Media Release Jan 3 2006:
For information on this media release
Contact Gila Livestock Growers Association
505-772-5753
505-621-3726
Joinanddonate@gilalivestockgrowers.org
Wolf Success Alters Lives of Inhabitants
According to the residents of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, there are a minimum of 37 documented wolves in the wilds of New Mexico, and a minimum of a dozen individual animals and pairs that remain uncounted by the agencies managing the program. There are an additional 15 wolves known to be in Arizona with undocumented individual and pairs in that state as well.
“Despite the requirements in final rule, I doubt we will ever see an accurate wolf count done through the Interagency Field Team, Says Laura Schneberger. They don’t have the man power, it’s not in their best interest to show the total overall success of the program. If they succeed in getting 100-125 wolves on the ground, they will have to pack it up and move the program elsewhere and nobody seems to want to do that.”
Schneberger, a rancher and President of the Gila Livestock Growers association has been affected by the program for nine years. She believes there are many more wolves in the wild than those the agency will admit are in the recovery area.
“The Interagency Field Team, who are in charge of getting the facts to the public, seem to be playing both sides against the middle to drag out the reintroduction as long as possible. They know of literally dozens of un-collared animals out there and if pressed will admit to seeing these animals from the air when they conduct weekly location flights. The problem is once the end of the year count comes along, they can only find but a fraction of those wolves. So the program uses a smaller number than is actually out there. The year end count is usually only a couple weeks worth of work”, says Schneberger. “But worse, non government organizations that support the wolf recovery, constantly complain about how small the number of animals in the wild actually is. They then issue press releases or file lawsuits pretending that the collared animals are the actual total numbers in the wild. It is a manipulation of the public the media and the judicial system, none of whom are getting reliable information. I have often wondered why FWS doesn’t correct this misinformation but they don’t.”
According to John Oakleaf the Fish and Wildlife Service’s field team coordinator, there are 4 known packs in the Gila National Forest and some dispersing wolves.
The Saddle pack has 6-9 documented wolves, 3 wear collars (AF797, AM732, M1007), and there are 3-6 un-collared pups, 3 were observed in late October, 6 observed in July.
The Middle Fork pack has 2 wolves, both wear collars (AF861, AM871). The pack was assumed to have denned in early 2006 based on aerial locations. However, subsequent observations have been unable to confirm the survival of pups therefore, pup status remains unknown.
The San Mateo pack north of Reserve NM consists of (AF903, M927) However, M927 was found dead, in November. Previous counts in were at 4-5 animals including 3 adults and 1-2 pups. 2 pups were observed earlier in the year, 1 pup was observed in November. Currently the IFT counts 3-4 wolves with 2 adults, 1 wears a collar, and 1-2 pups.
The Meridian pack consists of (AM806 and f1028) - 2 collared individuals 1 pup and 1 adult.
In November, Male 859 was lethally removed for its third livestock depredation incident. Its mate, F924 was trapped and removed after her second depredation incident. She is eligible for re-release into the BRWRA at a later time.
“We have those wolves that the team knows about, and more that they don’t,” says Schneberger.
“Most sightings go uninvestigated, but my documentation shows a pack of six wolves near Quemado on the Arizona border that killed a dog and harassed livestock in early 2006; 2 wolves seen and heard at Mule creek NM by local ranchers and hunters; 2 wolves are near Mimbres NM; 2-7 wolves or possibly wolf hybrids north of Luna NM; 2 un-collared wolves in the San Francisco basin east of Reserve.” “Wolves have been seen in Sierra and Socorro counties; 3 were seen on highway 59 near Dusty NM; 1 near Winston NM. There are several sightings of single wolves east of Datil NM and as far south as Kingston NM. There also seems to be a newly formed pack at Collins Park in the same region that is currently occupied by both the Saddle and Luna packs. I used to keep count in Arizona too but with the population explosion here I can’t keep up in Arizona anymore. However, I have received several reports of people encountering un-collared wolves there as well.”
Ranchers and rural occupants believe the wolves are now breeding with dogs and coyotes. Last week two wolf-like animals were shot north of Luna NM. The animals have some wolf-like characteristics, with a mane and a 36-40mm canine spread of a typical Mexican wolf as well as the color and markings of a domestic dog.
The animals were working as a pack to kill an elk calf when a landowner in the area shot two of the three animals. {See attached photos}
Livestock depredations have been increasing in the BRWRA as well. Compared with wolf populations in northern states on the verge of delisting wolves, the southwest depredations are significantly higher.
In Idaho which has 650 or more individual gray wolves, livestock depredations for 2005 are 2.9 per wolf. New Mexico and Arizona have about 60 wolves currently documented by FWS to be in the wild. In both Arizona and New Mexico during fiscal year 05-06, Mexican wolves were responsible for 6.0 livestock kills per wolf. In the Southwest there are more than double the depredations as states with recovered populations, with less than a tenth of the wolves on the ground.
“There is no doubt both people and wolves are suffering from the policies of this program and the managers are either in denial or playing games with the public,” says Schneberger. “It is time the agencies came clean with the facts on how many wolves they have and how they plan on expanding the program to other areas of the state. There has literally been an explosion in the New Mexico population in the past two years and this type of disastrous management cannot go on indefinitely.”
For the Schneberger family the program has been a disaster. The family came home from an overnight Christmas trip and found wolf tracks in the snow at their home. One of the family’s two five month old Great Pyrenees pups was missing and is presumed dead.
“We didn’t witness the attack like so many families in this area have, but it is still devastating to my kids and to me. It is no longer just about our livestock and economic survival now about the safety of our kids.”
Dog killing is becoming a problem within the program. Within a twenty mile radius of Wall Lake, ten miles down the canyon from the Schneberger ranch, the Aspen pack, has killed 6-7 dogs in the past year. One attack occurred in the presence of an eight year old girl The field team refers to the child as “an individual” in their monthly report. The dog was taken to the vet and survived but the IFT officers told the family they should not allow their daughter to be outside near their dogs.
Jim Harris, a neighbor of the girls’ family says, “ We all think what might have happened if she had not had that dog with her to get between her and that wolf.”
“What level of sacrifice by these people does the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the NM Department of Game and Fish consider acceptable?” asks Joe Delk. “How many ranchers have to go broke, how many pets and working dogs have to die? Will the death of a child finally be the sacrificial boundary? How do these agencies measure fear, anguish, helplessness and hopelessness and why should a disproportionate few people in a poor rural community have to bear all the sacrifice for what is supposedly a program to benefit the public?"
Delk, the Executive Director of the Paragon Foundation, a New Mexico based property rights organization that recently sponsored a wolf impact forum in Las Cruces and plans on hosting more around the state, also questions the programs management practices.
Mary McNab, Blue Arizona resident living in the BRWRA agrees that the program is poorly managed but feels the program has been less than honest with the public from the earliest days of the planning.
“The wolves are being dumped in small spots of the recovery area that are sometimes only as large as twelve square miles. These areas are still surrounded by towns, schools, livestock and backyards. There is no core area for recovery here, so the wolves are forced into habituation behavior by close proximity to all and sundry that was already here. There is no place for them to escape to the wild, there is no core recovery area for them to learn to be wild. These are impossible circumstances for the people to live with.”
Every day that goes by allowing the animals to prey on people at their homes and on their privately owned animals increases the habituation behavior and spreads it to other pack members. Dr. Valerius Geist from the University of Calgary also worries about the behavior of Mexican wolves in the southwest.
“In short, what is being observed is pre-attack behavior. I am an ethologist by profession. That is I profess animal behavior. I am very familiar indeed with wolf behavior and I see a need to inform the Southwest program managers that their assessments that wolves are showing no signs of aggression and just appear curious, puts persons in jeopardy. I see here a misunderstanding of the exploratory behavior of wolves."
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
As Costs of Wildfires Grow, So Does a Question: Who Should Pay? The steeply rising cost of preventing and suppressing wildfires, which burned more of the American landscape in 2006 than in any other year since at least 1960, is creating a rift between Washington and state and local governments over how the burden ought to be shouldered. A study issued in November by the inspector general’s office of the United States Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the Forest Service, said the nature of the wildfire threat was changing as private homes and communities pushed ever closer to the boundaries of once-remote public lands. Those communities and landowners, rather than federal taxpayers, should have to pay for more of their own fire protection, the report concluded. States and local governments are gearing up to fight back in Congress, arguing that decades of federal mismanagement of national forests and open spaces, not development, created the threat and that little communities with few resources are neither responsible for it nor equipped to make a difference. The pattern of wildfire distribution during the recently ended fire season, which charred more than 9.8 million acres, supports either side. According to federal statistics, more state, county and private lands burned than in any other year since 1997 — about half the total 2006 losses — primarily because of monstrous blazes in Oklahoma, in Texas and across the Upper Plains, regions where most property is privately owned. That finding, though also driven by broader factors like drought and heat that have little to do with residential development in fire-prone areas, supports the federal contention that the government has had to shift an increasingly large share of its resources from the task of protecting its own forests to firefighting elsewhere. In some places, though, the issue is more complex. In Stillwater County, Mont., north of Yellowstone National Park, for example, the small, long-established towns of Nye and Fishtail are bordered on two sides by national forest. In early July, the first of two huge fires erupted in the forest and roared into those communities, where 100,000 acres of mostly private land and 32 homes were burned. The blaze was the worst in the county’s history, local officials say....
Counties could lose millions in funding if law isn't renewed A law that has sent millions in revenue generated from National Forest lands to the states is expiring. The thought has county officials in Montana perspiring. It's called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. The funding comes from mineral resources, grazing fees and other sources. It's appropriated to states where national forests are located. This year, the final year of the act, Montana counties will get $13 million from the U.S. Forest Service. The check hit the mail Wednesday. But if the act isn't reauthorized, states could lose millions of dollars in federal funding. "It's a huge amount," Montana Association Counties Executive Director Harold Blattie said. Congress let the act expire before adjourning in 2006 and MACO is lobbying hard to get the Act reauthorized in 2007. So are the National Association of Counties and National Coalition of Forest Counties and Schools. If the act is not reauthorized, every county in Montana will pay the price — whether or not forested land lies within its border, according to MACO....
Outdoors: Researchers fight to save Idaho cod from extinction They're green, eel-like and incredibly difficult to raise in captivity, but Kootenai River burbot are now successfully spawning in plastic tanks at the University of Idaho. The tasty, freshwater codfish once sustained the Kootenai Tribe through the coldest months of winter, but fewer than 40 wild burbot are believed to be in the river today. In a desperate move to keep the fish from vanishing and until the politically sticky questions can be addressed about why the fish are in trouble in the first place the tribe is placing its hopes on setting up a hatchery. Problem is, nobody in the world has been able to figure out a way to raise the fish. They spawn in winter under ice, and young burbot eat things like bugs, plankton and other creatures found in only wild rivers. "Nobody has ever cultured this fish before," said Sue Ireland, fisheries biologist for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. "This is really feeling in the dark." It's getting a bit less dark, though. Four years ago, researchers at the University of Idaho began tackling the problem, courtesy of funding from the tribe, the Idaho Fish and Game Department and the Bonneville Power Administration....
Flower species wins fed habitat Two nearly extinct wildflowers found only in Washington County and just over the state line in Arizona now have a protected home. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has formally designated nearly 6,300 acres as critical habitat for the Holmgren milkvetch and the Shivwitz milkvetch. It marks only the second and third time the federal agency has created critical habitat for an endangered plant species in Utah. Under the designation, geographic areas containing features essential for the survival are managed for the protection of the species. "What has occurred in this instance is quite exceptional for Utah," Tony Frates, conservation co-chair of the Utah Native Plant Society, said Tuesday. "It's a long and complicated ruling, but the local field office did a real thorough job. And the [critical habitat] designation will be very helpful in keeping these two species from becoming extinct." Prompting the listing and new habitat designation has been Washington County's explosive growth and development. Specifically, the two plant species are in the path of a planned freeway interchange and roadway in St. George's south corridor that will link the city with its future airport and a planned community....
Locals: Keep East Entrance open The National Park Service lacks “adequate justification to support closure” of Sylvan Pass and has not sufficiently addressed safety, social or economic concerns in their draft winter use plan for Yellowstone National Park, according to a firm hired by Park County and Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s planning office. Ecosystem Research Group of Missoula, Mont., presented comments to Park County commissioners Tuesday in a draft document. The firm compiled arguments against the Park Service's preferred alternative, which maintains current Yellowstone winter use management provisions yet calls for closing Sylvan Pass and the East Entrance outside Cody. The proposed closure is based on avalanche danger, rising costs to control avalanches and decreased visitation numbers at that gate, according to park officials. Four of six proposed alternatives close Sylvan Pass to varying degrees of oversnow travel. “We are expressing grave concern about the closing of Sylvan Pass,” said Temple Stevenson, natural resource policy analyst for the governor’s office....
Interior announces intention to re-establish relationship with tribes Three officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday their intention to re-establish a working relationship between the agency and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes regarding management and operation of the National Bison Range. Under the agreement announced by Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett, FWS Director Dale Hall and Associate Deputy Interior Secretary Jim Cason the FWS would continue to manage the range as a national wildlife refuge. The tribes would undertake field and maintenance work, animal care and related duties on the range completely encompassed within the Flathead Reservation. In 2005 FWS entered into an annual funding agreement with the tribes to perform certain non-managerial functions on the range during Fiscal Year 2006. But on Dec. 11 FWS pulled the controversial agreement, saying the tribes had failed to live up to their responsibilities and had created an unacceptable workplace environment. Tribal officials said they were caught off guard by the move and denied allegations made in a letter from FWS Regional Director Mitch King that also said the agency was terminating negotiations for future AFAs....
Wyo targets wolf packs As they move toward delisting, many of the wolf packs in northwest Wyoming may be in the crosshairs. There are estimated to be 23 wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park, with three packs in the park. Under federal guidelines, Wyoming needs to maintain a minimum of seven packs outside the park, in addition to three inside, to ensure that wolves will not become endangered again. Wyoming representatives have said they would like the federal government to eliminate the extra packs -- about 16 -- before removing wolves from federal protection and turning over management to the state. The prospect of eliminating wolf packs has been mentioned in recent discussions between state and federal officials about a possible new approach to wolf management in Wyoming. The state's wolf management plan has been rejected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because it would subject the animals to unregulated killing in areas except Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and surrounding wilderness. A new proposal aimed at resolving the dispute would increase the area where wolves would be treated as "trophy game," meaning they could only be killed with permission from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Regardless of which management plan prevails, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said reducing packs has always been on the table....
Plains suffering from glut of snow Utility crews struggled to restore electrical service to tens of thousands of homes in four states today as grocery store shelves went bare and ranchers tried to reach hungry cattle isolated after a blizzard dumped nearly 3 feet of snow on the Plains. In Colorado, National Guard troops and state workers prepared to bring groceries into snowbound areas with Humvees and drop hay bales into farm fields. Across the region, from the Oklahoma panhandle to Nebraska, planes have been searching snow-covered highways and fields for stranded travelers and using heat-sensing equipment to locate cattle in need of food. Hay could be dropped by military planes or helicopters or delivered by snowmobile, said Polly White of the Colorado Division of Emergency Management. What no one wants is a repeat of 1997, when a blizzard killed up to 30,000 farm animals and cost farmers and ranchers an estimated $28 million, White said. Ice and heavy snow also bent over electrical towers and downed hundreds of miles of power lines. At least 60,000 homes and businesses in western Kansas, more than 15,000 in Nebraska, and 6,000-plus in Colorado and Oklahoma were without electricity, and some utility officials warned it could take more than a week to restore....
Choppers to the rescue Ranchers across Southeastern Colorado either tried to reach their cattle or hoped the Colorado Army National Guard could Tuesday as the animals stood in 3- to 4-foot deep snow. Helicopter crews operated out of the airports near Lamar, Springfield and Las Animas to reach the animals. Aircrew members joined forces with ranchers, who volunteered to help on the flights, to throw out bales of hay to the stranded animals and, where possible, landed to break the ice in cattle water tanks. Leonard Pruett, a cattle specialist for the Colorado State University Extension Service, said ranchers have been calling to ask for the hay bale flights, but aircrews also have helped whatever isolated animals they see. "If we see cattle out there that don't look like they've been fed, we'll drop hay to them," Pruett said. "We're doing everything we can to make sure they survive. Ranchers will be charged for the cost of the hay, but not the cost of flying it to the animals, he said....
Editorial - Operation rescue A MASSIVE effort is underway to help save the cattle industry in Southeast Colorado in the wake of two holiday season blizzards. While major highways were finally opened late Sunday, most rural roads were still covered by deep snow and impassable. That made reaching cattle herds difficult if not impossible. State officials estimate that the majority of the 345,000 head of cattle in the region were stranded in 3 feet of snow on pasture land, where the storms also left 15-foot drifts in some places. Baca County officials reported numerous calls this week about cattle getting weak, falling down and unable to make it through the drifts. The snow poses a special danger to mother cows and newborn calves. There was no immediate estimate how many cow-calf pairs might be imperiled, though. Our hats are off to the National Guard troops and the county officials who are doing their utmost to save lives and livelihoods in Southeastern Colorado....
Remembering The Crash Of 1942 On Thursday, October 15, 1942, a B-17 bomber from Alamogordo Army Air Field was finishing a training run over Magdalena Flats with full crew of nine aboard. Magdalena rancher Tom Kelly was 17 years old and remembers seeing the plane fly over the village on a foggy night. Kelly is the only person still alive who helped the Army recovery team find the crash site and recover the bodies of the nine airmen who perished. As the village board considers installing a plaque commemorating those who died in the crash, Kelly visited the site for the first time in decades. Over breakfast recently at the Magdalena Café, Kelly told this reporter the story of the crash and subsequent recovery effort. As Kelly told the story, the Café became quieter as more diners listened to the story....
As Costs of Wildfires Grow, So Does a Question: Who Should Pay? The steeply rising cost of preventing and suppressing wildfires, which burned more of the American landscape in 2006 than in any other year since at least 1960, is creating a rift between Washington and state and local governments over how the burden ought to be shouldered. A study issued in November by the inspector general’s office of the United States Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the Forest Service, said the nature of the wildfire threat was changing as private homes and communities pushed ever closer to the boundaries of once-remote public lands. Those communities and landowners, rather than federal taxpayers, should have to pay for more of their own fire protection, the report concluded. States and local governments are gearing up to fight back in Congress, arguing that decades of federal mismanagement of national forests and open spaces, not development, created the threat and that little communities with few resources are neither responsible for it nor equipped to make a difference. The pattern of wildfire distribution during the recently ended fire season, which charred more than 9.8 million acres, supports either side. According to federal statistics, more state, county and private lands burned than in any other year since 1997 — about half the total 2006 losses — primarily because of monstrous blazes in Oklahoma, in Texas and across the Upper Plains, regions where most property is privately owned. That finding, though also driven by broader factors like drought and heat that have little to do with residential development in fire-prone areas, supports the federal contention that the government has had to shift an increasingly large share of its resources from the task of protecting its own forests to firefighting elsewhere. In some places, though, the issue is more complex. In Stillwater County, Mont., north of Yellowstone National Park, for example, the small, long-established towns of Nye and Fishtail are bordered on two sides by national forest. In early July, the first of two huge fires erupted in the forest and roared into those communities, where 100,000 acres of mostly private land and 32 homes were burned. The blaze was the worst in the county’s history, local officials say....
Counties could lose millions in funding if law isn't renewed A law that has sent millions in revenue generated from National Forest lands to the states is expiring. The thought has county officials in Montana perspiring. It's called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. The funding comes from mineral resources, grazing fees and other sources. It's appropriated to states where national forests are located. This year, the final year of the act, Montana counties will get $13 million from the U.S. Forest Service. The check hit the mail Wednesday. But if the act isn't reauthorized, states could lose millions of dollars in federal funding. "It's a huge amount," Montana Association Counties Executive Director Harold Blattie said. Congress let the act expire before adjourning in 2006 and MACO is lobbying hard to get the Act reauthorized in 2007. So are the National Association of Counties and National Coalition of Forest Counties and Schools. If the act is not reauthorized, every county in Montana will pay the price — whether or not forested land lies within its border, according to MACO....
Outdoors: Researchers fight to save Idaho cod from extinction They're green, eel-like and incredibly difficult to raise in captivity, but Kootenai River burbot are now successfully spawning in plastic tanks at the University of Idaho. The tasty, freshwater codfish once sustained the Kootenai Tribe through the coldest months of winter, but fewer than 40 wild burbot are believed to be in the river today. In a desperate move to keep the fish from vanishing and until the politically sticky questions can be addressed about why the fish are in trouble in the first place the tribe is placing its hopes on setting up a hatchery. Problem is, nobody in the world has been able to figure out a way to raise the fish. They spawn in winter under ice, and young burbot eat things like bugs, plankton and other creatures found in only wild rivers. "Nobody has ever cultured this fish before," said Sue Ireland, fisheries biologist for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. "This is really feeling in the dark." It's getting a bit less dark, though. Four years ago, researchers at the University of Idaho began tackling the problem, courtesy of funding from the tribe, the Idaho Fish and Game Department and the Bonneville Power Administration....
Flower species wins fed habitat Two nearly extinct wildflowers found only in Washington County and just over the state line in Arizona now have a protected home. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has formally designated nearly 6,300 acres as critical habitat for the Holmgren milkvetch and the Shivwitz milkvetch. It marks only the second and third time the federal agency has created critical habitat for an endangered plant species in Utah. Under the designation, geographic areas containing features essential for the survival are managed for the protection of the species. "What has occurred in this instance is quite exceptional for Utah," Tony Frates, conservation co-chair of the Utah Native Plant Society, said Tuesday. "It's a long and complicated ruling, but the local field office did a real thorough job. And the [critical habitat] designation will be very helpful in keeping these two species from becoming extinct." Prompting the listing and new habitat designation has been Washington County's explosive growth and development. Specifically, the two plant species are in the path of a planned freeway interchange and roadway in St. George's south corridor that will link the city with its future airport and a planned community....
Locals: Keep East Entrance open The National Park Service lacks “adequate justification to support closure” of Sylvan Pass and has not sufficiently addressed safety, social or economic concerns in their draft winter use plan for Yellowstone National Park, according to a firm hired by Park County and Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s planning office. Ecosystem Research Group of Missoula, Mont., presented comments to Park County commissioners Tuesday in a draft document. The firm compiled arguments against the Park Service's preferred alternative, which maintains current Yellowstone winter use management provisions yet calls for closing Sylvan Pass and the East Entrance outside Cody. The proposed closure is based on avalanche danger, rising costs to control avalanches and decreased visitation numbers at that gate, according to park officials. Four of six proposed alternatives close Sylvan Pass to varying degrees of oversnow travel. “We are expressing grave concern about the closing of Sylvan Pass,” said Temple Stevenson, natural resource policy analyst for the governor’s office....
Interior announces intention to re-establish relationship with tribes Three officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday their intention to re-establish a working relationship between the agency and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes regarding management and operation of the National Bison Range. Under the agreement announced by Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett, FWS Director Dale Hall and Associate Deputy Interior Secretary Jim Cason the FWS would continue to manage the range as a national wildlife refuge. The tribes would undertake field and maintenance work, animal care and related duties on the range completely encompassed within the Flathead Reservation. In 2005 FWS entered into an annual funding agreement with the tribes to perform certain non-managerial functions on the range during Fiscal Year 2006. But on Dec. 11 FWS pulled the controversial agreement, saying the tribes had failed to live up to their responsibilities and had created an unacceptable workplace environment. Tribal officials said they were caught off guard by the move and denied allegations made in a letter from FWS Regional Director Mitch King that also said the agency was terminating negotiations for future AFAs....
Wyo targets wolf packs As they move toward delisting, many of the wolf packs in northwest Wyoming may be in the crosshairs. There are estimated to be 23 wolf packs outside Yellowstone National Park, with three packs in the park. Under federal guidelines, Wyoming needs to maintain a minimum of seven packs outside the park, in addition to three inside, to ensure that wolves will not become endangered again. Wyoming representatives have said they would like the federal government to eliminate the extra packs -- about 16 -- before removing wolves from federal protection and turning over management to the state. The prospect of eliminating wolf packs has been mentioned in recent discussions between state and federal officials about a possible new approach to wolf management in Wyoming. The state's wolf management plan has been rejected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because it would subject the animals to unregulated killing in areas except Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and surrounding wilderness. A new proposal aimed at resolving the dispute would increase the area where wolves would be treated as "trophy game," meaning they could only be killed with permission from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Regardless of which management plan prevails, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said reducing packs has always been on the table....
Plains suffering from glut of snow Utility crews struggled to restore electrical service to tens of thousands of homes in four states today as grocery store shelves went bare and ranchers tried to reach hungry cattle isolated after a blizzard dumped nearly 3 feet of snow on the Plains. In Colorado, National Guard troops and state workers prepared to bring groceries into snowbound areas with Humvees and drop hay bales into farm fields. Across the region, from the Oklahoma panhandle to Nebraska, planes have been searching snow-covered highways and fields for stranded travelers and using heat-sensing equipment to locate cattle in need of food. Hay could be dropped by military planes or helicopters or delivered by snowmobile, said Polly White of the Colorado Division of Emergency Management. What no one wants is a repeat of 1997, when a blizzard killed up to 30,000 farm animals and cost farmers and ranchers an estimated $28 million, White said. Ice and heavy snow also bent over electrical towers and downed hundreds of miles of power lines. At least 60,000 homes and businesses in western Kansas, more than 15,000 in Nebraska, and 6,000-plus in Colorado and Oklahoma were without electricity, and some utility officials warned it could take more than a week to restore....
Choppers to the rescue Ranchers across Southeastern Colorado either tried to reach their cattle or hoped the Colorado Army National Guard could Tuesday as the animals stood in 3- to 4-foot deep snow. Helicopter crews operated out of the airports near Lamar, Springfield and Las Animas to reach the animals. Aircrew members joined forces with ranchers, who volunteered to help on the flights, to throw out bales of hay to the stranded animals and, where possible, landed to break the ice in cattle water tanks. Leonard Pruett, a cattle specialist for the Colorado State University Extension Service, said ranchers have been calling to ask for the hay bale flights, but aircrews also have helped whatever isolated animals they see. "If we see cattle out there that don't look like they've been fed, we'll drop hay to them," Pruett said. "We're doing everything we can to make sure they survive. Ranchers will be charged for the cost of the hay, but not the cost of flying it to the animals, he said....
Editorial - Operation rescue A MASSIVE effort is underway to help save the cattle industry in Southeast Colorado in the wake of two holiday season blizzards. While major highways were finally opened late Sunday, most rural roads were still covered by deep snow and impassable. That made reaching cattle herds difficult if not impossible. State officials estimate that the majority of the 345,000 head of cattle in the region were stranded in 3 feet of snow on pasture land, where the storms also left 15-foot drifts in some places. Baca County officials reported numerous calls this week about cattle getting weak, falling down and unable to make it through the drifts. The snow poses a special danger to mother cows and newborn calves. There was no immediate estimate how many cow-calf pairs might be imperiled, though. Our hats are off to the National Guard troops and the county officials who are doing their utmost to save lives and livelihoods in Southeastern Colorado....
Remembering The Crash Of 1942 On Thursday, October 15, 1942, a B-17 bomber from Alamogordo Army Air Field was finishing a training run over Magdalena Flats with full crew of nine aboard. Magdalena rancher Tom Kelly was 17 years old and remembers seeing the plane fly over the village on a foggy night. Kelly is the only person still alive who helped the Army recovery team find the crash site and recover the bodies of the nine airmen who perished. As the village board considers installing a plaque commemorating those who died in the crash, Kelly visited the site for the first time in decades. Over breakfast recently at the Magdalena Café, Kelly told this reporter the story of the crash and subsequent recovery effort. As Kelly told the story, the Café became quieter as more diners listened to the story....
"The Great Wilderness Compromise"
PBS "NOW" heads out West on Friday, January 5 to examine a controversial
effort to find common ground on wilderness protection in the reddest state
in America: Idaho. Correspondent Jon Christensen follows Rep. Mike Simpson,
the Republican sponsor of a compromise wilderness bill, from the halls of
Congress to the peaks of the White Cloud Mountains. To break through the
polarization that has stymied efforts to protect wilderness in Idaho for a
generation, Simpson has worked hand-in-hand with environmentalist Rick
Johnson of the Idaho Conservation League for six years carefully crafting a
local compromise that gives something to everyone, but none of them
everything that they want. "NOW" talked with residents, ranchers, off-road
vehicle fans, and wilderness advocates, including singer-songwriter Carole
King, an ardent opponent of the compromise, which would give public land to
small towns in the region for future growth ‹ the most controversial of the
bills many trade-offs. Exchanging public land for wilderness is a tug-of-war
that has entered into a number of wilderness bills that were seeking passage
in the last session of Congress. And the Idaho compromise will be among the
first bills put on the congressional agenda in the new year. "NOW" offers a
window into the passions that drive the wedges ‹ and the ongoing quest for
common ground‹ in western wilderness politics.
To find your local show time, check http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.
You can also see the entire 20-minute report plus additional online features
after January 5 at http://www.pbs.org/now/.
For more information about the program, which is part of a longer
documentary in progress on wilderness politics in the West, e-mail
jonchristensen@stanford.edu.
Thanks! And Happy New Year!
Jon Christensen
Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Science and Policy
Ph.D. Candidate, History Department
Stanford University
PBS "NOW" heads out West on Friday, January 5 to examine a controversial
effort to find common ground on wilderness protection in the reddest state
in America: Idaho. Correspondent Jon Christensen follows Rep. Mike Simpson,
the Republican sponsor of a compromise wilderness bill, from the halls of
Congress to the peaks of the White Cloud Mountains. To break through the
polarization that has stymied efforts to protect wilderness in Idaho for a
generation, Simpson has worked hand-in-hand with environmentalist Rick
Johnson of the Idaho Conservation League for six years carefully crafting a
local compromise that gives something to everyone, but none of them
everything that they want. "NOW" talked with residents, ranchers, off-road
vehicle fans, and wilderness advocates, including singer-songwriter Carole
King, an ardent opponent of the compromise, which would give public land to
small towns in the region for future growth ‹ the most controversial of the
bills many trade-offs. Exchanging public land for wilderness is a tug-of-war
that has entered into a number of wilderness bills that were seeking passage
in the last session of Congress. And the Idaho compromise will be among the
first bills put on the congressional agenda in the new year. "NOW" offers a
window into the passions that drive the wedges ‹ and the ongoing quest for
common ground‹ in western wilderness politics.
To find your local show time, check http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.
You can also see the entire 20-minute report plus additional online features
after January 5 at http://www.pbs.org/now/.
For more information about the program, which is part of a longer
documentary in progress on wilderness politics in the West, e-mail
jonchristensen@stanford.edu.
Thanks! And Happy New Year!
Jon Christensen
Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Science and Policy
Ph.D. Candidate, History Department
Stanford University
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
NEWS ROUNDUP
Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....
Energy/Ag Alliance Fractures Over Eminent Domain For several decades now, the political interests of the energy and agricultural communities have been closely aligned in the Wyoming Legislature -- against federal regulations, but for federal tax breaks and support programs. Oh, and by the way, getting pretty much what they wanted from the state government and along similar lines. For all those years, Big Ag and Big Energy were reliable allies, but perhaps not for much longer. A deep fracture line has appeared between the two groups, and it is called eminent domain. Dustin Bleizeffer of the Casper Star Tribune has a New Year's Day package exploring the issue, including how landowners are objecting to a railroad's use of eminent domain, and a Rock Springs businessman who was forced to relocate his businesses by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Basically, more and more ranchers, landowners and business people are feeling like road kill on the super highway to progress. Energy companies, railroads, government all use eminent domain to achieve their goals, and it has been going on for a long time. When it happened to just a few, the rest tended to shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to the price paid for progress -- a good thing for everyone. What's different now, is the super-heated pace of energy development and growth in Wyoming. The number of people getting run over by eminent domain is growing, and it seems like there's a critical mass of resentment and betrayal building up. We'll have to see how this plays out in the upcoming legislative session, but it could well be that there are enough angry, bitter people out there, that the legislature will listen and even up the playing field between the big boys and the little guys....
Property power struggle Some say the cowboy is nothing more than a romantic image of an ideal that simply doesn't exist today in the West. So is the notion that owning property means you can keep people out and conduct your own business on your own terms. Growing numbers of property owners in Wyoming are demanding reform of the state's eminent domain laws to protect what they say might be a dying Western value. Rancher Eric Barlow recently toured his neighbor's ranch in Powder River Breaks country between Gillette and Buffalo and noted a property line dividing the flat-bottom valley pasture between two brothers' ranches. On one side a coal-bed methane company had cut a long ditch carefully meandering to one side of the bottomland so it didn't disturb much of the pasture. On the other side of the property line, the man-made ditch was ripped zigzag from one side to the other, as if it were purposely cut to damage as much of the bottomland pasture as possible. This, said Barlow, was no mistake. He believes it was meant to punish the one rancher for not agreeing to the company's terms. The company initiated eminent domain proceedings to cut the zigzagging ditch and force coal-bed methane water onto the ranch where it isn't wanted. "A coal-bed methane company will not pass up an opportunity to make an example of a rancher, just to show the rest what they are capable of," Barlow said. What coal-bed methane companies are capable of is taking private property for their own economic gain. They're not the only ones....
Editorial - Charges against fire boss heap travesty atop tragedy Firefighter bosses may start feeling the heat like never before. Federal prosecutors in Spokane charged a Forest Service crew boss with manslaughter Dec. 23 in connection with the deaths of four firefighters in a 2001 wildfire in northcentral Washington. This first-of-its-kind criminal case is a gross miscarriage of justice on its face. But even if the charges don't stand up in court, prosecutors have sent an unmistakable - and unfortunate - message to men and women up and down the chain of command: Avoid all risks and cover your rear. The ultimate effect could be less-effective firefighting leading to bigger, more dangerous fires and, perversely, even greater risk of fire fatalities in the future. Prosecutors say 46-year-old Ellreese Daniels committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to prevent his crew from being overrun by the Thirtymile fire near Winthrop, Wash., July 10, 2001. The criminal complaint says he and others committed a variety of mistakes, among them: underestimating the fire's potential, failing to anticipate extreme fire behavior, inadequately communicating among themselves and failing to ensure the crew's proper deployment of emergency fire shelters in the face of advancing flames. Prosecutors also say Daniels lied about some of his actions afterward. Ten firefighters and two campers trapped with the crew survived; four crew members died in their emergency shelters of asphyxia from inhaling superheated gases from the fire raging around them. The fire started as a picnicker's campfire....
At last, justice may prevail in Thirtymile Fire Four manslaughter charges brought against a U.S. Forest Service crew boss nearly 51/2 years after the deadly Thirtymile Fire in Okanogan County could finally be proof that justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. Ellreese Daniels is accused of allowing his 14-member squad to be trapped by the Thirtymile Fire in July 2001. The four involuntary manslaughter charges filed against him earlier this month are widely believed to be the first homicide charges ever brought against a firefighter whose crew was overtaken by flames. Daniels also faces seven counts of lying to investigators about his role in fighting the 9,300-acre fire, which grew from an unattended campfire...The documents repeatedly blamed the tragedy on numerous mistakes by more than one unnamed supervisor. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hopkins said federal rules prevent him from saying whether charges against other Thirtymile Fire bosses are expected. That possibility, both in the Thirtymile disaster and in subsequent fires that have left firefighters dead, is reportedly sending a chill through the professional firefighting ranks. They fear that they, too, may be held responsible if people under their command die. They should fear that -- and they should be held criminally responsible, but only when their actions allow the ever-present dangers inherent in firefighting to escalate through negligence and disregard for human safety....
Frontier family fights to return home Since 1878, four generations of Vadis and Howard Stratton's family lived as homesteaders on this mountain, much like TV's "The Waltons," the clan says. The family made electricity with an 1893 waterwheel, powered by a creek shooting downhill through a homemade pipe. Vadis Stratton and her late husband, Howard, who both didn't drink, smoke or cuss, raised seven kids here. Their home was a 1912 log cabin with a wood-burning stove near the original shed-sized 1878 dwelling. They cut timber for nearby Butte's mines and even prospected for gold. Right through last year, Vadis used a wringer washer. It all made for a 19th Century homestead working until the present day. Chester Arthur was president when the government invited covered-wagon pioneers like the Strattons' ancestors to settle the summits and valleys on the Continental Divide. Now the government has ordered the Strattons to leave, evicting the last of the frontier families that had populated this mountain and its namesake hamlet of Highland City, a nearly vanished ghost town founded in the 1860s gold rush. After winning a court ruling in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service declared 81-year-old Vadis Stratton and her son David, 42, illegal squatters in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and forced the matriarch in August to move into a senior citizen home in Butte, an hour's drive away....
Blown-down trees windfall for streams Wind, fire, floods . . . the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife finds a silver lining in everything nature can throw at the state. Especially trees. The agency, with help from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State Parks and a $28,750 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, is collecting as many 20-inch (diameter) trees as possible from a veritable forest that blew down along the central Oregon Coast during December windstorms. Downed trees 40 to 50 feet long are destined to be placed in several streams to provide rearing habitat for small salmon and steelhead, capture gravel and create side channels for both juvenile and adult fish. Four log-truckloads of conifer logs have been collected so far, and as many as 10 more might be collected from the December windfall. Jason Kirchner, a department fish habitat biologist, said he has planned seven to 10 projects next summer to improve 12 to 15 miles of streams. He'll use 10 to 200 logs per project....
Blackfeet claim entitlement to 'substantial allocation' of water Leaders of the Blackfeet Tribe told state and federal officials here that their reservation deserves much more water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers than it is getting now. The tribe is in water-rights talks with the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to determine how much water from the St. Mary and Milk rivers, along with other drainages, will be allocated to the tribe - and how much will be left over for other users. A public negotiation session was held Dec. 20 in Great Falls. Water from the two rivers, which form in the mountains west of the reservation and flow through it, currently is being diverted to thousands of farmers and residents along the Montana Hi-Line. Tribal officials aren't proposing to stop the distribution. But they argue they deserve more - what one called a ''substantial allocation'' - than they're getting. ''It's our water,'' Tribal Chairman Earl Old Person said. The outcome of the negotiations will affect thousands of residents on the reservation and those living downstream across north-central Montana....
Column - Balancing the needs of winter recreationists Utah boasts the “greatest snow on Earth” and for decades local residents and visitors have ventured into the Tony Grove/Franklin Basin area to ski, snowmobile and simply enjoy the beauty of the snow and mountains that Logan Canyon has to offer. Over time, conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists have developed. Ultimately, a fair distribution of recreation experiences within a limited area means both sides have to give a little. The issues are not about acres. You'll read many articles on who has the most acres available to use and what is fair and what isn't. But that's misleading. Not every acre is equal. Instead, the issues center on quality of snow, family tradition, available terrain, existing parking, proximity to the community of Logan, and the list goes on. The Tony Grove/Franklin Basin has it all; it's the hotspot, the gem for winter recreation. The conflict has a long history. Local newspaper articles describing the issues date back to 1975. The Forest Service responded to these growing conflicts and concerns in the Logan Ranger District in the 2003 Revised Forest Plan and its accompanying environmental impact statement. Still the conflict continued....
Editorial - BLM's landscape system is in danger Three weeks after he took office, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stopped the worst parts of a proposed overhaul of national parks management policies. Now he needs to do the same with a proposed overhaul of the Bureau of Land Management, announced to employees Nov. 30. The BLM manages three times as much public land as the National Park Service. The resignation of BLM Director Kathleen Clarke last Thursday gives Kempthorne the opportunity to show that the BLM remains committed to its conservation mission. The BLM is the steward of many of the great landscapes of the American West. In particular, the lands and waters of the National Landscape Conservation System have been called "hidden treasures of the American West." They include national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness areas (and wilderness study areas), historic trails and wild and scenic rivers. These great Western landscapes are the sister system to our national parks, but more rugged. They are highly visited. The proposed reorganization would dump a variety of unrelated programs into the National Landscape Conservation System, thus diluting resources that would be devoted to managing the system, which is already strained for resources. Worse, this latest reorganization plan was hatched in secret with no public review and no congressional oversight. No details have been publicly released, although recommendations were presented to employees Nov. 30 by live satellite broadcast. U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, and 25 other House members called in a Dec. 20 letter for the BLM to halt the proposed reorganization until Congress examines the implications for the 26 million acre National Landscape Conservation System....
Eagle suit could affect Big Chino pumping A lawsuit that is expected to be filed within the next few weeks will, if successful, make things a bit more challenging for the Prescott area communities to pump the Big Chino aquifer. On Nov. 2 the Arizona-based environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to remove all bald eagles from the endangered species list. The CBD contends in its notice that the Arizona born and raised desert nesting bald eagle is a separate and distinct species that, unlike it relatives to the north, has not recovered and requires continued protection...Of the 47 known breeding sites in Arizona, more than one third of them are on the Verde River. Several are located in the upper reaches of the Verde River, along a stretch of riparian habitat that critics contend will be most impacted by plans to pump the Big Chino. The US Geological Survey has determined that approximately 80 percent of the flow of the upper reaches of the Verde River comes from the Big Chino aquifer. Under the protection of the endangered species act, it is against the law to degrade the habitat of a listed species without the consultation and approval of the federal government first....
Endangered Idaho Snail Losing Habitat After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler spied some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announced, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs 70 miles southeast of Boise. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. The level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping....
NYT Editorial - Environmental Harmony The long history of Congressional bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues dating back to Richard Nixon has been seriously challenged only twice. The first time was in 1995, when the Gingrich Republicans swept into Washington determined to roll back environmental laws, a threat averted by President Bill Clinton’s veto pen and the exertions of a group of moderate Republicans. The second challenge occurred during the Congress that has now thankfully drawn to a close. The Democrats’ return to power in both houses has raised hopes that some of the old cooperative spirit can be restored and progress made on vital matters like global warming, oil dependency, national parks and threatened wetlands. Environmentalists in the House will certainly have more time to work on positive legislation, since they will no longer have to play defense against Richard Pombo, the California Republican who produced a stream of destructive schemes to open up protected public lands for commercial exploitation, rescind a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling and undermine the Endangered Species Act. Mr. Pombo has been ushered into well-deserved retirement by California voters. On the Senate side, there have been striking changes in leadership. Barbara Boxer, who cares about global warming, replaces James Inhofe, who doesn’t, as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeff Bingaman, who emphasizes conservation as the appropriate response to oil dependency, replaces Pete Domenici, who tends to favor greater production of America’s dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he’ll need Mr. Domenici’s help, Mr. Bingaman will almost certainly make a major push for new energy legislation, based on proposals that already have broad bipartisan support and would offer a menu of loans, direct subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars as well as alternatives to gasoline....
Studies: Lynx habitat may be at risk Some conservationists believe development of a private ski resort on Battle Mountain, as currently designed, will destroy potential lynx habitat and areas the animals might travel through. Colorado Wild conservationists based in Durango and others evaluated the Ginn Co.'s development south of Minturn and submitted their findings to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency is conducting an environmental study of the development and what may have to be done to lessen the effect on wildlife. Ginn Co. officials hope to build 1,700 homes, a golf course and 1,100 acres of ski terrain on and around Battle Mountain. Whether lynx roam Battle Mountain is debatable. The Ginn Co. found no traces of lynx in the area, although the Colorado Division of Wildlife has tracked lynx moving across the property....
In California, wild pigs hunted in defense of nature Save the flowers. Save the birds. Kill the pigs. This was Ted Champagne's mission deep in a maze of tule-covered islands and twisting sloughs where he steered his shallow hunting boat and waited for his Catahoula hounds to catch a whiff of wild pigs. The dogs, Butch and Porter, held their bodies taut and sniffed furiously. Champagne kept his 12-gauge shotgun close. He kept his 10-inch-long knife closer, strapped to his side and ready for use in case he found a pig in thick grass and reeds where it could be hard to tell if he was shooting a pig or his dogs. "Once the dogs smell something and jump out of the boat, things move fast," Champagne said. "You want to get in and finish it fast." Champagne is no ordinary hunter in this big marsh, but rather a guardian of endangered flowers and plants. He hunts to protect nature. Champagne volunteers his hunting services for a conservation group, the Solano Land Trust, one of a growing number of California public and nonprofit landowners who kill wild pigs to prevent them from damaging or killing native plants and wildlife....
Why voters rejected Santa Clara County open space measure It is one of the most vexing questions about last month's elections in Silicon Valley. Urban and suburban voters outnumber rural voters by a 15-1 ratio in Santa Clara County. The region has far more registered Democrats than Republicans, and a steady track record of supporting environmental issues. Yet those voters rejected Measure A, an initiative backed by every major local environmental group and many prominent Democratic politicians that would have placed landmark restrictions on development on hillsides and ranch lands. How? A Mercury News computer mapping analysis of all 1,244 precincts in Santa Clara County provides clues. As expected, Measure A won biggest in Palo Alto and Mountain View -- urban areas with lots of liberal voters and environmentalists. It lost biggest in Gilroy and Morgan Hill -- rural areas with more conservative voters, farmers and private-property-rights advocates. But a color-coded county map of the precinct results shows that the race was decided along the Highway 85 corridor....
Column - The Risks of Too Much City The coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become "Homo Urbanus." Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history -- ancient Rome -- boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there's no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the population remained relatively low to accommodate nature's carrying capacity: the biosphere's ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That's because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats....
Berry: Corporate economy is enemy For more than 40 years, author and poet Wendell Berry has advocated for local agriculture, good land stewardship and less corporate control of economies. He's walked the talk on his Kentucky farm 50 miles east of Louisville, plowing his fields with horse teams, producing most of his family's food and writing prolifically, without a computer, on a changing American culture. He believes now, more than ever, that conservationists and local land users such as farmers and loggers need to come together. "The split between people who produce from the land, like ranchers, and conservationists has been a tragic loss and a tragic waste of time," Berry said recently from his Kentucky farm. "The two sides have a common enemy they should recognize. The global corporate economy is the enemy." Berry, 72, will be a special speaker at the Quivira Coalition conference at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 in Albuquerque. He said he supports the coalition's efforts to bridge the gap between agriculture, land managers and environmentalists....
Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business The cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar system of federal farm subsidies is an iconic image of the struggling family farmer: small, powerless against Mother Nature, tied to the land by blood. Without generous government help, farm-state politicians say, thousands of these hardworking families would fail, threatening the nation's abundant food supply...This imagery secures billions annually in what one grower called "empathy payments" for farmers. But it is misleading. Today, most of the nation's food is produced by modern family farms that are large operations using state-of-the-art computers, marketing consultants and technologies that cut labor, time and costs. The owners are frequently college graduates who are as comfortable with a spreadsheet as with a tractor. They cover more acres and produce more crops with fewer workers than ever before. The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out....
Cows Engineered to Lack Mad Cow Disease Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease. An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said. Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The surviving cows are now being injected directly with mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to make certain the cattle are immune to it....
It's All Trew: Resourcefulness, greed make for salty brew The transformation from open-range to farming settlements brewed up some strange happenings in the Texas Panhandle. Add a mixture of nationalities, stir in every vocation you can think of then add a generous helping of man's natural greed - and the resulting brew sometimes became explosive. This was especially true in areas where the railroads chose to build. In 1876, the new State of Texas was financially broke but rich in land. The quickest way to turn land into money was by selling it. The fastest way to accomplish such sales was to build a railroad into virgin territory and open it for settlement. To encourage the building of railroads, the state offered to give 16 sections of land, or 10,240 acres, for each mile of new track laid. The railroad companies built the track, took the land, waited for the price to rise then sold it for money to build more track. Occasionally, a choice site on a side-track was created and private railroad investors took over, establishing a town and began selling lots and business opportunities to the public, creating big profits for the stockholders. The town of Salisbury, in what would become Hall County, was one of those choice sites....
Monday, January 01, 2007
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
A look back and a hopeful look ahead
By Julie Carter
There has been a long-standing saying around here about this time of year that goes something along the lines of "We'll just get this year over with so we can start on next year."
That thought has been somewhat of a slogan for ranching for the past decade of droughts and rollercoaster prices. That will not change, because the sources of the hardships haven't changed.
The brink of a new year seems to be a popular time to reflect on the past and then move on to resolutions.
Resolutions are often repeats of redundant attempts to move forward when everything except your will power is pushing you back. It has been my experience that the best thing you can do for a new year is learn what you can from the old year and move on.
This County Views column began as a guest column in 2002 with an esteemed life-long resident of Lincoln County, Johnson Stearns, telling about life in early county days. The wisdom in his story was that, in all the changes that have come and gone in 75 years, the way the sun rises and sets has not changed one bit.
Matt Ferguson delightfully told of fixing pipeline leaks and other assorted ranch jobs that have little or no dignity. His daughter brought it all into perspective for him when she let him know "how lucky he was because he got to play in the mud whenever he wanted to."
Welda Grider shared stories of ranch living. The nuances of hired cowboys, their ongoing antics and raising children to be the good help on the ranch brought some seldom-pondered ranch living realities to town. She even explained why getting kicked in the shins by a calf or run over by a cow in the corral is all part of the Ranch Kid 101 curriculum.
Ronnie Merritt gave us a four-part history of his family's origins in the far northeast end of Lincoln County. His words painted pictures of pioneer ranching that are forever a treasure to this county's history.
I have shared with you the memories of my simple childhood growing up on a high-mountain ranch in Colorado, of the struggles and blessings of living so very rural and the uniqueness of the people who live off the land.
We have talked about cowboy lifestyles, clothing, manners and cuisine. At length we have shared the stories of the ranch wife's jobs that require more a keen sense of humor than skills.
I shared my heart with you over the death of a people whose lives were a vital part of the fabric of this rural way of life and the gaping hole their passing left. I laughed at myself, and with you, over a laundry list of everyday ranch life happenings ranging from taking a dirty ranch pickup to the big city carwashes to the evolution of the "hunters of wild game."
It has been heart-warming fun for me to share my back-porch thoughts with you as well as the "you can't make this stuff up" stories of others. Although the West is changing, the cowboy "ain't dead yet," so there will be more stories to tell.
Turning the page of the calendar doesn't change a thing. It is a ceremony we put too much emphasis on and hope, that because of it, things will be different.
What has begun within each of us today will be seed for tomorrow - no matter what the calendar says.
May your year be blessed with all that you need and most of what you want.
© Julie Carter 2006
A Kelo Christmas
Suzanne Kelo, the Plaintiff in the now infamous Kelo v. City of New London case has sent a Christmas Card to the people who took her house away:
Here is my house that you did take
From me to you, this spell I make
Your houses, your homes
Your family, your friends
May they live in misery
That never ends.
I curse you all
May you rot in hell
To each of you
I send this spell
For the rest of your lives
I wish you ill
I send this now
By the power of will
A look back and a hopeful look ahead
By Julie Carter
There has been a long-standing saying around here about this time of year that goes something along the lines of "We'll just get this year over with so we can start on next year."
That thought has been somewhat of a slogan for ranching for the past decade of droughts and rollercoaster prices. That will not change, because the sources of the hardships haven't changed.
The brink of a new year seems to be a popular time to reflect on the past and then move on to resolutions.
Resolutions are often repeats of redundant attempts to move forward when everything except your will power is pushing you back. It has been my experience that the best thing you can do for a new year is learn what you can from the old year and move on.
This County Views column began as a guest column in 2002 with an esteemed life-long resident of Lincoln County, Johnson Stearns, telling about life in early county days. The wisdom in his story was that, in all the changes that have come and gone in 75 years, the way the sun rises and sets has not changed one bit.
Matt Ferguson delightfully told of fixing pipeline leaks and other assorted ranch jobs that have little or no dignity. His daughter brought it all into perspective for him when she let him know "how lucky he was because he got to play in the mud whenever he wanted to."
Welda Grider shared stories of ranch living. The nuances of hired cowboys, their ongoing antics and raising children to be the good help on the ranch brought some seldom-pondered ranch living realities to town. She even explained why getting kicked in the shins by a calf or run over by a cow in the corral is all part of the Ranch Kid 101 curriculum.
Ronnie Merritt gave us a four-part history of his family's origins in the far northeast end of Lincoln County. His words painted pictures of pioneer ranching that are forever a treasure to this county's history.
I have shared with you the memories of my simple childhood growing up on a high-mountain ranch in Colorado, of the struggles and blessings of living so very rural and the uniqueness of the people who live off the land.
We have talked about cowboy lifestyles, clothing, manners and cuisine. At length we have shared the stories of the ranch wife's jobs that require more a keen sense of humor than skills.
I shared my heart with you over the death of a people whose lives were a vital part of the fabric of this rural way of life and the gaping hole their passing left. I laughed at myself, and with you, over a laundry list of everyday ranch life happenings ranging from taking a dirty ranch pickup to the big city carwashes to the evolution of the "hunters of wild game."
It has been heart-warming fun for me to share my back-porch thoughts with you as well as the "you can't make this stuff up" stories of others. Although the West is changing, the cowboy "ain't dead yet," so there will be more stories to tell.
Turning the page of the calendar doesn't change a thing. It is a ceremony we put too much emphasis on and hope, that because of it, things will be different.
What has begun within each of us today will be seed for tomorrow - no matter what the calendar says.
May your year be blessed with all that you need and most of what you want.
© Julie Carter 2006
A Kelo Christmas
Suzanne Kelo, the Plaintiff in the now infamous Kelo v. City of New London case has sent a Christmas Card to the people who took her house away:
Here is my house that you did take
From me to you, this spell I make
Your houses, your homes
Your family, your friends
May they live in misery
That never ends.
I curse you all
May you rot in hell
To each of you
I send this spell
For the rest of your lives
I wish you ill
I send this now
By the power of will
Friday, December 29, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
FWS biologist acknowledges wolf debate The federal wolf recovery coordinator for the lower 48 states says he understands the need to have one person speaking when it comes to federal wolf policy. Ed Bangs, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena, Mont., said too many people talking at once can be confusing when government officials are trying to work out policies. Bangs was responding to comments made by Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, who said in a meeting of state and federal officials last week that "some duct tape on Mr. Bangs' mouth" would be helpful while Wyoming negotiates with the federal government on wolf management. Childers said in an interview that Bangs has made "off-the-cuff" remarks that have hindered discussions in the Legislature. Childers didn't specify what those comments were. But he said Bangs told members of the Wyoming Stock Growers and Wyoming Wool Growers associations that he didn't expect many problems with wolves. "I'm not saying Ed's a bad man," Childers said. "I'm saying what he said, it didn't turn out that way."....
Study links fires, ocean temps Using fire scars on nearly 5,000 tree stumps dating back 450 years, scientists have found that extended periods of major wildfires in the West occurred when the North Atlantic Ocean was going through periodic warming. With the North Atlantic at the start of a recurring warming period that typically lasts 20 to 60 years, the West could be in for an extended period of multiple fires on the scale of those seen in 2002 and 2006, said Thomas W. Swetnam. He's director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the study published in the Dec. 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This study and others have demonstrated that there is an underlying climatic influence on fuels and then on the weather conditions that promote fires," said Dan Cayan, climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who did not take part in the study. Ron Neilson, a U.S. Forest Service scientist who has developed models that predict wildfire danger based on climate models, agreed with the study's conclusions, and noted all the oceans are affected by global warming. And that in turn could exacerbate the wildfire cycle. Scientists have long seen a relationship between weather in the United States and El Nino, a warming of water in the South Pacific. When El Nino is strong, the Northwest typically has drought and severe fire seasons, and the Southwest has rain. When the cycle reverses, known as La Nina, the South Pacific cools, the Northwest has more rain, and the Southwest has drought and fires....
Western energy corridors: comment period extended After receiving hundreds of comments in response to the release of preliminary working maps, the interagency team analyzing potential environmental effects of designating energy corridors in 11 Western States has decided that additional time will be needed to consider these comments as the agencies conduct an environmental review of proposed corridor locations. A recent press release stated that, in order to ensure full consideration of the more than 200 comments and suggestions on the preliminary maps, project managers from the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture-Forest Service, and the Department of Defense will take additional time to refine the alternatives to be presented in the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The BLM and the Forest Service also must ensure that proposed routes and the analysis of their impacts are consistent with the resource management plans for lands they manage. The public will have an additional opportunity to comment on the Draft PEIS after it is published....
A casualty of the 'New West' One of the last miners in Pitkin County considers himself a casualty in the transition of the Old West into the New West. Robert Congdon on last week settled a dispute with the U.S. Forest Service, which might prevent him accessing a mine in the Crystal Valley that he rediscovered 20 years ago on the lower slopes of Mount Sopris. He wants the Maree Love Mine preserved as an important piece of the area's history. Congdon said he agreed to plead guilty to two charges - damaging natural features and maintaining or constructing a structure. In return, charges of interfering with a law enforcement officer and damaging a historical structure will be dropped. The Forest Service pursued charges against Congdon in December 2005 because agency officials felt his work put natural and historic resources at risk. A colony of rare Townsend's big-eared bats took up residence in the mine and the feds felt mining activity could bring them harm. The area is also sprinkled with mining relics that date to the late 1800s....
Groups aim to halt wild horse roundup Advocacy groups are asking a federal judge to stop the Bureau of Land Management from rounding up wild horses and burros next week in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas. America's Wild Horse Advocates, based in Blue Diamond near Red Rock Canyon, and Wild Horses 4 Ever, of Logandale, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas seeking a temporary restraining order and an injunction indefinitely postponing the Jan. 2 roundup. No hearing was immediately scheduled. The injunction would remain in effect until a judge heard the groups' claim that the BLM plan, outlined in an environmental assessment released Friday, is flawed and that the roundup would undercut efforts to keep wild horses on the range....
Vehicle ban sought in remote Arch Canyon A coalition of environmentalists, outfitters and Navajo tribal leaders have submitted a petition to the Bureau of Land Management asking that the agency close Arch Canyon in southeast Utah to off-highway vehicle traffic in order to protect the area's cultural and natural resources. Liz Thomas, a Moab-based attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said Wednesday that the group filed the formal petition this week after the BLM rejected what she called earlier, informal attempts to protect the area. The canyon is known for its large, though mostly unsurveyed, collection of Anasazi and Pueblo ruins and artifacts. Its year-round stream also is home to three native fish species - the flannel mouth sucker, blue head sucker and speckled dace. "We've been asking for this for a long time," Thomas said. "We understand that the BLM doesn't have the resources to do an inventory of the canyon. But until they know what's there, they need to protect those cultural resources and species until they have more information."....
Former Bush Interior Secretary Takes Job As Attorney For Shell Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global oil company. Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Shell, one of the world's largest producers of oil, was also one of the companies that Norton's Interior Department routinely engaged on matters of drilling in sensitive ecological settings. According to Dow Jones Market Watch, which published her job announcement Wednesday, Norton will serve as general counsel for Shell's unconventional resources division. By "unconventional resources," a Shell spokesman said it pertained to emerging technology that targets such things as oil shale and extra heavy oil. Shell's U.S. subsidiary, Shell Oil Co., is based in Houston, but Norton will be allowed to render her legal expertise from Denver....
Editorial - A lucrative scheme to not develop land It's high time the Colorado legislature got a grip on the "conservation easement" program, which is costing the state tax revenues at an ever increasing rate. As News reporter Ann Imse noted the other day, the loss of state income taxes has risen from $2.3 million in 2000, when the program began, to $7.5 million in 2002, to $57.3 million in 2004 and to $85.1 million in 2005. That kind of exponential growth in lost revenue is not what lawmakers had in mind. Something's wrong somewhere. The predictability of revenues gained or lost is important to the state's budgeting process. The money is going out in tax credits to people who have managed to sell or donate the development rights to their land to Great Outdoors Colorado or to any of the numerous private land trusts. These groups are supposed to ensure that the owners - who in most cases continue to control the land and can restrict public access to it - never develop it. The problem is, no one seems to know exactly how much land has been preserved or where it is. The Department of Revenue has the raw information in its income tax returns but hasn't compiled it. It should, even if it takes a special appropriation to pay for the job. Only when the public can review the open space preserved can it decide whether the program is worth the cost. Even proponents admit that some people have been gaming the system. There are several ways to do it....
Editorial - Global warming's poster cubs CONSIDER THE humble polar bear: Ursus maritimus to the scientists who admire it for its intelligence. Now consider President Bush, who might be classified as Executum obstreperum by the thousands of scientists who say his administration fails to appreciate the gravity of global warming. Is it possible that the polar bear can do what the scientists cannot? What the polar bear could do, essentially, is force the administration to take steps to curb global warming. With its proposal, announced Wednesday, to list polar bears as a threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the first time acknowledged that global warming is the driving force behind an animal's potential extinction. If the polar bear is listed as endangered, then the U.S. government would be bound by law to protect it — and protecting it may require regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the polar bear, the administration may have met its match. This isn't just any animal — it is a creature at once majestic and cuddly, the star attraction at countless zoos and featured in so many TV commercials it practically qualifies for a SAG card. If that's not enough, the same type of habitat loss threatening the bears' survival also endangers the penguin, which had a better year at the box office than all but a few humans. Less popular is the administration's stance on global warming. Bush has acknowledged the phenomenon, but he's reluctant to require industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions. If the polar bear is listed as an endangered species, would the government have to crack down on the carbon emissions that are threatening its existence?...
Aligning Horse Owners with Conservationists America cannot afford to lose the horse industry; its economic alone impact is huge. According to the American Horse Council’s study, the horse industry directly produces goods and services of $25.3 billion and has a total impact of $112.1 billion on U.S. gross domestic product. This same study reveals that there are 7.1 million people involved in the horse industry, with 1.9 million of those actually owning horses. All over the country, equestrians are faced with the impending loss of their open land. Leading horse organizations have identified loss of open land as the greatest threat to their future and the need to address this problem is urgent. According to David O’Connor, president of the U.S. Equestrian Federation, “With the suburban sprawl that is going on around the country, people who ride horses are losing vital resources. Partnerships … are needed to guarantee the future of equestrian sports and all types of equestrian access.” Equestrians share a special privilege: the permission to ride over magnificent open spaces on private land. They owe a debt of gratitude to the landowners who have conserved their land for future generations. The good news is that the rate of land has tripled in the last five years. Private voluntary land conservation is an important American tradition. The future of America’s natural heritage and the horse industry may well depend on it....
Preserve aims to save traditional 'hair' sheep When you talk about sheep, most people think about the short, white animals with wool covering their bodies. Don Chavez y Gilbert would like that to change. The wind blows wickedly at times through the trees at the Terra Patre Wildlife Preserve, but Chavez y Gilbert hardly notices as he talks about the hair sheep he is breeding. Chavez y Gilbert believes the days of the wool sheep, or "woolies" as he calls them, are numbered as far as the livestock industry goes. And he's doing what he can to adapt — by breeding a hair sheep that is closer in look, habit and structure to the sheep the Spanish colonizers originally brought to New Mexico than the woolies you see being raised now. "A woolie is just an unnaturally selective bred sheep that had a recessive gene where their wool didn't fall out," he explains as he walks part of Terra Patre's 20 acres and shows off the sheep he is breeding — which are of a Mouflon variety....
Beautifully felt: Popular art form turns rough wool into soft fabric It's like watching a sow's ear transform itself into a silk purse before your very eyes. But in this case, it's wool that magically turns into felt - with a little help from Black Forest, Colo., llama rancher Marlice Van Zandt. She starts by spreading puffs of multicolored llama wool in an attractive pattern on a bamboo mat, tops it with a plastic liner, then adds another layer of wool. She sprinkles the wool with hot water, rubs it with a soapy goo and whacks the heck out of it with a meat cleaver. That done, she rolls up the mat and rocks it back and forth zillions of times. When her arms get tired, she sits down and rolls it back and forth with her feet. Eventually, she unwraps the mat, and there - in soggy splendor - is beige felt with a brown design, soon to be turned into a purse. Van Zandt is one of the many crafters breathing new life into the 8,000-year-old art of felting, turning animal fibers into vests, boots, pillows, wall hangings, masks, jewelry and more....
FWS biologist acknowledges wolf debate The federal wolf recovery coordinator for the lower 48 states says he understands the need to have one person speaking when it comes to federal wolf policy. Ed Bangs, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena, Mont., said too many people talking at once can be confusing when government officials are trying to work out policies. Bangs was responding to comments made by Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, who said in a meeting of state and federal officials last week that "some duct tape on Mr. Bangs' mouth" would be helpful while Wyoming negotiates with the federal government on wolf management. Childers said in an interview that Bangs has made "off-the-cuff" remarks that have hindered discussions in the Legislature. Childers didn't specify what those comments were. But he said Bangs told members of the Wyoming Stock Growers and Wyoming Wool Growers associations that he didn't expect many problems with wolves. "I'm not saying Ed's a bad man," Childers said. "I'm saying what he said, it didn't turn out that way."....
Study links fires, ocean temps Using fire scars on nearly 5,000 tree stumps dating back 450 years, scientists have found that extended periods of major wildfires in the West occurred when the North Atlantic Ocean was going through periodic warming. With the North Atlantic at the start of a recurring warming period that typically lasts 20 to 60 years, the West could be in for an extended period of multiple fires on the scale of those seen in 2002 and 2006, said Thomas W. Swetnam. He's director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the study published in the Dec. 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This study and others have demonstrated that there is an underlying climatic influence on fuels and then on the weather conditions that promote fires," said Dan Cayan, climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who did not take part in the study. Ron Neilson, a U.S. Forest Service scientist who has developed models that predict wildfire danger based on climate models, agreed with the study's conclusions, and noted all the oceans are affected by global warming. And that in turn could exacerbate the wildfire cycle. Scientists have long seen a relationship between weather in the United States and El Nino, a warming of water in the South Pacific. When El Nino is strong, the Northwest typically has drought and severe fire seasons, and the Southwest has rain. When the cycle reverses, known as La Nina, the South Pacific cools, the Northwest has more rain, and the Southwest has drought and fires....
Western energy corridors: comment period extended After receiving hundreds of comments in response to the release of preliminary working maps, the interagency team analyzing potential environmental effects of designating energy corridors in 11 Western States has decided that additional time will be needed to consider these comments as the agencies conduct an environmental review of proposed corridor locations. A recent press release stated that, in order to ensure full consideration of the more than 200 comments and suggestions on the preliminary maps, project managers from the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture-Forest Service, and the Department of Defense will take additional time to refine the alternatives to be presented in the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The BLM and the Forest Service also must ensure that proposed routes and the analysis of their impacts are consistent with the resource management plans for lands they manage. The public will have an additional opportunity to comment on the Draft PEIS after it is published....
A casualty of the 'New West' One of the last miners in Pitkin County considers himself a casualty in the transition of the Old West into the New West. Robert Congdon on last week settled a dispute with the U.S. Forest Service, which might prevent him accessing a mine in the Crystal Valley that he rediscovered 20 years ago on the lower slopes of Mount Sopris. He wants the Maree Love Mine preserved as an important piece of the area's history. Congdon said he agreed to plead guilty to two charges - damaging natural features and maintaining or constructing a structure. In return, charges of interfering with a law enforcement officer and damaging a historical structure will be dropped. The Forest Service pursued charges against Congdon in December 2005 because agency officials felt his work put natural and historic resources at risk. A colony of rare Townsend's big-eared bats took up residence in the mine and the feds felt mining activity could bring them harm. The area is also sprinkled with mining relics that date to the late 1800s....
Groups aim to halt wild horse roundup Advocacy groups are asking a federal judge to stop the Bureau of Land Management from rounding up wild horses and burros next week in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas. America's Wild Horse Advocates, based in Blue Diamond near Red Rock Canyon, and Wild Horses 4 Ever, of Logandale, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas seeking a temporary restraining order and an injunction indefinitely postponing the Jan. 2 roundup. No hearing was immediately scheduled. The injunction would remain in effect until a judge heard the groups' claim that the BLM plan, outlined in an environmental assessment released Friday, is flawed and that the roundup would undercut efforts to keep wild horses on the range....
Vehicle ban sought in remote Arch Canyon A coalition of environmentalists, outfitters and Navajo tribal leaders have submitted a petition to the Bureau of Land Management asking that the agency close Arch Canyon in southeast Utah to off-highway vehicle traffic in order to protect the area's cultural and natural resources. Liz Thomas, a Moab-based attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said Wednesday that the group filed the formal petition this week after the BLM rejected what she called earlier, informal attempts to protect the area. The canyon is known for its large, though mostly unsurveyed, collection of Anasazi and Pueblo ruins and artifacts. Its year-round stream also is home to three native fish species - the flannel mouth sucker, blue head sucker and speckled dace. "We've been asking for this for a long time," Thomas said. "We understand that the BLM doesn't have the resources to do an inventory of the canyon. But until they know what's there, they need to protect those cultural resources and species until they have more information."....
Former Bush Interior Secretary Takes Job As Attorney For Shell Gale Norton is back providing oversight of energy development issues on public lands in the American West, this time as a key legal advisor for a major global oil company. Months after she resigned her cabinet post as President Bush's Interior Secretary—and then seemed to disappear from public view—the Coloradan apparently has accepted an offer to serve as counsel for Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Shell, one of the world's largest producers of oil, was also one of the companies that Norton's Interior Department routinely engaged on matters of drilling in sensitive ecological settings. According to Dow Jones Market Watch, which published her job announcement Wednesday, Norton will serve as general counsel for Shell's unconventional resources division. By "unconventional resources," a Shell spokesman said it pertained to emerging technology that targets such things as oil shale and extra heavy oil. Shell's U.S. subsidiary, Shell Oil Co., is based in Houston, but Norton will be allowed to render her legal expertise from Denver....
Editorial - A lucrative scheme to not develop land It's high time the Colorado legislature got a grip on the "conservation easement" program, which is costing the state tax revenues at an ever increasing rate. As News reporter Ann Imse noted the other day, the loss of state income taxes has risen from $2.3 million in 2000, when the program began, to $7.5 million in 2002, to $57.3 million in 2004 and to $85.1 million in 2005. That kind of exponential growth in lost revenue is not what lawmakers had in mind. Something's wrong somewhere. The predictability of revenues gained or lost is important to the state's budgeting process. The money is going out in tax credits to people who have managed to sell or donate the development rights to their land to Great Outdoors Colorado or to any of the numerous private land trusts. These groups are supposed to ensure that the owners - who in most cases continue to control the land and can restrict public access to it - never develop it. The problem is, no one seems to know exactly how much land has been preserved or where it is. The Department of Revenue has the raw information in its income tax returns but hasn't compiled it. It should, even if it takes a special appropriation to pay for the job. Only when the public can review the open space preserved can it decide whether the program is worth the cost. Even proponents admit that some people have been gaming the system. There are several ways to do it....
Editorial - Global warming's poster cubs CONSIDER THE humble polar bear: Ursus maritimus to the scientists who admire it for its intelligence. Now consider President Bush, who might be classified as Executum obstreperum by the thousands of scientists who say his administration fails to appreciate the gravity of global warming. Is it possible that the polar bear can do what the scientists cannot? What the polar bear could do, essentially, is force the administration to take steps to curb global warming. With its proposal, announced Wednesday, to list polar bears as a threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the first time acknowledged that global warming is the driving force behind an animal's potential extinction. If the polar bear is listed as endangered, then the U.S. government would be bound by law to protect it — and protecting it may require regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the polar bear, the administration may have met its match. This isn't just any animal — it is a creature at once majestic and cuddly, the star attraction at countless zoos and featured in so many TV commercials it practically qualifies for a SAG card. If that's not enough, the same type of habitat loss threatening the bears' survival also endangers the penguin, which had a better year at the box office than all but a few humans. Less popular is the administration's stance on global warming. Bush has acknowledged the phenomenon, but he's reluctant to require industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions. If the polar bear is listed as an endangered species, would the government have to crack down on the carbon emissions that are threatening its existence?...
Aligning Horse Owners with Conservationists America cannot afford to lose the horse industry; its economic alone impact is huge. According to the American Horse Council’s study, the horse industry directly produces goods and services of $25.3 billion and has a total impact of $112.1 billion on U.S. gross domestic product. This same study reveals that there are 7.1 million people involved in the horse industry, with 1.9 million of those actually owning horses. All over the country, equestrians are faced with the impending loss of their open land. Leading horse organizations have identified loss of open land as the greatest threat to their future and the need to address this problem is urgent. According to David O’Connor, president of the U.S. Equestrian Federation, “With the suburban sprawl that is going on around the country, people who ride horses are losing vital resources. Partnerships … are needed to guarantee the future of equestrian sports and all types of equestrian access.” Equestrians share a special privilege: the permission to ride over magnificent open spaces on private land. They owe a debt of gratitude to the landowners who have conserved their land for future generations. The good news is that the rate of land has tripled in the last five years. Private voluntary land conservation is an important American tradition. The future of America’s natural heritage and the horse industry may well depend on it....
Preserve aims to save traditional 'hair' sheep When you talk about sheep, most people think about the short, white animals with wool covering their bodies. Don Chavez y Gilbert would like that to change. The wind blows wickedly at times through the trees at the Terra Patre Wildlife Preserve, but Chavez y Gilbert hardly notices as he talks about the hair sheep he is breeding. Chavez y Gilbert believes the days of the wool sheep, or "woolies" as he calls them, are numbered as far as the livestock industry goes. And he's doing what he can to adapt — by breeding a hair sheep that is closer in look, habit and structure to the sheep the Spanish colonizers originally brought to New Mexico than the woolies you see being raised now. "A woolie is just an unnaturally selective bred sheep that had a recessive gene where their wool didn't fall out," he explains as he walks part of Terra Patre's 20 acres and shows off the sheep he is breeding — which are of a Mouflon variety....
Beautifully felt: Popular art form turns rough wool into soft fabric It's like watching a sow's ear transform itself into a silk purse before your very eyes. But in this case, it's wool that magically turns into felt - with a little help from Black Forest, Colo., llama rancher Marlice Van Zandt. She starts by spreading puffs of multicolored llama wool in an attractive pattern on a bamboo mat, tops it with a plastic liner, then adds another layer of wool. She sprinkles the wool with hot water, rubs it with a soapy goo and whacks the heck out of it with a meat cleaver. That done, she rolls up the mat and rocks it back and forth zillions of times. When her arms get tired, she sits down and rolls it back and forth with her feet. Eventually, she unwraps the mat, and there - in soggy splendor - is beige felt with a brown design, soon to be turned into a purse. Van Zandt is one of the many crafters breathing new life into the 8,000-year-old art of felting, turning animal fibers into vests, boots, pillows, wall hangings, masks, jewelry and more....
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Bureau of Land Management Head Resigns
Kathleen Clarke, the first woman to head the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, resigned Thursday to return to her home state of Utah. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Clarke had created more recreational opportunities for Americans and sped up "environmentally sensitive" oil and natural gas production on federal lands since taking over the agency in January 2002. BLM manages 258 million acres, about one-eighth of the land in the United States. Most of that land _ grasslands, forests, high mountains, arctic tundra and deserts _ is in the West. It also oversees about 700 million acres of minerals below the land's surface. "Our public lands, our forests and our landscapes are better off" because of Clarke's service, Kempthorne said Thursday. Before taking over BLM, Clarke had worked as executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources and as a top aide to former Rep. James Hansen, a Utah Republican who once headed the House Resources Committee. She also had co-owned a construction and real estate business in Kaysville, Utah and had been on the staff of Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, who is now deceased. BLM was headed during the Clinton administration by another Utah resident, Patrick Shea, who had been a lawyer, educator and businessman before taking over the agency.
Kathleen Clarke, the first woman to head the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, resigned Thursday to return to her home state of Utah. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said Clarke had created more recreational opportunities for Americans and sped up "environmentally sensitive" oil and natural gas production on federal lands since taking over the agency in January 2002. BLM manages 258 million acres, about one-eighth of the land in the United States. Most of that land _ grasslands, forests, high mountains, arctic tundra and deserts _ is in the West. It also oversees about 700 million acres of minerals below the land's surface. "Our public lands, our forests and our landscapes are better off" because of Clarke's service, Kempthorne said Thursday. Before taking over BLM, Clarke had worked as executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources and as a top aide to former Rep. James Hansen, a Utah Republican who once headed the House Resources Committee. She also had co-owned a construction and real estate business in Kaysville, Utah and had been on the staff of Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, who is now deceased. BLM was headed during the Clinton administration by another Utah resident, Patrick Shea, who had been a lawyer, educator and businessman before taking over the agency.
NEWS ROUNDUP
37 Endangered Tortoises Move to N.M. Deep in burrows in southern New Mexico, the only genetically pure bolson tortoises in the United States are waiting out the winter. Thirty-seven of the endangered creatures, the largest tortoises found in North America at up to 18 inches long, came to New Mexico this year from a ranch in Arizona. Most are at Ted Turner's Armendaris Ranch near Truth or Consequences. "We work to recover endangered species on all our properties in the United States," ranch manager Tom Waddell said. "It's just another one on the list, but it is exciting and fun." Turner's ranches in New Mexico also are home to endangered Mexican gray wolves, black-footed ferrets and aplomado falcons. The bolson tortoises are believed to have been in the Southwest for thousands of years but were discovered by scientists only in the late 1950s in Mexico. "They're kind of prehistoric," Waddell said. "It's kind of like finding a dinosaur." There are 26 adult tortoises in a pair of 8-acre pens at the Armendaris and four tortoises at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park in Carlsbad. And additional seven young tortoises that hatched this summer are at Turner's Ladder Ranch, also near T or C. Bolson tortoises once were found in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma, as well as in Mexico. The only ones left in the wild now are a small population in the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico....
Column - Losing to the Greens "I've never seen industry so deathly afraid of the current politics surrounding climate change policy," a Bush administration environmental official told me. With good reason. As Democrats take control of Congress, once-firm opposition to the green lobby's campaign of imposing carbon emission controls is weak. Panicky captains of industry have themselves largely to blame for failing to respond to the environmentalists' well-financed propaganda operation. One government official says "industry appears utterly helpless and utterly clueless as to how to respond." But the Bush administration itself is a house divided, with support for greens and severe carbon regulation inside the Department of Energy rampant, reaching up to the secretary himself. None of this necessarily means climate change will become law during the next two years, with President Bush wielding his veto pen if any bill escapes the Senate's gridlock. Rep. John Dingell of Detroit, reassuming chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee after a dozen years' absence, will try to protect the automotive industry from Draconian regulation. But over the long term, industry is losing to the greens....
After Long Struggle, Whooping Crane Population Hits Milestone One of the most beloved groups of winter Texans is back, in the largest number in a century and with a record 45 youngsters in tow, including an even rarer seven pairs of twins. They flew 2,400 miles from Canada's Northwest Territories and can be seen munching on blue crabs and bright red-orange wolfberries among the marshes of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, whose numbers dwindled to fewer than 20 in 1941, is not only back from the brink of extinction but also thriving -- a comeback story, federal wildlife officials say, that illustrates how a coordinated conservation effort can save a species....
Schwarzenegger Remakes Himself as Environmentalist Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the type of guy you would necessarily associate with tree hugging. When he bought a Hummer in the early 1990s, it kicked off a nationwide craze for the gas-guzzling behemoths. His lighter-fluid-dowsed action flicks and protein-packed chest bespoke more of American excess than environmentalism, more violence than vegan. But as governor of California, Schwarzenegger has engaged in a savvy makeover, befitting a Hollywood star. He retooled one of his four Hummers to run on alternative fuels and is quickly fashioning himself into one of the most aggressively pro-environment governors in a state known for leading the nation on that issue. This year he signed the nation's first environmental law of its kind, committing the state to lowering its greenhouse gas production to 1990 levels by 2020 and setting up an international program that provides manufacturers with incentives to lower carbon emissions, which is supposed to begin by 2012. He has vowed to fight any attempt to drill for oil off California's coast. And now Schwarzenegger, a Republican, wants to use his star power to turn global warming into an issue in the 2008 presidential election. "There is a whole new movement because of the change of people sent to Washington," Schwarzenegger said in an interview this week, referring to the Democratic Party's impending takeover of Congress. "We want to put the spotlight on this issue in America. It has to become a debate in the presidential election. It has to become an issue."....
Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented....
Polar Bears Proposed for U.S. Endangered Species List The U.S. government today proposed listing polar bears as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act because the animals' sea ice habitat is melting. "Polar bears are one of nature's ultimate survivors," Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne told reporters today at a press conference. "They are able to live and thrive in one of the world's harshest environments. But there's concern that their habitat may literally be melting." The Endangered Species Act requires federal agencies to ensure that all activities the government approves will not harm listed species or their habitats. Environmental groups quickly connected the announcement with scientific evidence that climate change is melting the iconic bear's Arctic habitat, causing the animals to go hungry and give birth less often....
Tour shows participants why environmentalists value Red Desert Gay, like many in the group, fears the peace of Wyoming's isolated ecosystems if the Red Desert is opened to natural gas development, a move currently being mulled over by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The proposed action would result in at least 255 gas wells in the scenic Jack Morrow Hills within the Red Desert in south central Wyoming, according to the watchdog group Friends of the Red Desert, which co-sponsored the Nov. 11 tour. Hundreds more wells could go in throughout the 8-million-acre Red Desert, group officials said. The Red Desert is home to petroglyphs and other American Indian artifacts, outlaw trails (the area was once used as a hideout for Butch Cassidy), and herds of wild horses, elk and antelope. Friends of the Red Desert currently is pushing for a National Conservation Area-status for the northern portion of the desert, which includes the Jack Morrow Hills. In all, about 650,000 acres would be set aside. The group said such designation would protect the area from mineral development, ensuring its wildlife and culturally and geographically significant sites would remain intact....
Editorial - It's the Forest Service, not fire department An audit completed late last month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General hammers the Forest Service for burning money in the way it fights forest fires. Although auditors conclude the agency wastes money through poor cost containment and by fighting fires that might actually do more good than harm by thinning overgrown forests, much of the high cost of firefighting comes from protecting private property, not the national forests. Indeed, depending on the degree of development, between 50 percent and 95 percent of the cost of firefighting may be attributable to protecting homes and other structures on private property, the auditors found. That's not altogether surprising to anyone here in Montana or elsewhere in the West, where every summer we see the Forest Service pulling out all the stops to protect lives and structures - small armies of men and women on the ground, helicopters and bombers aloft, huge fleets of vehicles and a massive organization providing logistical support. When smoke's rising, virtually no one questions expenditures aimed at protecting private property - unless it's to complain they're insufficient. Obviously, people and their property need protection from fire. The question is whether that should be the Forest Service's job. Moreover, we should also consider whether all of us might do more to protect ourselves from forest fires, most of all by making better decisions about where and how we develop property. People who are smart enough not to build in flood plains and avalanche chutes and steep, slide-prone hillsides are all too willing to build their houses in densely forested settings where wildfire is more dependably predictable than floods, avalanches and mudslides....
Simpson still pushing for Idaho wilderness bill U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson says he will take a picture of every acre of public land that his Boulder-White Clouds wilderness bill would transfer to Custer County to convince Democrats in Congress that the federal government is not giving away pristine national forest. "This is sagebrush desert," Simpson, R-Idaho, told the Idaho Falls Post-Register. Simpson said some House Democrats, including the incoming chairman of the influential House Resources Committee, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, have been persuaded by "all the bull that's going on" to oppose the wilderness bill. Last year, opponents of Simpson's Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act bought advertisements depicting the 3,600 acres to be transferred as pristine wilderness rather than harsh desert terrain. With Democrats taking control of the House and Senate, Simpson will have to sway a new set of congressional leaders. Some Democrats, including Rahall, have pledged to defeat the bill because of provisions that would give public land to Custer County and other localities in exchange for 312,000 acres of new wilderness in the surrounding Boulder-White Cloud Mountains. If the land exchange were eliminated, the entire bill likely would fail, said Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League....
Ag chief accepts Idaho roadless plan Idaho's proposed management plan for 9.3 million acres of federal roadless areas within national forests was accepted by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns on Friday and now will move forward in the process of becoming a federal rule. The procedural action came a day after the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee recommended Johanns accept the petition submitted by Idaho Gov. Jim Risch. The plan Risch put forward last month limits development of 3.1 million acres — even more than protections in a 2001 Clinton administration rule. The plan would allow temporary road-building on another 5.5 million acres, only to the extent that it had already been allowed by Clinton officials to boost forest health. Another 500,000 acres would be opened to logging and road building....
Ranchers point to coyote predation Sportsmen blame a lack of harvestable deer in southeastern North Dakota on coyotes at the same time area ranchers report seeing coyotes close to their homes and blame them for herd predation. One area rancher even switched livestock varieties after losing about 10 percent of his lambs to coyotes. While wildlife experts say coyote numbers are not necessarily increasing in this area, ranchers aren't too sure about this revelation. Tam Griepentrog had a cow calving early a few years ago. He knew the calf wouldn’t make it and watched the cow struggle to birth her calf. The cow was in a bad spot in the pasture so he chose to move her closer to the yard. By the time he got to his cow, coyotes had eaten the dead calf’s ear and tongue, while the calf was still in the cow. It is a common occurrence to see coyotes in the middle of his pasture looking for an opportunity at a newborn calf. The laboring cow is too busy pushing a calf to worry about coyotes, but the rest of the cows chase the predators off, usually, Griepentrog said....
FDA Set to OK Food From Cloned Animals The government has decided that food from cloned animals is safe to eat and does not require special labeling. The Food and Drug Administration planned to brief industry groups in advance of an announcement Thursday morning. The FDA indicated it would approve cloned livestock in a scientific journal article published online earlier this month. Consumer groups say labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with the idea of cloned livestock. However, FDA concluded that cloned animals are "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock and that no identification is needed to judge their safety for the food supply....
Rancher's 15 minutes of fame, a decade later If Oakdale rancher Bill Fogarty wonders what he looked like 10 years ago, he needs only to drop by the local RadioShack store. When you enter the store, there's a display for Cingular, a cellular phone company. The photo in the display is of a 40-something cowboy standing in front of a horse and holding the reins. That cowboy is Fogarty. What makes this interesting is that the 40-something cowboy is now a 50-something cowboy. The photo was taken a decade ago, yet is now on Cingular displays throughout the state. Fogarty stands out clearly. The horse is mostly blocked by other elements of the display. Here's the back story: About 10 years ago, a photography crew came to Oakdale looking for someone to help them do a photo shoot with a Western theme. They somehow met Lynn Ferreira, who is Fogarty's cousin, who put them in contact with Fogarty. He is a rancher whose great-grandfather homesteaded the family ranch east of Oakdale in 1873, according to Fogarty's sister, Janet Medina....
Capitol's last cowboys ride on Politics is a lot like ranching. It's just the art of herding people instead of cattle. Throughout its 94-year history, Arizona has had so many rancher politicians (more than 120 in all) that, at one point, critics took to calling the state's government the "Cowboy Legislature." But like so much of the state's rural roots, that era is coming to an end. Sen. Jake Flake and his lifelong friend Rep. Jack Brown, with a combined 22 years in elected office, are the last active ranchers in the Arizona Legislature. Just as Arizona has drifted away from the "Five C's" emblazoned on the state seal (cattle, cotton, copper, citrus and climate) to more of a service, manufacturing and knowledge economy, political power long ago shifted to the urban areas surrounding Phoenix and Tucson. "These guys are a symbol of the Old West that many of us want to hold on to," Arizona historian Jack August said. "They represent a way of life that all of us want to keep in our hopes and dreams. A part of our intellectual warehouse as Arizonans includes a guy on a horse rounding up cattle in the fall." As ranchers leave the Legislature, Arizona loses ties to its rural roots Much of Arizona's political zeitgeist, from a barebones state government and local control of schools to fierce protection of private property, water and gun rights, is rooted in its cowboy past....
Saddle Saga Someone has said, "the institution is the shadow of the man." The Visalia Stock Saddle Company is the progressive living shadow of three men of three generations: Dave E. Walker, its founder, Edmund Walker Weeks, his nephew and successor, and Leland B. Bergen, the latter's stepson and present owner and manager. In this series of "Saddle Saga," we would seek to bring to you tales of events and men of the three periods of the cattle business which coincide with the seventy-year era already served by the Visalia Stock Saddle Company. From 1519, when Cortez brought with him to Mexico the Spanish saddles-not so very different from those used by the knights in medieval Europe-not a single improvement of note was made to add to the comfort or practicability of saddles until in 1868 when there came into an obscure harness and saddlery shop in Hornitos, near Visalia, California, one of these crude saddles for repair. These old Mexican-type saddles were cumbersome atrocities in most cases, and could be almost depended upon to cause sores on the horses' backs. The tree itself was really little more than a wooden frame, rawhide covered, while over all was thrown the loose-fitting leather cover called the mochilla. The stirrup leathers had no fenders or rasderos, so of necessity the rider wore leather leggings to protect himself. For 350 years then the knights of the American cattle range, from Mexico north, endured this discomfort until the day Ricardo Mattley determined to improve upon the Mexican saddle brought to his humble shop for repair....
It's All Trew: 'Old-time sayings' pique readers' interests On a regular basis I receive responses about my columns and questions about old-time sayings and terms. Some are familiar and others I have never heard before. Here are a few samples that I found interesting. The term "give them the whole nine yards" was explained recently. It seems in WWI, the old water-cooled machine guns fired bullets attached to a belt unfolding from an ammo box holding 27 feet of loaded belting. Since twenty-seven feet is nine yards, when the enemy attacked they said, "Give them the whole nine-yards." My article about "kissing-kin" being distant kin on which you could legally practice your kissing skills generated several responses. Some believe you can be kissing kin and not be blood related. Others said a "kissing cousin" was far enough removed from being kin that marriage to them was permitted. For example, a seventh cousin might be fair prey....
It’s The Pitts: In Truck Years You can’t talk for ten minutes with a rancher without him comparing the cost of calves and cars. “I can remember when it only took twenty calves to buy a new pickup. Now it takes a hundred,” or so they’ll say. My response is that fellow ought to either buy a cheaper truck or a better bull. We haven’t made near the improvement in our calves as Detroit has with trucks. They are highly polished, tough, slick, bold and formidable. And that’s just the salesman... you should see the trucks. Three doors or four, short bed or long, bucket seats and back seats. And enough toys to please the most discriminating grown-up child. If we had made as much improvement with our cattle the last twenty years as they have with pickups our calves would dress and deliver themselves. In a moment of weakness I actually considered buying a new truck. My cowboy carriage was made in 1985 but in dog years that’s 147 years old! (It’s a well known fact that dogs and ranch trucks age seven years for every human year.) My old truck burns more oil than it does gas and when I asked the wrecker if the truck was worth anything to haul away he wanted to know how much gas was in the tank. I guess at three bucks a gallon it makes a big difference in the blue book price for a truck as old as mine....
37 Endangered Tortoises Move to N.M. Deep in burrows in southern New Mexico, the only genetically pure bolson tortoises in the United States are waiting out the winter. Thirty-seven of the endangered creatures, the largest tortoises found in North America at up to 18 inches long, came to New Mexico this year from a ranch in Arizona. Most are at Ted Turner's Armendaris Ranch near Truth or Consequences. "We work to recover endangered species on all our properties in the United States," ranch manager Tom Waddell said. "It's just another one on the list, but it is exciting and fun." Turner's ranches in New Mexico also are home to endangered Mexican gray wolves, black-footed ferrets and aplomado falcons. The bolson tortoises are believed to have been in the Southwest for thousands of years but were discovered by scientists only in the late 1950s in Mexico. "They're kind of prehistoric," Waddell said. "It's kind of like finding a dinosaur." There are 26 adult tortoises in a pair of 8-acre pens at the Armendaris and four tortoises at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park in Carlsbad. And additional seven young tortoises that hatched this summer are at Turner's Ladder Ranch, also near T or C. Bolson tortoises once were found in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma, as well as in Mexico. The only ones left in the wild now are a small population in the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico....
Column - Losing to the Greens "I've never seen industry so deathly afraid of the current politics surrounding climate change policy," a Bush administration environmental official told me. With good reason. As Democrats take control of Congress, once-firm opposition to the green lobby's campaign of imposing carbon emission controls is weak. Panicky captains of industry have themselves largely to blame for failing to respond to the environmentalists' well-financed propaganda operation. One government official says "industry appears utterly helpless and utterly clueless as to how to respond." But the Bush administration itself is a house divided, with support for greens and severe carbon regulation inside the Department of Energy rampant, reaching up to the secretary himself. None of this necessarily means climate change will become law during the next two years, with President Bush wielding his veto pen if any bill escapes the Senate's gridlock. Rep. John Dingell of Detroit, reassuming chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee after a dozen years' absence, will try to protect the automotive industry from Draconian regulation. But over the long term, industry is losing to the greens....
After Long Struggle, Whooping Crane Population Hits Milestone One of the most beloved groups of winter Texans is back, in the largest number in a century and with a record 45 youngsters in tow, including an even rarer seven pairs of twins. They flew 2,400 miles from Canada's Northwest Territories and can be seen munching on blue crabs and bright red-orange wolfberries among the marshes of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, whose numbers dwindled to fewer than 20 in 1941, is not only back from the brink of extinction but also thriving -- a comeback story, federal wildlife officials say, that illustrates how a coordinated conservation effort can save a species....
Schwarzenegger Remakes Himself as Environmentalist Arnold Schwarzenegger is not the type of guy you would necessarily associate with tree hugging. When he bought a Hummer in the early 1990s, it kicked off a nationwide craze for the gas-guzzling behemoths. His lighter-fluid-dowsed action flicks and protein-packed chest bespoke more of American excess than environmentalism, more violence than vegan. But as governor of California, Schwarzenegger has engaged in a savvy makeover, befitting a Hollywood star. He retooled one of his four Hummers to run on alternative fuels and is quickly fashioning himself into one of the most aggressively pro-environment governors in a state known for leading the nation on that issue. This year he signed the nation's first environmental law of its kind, committing the state to lowering its greenhouse gas production to 1990 levels by 2020 and setting up an international program that provides manufacturers with incentives to lower carbon emissions, which is supposed to begin by 2012. He has vowed to fight any attempt to drill for oil off California's coast. And now Schwarzenegger, a Republican, wants to use his star power to turn global warming into an issue in the 2008 presidential election. "There is a whole new movement because of the change of people sent to Washington," Schwarzenegger said in an interview this week, referring to the Democratic Party's impending takeover of Congress. "We want to put the spotlight on this issue in America. It has to become a debate in the presidential election. It has to become an issue."....
Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities. Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented....
Polar Bears Proposed for U.S. Endangered Species List The U.S. government today proposed listing polar bears as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act because the animals' sea ice habitat is melting. "Polar bears are one of nature's ultimate survivors," Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne told reporters today at a press conference. "They are able to live and thrive in one of the world's harshest environments. But there's concern that their habitat may literally be melting." The Endangered Species Act requires federal agencies to ensure that all activities the government approves will not harm listed species or their habitats. Environmental groups quickly connected the announcement with scientific evidence that climate change is melting the iconic bear's Arctic habitat, causing the animals to go hungry and give birth less often....
Tour shows participants why environmentalists value Red Desert Gay, like many in the group, fears the peace of Wyoming's isolated ecosystems if the Red Desert is opened to natural gas development, a move currently being mulled over by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The proposed action would result in at least 255 gas wells in the scenic Jack Morrow Hills within the Red Desert in south central Wyoming, according to the watchdog group Friends of the Red Desert, which co-sponsored the Nov. 11 tour. Hundreds more wells could go in throughout the 8-million-acre Red Desert, group officials said. The Red Desert is home to petroglyphs and other American Indian artifacts, outlaw trails (the area was once used as a hideout for Butch Cassidy), and herds of wild horses, elk and antelope. Friends of the Red Desert currently is pushing for a National Conservation Area-status for the northern portion of the desert, which includes the Jack Morrow Hills. In all, about 650,000 acres would be set aside. The group said such designation would protect the area from mineral development, ensuring its wildlife and culturally and geographically significant sites would remain intact....
Editorial - It's the Forest Service, not fire department An audit completed late last month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General hammers the Forest Service for burning money in the way it fights forest fires. Although auditors conclude the agency wastes money through poor cost containment and by fighting fires that might actually do more good than harm by thinning overgrown forests, much of the high cost of firefighting comes from protecting private property, not the national forests. Indeed, depending on the degree of development, between 50 percent and 95 percent of the cost of firefighting may be attributable to protecting homes and other structures on private property, the auditors found. That's not altogether surprising to anyone here in Montana or elsewhere in the West, where every summer we see the Forest Service pulling out all the stops to protect lives and structures - small armies of men and women on the ground, helicopters and bombers aloft, huge fleets of vehicles and a massive organization providing logistical support. When smoke's rising, virtually no one questions expenditures aimed at protecting private property - unless it's to complain they're insufficient. Obviously, people and their property need protection from fire. The question is whether that should be the Forest Service's job. Moreover, we should also consider whether all of us might do more to protect ourselves from forest fires, most of all by making better decisions about where and how we develop property. People who are smart enough not to build in flood plains and avalanche chutes and steep, slide-prone hillsides are all too willing to build their houses in densely forested settings where wildfire is more dependably predictable than floods, avalanches and mudslides....
Simpson still pushing for Idaho wilderness bill U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson says he will take a picture of every acre of public land that his Boulder-White Clouds wilderness bill would transfer to Custer County to convince Democrats in Congress that the federal government is not giving away pristine national forest. "This is sagebrush desert," Simpson, R-Idaho, told the Idaho Falls Post-Register. Simpson said some House Democrats, including the incoming chairman of the influential House Resources Committee, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, have been persuaded by "all the bull that's going on" to oppose the wilderness bill. Last year, opponents of Simpson's Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act bought advertisements depicting the 3,600 acres to be transferred as pristine wilderness rather than harsh desert terrain. With Democrats taking control of the House and Senate, Simpson will have to sway a new set of congressional leaders. Some Democrats, including Rahall, have pledged to defeat the bill because of provisions that would give public land to Custer County and other localities in exchange for 312,000 acres of new wilderness in the surrounding Boulder-White Cloud Mountains. If the land exchange were eliminated, the entire bill likely would fail, said Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League....
Ag chief accepts Idaho roadless plan Idaho's proposed management plan for 9.3 million acres of federal roadless areas within national forests was accepted by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns on Friday and now will move forward in the process of becoming a federal rule. The procedural action came a day after the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee recommended Johanns accept the petition submitted by Idaho Gov. Jim Risch. The plan Risch put forward last month limits development of 3.1 million acres — even more than protections in a 2001 Clinton administration rule. The plan would allow temporary road-building on another 5.5 million acres, only to the extent that it had already been allowed by Clinton officials to boost forest health. Another 500,000 acres would be opened to logging and road building....
Ranchers point to coyote predation Sportsmen blame a lack of harvestable deer in southeastern North Dakota on coyotes at the same time area ranchers report seeing coyotes close to their homes and blame them for herd predation. One area rancher even switched livestock varieties after losing about 10 percent of his lambs to coyotes. While wildlife experts say coyote numbers are not necessarily increasing in this area, ranchers aren't too sure about this revelation. Tam Griepentrog had a cow calving early a few years ago. He knew the calf wouldn’t make it and watched the cow struggle to birth her calf. The cow was in a bad spot in the pasture so he chose to move her closer to the yard. By the time he got to his cow, coyotes had eaten the dead calf’s ear and tongue, while the calf was still in the cow. It is a common occurrence to see coyotes in the middle of his pasture looking for an opportunity at a newborn calf. The laboring cow is too busy pushing a calf to worry about coyotes, but the rest of the cows chase the predators off, usually, Griepentrog said....
FDA Set to OK Food From Cloned Animals The government has decided that food from cloned animals is safe to eat and does not require special labeling. The Food and Drug Administration planned to brief industry groups in advance of an announcement Thursday morning. The FDA indicated it would approve cloned livestock in a scientific journal article published online earlier this month. Consumer groups say labels are a must, because surveys have shown people to be uncomfortable with the idea of cloned livestock. However, FDA concluded that cloned animals are "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock and that no identification is needed to judge their safety for the food supply....
Rancher's 15 minutes of fame, a decade later If Oakdale rancher Bill Fogarty wonders what he looked like 10 years ago, he needs only to drop by the local RadioShack store. When you enter the store, there's a display for Cingular, a cellular phone company. The photo in the display is of a 40-something cowboy standing in front of a horse and holding the reins. That cowboy is Fogarty. What makes this interesting is that the 40-something cowboy is now a 50-something cowboy. The photo was taken a decade ago, yet is now on Cingular displays throughout the state. Fogarty stands out clearly. The horse is mostly blocked by other elements of the display. Here's the back story: About 10 years ago, a photography crew came to Oakdale looking for someone to help them do a photo shoot with a Western theme. They somehow met Lynn Ferreira, who is Fogarty's cousin, who put them in contact with Fogarty. He is a rancher whose great-grandfather homesteaded the family ranch east of Oakdale in 1873, according to Fogarty's sister, Janet Medina....
Capitol's last cowboys ride on Politics is a lot like ranching. It's just the art of herding people instead of cattle. Throughout its 94-year history, Arizona has had so many rancher politicians (more than 120 in all) that, at one point, critics took to calling the state's government the "Cowboy Legislature." But like so much of the state's rural roots, that era is coming to an end. Sen. Jake Flake and his lifelong friend Rep. Jack Brown, with a combined 22 years in elected office, are the last active ranchers in the Arizona Legislature. Just as Arizona has drifted away from the "Five C's" emblazoned on the state seal (cattle, cotton, copper, citrus and climate) to more of a service, manufacturing and knowledge economy, political power long ago shifted to the urban areas surrounding Phoenix and Tucson. "These guys are a symbol of the Old West that many of us want to hold on to," Arizona historian Jack August said. "They represent a way of life that all of us want to keep in our hopes and dreams. A part of our intellectual warehouse as Arizonans includes a guy on a horse rounding up cattle in the fall." As ranchers leave the Legislature, Arizona loses ties to its rural roots Much of Arizona's political zeitgeist, from a barebones state government and local control of schools to fierce protection of private property, water and gun rights, is rooted in its cowboy past....
Saddle Saga Someone has said, "the institution is the shadow of the man." The Visalia Stock Saddle Company is the progressive living shadow of three men of three generations: Dave E. Walker, its founder, Edmund Walker Weeks, his nephew and successor, and Leland B. Bergen, the latter's stepson and present owner and manager. In this series of "Saddle Saga," we would seek to bring to you tales of events and men of the three periods of the cattle business which coincide with the seventy-year era already served by the Visalia Stock Saddle Company. From 1519, when Cortez brought with him to Mexico the Spanish saddles-not so very different from those used by the knights in medieval Europe-not a single improvement of note was made to add to the comfort or practicability of saddles until in 1868 when there came into an obscure harness and saddlery shop in Hornitos, near Visalia, California, one of these crude saddles for repair. These old Mexican-type saddles were cumbersome atrocities in most cases, and could be almost depended upon to cause sores on the horses' backs. The tree itself was really little more than a wooden frame, rawhide covered, while over all was thrown the loose-fitting leather cover called the mochilla. The stirrup leathers had no fenders or rasderos, so of necessity the rider wore leather leggings to protect himself. For 350 years then the knights of the American cattle range, from Mexico north, endured this discomfort until the day Ricardo Mattley determined to improve upon the Mexican saddle brought to his humble shop for repair....
It's All Trew: 'Old-time sayings' pique readers' interests On a regular basis I receive responses about my columns and questions about old-time sayings and terms. Some are familiar and others I have never heard before. Here are a few samples that I found interesting. The term "give them the whole nine yards" was explained recently. It seems in WWI, the old water-cooled machine guns fired bullets attached to a belt unfolding from an ammo box holding 27 feet of loaded belting. Since twenty-seven feet is nine yards, when the enemy attacked they said, "Give them the whole nine-yards." My article about "kissing-kin" being distant kin on which you could legally practice your kissing skills generated several responses. Some believe you can be kissing kin and not be blood related. Others said a "kissing cousin" was far enough removed from being kin that marriage to them was permitted. For example, a seventh cousin might be fair prey....
It’s The Pitts: In Truck Years You can’t talk for ten minutes with a rancher without him comparing the cost of calves and cars. “I can remember when it only took twenty calves to buy a new pickup. Now it takes a hundred,” or so they’ll say. My response is that fellow ought to either buy a cheaper truck or a better bull. We haven’t made near the improvement in our calves as Detroit has with trucks. They are highly polished, tough, slick, bold and formidable. And that’s just the salesman... you should see the trucks. Three doors or four, short bed or long, bucket seats and back seats. And enough toys to please the most discriminating grown-up child. If we had made as much improvement with our cattle the last twenty years as they have with pickups our calves would dress and deliver themselves. In a moment of weakness I actually considered buying a new truck. My cowboy carriage was made in 1985 but in dog years that’s 147 years old! (It’s a well known fact that dogs and ranch trucks age seven years for every human year.) My old truck burns more oil than it does gas and when I asked the wrecker if the truck was worth anything to haul away he wanted to know how much gas was in the tank. I guess at three bucks a gallon it makes a big difference in the blue book price for a truck as old as mine....
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Monday, December 25, 2006
Bald Eagle to Be Taken Off Endangered List
Seven years after the U.S. government moved to take the bald eagle off the endangered species list, the Bush administration intends to complete the step by February, prodded by a frustrated libertarian property owner in Minnesota. The delisting, supported by mainstream environmental groups, would represent a formal declaration that the eagle population has sufficiently rebounded, increasing more than 15-fold since its 1963 nadir to more than 7,000 nesting pairs. The next challenge is to ensure the national symbol's continued protection. "By February 16th, the bald eagle will be delisted," said Marshall Jones, deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We'll be clear so people won't think, 'It's open season on bald eagles.' No way." Although the majestic raptor will no longer be covered by the Endangered Species Act, two earlier laws and a few carefully written phrases are expected to balance respect for the eagle with an appreciation for property rights...It was a bald eagle's nest that undid Edmund Contoski. And it was Edmund Contoski who filed a federal lawsuit that prompted U.S. District Judge John Tunheim to set the February deadline for the government to act or explain why not. Contoski's problem, as he saw it, was the nest high in a pine on his property alongside Sullivan Lake, about 100 miles northwest of the Twin Cities. When the nest was reported to state environmental authorities, he was a few weeks away from carving out a road and several lots, hoping to make good on a family investment. No eagles were using the nest that year -- they returned later -- but the discovery meant that no one could build within 330 feet. The land was suddenly useless for development, and Contoski was steamed. "I can't even cut firewood," he said. "I can't trim a tree. I can't do anything." He tracked down the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has a record of challenging endangered-species rules. Better yet, Pacific attorney Damien Schiff was willing to file suit for free. For attorney and client, the case was more about principle than principal...A former city planner, published author and founder three decades ago of Minnesota's Libertarian Party, Contoski is not enthusiastic about government rules...When he studies his Constitution, he sees a guarantee of inalienable rights. "It doesn't say, 'unless eagles need a home.' It's unfair that we pay taxes all these years and now we can't recoup that. If it's public benefit, let the federal government or the state pay us for it."....
Seven years after the U.S. government moved to take the bald eagle off the endangered species list, the Bush administration intends to complete the step by February, prodded by a frustrated libertarian property owner in Minnesota. The delisting, supported by mainstream environmental groups, would represent a formal declaration that the eagle population has sufficiently rebounded, increasing more than 15-fold since its 1963 nadir to more than 7,000 nesting pairs. The next challenge is to ensure the national symbol's continued protection. "By February 16th, the bald eagle will be delisted," said Marshall Jones, deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We'll be clear so people won't think, 'It's open season on bald eagles.' No way." Although the majestic raptor will no longer be covered by the Endangered Species Act, two earlier laws and a few carefully written phrases are expected to balance respect for the eagle with an appreciation for property rights...It was a bald eagle's nest that undid Edmund Contoski. And it was Edmund Contoski who filed a federal lawsuit that prompted U.S. District Judge John Tunheim to set the February deadline for the government to act or explain why not. Contoski's problem, as he saw it, was the nest high in a pine on his property alongside Sullivan Lake, about 100 miles northwest of the Twin Cities. When the nest was reported to state environmental authorities, he was a few weeks away from carving out a road and several lots, hoping to make good on a family investment. No eagles were using the nest that year -- they returned later -- but the discovery meant that no one could build within 330 feet. The land was suddenly useless for development, and Contoski was steamed. "I can't even cut firewood," he said. "I can't trim a tree. I can't do anything." He tracked down the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has a record of challenging endangered-species rules. Better yet, Pacific attorney Damien Schiff was willing to file suit for free. For attorney and client, the case was more about principle than principal...A former city planner, published author and founder three decades ago of Minnesota's Libertarian Party, Contoski is not enthusiastic about government rules...When he studies his Constitution, he sees a guarantee of inalienable rights. "It doesn't say, 'unless eagles need a home.' It's unfair that we pay taxes all these years and now we can't recoup that. If it's public benefit, let the federal government or the state pay us for it."....
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Happy holly trails to you - fa la la la la
By Julie Carter
It's here. Christmas has arrived and the fun should begin anytime now.
Very soon people will start anticipating that magic day, Jan. 1.
You know the one - where you suddenly are going to get richer, thinner and better looking because you resolved you would.
But before we get to that, let me give you some advice that was passed to me about how to enjoy a party, of which by now, you have attended more than you wanted to with more to come.
Why not give yourself a genuine reason for those soon-to-be-made resolutions.
· Avoid the carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the holiday spirit. In fact, if you see carrot sticks, leave immediately and go next door where they are serving rum balls.
· Drink as much eggnog as you can and quickly. It's not addicting, its seasonal, and you won't see it again for a year. Pay no mind to the 10,000 calories-a-sip.
· If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy is not a stand-alone dish.
· If mashed potatoes are served, ask if they are made with skim or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
· Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free.
· Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when there is nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you will need after circling the buffet table with a 10-pound plate of food and drinking that vat of eggnog.
· Fruitcake? Okay, it has the mandatory celebratory calories but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.
· " 'Twas the night before Christmas and all around my hips, were holiday candies sneaking past my lips." This happens all year so don't make it an issue just because it's Christmas.
· If you leave a party or get up from the table and you don't feel terrible, you haven't been paying attention. Re-read the tips and commit them to memory.
Now that you are all done shopping (You are, aren't you?) and this year's gifts are bought with next year's money, you can congratulate yourself for observing this deeply religious holiday in your own way, usually by going to the mall of your choice.
You mailed everything plenty early so the post office had time to lose it in time for Christmas.
Tradition has become so dependable.
And somewhere there are those that still take the time and generation-honored skills to give only homemade gifts.
When I was in that I-made-it-myself mode, I tried to give my children away but they were returned to me immediately.
Erma Bombeck once said, "There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."
But I think it would be sadder yet, to not wake up at all.
We are all children in some way and Christmas can be the very day we get to act like it. Try not to waste it.
One more Fa-la-la-la and you are out-of-here, making tracks into 2007.
Happy holly-laden trails to you and yours.
© Julie Carter 2006
New Hope
by Larry Gabriel
It is almost a new year. The new year will bring many new ideas, dreams, projects and change to South Dakota. They always do.
We have all heard the expression, "some things never change", but I have never seen a thing that did not change.
Technology changes so fast it is difficult to keep up at times. The weather, the road conditions, soil moisture, crop conditions, crop outlooks, what crops we plant, what kind of cattle we raise, the state of the economy, and a host of things that impact our lives change all the time.
Even people change. Have you noticed a more positive attitude in many of our rural communities? I have. Many communities which once accepted gradual population decline as an unchangeable trend are turning that around.
More of our rural communities will do so during this new year. Unimagined progress and improvement will be made in many aspects of rural life. New business will begin. New ideas will be explored. New people will arrive.
Not everyone believes that. There are always some doubters and naysayers in every crowd. But they are few. I don't enjoy listening to them. I listen politely with my ears, but I try not to take to heart what they say. I take to heart the voices of progress, improvement and optimism.
I believe things will improve, because optimism (like all attitudes) is contagious. Many have it. Many more will get it.
Also, I believe the leaders of our state and your community will succeed where others have failed, when they have a passion for what they are doing. When the people of a community care deeply about its future and spread their optimism, anything is possible.
There is a third reason to be optimistic about the new year. We are surrounded in South Dakota by a great natural abundance of fertile land, clean air and pure water. When you add the strong belief and work ethics of our people to those natural resources, only the imagination limits what we can achieve.
I am always positive about the start of a new year, just as I am about the start of a new day. The quiet of early morning is my favorite time to contemplate the blessings I have and the opportunities that will come with the new day.
I view the arrival of a new year in much the same way. My hope for you is that you will too.
Together we can meet any challenge, overcome any obstacle, pass any test, build any dream and best of all enjoy every minute of it, because we care about what we are doing.
May your new year be filled with hope and faith that better things are just around the corner.
Happy New Year to all!
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Happy Birthday to Jenna Rose DuBois who is 6 years old today!
By Julie Carter
It's here. Christmas has arrived and the fun should begin anytime now.
Very soon people will start anticipating that magic day, Jan. 1.
You know the one - where you suddenly are going to get richer, thinner and better looking because you resolved you would.
But before we get to that, let me give you some advice that was passed to me about how to enjoy a party, of which by now, you have attended more than you wanted to with more to come.
Why not give yourself a genuine reason for those soon-to-be-made resolutions.
· Avoid the carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the holiday spirit. In fact, if you see carrot sticks, leave immediately and go next door where they are serving rum balls.
· Drink as much eggnog as you can and quickly. It's not addicting, its seasonal, and you won't see it again for a year. Pay no mind to the 10,000 calories-a-sip.
· If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy is not a stand-alone dish.
· If mashed potatoes are served, ask if they are made with skim or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
· Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free.
· Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when there is nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you will need after circling the buffet table with a 10-pound plate of food and drinking that vat of eggnog.
· Fruitcake? Okay, it has the mandatory celebratory calories but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.
· " 'Twas the night before Christmas and all around my hips, were holiday candies sneaking past my lips." This happens all year so don't make it an issue just because it's Christmas.
· If you leave a party or get up from the table and you don't feel terrible, you haven't been paying attention. Re-read the tips and commit them to memory.
Now that you are all done shopping (You are, aren't you?) and this year's gifts are bought with next year's money, you can congratulate yourself for observing this deeply religious holiday in your own way, usually by going to the mall of your choice.
You mailed everything plenty early so the post office had time to lose it in time for Christmas.
Tradition has become so dependable.
And somewhere there are those that still take the time and generation-honored skills to give only homemade gifts.
When I was in that I-made-it-myself mode, I tried to give my children away but they were returned to me immediately.
Erma Bombeck once said, "There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."
But I think it would be sadder yet, to not wake up at all.
We are all children in some way and Christmas can be the very day we get to act like it. Try not to waste it.
One more Fa-la-la-la and you are out-of-here, making tracks into 2007.
Happy holly-laden trails to you and yours.
© Julie Carter 2006
New Hope
by Larry Gabriel
It is almost a new year. The new year will bring many new ideas, dreams, projects and change to South Dakota. They always do.
We have all heard the expression, "some things never change", but I have never seen a thing that did not change.
Technology changes so fast it is difficult to keep up at times. The weather, the road conditions, soil moisture, crop conditions, crop outlooks, what crops we plant, what kind of cattle we raise, the state of the economy, and a host of things that impact our lives change all the time.
Even people change. Have you noticed a more positive attitude in many of our rural communities? I have. Many communities which once accepted gradual population decline as an unchangeable trend are turning that around.
More of our rural communities will do so during this new year. Unimagined progress and improvement will be made in many aspects of rural life. New business will begin. New ideas will be explored. New people will arrive.
Not everyone believes that. There are always some doubters and naysayers in every crowd. But they are few. I don't enjoy listening to them. I listen politely with my ears, but I try not to take to heart what they say. I take to heart the voices of progress, improvement and optimism.
I believe things will improve, because optimism (like all attitudes) is contagious. Many have it. Many more will get it.
Also, I believe the leaders of our state and your community will succeed where others have failed, when they have a passion for what they are doing. When the people of a community care deeply about its future and spread their optimism, anything is possible.
There is a third reason to be optimistic about the new year. We are surrounded in South Dakota by a great natural abundance of fertile land, clean air and pure water. When you add the strong belief and work ethics of our people to those natural resources, only the imagination limits what we can achieve.
I am always positive about the start of a new year, just as I am about the start of a new day. The quiet of early morning is my favorite time to contemplate the blessings I have and the opportunities that will come with the new day.
I view the arrival of a new year in much the same way. My hope for you is that you will too.
Together we can meet any challenge, overcome any obstacle, pass any test, build any dream and best of all enjoy every minute of it, because we care about what we are doing.
May your new year be filled with hope and faith that better things are just around the corner.
Happy New Year to all!
Mr. Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Happy Birthday to Jenna Rose DuBois who is 6 years old today!
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