NEWS ROUNDUP
Voters get a say on land rights Eleven states are giving voters their first chance this fall to override last year's Supreme Court ruling that allows local governments seeking more tax revenue to seize private property and give it to developers. Thirty state legislatures have passed laws or constitutional amendments since June 2005 to negate or limit the ruling's effect in their states. Voting 5-4, the high court said the Constitution permits state and local governments to condemn a home through eminent domain powers so developers can build hotels, offices or retail centers on the site. The decision, Kelo v. New London, Conn., raised a public outcry, led by libertarians and conservatives who advocate limited government power. The spate of ballot proposals is being bankrolled largely by libertarian organizations controlled by New York City real estate investor Howie Rich. The groups, Americans for Limited Government and the Fund for Democracy, have donated $4 million to ballot drives in eight states. "It's about one of the core freedoms that our country was built on," Rich says. "People work very hard to own a small business, a home or property. The government is there to protect the right to that property, not to take it away." Cities, some environmental groups and property developers oppose the ballot measures. Using eminent domain for commercial projects is proper "as a last resort," says Paul Farmer, executive director of the American Planning Association, a group for urban planners based in Washington. "Working these things out in the legislatures is preferable to the sledgehammer approach of these measures." Larry Morandi of the National Conference of State Legislatures says momentum is building on these issues and most of the ballot measures could pass. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says, "I'm not sure even Roe v. Wade (which legalized abortion nationwide) got so much of the country saying 'no' the way Kelo did."....
Wilderness bill comes with price Congress is on the verge of approving half a dozen bills that would protect as much as 1 million acres of wilderness areas across the West, but the move has infuriated environmentalists who charge that lawmakers are giving away too much pristine public land to real estate developers and local communities in the process. If lawmakers finish work on the legislation before adjourning -- several bills have passed the House already, and a Senate hearing is scheduled for tomorrow -- it would amount to the largest designation of new wilderness areas in a decade. But advocates and critics are in a bitter fight over the trade-offs, with opponents saying the public is paying too high a price. One pending bill would protect a 273,000-acre stretch of California's northern coast to preserve steelhead and salmon habitat -- but it would also guarantee that off-road vehicles could use an area nearby. Another measure would create a 300,000-acre wilderness area in Idaho while handing over 4,000 acres to state and local authorities to develop or manage on their own. "For a public-interest movement to succeed, it has to be supported by the public, and it has to move [forward]," said Idaho Conservation League Executive Director Rick Johnson, who teamed up with Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, to craft the Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act. "This is not the time to let the perfect be the enemy of the good." But several environmental activists, including singer-songwriter and Idaho resident Carole King and Janine Blaeloch, director of the Seattle-based Western Lands Project, said the bills would set a dangerous precedent....
Fish and Game to kill more Idaho wolves blamed for livestock deaths Three Idaho wolves have been killed by federal hunters in recent weeks and state officials have authorized the destruction of 10 more, due to recent attacks on livestock that left some 63 sheep dead and five injured. While disease and non-predator-related causes result in more than two-thirds livestock deaths in Idaho, state Department of Fish and Game officials say these wolf control actions are needed to curb future attacks. At least 43 sheep were killed since August by wolves of the Lick Creek pack, which roam western Idaho near the Snake River. Elsewhere in the state, other wolves killed 20 more sheep in the last week. So far this year, federal and state agents have killed 26 wolves in Idaho, and another nine have been legally killed by ranchers whose livestock were threatened or attacked.
In tug-of-war for space, prairie dogs losing fight It's been a bad few weeks for prairie dogs and their human champions. The Colorado Wildlife Commission declined to give the black-tailed prairie dog year-round protection from being shot, instead giving them safe harbor on public lands only between March 1 and June 14. At the same meeting, the commission approved use of a device known as the "Rodenator," which injects oxygen and propane into prairie dog holes, detonates the mixture and kills the animals within a minute. Those decisions came on the heels of the Boulder City Council approving a plan that OKs the killing of some prairie dogs and doesn't allot much money for prairie dog barriers that would keep the animals away from the humans annoyed by them. Depending on the point of view, prairie dogs are either cute, resourceful creatures that give shelter to burrowing owls and fine meals to coyotes, hawks and other prairie predators, or they're disease-ridden varmints that destroy grasslands and lawns and burrow holes that are the perfect size for spraining ankles....
Interior official urges cooperation on land restoration Nature doesn't recognize the difference between public and private ground. It doesn't see the lines on the map where one state starts and another ends. And it certainly doesn't know the difference between Forest Service green and Bureau of Land Management yellow. So when the talk turns to restoration of natural ecosystems, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Interior Lynn Scarlett said its time to search out the partnerships that will allow for those efforts to occur across the landscape. On Monday, Scarlett shared that vision as the keynote speaker of the 30th annual Public Land Law Conference at the University of Montana in a talk entitled “From Resource Damages to Restoration: An Evolution Toward Partnerships.” On Monday night, Scarlett was espousing the virtues of the Bush program. Cooperative Conservation works to bring citizens, communities and companies together to work on protecting and restoring the environment where they all live, work and play. It is incentive based, depends on collaboration and cooperation, has an experiential component and is entrepreneurial, Scarlett said....
Business Influence Over Environmental Policy and Regulation Is Targeted, Says Author of New Book Business influence over environmental policy and regulation in the United States is strategic and focused, says the author of the new book "Corporate America and Environmental Policy: How Often Does Business Get Its Way?" Business interests are more selective about exerting their influence than is commonly believed, and when they do get involved it's on issues that have high stakes for them and for the public, said author Sheldon Kamieniecki, a professor of politics and dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We've underestimated the strict approach business has taken to environmental politics," said Kamieniecki. "It isn't fair to say they've been involved in everything and are single-handedly responsible for our lack of progress. They have limited resources and choose their fights accordingly." The book is the first major investigation of business influence over environmental policy in all three branches of government. Through quantitative analysis, as well as six in-depth case studies of such hot-button topics as the management of old-growth forests, toxic dumping in the Hudson River, and the environmental impacts of coal mining, Kamieniecki examined the influence of business since 1970 on Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, and the federal court of appeals....
Editorial - Interior on the hot seat The U.S. Interior Department has much to worry about, and perhaps much to answer for, on key questions about how it's doing its job. Two weeks ago, Interior's Inspector General, Earl Devaney, told a congressional committee, "Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior." Devaney was particularly concerned about handling of oil and gas leasing, going back to the Clinton administration in the 1990s, and by the activities of former deputy secretary J. Steven Griles, who was suspected of favoring former lobbying clients. Flawed Gulf of Mexico oil and gas leases signed during the late 1990s may have lost the government more than $1 billion in royalties. And lawsuits pending in Oklahoma City claim the department's Minerals Management Service has failed to collect full payment of other royalties. In Wyoming, both outside critics and internal memos say the department's Bureau of Land Management is failing to enforce environmental standards on energy development around Pinedale. Such problems will require a strong response from new Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, a former Idaho governor, if the department is to repair its credibility and properly fulfill its mission of both conservation and recovering appropriate value from development....
Judge Halts Petroleum Reserve Lease Sale A federal judge has halted the sale of federal oil leases on a portion of Alaska's North Slope that environmentalists have pinpointed as a haven for migratory birds and calving caribou. The decision Monday blocks the sale of about 1.7 million acres that the Bureau of Land Management had planned for Wednesday. The sale would have included the Teshekpuk Lake area, which sits above 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Environmental groups have argued that a 600,000-acre section of the reserve at Teshekpuk Lake contains some of the most important wetlands in the Arctic. The decision by Judge James K. Singleton echoed a decision he had issued on Sept. 7 that temporarily halted the sale. Government environmental studies, Singleton wrote, were too narrow in scope because they did not consider how leasing in the northeastern part of the reserve would affect land and wildlife in the northwestern section of the 23-million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The government is fighting hard put at least a portion of the lease up for bid. The Interior Department had offered last week to temporarily abandon the sale of oil leases near the lake, asking the court to allow the leases outside the Teshekpuk region to proceed....
Chevron again eyes Colo. shale Thirty years after quitting one of the nation's most promising yet costly energy resources, Chevron Corp. wants to take another crack at unlocking shale oil from western Colorado's Piceance Basin. Chevron announced its return - which will come with help from scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico - on Monday at a petroleum engineers conference in San Antonio. Oil companies have struggled for decades to unlock the solid organic kerogen from sediment layers ranging from surface outcrops to deep underground. Now, with rising oil prices and instability with overseas supplies making such endeavors more attractive, Chevron is turning to chemists at Los Alamos to determine how this fuel can be liberated at the molecular level. Chevron chief technology officer Don Paul said the venture with Los Alamos could enable the company to tap some of the estimated 1 trillion barrels of oil locked in the shale, four times the holdings of Saudi Arabia....
Evangelical Christians Called to Tackle Global Warming The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice-president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), is pushing to persuade evangelical Christians to care about global warming. But while most U.S. evangelical Christians tend to vote Republican, the environmental cause is more associated with the Democratic Party, Cizik said in a Reuters interview. Cizik notes that since the 60 million or so American evangelicals tend to be more concerned with such social issues as abortion and the war in Iraq, getting them into tackling global climate change or other environmental problems is not an easy task. "There are people who disagree with what I'm doing ... within the evangelical community of America," he said. "Simply for standing up and saying, 'Climate change is real, the science is solid, we have to care about this issue because of the impact on the poor' -why would that be controversial? Well, I'm sorry to say, it is controversial and there are people who want to take my head off." Cizik is part of an overall ecological push by evangelical Christians known as "creation care," the notion that the environment is a divine creation and must be protected by humans....
Global Temperature Highest in Millennia The planet's temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.36 degree Fahrenheit per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago. The researchers noted that a report in the journal Nature found that 1,700 plant, animal and insect species moved poleward at an average rate of about 4 miles per decade in the last half of the 20th century. The warming has been stronger in the far north, where melting ice and snow expose darker land and rocks beneath allowing more warmth from the sun to be absorbed, and more over land than water. Water changes temperature more slowly than land because of its great capacity to hold heat, but the researchers noted that the warming has been marked in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. Those oceans have a major effect on climate and warming that could lead to more El Nino episodes affecting the weather....
Demands for Fish Ladders Ignored In a tentative ruling Monday that was criticized by environmentalists and Indian tribes, a federal commission that regulates hydropower brushed aside U.S. wild-life agency demands for fish ladders to help dwindling Klamath River salmon runs cross dams that block upriver spawning grounds. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a draft environmental review of the four dams, which are operated by PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore., as part of a license renewal process that is slated to be concluded early next year. Environmentalists, tribes and commercial fishermen have long battled for removal of the dams, which they believe have played a critical role in the decline of chinook, the highly prized king salmon of the marketplace, while putting the disappearing coho salmon on the endangered species list. Steve Rothert of the environmental group American Rivers said the commission "overstepped its regulatory powers" in bypassing federal wildlife agency recommendations for fish ladders. Instead, the regulators in principal agreed with a plan by PacifiCorp to transport salmon around the dams to get them to upper parts of the river that have been blocked for more than half a century....
A Editorial - Blind Forest Road Policy ROAD-BUILDING IN NATIONAL forests is a double whammy for taxpayers. Not only do they have to pay the cost of the actual roads, which are used mostly by the timber and mining industries, but taxpayers must also bear the less quantifiable cost of the environmental damage to the forests they own. That's why decisions to build new roads in pristine forests should be made only after careful study and deliberation. That was the policy adopted in the Clinton administration, which, after three years of study and public input, in 2001 banned road-building in 58 million acres of forest. But the Bush administration, in a decision marked by neither study nor deliberation, suspended the so-called roadless rule later that year. The mad dash to open the forests to more roads — and, oddly, to give states more control over national forests — was what undid the Bush administration's plans. A federal judge ruled last week that the administration had failed to do the environmental studies required under the Endangered Species and National Environmental Policy acts before disregarding the roadless rule in the Lower 48 states....
Kempthorne, Gov. Bush, environmentalists leaders meet Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Gov. Jeb Bush promoted cooperation between government and the private sector on environmental conservation Monday during a tour designed to gather input from citizens on federal environmental programs. Kempthorne, Bush and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said the 24-city tour designed to forge new partnerships between groups - business, government and environmental activists - that haven't always agreed during environmental debates. The concept of cooperative conservation was President Bush's idea to move "away from the old environmental debate that pits one group against another," Kempthorne told a crowd of over 100 people. But environmental activists, who said previous tour stops have featured "hand-picked opponents" of protection laws, dominated Monday's hearing with pleas that President Bush's administration fully fund and enforce existing laws such as the Endangered Species Act....
The environmental load of 300 million: How heavy? A flotilla of 100 fishing boats, rafts, and kayaks crossed the Willamette River to a downtown park in Portland, Ore., the other evening to rally for the Pacific Northwest's reigning icon: wild salmon, now plummeting toward extinction due to development across much of the Columbia River basin. It was a typical event for a "green" city that has one of the best records in the United States for recycling, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, using alternative energy, and providing public transportation and bike paths. But Portland's amenities - its natural setting along the Willamette River and its youthful techie vibe - are drawing a surge of new people, threatening to erode the very qualities that drew people here in the first place. As the US approaches 300 million people, that's the story of the nation as well. In many ways, Americans have mitigated the impact of their increasing presence on the land. Since reaching the 200 million mark back in 1967, they have cut emissions of major air pollutants, banned certain harmful pesticides, and overseen the rebound of several endangered species. Despite using more resources and creating more waste, they've become more energy efficient. The danger, experts say, is that the US may simply have postponed the day of reckoning....
Landowners fight lynx habitat designation About one-third of the state could soon be classified as critical habitat for endangered Canada lynx. But the companies that own most of northern Maine and use the forests for logging and for development have asked to have their land exempted from the habitat area. No one is certain how the designation would affect future land uses in what is the richest lynx habitat in the United States, but the Maine landowners, along with wildlife conservation groups that support the habitat designation, are making their final appeals to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the Nov. 1 decision approaches. "We have concerns about lynx (in Maine), and here they are, trying to get exempted," said Jen Burns, attorney for Maine Audubon. The group is filing arguments opposing the landowners' exemption requests. The proposal to designate 10,633 square miles in Maine shouldn't be reduced simply because the owners want to be left out, she said....
20% drop in campers at parks over decade National parks are seeing 20 percent fewer campers than 10 years ago, and officials say causes may include a slumping economy, higher gas prices, more competition for people's time and changing demographics. "The long weekend is replacing the two-week time off," said Jim Gramann, a professor at Texas A&M University and a visiting social scientist for the National Park Service. "That means fewer overnight stays in the national parks." Gramann said population changes may also have an impact because of the growth among some groups that are not traditional park-goers, such as minorities. Census projections show that by 2050, ethnic minority groups will compose more than 47 percent of the U.S. population. The Park Service reported that overnight stays in national park fell by 13.8 million, or 20 percent, between 1995 and 2005 and have fallen an additional 4.3 percent in the first eight months of this year. The Park Service said tent camping dropped 23 percent, backcountry camping 24 percent and RV camping 31 percent in the 10-year period.
Sheep Burned in Yolo County Fire Receiving Care The sight of hundreds of sheep burned in last Friday's fire near Zamora is hard to see, even for those used to dealing with injured animals. Yet there are signs of encouragement with each passing day. The fast-moving blaze scorched approximately 10,000 acres, destroyed three homes, several outbuildings and downed power lines. A large flock of sheep didn't escape the flames either. Sheep rancher Bill Slaven said there was little he could do when the fire ripped through his ranch. "It was worse than I thought. I thought there'd be some place where they could maybe get out a little area or something, but there wasn't any place for them." Slaven, whose family has owned the land for about 100 years, said he expects he'll lose as many as 600 sheep, a painful blow that will also be hard financially. "Just have to kind of go through the year and see if we make it through," he said....
It's All Trew: Artist draws on past in a jab at LBJ In 1963, after JFK’s untimely death put LBJ into the presidency, Peter Hurd, the famous New Mexico artist, was chosen to paint the official White House likeness of LBJ. Like the bust sittings, Johnson did not cooperate. After all, he was a busy man. Hurd was allowed only one sitting, during which Johnson fell asleep, then woke up and abruptly left the room, not to return. The artist had to complete the portrait from photographs. Most thought the finished work was excellent and even flattering to the president. When LBJ viewed the portrait he declared it, “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” Hurd was not your average man. He descended from a famous military family, attended West Point and served as a Life Magazine war correspondent during World War II, all the while becoming a world-class artist of great distinction. LBJ’s denouncement of his portrait barely ruffled Hurd’s feathers. He joined in the puns and jokes, making the rounds because he knew in spite of what Johnson said, the work was good and would hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Hurd eventually became the best-known artist in the southwest with work hanging only in famous museums and galleries. Recently, While Ruth and I visited an antique store in Farwell, we saw a small pen and ink illustration signed by Hurd. We know the work was a copy and don’t know if the signature on the original drawing was authentic. The subject was a well-drawn donkey running toward the back of the illustration. In clear view, the rear of the donkey was drawn in a way LBJ’s face could be instantly recognized, and I must say the resemblance was remarkable. Perhaps if the signature is authentic, Hurd took his revenge after all....
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Save Historic Smokey Creek CCC Camp From Bush Forest Service
Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400, Battle Ground, WA 98604
(360) 687-3087 – Fax: (360) 687-2973
alra@governance.net
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003 landrightsnet@yahoo.com -- (202) 329-3574
Stop using “exclusive use” to get rid of family recreation.
Save Historic Smokey Creek CCC Camp From Bush Forest Service
Your call today can help save family forest recreation
Urgent Action needed today.
Historic CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) Camp To Be Burned By Forest Service – families to be ejected.
It is only an example of the Forest Service policy of removing recreation from the forests.
By fighting for Smokey Creek, you are fighting against the anti-people “exclusive use” policy the Forest Service is using to keep you and your allies out of the forests.
*****See Action Items Below.
Voting for Bush Administration was supposed to support more forest access, not less.
*****The Bush Administration Policy has the Forest Service getting rid of “exclusive use” throughout the National Forest System. Their idea of “exclusive use” is -- if you have a cabin or camp in a specific spot, then someone else cannot be at that spot at the same time. If someone else cannot be there at the same time, it is not open to the public. Therefore you must be eliminated to make room for the “public.” The result of this convoluted thinking is that most uses of the forests must be eliminated to make room for the “public.”
Of course if everyone is eliminated to make room for everyone else, then nobody uses the forest -- that is exactly what the Forest Service wants.
This kind of logic is managing the forests all over the country.
If they eliminate the permittees who have shown special caring about a particular area of the forest, then it becomes the tragedy of the commons. Everyone public is responsible however no one in particular is responsible. No private investment or care is given to any particular spot in the forest. All the costs of managing the forests go to the “public” which means the taxpayer.
With costs higher, there is less public support from Congress resulting in more closed forests and less people going there. That is the object of the “exclusive use” policy in the first place. Get rid of the people.
Family recreation is under attack. Permit cabin use is being subtly undermined.
Forest Service Permittees Face Removal
All permittees must call, fax and e-mail their Congressman, Senators and Forest Service/Agriculture Department officials to put a stop to the “exclusive use” policy. Otherwise you will be eliminated over time.
Sound familiar? The Forest Service wants to remove people from the forests. They say they want public use but really they want no use.
The Bush Administration is continuing the anti-people recreation policies of the Clinton Administration.
Here is the background on the Smokey Creek CCC Camp.
The Forest Service has arbitrarily decided that the old and historic buildings of the Smokey Creek CCC Camp site are no longer serviceable and is planning to burn the former CCC camp to the ground. This old and historic CCC camp is located in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest Washington State, North of the Columbia River.
Of course, the Forest Service does not want the camp to be serviceable, so in their biased view, it is not serviceable. Even though the Mountain View Recreation Club is happy to get along with it as it is and even make investments in it to keep it going.
Smokey Creek CCC Camp is leased to the Mountain View Recreation Club that has used and maintained the camp for 47 years. A lot of time, care, sweat and labor has gone into making this camp a wonderful family experience.
Part of the Club’s permit with the Forest Service requires that that camp be made available to the public. So the public also gains from the Club’s private initiative and investment.
The Forest Service has given a deadline of October to the camp users to vacate the camp. Sometime after that date burning will eliminate the camp from any possible future use. It will just become largely unused forest with no direct citizen involvement.
How does the public benefit by burning down this camp?
Is this why Bush supporters voted for him? To get less access, not more.
This is part of a larger nationwide Forest Service policy to remove what they call “exclusive use” of not just Smokey Creek, but many other camps and recreation sites across the country. This anti-recreation policy threatens tens of thousands of cabin permittees, recreation permittees and permittees of other types of uses in Forest Service areas nationwide.
The Mountain View Recreation Club has done a terrific job of taking care of the camp over 47 years according to letters from the Forest Service.
Fifty families participate in this club along with many of their friends and relatives. The emphasis is on camping and horseback trail riding. It is a wonderful place for kids. Many thousands of use days have occurred that would not have happened if Smokey Creek did not exist. Those use day’s will all disappear if the Forest Service gets its way and removes the camp.
By using the code word “exclusive use” the Forest Service tries to hide their real agenda of eliminating any use. It is the tragedy of the commons revisited. By eliminating people who place a value on taking care of the resource, the agency supposedly makes it available to all the general public. By not being specifically involved in a parcel of land, the public does not place the care or invest time in the land. The real result is that nobody uses the area and the public and the land are the losers.
With the people who care about Smokey Creek eliminated, the public is gradually eliminated.
By its permit, the camp already must be available to other groups. Thus the general public benefits from private stewardship and the forest benefits because real people take responsibility for managing and caring for the forest. This saves the taxpayer money in the long run and enhances family recreation. It is sweat equity and family involvement at its best.
You can help save Smokey Creek.
*****Action Items:
-----1. Call and fax Secretary of Agriculture, Michael O. Johanns. Call (202) 720-3631. Fax: (202) 720-2166. E-mail: mike.johanns@usda.gov
-----2. Call or fax Mark Rey, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment. He is in charge of the Forest Service. His phone number is (202) 720-7173. The fax is: (202) 720-4732. mark.rey@usda.gov. A question for him is why the Bush Administration is supporting the removal of recreation uses from our Federal lands.
Another question is why the Bush Administration is rewarding private stewardship by throwing out the people. This is not consistent with our understanding of Bush Administration policy. It is certainly not why people voted for President Bush.
The Agriculture Department and Congress must be deluged with calls.
-----3. Call, fax and e-mail Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Senator Cantwell is up for re-election. Ask her to show her support for family recreation and access to the forests by stopping the closure and burning of Smokey Creek. Call her at (202) 224-3441. Her fax is (202) 228-0514. Send her a message at http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/index.html or go to http://cantwell.senate.gov/
-----4. Call, fax or e-mail both your Senators about this terrible Forest Service “exclusive use policy.” Any Senator may be called (202) 224-3121.
----5. Call, fax and e-mail Congressman Doc Hastings (R-WA). Smokey Creek is in his district. He’s been working hard to save Smokey Creek and needs your letters of support. He has asked for a 60 day extension on the permit so there is more time to consider alternatives to burning down the camp. You can call (202) 225-2816. His fax number is (202) 225-3251. The staff person working hard on this issue is Martin Doern (martin.doern@mail.house.gov).
-----6. Call, fax and e-mail your own Congressman urging him to support Rep. Hastings and save Smokey Creek. Any Congressman may be called at (202) 225-3121. Tell them to ask the Forest Service to extend the Smokey Creek CCC Camp permit. Ask for their fax and e-mail when you call.
*****
Ask your Congressman to request that the Forest Service extend the Smokey Creek permit. Ask him or her not to let the FS burn down the historic Smokey Creek CCC Camp. Help stop the huge nationwide plan by the Forest Service to get rid of what they call “exclusive use” in all National Forests. This plan will affect your local forests also.
*****
Why should you bother to call or send a fax or e-mail about an issue that may be remote to you? Because the fight to continue special use permits and recreation access to our Federal lands is the fight of every one who cares about family recreation in the forests.
Everyone who shares these concerns of losing recreation access should fight back. Those who are saved will be there to fight for you when you are under attack. It is a team game. If you don’t play it that way, you are certain to lose your access over time. The Forest Service will divide and conquer you.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “If we don’t all hang together, we will most assuredly hang separately.”
Call every day this week and next. This battle is likely to go on for weeks. Don’t pay any attention to the Forest Service deadline. We’re going to fight for Smokey Creek and against “exclusive use” until we win.
The Agriculture Department phones must ring off the hook. The Bush Administration must be held accountable for removing recreation from our forests and throwing families out.
You can make a difference by making your calls and getting others to do the same. Call your friends and neighbors.
This is your chance to really make a difference.
The Bush Administration appears to be afraid to stand up to Forest Service bureaucrats who have a bias to get rid of users of the forest. This is cultural cleansing at its worse. They lock them out.
Are the unelected bureaucrats running the Forest Service or our elected officials?
Your calls will get your elected officials into action.
Please forward this message as widely as you can.
Land Rights Network
American Land Rights Association
PO Box 400, Battle Ground, WA 98604
(360) 687-3087 – Fax: (360) 687-2973
alra@governance.net
Web Address: http://www.landrights.org
Legislative Office: 507 Seward Square SE - Washington, DC 20003 landrightsnet@yahoo.com -- (202) 329-3574
Stop using “exclusive use” to get rid of family recreation.
Save Historic Smokey Creek CCC Camp From Bush Forest Service
Your call today can help save family forest recreation
Urgent Action needed today.
Historic CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) Camp To Be Burned By Forest Service – families to be ejected.
It is only an example of the Forest Service policy of removing recreation from the forests.
By fighting for Smokey Creek, you are fighting against the anti-people “exclusive use” policy the Forest Service is using to keep you and your allies out of the forests.
*****See Action Items Below.
Voting for Bush Administration was supposed to support more forest access, not less.
*****The Bush Administration Policy has the Forest Service getting rid of “exclusive use” throughout the National Forest System. Their idea of “exclusive use” is -- if you have a cabin or camp in a specific spot, then someone else cannot be at that spot at the same time. If someone else cannot be there at the same time, it is not open to the public. Therefore you must be eliminated to make room for the “public.” The result of this convoluted thinking is that most uses of the forests must be eliminated to make room for the “public.”
Of course if everyone is eliminated to make room for everyone else, then nobody uses the forest -- that is exactly what the Forest Service wants.
This kind of logic is managing the forests all over the country.
If they eliminate the permittees who have shown special caring about a particular area of the forest, then it becomes the tragedy of the commons. Everyone public is responsible however no one in particular is responsible. No private investment or care is given to any particular spot in the forest. All the costs of managing the forests go to the “public” which means the taxpayer.
With costs higher, there is less public support from Congress resulting in more closed forests and less people going there. That is the object of the “exclusive use” policy in the first place. Get rid of the people.
Family recreation is under attack. Permit cabin use is being subtly undermined.
Forest Service Permittees Face Removal
All permittees must call, fax and e-mail their Congressman, Senators and Forest Service/Agriculture Department officials to put a stop to the “exclusive use” policy. Otherwise you will be eliminated over time.
Sound familiar? The Forest Service wants to remove people from the forests. They say they want public use but really they want no use.
The Bush Administration is continuing the anti-people recreation policies of the Clinton Administration.
Here is the background on the Smokey Creek CCC Camp.
The Forest Service has arbitrarily decided that the old and historic buildings of the Smokey Creek CCC Camp site are no longer serviceable and is planning to burn the former CCC camp to the ground. This old and historic CCC camp is located in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest Washington State, North of the Columbia River.
Of course, the Forest Service does not want the camp to be serviceable, so in their biased view, it is not serviceable. Even though the Mountain View Recreation Club is happy to get along with it as it is and even make investments in it to keep it going.
Smokey Creek CCC Camp is leased to the Mountain View Recreation Club that has used and maintained the camp for 47 years. A lot of time, care, sweat and labor has gone into making this camp a wonderful family experience.
Part of the Club’s permit with the Forest Service requires that that camp be made available to the public. So the public also gains from the Club’s private initiative and investment.
The Forest Service has given a deadline of October to the camp users to vacate the camp. Sometime after that date burning will eliminate the camp from any possible future use. It will just become largely unused forest with no direct citizen involvement.
How does the public benefit by burning down this camp?
Is this why Bush supporters voted for him? To get less access, not more.
This is part of a larger nationwide Forest Service policy to remove what they call “exclusive use” of not just Smokey Creek, but many other camps and recreation sites across the country. This anti-recreation policy threatens tens of thousands of cabin permittees, recreation permittees and permittees of other types of uses in Forest Service areas nationwide.
The Mountain View Recreation Club has done a terrific job of taking care of the camp over 47 years according to letters from the Forest Service.
Fifty families participate in this club along with many of their friends and relatives. The emphasis is on camping and horseback trail riding. It is a wonderful place for kids. Many thousands of use days have occurred that would not have happened if Smokey Creek did not exist. Those use day’s will all disappear if the Forest Service gets its way and removes the camp.
By using the code word “exclusive use” the Forest Service tries to hide their real agenda of eliminating any use. It is the tragedy of the commons revisited. By eliminating people who place a value on taking care of the resource, the agency supposedly makes it available to all the general public. By not being specifically involved in a parcel of land, the public does not place the care or invest time in the land. The real result is that nobody uses the area and the public and the land are the losers.
With the people who care about Smokey Creek eliminated, the public is gradually eliminated.
By its permit, the camp already must be available to other groups. Thus the general public benefits from private stewardship and the forest benefits because real people take responsibility for managing and caring for the forest. This saves the taxpayer money in the long run and enhances family recreation. It is sweat equity and family involvement at its best.
You can help save Smokey Creek.
*****Action Items:
-----1. Call and fax Secretary of Agriculture, Michael O. Johanns. Call (202) 720-3631. Fax: (202) 720-2166. E-mail: mike.johanns@usda.gov
-----2. Call or fax Mark Rey, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment. He is in charge of the Forest Service. His phone number is (202) 720-7173. The fax is: (202) 720-4732. mark.rey@usda.gov. A question for him is why the Bush Administration is supporting the removal of recreation uses from our Federal lands.
Another question is why the Bush Administration is rewarding private stewardship by throwing out the people. This is not consistent with our understanding of Bush Administration policy. It is certainly not why people voted for President Bush.
The Agriculture Department and Congress must be deluged with calls.
-----3. Call, fax and e-mail Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Senator Cantwell is up for re-election. Ask her to show her support for family recreation and access to the forests by stopping the closure and burning of Smokey Creek. Call her at (202) 224-3441. Her fax is (202) 228-0514. Send her a message at http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/index.html or go to http://cantwell.senate.gov/
-----4. Call, fax or e-mail both your Senators about this terrible Forest Service “exclusive use policy.” Any Senator may be called (202) 224-3121.
----5. Call, fax and e-mail Congressman Doc Hastings (R-WA). Smokey Creek is in his district. He’s been working hard to save Smokey Creek and needs your letters of support. He has asked for a 60 day extension on the permit so there is more time to consider alternatives to burning down the camp. You can call (202) 225-2816. His fax number is (202) 225-3251. The staff person working hard on this issue is Martin Doern (martin.doern@mail.house.gov).
-----6. Call, fax and e-mail your own Congressman urging him to support Rep. Hastings and save Smokey Creek. Any Congressman may be called at (202) 225-3121. Tell them to ask the Forest Service to extend the Smokey Creek CCC Camp permit. Ask for their fax and e-mail when you call.
*****
Ask your Congressman to request that the Forest Service extend the Smokey Creek permit. Ask him or her not to let the FS burn down the historic Smokey Creek CCC Camp. Help stop the huge nationwide plan by the Forest Service to get rid of what they call “exclusive use” in all National Forests. This plan will affect your local forests also.
*****
Why should you bother to call or send a fax or e-mail about an issue that may be remote to you? Because the fight to continue special use permits and recreation access to our Federal lands is the fight of every one who cares about family recreation in the forests.
Everyone who shares these concerns of losing recreation access should fight back. Those who are saved will be there to fight for you when you are under attack. It is a team game. If you don’t play it that way, you are certain to lose your access over time. The Forest Service will divide and conquer you.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “If we don’t all hang together, we will most assuredly hang separately.”
Call every day this week and next. This battle is likely to go on for weeks. Don’t pay any attention to the Forest Service deadline. We’re going to fight for Smokey Creek and against “exclusive use” until we win.
The Agriculture Department phones must ring off the hook. The Bush Administration must be held accountable for removing recreation from our forests and throwing families out.
You can make a difference by making your calls and getting others to do the same. Call your friends and neighbors.
This is your chance to really make a difference.
The Bush Administration appears to be afraid to stand up to Forest Service bureaucrats who have a bias to get rid of users of the forest. This is cultural cleansing at its worse. They lock them out.
Are the unelected bureaucrats running the Forest Service or our elected officials?
Your calls will get your elected officials into action.
Please forward this message as widely as you can.
Monday, September 25, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rancher Vows Fight With Gov't Over Elk When 100 farm-raised elk fled his private hunting reserve through a bear-dug hole under the fence, owner Rex Rammell a man with a long history of locking antlers with the state didn't realize he'd wind up in the governor's crosshairs. But a month later, about 20 of the elk are dead, shot on sight under an emergency executive order from Gov. Jim Risch. About 40 have been recaptured and the rest are roaming the alfalfa fields and forest slopes on the fringe of Yellowstone National Park, home to the nation's largest herd of wild elk. Risch, joined by wildlife officials, says Rammell's elk will pollute the native gene pool and spread disease. Rammell, a veterinarian who made a career of breeding trophy bull elk for wealthy hunters and a sideshow of fighting the government, says he sold his farm and his elk and would like to run against Risch for public office in four years on a campaign against government abuses. "When people tell my story, it'd read like a novel. It's like I've gotten on the wrong side of the mafia," Rammell said of the state and public hunters who patrol the rock-cobbled roads near his ranch, taking elk in their sights. "But America will soon know that there's a mountain man out here that's not going to let the government do it."....
Wolves attack 3 heifers A Madison Valley landowner has been given a shoot-on-sight permit to kill up to two wolves. The animals badly injured three yearling heifers, who had to be euthanized. USDA Wildlife Services investigated the attacks on Sept. 19 and Sept. 22. The rancher's name was not released. The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department authorized the killing of up to two wolves by either USDA Wildlife Services or the landowner through Oct. 15. After that, the cattle will be removed from the property for the winter. "The Wedge pack is known to live on and around the property where the depredations occurred, although we don't know right now whether the Wedge Pack is responsible for the recent depredations," said Carolyn Sime, FWP wolf program coordinator....
Feds reject Idaho plan to kill wolves Federal officials have rejected Idaho's plan to kill up to 43 wolves in north-central Idaho to boost elk numbers, saying scientific data gathered by the state do not justify the action. At a recent meeting, federal officials told Steve Nadeau, Idaho Fish and Game Department's large carnivore manager, that state studies of elk declines in the Lolo region didn't adequately demonstrate wolves are the primary cause. "We agreed the wolves are playing an important role in limiting recovery. The question comes down to whether or not there's an unacceptable impact," said Jeff Foss, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field supervisor in Boise. "Based on the information that was provided at the meeting, the service didn't feel it had enough at that time to draw (that) conclusion." The Idaho agency said the federal decision means the plan will not be put into effect this winter, but research to gather supporting data will continue. "The department would have liked to move forward by this winter," Jim Unsworth, the department's wildlife bureau chief, told The Associated Press. "That's not likely."....
Group: Work with railroad A group of landowners along Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad’s proposed coal line into Wyoming urged their neighbors Friday to start working with — not against — the railroad on land-acquisition issues. The group, called the DM&E Landowner Advisory Board, has kept a low profile in recent years. Five of the board’s seven members held a news conference Friday in Rapid City. Their message: You’ll be better off if you work out a deal with the railroad now, rather than submit to a court-ordered settlement later on. DM&E has been working nine years on its plan to upgrade and extend its main east-west line into the coalfields of northeast Wyoming. The Sioux Falls company is currently waiting for a $2.3 billion federal loan. Board member Dave Lewis of Oelrichs said he was initially a railroad opponent. But now, he is strongly in favor of the railroad. “We talked to lawyers who said, ‘You can do all kinds of things to delay the railroad and cost them extra money, but … it’s going to get built, and it makes more sense to spend your time and effort to make sure you’re adequately compensated.’ That’s the route I chose,” he said....
Feds hold up oil, gas leases in Wyo Range A federal review board has temporarily halted energy development on 20,000 acres in the Wyoming Range, siding with conservation and sportsmen who said energy leases there were sold with insufficient review. The Interior Board of Land Appeals on Thursday granted a stay on leases the Bureau of Land Management had sold in the mountains 40 miles south of Jackson. A representative of one group said that would effectively halt energy development on the land for two to three years. A number of conservation groups and a coalition of outfitters requested the stay to postpone oil and gas drilling while the board considers their appeal of leases sold to energy companies in April. The groups have also filed protests on other leases that BLM sold in June and August covering roughly 23,000 acres in the area. Conservationists called the stay good news, but said the decision is far from a victory. “It’s a temporary halt on leasing until the board makes a decision on the merits of the appeal,” said Wyoming Outdoor Council attorney Lisa McGee. “It's an opportunity to slow down....
Growing pains Army’s proposed expansion of Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site may imperil historical and prehistoric treasures in Southeast Colorado. The Army’s decision to transfer 8,000 additional troops to Fort Carson and also make the Mountain Camp the training headquarters for reserve soldiers and National Guard troops west of the Mississippi River is having a ripple effect across Southern Colorado. The plans coincide with the Army’s proposed expansion of its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, a 240,000-acre training ground for troops, by 418,000 acres. The Army contends it needs more land to accommodate its broader mission and that private landowners who are willing to sell their land for the expansion are silent supporters of the proposal, which is currently undergoing review by Army brass. Farmers, ranchers and local governments across Southern Colorado are fighting the proposal. Opponents fear dire economic consequences will accompany the loss of their land in a region already buffeted by the lingering effects of drought and agricultural and ranching challenges. Another aspect of the debate is the potential loss of archaeological and fossil finds in the proposed expansion area....
Prairie legacy The Purgatoire River snakes through the dusty vistas and rolling hills in the middle of endless cattle-ranching country in Southeastern Colorado. Hidden across large rock formations and sandstone bluffs on each side of this slow-flowing river are ancient Native American petroglyphs, ceremonial circles and even dinosaur footprints. On its journey to the east, the river runs through a large portion of the Davidson Ranch. Ranchers Bob and John Davidson, brothers who run their cattle operation on 44,000 acres of land about 14 miles southeast of this small farm town, say the ancient treasures that adorn their land are in trouble if the Army expands its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Las Animas County is the state’s eighth cattle-producing county in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The county is second in terms of cow-calf operations with about 35,000 cows second only to Yuma County with 52,000. "We are not willing to sell - this land is our lives and we would be flat out retired if they took it. We couldn't start over because John is 65 and I am 62," Bob said as he drove across the hard land he loves. "My dad worked out here until he was 85. He did exactly what he wanted and he worked almost to the day he died. We want to finish our lives out here and our kids want the operation when we are done with it. We just don't want to get rid of it at any cost," he added....
Fate of historic dig hangs in the balance The fate of an 1880s homestead along the Purgatoire River is in limbo pending the Army’s decision on expanding its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Minette Church, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has led some of the archaeological teams working at the Lopez Family Plaza some 15 miles south of La Junta. “The Lopez Family Plaza was built circa 1880 by Domacio and Loretta (de Arce) Lopez,” Church said. “They lived there until roughly 1903.” The Lopezes patented a homestead of 160 acres but their holdings gradually increased to include a school house, small cemetery and a little church, she said. “The church is of interest. They are looking to stabilize the walls because the adobe is in such bad shape,” Church said. Archaeological work began in 2003 and occurs every other summer, Church said. “The site is within a national historic district.”....
Editorial - States deserve role in roadless verdicts Coloradans know better than bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., how the state's roadless Forest Service land should be managed. That's why we were pleased when President Bush replaced President Clinton's 2001 one-size-fits-all "roadless rule" with a process that gave state officials and local stakeholders a role in devising policy. The land in question involves 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico, including 4.1 million in Colorado. A bipartisan task force, after months of work, submitted its recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens just last week. It recommended keeping nearly all of Colorado's designated areas roadless, with very limited exceptions. Owens, in turn, was to have submitted the state's petition to the federal government by November. Was it all for nothing? On Wednesday, a U.S. magistrate judge in San Francisco ruled that the Bush policy was invalid because the Forest Service had not completed the proper environmental analyses. "We simply should not have a federal magistrate in San Francisco unilaterally dictating natural resource policy for the entire country," Owens said, and he's right. The Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture, which is considering whether to appeal the ruling by Judge Elizabeth Laporte. It should. The argument that the environmental impact of state policies has to be studied before the states have decided what policies they prefer is rather odd, especially since Laporte conceded that the Forest Service did have authority to adopt a localized approach to forest protection, rather than a single nationwide policy, "provided that it follows the proper procedures."....
Idaho submits its petition Gov. Jim Risch says he has a plan for roadless areas in Idaho's federal forests that will help save them from the wildfires that burned an area larger than the state of Rhode Island in 2006. Environmentalists say the governor is blowing smoke. At a news conference this week, Risch unveiled the state's request for changes to U.S. Forest Service management plans for 9.3 million acres of roadless areas here -- more pristine forest land under federal management than any other state in the lower 48. His 69-page petition would ban road-building on 3.1 million acres, even as it allows some development in the remainder, including building temporary roads to allow timber harvests to remove beetle-killed trees that boost fire danger. "Fire is the result of fuel build-up," Risch said. "I'm tired of breathing this smoke." Under Idaho's petition, 1.4 million acres of Forest Service territory would be designated "wildland" and would closely parallel existing federal wilderness areas, where no roadbuilding is allowed. That portion includes 315,000 acres currently slated to become wilderness in the Boulder and White Cloud mountains of central Idaho. Another 1.7 million acres would be dubbed "primitive," and would get similar protections. Some 5.5 million acres would labeled "backcountry," where temporary roads could be built and logging conducted for forest health. And another 500,000 acres would be reclassified as "general," where commercial timber harvests would be allowed....
The potential in Utah's tar sands not worth the trouble, experts say Excitement over the development of Utah's tar-sands reserves has relied on the example of massive mining and refining projects in Alberta, Canada, but Utah's potential doesn't compare and may never be realized. That general conclusion, reached at an academic conference at the University of Utah this past week, came from scientists, state officials, industry representatives and environmentalists. Though not unanimous, the findings mean hopeful tar-sands developers are going to have to come up with new technologies to succeed commercially. "That's why all of us are working on new processes," said Page van Löben Sels, president of the consulting firm Performance Investors Inc. and former president of the Utah affiliate of Earth Energy Resources of Calgary, Alberta. Known as oil sands in Canada, tar sands contain bitumen - residual fossil oil trapped in rock - which can be processed to make asphalt and crude oil, then refined to produce gasoline and diesel. There are an estimated 3 trillion barrels of oil in tar sands in the world. About 650 billion barrels are in North America, most in the Athabasca field in Alberta. Southeast Utah is thought to have 12 billion to 40 billion barrels of potential petroleum locked in sandstone formations, mostly around Vernal in Uintah County. Utah's tar sands comprise 274,000 acres. About 74 percent of those acres are public land, with federal lands making up about 71.6 percent, said Jim Kohler, solid minerals chief for the state Bureau of Land Management. It is unknown how much of that potential would be recoverable....
How deep can you dig? If you've never been in a 300-ton haul truck, just find a two-story home and sit at a window on the top floor with a steering wheel in your hands. It's like driving a house. After a while you forget about the huge wheels below your seat, and it feels like a low-flying aircraft in slow motion -- until you dive into the pit. You begin to feel small again. The loud whir of brakes sounds like a time machine as you descend down a wide passage carved through 60 million years of geologic layering. Soon your large home on wheels is dwarfed under earthen highwalls that stretch more than 200 feet upward to the unseen surface above. When major strip mining began here in Campbell County 30 years ago, mines chewed on the shallow edges of the coal outcrop, removing about one unit of dirt for every unit of coal. But the coal seams here dive westward to depths beyond 2,000 feet between the Powder River and Buffalo. Today, some "strip ratios" are more like 5 to 1, and soon it will be 6 to 1, according to the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management....
Governor wants lease-buyback bill Gov. Dave Freudenthal has asked the state's congressional delegation to consider sponsoring legislation to buy back some natural gas leases in southwest Wyoming's Jack Morrow Hills to protect the Red Desert area from energy development. In a letter to U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., dated Aug. 18, Freudenthal wrote that a voluntary lease-buyback program could be implemented as a "management tool" if supported by congressional action. "Your support would provide options that would allow the rich natural resources of Wyoming, including the Jack Morrow Hills area, to remain protected," the governor wrote. The letter was obtained by Friends of the Red Desert, a conservation group. But Thomas said he still believes the federal management plan for the Jack Morrow Hills that was approved this summer needs to be given time before any changes are made or special protections are adopted. Conservationists said they were heartened by the governor's endorsement of some sort of special protection for the Jack Morrow Hills area. They said the best way to achieve that was to establish a federal "national conservation area" designation for the hills....
Appeals court rules against converting farm to wetlands State plans to remake Colusa County farmland as wetlands took another blow when a state appeals court upheld a 2004 decision blocking the takeover of the Traynham Ranch east of Arbuckle. The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento rejected the appeal by the Wildlife Conservation Board and Department of Fish and Game. Both agencies sought to turn 235 acres they purchased in 2001 into wildlife habitat, but a year later the California Farm Bureau Federation and the county sued to prevent the change. Colusa County Judge John Tiernan sided with the Farm Bureau and the county in 2004. The appeals court upheld Tiernan. “This project is not a mere passive change in use, a cessation of farming on the property. This project involves the physical reshaping of the land to create wetlands and uplands for habitat,” the appeals court said in a 46-page decision posted Friday on its Web site. The state agencies “consistently took the position the loss of agricultural land was not itself an adverse environmental impact, but the state agencies do not point us to any evidence in the record showing they considered the potential environmental impacts from the management plan and the construction and maintenance of this new habitat,” the court said. The state could not convert the lands without environmental review, the appeals court ruled, saying even the restoration of farmland to a more “natural” state has long-term effects on people and nearby farms that must be studied....
Vegas growth pushes up against pig farm When Bob Combs began farming pigs here 43 years ago, his was the only house light for miles out in the desert, and he could safely shoot his rifle in any direction at the stray dogs that came to attack his livestock. Now, houses bump up against his 150 acres of farm land on all sides. The city around him, North Las Vegas, is the second fastest-growing in the United States. "They keep moving in towards me all the time," said Combs, a lanky 67-year-old with a slow drawl. Neither odor complaints nor the million-dollar offers from developers have gotten him to move. Combs says his R.C. Farms has a higher mission than just producing pork. Thousands of his pigs eat food scraps from the biggest casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, recycling tons of material that would have gone to waste, and his mission statement claims: "Through recycling we are assisting in one aspect of God's greatest creation ... life." "I want to be recognized as a community asset and not a public nuisance," he said. But many nearby residents and the mayor of North Las Vegas portray Combs' farm as a smelly relic that is getting in the way of progress....
Tatum Cow Pasture Golf Course It’s possible to play golf among cow patties and coyotes at Tatum’s “cow pasture golf course. Located about an hour south of Roosevelt County, down Highway 206, it has unique fairways and greens. Two years ago, Tatum Schools Superintendent T.J. Parks got together with some of his board members, who were ranchers, and came up with the idea of a golf course in a cow pasture. Instead of dealing with such typical hazards as sand bunkers and lakes, visitors to this 9-hole course will be tested by such obstacles as mesquite bushes and barbed-wire fences. And the gallery observing golfers navigating the course is likely to be full of horses and cows. Parks says even those who may not be scratch golfers or are new to the sport will enjoy themselves because this golf course is the great equalizer....
Association honors rancher Joe Flores wants to keep the Old West alive. "Anything you can do on horseback is where I want to be," said the Stratford resident. His work with the Ranching Heritage Association stretches back to 1973, and the group honored him Saturday with a Founders Award. "Joe is one of those people who has a great passion for history as it pertains to the development of the Old West and Texas, in particular. He loves the old-timers who lived the life and tell the stories about it," said Marsha Pfluger, associate director of the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock. "To honor him with this award is a real pleasure and a great honor." Pfluger also cited Flores' long-standing membership in the association, service on its board and knack for developing new members as more reasons for him to get the award....
Legacy left unwritten John Marsh must have figured he had nothing to fear on that crisp September afternoon in 1856 when he rode his buggy toward Martinez from his vast cattle ranch near Mount Diablo. After all, Marsh, the man whose writings launched the first wagon trains to California, was no pushover. The barrel-chested doctor and cattle baron had learned Latin and Greek at Harvard College and how to hang a horse thief on the Western frontier. He had survived Indian wars, capture by Comanches and wilderness explorations with mountain men before becoming the first U.S. citizen to settle in Contra Costa County, then a largely untamed part of Mexico. Even at 56 years old, with tinges of gray in his hair, Marsh could rope and shoot like a young cowboy. Marsh, however, wasn't prepared that day for a confrontation with three cowboys who caught up with him on a dirt road outside Martinez. Marsh carried grapes and a carpet bag in his buggy. The cowboys had knives, lariats and information that Marsh was packing gold. Earlier in the day, two of the cowboys had helped Marsh round up cattle that he sold for $4,000....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Wild Australian bullock a local legend "I've finally caught the wild bullock," Marian told Dave over the phone. "Bring a big gun!" she said. It was a bright summer morning when Dave pulled into Marian's stock farm in the northern part of New South Wales bush country. "He's real nervous," she explained. "He's with the bull. Ya need the big gun 'cause ya won't get a second shot. The bull will be maddened by the smell of blood and will charge ya!" She hid Ken and Doug behind the woodshed. Dave sat in the left-hand passenger side of the quarter-ton ute. Marian drove into the small pasture and eased to within 20 meters of the suspicious pair of bovine. The bull was large, but the 6-year-old Shorthorn bullock was XXL. At least 1000 kilograms. "Now," instructed Marian, "I can't bear to watch so as soon as you shoot, shout, 'Got 'im!' Or 'Drive like 'ell!' "....
Rancher Vows Fight With Gov't Over Elk When 100 farm-raised elk fled his private hunting reserve through a bear-dug hole under the fence, owner Rex Rammell a man with a long history of locking antlers with the state didn't realize he'd wind up in the governor's crosshairs. But a month later, about 20 of the elk are dead, shot on sight under an emergency executive order from Gov. Jim Risch. About 40 have been recaptured and the rest are roaming the alfalfa fields and forest slopes on the fringe of Yellowstone National Park, home to the nation's largest herd of wild elk. Risch, joined by wildlife officials, says Rammell's elk will pollute the native gene pool and spread disease. Rammell, a veterinarian who made a career of breeding trophy bull elk for wealthy hunters and a sideshow of fighting the government, says he sold his farm and his elk and would like to run against Risch for public office in four years on a campaign against government abuses. "When people tell my story, it'd read like a novel. It's like I've gotten on the wrong side of the mafia," Rammell said of the state and public hunters who patrol the rock-cobbled roads near his ranch, taking elk in their sights. "But America will soon know that there's a mountain man out here that's not going to let the government do it."....
Wolves attack 3 heifers A Madison Valley landowner has been given a shoot-on-sight permit to kill up to two wolves. The animals badly injured three yearling heifers, who had to be euthanized. USDA Wildlife Services investigated the attacks on Sept. 19 and Sept. 22. The rancher's name was not released. The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department authorized the killing of up to two wolves by either USDA Wildlife Services or the landowner through Oct. 15. After that, the cattle will be removed from the property for the winter. "The Wedge pack is known to live on and around the property where the depredations occurred, although we don't know right now whether the Wedge Pack is responsible for the recent depredations," said Carolyn Sime, FWP wolf program coordinator....
Feds reject Idaho plan to kill wolves Federal officials have rejected Idaho's plan to kill up to 43 wolves in north-central Idaho to boost elk numbers, saying scientific data gathered by the state do not justify the action. At a recent meeting, federal officials told Steve Nadeau, Idaho Fish and Game Department's large carnivore manager, that state studies of elk declines in the Lolo region didn't adequately demonstrate wolves are the primary cause. "We agreed the wolves are playing an important role in limiting recovery. The question comes down to whether or not there's an unacceptable impact," said Jeff Foss, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field supervisor in Boise. "Based on the information that was provided at the meeting, the service didn't feel it had enough at that time to draw (that) conclusion." The Idaho agency said the federal decision means the plan will not be put into effect this winter, but research to gather supporting data will continue. "The department would have liked to move forward by this winter," Jim Unsworth, the department's wildlife bureau chief, told The Associated Press. "That's not likely."....
Group: Work with railroad A group of landowners along Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad’s proposed coal line into Wyoming urged their neighbors Friday to start working with — not against — the railroad on land-acquisition issues. The group, called the DM&E Landowner Advisory Board, has kept a low profile in recent years. Five of the board’s seven members held a news conference Friday in Rapid City. Their message: You’ll be better off if you work out a deal with the railroad now, rather than submit to a court-ordered settlement later on. DM&E has been working nine years on its plan to upgrade and extend its main east-west line into the coalfields of northeast Wyoming. The Sioux Falls company is currently waiting for a $2.3 billion federal loan. Board member Dave Lewis of Oelrichs said he was initially a railroad opponent. But now, he is strongly in favor of the railroad. “We talked to lawyers who said, ‘You can do all kinds of things to delay the railroad and cost them extra money, but … it’s going to get built, and it makes more sense to spend your time and effort to make sure you’re adequately compensated.’ That’s the route I chose,” he said....
Feds hold up oil, gas leases in Wyo Range A federal review board has temporarily halted energy development on 20,000 acres in the Wyoming Range, siding with conservation and sportsmen who said energy leases there were sold with insufficient review. The Interior Board of Land Appeals on Thursday granted a stay on leases the Bureau of Land Management had sold in the mountains 40 miles south of Jackson. A representative of one group said that would effectively halt energy development on the land for two to three years. A number of conservation groups and a coalition of outfitters requested the stay to postpone oil and gas drilling while the board considers their appeal of leases sold to energy companies in April. The groups have also filed protests on other leases that BLM sold in June and August covering roughly 23,000 acres in the area. Conservationists called the stay good news, but said the decision is far from a victory. “It’s a temporary halt on leasing until the board makes a decision on the merits of the appeal,” said Wyoming Outdoor Council attorney Lisa McGee. “It's an opportunity to slow down....
Growing pains Army’s proposed expansion of Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site may imperil historical and prehistoric treasures in Southeast Colorado. The Army’s decision to transfer 8,000 additional troops to Fort Carson and also make the Mountain Camp the training headquarters for reserve soldiers and National Guard troops west of the Mississippi River is having a ripple effect across Southern Colorado. The plans coincide with the Army’s proposed expansion of its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, a 240,000-acre training ground for troops, by 418,000 acres. The Army contends it needs more land to accommodate its broader mission and that private landowners who are willing to sell their land for the expansion are silent supporters of the proposal, which is currently undergoing review by Army brass. Farmers, ranchers and local governments across Southern Colorado are fighting the proposal. Opponents fear dire economic consequences will accompany the loss of their land in a region already buffeted by the lingering effects of drought and agricultural and ranching challenges. Another aspect of the debate is the potential loss of archaeological and fossil finds in the proposed expansion area....
Prairie legacy The Purgatoire River snakes through the dusty vistas and rolling hills in the middle of endless cattle-ranching country in Southeastern Colorado. Hidden across large rock formations and sandstone bluffs on each side of this slow-flowing river are ancient Native American petroglyphs, ceremonial circles and even dinosaur footprints. On its journey to the east, the river runs through a large portion of the Davidson Ranch. Ranchers Bob and John Davidson, brothers who run their cattle operation on 44,000 acres of land about 14 miles southeast of this small farm town, say the ancient treasures that adorn their land are in trouble if the Army expands its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Las Animas County is the state’s eighth cattle-producing county in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The county is second in terms of cow-calf operations with about 35,000 cows second only to Yuma County with 52,000. "We are not willing to sell - this land is our lives and we would be flat out retired if they took it. We couldn't start over because John is 65 and I am 62," Bob said as he drove across the hard land he loves. "My dad worked out here until he was 85. He did exactly what he wanted and he worked almost to the day he died. We want to finish our lives out here and our kids want the operation when we are done with it. We just don't want to get rid of it at any cost," he added....
Fate of historic dig hangs in the balance The fate of an 1880s homestead along the Purgatoire River is in limbo pending the Army’s decision on expanding its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. Minette Church, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has led some of the archaeological teams working at the Lopez Family Plaza some 15 miles south of La Junta. “The Lopez Family Plaza was built circa 1880 by Domacio and Loretta (de Arce) Lopez,” Church said. “They lived there until roughly 1903.” The Lopezes patented a homestead of 160 acres but their holdings gradually increased to include a school house, small cemetery and a little church, she said. “The church is of interest. They are looking to stabilize the walls because the adobe is in such bad shape,” Church said. Archaeological work began in 2003 and occurs every other summer, Church said. “The site is within a national historic district.”....
Editorial - States deserve role in roadless verdicts Coloradans know better than bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., how the state's roadless Forest Service land should be managed. That's why we were pleased when President Bush replaced President Clinton's 2001 one-size-fits-all "roadless rule" with a process that gave state officials and local stakeholders a role in devising policy. The land in question involves 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico, including 4.1 million in Colorado. A bipartisan task force, after months of work, submitted its recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens just last week. It recommended keeping nearly all of Colorado's designated areas roadless, with very limited exceptions. Owens, in turn, was to have submitted the state's petition to the federal government by November. Was it all for nothing? On Wednesday, a U.S. magistrate judge in San Francisco ruled that the Bush policy was invalid because the Forest Service had not completed the proper environmental analyses. "We simply should not have a federal magistrate in San Francisco unilaterally dictating natural resource policy for the entire country," Owens said, and he's right. The Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture, which is considering whether to appeal the ruling by Judge Elizabeth Laporte. It should. The argument that the environmental impact of state policies has to be studied before the states have decided what policies they prefer is rather odd, especially since Laporte conceded that the Forest Service did have authority to adopt a localized approach to forest protection, rather than a single nationwide policy, "provided that it follows the proper procedures."....
Idaho submits its petition Gov. Jim Risch says he has a plan for roadless areas in Idaho's federal forests that will help save them from the wildfires that burned an area larger than the state of Rhode Island in 2006. Environmentalists say the governor is blowing smoke. At a news conference this week, Risch unveiled the state's request for changes to U.S. Forest Service management plans for 9.3 million acres of roadless areas here -- more pristine forest land under federal management than any other state in the lower 48. His 69-page petition would ban road-building on 3.1 million acres, even as it allows some development in the remainder, including building temporary roads to allow timber harvests to remove beetle-killed trees that boost fire danger. "Fire is the result of fuel build-up," Risch said. "I'm tired of breathing this smoke." Under Idaho's petition, 1.4 million acres of Forest Service territory would be designated "wildland" and would closely parallel existing federal wilderness areas, where no roadbuilding is allowed. That portion includes 315,000 acres currently slated to become wilderness in the Boulder and White Cloud mountains of central Idaho. Another 1.7 million acres would be dubbed "primitive," and would get similar protections. Some 5.5 million acres would labeled "backcountry," where temporary roads could be built and logging conducted for forest health. And another 500,000 acres would be reclassified as "general," where commercial timber harvests would be allowed....
The potential in Utah's tar sands not worth the trouble, experts say Excitement over the development of Utah's tar-sands reserves has relied on the example of massive mining and refining projects in Alberta, Canada, but Utah's potential doesn't compare and may never be realized. That general conclusion, reached at an academic conference at the University of Utah this past week, came from scientists, state officials, industry representatives and environmentalists. Though not unanimous, the findings mean hopeful tar-sands developers are going to have to come up with new technologies to succeed commercially. "That's why all of us are working on new processes," said Page van Löben Sels, president of the consulting firm Performance Investors Inc. and former president of the Utah affiliate of Earth Energy Resources of Calgary, Alberta. Known as oil sands in Canada, tar sands contain bitumen - residual fossil oil trapped in rock - which can be processed to make asphalt and crude oil, then refined to produce gasoline and diesel. There are an estimated 3 trillion barrels of oil in tar sands in the world. About 650 billion barrels are in North America, most in the Athabasca field in Alberta. Southeast Utah is thought to have 12 billion to 40 billion barrels of potential petroleum locked in sandstone formations, mostly around Vernal in Uintah County. Utah's tar sands comprise 274,000 acres. About 74 percent of those acres are public land, with federal lands making up about 71.6 percent, said Jim Kohler, solid minerals chief for the state Bureau of Land Management. It is unknown how much of that potential would be recoverable....
How deep can you dig? If you've never been in a 300-ton haul truck, just find a two-story home and sit at a window on the top floor with a steering wheel in your hands. It's like driving a house. After a while you forget about the huge wheels below your seat, and it feels like a low-flying aircraft in slow motion -- until you dive into the pit. You begin to feel small again. The loud whir of brakes sounds like a time machine as you descend down a wide passage carved through 60 million years of geologic layering. Soon your large home on wheels is dwarfed under earthen highwalls that stretch more than 200 feet upward to the unseen surface above. When major strip mining began here in Campbell County 30 years ago, mines chewed on the shallow edges of the coal outcrop, removing about one unit of dirt for every unit of coal. But the coal seams here dive westward to depths beyond 2,000 feet between the Powder River and Buffalo. Today, some "strip ratios" are more like 5 to 1, and soon it will be 6 to 1, according to the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management....
Governor wants lease-buyback bill Gov. Dave Freudenthal has asked the state's congressional delegation to consider sponsoring legislation to buy back some natural gas leases in southwest Wyoming's Jack Morrow Hills to protect the Red Desert area from energy development. In a letter to U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., dated Aug. 18, Freudenthal wrote that a voluntary lease-buyback program could be implemented as a "management tool" if supported by congressional action. "Your support would provide options that would allow the rich natural resources of Wyoming, including the Jack Morrow Hills area, to remain protected," the governor wrote. The letter was obtained by Friends of the Red Desert, a conservation group. But Thomas said he still believes the federal management plan for the Jack Morrow Hills that was approved this summer needs to be given time before any changes are made or special protections are adopted. Conservationists said they were heartened by the governor's endorsement of some sort of special protection for the Jack Morrow Hills area. They said the best way to achieve that was to establish a federal "national conservation area" designation for the hills....
Appeals court rules against converting farm to wetlands State plans to remake Colusa County farmland as wetlands took another blow when a state appeals court upheld a 2004 decision blocking the takeover of the Traynham Ranch east of Arbuckle. The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento rejected the appeal by the Wildlife Conservation Board and Department of Fish and Game. Both agencies sought to turn 235 acres they purchased in 2001 into wildlife habitat, but a year later the California Farm Bureau Federation and the county sued to prevent the change. Colusa County Judge John Tiernan sided with the Farm Bureau and the county in 2004. The appeals court upheld Tiernan. “This project is not a mere passive change in use, a cessation of farming on the property. This project involves the physical reshaping of the land to create wetlands and uplands for habitat,” the appeals court said in a 46-page decision posted Friday on its Web site. The state agencies “consistently took the position the loss of agricultural land was not itself an adverse environmental impact, but the state agencies do not point us to any evidence in the record showing they considered the potential environmental impacts from the management plan and the construction and maintenance of this new habitat,” the court said. The state could not convert the lands without environmental review, the appeals court ruled, saying even the restoration of farmland to a more “natural” state has long-term effects on people and nearby farms that must be studied....
Vegas growth pushes up against pig farm When Bob Combs began farming pigs here 43 years ago, his was the only house light for miles out in the desert, and he could safely shoot his rifle in any direction at the stray dogs that came to attack his livestock. Now, houses bump up against his 150 acres of farm land on all sides. The city around him, North Las Vegas, is the second fastest-growing in the United States. "They keep moving in towards me all the time," said Combs, a lanky 67-year-old with a slow drawl. Neither odor complaints nor the million-dollar offers from developers have gotten him to move. Combs says his R.C. Farms has a higher mission than just producing pork. Thousands of his pigs eat food scraps from the biggest casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, recycling tons of material that would have gone to waste, and his mission statement claims: "Through recycling we are assisting in one aspect of God's greatest creation ... life." "I want to be recognized as a community asset and not a public nuisance," he said. But many nearby residents and the mayor of North Las Vegas portray Combs' farm as a smelly relic that is getting in the way of progress....
Tatum Cow Pasture Golf Course It’s possible to play golf among cow patties and coyotes at Tatum’s “cow pasture golf course. Located about an hour south of Roosevelt County, down Highway 206, it has unique fairways and greens. Two years ago, Tatum Schools Superintendent T.J. Parks got together with some of his board members, who were ranchers, and came up with the idea of a golf course in a cow pasture. Instead of dealing with such typical hazards as sand bunkers and lakes, visitors to this 9-hole course will be tested by such obstacles as mesquite bushes and barbed-wire fences. And the gallery observing golfers navigating the course is likely to be full of horses and cows. Parks says even those who may not be scratch golfers or are new to the sport will enjoy themselves because this golf course is the great equalizer....
Association honors rancher Joe Flores wants to keep the Old West alive. "Anything you can do on horseback is where I want to be," said the Stratford resident. His work with the Ranching Heritage Association stretches back to 1973, and the group honored him Saturday with a Founders Award. "Joe is one of those people who has a great passion for history as it pertains to the development of the Old West and Texas, in particular. He loves the old-timers who lived the life and tell the stories about it," said Marsha Pfluger, associate director of the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock. "To honor him with this award is a real pleasure and a great honor." Pfluger also cited Flores' long-standing membership in the association, service on its board and knack for developing new members as more reasons for him to get the award....
Legacy left unwritten John Marsh must have figured he had nothing to fear on that crisp September afternoon in 1856 when he rode his buggy toward Martinez from his vast cattle ranch near Mount Diablo. After all, Marsh, the man whose writings launched the first wagon trains to California, was no pushover. The barrel-chested doctor and cattle baron had learned Latin and Greek at Harvard College and how to hang a horse thief on the Western frontier. He had survived Indian wars, capture by Comanches and wilderness explorations with mountain men before becoming the first U.S. citizen to settle in Contra Costa County, then a largely untamed part of Mexico. Even at 56 years old, with tinges of gray in his hair, Marsh could rope and shoot like a young cowboy. Marsh, however, wasn't prepared that day for a confrontation with three cowboys who caught up with him on a dirt road outside Martinez. Marsh carried grapes and a carpet bag in his buggy. The cowboys had knives, lariats and information that Marsh was packing gold. Earlier in the day, two of the cowboys had helped Marsh round up cattle that he sold for $4,000....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Wild Australian bullock a local legend "I've finally caught the wild bullock," Marian told Dave over the phone. "Bring a big gun!" she said. It was a bright summer morning when Dave pulled into Marian's stock farm in the northern part of New South Wales bush country. "He's real nervous," she explained. "He's with the bull. Ya need the big gun 'cause ya won't get a second shot. The bull will be maddened by the smell of blood and will charge ya!" She hid Ken and Doug behind the woodshed. Dave sat in the left-hand passenger side of the quarter-ton ute. Marian drove into the small pasture and eased to within 20 meters of the suspicious pair of bovine. The bull was large, but the 6-year-old Shorthorn bullock was XXL. At least 1000 kilograms. "Now," instructed Marian, "I can't bear to watch so as soon as you shoot, shout, 'Got 'im!' Or 'Drive like 'ell!' "....
Sunday, September 24, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
You just can’t make this stuff up
By Julie Carter
Dan, of Slats and Dan fame, is an interesting character in his own right. He enjoys his happy hick persona to the limit and is all cowboy but with a real job to support his team-roping lifestyle.
Working for the Ford-New Holland dealership, Dan is something of an expert at hay baling and tractors, has been through company schools and can recite parts numbers from a seemingly photographic memory. He supplements his income by day working at different outfits and caring for wheat pasture cattle in the winter.
Dan tells non-stop goofy stories about his hillbilly relatives. He keeps his valuables in a little kid's tin lunch box in the floorboard of his truck saying they might get stolen if he leaves them in the house. This includes his paw's antique .22 saddlebag gun, Slat's papers, the house papers, truck title and his high school ring.
Dan's best friend since childhood is Tim. They split the rent for a couple of years until Tim discovered all the benefits that came with them and selected a wife.
One morning before the wife came into the picture, they woke up and found their hats fit a little tight (translation: they both had a hangover). After some serious discussion they decided that maybe they should eat more vegetables other than hops, corn and tobacco.
They didn't want to go plumb off the deep end and cook anything - the gut grenades and belly-washer drinks at the local Quik Stop were filling most of the requirements for gourmet meals. After considering all their options in the health food line they decided on a cantaloupe.
Since they could get that at the stand by the side of the road next to the roping arena, everything worked out well. When they got home with their purchase they decided it might be a little green so they put it in a bowl and put it in the icebox. That was in 2002.
The next time they thought about health food was in 2003. The cantaloupe was still in the icebox but they donated it to the coon who hunted over the pasture fence. They cleaned out the icebox with a little kerosene and decided maybe health food was a over rated.
Wallace is another of Dan's friends. A few years back Dan and Wallace were at a mega-big practice roping and as both were very new to the sport, they had no clue what was going on and how things worked. They'd made a pact that if either saw the other doing something really stupid they would tell each other. That would avoid the embarrassment in front of a whole bunch of people.
It was Dan's turn first. Wallace, you remember what we said about if we saw the other doing something really dumb we would say so? Wallace nodded his recollection.
I see you got some of those really high-dollar skid boots endorsed by Coopers on your horse tonight, Dan said. Wallace nodded. You know those belong on the back feet of your horse? Dan asked.
Wallace's logic was simple. I know they are supposed to go on the back feet, but this damn horse won't let me put them on his back feet and they cost me $55. Any time I blow $55 on something for a horse, he's going to wear it somewhere. If he hadn't let me put them on his front feet he was going to have to wear them on his ears.
Wallace roped all evening in that manner, giving stern looks to anyone that may have glanced his way in question. No one said a thing.
Cowboy banter is basic, honest and always entertaining. Conversations run fast and in many directions - like the one about Kathy the Bling Bling Queen from Right Smack Out of the Crack, Oklahoma.
You just can't make this stuff up. Who would believe it?
© Julie Carter 2006
What's the Goal?
by Larry Gabriel
What is the current primary goal of federal efforts to influence agricultural production in America?
We have been debating the farm policy of the United States Government for many years. Each time there is a new farm bill in the works, we start all over again with no clear picture of what we are doing, as far as I can tell.
I recently attended the annual national conference for state departments of agriculture and listened to arguments for and against our crop subsidy system and disaster assistance programs.
After all that listening and talking, I still can't tell what the primary goal is.
Is it cheap food? Is it boosting rural income? Is it keeping good stewards on the land? Is it creating biodiversity? Is it growing more ducks? Is it creating more bargaining chips to use in the international trading arena?
Those are all possible goals, but shouldn’t there be one primary, over-riding goal or objective that gives policy a sense of direction?
In any system or program with multiple goals, there will be times when stated goals are in competition with each other or in direct conflict with each other. Many of the stated agricultural policy goals are competing or conflicting. Only a primary goal can give us direction when competing goals are in conflict.
For many years, cheap food was named as the primary goal. It is true that having an adequate safe food supply is an absolute necessity for any nation. Many countries cannot produce all they need and are dependent upon imports. We import food too, but we could survive without it. Some nations cannot.
Is food security the real primary goal of the congressional direction to USDA (the United States Department of Agriculture)? I don't know. I am not sure you can find a congressman or senator who knows.
If food security is the current primary goal of federal farm policy, are we going about it the right way? Are the subsidies directed at the food products we really need or toward the ones some particular group wants to promote?
These are all questions our leaders need to answer. These are all questions we must continue to ask until they do.
You might be surprised to learn that at one time getting rid of small unsustainable farms was a goal of Congress and USDA. Now it seems they have reversed their thinking on that.
I have no idea what the current primary goal of United States farm policy is. I sure hope somebody does.
"The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." --Will Rogers
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
You just can’t make this stuff up
By Julie Carter
Dan, of Slats and Dan fame, is an interesting character in his own right. He enjoys his happy hick persona to the limit and is all cowboy but with a real job to support his team-roping lifestyle.
Working for the Ford-New Holland dealership, Dan is something of an expert at hay baling and tractors, has been through company schools and can recite parts numbers from a seemingly photographic memory. He supplements his income by day working at different outfits and caring for wheat pasture cattle in the winter.
Dan tells non-stop goofy stories about his hillbilly relatives. He keeps his valuables in a little kid's tin lunch box in the floorboard of his truck saying they might get stolen if he leaves them in the house. This includes his paw's antique .22 saddlebag gun, Slat's papers, the house papers, truck title and his high school ring.
Dan's best friend since childhood is Tim. They split the rent for a couple of years until Tim discovered all the benefits that came with them and selected a wife.
One morning before the wife came into the picture, they woke up and found their hats fit a little tight (translation: they both had a hangover). After some serious discussion they decided that maybe they should eat more vegetables other than hops, corn and tobacco.
They didn't want to go plumb off the deep end and cook anything - the gut grenades and belly-washer drinks at the local Quik Stop were filling most of the requirements for gourmet meals. After considering all their options in the health food line they decided on a cantaloupe.
Since they could get that at the stand by the side of the road next to the roping arena, everything worked out well. When they got home with their purchase they decided it might be a little green so they put it in a bowl and put it in the icebox. That was in 2002.
The next time they thought about health food was in 2003. The cantaloupe was still in the icebox but they donated it to the coon who hunted over the pasture fence. They cleaned out the icebox with a little kerosene and decided maybe health food was a over rated.
Wallace is another of Dan's friends. A few years back Dan and Wallace were at a mega-big practice roping and as both were very new to the sport, they had no clue what was going on and how things worked. They'd made a pact that if either saw the other doing something really stupid they would tell each other. That would avoid the embarrassment in front of a whole bunch of people.
It was Dan's turn first. Wallace, you remember what we said about if we saw the other doing something really dumb we would say so? Wallace nodded his recollection.
I see you got some of those really high-dollar skid boots endorsed by Coopers on your horse tonight, Dan said. Wallace nodded. You know those belong on the back feet of your horse? Dan asked.
Wallace's logic was simple. I know they are supposed to go on the back feet, but this damn horse won't let me put them on his back feet and they cost me $55. Any time I blow $55 on something for a horse, he's going to wear it somewhere. If he hadn't let me put them on his front feet he was going to have to wear them on his ears.
Wallace roped all evening in that manner, giving stern looks to anyone that may have glanced his way in question. No one said a thing.
Cowboy banter is basic, honest and always entertaining. Conversations run fast and in many directions - like the one about Kathy the Bling Bling Queen from Right Smack Out of the Crack, Oklahoma.
You just can't make this stuff up. Who would believe it?
© Julie Carter 2006
What's the Goal?
by Larry Gabriel
What is the current primary goal of federal efforts to influence agricultural production in America?
We have been debating the farm policy of the United States Government for many years. Each time there is a new farm bill in the works, we start all over again with no clear picture of what we are doing, as far as I can tell.
I recently attended the annual national conference for state departments of agriculture and listened to arguments for and against our crop subsidy system and disaster assistance programs.
After all that listening and talking, I still can't tell what the primary goal is.
Is it cheap food? Is it boosting rural income? Is it keeping good stewards on the land? Is it creating biodiversity? Is it growing more ducks? Is it creating more bargaining chips to use in the international trading arena?
Those are all possible goals, but shouldn’t there be one primary, over-riding goal or objective that gives policy a sense of direction?
In any system or program with multiple goals, there will be times when stated goals are in competition with each other or in direct conflict with each other. Many of the stated agricultural policy goals are competing or conflicting. Only a primary goal can give us direction when competing goals are in conflict.
For many years, cheap food was named as the primary goal. It is true that having an adequate safe food supply is an absolute necessity for any nation. Many countries cannot produce all they need and are dependent upon imports. We import food too, but we could survive without it. Some nations cannot.
Is food security the real primary goal of the congressional direction to USDA (the United States Department of Agriculture)? I don't know. I am not sure you can find a congressman or senator who knows.
If food security is the current primary goal of federal farm policy, are we going about it the right way? Are the subsidies directed at the food products we really need or toward the ones some particular group wants to promote?
These are all questions our leaders need to answer. These are all questions we must continue to ask until they do.
You might be surprised to learn that at one time getting rid of small unsustainable farms was a goal of Congress and USDA. Now it seems they have reversed their thinking on that.
I have no idea what the current primary goal of United States farm policy is. I sure hope somebody does.
"The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." --Will Rogers
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
OPINION/COMMENTARY
ENVIRONMENTAL TWO-STEP
Congress deals with pollution in a two-step process: It announces popular objectives like healthy air, and then it delegates to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the hard work of making the rules that actually limit pollution, says David Schoenbrod, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
The explanation for this two-step is that only an expert agency insulated from politics will do the right thing. Yet, the EPA has never been able to abolish politics from the process, and it never will. And in trying, the EPA makes the environment worse.
To see why, consider the fight over leaded gasoline:
* In 1970, the Clean Air Act was passed because voters demanded protection from air pollution.
* But the measure was no act of courage on Congress's part; the pollution control devices on new cars would be ruined by leaded gas anyway, and it did nothing to cut the 100 million old cars would still be using leaded gasoline after 1975.
* Meanwhile, members of Congress were quietly lobbying the EPA to make no rule to protect health from lead; the agency began to move, but so slowly that, in 1975, more lead was coming out of tailpipes than in 1970.
If Congress made the pollution rules rather than outsourcing responsibility to the EPA, more would get done, faster. And members of Congress don't have to be scientists to produce decent pollution rules. No EPA administrator was a scientist from the agency's inception in 1970 to 2004.
The choice ultimately is whether we want decisions to be made by open votes in Congress or behind closed doors at the EPA. Allowing Congress to claim credit for protecting health while shifting the blame to the EPA for the inevitable costs and remaining health risks, does not insulate the process from politics, it only adds to it.
Source: David Schoenbrod, "Saving Our Environment From Washington," Washington Post, September 21, 2006.
For text: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092000837.html
House Should Stand Firm on Offshore Energy
The Competitive Enterprise Institute urges leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives to resist political pressure to accept the Senate-passed OCS bill, S. 3711. Senate leaders instead should schedule a vote on the House-passed bill, H.R. 4761, or accept a compromise that includes key provisions of the House bill to expand offshore oil and gas production. “The House should not be providing cover for Senators to pretend that they are addressing America's energy needs,” said Director of Energy Policy Myron Ebell. “The Senate bill simply doesn't have any energy in it.” In recent days, House leaders have been subjected to increasing pressure to cave in and accept the inadequate Senate bill and thereby allow Senators to claim that they have accomplished something. “With gas prices still high and concern over importing oil from unstable regimes at an all time high, American consumers deserve legislation that will significantly increase domestic oil and gas production. Members of the House and Senate owe it to their constituents to pass the House bill or a compromise based on the House bill,” said Ebell. “And while they're at it, they should add ANWR, which has already passed both chambers this year.”
DOOMING WOODS AND WILDLIFE
Environmental groups are unwittingly destroying forests and killing wildlife with lawsuits. Ironically, they do so while claiming to save them, says Thomas Bonnicksen, a member of the advisory board of the Forest Foundation.
The latest example uses the California spotted owl and Pacific fisher in arguments supporting a lawsuit to stop restoration thinning in the Giant Sequoia National Monument:
* Already, many California public forests have grown dangerously overcrowded with 10 to 20 times more trees than is natural.
* The Giant Sequoia National Monument is near the top of the crowded forest list; it already burned once, and it is certain to burn again.
* In 2002, the McNally fire blackened 151,000 acres in and around the Sequoia National Monument, coming within a mile of the Packsaddle Grove of giant sequoias.
* Without active management, it is only a matter of time before another major wildfire hits, possibly destroying all 38 sequoia groves in the monument.
Rather than protecting forests and wildlife with lawsuits, activists condemn them to destruction:
* In New Mexico's Los Alamos Fire, 90 percent of the Mexican spotted owl's habitat was lost.
* Between 1999 and 2002, the U.S. Forest Service identified 11 California spotted owl-nesting sites as lost to wildfire.
* In 2002, the Biscuit Fire destroyed tens of thousands of acres of spotted owl habitat in Southern Oregon and Northern California, including 49 known nesting sites.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cite wildfire as the primary threat to spotted owls. The Pacific fisher is also at risk because of catastrophic wildfire. The forest thinning that activists have blocked is legal and necessary, and approved by the Clinton administration with environmentalist support, says Bonnicksen.
Source: Thomas Bonnicksen, "Dooming woods and wildlife," Washington Times, September 17, 2006.
For text (subscription required):
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060916-112432-5107r.htm
UNCLE SAM'S TEAT
Over the next year, Congress will produce a new farm bill to replace the gargantuan five-year giveaway that makes up the current one. Conventional wisdom holds that it won't differ much, despite strong motivating factors for reform, says the Economist.
Under the current bill:
* The federal government spent over $20 billion on farm subsidies last year, more than it spent on foreign aid and almost twice what it spends on subsidizing college for poor children.
* Most of the direct cash is lavished on crops, particularly corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat, causing more trade distortion and depressing world prices.
* Farmers who grow corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat crops received 93 percent of the subsidies between 2002 and 2005.
* Six out ten American farmers get no federal money, but 10 percent of farmers get 72 percent of the available funds.
Despite the big payouts, many farmers are beginning to see the need for reform, albeit for differing reasons:
* Fear of litigation at the World Trade Organization is one reason for reform's momentum; Brazil has already won a case against American cotton subsidies and farmers are worried that other crop subsidies could be vulnerable to a WTO case.
* Ethanol production is a major factor; increases in input prices, especially corn, will cause subsidies to decline.
* Public awareness of the subsidies' scale, and their inequity, has been rising; the 60 percent of farmers who get no cash from Washington, particularly fruit and vegetable producers, are increasingly cross.
From a trade perspective, the new farm bill could be a modest improvement, says the Economist. The United States may well be heading for more green subsidies and fewer trade-distorting ones. But despite Washington's budget crunch, few expect Uncle Sam's generosity to farmers to abate much.
Source: Editorial, "Uncle Sam's Teat," the Economist, September 9, 2006.
For text: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7887994
FAT CHANCE FOR THE NEW PROHIBITIONISM?
What if restaurants throughout this country were too scared of a lawsuit to sell foods deemed fattening? It's not a far-fetched possibility, at least if a misguided gaggle of lawyers, legislators and researchers get their way. Chicago is the latest focal point in a movement to create a slimmer America. Alderman Edward Burke this June proposed a citywide ban on the use of cooking with oils containing artificial trans fatty acids in restaurants that do at least $20 million a year worth of business. Establishments not in compliance would face fines ranging from $200 to $1,000 per day. "We have to be very careful when we start telling everybody how to live their lives," cautioned Mayor Richard M. Daley. The mayor perhaps is making up for keeping a low profile in the face of recent bans enacted by the Board of Aldermen on smoking in restaurants and bars, and the selling of foie gras (a liver delicacy). Elsewhere, dozens of states either have introduced or passed legislation aimed at curbing obesity. Measures include restricting advertising to children; requiring schools to provide parents with information about student body mass index; requiring schools to provide diabetes screening; mandating insurance coverage for obesity prevention and treatment; and establishing nutrition education programs. A University of Baltimore-affiliated think tank, the Schaefer Center for Public Policy, has created an annual "Obesity Report Card" to keep the heat on states to do more. Granted, there never will be a shortage of people who, lacking in impulse control, prefer to gorge themselves without regard to health consequences. But to use that as a pretext to limit the range of pleasures available to all of us has an unpleasant ring of familiarity. Prohibition operated on this very premise: Let us combat the temptation to take an activity to excess by banning the activity outright. Don't bother telling our latter-day Prohibitionists about the necessity of self-control. Whether the object of their wrath is food or alcohol, such talk merely serves as a cover for the irresponsible pursuit of profit. For a good decade or more, Kelly Brownell, a paunchy Yale psychologist and top adviser to the deceptively effective Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, has called for punitive taxes on unhealthy food. "I recommend we develop a militant attitude about the toxic food environment, like we have about tobacco," he has written in CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter....
DDT'S NEW FRIEND
The World Health Organization announced Friday that it will begin actively promoting use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria in developing nations. After tens of millions of preventable malarial deaths in these poor countries, it's nice to see WHO finally come to its senses, says the Wall Street Journal.
The agency's malaria chief, Arata Kochi, told reporters that "one of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." He also said, "We must take a position based on the science and the data."
* Malaria is the number one killer of pregnant women and children in Africa and among the top killers in Asia and South America.
* It's long been known that DDT is the cheapest and most effective way to contain the disease, which is spread by infected mosquitoes.
* But United Nations health agencies and others have for decades resisted employing DDT under pressure from anti-pesticide environmentalists.
For decades, the science and empirical data about DDT's effectiveness have been distorted or suppressed. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that DDT use in the amounts necessary to ward off malarial mosquitoes is harmful to humans, wildlife or the environment.
One insecticide won't end malaria, and DDT's proponents don't claim it will. But by keeping more people alive and healthy, DDT can help create the conditions for the only lasting solution, which is economic growth and development, says the Journal.
Source: Editorial, "DDT's New Friend," Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2006.
For text (subscription required):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115853443509765807.html
CALIFORNIA LOSES WITH GREENHOUSE LAW
Arnold Schwarzenegger's signing of the first statewide, multi-industry greenhouse gas emission limits will result in higher prices for the states' consumers, higher unemployment for its workers and little or no benefit for the environment, says H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
The law will require companies in selected industries to reduce their greenhouse emissions by whatever amounts, and by whatever methods, are deemed necessary by the California Air Resources Board in order to reduce emissions for the entire state by 25 percent by 2020 -- equaling California's 1990 emission levels.
While California is an economic powerhouse and these cuts are substantial, their effect on future climate will be nil, says Burnett:
* An analysis of a regional climate change action plan considered by 11 Northeastern states and the premiers of Canada's eastern provinces showed that even with an efficient cap-and-trade program similar to Schwarzenegger's proposal, both electricity and residential natural gas prices would rise by as much as 39 percent by 2020.
* The higher energy costs would result in consumption falling by an estimated average of $2,634 per household; gross state product would decline 1.1 percent; and an estimated 191,589 jobs would be lost by 2010.
* The study also found that as companies fled high fuel prices in the Northeastern states, employment in the rest of the United States would increase by more than 117,000 in 2010 and by an additional 59,000 in 2020.
Additionally, Californians face some of the highest energy bills in the nation -- which this law will only make worse. Proponents of the law argue that it will create new jobs through investments in, and the manufacturing of, new technologies. However, these gains will not be realized in California, says Burnett.
Source: H. Sterling Burnett, "California loses with greenhouse law," Sacramento Bee, September 16, 2006.
For text (subscription required):
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/24182.html
ESSAYS ON THE RELIGIOUS NATURE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
So what is this business about the “religious” nature of this movement? I submit that this movement has achieved unprecedented power and caused dramatic losses of our rights and traditions in a short period because we perceive it as and treat it as an ideology and not as a religious (or quasi-religious) movement. For instance, when gun control groups began to threaten gun owners; gun owners formed a National Rifle Association and a Gun Owners of America and State gun associations. Most gun owners threw their money in the pot. Lawsuits or new laws were challenged in court and argued openly. Books and articles abound: Japan “proves” gun control works, Australia and England “prove” it doesn’t, Hitler confiscated registered guns to begin his oppression, the UN wants to control all guns, history shows that gun control only expands once it is begun, concealed weapons have helped to decrease crime, and so goes our national discussion. We may disagree about “facts” but “facts” they are and each of us is entitled to interpret them. Keeping or losing our guns depends on argument and commitment and determination. The gun control movement is a classic ideology based on personal beliefs. On the other hand, the “sacredness” of wilderness, the “iconic” nature of the American horse, the “abomination” of trapping or wearing fur, the urgency of “restoring” “native” species or eradicating “Invasive Species”, the “fact” that no one has the “right” to “own” and animal, the “fact” that we should not raise or eat meat, the “fact” that hunting and fishing (i.e. hunters and fishermen) should be eliminated, the belief that people are “in their (i.e. wildlife) habitat” or that people killed or injured by unmanaged and protected wildlife are at fault, and many other such assertions of the environmental and animal rights movement are seemingly irrefutable. Why? Because they emanate from religious beliefs about God and Man and the earth and all that is in it or on it and not from interpretable facts as in other ideologies. Saying that all the various facets of the environmental and animal rights movement have the same basic beliefs is far more accurate than it would be to say the same thing for all the gun control groups. The basis for all the “sacredness” and “iconic” nature of certain (a growing list but soon all) plants and animals and the rationale why humans must be controlled and their activities proscribed by environmental and animal rights power brokers is implied as coming from “science” or “reverence” for nature or “humane” concepts or “advanced” thinking or ancient pagan worship of natural phenomena. In any case, they are based on unquestionable beliefs as interpreted by “experts”. Like ancient pagan priests, they make assertions that may not be questioned and indeed are assumed to be unintelligible to most of the populace. It is the need for absolute adherence to these beliefs that justifies the erosion of private property, the growth of Federal power, the elimination of rights and traditions, and the control of the publics’ place and method of living, employment, and transportation....
Part two of this essay is here.
ENVIRONMENTAL TWO-STEP
Congress deals with pollution in a two-step process: It announces popular objectives like healthy air, and then it delegates to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the hard work of making the rules that actually limit pollution, says David Schoenbrod, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
The explanation for this two-step is that only an expert agency insulated from politics will do the right thing. Yet, the EPA has never been able to abolish politics from the process, and it never will. And in trying, the EPA makes the environment worse.
To see why, consider the fight over leaded gasoline:
* In 1970, the Clean Air Act was passed because voters demanded protection from air pollution.
* But the measure was no act of courage on Congress's part; the pollution control devices on new cars would be ruined by leaded gas anyway, and it did nothing to cut the 100 million old cars would still be using leaded gasoline after 1975.
* Meanwhile, members of Congress were quietly lobbying the EPA to make no rule to protect health from lead; the agency began to move, but so slowly that, in 1975, more lead was coming out of tailpipes than in 1970.
If Congress made the pollution rules rather than outsourcing responsibility to the EPA, more would get done, faster. And members of Congress don't have to be scientists to produce decent pollution rules. No EPA administrator was a scientist from the agency's inception in 1970 to 2004.
The choice ultimately is whether we want decisions to be made by open votes in Congress or behind closed doors at the EPA. Allowing Congress to claim credit for protecting health while shifting the blame to the EPA for the inevitable costs and remaining health risks, does not insulate the process from politics, it only adds to it.
Source: David Schoenbrod, "Saving Our Environment From Washington," Washington Post, September 21, 2006.
For text: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092000837.html
House Should Stand Firm on Offshore Energy
The Competitive Enterprise Institute urges leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives to resist political pressure to accept the Senate-passed OCS bill, S. 3711. Senate leaders instead should schedule a vote on the House-passed bill, H.R. 4761, or accept a compromise that includes key provisions of the House bill to expand offshore oil and gas production. “The House should not be providing cover for Senators to pretend that they are addressing America's energy needs,” said Director of Energy Policy Myron Ebell. “The Senate bill simply doesn't have any energy in it.” In recent days, House leaders have been subjected to increasing pressure to cave in and accept the inadequate Senate bill and thereby allow Senators to claim that they have accomplished something. “With gas prices still high and concern over importing oil from unstable regimes at an all time high, American consumers deserve legislation that will significantly increase domestic oil and gas production. Members of the House and Senate owe it to their constituents to pass the House bill or a compromise based on the House bill,” said Ebell. “And while they're at it, they should add ANWR, which has already passed both chambers this year.”
DOOMING WOODS AND WILDLIFE
Environmental groups are unwittingly destroying forests and killing wildlife with lawsuits. Ironically, they do so while claiming to save them, says Thomas Bonnicksen, a member of the advisory board of the Forest Foundation.
The latest example uses the California spotted owl and Pacific fisher in arguments supporting a lawsuit to stop restoration thinning in the Giant Sequoia National Monument:
* Already, many California public forests have grown dangerously overcrowded with 10 to 20 times more trees than is natural.
* The Giant Sequoia National Monument is near the top of the crowded forest list; it already burned once, and it is certain to burn again.
* In 2002, the McNally fire blackened 151,000 acres in and around the Sequoia National Monument, coming within a mile of the Packsaddle Grove of giant sequoias.
* Without active management, it is only a matter of time before another major wildfire hits, possibly destroying all 38 sequoia groves in the monument.
Rather than protecting forests and wildlife with lawsuits, activists condemn them to destruction:
* In New Mexico's Los Alamos Fire, 90 percent of the Mexican spotted owl's habitat was lost.
* Between 1999 and 2002, the U.S. Forest Service identified 11 California spotted owl-nesting sites as lost to wildfire.
* In 2002, the Biscuit Fire destroyed tens of thousands of acres of spotted owl habitat in Southern Oregon and Northern California, including 49 known nesting sites.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cite wildfire as the primary threat to spotted owls. The Pacific fisher is also at risk because of catastrophic wildfire. The forest thinning that activists have blocked is legal and necessary, and approved by the Clinton administration with environmentalist support, says Bonnicksen.
Source: Thomas Bonnicksen, "Dooming woods and wildlife," Washington Times, September 17, 2006.
For text (subscription required):
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060916-112432-5107r.htm
UNCLE SAM'S TEAT
Over the next year, Congress will produce a new farm bill to replace the gargantuan five-year giveaway that makes up the current one. Conventional wisdom holds that it won't differ much, despite strong motivating factors for reform, says the Economist.
Under the current bill:
* The federal government spent over $20 billion on farm subsidies last year, more than it spent on foreign aid and almost twice what it spends on subsidizing college for poor children.
* Most of the direct cash is lavished on crops, particularly corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat, causing more trade distortion and depressing world prices.
* Farmers who grow corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat crops received 93 percent of the subsidies between 2002 and 2005.
* Six out ten American farmers get no federal money, but 10 percent of farmers get 72 percent of the available funds.
Despite the big payouts, many farmers are beginning to see the need for reform, albeit for differing reasons:
* Fear of litigation at the World Trade Organization is one reason for reform's momentum; Brazil has already won a case against American cotton subsidies and farmers are worried that other crop subsidies could be vulnerable to a WTO case.
* Ethanol production is a major factor; increases in input prices, especially corn, will cause subsidies to decline.
* Public awareness of the subsidies' scale, and their inequity, has been rising; the 60 percent of farmers who get no cash from Washington, particularly fruit and vegetable producers, are increasingly cross.
From a trade perspective, the new farm bill could be a modest improvement, says the Economist. The United States may well be heading for more green subsidies and fewer trade-distorting ones. But despite Washington's budget crunch, few expect Uncle Sam's generosity to farmers to abate much.
Source: Editorial, "Uncle Sam's Teat," the Economist, September 9, 2006.
For text: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7887994
FAT CHANCE FOR THE NEW PROHIBITIONISM?
What if restaurants throughout this country were too scared of a lawsuit to sell foods deemed fattening? It's not a far-fetched possibility, at least if a misguided gaggle of lawyers, legislators and researchers get their way. Chicago is the latest focal point in a movement to create a slimmer America. Alderman Edward Burke this June proposed a citywide ban on the use of cooking with oils containing artificial trans fatty acids in restaurants that do at least $20 million a year worth of business. Establishments not in compliance would face fines ranging from $200 to $1,000 per day. "We have to be very careful when we start telling everybody how to live their lives," cautioned Mayor Richard M. Daley. The mayor perhaps is making up for keeping a low profile in the face of recent bans enacted by the Board of Aldermen on smoking in restaurants and bars, and the selling of foie gras (a liver delicacy). Elsewhere, dozens of states either have introduced or passed legislation aimed at curbing obesity. Measures include restricting advertising to children; requiring schools to provide parents with information about student body mass index; requiring schools to provide diabetes screening; mandating insurance coverage for obesity prevention and treatment; and establishing nutrition education programs. A University of Baltimore-affiliated think tank, the Schaefer Center for Public Policy, has created an annual "Obesity Report Card" to keep the heat on states to do more. Granted, there never will be a shortage of people who, lacking in impulse control, prefer to gorge themselves without regard to health consequences. But to use that as a pretext to limit the range of pleasures available to all of us has an unpleasant ring of familiarity. Prohibition operated on this very premise: Let us combat the temptation to take an activity to excess by banning the activity outright. Don't bother telling our latter-day Prohibitionists about the necessity of self-control. Whether the object of their wrath is food or alcohol, such talk merely serves as a cover for the irresponsible pursuit of profit. For a good decade or more, Kelly Brownell, a paunchy Yale psychologist and top adviser to the deceptively effective Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, has called for punitive taxes on unhealthy food. "I recommend we develop a militant attitude about the toxic food environment, like we have about tobacco," he has written in CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter....
DDT'S NEW FRIEND
The World Health Organization announced Friday that it will begin actively promoting use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria in developing nations. After tens of millions of preventable malarial deaths in these poor countries, it's nice to see WHO finally come to its senses, says the Wall Street Journal.
The agency's malaria chief, Arata Kochi, told reporters that "one of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." He also said, "We must take a position based on the science and the data."
* Malaria is the number one killer of pregnant women and children in Africa and among the top killers in Asia and South America.
* It's long been known that DDT is the cheapest and most effective way to contain the disease, which is spread by infected mosquitoes.
* But United Nations health agencies and others have for decades resisted employing DDT under pressure from anti-pesticide environmentalists.
For decades, the science and empirical data about DDT's effectiveness have been distorted or suppressed. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that DDT use in the amounts necessary to ward off malarial mosquitoes is harmful to humans, wildlife or the environment.
One insecticide won't end malaria, and DDT's proponents don't claim it will. But by keeping more people alive and healthy, DDT can help create the conditions for the only lasting solution, which is economic growth and development, says the Journal.
Source: Editorial, "DDT's New Friend," Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2006.
For text (subscription required):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115853443509765807.html
CALIFORNIA LOSES WITH GREENHOUSE LAW
Arnold Schwarzenegger's signing of the first statewide, multi-industry greenhouse gas emission limits will result in higher prices for the states' consumers, higher unemployment for its workers and little or no benefit for the environment, says H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
The law will require companies in selected industries to reduce their greenhouse emissions by whatever amounts, and by whatever methods, are deemed necessary by the California Air Resources Board in order to reduce emissions for the entire state by 25 percent by 2020 -- equaling California's 1990 emission levels.
While California is an economic powerhouse and these cuts are substantial, their effect on future climate will be nil, says Burnett:
* An analysis of a regional climate change action plan considered by 11 Northeastern states and the premiers of Canada's eastern provinces showed that even with an efficient cap-and-trade program similar to Schwarzenegger's proposal, both electricity and residential natural gas prices would rise by as much as 39 percent by 2020.
* The higher energy costs would result in consumption falling by an estimated average of $2,634 per household; gross state product would decline 1.1 percent; and an estimated 191,589 jobs would be lost by 2010.
* The study also found that as companies fled high fuel prices in the Northeastern states, employment in the rest of the United States would increase by more than 117,000 in 2010 and by an additional 59,000 in 2020.
Additionally, Californians face some of the highest energy bills in the nation -- which this law will only make worse. Proponents of the law argue that it will create new jobs through investments in, and the manufacturing of, new technologies. However, these gains will not be realized in California, says Burnett.
Source: H. Sterling Burnett, "California loses with greenhouse law," Sacramento Bee, September 16, 2006.
For text (subscription required):
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/24182.html
ESSAYS ON THE RELIGIOUS NATURE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
So what is this business about the “religious” nature of this movement? I submit that this movement has achieved unprecedented power and caused dramatic losses of our rights and traditions in a short period because we perceive it as and treat it as an ideology and not as a religious (or quasi-religious) movement. For instance, when gun control groups began to threaten gun owners; gun owners formed a National Rifle Association and a Gun Owners of America and State gun associations. Most gun owners threw their money in the pot. Lawsuits or new laws were challenged in court and argued openly. Books and articles abound: Japan “proves” gun control works, Australia and England “prove” it doesn’t, Hitler confiscated registered guns to begin his oppression, the UN wants to control all guns, history shows that gun control only expands once it is begun, concealed weapons have helped to decrease crime, and so goes our national discussion. We may disagree about “facts” but “facts” they are and each of us is entitled to interpret them. Keeping or losing our guns depends on argument and commitment and determination. The gun control movement is a classic ideology based on personal beliefs. On the other hand, the “sacredness” of wilderness, the “iconic” nature of the American horse, the “abomination” of trapping or wearing fur, the urgency of “restoring” “native” species or eradicating “Invasive Species”, the “fact” that no one has the “right” to “own” and animal, the “fact” that we should not raise or eat meat, the “fact” that hunting and fishing (i.e. hunters and fishermen) should be eliminated, the belief that people are “in their (i.e. wildlife) habitat” or that people killed or injured by unmanaged and protected wildlife are at fault, and many other such assertions of the environmental and animal rights movement are seemingly irrefutable. Why? Because they emanate from religious beliefs about God and Man and the earth and all that is in it or on it and not from interpretable facts as in other ideologies. Saying that all the various facets of the environmental and animal rights movement have the same basic beliefs is far more accurate than it would be to say the same thing for all the gun control groups. The basis for all the “sacredness” and “iconic” nature of certain (a growing list but soon all) plants and animals and the rationale why humans must be controlled and their activities proscribed by environmental and animal rights power brokers is implied as coming from “science” or “reverence” for nature or “humane” concepts or “advanced” thinking or ancient pagan worship of natural phenomena. In any case, they are based on unquestionable beliefs as interpreted by “experts”. Like ancient pagan priests, they make assertions that may not be questioned and indeed are assumed to be unintelligible to most of the populace. It is the need for absolute adherence to these beliefs that justifies the erosion of private property, the growth of Federal power, the elimination of rights and traditions, and the control of the publics’ place and method of living, employment, and transportation....
Part two of this essay is here.
Friday, September 22, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rural Residents Battle Southern Nevada Water Grab Residents of rural Nevada know they face long odds in their effort to thwart a proposed water grab by southern Nevada. Las Vegas has money and political power, but the rural residents think they have the truth on their side, and, so far, they refuse to back down or be bought off. My ancestors were able to live a sustainable lifestyle on the land for quite some time. Las Vegas seems to want to sustain unsustainable growth," Rick Spilsbury, a Western Shoshone blogger, says. Rural residents know that it's only been in the last few years that Las Vegas paid any attention at all to water conservation, and that fountains, lawns, pools, and man-made lakes have multiplied with few restrictions. Now, Las Vegas wants White Pine's water, hundreds of thousands of acres, to allow for even more sprawl. "I don't like the idea of my place drying up for another condo or casino in Las Vegas," Bannon Humphries, a Spring Valley rancher, says. "I think every person up there is against it. I haven't spoken to one person who is even quiet about it," Spilsbury says....
Nevada water hearings continue Advocates of a plan to pump billions of gallons of groundwater from rural Nevada to booming Las Vegas spent hours Thursday trying to discredit reports of an expert fighting the plan - and got a warning from a state hearing panel to move on. Attorneys Paul Taggart and Michael Van Zandt, representing the Southern Nevada Water Authority, grilled hydrologist Tom Meyers at length during the second week of hearings on the SNWA request to draw more than 90,000 acre-feet of groundwater from Spring Valley. The questioning prompted Tracy Taylor, the state water engineer who must make a final decision on the pumping plan, to tell the lawyers to stop "pounding on uncertainties" in Meyers' projections on available water in the valley. Meyers maintains that SNWA's plan would take too much water out of Spring Valley and damage existing groundwater, spring and surface water rights that already total more than 70,000 acre-feet per year. SNWA contends that the perennial yield, or the amount of water that can be safely pumped on an annual basis, from the valley, located in White Pine County, is about 100,000 acre-feet, which is more than what it's seeking....
'Triangle' farmers challenge Legacy Project The Wood River Legacy Project, an ambitious effort to restore flows to 12 miles of the Big Wood River south of Glendale Bridge projected to boost the size of the fishery by 33 percent, has drawn support from a host of city and county governments and local canal companies. But during a public forum in Hailey Tuesday night, the project, which hinges on the revision of Idaho's entrenched water laws, was challenged by a group of farmers south of Bellevue who believe the undertaking will create more harm than good. Every summer since 1920, the Big Wood River, which is among Idaho's most treasured fisheries, has been diverted into canals near Glendale Bridge, leaving scores of trout to die in stagnant pools. Legacy Project Director Rich McIntyre thinks if water right's holders are given an option, many would choose to keep their water in-stream, and the dead stretch of river could be revived. But current Idaho water law is based on a "use it or lose it" policy, meaning water rights' holders must exercise their rights to the precious resource, or lose it all....
Water groups supports H2O provisions of Idaho wilderness bill An Idaho water-rights advocacy group is supporting elements of a bid to create a 550-thousand acre wilderness in the rugged Owyhee canyonlands of southwestern Idaho, saying it includes provisions that protect state water rights. The Idaho Water Users Association, whose members include cities, ranchers and fish farmers, says it's "satisfied that Idaho sovereignty over its waters is fully protected." It also endorsed provisions of the wilderness plan, which is sponsored by Senator Mike Crapo and goes before a Senate subcommitttee on September 27th, that keep water from the Owyhee and Bruneau river basins from being piped out of state. The group says that's an important safeguard for local water users....
A climate of change President Bush's endeavor to give landowners, corporations, local governments, nonprofits and others more say in the management of natural resources has environmentalists and their allies nervous. "We're concerned this will hurt the gains we've made in the last 30 years of environmental law," says Gary L. Graham, executive director of Audubon Colorado. Such concerns arose last week as Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist, came to the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs as part of a 24-city national listening tour to solicit suggestions on the president's nebulously dubbed "cooperative conservation" effort. Gun rights activists, farmers and ranchers, four-wheeling groups and oil and natural gas representatives poured into a large campus conference room to praise the initiative. Many of them said government agencies too often stand in the way of their interests, citing a variety of reasons, including petty personality conflicts and officials' incompetence....
Conservancy opposes Army plan After getting an earful from donors, the Nature Conservancy is taking a stance against the Army’s proposed expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. The organization, which has worked with the military to preserve ranchland around Fort Carson, says it will have nothing to do with a project that would put ranchers off their land through use of federal land-seizure laws. “We have a strict prohibition in participating in condemnation projects,” Brian McPeek, the organization’s deputy state director, said Thursday. The Army is eyeing outside organizations to help manage a stretch of the training area if Defense Department officials approve adding as much as 418,000 acres to the 235,000-acre site in southeast Colorado. The Army has proposed a “conservation area” covering the Purgatoire River valley adjacent to Piñon Canyon, managed by an outside organization. McPeek said the Army hasn’t discussed its plans with the Nature Conservancy. The group’s unwillingness to participate doesn’t change anything, the Army said. “It has no effect whatsoever,” said Karen Edge, an Army spokeswoman....
Leaders Convene in Helena for Climate Challenge Conference Montanans are feeling the impact of global warming. An eight-year drought in Eastern Montana has been a blow to farmers and ranchers and elsewhere, ski bums and trout fisherman are experiencing shorter recreational seasons. And no one in Montana can fail to notice the increase in forest fires this year. These are some of the concerns bringing together over forty organizations sponsoring the Climate Challenge Conference in Helena this weekend. "We are very gratified by the wide diversity and range of organizations who responded to our call for this conference," said Sterling Miller, Senior Wildlife Biologist for the National Wildlife Federation. Corporations, unions, government agencies, non-profits and individuals concerned with global warming will all be attending the conference. The main goal of the conference is to get the attention of political leaders who are ignoring the issue of global warming, Sterling said. He makes an emphatic exclusion of Governor Brian Schweitzer from the apathetic group. The hope is that the interest groups involvement will help get politicians to take notice....
Suspected wolf on Zumwalt may be vanguard Biologists have not yet been able to positively confirm the presence of a young black wolf on the Zumwalt Prairie of Wallowa County, despite a videotape taken in about mid-July by an archery hunter from Eugene, who was scouting the area. The U.S. Wildlife Service and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife have since received a couple of other possible sightings in the area, one from a fence builder about three weeks who initially suspected that the animal might have been a dog, according to Craig Ely, Northeast Oregon Regional Director based in La Grande. Ely said that biologist spent 10 or 12 days in the evenings looking for the animal with no success, and sent a plane over the prairie in the search after that most recent report. "If it's a wolf, they move around a lot," Ely said, adding that while the animal could be a wolf hybrid, or even a dog gone wild, but it could also be a wolf. "My assessment is that, as an agency, we believe there are wolves in Oregon, we just haven't confirmed it yet…Sooner or later, Oregon will be recolonized with wolves from Idaho."....
Capitol Hill rally helped spotlight timber safety net's importance Last week's blitz on Capitol Hill to draw attention to the plight of counties facing elimination of the federal timber safety net proved valuable, Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson said. Speaking at Wednesday's meeting of the county Board of Commissioners, Robertson said the effort spotlighted the importance of the program for counties across the United States that have been hurt by cutbacks in logging on federal forests. More than 200 officials representing counties and schools throughout the nation -- including Robertson and fellow Commissioner Marilyn Kittelman -- descended upon Washington, D.C., to urge Congress to extend the safety net program. "It was an opportunity to re-energize the effort," Robertson said. The safety net, which was signed into law in 2000 by former President Bill Clinton, is set to expire at the end of the federal fiscal year Sept. 30....
Judge OKs Mount Ashland ski area expansion A federal judge has ruled in favor of the Mount Ashland ski area's proposed expansion, but environmental groups that sued to halt more development on the mountain say they may appeal his decision. U.S. District Court Judge Owen Panner issued a summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Forest Service and the Mount Ashland Association, the nonprofit corporation that manages the ski area. He rejected the arguments of three environmental groups that challenged the Forest Service's decision to approve 16 new ski and snowboard trails, two new chairlifts and 200 additional parking spaces on the mountain. "We're elated," said Bill Little, president of the board of directors of the Mount Ashland Association. "We're considering our options," said Tom Dimitre, chairman of the Rogue Group Sierra Club, one of the groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service along with Ashland-based Headwaters and Portland-based Oregon Natural Resources Council....
Federal court: Road to jarbidge stays open A dispute over two miles of dirt road and a threatened fish in a national forest just south of the Idaho line may be over after nearly a decade. A decision signed on Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Hunt lifted a stay freezing a 2001 agreement, in which the government had agreed not to contest Elko County’s claim to a right of way on the South Canyon Road. Hunt emphasized that the settlement agreement does not transfer any interest in land. Elko County’s claim will remain dormant and Elko County and the government will work together on the road, he said. “There is a huge gulf between granting someone an interest in land and refusing to argue about whether they have such an interest,’’ Hunt said. The 2001 agreement settled a federal lawsuit that charged Elko County had undertaken illegal repairs in 1998 on washed-out portions of South Canyon Road, which runs alongside a fork in the Jarbidge River. The river’s bull trout were declared threatened in 1999 under the Endangered Species Act....
Editorial - Roadless policy needs a path No one's quite sure about the precise impact of this week's "roadless" ruling by a federal judge, which would restore broad protections to about a third of national forest land in the lower 48 states. The ruling was favorably received by those who seek to control development on the West's pristine public lands. But we hope it doesn't undo the work of the state commission that developed a smart set of recommendations to provide appropriate safeguards for public lands while still satisfying a variety of environmental, recreational and commercial interests. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte of San Francisco threw out the Bush administration's roadless program, saying that Washington failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before giving states permission last year to draft their own management guidelines for roads on forest lands. The court ruling came a week after the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force submitted recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens to preserve most of the 4.4 million acres of roadless areas in Colorado's national forests. We agree with Owens, who said, "The bipartisan, collaborative process we have undertaken in Colorado is the appropriate way to determine our state's position concerning roadless areas." But we think he's off base in saying that Laporte is "unilaterally dictating natural-resource policy for the entire country."....
Guv touts renewed roadless rule Gov. Bill Richardson is praising a decision by a federal judge in California to reinstate the "Roadless Rule," a Clinton-era ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests. "This is a monumental victory for everyone who enjoys our wild forests," Richardson said Wednesday. "Our roadless forests areas are cherished by hunters, anglers and outdoor enthusiasts. Roadless areas support significant and complex wildlife communities, they create valuable recreation opportunities, and roadless areas help support rural economies." But Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of Albuquerque calls the decision by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte a step backward for those seeking to empower states and local governments in roadless area management. "For over 40 years, our courts have thrown out national roadless rules like the Clinton-era rule, which was overturned by numerous courts," Domenici said. "Now that we finally have a state-based system, I'd hate to see it derailed." He added that the previous, one-size-fits-all national approach didn't meet the needs of many states, including New Mexico....
Five timber areas sold; four face protests Five U.S. Bureau of Land Management timber sales totalling 20.3 million board feet were sold Thursday in the agency's Medford District. However, all but one has been administratively protested by environmental groups to the Interior Board of Land Appeals in Arlington, Va. It takes about 90 days for an administrative protest to be resolved by the appeals board, according to BLM spokeswoman Patty Burel. Two others sales containing nearly 4 million board feet also offered Thursday were not sold. The district's targeted annual allowable harvest is 57.1 million board feet, although the actual amount fluctuates each year. Only 28.5 million board feet were offered this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, Burel said....
Monumental discoveries Paleontologists are giddy after the fossil frenzy at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument yielded yet more fruit: two heretofore unknown 75-million-year-old dinosaurs. "It's been a dream summer," beamed Alan Titus, Bureau of Land Management paleontologist for the 1.9 million-acre monument in southern Utah. A 6-foot-long skull of one of the plant-eating creatures - found intact along with about 30 percent of its skeleton - belongs to a beast similar to members of the ceratoid family, but boasts some distinct features. "We realized from its features and characteristics we've never seen it before," Titus said. Those characteristics make it impossible to categorize the creature in the two subfamilies for ceratoid dinosaurs - which, like the triceratops, are known for their facial horns and a shield that fans out from the back of the neck. What makes this dinosaur unique is the mammoth size of the horns over the eyes and the stubby horn over the nose in addition to the shield features, Titus said. The skull was found this summer by a volunteer....
Lease sale in Alaska may be reworked The Interior Department may reverse course and withdraw part of a planned sale of oil-drilling leases on Alaska's North Slope because of environmental concerns, a department official said. The Wednesday sale of leases on about 8 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve includes about 400,000 acres around Teshekpuk Lake, an area environmental groups consider a critical Arctic wildlife habitat. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge James Singleton in Anchorage ruled that an environmental impact statement prepared by the department for the entire area failed "to adequately address the cumulative effect" of the drilling. Last week the Bush administration rejected the judge's finding and said the sale would proceed as planned. "If we want to go ahead with the Sept. 27 sale, we're going to have to accommodate what the judge said," Johnnie Burton, director of the department's Minerals Management Service, said Thursday at a news conference in Washington. Asked whether the department might consider withdrawing the 400,000 acres around the lake from the sale, Burton said, "We might." "We haven't made the decision yet," she said....
Mogul Pledges Billions Against Warming British business mogul Richard Branson said Thursday he would invest about $3 billion to combat global warming over the next decade. Branson, the billionaire behind the multi-platform Virgin brand, said the money would come from 100 percent of the profits generated by his transportation and airline sectors. It will then be invested in efforts to find renewable, sustainable energy sources in an effort to wean the world off of oil and coal. Branson made the announcement on the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual conference of business, political and nonprofit leaders hosted by former President Clinton. "Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents," Branson said at a news conference with Clinton at his side. "We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment."....
Study: Oceans have cooled in recent years Despite the long term warming trend seen around the globe, the oceans have cooled in the last three years, scientists announced today. The temperature drop, a small fraction of the total warming seen in the last 48 years, suggests that global warming trends can sometimes take little dips. "This research suggests global warming isn't always steady, but happens with occasional 'speed bumps,'" said study co-author Josh Willis, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This cooling is probably natural climate variability. The oceans today are still warmer than they were during the 1980s, and most scientists expect the oceans will eventually continue to warm in response to human-induced climate change."....
Hunters must steer clear of rocket launch The New Mexico Economic Development Department is advising hunters to steer clear of public land in Game Management Unit 20 on Sept. 25. A private company will be launching a rocket from temporary facilities near the proposed Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. Hunting seasons for oryx and dove will be open during the time of the launch. New Mexico State Police, county sheriff's departments, the Department of Game and Fish and private security companies will be present at several roadblocks to discourage entry to the area surrounding the launch site. The proposed launch is scheduled for around 7:30 a.m., but delays may extend the time the roadblocks are in place and could last throughout the day. The launch area includes 27 square miles of state trust land and surrounding Bureau of Land Management property west of White Sands Missile Range. The launch is approximately 23 miles east of Caballo Lake....
Ire over plan's ag land proposal A proposal to offset the future loss of Monterey County farmland to development in the proposed county general plan provoked heated protests Wednesday before county planning commissioners. Another proposal to require water-quality tests on new agricultural wells in the draft general plan -- a 20-year growth blueprint for unincorporated areas -- also hit sore points with members of the public and some commissioners. Christopher Bunn Jr., a farm industry spokesman, said the proposal to require farmland developers to preserve twice as much farmland elsewhere in the county "is particularly designed to send a farmer's blood pressure up." He said the industry is "ballistic" about the proposal suggested by a county environmental consultant. County planners said the farmland-protection measure was suggested as a means of mitigating the inevitable loss of important farmland to development during the next 20 years. Commissioners suggested changes that would make the program an option, rather than a requirement, to move ahead with a farmland-conversion project. Still, critics said, the proposal would increase land and housing costs and prove very expensive to developers seeking to acquire farmland conservation easements from a shrinking pool of farmland owners willing to sell development rights....
Column - Activists using Arizona as battlefield Animal-rights militants from Washington, New York and California have brought their political agenda to Arizona, intent on criminalizing humane practices of livestock farmers. If successful, hog farmers and veal ranchers will face fines up to $20,000 and six months in jail. And one day consumers may be forced to buy pork from Mexico and other foreign producers. Proposition 204's out-of-state funders are targeting the way breeding pigs and veal calves are housed. Yet Arizona has no veal farms and ranks just 27th nationally in hog production. Targeting states with minor or non-existent livestock industries and large urban populations of unsuspecting voters shows the true colors of the activists who are using Arizona as a pawn in their national campaign. Their mission is to denigrate law-abiding farmers, whose methods are approved by veterinary professionals and experts, and stir fear in the hearts and minds of voters with malicious claims about the way farmers care for their animals. And the activists won't think twice about breaking the law if that's what it takes, as they did in pushing a similar initiative in Florida in 2002. There, some of the same activists flooded the state with $1 million in illegal campaign contributions. They were charged with 210 violations of election law and paid a $50,000 fine. That initiative granted pigs constitutional rights and forced the state's only two hog farms, both family-owned, out of business....
U.S. government asks court to dismiss case against Cdn cattle by ranchers An appeal by a U.S. ranchers' group attempting to stop some Canadian cattle from crossing the border could be dead before it even begins. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has filed a motion in the Court of Appeals asking it to agree with a lower court's ruling without hearing all the evidence. The motion says that judges at the Appeals Court have already rejected the attempt by the Montana-based lobby group Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF) to keep America's borders firmly closed to Canadian cattle based on the country's cases of mad cow disease. "All of the issues . . . have already been considered and rejected by this Court," it reads. "The rule at issue is unchanged, as are the relevant facts and law."....
Cattlemen Support Senate Renewal of Mandatory Price Reporting Members of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) are gratified with the U.S. Senate’s final passage of H.R. 3408, legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year and will now effectively reauthorize Mandatory Price Reporting (MPR) for four more years, through September 30, 2010. “This reporting process is important to U.S. cattle ranchers, and since the mandatory law expired last fall, we have been working diligently to urge its renewal,” explains NCBA President and Missouri cattle producer Mike John. “Making price reporting practices mandatory by law assures cattle producers are getting the marketing information they need about their beef products.” Mandatory Price Reporting requires meat packers to report to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) daily price and volume information on negotiated and non-negotiated purchases of cattle and boxed beef sales. In addition, companies are also required to report beef exports and imports. The Mandatory Price Reporting law expired September 30, 2005, after the Senate was initially unable to agree to the bill passed by the House....
New group relives the Wild West The late 1800s in Bay City, with its notorious waterfront saloons and bawdy houses, was akin to dozens of boom towns in the Wild West where cowboys and outlaws, miners and ranchers all mingled. The 16th annual River of Time Living History Encampment, however, brings in a bit of cowboy justice in the form of presentations by the Christian Cowboys, a band of 22 re-enactors who relive the Old West. Tom Brown, the Cowboys' moderator and one of the originators, said the group includes former teachers who want to keep history alive, especially the bits of Americana celebrated in the Wild West shows. Visitors can check the updated daily schedule to be handed out at the park to see when the Cowboys will perform. Brown, a retired teacher of history and social studies at Farwell High School, said the group brings in an entire Western town block of seven false-front buildings stretching about 80 feet. The Cowboys have 22 different skits they practice and can present at various events and festivals throughout the state and beyond, Brown said....
Museum Opens In Pie Town Just in time for the Pie Festival the DanCyn Windmill Museum opened to the public in Pie Town, New Mexico, on Friday, Sept. 8. The museum is an ongoing labor of love for Cyndi and Dan Lee, who conceived the idea after they visited a Windmill Museum in Oklahoma nine years ago. Right now the museum consists of the Old Bennett cabin, built in the early 30s, where the Lee family of five children lived in its two rooms on the Tres Lagunas Ranch. The museum has expansion plans for two outbuildings and, of course, more windmills. Dan and Cyndi Lee purchased the cabin from Miles Choate and it is dedicated to his memory. “We tore it down in 1999 and marked every log with its location and moved it log by log to Pie Town,” Cyndi said. “Two years ago we did the foundation.” According to invitation to the opening, “It’s been our dream to capture the rich heritage of the area in a period authentic log cabin filled with memories of local families, the homesteaders, the ranchers.” And filled it is with donations of furniture, clothing, dishes, bedding, tools, newspapers and magazines, photos, saddles, quirts and quilts – intriguing treasures from the past of the 30s to the early 50s. People viewing the cabin on its opening day could be heard exclaiming with delight, “My grandmother had one of those,” or “We used to have that when I was growing up.”....
'Pavarotti of the Plains' Don Walser dead at 72 There's never been a more special relationship between a musician and his fans in Austin than when rotund National Guardsman Don Walser started over in the music business in 1990 at the now-defunct Henry's Bar on Burnet Road. His improbable rise and signing to Sire Records, the label of Madonna and the Ramones, at age 64 was the feelgood story of the Austin music scene. Dubbed "the Pavarotti of the Plains" for his clear, powerful tenor, Walser was embraced by gray-haired two-steppers and tattooed punk rockers alike, which was the basis of a February 1996 segment on "ABC Primetime Live." Walser passed away about 1:45 p.m. Wednesday after a long illness. He was 72. Slowed by mounting health problems, which forced his retirement from the music business in September 2003, Walser's time in the spotlight was relatively short. He loved to sing and lived to please his fans, but the singer's physical deterioration — he was diagnosed with neuropathy, a disease of the nervous system, in 2001 — caused him to forget lyrics and back down from notes he hit with ease just a few years earlier. In an interview with the American-Statesman in late 2003, Walser could barely lift his hand and his speech was slow and difficult, but his eyes lit up when a favorite memory surfaced, including the standing ovation he received when he opened for Johnny Cash at the Erwin Center in 1996 and making his debut at the Grand Ol' Opry in 1999. The next year he was honored with the National Heritage Award in Washington, D.C....
Rural Residents Battle Southern Nevada Water Grab Residents of rural Nevada know they face long odds in their effort to thwart a proposed water grab by southern Nevada. Las Vegas has money and political power, but the rural residents think they have the truth on their side, and, so far, they refuse to back down or be bought off. My ancestors were able to live a sustainable lifestyle on the land for quite some time. Las Vegas seems to want to sustain unsustainable growth," Rick Spilsbury, a Western Shoshone blogger, says. Rural residents know that it's only been in the last few years that Las Vegas paid any attention at all to water conservation, and that fountains, lawns, pools, and man-made lakes have multiplied with few restrictions. Now, Las Vegas wants White Pine's water, hundreds of thousands of acres, to allow for even more sprawl. "I don't like the idea of my place drying up for another condo or casino in Las Vegas," Bannon Humphries, a Spring Valley rancher, says. "I think every person up there is against it. I haven't spoken to one person who is even quiet about it," Spilsbury says....
Nevada water hearings continue Advocates of a plan to pump billions of gallons of groundwater from rural Nevada to booming Las Vegas spent hours Thursday trying to discredit reports of an expert fighting the plan - and got a warning from a state hearing panel to move on. Attorneys Paul Taggart and Michael Van Zandt, representing the Southern Nevada Water Authority, grilled hydrologist Tom Meyers at length during the second week of hearings on the SNWA request to draw more than 90,000 acre-feet of groundwater from Spring Valley. The questioning prompted Tracy Taylor, the state water engineer who must make a final decision on the pumping plan, to tell the lawyers to stop "pounding on uncertainties" in Meyers' projections on available water in the valley. Meyers maintains that SNWA's plan would take too much water out of Spring Valley and damage existing groundwater, spring and surface water rights that already total more than 70,000 acre-feet per year. SNWA contends that the perennial yield, or the amount of water that can be safely pumped on an annual basis, from the valley, located in White Pine County, is about 100,000 acre-feet, which is more than what it's seeking....
'Triangle' farmers challenge Legacy Project The Wood River Legacy Project, an ambitious effort to restore flows to 12 miles of the Big Wood River south of Glendale Bridge projected to boost the size of the fishery by 33 percent, has drawn support from a host of city and county governments and local canal companies. But during a public forum in Hailey Tuesday night, the project, which hinges on the revision of Idaho's entrenched water laws, was challenged by a group of farmers south of Bellevue who believe the undertaking will create more harm than good. Every summer since 1920, the Big Wood River, which is among Idaho's most treasured fisheries, has been diverted into canals near Glendale Bridge, leaving scores of trout to die in stagnant pools. Legacy Project Director Rich McIntyre thinks if water right's holders are given an option, many would choose to keep their water in-stream, and the dead stretch of river could be revived. But current Idaho water law is based on a "use it or lose it" policy, meaning water rights' holders must exercise their rights to the precious resource, or lose it all....
Water groups supports H2O provisions of Idaho wilderness bill An Idaho water-rights advocacy group is supporting elements of a bid to create a 550-thousand acre wilderness in the rugged Owyhee canyonlands of southwestern Idaho, saying it includes provisions that protect state water rights. The Idaho Water Users Association, whose members include cities, ranchers and fish farmers, says it's "satisfied that Idaho sovereignty over its waters is fully protected." It also endorsed provisions of the wilderness plan, which is sponsored by Senator Mike Crapo and goes before a Senate subcommitttee on September 27th, that keep water from the Owyhee and Bruneau river basins from being piped out of state. The group says that's an important safeguard for local water users....
A climate of change President Bush's endeavor to give landowners, corporations, local governments, nonprofits and others more say in the management of natural resources has environmentalists and their allies nervous. "We're concerned this will hurt the gains we've made in the last 30 years of environmental law," says Gary L. Graham, executive director of Audubon Colorado. Such concerns arose last week as Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist, came to the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs as part of a 24-city national listening tour to solicit suggestions on the president's nebulously dubbed "cooperative conservation" effort. Gun rights activists, farmers and ranchers, four-wheeling groups and oil and natural gas representatives poured into a large campus conference room to praise the initiative. Many of them said government agencies too often stand in the way of their interests, citing a variety of reasons, including petty personality conflicts and officials' incompetence....
Conservancy opposes Army plan After getting an earful from donors, the Nature Conservancy is taking a stance against the Army’s proposed expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. The organization, which has worked with the military to preserve ranchland around Fort Carson, says it will have nothing to do with a project that would put ranchers off their land through use of federal land-seizure laws. “We have a strict prohibition in participating in condemnation projects,” Brian McPeek, the organization’s deputy state director, said Thursday. The Army is eyeing outside organizations to help manage a stretch of the training area if Defense Department officials approve adding as much as 418,000 acres to the 235,000-acre site in southeast Colorado. The Army has proposed a “conservation area” covering the Purgatoire River valley adjacent to Piñon Canyon, managed by an outside organization. McPeek said the Army hasn’t discussed its plans with the Nature Conservancy. The group’s unwillingness to participate doesn’t change anything, the Army said. “It has no effect whatsoever,” said Karen Edge, an Army spokeswoman....
Leaders Convene in Helena for Climate Challenge Conference Montanans are feeling the impact of global warming. An eight-year drought in Eastern Montana has been a blow to farmers and ranchers and elsewhere, ski bums and trout fisherman are experiencing shorter recreational seasons. And no one in Montana can fail to notice the increase in forest fires this year. These are some of the concerns bringing together over forty organizations sponsoring the Climate Challenge Conference in Helena this weekend. "We are very gratified by the wide diversity and range of organizations who responded to our call for this conference," said Sterling Miller, Senior Wildlife Biologist for the National Wildlife Federation. Corporations, unions, government agencies, non-profits and individuals concerned with global warming will all be attending the conference. The main goal of the conference is to get the attention of political leaders who are ignoring the issue of global warming, Sterling said. He makes an emphatic exclusion of Governor Brian Schweitzer from the apathetic group. The hope is that the interest groups involvement will help get politicians to take notice....
Suspected wolf on Zumwalt may be vanguard Biologists have not yet been able to positively confirm the presence of a young black wolf on the Zumwalt Prairie of Wallowa County, despite a videotape taken in about mid-July by an archery hunter from Eugene, who was scouting the area. The U.S. Wildlife Service and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife have since received a couple of other possible sightings in the area, one from a fence builder about three weeks who initially suspected that the animal might have been a dog, according to Craig Ely, Northeast Oregon Regional Director based in La Grande. Ely said that biologist spent 10 or 12 days in the evenings looking for the animal with no success, and sent a plane over the prairie in the search after that most recent report. "If it's a wolf, they move around a lot," Ely said, adding that while the animal could be a wolf hybrid, or even a dog gone wild, but it could also be a wolf. "My assessment is that, as an agency, we believe there are wolves in Oregon, we just haven't confirmed it yet…Sooner or later, Oregon will be recolonized with wolves from Idaho."....
Capitol Hill rally helped spotlight timber safety net's importance Last week's blitz on Capitol Hill to draw attention to the plight of counties facing elimination of the federal timber safety net proved valuable, Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson said. Speaking at Wednesday's meeting of the county Board of Commissioners, Robertson said the effort spotlighted the importance of the program for counties across the United States that have been hurt by cutbacks in logging on federal forests. More than 200 officials representing counties and schools throughout the nation -- including Robertson and fellow Commissioner Marilyn Kittelman -- descended upon Washington, D.C., to urge Congress to extend the safety net program. "It was an opportunity to re-energize the effort," Robertson said. The safety net, which was signed into law in 2000 by former President Bill Clinton, is set to expire at the end of the federal fiscal year Sept. 30....
Judge OKs Mount Ashland ski area expansion A federal judge has ruled in favor of the Mount Ashland ski area's proposed expansion, but environmental groups that sued to halt more development on the mountain say they may appeal his decision. U.S. District Court Judge Owen Panner issued a summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Forest Service and the Mount Ashland Association, the nonprofit corporation that manages the ski area. He rejected the arguments of three environmental groups that challenged the Forest Service's decision to approve 16 new ski and snowboard trails, two new chairlifts and 200 additional parking spaces on the mountain. "We're elated," said Bill Little, president of the board of directors of the Mount Ashland Association. "We're considering our options," said Tom Dimitre, chairman of the Rogue Group Sierra Club, one of the groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service along with Ashland-based Headwaters and Portland-based Oregon Natural Resources Council....
Federal court: Road to jarbidge stays open A dispute over two miles of dirt road and a threatened fish in a national forest just south of the Idaho line may be over after nearly a decade. A decision signed on Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Hunt lifted a stay freezing a 2001 agreement, in which the government had agreed not to contest Elko County’s claim to a right of way on the South Canyon Road. Hunt emphasized that the settlement agreement does not transfer any interest in land. Elko County’s claim will remain dormant and Elko County and the government will work together on the road, he said. “There is a huge gulf between granting someone an interest in land and refusing to argue about whether they have such an interest,’’ Hunt said. The 2001 agreement settled a federal lawsuit that charged Elko County had undertaken illegal repairs in 1998 on washed-out portions of South Canyon Road, which runs alongside a fork in the Jarbidge River. The river’s bull trout were declared threatened in 1999 under the Endangered Species Act....
Editorial - Roadless policy needs a path No one's quite sure about the precise impact of this week's "roadless" ruling by a federal judge, which would restore broad protections to about a third of national forest land in the lower 48 states. The ruling was favorably received by those who seek to control development on the West's pristine public lands. But we hope it doesn't undo the work of the state commission that developed a smart set of recommendations to provide appropriate safeguards for public lands while still satisfying a variety of environmental, recreational and commercial interests. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte of San Francisco threw out the Bush administration's roadless program, saying that Washington failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before giving states permission last year to draft their own management guidelines for roads on forest lands. The court ruling came a week after the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force submitted recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens to preserve most of the 4.4 million acres of roadless areas in Colorado's national forests. We agree with Owens, who said, "The bipartisan, collaborative process we have undertaken in Colorado is the appropriate way to determine our state's position concerning roadless areas." But we think he's off base in saying that Laporte is "unilaterally dictating natural-resource policy for the entire country."....
Guv touts renewed roadless rule Gov. Bill Richardson is praising a decision by a federal judge in California to reinstate the "Roadless Rule," a Clinton-era ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests. "This is a monumental victory for everyone who enjoys our wild forests," Richardson said Wednesday. "Our roadless forests areas are cherished by hunters, anglers and outdoor enthusiasts. Roadless areas support significant and complex wildlife communities, they create valuable recreation opportunities, and roadless areas help support rural economies." But Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of Albuquerque calls the decision by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte a step backward for those seeking to empower states and local governments in roadless area management. "For over 40 years, our courts have thrown out national roadless rules like the Clinton-era rule, which was overturned by numerous courts," Domenici said. "Now that we finally have a state-based system, I'd hate to see it derailed." He added that the previous, one-size-fits-all national approach didn't meet the needs of many states, including New Mexico....
Five timber areas sold; four face protests Five U.S. Bureau of Land Management timber sales totalling 20.3 million board feet were sold Thursday in the agency's Medford District. However, all but one has been administratively protested by environmental groups to the Interior Board of Land Appeals in Arlington, Va. It takes about 90 days for an administrative protest to be resolved by the appeals board, according to BLM spokeswoman Patty Burel. Two others sales containing nearly 4 million board feet also offered Thursday were not sold. The district's targeted annual allowable harvest is 57.1 million board feet, although the actual amount fluctuates each year. Only 28.5 million board feet were offered this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, Burel said....
Monumental discoveries Paleontologists are giddy after the fossil frenzy at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument yielded yet more fruit: two heretofore unknown 75-million-year-old dinosaurs. "It's been a dream summer," beamed Alan Titus, Bureau of Land Management paleontologist for the 1.9 million-acre monument in southern Utah. A 6-foot-long skull of one of the plant-eating creatures - found intact along with about 30 percent of its skeleton - belongs to a beast similar to members of the ceratoid family, but boasts some distinct features. "We realized from its features and characteristics we've never seen it before," Titus said. Those characteristics make it impossible to categorize the creature in the two subfamilies for ceratoid dinosaurs - which, like the triceratops, are known for their facial horns and a shield that fans out from the back of the neck. What makes this dinosaur unique is the mammoth size of the horns over the eyes and the stubby horn over the nose in addition to the shield features, Titus said. The skull was found this summer by a volunteer....
Lease sale in Alaska may be reworked The Interior Department may reverse course and withdraw part of a planned sale of oil-drilling leases on Alaska's North Slope because of environmental concerns, a department official said. The Wednesday sale of leases on about 8 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve includes about 400,000 acres around Teshekpuk Lake, an area environmental groups consider a critical Arctic wildlife habitat. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge James Singleton in Anchorage ruled that an environmental impact statement prepared by the department for the entire area failed "to adequately address the cumulative effect" of the drilling. Last week the Bush administration rejected the judge's finding and said the sale would proceed as planned. "If we want to go ahead with the Sept. 27 sale, we're going to have to accommodate what the judge said," Johnnie Burton, director of the department's Minerals Management Service, said Thursday at a news conference in Washington. Asked whether the department might consider withdrawing the 400,000 acres around the lake from the sale, Burton said, "We might." "We haven't made the decision yet," she said....
Mogul Pledges Billions Against Warming British business mogul Richard Branson said Thursday he would invest about $3 billion to combat global warming over the next decade. Branson, the billionaire behind the multi-platform Virgin brand, said the money would come from 100 percent of the profits generated by his transportation and airline sectors. It will then be invested in efforts to find renewable, sustainable energy sources in an effort to wean the world off of oil and coal. Branson made the announcement on the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual conference of business, political and nonprofit leaders hosted by former President Clinton. "Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents," Branson said at a news conference with Clinton at his side. "We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment."....
Study: Oceans have cooled in recent years Despite the long term warming trend seen around the globe, the oceans have cooled in the last three years, scientists announced today. The temperature drop, a small fraction of the total warming seen in the last 48 years, suggests that global warming trends can sometimes take little dips. "This research suggests global warming isn't always steady, but happens with occasional 'speed bumps,'" said study co-author Josh Willis, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This cooling is probably natural climate variability. The oceans today are still warmer than they were during the 1980s, and most scientists expect the oceans will eventually continue to warm in response to human-induced climate change."....
Hunters must steer clear of rocket launch The New Mexico Economic Development Department is advising hunters to steer clear of public land in Game Management Unit 20 on Sept. 25. A private company will be launching a rocket from temporary facilities near the proposed Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. Hunting seasons for oryx and dove will be open during the time of the launch. New Mexico State Police, county sheriff's departments, the Department of Game and Fish and private security companies will be present at several roadblocks to discourage entry to the area surrounding the launch site. The proposed launch is scheduled for around 7:30 a.m., but delays may extend the time the roadblocks are in place and could last throughout the day. The launch area includes 27 square miles of state trust land and surrounding Bureau of Land Management property west of White Sands Missile Range. The launch is approximately 23 miles east of Caballo Lake....
Ire over plan's ag land proposal A proposal to offset the future loss of Monterey County farmland to development in the proposed county general plan provoked heated protests Wednesday before county planning commissioners. Another proposal to require water-quality tests on new agricultural wells in the draft general plan -- a 20-year growth blueprint for unincorporated areas -- also hit sore points with members of the public and some commissioners. Christopher Bunn Jr., a farm industry spokesman, said the proposal to require farmland developers to preserve twice as much farmland elsewhere in the county "is particularly designed to send a farmer's blood pressure up." He said the industry is "ballistic" about the proposal suggested by a county environmental consultant. County planners said the farmland-protection measure was suggested as a means of mitigating the inevitable loss of important farmland to development during the next 20 years. Commissioners suggested changes that would make the program an option, rather than a requirement, to move ahead with a farmland-conversion project. Still, critics said, the proposal would increase land and housing costs and prove very expensive to developers seeking to acquire farmland conservation easements from a shrinking pool of farmland owners willing to sell development rights....
Column - Activists using Arizona as battlefield Animal-rights militants from Washington, New York and California have brought their political agenda to Arizona, intent on criminalizing humane practices of livestock farmers. If successful, hog farmers and veal ranchers will face fines up to $20,000 and six months in jail. And one day consumers may be forced to buy pork from Mexico and other foreign producers. Proposition 204's out-of-state funders are targeting the way breeding pigs and veal calves are housed. Yet Arizona has no veal farms and ranks just 27th nationally in hog production. Targeting states with minor or non-existent livestock industries and large urban populations of unsuspecting voters shows the true colors of the activists who are using Arizona as a pawn in their national campaign. Their mission is to denigrate law-abiding farmers, whose methods are approved by veterinary professionals and experts, and stir fear in the hearts and minds of voters with malicious claims about the way farmers care for their animals. And the activists won't think twice about breaking the law if that's what it takes, as they did in pushing a similar initiative in Florida in 2002. There, some of the same activists flooded the state with $1 million in illegal campaign contributions. They were charged with 210 violations of election law and paid a $50,000 fine. That initiative granted pigs constitutional rights and forced the state's only two hog farms, both family-owned, out of business....
U.S. government asks court to dismiss case against Cdn cattle by ranchers An appeal by a U.S. ranchers' group attempting to stop some Canadian cattle from crossing the border could be dead before it even begins. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has filed a motion in the Court of Appeals asking it to agree with a lower court's ruling without hearing all the evidence. The motion says that judges at the Appeals Court have already rejected the attempt by the Montana-based lobby group Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF) to keep America's borders firmly closed to Canadian cattle based on the country's cases of mad cow disease. "All of the issues . . . have already been considered and rejected by this Court," it reads. "The rule at issue is unchanged, as are the relevant facts and law."....
Cattlemen Support Senate Renewal of Mandatory Price Reporting Members of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) are gratified with the U.S. Senate’s final passage of H.R. 3408, legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year and will now effectively reauthorize Mandatory Price Reporting (MPR) for four more years, through September 30, 2010. “This reporting process is important to U.S. cattle ranchers, and since the mandatory law expired last fall, we have been working diligently to urge its renewal,” explains NCBA President and Missouri cattle producer Mike John. “Making price reporting practices mandatory by law assures cattle producers are getting the marketing information they need about their beef products.” Mandatory Price Reporting requires meat packers to report to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) daily price and volume information on negotiated and non-negotiated purchases of cattle and boxed beef sales. In addition, companies are also required to report beef exports and imports. The Mandatory Price Reporting law expired September 30, 2005, after the Senate was initially unable to agree to the bill passed by the House....
New group relives the Wild West The late 1800s in Bay City, with its notorious waterfront saloons and bawdy houses, was akin to dozens of boom towns in the Wild West where cowboys and outlaws, miners and ranchers all mingled. The 16th annual River of Time Living History Encampment, however, brings in a bit of cowboy justice in the form of presentations by the Christian Cowboys, a band of 22 re-enactors who relive the Old West. Tom Brown, the Cowboys' moderator and one of the originators, said the group includes former teachers who want to keep history alive, especially the bits of Americana celebrated in the Wild West shows. Visitors can check the updated daily schedule to be handed out at the park to see when the Cowboys will perform. Brown, a retired teacher of history and social studies at Farwell High School, said the group brings in an entire Western town block of seven false-front buildings stretching about 80 feet. The Cowboys have 22 different skits they practice and can present at various events and festivals throughout the state and beyond, Brown said....
Museum Opens In Pie Town Just in time for the Pie Festival the DanCyn Windmill Museum opened to the public in Pie Town, New Mexico, on Friday, Sept. 8. The museum is an ongoing labor of love for Cyndi and Dan Lee, who conceived the idea after they visited a Windmill Museum in Oklahoma nine years ago. Right now the museum consists of the Old Bennett cabin, built in the early 30s, where the Lee family of five children lived in its two rooms on the Tres Lagunas Ranch. The museum has expansion plans for two outbuildings and, of course, more windmills. Dan and Cyndi Lee purchased the cabin from Miles Choate and it is dedicated to his memory. “We tore it down in 1999 and marked every log with its location and moved it log by log to Pie Town,” Cyndi said. “Two years ago we did the foundation.” According to invitation to the opening, “It’s been our dream to capture the rich heritage of the area in a period authentic log cabin filled with memories of local families, the homesteaders, the ranchers.” And filled it is with donations of furniture, clothing, dishes, bedding, tools, newspapers and magazines, photos, saddles, quirts and quilts – intriguing treasures from the past of the 30s to the early 50s. People viewing the cabin on its opening day could be heard exclaiming with delight, “My grandmother had one of those,” or “We used to have that when I was growing up.”....
'Pavarotti of the Plains' Don Walser dead at 72 There's never been a more special relationship between a musician and his fans in Austin than when rotund National Guardsman Don Walser started over in the music business in 1990 at the now-defunct Henry's Bar on Burnet Road. His improbable rise and signing to Sire Records, the label of Madonna and the Ramones, at age 64 was the feelgood story of the Austin music scene. Dubbed "the Pavarotti of the Plains" for his clear, powerful tenor, Walser was embraced by gray-haired two-steppers and tattooed punk rockers alike, which was the basis of a February 1996 segment on "ABC Primetime Live." Walser passed away about 1:45 p.m. Wednesday after a long illness. He was 72. Slowed by mounting health problems, which forced his retirement from the music business in September 2003, Walser's time in the spotlight was relatively short. He loved to sing and lived to please his fans, but the singer's physical deterioration — he was diagnosed with neuropathy, a disease of the nervous system, in 2001 — caused him to forget lyrics and back down from notes he hit with ease just a few years earlier. In an interview with the American-Statesman in late 2003, Walser could barely lift his hand and his speech was slow and difficult, but his eyes lit up when a favorite memory surfaced, including the standing ovation he received when he opened for Johnny Cash at the Erwin Center in 1996 and making his debut at the Grand Ol' Opry in 1999. The next year he was honored with the National Heritage Award in Washington, D.C....
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