NEWS ROUNDUP
Congress Looks at Solutions to Yellowstone Bison Debate Congressman, Denny Rehberg raised his voice Tuesday at a Congressional oversight hearing about the bison in Yellowstone National Park, the feared transmission of calf-aborting brucellosis from bison to Montana’s cattle, and the resulting years of killing and hazing thousands of bison that wandered out of the park in search of food. “I have an answer,” Rehberg thundered in his leadoff statement to the House Natural Resources Committee panel that oversees national parks. “Why don’t you fix your herd?” Fixing the herd—by stamping out brucellosis entirely—was central in the discussions toward solving the Yellowstone bison standoff. The hearing of the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, now chaired by Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, was the first ever to address the issue. Also new for the new Congress was testimony from the Buffalo Field Campaign, which advocates giving buffalo full access to all suitable habitat in Montana within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and managing cattle grazing in the area to keep them brucellosis-free....
Editorial - Park bison dispute migrates to Congress Migration of Yellowstone bison and federal rules on bovine health were the focus of a U.S. House subcommittee hearing Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The hearing plowed the same ground the bison debate has occupied for too many years. On Aug. 31, 1999, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus and representatives of the Church Universal and Triumphant were among 250 people attending a ceremony at Corwin Springs to herald the preservation of thousands of acres of land just outside Yellowstone's northern boundary. U.S. taxpayers purchased about 8,000 acres from the church for $13 million. "This valley is to be available for bison," Babbitt said that day. "We need to reach an agreement about a common management plan." The bison management plan remains in "step 1" because cattle from the church's Royal Teton Ranch still graze near the park's north boundary in winter, Robin Nazzaro, of the General Accountability Office said. When the money was spent, the participating federal and state agencies expected to obtain grazing rights by the winter of 2002-03. "The value of this acquisition for the bison herd is minimal" without the winter grazing rights, Nazzaro testified....
Democrats in Congress want to stop bison slaughter Montana officials clashed with members of the House Natural Resources Committee Tuesday as the panel’s chairman said he is adamantly opposed to the “murder” of Yellowstone National Park bison. West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, the Democrat who took charge of the committee in January, has long opposed slaughtering bison that wander outside the park and has in the past tried to stop it. He hinted at a House subcommittee hearing on the issue that he may try again. “Slaughter is not management,” Rahall said. “It is an approach from a bygone era and has no place in time of rapid and scientific and economic progress. We are capable of more ingenuity and more compassion if we are willing to try.” Rahall noted that he offered an amendment in 2003 that would have stopped the slaughter of all Yellowstone bison. The amendment was defeated, 220-199. “That vote was a harbinger of what will come, that the status quo is no longer sufficient.” Rahall said.....
DU fights for land reserves Did you know that the U.S. government pays American farmers and ranchers to set aside land, let it rest and not use it to grow crops? The program is known as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which to the uninitiated appears to be a waste of taxpayer money, but that isn't necessarily so. The CRPs all across this nation, according to the Ducks Unlimited conservation organization, have proved valuable for waterfowl and wildlife production, particularly in the Prairie Pothole Region, which is believed to be the best waterfowl breeding area in the world. With that in mind, a number of DU representatives last week met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner and officials of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality to discuss what DU believes are problems facing the land conservation programs. The fear is that during the current energy crisis, farmers will be urged to grow crops to be converted into biofuels, at the same time driving up land prices and forcing farmers to weigh the dollar amount offered for a CRP vs. the money that could be made if they jumped into the biofuel pool....
Congress Braces For Global Warming Onslaught A one-two punch in favor of global warming legislation will land on Capitol Hill this week, as former Vice President Al Gore testifies before House and Senate committees following an "action day" involving thousands of environmental activists. Gore is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce early Wednesday. The hearing entitled "Perspectives on Climate Change" will also feature Gore critic, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Denmark and author of the controversial book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Later in the day, the former vice president will testify again, this time before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. No additional witnesses have yet been scheduled to testify....
Al Gore Continues to Demand Special Treatment Former Vice President Al Gore, despite being given major preferential treatment, has violated the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee’s (EPW) hearing rules. Gore first demanded to be granted an unprecedented 30 minute opening statement to the Senate EPW Committee for Wednesday’s (March 21) global warming hearing scheduled for 2:30 pm ET. The GOP minority on the EPW committee agreed to the 30 minute opening statement. But then Gore demanded a waiver of the EPW committee’s 48 hour rule that requires all witnesses before EPW to submit their testimony in advance. The GOP minority on the EPW committee then agreed to waive the 48 hour rule in favor of allowing Gore to submit his testimony 24 hours before the hearing. But in a breaking news development on Capitol Hill -- the former Vice President has violated the new 24 hour deadline extension by failing to submit his testimony – even with the new time extension granted to Gore....
Climate scientist sees cover-up A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn't want his message to get out. But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced. "We have over 1,400 opportunities that you've availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican. Mr. Hansen responded: "For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed of my expertise. I shouldn't be required to parrot some company line."....
Bill introduced to conserve America's open spaces and farmland California U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) have introduced a bill to help landowners conserve our country's precious agricultural land and open spaces. The bill would permanently extend an important tax incentive for farmers and ranchers who donate their land's development rights to local land trusts, creating a conservation easement. The currently available tax deduction for conservation easements, which expires at the end of the year, has been extremely successful at encouraging landowners to preserve their land's agricultural purpose rather than sell it to developers. The conservation easement tax provision encourages landowners to protect their land from development by giving them a tax deduction equal to the land's development value. Once placed under a conservation easement, the land cannot be developed at any time in the future, even if the land is sold. However, the landowner and all future owners can continue to farm the land. Specifically, the provision provides a tax deduction equal to the land's development value up to 50 percent of the land donor's income for all individuals except ranchers and farmers, who are capped at 100 percent of the donor's income. The deduction can be carried forward for 15 years....
Senators Say Timber Payments Extended Payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging would continue for five more years under a deal announced Tuesday by Senate Democrats. The deal, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Western senators, would authorize about $2.8 billion to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act through 2011. Another $1.9 billion would be directed to rural states through a proposal to fully fund the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, which reimburses state and local governments for federally owned property. Details were still being finalized, but lawmakers said the plan would allocate $526 million in emergency spending to extend the law for one year. The so-called county payments program helps pay for schools, roads and public safety in 700 rural counties in 39 states, with most of the money going to the West....
Manhattan Beach Makes Amends The California town of Manhattan Beach is hoping to make amends for using its powers of eminent domain to take land from black families more than 80 years ago. The city council voted to rename the two block neighborhood it turned into a public park after the African-American couple that bought the land overlooking the Pacific Ocean in 1912, The Los Angeles Times reported. Charles and Willa Bruce had created one of the few places in Southern California where black families could swim. In 1924, city leaders decided the land should be turned into a public park and they condemned a two-block area that was home to several minority families in addition to the Bruce's resort. Three decades went by before a park was built on the land....
Navajo seek official's ouster Utah's Navajo tribal leaders are ratcheting up the pressure on the state's top public lands official. After a former Navajo tribal councilman went public in January with complaints about Lynn Stevens - who heads Utah's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office - members of the Navajo Utah Commission asked Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to remove Stevens from his state post and his seat on the board of trustees for the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, which administers oil and gas royalties from energy development on tribal lands. In a pair of Feb. 26 letters to Huntsman, Navajo Utah Commission Chair Lena Manheimer says that Stevens has failed to follow proper procedures in the allocation of trust fund monies, and has a conflict of interest because he also serves as a member of the San Juan County Commission. Manheimer also says Stevens has failed to heed tribal concerns over the road in Arch Canyon, currently the scene of a battle over off-highway vehicle use. The county commission claims the road as a county right-of-way; tribal leaders want the road closed to OHV traffic because of American Indian artifacts in the canyon....
Mystery Foam Discovered Floating Down Green River What's causing foul-smelling foam on the Green River in Utah? Government agencies want to solve the mystery. Is it illegal pollution or just one of nature's tricks? There's a good chance the foam, which ran more than 50 miles down the Green River, is a natural phenomenon triggered by our unusual weather; but there are puzzling, unusual aspects. Most agencies started scrambling yesterday and today, even though the foam was reported more than a week ago. Chopper Five caught up with the mystery foam late in the game. It was nearly gone, a 50-foot span of foam disintegrating in the rapids of Desolation Canyon. Trailing behind was a sheen of unknown origin....
Off-road trails closed at Nevada dunes to help rare butterfly Federal land managers working to keep a rare Nevada butterfly off the list of endangered species have closed scores of off-road vehicle trails at one of the biggest, most popular sand dunes in the West. The closure affects about six square miles of public land where an ancient lake once existed. The emergency order replaces a voluntary measure the U.S. Bureau of Land Management imposed two years ago on a portion of up to 200 miles of trails that run through shrubs and other vegetation that is home to the Sand Mountain Blue Butterfly, the BLM said. Agency officials could not say how many miles of trails were closed but said the main sand dunes at Sand Mountain where most motorized use occurs will remain open. An estimated 50,000 outdoor enthusiasts in dune buggies, motorcycles and other off-road vehicles annually traverse the 600-foot tall, two-mile long dunes about 75 miles east of Reno....
Taking another walk in space Buzz Aldrin - a retired astronaut who is used to taking historic first steps in desolate terrain - took the ceremonial walk to open Grand Canyon West's glass-bottomed Skywalk bridge Tuesday. During his famed 1969 moon walk, he was the second man to descend from a state-of-the-art lunar lander onto a dusty landscape. This time around, Aldrin stepped across desert terrain onto another feat of engineering, a $30 million structure that juts 70 feet over the Grand Canyon's edge. Aldrin, speaking on the bridge while standing next to other dignitaries, said the Skywalk offers "a future of hope" for the Hualapai people. Unlike the moon, which hasn't seen a visitor in decades, the Hualapai Nation is betting thousands will follow in Aldrin's footsteps at Grand Canyon West. John Herrington, the first American Indian astronaut to fly in space, took the ceremonial first steps from the other end of the U-shaped Skywalk....
Oxnard to give coyotes an earful Oxnard's code compliance manager has purchased 1,000 hand-held boat horns to help residents scare off coyotes and other stray animals. Dirk Voss said he bought the horns early last month after residents in the city's River Ridge neighborhood complained that coyotes likely killed several domestic pets. At least three cats disappeared from the neighborhood around November. Residents at the time reported hearing packs of coyotes yipping at night, while sightings of the animals and their droppings at the nearby River Ridge Golf Course grew more frequent.
Experts blame dry weather for a sudden uptick in urban sightings of coyotes, including parts of Los Angeles....
Climber Potter, Patagonia agree to split the synchilla Dean Potter and his wife, Steph Davis, two of the most accomplished mountaineers in the world, will no longer be rock climbing ambassadors for the Patagonia outdoors clothing company, Potter said this week in Jackson. The split between the famous couple and the well-known company comes almost a year after Potter made a controversial ascent of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Utah, last spring. The latest development in Potter’s high-profile career, which moved into dicey terrain following the arch ascent, will put him at arm’s length from a company that has pioneered environmentalism around the globe in a fashion never before seen. Potter, a superb alpinist, rock climber, slackline walker, BASE jumper and aerialist, is breaking such new ground in the mountain scene that Alpinist Film Festival organizer Christian Beckwith labeled him a “climbing provocateur.” In Jackson to attend that gathering last weekend, Potter said in an interview that he and Davis would end their relationship with the Ventura, Calif., firm, owned by Jackson Hole homeowners Yvon and Malinda Chouinard....
Nature Conservancy Applauds House Commitment to Preserve National Parks Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 658, the Natural Resource Protection Cooperative Agreement Act, by an overwhelming margin of 390-10. The Nature Conservancy applauds this legislation, spearheaded by Congressman Jon Porter (R-NV). The measure additionally received the strong support of Natural Resources Committee for National Parks and Forests, Public Lands Subcommittee Chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Ranking Member Robert Bishop (R-UT). If passed, this bill would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to enter into cooperative agreements to protect natural resources within the National Park System. This would allow the National Park Service to work in collaboration with a broader range of partners, both inside and outside the boundaries of park units, to protect important lands – especially from invasive species. For example, the Park service could more efficiently collaborate with partners to control or eradicate invasive species before they cause harm within a National Park....
Air, Water Powerful Partners in Northwest Like mail-order brides, thousands of long-limbed wind turbines are coming to the empty outback of Washington and Oregon, where they are being married off, via the electrical grid, to hulking old hydroelectric dams. These are arranged weddings for a warming world -- designed never to give birth to greenhouse gases. The Pacific Northwest is hardly alone as it chases the wind for clean power. Anxiety about climate change and surging demand for electricity have triggered a wind-power frenzy in much of the United States, making it the fastest growing wind-energy market in the world. Power-generating capacity from wind jumped 27 percent last year and is expected to do the same this year. But it is in the Northwest where wind power, an often capricious source of electricity, meshes most seamlessly with the existing electricity grid, which relies heavily on hydroelectric dams, power managers say. This meshing of power sources is done in a way that maximizes power reliability while minimizing the grid's need for energy from fossil fuels, which release the greenhouses gases that cause global warming....
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
GAO
Yellowstone National Park: Preliminary Observations on the Implementation of the Interagency Bison Management Plan, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, House Committee on Natural Resources. GAO-07-638T, March 20.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-638T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07638thigh.pdf
Yellowstone National Park: Preliminary Observations on the Implementation of the Interagency Bison Management Plan, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, House Committee on Natural Resources. GAO-07-638T, March 20.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-638T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07638thigh.pdf
NEWS ROUNDUP
Law Prof Takes Case to the Supreme Court Yesterday, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John G. Roberts ’76, a graduate of Harvard Law School, got to turn the tables on one of his former instructors. In his first Supreme Court appearance since December 2004, Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 argued that the property rights of Harvey F. Robbins, the Wyoming rancher he was representing, were violated when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took retaliatory action against him for failing to give the government access to a road. “They ransacked his cabin, they got a neighbor to run a truck into him when he was on horseback, they fabricated felony charges against him,” Tribe said. “All because he wouldn’t bow to their demands.” The Supreme Court has to determine if plaintiffs can sue government officials personally under federal racketeering laws; Robbins is trying to sue BLM employees. In his argument, Tribe claimed that the Fifth Amendment protects citizens from facing retaliation from the government for excluding the government from private property. “In my view, the Fifth Amendment protects you not only from having your property taken without just compensation, but it also protects you from being subject to government retaliation,” Tribe said in a phone interview from Washington after his appearance before the court. “That’s the case here.” While Tribe said he sensed the justices were sympathetic to his Fifth Amendment argument, they were wary of creating new ways to sue government employees. “There is a considerable amount of hostility for the possibility of opening up the floodgates of litigation against government officials,” Tribe said....
Dispute with BLM heard by top court A Wyoming rancher should be allowed to sue individual federal workers for harassment and retaliation under federal racketeering law, the rancher's lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe argued the case for Robbins, saying there should be a constitutional avenue for private citizens to sue government employees for continued harassment, instead of having to sue for individual retaliatory actions. The Bureau of Land Management, represented by the Department of Justice, argued that there is no precedent for such lawsuits under current law and thus their employees are immune from them. The justices questioned whether Robbins' lawsuit was an appropriate response to the BLM employees' actions and whether allowing it to proceed would flood the legal system with similar lawsuits....Go here (pdf) for a transcript of the oral arguments.
Bush administration reinterprets species law Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already died out. The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington, D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its entire range. That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said....Go here (pdf) to read the opinion.
WWF's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, Rio Grande Makes List The Rio Grande is among the world's top ten rivers at risk, according to a report by the same name released today by World Wildlife Fund. The WWF report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, names the world's rivers that are facing widespread degradation while millions of people depend on them for survival. The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico), along the U.S.-Mexico border, made the Top 10 list because the river is severely threatened by water diversions, widespread alteration of the floodplain, dams and pollution. Although the Rio Grande and its tributaries run through the arid Chihuahuan Desert it is home to a spectacular array of freshwater species. The river is also the lifeblood of the region's economy, providing water to some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country and thousands of farms and ranches. Irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of all water diversions from the river....
Court declines to referee logging dispute in scorched forest The Supreme Court declined to step into a fight Monday between the Bush administration and environmental groups who are trying to stop logging in a national forest that was damaged by wildfires. The justices refused to review an appeals court decision that temporarily blocked logging in two sections of the Eldorado National Forest, near Sacramento, Calif., while the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity pursue a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service. Fires burned nearly 19,000 acres of the forest in 2004. At issue is whether the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied the proper legal standard in granting a preliminary injunction against the logging....
Mexican gray wolf killed by recovery team An endangered Mexican gray wolf that was involved in killing three cows in southwestern New Mexico was fatally shot Friday by a member of the wolf interagency field team. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an order to permanently remove the male wolf, a member of the Saddle Pack, from the Arizona-New Mexico border in February. At the time, the agency said the team would make every effort to capture the wolf. But the Center for Biological Diversity criticized the kill, saying no such efforts were made....
Wolf numbers top 1,300 in region There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago. The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down. "I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see." As the wolf population has grown, so have the reports of cattle, sheep and other livestock being killed. In response, wildlife officials last year killed a record number of wolves after livestock attacks....
Conservation groups prepare to sue over wolf ordinance Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians joined three other conservation groups Monday in sending Catron County commissioners notice of their intent to file a lawsuit over a new county wolf-killing ordinance. Catron County recently approved an ordinance allowing livestock producers to kill wolves that might be a danger to humans. The conservation groups say the killing of wolves to protect humans is already covered under the Endangered Species Act. The ordinance “unlawfully undermines federal wolf management.” Forest Guardians was joined in the notice by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Rewilding Insitute and Sinapu....
Clashing over Utah's trust lands: Selling the land vs. saving the land It controls 3.4 million acres of Utah land, has amassed some $700 million and is a major power broker from one end of the state to the other. Although its name carries the kind of bureaucratic freight that makes people's eyes glaze over, its actions often raise hackles. The Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration is the state's gorilla. SITLA is backed up by statutory might that allows the agency to rule with an iron hand - when it wants to. White-hot topics like the trust-lands agency's desire to auction off 365 scenic acres near Little Hole, the blue-ribbon trout fishery on the Green River, have wildlife enthusiasts biting their lips. Developers want to build an upscale lodge and cabins on the land. And recently, the agency turned up its nose at a $40 million offer from the state Department of Natural Resources for 28,000 acres on Tabby Mountain on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains. It's a favorite for hunters, but trust-lands officials say they can get a better offer in the future, most likely from the private sector....
Suit targets tar-sand oil development Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the government Wednesday to try to stop leases that could lead to an unusual style of oil extraction on federal land in southern Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others claim the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had no authority to approve ''tar sand'' leases on 38,000 acres in Garfield County. Tar sand is like black tar melded with sand, clay or stone, a concoction that looks like coffee grounds. The oil is extracted after the material is mined. ''It's extremely destructive on the surface,'' said Stephen Bloch, attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Salt Lake City. No extraction is imminent. The land is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not far from Capitol Reef National Park, and wilderness study areas....
Helping dragonfly would cost millions Federal efforts to conserve the endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly along the Des Plaines River Valley could cost $14.6 million to $43.9 million over the next 20 years, according to an analysis released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The estimates come as the service is considering whether to designate as a critical habitat 27,836 acres in the four Midwest states where the metallic green insect with a 3-inch wingspan and emerald-colored eyes remains. Such a designation limits development and other activities, but it protects features necessary for the species' recovery, such as water or food. Environmentalists argue that protecting the habitat of the rare dragonflies--whose only Illinois range is in slivers of Cook, DuPage and Will Counties--is important because they are indicators of the quality of groundwater in a region where it's under pressure from development. Caused mostly by the destruction of their habitats, biologists estimate there are fewer than 500 adult Hine's emerald dragonflies in the state....
Bureaucrats or anglers: who can save the Verde trout? Fishing in Central Arizona could be in big trouble if a lawsuit to list the Verde trout is successful. If that happens, all stockings of non-native fish—trout, bass, catfish and panfish—will likely stop for at least a year while biologists conduct a study to determine how such stockings impact the Verde trout. They could find that stockings of non-native fish must stop permanently. And, ironically, the lawsuit to protect the Verde trout could kill it. Oddly enough, the Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit the very same week I approached Arizona Game & Fish Department with my own Verde Trout Recovery Project. The CBD is as concerned about the fish as I am, but we're approaching the problem from two different directions; unfortunately, they're mutually exclusive. Consider tossing in your own two cents' worth after I give you some background....
Texas dolphin die-off puzzles scientists The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday. "This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters. Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore....
All Creatures Great, Small ... and Endangered AFTER completing the nature documentary “The Blue Planet” — a $10 million, eight-part BBC series that took 20 camera teams five years to shoot, spawned an international concert tour based on its Emmy-winning score and eventually was shown in more than 50 countries — its producer, Alastair Fothergill, could have taken a well-deserved break. Instead, immediately following “Blue Planet’s” September 2001 debut, Mr. Fothergill, a longtime BBC producer, began work on another ambitious project. His new series, “Planet Earth,” “is trying to do for the whole planet what ‘Blue Planet’ had done for the oceans,” Mr. Fothergill said in a telephone interview. “To be honest, that’s a pretty tall order.” The new 11-part series, shown last summer in Britain, will have its United States premiere on March 25 on the Discovery Channel. To help him up the ante, the BBC, which says “Planet Earth” is its most ambitious documentary project to date, laid out up to $2 million per episode, and Mr. Fothergill didn’t waste a cent. “Until we started ‘Planet Earth’ the only aerials you could film in nature documentaries were wide angles because if you flew close enough to get a tighter shot you’d frighten the animals,” Mr. Fothergill said. Among the various photography systems employed by his vagabonding camera crew — 70 men and women who traveled to more than 200 locations on five continents — during their five years traveling the globe, the Cineflex heligimble was by far the most revolutionary. The gyroscopic stabilizing mechanism, once reserved for Hollywood studios, can support a lens four times more powerful than any previously used in nature photography....
Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees? Since at least the 19th century, people have periodically claimed to see giant snowflakes falling from the sky — big ones the size of saucers and plates or even larger, their edges turned up, their heaviness making them descend faster than small flakes. But the evidence was always sketchy and, because of the fragile nature of snowflakes, fleeting. The giant flakes were not quite in the category of sea monsters or U.F.O.’s. Even so, skeptics noted the human fondness for exaggeration, as well as the lack of convincing photographs. And the organizations that compile weather records never made tracking big flakes an observational requirement. So the giants languished in a twilight world of science, their existence claimed but seldom documented. Now, theorists, weather historians and field observers are concluding that most of the reports are true and that unusually large snowflakes two to six inches wide and perhaps wider fall regularly around the globe, surprisingly big and fluffy, if seldom witnessed or celebrated. Guinness World Records lists the largest snowflakes as having fallen during a storm in January 1887 at Fort Keogh, in Montana. A rancher nearby, the book says, called them “larger than milk pans” and measured one at 15 inches wide. But no corroborating evidence supports the claim....
Idaho's first gold rush attracted Irish immigrants Capt. Elias D. Pierce, a Californian at the head of a party of six prospectors, discovered gold on Orofino Creek in North Idaho on Sept. 30, 1860. In the spring of 1861 a gold rush of major proportions was on. Many Irish refugees from the great potato famine of the 1840s went to California during the gold rush of the 1850s. In the 1860s, many found their way to Pierce, Idaho. Most of these Irish adventurers had been too late to find much gold in California. When news of Pierce's strike reached them, they headed for the wilds of Idaho. Their biographies, collected years later, tell us of adventure, hard work, and pride in their accomplishments. Here are the stories of a few who traveled to the little mining town of Pierce in the early ‘60s....
Baxter Black : Horse sets barn ablaze I wrote a book titled "Blazin' Bloats and Cows on Fire!" It referred to the flammability of rumen gasses and the spectacular but rarely harmful occasions when they are ignited. I assumed that the predilection for ignition was confined to ruminants, but, as is often the case, I was thinking too small. Dr. Charlie broadened my horizons. He and his esteemed equine veterinary colleague, Marvelous Marv, were on a house call to examine a 4-year-old colt with colic. Although the horse was a fine looking chestnut, the facilities were not up to par. It was raining a steady drizzle and the horse pen was abloom in late spring Colorado mud. Marvelous Marv was not necessarily fastidious, but he made a point to dress professionally. A Windsor knotted tie, Pendleton wool sport coat and checkered English hunting cap set him apart from Dr. Charlie who wore more practical coverall garb. When they arrived together, most assumed Marvelous Marv was the man-in-charge and Dr. Charlie was his valet. They soon determined from the history of the patient being fed a garbage can full of lawn clippings and the swollen tight high right flank, that a gaseous cecum was the problem. The lady owner fretted. She led the horse from the muddy pen into a small very old wooden storage shed. The doctors proceeded with their examination and concluded that the cecum would have to be punctured to relieve the pressure....
Law Prof Takes Case to the Supreme Court Yesterday, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John G. Roberts ’76, a graduate of Harvard Law School, got to turn the tables on one of his former instructors. In his first Supreme Court appearance since December 2004, Loeb University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 argued that the property rights of Harvey F. Robbins, the Wyoming rancher he was representing, were violated when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took retaliatory action against him for failing to give the government access to a road. “They ransacked his cabin, they got a neighbor to run a truck into him when he was on horseback, they fabricated felony charges against him,” Tribe said. “All because he wouldn’t bow to their demands.” The Supreme Court has to determine if plaintiffs can sue government officials personally under federal racketeering laws; Robbins is trying to sue BLM employees. In his argument, Tribe claimed that the Fifth Amendment protects citizens from facing retaliation from the government for excluding the government from private property. “In my view, the Fifth Amendment protects you not only from having your property taken without just compensation, but it also protects you from being subject to government retaliation,” Tribe said in a phone interview from Washington after his appearance before the court. “That’s the case here.” While Tribe said he sensed the justices were sympathetic to his Fifth Amendment argument, they were wary of creating new ways to sue government employees. “There is a considerable amount of hostility for the possibility of opening up the floodgates of litigation against government officials,” Tribe said....
Dispute with BLM heard by top court A Wyoming rancher should be allowed to sue individual federal workers for harassment and retaliation under federal racketeering law, the rancher's lawyer told the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe argued the case for Robbins, saying there should be a constitutional avenue for private citizens to sue government employees for continued harassment, instead of having to sue for individual retaliatory actions. The Bureau of Land Management, represented by the Department of Justice, argued that there is no precedent for such lawsuits under current law and thus their employees are immune from them. The justices questioned whether Robbins' lawsuit was an appropriate response to the BLM employees' actions and whether allowing it to proceed would flood the legal system with similar lawsuits....Go here (pdf) for a transcript of the oral arguments.
Bush administration reinterprets species law Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already died out. The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington, D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its entire range. That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said....Go here (pdf) to read the opinion.
WWF's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, Rio Grande Makes List The Rio Grande is among the world's top ten rivers at risk, according to a report by the same name released today by World Wildlife Fund. The WWF report, World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk, names the world's rivers that are facing widespread degradation while millions of people depend on them for survival. The Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico), along the U.S.-Mexico border, made the Top 10 list because the river is severely threatened by water diversions, widespread alteration of the floodplain, dams and pollution. Although the Rio Grande and its tributaries run through the arid Chihuahuan Desert it is home to a spectacular array of freshwater species. The river is also the lifeblood of the region's economy, providing water to some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country and thousands of farms and ranches. Irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of all water diversions from the river....
Court declines to referee logging dispute in scorched forest The Supreme Court declined to step into a fight Monday between the Bush administration and environmental groups who are trying to stop logging in a national forest that was damaged by wildfires. The justices refused to review an appeals court decision that temporarily blocked logging in two sections of the Eldorado National Forest, near Sacramento, Calif., while the Earth Island Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity pursue a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service. Fires burned nearly 19,000 acres of the forest in 2004. At issue is whether the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied the proper legal standard in granting a preliminary injunction against the logging....
Mexican gray wolf killed by recovery team An endangered Mexican gray wolf that was involved in killing three cows in southwestern New Mexico was fatally shot Friday by a member of the wolf interagency field team. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an order to permanently remove the male wolf, a member of the Saddle Pack, from the Arizona-New Mexico border in February. At the time, the agency said the team would make every effort to capture the wolf. But the Center for Biological Diversity criticized the kill, saying no such efforts were made....
Wolf numbers top 1,300 in region There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago. The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down. "I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see." As the wolf population has grown, so have the reports of cattle, sheep and other livestock being killed. In response, wildlife officials last year killed a record number of wolves after livestock attacks....
Conservation groups prepare to sue over wolf ordinance Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians joined three other conservation groups Monday in sending Catron County commissioners notice of their intent to file a lawsuit over a new county wolf-killing ordinance. Catron County recently approved an ordinance allowing livestock producers to kill wolves that might be a danger to humans. The conservation groups say the killing of wolves to protect humans is already covered under the Endangered Species Act. The ordinance “unlawfully undermines federal wolf management.” Forest Guardians was joined in the notice by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Rewilding Insitute and Sinapu....
Clashing over Utah's trust lands: Selling the land vs. saving the land It controls 3.4 million acres of Utah land, has amassed some $700 million and is a major power broker from one end of the state to the other. Although its name carries the kind of bureaucratic freight that makes people's eyes glaze over, its actions often raise hackles. The Utah School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration is the state's gorilla. SITLA is backed up by statutory might that allows the agency to rule with an iron hand - when it wants to. White-hot topics like the trust-lands agency's desire to auction off 365 scenic acres near Little Hole, the blue-ribbon trout fishery on the Green River, have wildlife enthusiasts biting their lips. Developers want to build an upscale lodge and cabins on the land. And recently, the agency turned up its nose at a $40 million offer from the state Department of Natural Resources for 28,000 acres on Tabby Mountain on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains. It's a favorite for hunters, but trust-lands officials say they can get a better offer in the future, most likely from the private sector....
Suit targets tar-sand oil development Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the government Wednesday to try to stop leases that could lead to an unusual style of oil extraction on federal land in southern Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others claim the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had no authority to approve ''tar sand'' leases on 38,000 acres in Garfield County. Tar sand is like black tar melded with sand, clay or stone, a concoction that looks like coffee grounds. The oil is extracted after the material is mined. ''It's extremely destructive on the surface,'' said Stephen Bloch, attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Salt Lake City. No extraction is imminent. The land is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not far from Capitol Reef National Park, and wilderness study areas....
Helping dragonfly would cost millions Federal efforts to conserve the endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly along the Des Plaines River Valley could cost $14.6 million to $43.9 million over the next 20 years, according to an analysis released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The estimates come as the service is considering whether to designate as a critical habitat 27,836 acres in the four Midwest states where the metallic green insect with a 3-inch wingspan and emerald-colored eyes remains. Such a designation limits development and other activities, but it protects features necessary for the species' recovery, such as water or food. Environmentalists argue that protecting the habitat of the rare dragonflies--whose only Illinois range is in slivers of Cook, DuPage and Will Counties--is important because they are indicators of the quality of groundwater in a region where it's under pressure from development. Caused mostly by the destruction of their habitats, biologists estimate there are fewer than 500 adult Hine's emerald dragonflies in the state....
Bureaucrats or anglers: who can save the Verde trout? Fishing in Central Arizona could be in big trouble if a lawsuit to list the Verde trout is successful. If that happens, all stockings of non-native fish—trout, bass, catfish and panfish—will likely stop for at least a year while biologists conduct a study to determine how such stockings impact the Verde trout. They could find that stockings of non-native fish must stop permanently. And, ironically, the lawsuit to protect the Verde trout could kill it. Oddly enough, the Center for Biological Diversity filed the suit the very same week I approached Arizona Game & Fish Department with my own Verde Trout Recovery Project. The CBD is as concerned about the fish as I am, but we're approaching the problem from two different directions; unfortunately, they're mutually exclusive. Consider tossing in your own two cents' worth after I give you some background....
Texas dolphin die-off puzzles scientists The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday. "This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters. Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore....
All Creatures Great, Small ... and Endangered AFTER completing the nature documentary “The Blue Planet” — a $10 million, eight-part BBC series that took 20 camera teams five years to shoot, spawned an international concert tour based on its Emmy-winning score and eventually was shown in more than 50 countries — its producer, Alastair Fothergill, could have taken a well-deserved break. Instead, immediately following “Blue Planet’s” September 2001 debut, Mr. Fothergill, a longtime BBC producer, began work on another ambitious project. His new series, “Planet Earth,” “is trying to do for the whole planet what ‘Blue Planet’ had done for the oceans,” Mr. Fothergill said in a telephone interview. “To be honest, that’s a pretty tall order.” The new 11-part series, shown last summer in Britain, will have its United States premiere on March 25 on the Discovery Channel. To help him up the ante, the BBC, which says “Planet Earth” is its most ambitious documentary project to date, laid out up to $2 million per episode, and Mr. Fothergill didn’t waste a cent. “Until we started ‘Planet Earth’ the only aerials you could film in nature documentaries were wide angles because if you flew close enough to get a tighter shot you’d frighten the animals,” Mr. Fothergill said. Among the various photography systems employed by his vagabonding camera crew — 70 men and women who traveled to more than 200 locations on five continents — during their five years traveling the globe, the Cineflex heligimble was by far the most revolutionary. The gyroscopic stabilizing mechanism, once reserved for Hollywood studios, can support a lens four times more powerful than any previously used in nature photography....
Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees? Since at least the 19th century, people have periodically claimed to see giant snowflakes falling from the sky — big ones the size of saucers and plates or even larger, their edges turned up, their heaviness making them descend faster than small flakes. But the evidence was always sketchy and, because of the fragile nature of snowflakes, fleeting. The giant flakes were not quite in the category of sea monsters or U.F.O.’s. Even so, skeptics noted the human fondness for exaggeration, as well as the lack of convincing photographs. And the organizations that compile weather records never made tracking big flakes an observational requirement. So the giants languished in a twilight world of science, their existence claimed but seldom documented. Now, theorists, weather historians and field observers are concluding that most of the reports are true and that unusually large snowflakes two to six inches wide and perhaps wider fall regularly around the globe, surprisingly big and fluffy, if seldom witnessed or celebrated. Guinness World Records lists the largest snowflakes as having fallen during a storm in January 1887 at Fort Keogh, in Montana. A rancher nearby, the book says, called them “larger than milk pans” and measured one at 15 inches wide. But no corroborating evidence supports the claim....
Idaho's first gold rush attracted Irish immigrants Capt. Elias D. Pierce, a Californian at the head of a party of six prospectors, discovered gold on Orofino Creek in North Idaho on Sept. 30, 1860. In the spring of 1861 a gold rush of major proportions was on. Many Irish refugees from the great potato famine of the 1840s went to California during the gold rush of the 1850s. In the 1860s, many found their way to Pierce, Idaho. Most of these Irish adventurers had been too late to find much gold in California. When news of Pierce's strike reached them, they headed for the wilds of Idaho. Their biographies, collected years later, tell us of adventure, hard work, and pride in their accomplishments. Here are the stories of a few who traveled to the little mining town of Pierce in the early ‘60s....
Baxter Black : Horse sets barn ablaze I wrote a book titled "Blazin' Bloats and Cows on Fire!" It referred to the flammability of rumen gasses and the spectacular but rarely harmful occasions when they are ignited. I assumed that the predilection for ignition was confined to ruminants, but, as is often the case, I was thinking too small. Dr. Charlie broadened my horizons. He and his esteemed equine veterinary colleague, Marvelous Marv, were on a house call to examine a 4-year-old colt with colic. Although the horse was a fine looking chestnut, the facilities were not up to par. It was raining a steady drizzle and the horse pen was abloom in late spring Colorado mud. Marvelous Marv was not necessarily fastidious, but he made a point to dress professionally. A Windsor knotted tie, Pendleton wool sport coat and checkered English hunting cap set him apart from Dr. Charlie who wore more practical coverall garb. When they arrived together, most assumed Marvelous Marv was the man-in-charge and Dr. Charlie was his valet. They soon determined from the history of the patient being fed a garbage can full of lawn clippings and the swollen tight high right flank, that a gaseous cecum was the problem. The lady owner fretted. She led the horse from the muddy pen into a small very old wooden storage shed. The doctors proceeded with their examination and concluded that the cecum would have to be punctured to relieve the pressure....
Monday, March 19, 2007
Talks under way to speed meat labels, animal ID
It's been five years since Congress passed a law requiring meat to be marked with the country of origin, but shoppers will have a hard time finding those labels. The food industry has succeeded in repeatedly delaying the labeling requirement. It's currently put off until the fall of 2008. But an end to that delay could be in the works. The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson, wants to marry the labeling program to a plan to require livestock producers to participate in a national animal identification system. Tying the two programs together could win support for both from the packers, producers and other groups that dislike one of the programs but like the other. At least that's what Peterson is betting on. "Bottom line is that country-of-origin labeling is the law. It's been delayed. It will not be delayed anymore. We are going to figure out how to implement it," says the Minnesota Democrat, who has been meeting recently with representatives of key interest groups. Meatpackers and others who oppose the labeling law have good reason to sit down with Peterson. Republican leaders once could be counted on to keep putting off the requirement. But Democrats are now in charge of Congress, and there could be a Democrat in the White House after 2008. Packers also would get a chance to alter the labeling law and get something they want and many farmers oppose - a mandatory ID system. ID tags would not only make it easier to determine the native country of a hog or steer, but they would also allow investigators to quickly track down the farm where a diseased animal originates. That Peterson wants to address both the labeling and ID issues "is welcome news," says David Ray, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, a trade group that represents packers such as Tyson Foods Inc. and Hormel Foods Corp. "We thought for our industry that we ought to look at how this might work together," says Joy Philippi, a Nebraska farmer who is president of the National Pork Producers Council. "We're willing to take hard looks at these things to come up with solutions that are workable for cattlemen," says Colin Woodall, a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association....
It's been five years since Congress passed a law requiring meat to be marked with the country of origin, but shoppers will have a hard time finding those labels. The food industry has succeeded in repeatedly delaying the labeling requirement. It's currently put off until the fall of 2008. But an end to that delay could be in the works. The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson, wants to marry the labeling program to a plan to require livestock producers to participate in a national animal identification system. Tying the two programs together could win support for both from the packers, producers and other groups that dislike one of the programs but like the other. At least that's what Peterson is betting on. "Bottom line is that country-of-origin labeling is the law. It's been delayed. It will not be delayed anymore. We are going to figure out how to implement it," says the Minnesota Democrat, who has been meeting recently with representatives of key interest groups. Meatpackers and others who oppose the labeling law have good reason to sit down with Peterson. Republican leaders once could be counted on to keep putting off the requirement. But Democrats are now in charge of Congress, and there could be a Democrat in the White House after 2008. Packers also would get a chance to alter the labeling law and get something they want and many farmers oppose - a mandatory ID system. ID tags would not only make it easier to determine the native country of a hog or steer, but they would also allow investigators to quickly track down the farm where a diseased animal originates. That Peterson wants to address both the labeling and ID issues "is welcome news," says David Ray, a spokesman for the American Meat Institute, a trade group that represents packers such as Tyson Foods Inc. and Hormel Foods Corp. "We thought for our industry that we ought to look at how this might work together," says Joy Philippi, a Nebraska farmer who is president of the National Pork Producers Council. "We're willing to take hard looks at these things to come up with solutions that are workable for cattlemen," says Colin Woodall, a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association....
NEWS ROUNDUP
To the Supreme Court For a man widely viewed as an ungrateful troublemaker and infrequent folk hero, nestled among 100,000 or more pristine acres of ancient tribal lands and dinosaurs graves, there is a primal logic in the fact that Harvey Frank Robbins’ case before the U.S. Supreme Court Monday will beg the justices to excavate the very bones of the Fifth Amendment. Among other considerations, the high court will have to decide whether the 5th Amendment, like the 1st and the 4th, protects citizens from unlawful retaliation for exercising a presumed right. Cheyenne attorney Karen Budd-Falen argues her client has an “embedded” right under the 5th Amendment’s “Takings Clause” to exclude Uncle Sam from Robbins’ property after Robbins declined a land swap offer he judged “unjust,” which prevented the government from regaining a preexisting easement. Court documents show BLM forgot to record the right-of-way before Robbins, 52, bought the land in question. Though the national media tends to view western “get-off-my-land” disputes as another quaint, age-old comedy of manners such ornery contemporaries as Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, and now Robbins, are forcing serious jurists to wring their hands where none so high beforehand have even waved....This can only be described as a hit piece. It variously describes Robbins as "a rubber-flooring scion from a wealthy, well-connected Alabama family", as "a rogue rancher recklessly throwing his money and influence around to gratify his land-grabbing egoism", and as "arrogantly ignoring such homespun virtues as neighborly cooperation". You get the picture, and yet, this appears on the internet edition of the Casper Star-Tribune under the News tab and is unsigned by the author. The least they could have done was place it in the Opinion section. Better yet, why not produce a balanced piece that discusses this important case?
High court to hear rancher's case The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday in a Wyoming case involving a rancher who has sued employees of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, claiming retaliation. Thermopolis rancher Harvey Frank Robbins maintains that BLM workers pulled his grazing permits and otherwise persecuted him to try to get him to give the government road access. The Supreme Court will consider whether the government officials can be sued personally under federal racketeering law for their official actions. If Robbins wins the Supreme Court case, he can then continue with his case in U.S. District Court in Wyoming. "I am very excited and nervous," said one of Robbins' lawyers, Karen Budd-Falen, as she traveled from Cheyenne to Washington on Friday. "The issues in this case are so important." Robbins asserts that BLM agents told him he would get a "hardball education" when he refused to give them an easement across his land. He says they revoked his grazing and business permits, trespassed on his property and filed a frivolous criminal complaint against him. He is arguing that the government violated his constitutionally protected property and due-process rights. The court will also decide whether the Fifth Amendment protects citizens against retaliation for excluding the government from private property outside the process of eminent domain, where the government has the authority to take property for public purposes....
Despite furor, Idaho elk industry won't face new regulations An attempt to boost state oversight of Idaho's $30 million elk-ranching industry is dead after a bill to license elk ranches was killed Friday by an unlikely alliance of anti-regulation Republicans and Democrats demanding stricter rules. The measure deadlocked 5-5 in the House Agricultural Affairs Committee after passing the Senate last month. That means nothing will come of the late-2006 furor after dozens of domesticated elk bolted from a private hunting preserve into the wilds of eastern Idaho near Yellowstone National Park, prompting sportsmen's groups and then-Gov. Jim Risch to call for new measures to protect wild herds from disease and genetic impurities. Friday's three-hour debate featured bickering elk ranchers who criticized the bill -- even though it had been drafted by members of their own industry association. "The industry, regardless of what you've been told, 80 percent is totally against licensing," said Charles Warner, an elk rancher from Kellogg in northern Idaho and a board member of the Idaho Elk Breeders Association....
World's most important crops hit by global warming effects Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops. Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused aloss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn. Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California. The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world....
Energy companies say they can live with grouse rules Some major energy companies say federal rules advanced to protect sage grouse do not impinge on their operations in northeastern Wyoming, but some drillers and service workers say they're set back by the rules. The Bureau of Land Management's seasonal restrictions ban any surface disturbance on grouse strutting and nesting grounds from March 1 through June 15. Marathon Oil Co. reports it has not seen a dramatic slowdown in its operations as a result. Lee Warren, public affairs officer for Anadarko, said the company isn't drilling at all now, because most of its leases are on federal land. He said the company saw the lull coming. Bill William, owner of Pump Pro, Inc., a pump service and repair company in Gillette, said he's seen business fall because of the restrictions....
Alternate proposal for Piñon Canyon The U.S. Army's plans to acquire as much as 418,577 acres of fragile grasslands in southeastern Colorado may face a bigger "tank trap" than the Pentagon expected when it announced its goal last February. The Army already controls 240,000 acres at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Expanding to 1,000 square miles would displace ranchers who have been good stewards of these lands for generations. The reaction from most of the state's political leaders was originally meek. Gov. Bill Ritter and Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar urged the Army to only buy land from willing sellers and not to use federal eminent-domain powers. Unfortunately, such pieties are largely beside the point. Most of the land the Army covets is in the Comanche National Grasslands and is already owned by the U.S. government. To be sure, the region is a checkerboard of private and public land. But even without eminent domain, the Army could make most private landowners within or adjacent to the federal holdings an offer they couldn't refuse. The problem for many ranchers is that their private holdings are too small to be viable if they lose their grazing privileges on the adjacent public lands....
State, church "very close" to deal on bison With a congressional hearing set for Tuesday over the government's killing of bison that migrate from Yellowstone National Park, state officials are negotiating to give the animals safe travel through a sprawling, church-owned ranch north of the park. A deal would end a seven-year impasse on about 6,000 acres owned by the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religious sect that gained notoriety last decade for its predictions of impending apocalypse. Church President Kate Gordon said Friday the two parties "are very close" to a final agreement. The purchase of grazing rights on the property would give bison room to move out of the park without possibly being rounded up for slaughter, as mandated by state and federal policies. The policies were created after cattle producers expressed concern their grazing animals would become infected with brucellosis through contact with Yellowstone bison carrying the disease. In cattle brucellosis can cause the abortion of calves. Some Montana ranchers worry brucellosis in their livestock would restrict the cattle trade, including beef exports....
Park snowmobiling rises More people rode snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park this winter than in the past several years, but even the busiest day didn't approach the daily limit of 720 snowmobiles allowed in the park. On average, 299 snowmobiles entered the park between December and March 11, when the winter season ended. Last year the average was 253. Even the busiest day this season -- Dec. 28, when 542 snowmobiles entered -- fell below the daily limit that has been in place since 2004 and is the number that the National Park Service is considering for a long-term rule to reduce air pollution and noise in the park....
Ethanol's Growing List of Enemies Paul Hitch has spent his entire life raising cattle and hogs on a stretch of the Oklahoma panhandle he says is "flat as a billiard table." His great-grandfather started the ranch in 1884, before Oklahoma was a state, and now Hitch, 63, is preparing to pass the family business on to his two sons. But he worries that they'll face mounting pressures in the industry, particularly because of the soaring price for corn, which the business depends on to feed the livestock. In the past year, corn prices have doubled as demand from ethanol producers has surged. "This ethanol binge is insane," says Hitch, who's president-elect of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. The ethanol movement is sprouting a vocal crop of critics. While politicians including President George W. Bush and farmers across the Midwest hope that the U.S. can win its energy independence by turning corn into fuel, Hitch and an unlikely assortment of allies are raising their voices in opposition. The effort is uniting ranchers and environmentalists, hog farmers and hippies, solar-power idealists and free-market pragmatists....
Industry: Reject water rules The oil and gas industry hopes that Gov. Dave Freudenthal will reject rule changes adopted last month by a divided state Environmental Quality Council that would regulate impacts of coal-bed methane water on soil, vegetation and landowners. The changes are not well defined and create more paperwork for industry and landowners, which could result in slowing down coal-bed methane development in Wyoming, said John Robitaille, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. "There's a great deal of uncertainty surrounding these rules," Robitaille said. "Any time you have uncertainty, you most likely have delay." Kate Fox, attorney for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Sheridan-based advocacy group that proposed the rule changes, said the rules shouldn't slow down the speed of issuing drilling permits. "I don't see it as onerous at all," Fox said Wednesday. "I don't see how anyone can complain about a requirement of decent science to support their applications."....
Split estates: Mineral, agriculture surface rights clash in field Herbert Vasseur has begun planning his spring farming activities while keeping a close eye on the Montana Legislature's split estate debates, specifically Senate Bill 19 in the current legislative session. Senate Bill 19 is in the House Natural Resource committee and if passed will benefit the surface and landowners in split estates. “Support is needed to pass this bill,” said Vasseur, a farmer, landowner and mineral owners form Chinook, Mont. As a farmer, landowner and mineral owner, Vasseur is one of few Montanans who own both the surface and mineral rights on his farm on which he raises cereal grains. Most Montana landowners aren't as fortunate and live on split estates. A split estates occurs when one person own the surface rights and another owns the mineral rights to a piece of land, explained Vasseur. “There are a lot of ways split estates came about,” he said. “When the homesteaders came to Montana in the 1930s, they would get liens put against their mineral rights to pay their bills because they didn't think they would be worth anything. There were also a lot of split estates made with tax deeds and foreclosures where the counties sold the surface rights and maintained or sold the mineral rights.”....
Whose Ox Is Gored? The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist. Last Tuesday, the Times reported that several eminent scientists "argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points [on global warming] are exaggerated and erroneous." The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, "emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal." All of this comes in the wake of the enormous publicity Mr. Gore received after his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar. The film features Mr. Gore reprising his famous sighing and lamenting how the average American's energy use is greedily off the charts. At the film's end viewers are asked, "Are you ready to change the way you live?"....
Traffic, water may flow in tunnel The rock samples come up slowly from deep within the Earth, cylinders of stone almost unimaginably old that could be key to a future water supply for thousands of Southern Californians. Amid the peaks that separate Orange and Riverside counties, geologists from San Diego-based Kleinfelder, Inc. are working to drill nearly a half-mile into the mountains' core. Their goal is to find out what kind of rock lies along the path of a proposed Metropolitan Water District pipeline under the Santa Ana Mountains between Corona and Irvine. The pipeline would deliver up to 646 million gallons of water daily, enough to supply 1.46 million people annually. The drilling is also of interest to the Riverside County Transportation Commission, which – along with transportation officials from Orange County – is investigating the feasibility of tunneling under the mountains to link the counties....
Editorial - Equal access to injustice, more like it Americans have a pretty keen sense of justice. For example, most people would agree that the ability to protect your rights shouldn't be limited to the wealthy. We even have a federal law allowing people to recover their legal expenses after they sue the government and win. The purpose of that Equal Access to Justice Act is to level the playing field - to make sure the immense power and wealth of the federal government doesn't prevent people from having their day in court. But if it's justice we want, Congress ought to tweak that act. As the Missoulian illustrated in a March 11 article, “Forest Service struggles to finish restoration,” the Equal Access to Justice Act has become a self-funding mechanism for environmental groups fundamentally opposed to prevailing national forest management direction. As our article detailed, the Lolo National Forest spent more than $1 million in recent years on a proposal to use salvaged timber harvested in the wake of the fires of 2000 to help pay for extensive forest restoration. The proposal called for logging 4,600 out of a total of 74,000 acres burned in 2000. The high cost of trying to launch the project is largely attributable to the extensive planning and detailed environmental analysis required to justify and defend any significant Forest Service undertaking. To make the long story short, the project didn't get far. The Sierra Club and Alliance for the Wild Rockies stole the momentum with a lawsuit objecting to harvesting trees in unroaded patches, and a subsequent lawsuit by a group now known as the WildWest Institute brought the whole thing to a halt. Based on the Equal Access to Justice Act, the Forest Service agreed to pay $75,000 in legal fees to the first two groups and is negotiating over the latter's demand for $110,660 in legal fees. The money will rob from funds the agency could better use managing the forests. This is nothing unusual. That's the problem....
Fighting Vail's future fires Mother Nature can be quite the arsonist. Maybe next summer, maybe in 50 years, she'll get the urge to burn down much of the White River National Forest and clear out hundreds of miles of beetle-killed pine trees. She historically likes a clean slate, and a big burn is inevitable, said Phil Bowden, a wildland fuels management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. Vail just has to be ready when that happens. This summer, the town and the forest service will continue clearing out dead and dying pine trees surrounding Vail, much like they've done the past three years. The trees shed their needles and branches then fall to the forest floor, contributing to a large and volatile fuel load. The pines, filled with sticky, combustible pitch, make great fuel for wildfires and are dangerous to residents and buildings, especially those on the edge....
Report blames forest supervisors for letting 2006 canyon blaze grow A June fire that led to the voluntary evacuation of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon grew out of control because of errors by fire managers and senior supervisors who let the lightning-caused blaze burn in dangerous conditions, a U.S. Forest Service report says. The Warm Fire ended up charring 59,000 acres on the Kaibab Plateau between June 8 and July 4, with some of the area scalded so badly the soil was sterilized. The report, obtained this week by the Arizona Daily Sun newspaper, blames supervisors and Kaibab National Forest District Ranger Jill Leonard for a series of mistakes, including inaction when the fire flared out of control, making decisions on the fly and allowing the fire to burn unfought during the peak Arizona fire season. A spokeswoman for the Forest Service said Saturday that only a few of the report's findings relate specifically to Leonard, who now is assigned to the Washington D.C. headquarters, and that blaming her alone would be simplistic....
Logging halted on 72,000 acres in Oregon Logging in spotted owl habitat is coming to a halt on 72,000 acres of federal lands in Western Oregon until government biologists come up with a better scientific basis to saying that cutting the trees will not harm the threatened species. Based on an appeals court ruling last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week pulled five documents known as biological opinions that authorized the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to log in owl habitat stretching from Mount Hood to the California border, Fish and Wildlife spokesman Phil Carroll said Friday. The biological opinions gave BLM and the Forest Service authority to kill some spotted owls in the course of logging on the Mount Hood, Willamette and Rogue River-Siskiyou national forests and the Salem, Eugene, Roseburg and Medford districts of BLM and the Columbia River gorge national Scenic Area, Fish and Wildlife spokesman Phil Carroll said Friday. The ruling pertained to a challenge of logging on BLM's Medford District, but the same reasoning was used in all five documents, which are also being challenged in court. Carroll said those were withdrawn in expectation they would be struck down as well....
Bi-partisan effort to remove livestock manure from Superfund Back in 1980 Congress passed the “Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act” (CERCLA - also knows as the Superfund Law) to address the growing concerns about the need to clean up uncontrolled, abandoned hazardous waste sites and to address future releases of hazardous substances into the environment. Lately some environmentalists have been demanding, with some support from isolated judicial cases, that livestock manure should be classified as a hazardous waste and thus come under the Superfund Law. To counteract this move, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation on March 8 that would clarify the Superfund Law that has unintentionally impacted America's farmers and ranchers. The bipartisan “Agricultural Protection and Prosperity Act of 2007” would clarify that livestock manure is not classified as a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant under CERCLA. Those introducing the legislation contend that if normal animal manure is found to be a hazardous substance under the Superfund Law, then virtually every farm operation in the country could be potentially exposed to liabilities and penalties under the Super-fund Law, and this is an outcome that Congress never intended....
Horse-meat export fight resumes in Texas After hearing of reports several years ago that 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand had been slaughtered for food in Japan, legions of American horse lovers were outraged. The famed racehorse's death also fanned a battle that was renewed this month in the Texas Legislature and could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Not everyone in Texas is opposed to killing horses for food. State Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, has introduced a bill legalizing the export of horse meat from Texas for consumption in countries such as France and Belgium, where it is considered a delicacy. Miller's filing came after a March 6 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not to reconsider its own January ruling in which it upheld a 1949 Texas law banning the slaughter of horses in the state for human consumption anywhere....
Artful cowboys (and girls) The Wild West comes to St. Petersburg in two exhibitions opening Friday at the Arts Center. "The Wild Bunch: Cowboys in Contemporary Art" will feature works by contemporary artists that use the iconography of the cowboy in fresh and unexpected ways. The exhibition includes installations and video work as well as paintings and sculptures by artists including Jenny Rogers, Jennifer Zackin, James Michaels, Gordon McConnell, Fort Guerin, William Schenk, David Rathman and Bernard Williams. "Cracker Country: Florida's Cowboy Culture" features works by three local photographers, Beth Reynolds, Carlton Ward Jr. and Rachel Turner, who have documented some aspect of the Florida Cracker cowboy culture....
The cowboy way They just don't make 'em like they used to. That's what Don Walker would say about the machines used to make the kind of cowboy boots ranchers and cattle hands wear day in and day out, swearing they'd never put anything else on their feet. "It's made out of iron," Walker said as he described his prized machine at the 10th annual Cedar City Cowboy Gathering on Friday. "I don't even think you can find one of these anymore." Much like the way his sturdy machine was made, Walker said his boot-making profession is also a dying tradition. But he wasn't alone in his attempt to promote his disappearing craft. Many other vendors tried their best to preserve the Old West during the Cowboy Gathering by selling rare, handmade items you simply wouldn't see in a modern retail store. "It's funny," Walker said. "Our society just doesn't understand custom anymore." Like the bootmaker from Spring City, Dick Levitz, of Cedar City, said he also struggles to earn a living building saddles from scratch. But it isn't about the money, he said. He just likes doing what he does even though the demand for his services isn't what it used to be....
It's All Trew: Coffee history from the West Presenting the history of coffee since its beginnings as a wild berry would require pages. Coffee history in the Great American West could not be told without using the word "Arbuckles," which just might be the most famous name in the West. Before Arbuckles came along, coffee could only be made by roasting raw coffee beans, grinding by some method and then boiling in water. John Arbuckle changed this process. First, he roasted raw beans professionally, coated them with a mixture of eggs and sugar, sealing in the flavor, then placed the beans into paper packages. Customers merely ground the beans and boiled the brew. At first the coated beans came in a sack, and later the already-ground beans were packaged. The Arbuckle Company initiated many new ideas for sales including offering prizes, coupons for trade and even placing "hard rock candy" into the wooden cases holding packages of coffee. None of these incentives quite matched that of a cowboy acquiring the paper sack in which the coffee came packed. At that time, toilet paper was unheard of on roundups and trail drives. The actual taste of country coffee varied because of the many different types of water used....
To the Supreme Court For a man widely viewed as an ungrateful troublemaker and infrequent folk hero, nestled among 100,000 or more pristine acres of ancient tribal lands and dinosaurs graves, there is a primal logic in the fact that Harvey Frank Robbins’ case before the U.S. Supreme Court Monday will beg the justices to excavate the very bones of the Fifth Amendment. Among other considerations, the high court will have to decide whether the 5th Amendment, like the 1st and the 4th, protects citizens from unlawful retaliation for exercising a presumed right. Cheyenne attorney Karen Budd-Falen argues her client has an “embedded” right under the 5th Amendment’s “Takings Clause” to exclude Uncle Sam from Robbins’ property after Robbins declined a land swap offer he judged “unjust,” which prevented the government from regaining a preexisting easement. Court documents show BLM forgot to record the right-of-way before Robbins, 52, bought the land in question. Though the national media tends to view western “get-off-my-land” disputes as another quaint, age-old comedy of manners such ornery contemporaries as Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, and now Robbins, are forcing serious jurists to wring their hands where none so high beforehand have even waved....This can only be described as a hit piece. It variously describes Robbins as "a rubber-flooring scion from a wealthy, well-connected Alabama family", as "a rogue rancher recklessly throwing his money and influence around to gratify his land-grabbing egoism", and as "arrogantly ignoring such homespun virtues as neighborly cooperation". You get the picture, and yet, this appears on the internet edition of the Casper Star-Tribune under the News tab and is unsigned by the author. The least they could have done was place it in the Opinion section. Better yet, why not produce a balanced piece that discusses this important case?
High court to hear rancher's case The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday in a Wyoming case involving a rancher who has sued employees of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, claiming retaliation. Thermopolis rancher Harvey Frank Robbins maintains that BLM workers pulled his grazing permits and otherwise persecuted him to try to get him to give the government road access. The Supreme Court will consider whether the government officials can be sued personally under federal racketeering law for their official actions. If Robbins wins the Supreme Court case, he can then continue with his case in U.S. District Court in Wyoming. "I am very excited and nervous," said one of Robbins' lawyers, Karen Budd-Falen, as she traveled from Cheyenne to Washington on Friday. "The issues in this case are so important." Robbins asserts that BLM agents told him he would get a "hardball education" when he refused to give them an easement across his land. He says they revoked his grazing and business permits, trespassed on his property and filed a frivolous criminal complaint against him. He is arguing that the government violated his constitutionally protected property and due-process rights. The court will also decide whether the Fifth Amendment protects citizens against retaliation for excluding the government from private property outside the process of eminent domain, where the government has the authority to take property for public purposes....
Despite furor, Idaho elk industry won't face new regulations An attempt to boost state oversight of Idaho's $30 million elk-ranching industry is dead after a bill to license elk ranches was killed Friday by an unlikely alliance of anti-regulation Republicans and Democrats demanding stricter rules. The measure deadlocked 5-5 in the House Agricultural Affairs Committee after passing the Senate last month. That means nothing will come of the late-2006 furor after dozens of domesticated elk bolted from a private hunting preserve into the wilds of eastern Idaho near Yellowstone National Park, prompting sportsmen's groups and then-Gov. Jim Risch to call for new measures to protect wild herds from disease and genetic impurities. Friday's three-hour debate featured bickering elk ranchers who criticized the bill -- even though it had been drafted by members of their own industry association. "The industry, regardless of what you've been told, 80 percent is totally against licensing," said Charles Warner, an elk rancher from Kellogg in northern Idaho and a board member of the Idaho Elk Breeders Association....
World's most important crops hit by global warming effects Global warming over the past quarter century has led to a fall in the yield of some of the most important food crops in the world, according to one of the first scientific studies of how climate change has affected cereal crops. Rising temperatures between 1981 and 2002 caused aloss in production of wheat, corn and barley that amounted in effect to some 40 million tons a year - equivalent to annual losses of some £2.6bn. Although these numbers are not large compared to the world-wide production of cereal crops, scientists warned that the findings demonstrated how climate change was already having an impact on the global production of staple foods. "Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future, but this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply," said Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California. The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed yields of cereals from around the world during a period when average temperatures rose by about 0.7C between 1980 and 2002 - although the rise was even higher in certain crop-growing regions of the world....
Energy companies say they can live with grouse rules Some major energy companies say federal rules advanced to protect sage grouse do not impinge on their operations in northeastern Wyoming, but some drillers and service workers say they're set back by the rules. The Bureau of Land Management's seasonal restrictions ban any surface disturbance on grouse strutting and nesting grounds from March 1 through June 15. Marathon Oil Co. reports it has not seen a dramatic slowdown in its operations as a result. Lee Warren, public affairs officer for Anadarko, said the company isn't drilling at all now, because most of its leases are on federal land. He said the company saw the lull coming. Bill William, owner of Pump Pro, Inc., a pump service and repair company in Gillette, said he's seen business fall because of the restrictions....
Alternate proposal for Piñon Canyon The U.S. Army's plans to acquire as much as 418,577 acres of fragile grasslands in southeastern Colorado may face a bigger "tank trap" than the Pentagon expected when it announced its goal last February. The Army already controls 240,000 acres at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Expanding to 1,000 square miles would displace ranchers who have been good stewards of these lands for generations. The reaction from most of the state's political leaders was originally meek. Gov. Bill Ritter and Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar urged the Army to only buy land from willing sellers and not to use federal eminent-domain powers. Unfortunately, such pieties are largely beside the point. Most of the land the Army covets is in the Comanche National Grasslands and is already owned by the U.S. government. To be sure, the region is a checkerboard of private and public land. But even without eminent domain, the Army could make most private landowners within or adjacent to the federal holdings an offer they couldn't refuse. The problem for many ranchers is that their private holdings are too small to be viable if they lose their grazing privileges on the adjacent public lands....
State, church "very close" to deal on bison With a congressional hearing set for Tuesday over the government's killing of bison that migrate from Yellowstone National Park, state officials are negotiating to give the animals safe travel through a sprawling, church-owned ranch north of the park. A deal would end a seven-year impasse on about 6,000 acres owned by the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religious sect that gained notoriety last decade for its predictions of impending apocalypse. Church President Kate Gordon said Friday the two parties "are very close" to a final agreement. The purchase of grazing rights on the property would give bison room to move out of the park without possibly being rounded up for slaughter, as mandated by state and federal policies. The policies were created after cattle producers expressed concern their grazing animals would become infected with brucellosis through contact with Yellowstone bison carrying the disease. In cattle brucellosis can cause the abortion of calves. Some Montana ranchers worry brucellosis in their livestock would restrict the cattle trade, including beef exports....
Park snowmobiling rises More people rode snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park this winter than in the past several years, but even the busiest day didn't approach the daily limit of 720 snowmobiles allowed in the park. On average, 299 snowmobiles entered the park between December and March 11, when the winter season ended. Last year the average was 253. Even the busiest day this season -- Dec. 28, when 542 snowmobiles entered -- fell below the daily limit that has been in place since 2004 and is the number that the National Park Service is considering for a long-term rule to reduce air pollution and noise in the park....
Ethanol's Growing List of Enemies Paul Hitch has spent his entire life raising cattle and hogs on a stretch of the Oklahoma panhandle he says is "flat as a billiard table." His great-grandfather started the ranch in 1884, before Oklahoma was a state, and now Hitch, 63, is preparing to pass the family business on to his two sons. But he worries that they'll face mounting pressures in the industry, particularly because of the soaring price for corn, which the business depends on to feed the livestock. In the past year, corn prices have doubled as demand from ethanol producers has surged. "This ethanol binge is insane," says Hitch, who's president-elect of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. The ethanol movement is sprouting a vocal crop of critics. While politicians including President George W. Bush and farmers across the Midwest hope that the U.S. can win its energy independence by turning corn into fuel, Hitch and an unlikely assortment of allies are raising their voices in opposition. The effort is uniting ranchers and environmentalists, hog farmers and hippies, solar-power idealists and free-market pragmatists....
Industry: Reject water rules The oil and gas industry hopes that Gov. Dave Freudenthal will reject rule changes adopted last month by a divided state Environmental Quality Council that would regulate impacts of coal-bed methane water on soil, vegetation and landowners. The changes are not well defined and create more paperwork for industry and landowners, which could result in slowing down coal-bed methane development in Wyoming, said John Robitaille, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. "There's a great deal of uncertainty surrounding these rules," Robitaille said. "Any time you have uncertainty, you most likely have delay." Kate Fox, attorney for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Sheridan-based advocacy group that proposed the rule changes, said the rules shouldn't slow down the speed of issuing drilling permits. "I don't see it as onerous at all," Fox said Wednesday. "I don't see how anyone can complain about a requirement of decent science to support their applications."....
Split estates: Mineral, agriculture surface rights clash in field Herbert Vasseur has begun planning his spring farming activities while keeping a close eye on the Montana Legislature's split estate debates, specifically Senate Bill 19 in the current legislative session. Senate Bill 19 is in the House Natural Resource committee and if passed will benefit the surface and landowners in split estates. “Support is needed to pass this bill,” said Vasseur, a farmer, landowner and mineral owners form Chinook, Mont. As a farmer, landowner and mineral owner, Vasseur is one of few Montanans who own both the surface and mineral rights on his farm on which he raises cereal grains. Most Montana landowners aren't as fortunate and live on split estates. A split estates occurs when one person own the surface rights and another owns the mineral rights to a piece of land, explained Vasseur. “There are a lot of ways split estates came about,” he said. “When the homesteaders came to Montana in the 1930s, they would get liens put against their mineral rights to pay their bills because they didn't think they would be worth anything. There were also a lot of split estates made with tax deeds and foreclosures where the counties sold the surface rights and maintained or sold the mineral rights.”....
Whose Ox Is Gored? The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist. Last Tuesday, the Times reported that several eminent scientists "argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points [on global warming] are exaggerated and erroneous." The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, "emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal." All of this comes in the wake of the enormous publicity Mr. Gore received after his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar. The film features Mr. Gore reprising his famous sighing and lamenting how the average American's energy use is greedily off the charts. At the film's end viewers are asked, "Are you ready to change the way you live?"....
Traffic, water may flow in tunnel The rock samples come up slowly from deep within the Earth, cylinders of stone almost unimaginably old that could be key to a future water supply for thousands of Southern Californians. Amid the peaks that separate Orange and Riverside counties, geologists from San Diego-based Kleinfelder, Inc. are working to drill nearly a half-mile into the mountains' core. Their goal is to find out what kind of rock lies along the path of a proposed Metropolitan Water District pipeline under the Santa Ana Mountains between Corona and Irvine. The pipeline would deliver up to 646 million gallons of water daily, enough to supply 1.46 million people annually. The drilling is also of interest to the Riverside County Transportation Commission, which – along with transportation officials from Orange County – is investigating the feasibility of tunneling under the mountains to link the counties....
Editorial - Equal access to injustice, more like it Americans have a pretty keen sense of justice. For example, most people would agree that the ability to protect your rights shouldn't be limited to the wealthy. We even have a federal law allowing people to recover their legal expenses after they sue the government and win. The purpose of that Equal Access to Justice Act is to level the playing field - to make sure the immense power and wealth of the federal government doesn't prevent people from having their day in court. But if it's justice we want, Congress ought to tweak that act. As the Missoulian illustrated in a March 11 article, “Forest Service struggles to finish restoration,” the Equal Access to Justice Act has become a self-funding mechanism for environmental groups fundamentally opposed to prevailing national forest management direction. As our article detailed, the Lolo National Forest spent more than $1 million in recent years on a proposal to use salvaged timber harvested in the wake of the fires of 2000 to help pay for extensive forest restoration. The proposal called for logging 4,600 out of a total of 74,000 acres burned in 2000. The high cost of trying to launch the project is largely attributable to the extensive planning and detailed environmental analysis required to justify and defend any significant Forest Service undertaking. To make the long story short, the project didn't get far. The Sierra Club and Alliance for the Wild Rockies stole the momentum with a lawsuit objecting to harvesting trees in unroaded patches, and a subsequent lawsuit by a group now known as the WildWest Institute brought the whole thing to a halt. Based on the Equal Access to Justice Act, the Forest Service agreed to pay $75,000 in legal fees to the first two groups and is negotiating over the latter's demand for $110,660 in legal fees. The money will rob from funds the agency could better use managing the forests. This is nothing unusual. That's the problem....
Fighting Vail's future fires Mother Nature can be quite the arsonist. Maybe next summer, maybe in 50 years, she'll get the urge to burn down much of the White River National Forest and clear out hundreds of miles of beetle-killed pine trees. She historically likes a clean slate, and a big burn is inevitable, said Phil Bowden, a wildland fuels management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. Vail just has to be ready when that happens. This summer, the town and the forest service will continue clearing out dead and dying pine trees surrounding Vail, much like they've done the past three years. The trees shed their needles and branches then fall to the forest floor, contributing to a large and volatile fuel load. The pines, filled with sticky, combustible pitch, make great fuel for wildfires and are dangerous to residents and buildings, especially those on the edge....
Report blames forest supervisors for letting 2006 canyon blaze grow A June fire that led to the voluntary evacuation of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon grew out of control because of errors by fire managers and senior supervisors who let the lightning-caused blaze burn in dangerous conditions, a U.S. Forest Service report says. The Warm Fire ended up charring 59,000 acres on the Kaibab Plateau between June 8 and July 4, with some of the area scalded so badly the soil was sterilized. The report, obtained this week by the Arizona Daily Sun newspaper, blames supervisors and Kaibab National Forest District Ranger Jill Leonard for a series of mistakes, including inaction when the fire flared out of control, making decisions on the fly and allowing the fire to burn unfought during the peak Arizona fire season. A spokeswoman for the Forest Service said Saturday that only a few of the report's findings relate specifically to Leonard, who now is assigned to the Washington D.C. headquarters, and that blaming her alone would be simplistic....
Logging halted on 72,000 acres in Oregon Logging in spotted owl habitat is coming to a halt on 72,000 acres of federal lands in Western Oregon until government biologists come up with a better scientific basis to saying that cutting the trees will not harm the threatened species. Based on an appeals court ruling last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week pulled five documents known as biological opinions that authorized the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to log in owl habitat stretching from Mount Hood to the California border, Fish and Wildlife spokesman Phil Carroll said Friday. The biological opinions gave BLM and the Forest Service authority to kill some spotted owls in the course of logging on the Mount Hood, Willamette and Rogue River-Siskiyou national forests and the Salem, Eugene, Roseburg and Medford districts of BLM and the Columbia River gorge national Scenic Area, Fish and Wildlife spokesman Phil Carroll said Friday. The ruling pertained to a challenge of logging on BLM's Medford District, but the same reasoning was used in all five documents, which are also being challenged in court. Carroll said those were withdrawn in expectation they would be struck down as well....
Bi-partisan effort to remove livestock manure from Superfund Back in 1980 Congress passed the “Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act” (CERCLA - also knows as the Superfund Law) to address the growing concerns about the need to clean up uncontrolled, abandoned hazardous waste sites and to address future releases of hazardous substances into the environment. Lately some environmentalists have been demanding, with some support from isolated judicial cases, that livestock manure should be classified as a hazardous waste and thus come under the Superfund Law. To counteract this move, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation on March 8 that would clarify the Superfund Law that has unintentionally impacted America's farmers and ranchers. The bipartisan “Agricultural Protection and Prosperity Act of 2007” would clarify that livestock manure is not classified as a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant under CERCLA. Those introducing the legislation contend that if normal animal manure is found to be a hazardous substance under the Superfund Law, then virtually every farm operation in the country could be potentially exposed to liabilities and penalties under the Super-fund Law, and this is an outcome that Congress never intended....
Horse-meat export fight resumes in Texas After hearing of reports several years ago that 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand had been slaughtered for food in Japan, legions of American horse lovers were outraged. The famed racehorse's death also fanned a battle that was renewed this month in the Texas Legislature and could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Not everyone in Texas is opposed to killing horses for food. State Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, has introduced a bill legalizing the export of horse meat from Texas for consumption in countries such as France and Belgium, where it is considered a delicacy. Miller's filing came after a March 6 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not to reconsider its own January ruling in which it upheld a 1949 Texas law banning the slaughter of horses in the state for human consumption anywhere....
Artful cowboys (and girls) The Wild West comes to St. Petersburg in two exhibitions opening Friday at the Arts Center. "The Wild Bunch: Cowboys in Contemporary Art" will feature works by contemporary artists that use the iconography of the cowboy in fresh and unexpected ways. The exhibition includes installations and video work as well as paintings and sculptures by artists including Jenny Rogers, Jennifer Zackin, James Michaels, Gordon McConnell, Fort Guerin, William Schenk, David Rathman and Bernard Williams. "Cracker Country: Florida's Cowboy Culture" features works by three local photographers, Beth Reynolds, Carlton Ward Jr. and Rachel Turner, who have documented some aspect of the Florida Cracker cowboy culture....
The cowboy way They just don't make 'em like they used to. That's what Don Walker would say about the machines used to make the kind of cowboy boots ranchers and cattle hands wear day in and day out, swearing they'd never put anything else on their feet. "It's made out of iron," Walker said as he described his prized machine at the 10th annual Cedar City Cowboy Gathering on Friday. "I don't even think you can find one of these anymore." Much like the way his sturdy machine was made, Walker said his boot-making profession is also a dying tradition. But he wasn't alone in his attempt to promote his disappearing craft. Many other vendors tried their best to preserve the Old West during the Cowboy Gathering by selling rare, handmade items you simply wouldn't see in a modern retail store. "It's funny," Walker said. "Our society just doesn't understand custom anymore." Like the bootmaker from Spring City, Dick Levitz, of Cedar City, said he also struggles to earn a living building saddles from scratch. But it isn't about the money, he said. He just likes doing what he does even though the demand for his services isn't what it used to be....
It's All Trew: Coffee history from the West Presenting the history of coffee since its beginnings as a wild berry would require pages. Coffee history in the Great American West could not be told without using the word "Arbuckles," which just might be the most famous name in the West. Before Arbuckles came along, coffee could only be made by roasting raw coffee beans, grinding by some method and then boiling in water. John Arbuckle changed this process. First, he roasted raw beans professionally, coated them with a mixture of eggs and sugar, sealing in the flavor, then placed the beans into paper packages. Customers merely ground the beans and boiled the brew. At first the coated beans came in a sack, and later the already-ground beans were packaged. The Arbuckle Company initiated many new ideas for sales including offering prizes, coupons for trade and even placing "hard rock candy" into the wooden cases holding packages of coffee. None of these incentives quite matched that of a cowboy acquiring the paper sack in which the coffee came packed. At that time, toilet paper was unheard of on roundups and trail drives. The actual taste of country coffee varied because of the many different types of water used....
Sunday, March 18, 2007
ARE YOU AN ELK HUNTER?
DO YOU TAKE YOUR FAMILY INTO THE GILA?
Mexican Wolves are decimating the Elk herd in the Gila National Forest!
It is not safe to take pets into the Gila!
Everyone must exercise caution and care when visiting the Gila!
BEWARE OF WOLVES IN THE GILA!!!!
The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is managing all wildlife in the Gila for the benefit of the wolves.
The elk and deer in the Gila belong to the people of the State of New Mexico. The NM Department of Game and Fish and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are sacrificing the people’s large game animals for the wolves.
Livestock, horses and pets are also being attacked by wolves. One dog was attacked by a wolf only yards from the front porch of a home in the Gila in the presence of an 8 year old girl.
The New Mexico State Game Commission meets in Las Cruces on March 28.
Sportsmen Must Unite
Attend an important meeting for Sportsmen who hunt the Gila!
Learn the true impact of the Mexican Wolf in the Gila!
7:00 PM
Thursday, March 22
Las Cruces Elks Lodge No. 1119
3000 Elks Drive
Las Cruces, NM
Byron Delk – 640-3185 Joe Delk – 644-3082
Joe Delk
Field Representative
Paragon Foundation
H 505-524-1233
C 505-644-3082
DO YOU TAKE YOUR FAMILY INTO THE GILA?
Mexican Wolves are decimating the Elk herd in the Gila National Forest!
It is not safe to take pets into the Gila!
Everyone must exercise caution and care when visiting the Gila!
BEWARE OF WOLVES IN THE GILA!!!!
The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is managing all wildlife in the Gila for the benefit of the wolves.
The elk and deer in the Gila belong to the people of the State of New Mexico. The NM Department of Game and Fish and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are sacrificing the people’s large game animals for the wolves.
Livestock, horses and pets are also being attacked by wolves. One dog was attacked by a wolf only yards from the front porch of a home in the Gila in the presence of an 8 year old girl.
The New Mexico State Game Commission meets in Las Cruces on March 28.
Sportsmen Must Unite
Attend an important meeting for Sportsmen who hunt the Gila!
Learn the true impact of the Mexican Wolf in the Gila!
7:00 PM
Thursday, March 22
Las Cruces Elks Lodge No. 1119
3000 Elks Drive
Las Cruces, NM
Byron Delk – 640-3185 Joe Delk – 644-3082
Joe Delk
Field Representative
Paragon Foundation
H 505-524-1233
C 505-644-3082
Straw hats and new ropes harken to spring
By Julie Carter
Ranchers, ropers, and pretty girls are all getting ready for spring. Fruit trees are bursting in bloom and yes, everybody I know is sneezing and sniffling with the annual pollen attack.
There are a few other signs of the impending season.
Dan has decided the winter wheat horses are about worn out and yearling cattle are about ready to ship.
His top pasture mounts, Slats and Thin Rind, have been used to doctor cattle, ride and work every day all winter.
It's time to take the cattle to town, get a check, rest the winter horses and get down to the business of summer team roping.
Cue Ball is the professional rope horse on the outfit and is entirely too important to use in regular rotation with the wheat cattle.
Having spent the winter unemployed, he's fat and ready to win everything Dan can enter.
The practice arena has dried out, all potential headers and heelers have been invited to practice sessions and they have shown up in every state of readiness.
Some have new ropes, a few have new horses and the dedicated spent the winter watching the champs on roping videos in an attempt to absorb some winning skills while running the remote control from the recliner.
Others simply outlasted the cold months by staying in shape with holding up their end of the cold mountain brewery distribution.
When Dan was looking for a new heel horse, Tex, the horse-trading uncle, told him to find a "blown-up" head horse and they would make a heel horse of him.
When Tex went to look at the horse Dan found, he agreed that Dan had done a find job in the "blown-up" department.
It took Dan all winter riding the new horse the 8-miles roundtrip to and from work every day, tying him to a tractor all day (Dan works at an implement dealer) to get to him to quit rearing in the box.
Miles and wet saddle blankets are quite dependable training methods.
Jeff had a little different worry than the other twine-twirlers. Last year he got caught in a bind, a little short of funds, and had to settle for less than the George Strait-special straw hat.
Everybody gave him a hard time all summer long for wearing this hat with a less-than-becoming crease that fit like a box stuck on his head.
Feeling like his buddies were being unjust with their taunts and jeers, he decided he wasn't going to let it happen again this year.
His friend Grady told him the local flea market had a new shipment of straw hats and were just what he needed at the right price.
Grady was impressively familiar with the local flea market.
Why, just last week he had bought a complete set of bowling pins at a wonderful bargain price. He had put them with the shower seat he had bought just the week before for a ticket price too good to be true.
Jeff recalled that last year his hat, the box-fit special, had blown off in the arena during a roping.
Two ropers, making a fast run at a steer, ran over the hat before Jeff could get it picked up. He also recalled that Grady had been one of them.
With this remembrance, Jeff became quite suspicious that Grady might have an ulterior motive to suggesting the flea market bargain straw.
He decided he would not let spring exuberance get him to just throw away his roping money, so he settled for a gimme-cap to start the season.
This is quite possibly the reason team ropers are traditionally not known for their cowboy fashion sense.
Let Spring begin!
A cowboy's last trail
The bright, dancing eyes behind the big, almost comical smile, stuck on the ruddy face of a perennially tanned rancher will never leave my memory. Neither will I forget the soft, attractive features of a city-girl-moved-west, a woman who fell in love with the image of a man astride a horse, working cattle and telling wild tales, a woman who brought such images to life in her quest for happiness.
I suppose if you analyzed it, it could make your head hurt. He got to Denver once a year in the fall, at shipping time for his cows. He rode in the Rio Grande caboose, just 'cause that's the way it was done. That was back in the days when Denver was a true cow town - the rows of stockyards and meat packing houses located over by the Coliseum. Those were party times, and as a poem more or less says, the days when a "good cowpunch could oil up his insides."
She found his rough life fascinating - the broncs, the wild cows, the mischievous smile and the generations of ranching his family represented in the valley - and it created a romance in her mind that she could not shake. And you have to know that the tender touch of a woman's love, the brush of her soft, blonde hair against his cheek, the pad of her light footsteps through his lonely house, the wetness of her kiss and the sigh of her surrender had to light him up like he was the most important man in the world.
It might have been the whirlwind romance of the area some years ago, something to still be talked about, but routine surgery at a city hospital back home turned into a nightmare for the young woman, leaving her paralyzed on one side. Such rare events are traumatic not only physically, but also mentally, and her recovery required a lengthy residence in the big city, close to her family. It's difficult, especially when the love affair is new and no real commitments have been made, for two people to continue through an illness of such magnitude, particularly with hundreds of miles between them.
But, and as perhaps no one knew, they kept the thread between them alive and didn't let go. It was different afterwards, to be sure, but two people once touched by the unique vibrancy of a burning passion found it impossible to surrender it to the harshness of reality.
In the miraculous continuation of a conversation put on hold 40 years ago, shortly after this story began, the woman recently confided to an intimate lady friend of mine that the relationship was still on, even in their 80s, and that he called her religiously from the ranch every Sunday morning, although he hadn't called for a while now. "Do you think he's OK?" was the tentative query.
As it sometimes happens, an old friend stopped by to see how he was doing, not so much because he liked him, but more from the fact they both belonged to the old-time ranching fraternity, a group so small anymore as to be almost nonexistent, and hell, you've got to take care of each other, if for no other reason than who else will?
It's not pretty, but old cowboys die kind of like their horses - hard and alone, their cries unheard. Oh, his buddy got him to the clinic, all right, bloody head and empty eyes, and although he lived a couple more days in the hospital, it was, in a sense, a tragedy to move him from the horse pasture in which he fell, for that is where his spirit left him.
She'd give a lot for one more Sunday call, I reckon.
Tony Vagneur sometimes wishes he didn't know stories like this. Read him here every Saturday and send comments to ajv@sopris.net.
By Julie Carter
Ranchers, ropers, and pretty girls are all getting ready for spring. Fruit trees are bursting in bloom and yes, everybody I know is sneezing and sniffling with the annual pollen attack.
There are a few other signs of the impending season.
Dan has decided the winter wheat horses are about worn out and yearling cattle are about ready to ship.
His top pasture mounts, Slats and Thin Rind, have been used to doctor cattle, ride and work every day all winter.
It's time to take the cattle to town, get a check, rest the winter horses and get down to the business of summer team roping.
Cue Ball is the professional rope horse on the outfit and is entirely too important to use in regular rotation with the wheat cattle.
Having spent the winter unemployed, he's fat and ready to win everything Dan can enter.
The practice arena has dried out, all potential headers and heelers have been invited to practice sessions and they have shown up in every state of readiness.
Some have new ropes, a few have new horses and the dedicated spent the winter watching the champs on roping videos in an attempt to absorb some winning skills while running the remote control from the recliner.
Others simply outlasted the cold months by staying in shape with holding up their end of the cold mountain brewery distribution.
When Dan was looking for a new heel horse, Tex, the horse-trading uncle, told him to find a "blown-up" head horse and they would make a heel horse of him.
When Tex went to look at the horse Dan found, he agreed that Dan had done a find job in the "blown-up" department.
It took Dan all winter riding the new horse the 8-miles roundtrip to and from work every day, tying him to a tractor all day (Dan works at an implement dealer) to get to him to quit rearing in the box.
Miles and wet saddle blankets are quite dependable training methods.
Jeff had a little different worry than the other twine-twirlers. Last year he got caught in a bind, a little short of funds, and had to settle for less than the George Strait-special straw hat.
Everybody gave him a hard time all summer long for wearing this hat with a less-than-becoming crease that fit like a box stuck on his head.
Feeling like his buddies were being unjust with their taunts and jeers, he decided he wasn't going to let it happen again this year.
His friend Grady told him the local flea market had a new shipment of straw hats and were just what he needed at the right price.
Grady was impressively familiar with the local flea market.
Why, just last week he had bought a complete set of bowling pins at a wonderful bargain price. He had put them with the shower seat he had bought just the week before for a ticket price too good to be true.
Jeff recalled that last year his hat, the box-fit special, had blown off in the arena during a roping.
Two ropers, making a fast run at a steer, ran over the hat before Jeff could get it picked up. He also recalled that Grady had been one of them.
With this remembrance, Jeff became quite suspicious that Grady might have an ulterior motive to suggesting the flea market bargain straw.
He decided he would not let spring exuberance get him to just throw away his roping money, so he settled for a gimme-cap to start the season.
This is quite possibly the reason team ropers are traditionally not known for their cowboy fashion sense.
Let Spring begin!
A cowboy's last trail
The bright, dancing eyes behind the big, almost comical smile, stuck on the ruddy face of a perennially tanned rancher will never leave my memory. Neither will I forget the soft, attractive features of a city-girl-moved-west, a woman who fell in love with the image of a man astride a horse, working cattle and telling wild tales, a woman who brought such images to life in her quest for happiness.
I suppose if you analyzed it, it could make your head hurt. He got to Denver once a year in the fall, at shipping time for his cows. He rode in the Rio Grande caboose, just 'cause that's the way it was done. That was back in the days when Denver was a true cow town - the rows of stockyards and meat packing houses located over by the Coliseum. Those were party times, and as a poem more or less says, the days when a "good cowpunch could oil up his insides."
She found his rough life fascinating - the broncs, the wild cows, the mischievous smile and the generations of ranching his family represented in the valley - and it created a romance in her mind that she could not shake. And you have to know that the tender touch of a woman's love, the brush of her soft, blonde hair against his cheek, the pad of her light footsteps through his lonely house, the wetness of her kiss and the sigh of her surrender had to light him up like he was the most important man in the world.
It might have been the whirlwind romance of the area some years ago, something to still be talked about, but routine surgery at a city hospital back home turned into a nightmare for the young woman, leaving her paralyzed on one side. Such rare events are traumatic not only physically, but also mentally, and her recovery required a lengthy residence in the big city, close to her family. It's difficult, especially when the love affair is new and no real commitments have been made, for two people to continue through an illness of such magnitude, particularly with hundreds of miles between them.
But, and as perhaps no one knew, they kept the thread between them alive and didn't let go. It was different afterwards, to be sure, but two people once touched by the unique vibrancy of a burning passion found it impossible to surrender it to the harshness of reality.
In the miraculous continuation of a conversation put on hold 40 years ago, shortly after this story began, the woman recently confided to an intimate lady friend of mine that the relationship was still on, even in their 80s, and that he called her religiously from the ranch every Sunday morning, although he hadn't called for a while now. "Do you think he's OK?" was the tentative query.
As it sometimes happens, an old friend stopped by to see how he was doing, not so much because he liked him, but more from the fact they both belonged to the old-time ranching fraternity, a group so small anymore as to be almost nonexistent, and hell, you've got to take care of each other, if for no other reason than who else will?
It's not pretty, but old cowboys die kind of like their horses - hard and alone, their cries unheard. Oh, his buddy got him to the clinic, all right, bloody head and empty eyes, and although he lived a couple more days in the hospital, it was, in a sense, a tragedy to move him from the horse pasture in which he fell, for that is where his spirit left him.
She'd give a lot for one more Sunday call, I reckon.
Tony Vagneur sometimes wishes he didn't know stories like this. Read him here every Saturday and send comments to ajv@sopris.net.
OPINION/COMMENTARY
New Army Corps Rule Fails To Give Relief To Property Owners
In an effort to discourage developers from building on large areas of wetland by offering them waivers to build on smaller ones without environmental reviews, the Army Corps of Engineers issued new construction rules last week that have upset environmentalists and developers alike. According to H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), this was a missed opportunity to protect property owners and may lead to a slew of law suits. "Undoubtedly this was an attempt to comply with Court rulings striking down their previous interpretation of its power to protect wetlands, without unduly angering the powerful environmental lobby," said Burnett. "Yet environmentalists are likely to portray this as a rolling back on environmental protections, as they do with any change in the status quo that doesn't increase government's control over private property." Burnett predicts that "property owners will wind up back in court arguing that the new rules illegally restrict the lawful development of their property in areas that in fact have little or no connection to navigable waterways as traditionally understood. This won't help the environment but it will continue to hamper economic progress - only lawyers win with these new construction rules."....
PRIUS OUTDOES HUMMER IN ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
The Toyota Prius, the flagship car for the environmentally conscious, is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America, and takes more combined energy to produce than a Hummer, says the Recorder.
Consider:
* The nickel contained in the Prius' battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers.
* Dubbed the Superstack, the factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist's nightmare.
* Acid rain around the area was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside, according to Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin.
* After leaving the plant, the nickel travels to Europe, China, Japan and United States, a hardly environmentally sound round the world trip for a single battery.
But that isn't even the worst part, says the Record. According to a study by CNW Marketing, the total combined energy to produce a Prius (consisting of electrical, fuel, transportation, materials and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime), is greater than what it takes to produce a Hummer:
* The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles -- the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
* The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.
* That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use almost 50 percent less combined energy doing it.
Source: Chris Demorro, "Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage," The Recorder, March 7, 2007.
For text:http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188
Our Green ICE Age
All environmentalists should be singing the praises of the internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of damning it for polluting the environment. The environmental advantages of the internal combustion engine have been obvious for a long time. But a recent story in the British newspaper, "The Independent," on the methane from livestock flatulence makes the advantages of internal combustion even more obvious. According to "The Independent," a recent study by the Food and Agricultural Organization finds that "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together." Global warming became a concern, however, long after the internal combustion engine began improving the environment. In 1900 most of the horsepower we had available really was horse power -- or mule power, or oxen power. As reliance on the internal combustion engine increased in the early 1900s, we began replacing the emissions that came out of the tailpipes of animals with those coming out of the tailpipes of cars and trucks. And the latter emissions were a lot less harmful than the former. Consider the effects of horse emissions in our towns and cities at the beginning of the last century. The air and water pollution from horse manure contributed to a death rate far greater than that generated by the pollution from cars and trucks. No one denies that photochemical smog from gas powered vehicles is a health risk, but it is not nearly the health risk of cholera, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, diphtheria and malaria. These diseases killed tens of thousands of Americans in the early 20-century and these deaths began to decline as cars and trucks replaced horses and wagons. And the improvements in the environment weren't limited to just the towns and cities. Before gasoline power arrived, beasts of burden were polluting agricultural communities along with meat producing animals such as cows, chickens and pigs. By eliminating horses, mules and oxen on farms, tractors and other types of gas-powered farm machinery greatly reduced the problem of animal waste that environmentalists, with justification, still complain about. This also eliminated the need to grow the food required by millions of farm animals. It has been estimated that it took about 93 million acres of land in 1900 to grow the food to fuel the farm animals that were soon replaced by motorized farm machinery. Much of that land has now gone back to woodlands....
Do as I say, not as I spew
Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was billed as "a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it." But right after the movie won an Oscar for best documentary, America learned that Gore's crusade ends at his front door. A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, released a press release that showed the Gores spent $30,000 a year on energy for their suburban Nashville home -- and burned 221,000 kilowatt-hours last year, or 20 times the national average. The reaction of Gore's spokesperson is instructive. Kalee Kreider told ABC News' Jake Tapper, "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue, so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent." Kreider is right, in a way. Gore is the most effective global-warming advocate in America. Yet somehow Gore has little problem doing a lot of the very thing he tells the rest of the country not to do -- that is, burning more energy than is necessary. The message comes across loud and clear: The Gores are rich, and rich people are going to burn a lot of energy. They won't let their belief in global warming crimp their lifestyle....
The Left-Wing Echo Chamber
Death threats. Harassing phone calls. Threatening e-mails. Such was a day in the life of Drew Johnson a few weeks ago. His crime? Johnson is president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free-market think tank that broke one of the juiciest stories of 2007. A day after the Academy Awards, on Feb. 26, Johnson’s organization reported details of Al Gore’s enormous utility bill. The former vice president had consumed nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in a single year -- more than 20 times the national average. The story skyrocketed to the top headline on the Drudge Report, sending tens of thousands of visitors to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s Web site. With Gore facing charges of hypocrisy just a day after winning an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth," the news traveled fast. Unfortunately for Johnson, it meant enduring days of attacks from liberals -- even though the facts of the story came directly from public records. Last week he visited Washington, D.C., to share his story. Johnson told a group of conservative bloggers at The Heritage Foundation that he heard from hundreds of angry callers, many of whom used profane language. The research center’s vice president, whose phone number was listed on the Web page, eventually had to change her number when the attacks became so persistent and threatening. The phone blitz was only one avenue liberals used to intimidate. Johnson said his organization received thousands of e-mails, the vast majority of them negative and hate-filled. Shortly after the story made headlines, popular liberal blogs Daily Kos and Huffington Post, laid out their plan of attack....
ETHANOL HYPOCRITES
Once the darling energy source of the political left, we now hear how sugar production for ethanol is trashing the otherwise forgotten rain forest and adds to global warming. Others are blaming ethanol for everything from poverty to floods. However, the argument doesn't get the facts right, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).
Consider:
* Brazil is not growing sugar for ethanol production on rain forest land but in the southern grasslands, making environmentalists' renewed interest in deforestation irrelevant.
* On the grasslands, ethanol production has barely started; Brazil's entire agricultural production is done on only 8 percent of the nation's arable land.
Environmentalists, however, are trying to sell Brazil as one big rain forest in need of "saving" instead of a diverse, rapidly industrializing country whose development is critical to conservation:
* Poverty, not development, is the biggest danger to rain forests, as UC Berkeley professor emeritus Jack Hollander found in a study.
* As Brazil industrialized in 2005, it reforested 553,000 hectares of rain forest, and last year it reduced Amazon deforestation by 11 percent.
* Meanwhile, an even bigger ethanol producer, the United States, leads the world in reforestation, according to Jesse H. Ausubel, director of Rockefeller University's program for the human environment.
Ethanol is no panacea and unlikely to be more than 10 percent of energy production, but it's a viable alternative, says IBD. If President Bush can enrage environmentalists by developing the ethanol they once championed, it is unlikely that any alternative (in the hands of Bush that is) will satisfy them. They simply aren't serious.
Source: Editorial, "Ethanol Hypocrites," Investor's Business Daily, March 9, 2007.
For text:http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258250203727155
Global Warming Expedition Called Off When Hiker Gets Frost Bite
A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment. "Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition. On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week....hat tip to Allen Estrin
New Army Corps Rule Fails To Give Relief To Property Owners
In an effort to discourage developers from building on large areas of wetland by offering them waivers to build on smaller ones without environmental reviews, the Army Corps of Engineers issued new construction rules last week that have upset environmentalists and developers alike. According to H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), this was a missed opportunity to protect property owners and may lead to a slew of law suits. "Undoubtedly this was an attempt to comply with Court rulings striking down their previous interpretation of its power to protect wetlands, without unduly angering the powerful environmental lobby," said Burnett. "Yet environmentalists are likely to portray this as a rolling back on environmental protections, as they do with any change in the status quo that doesn't increase government's control over private property." Burnett predicts that "property owners will wind up back in court arguing that the new rules illegally restrict the lawful development of their property in areas that in fact have little or no connection to navigable waterways as traditionally understood. This won't help the environment but it will continue to hamper economic progress - only lawyers win with these new construction rules."....
PRIUS OUTDOES HUMMER IN ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
The Toyota Prius, the flagship car for the environmentally conscious, is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America, and takes more combined energy to produce than a Hummer, says the Recorder.
Consider:
* The nickel contained in the Prius' battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers.
* Dubbed the Superstack, the factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist's nightmare.
* Acid rain around the area was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside, according to Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin.
* After leaving the plant, the nickel travels to Europe, China, Japan and United States, a hardly environmentally sound round the world trip for a single battery.
But that isn't even the worst part, says the Record. According to a study by CNW Marketing, the total combined energy to produce a Prius (consisting of electrical, fuel, transportation, materials and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime), is greater than what it takes to produce a Hummer:
* The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles -- the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
* The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.
* That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use almost 50 percent less combined energy doing it.
Source: Chris Demorro, "Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage," The Recorder, March 7, 2007.
For text:http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188
Our Green ICE Age
All environmentalists should be singing the praises of the internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of damning it for polluting the environment. The environmental advantages of the internal combustion engine have been obvious for a long time. But a recent story in the British newspaper, "The Independent," on the methane from livestock flatulence makes the advantages of internal combustion even more obvious. According to "The Independent," a recent study by the Food and Agricultural Organization finds that "livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together." Global warming became a concern, however, long after the internal combustion engine began improving the environment. In 1900 most of the horsepower we had available really was horse power -- or mule power, or oxen power. As reliance on the internal combustion engine increased in the early 1900s, we began replacing the emissions that came out of the tailpipes of animals with those coming out of the tailpipes of cars and trucks. And the latter emissions were a lot less harmful than the former. Consider the effects of horse emissions in our towns and cities at the beginning of the last century. The air and water pollution from horse manure contributed to a death rate far greater than that generated by the pollution from cars and trucks. No one denies that photochemical smog from gas powered vehicles is a health risk, but it is not nearly the health risk of cholera, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, diphtheria and malaria. These diseases killed tens of thousands of Americans in the early 20-century and these deaths began to decline as cars and trucks replaced horses and wagons. And the improvements in the environment weren't limited to just the towns and cities. Before gasoline power arrived, beasts of burden were polluting agricultural communities along with meat producing animals such as cows, chickens and pigs. By eliminating horses, mules and oxen on farms, tractors and other types of gas-powered farm machinery greatly reduced the problem of animal waste that environmentalists, with justification, still complain about. This also eliminated the need to grow the food required by millions of farm animals. It has been estimated that it took about 93 million acres of land in 1900 to grow the food to fuel the farm animals that were soon replaced by motorized farm machinery. Much of that land has now gone back to woodlands....
Do as I say, not as I spew
Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was billed as "a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it." But right after the movie won an Oscar for best documentary, America learned that Gore's crusade ends at his front door. A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, released a press release that showed the Gores spent $30,000 a year on energy for their suburban Nashville home -- and burned 221,000 kilowatt-hours last year, or 20 times the national average. The reaction of Gore's spokesperson is instructive. Kalee Kreider told ABC News' Jake Tapper, "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue, so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent." Kreider is right, in a way. Gore is the most effective global-warming advocate in America. Yet somehow Gore has little problem doing a lot of the very thing he tells the rest of the country not to do -- that is, burning more energy than is necessary. The message comes across loud and clear: The Gores are rich, and rich people are going to burn a lot of energy. They won't let their belief in global warming crimp their lifestyle....
The Left-Wing Echo Chamber
Death threats. Harassing phone calls. Threatening e-mails. Such was a day in the life of Drew Johnson a few weeks ago. His crime? Johnson is president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free-market think tank that broke one of the juiciest stories of 2007. A day after the Academy Awards, on Feb. 26, Johnson’s organization reported details of Al Gore’s enormous utility bill. The former vice president had consumed nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in a single year -- more than 20 times the national average. The story skyrocketed to the top headline on the Drudge Report, sending tens of thousands of visitors to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s Web site. With Gore facing charges of hypocrisy just a day after winning an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth," the news traveled fast. Unfortunately for Johnson, it meant enduring days of attacks from liberals -- even though the facts of the story came directly from public records. Last week he visited Washington, D.C., to share his story. Johnson told a group of conservative bloggers at The Heritage Foundation that he heard from hundreds of angry callers, many of whom used profane language. The research center’s vice president, whose phone number was listed on the Web page, eventually had to change her number when the attacks became so persistent and threatening. The phone blitz was only one avenue liberals used to intimidate. Johnson said his organization received thousands of e-mails, the vast majority of them negative and hate-filled. Shortly after the story made headlines, popular liberal blogs Daily Kos and Huffington Post, laid out their plan of attack....
ETHANOL HYPOCRITES
Once the darling energy source of the political left, we now hear how sugar production for ethanol is trashing the otherwise forgotten rain forest and adds to global warming. Others are blaming ethanol for everything from poverty to floods. However, the argument doesn't get the facts right, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).
Consider:
* Brazil is not growing sugar for ethanol production on rain forest land but in the southern grasslands, making environmentalists' renewed interest in deforestation irrelevant.
* On the grasslands, ethanol production has barely started; Brazil's entire agricultural production is done on only 8 percent of the nation's arable land.
Environmentalists, however, are trying to sell Brazil as one big rain forest in need of "saving" instead of a diverse, rapidly industrializing country whose development is critical to conservation:
* Poverty, not development, is the biggest danger to rain forests, as UC Berkeley professor emeritus Jack Hollander found in a study.
* As Brazil industrialized in 2005, it reforested 553,000 hectares of rain forest, and last year it reduced Amazon deforestation by 11 percent.
* Meanwhile, an even bigger ethanol producer, the United States, leads the world in reforestation, according to Jesse H. Ausubel, director of Rockefeller University's program for the human environment.
Ethanol is no panacea and unlikely to be more than 10 percent of energy production, but it's a viable alternative, says IBD. If President Bush can enrage environmentalists by developing the ethanol they once championed, it is unlikely that any alternative (in the hands of Bush that is) will satisfy them. They simply aren't serious.
Source: Editorial, "Ethanol Hypocrites," Investor's Business Daily, March 9, 2007.
For text:http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=258250203727155
Global Warming Expedition Called Off When Hiker Gets Frost Bite
A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment. "Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition. On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week....hat tip to Allen Estrin
FLE
Amid Concerns, FBI Lapses Went On
FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period when bureau lawyers and managers were expressing escalating concerns about the practice, according to senior FBI and Justice Department officials and documents. FBI lawyers raised the concerns beginning in late October 2004 but did not closely scrutinize the practice until last year, FBI officials acknowledged. They also did not understand the scope of the problem until the Justice Department launched an investigation, FBI officials said. Under pressure to provide a stronger legal footing, counterterrorism agents last year wrote new letters to phone companies demanding the information the bureau already possessed. At least one senior FBI headquarters official -- whom the bureau declined to name -- signed these "national security letters" without including the required proof that the letters were linked to FBI counterterrorism or espionage investigations, an FBI official said. The flawed procedures involved the use of emergency demands for records, called "exigent circumstance" letters, which contained false or undocumented claims. They also included national security letters that were issued without FBI rules being followed. Both types of request were served on three phone companies....
Treasury casts a wide net under Patriot Act
Under a little-noticed provision in the USA Patriot Act, the Treasury Department has ordered severe restrictions against foreign banks or countries for reasons beyond the stated purpose of the law and without producing evidence. Section 311 of the 2001 Patriot Act was drafted to halt terrorist financing and money laundering, but the Bush administration has used it against an alleged source of terrorist financing - a bank in Syria - only once. The Treasury has invoked it more often to punish alleged human-rights abuses or offshore banking havens. Although Congress has yet to examine the Treasury's use of Section 311, the provision is likely to add to the controversy over other sweeping powers the executive branch of government acquired under the Patriot Act. According to a recent audit, the FBI used the act illegally to obtain personal information about U.S. citizens, and the administration has agreed to abandon a provision that it used to replace eight U.S. attorneys for what Democrats charge were partisan political reasons. Supporters view Section 311 as a diplomatic sledgehammer that gets results. Critics - many of whom refused to speak on the record, saying they feared retribution - complain that the provision denies suspects due process and presumes that the accused are guilty rather than innocent. Through Section 311, the Treasury doesn't have to tell accused banks or countries what threat they allegedly pose to the U.S. financial system, and the Treasury has the power to act as both prosecutor and judge....
Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews. Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work. It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general. Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales's role in authorizing the eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, as well as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general. Both the White House and Gonzales declined comment on two issues -- whether Gonzales informed Bush that his own conduct was about to be scrutinized, and whether he urged the president to close down the investigation, which had been requested by Democratic members of Congress. Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said....
Major Second Amendment Decision
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (commonly referred to as the "D.C. Circuit") today (Friday, March 9) issued a very important Second Amendment decision broadly upholding the right of individuals to possess and use firearms, in particular handguns, for self-defense in the home. The case involved a challenge, brought by six residents of the District of Columbia, to the District's handgun laws. These laws largely ban the private ownership of handguns in D.C. Even where such ownership is permitted (e.g., by retired D.C. police officers), the laws impose onerous restrictions on the use of such handguns, including a requirement that all firearms be kept unloaded and unassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device. (See Decision at 4.) The plaintiffs wanted to possess "functional firearms" in their homes for purposes of self-defense. The D.C. guns laws, obviously, frustrated these perfectly reasonable aims. The case was heard by a three-judge panel, composed of Laurence Silberman (appointed by President Reagan in 1985), Thomas Griffith (appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005), and Karen LeCraft Henderson (appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990). Judge Silberman and Judge Griffith concluded (in an opinion written by Judge Silberman, in classic originalist style) that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to "keep and bear arms" (as opposed to merely a collective right related to the maintenance of state militias); that handguns are among the types of "arms" protected by the Second Amendment; and that the District's handgun laws violate the Second Amendment insofar as they prohibit an individual from owning and using a handgun for self-defense in the home. Judge Henderson dissented from the decision. This is only the second time a federal appellate court has decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms. The Fifth Circuit also has reached this result. In contrast, the First, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits all have concluded that the Second Amendment only protects a collective right. (See Decision at 16.) The Second Circuit (which covers New York, Connecticut, and Vermont) still has not addressed the issue....
Amid Concerns, FBI Lapses Went On
FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period when bureau lawyers and managers were expressing escalating concerns about the practice, according to senior FBI and Justice Department officials and documents. FBI lawyers raised the concerns beginning in late October 2004 but did not closely scrutinize the practice until last year, FBI officials acknowledged. They also did not understand the scope of the problem until the Justice Department launched an investigation, FBI officials said. Under pressure to provide a stronger legal footing, counterterrorism agents last year wrote new letters to phone companies demanding the information the bureau already possessed. At least one senior FBI headquarters official -- whom the bureau declined to name -- signed these "national security letters" without including the required proof that the letters were linked to FBI counterterrorism or espionage investigations, an FBI official said. The flawed procedures involved the use of emergency demands for records, called "exigent circumstance" letters, which contained false or undocumented claims. They also included national security letters that were issued without FBI rules being followed. Both types of request were served on three phone companies....
Treasury casts a wide net under Patriot Act
Under a little-noticed provision in the USA Patriot Act, the Treasury Department has ordered severe restrictions against foreign banks or countries for reasons beyond the stated purpose of the law and without producing evidence. Section 311 of the 2001 Patriot Act was drafted to halt terrorist financing and money laundering, but the Bush administration has used it against an alleged source of terrorist financing - a bank in Syria - only once. The Treasury has invoked it more often to punish alleged human-rights abuses or offshore banking havens. Although Congress has yet to examine the Treasury's use of Section 311, the provision is likely to add to the controversy over other sweeping powers the executive branch of government acquired under the Patriot Act. According to a recent audit, the FBI used the act illegally to obtain personal information about U.S. citizens, and the administration has agreed to abandon a provision that it used to replace eight U.S. attorneys for what Democrats charge were partisan political reasons. Supporters view Section 311 as a diplomatic sledgehammer that gets results. Critics - many of whom refused to speak on the record, saying they feared retribution - complain that the provision denies suspects due process and presumes that the accused are guilty rather than innocent. Through Section 311, the Treasury doesn't have to tell accused banks or countries what threat they allegedly pose to the U.S. financial system, and the Treasury has the power to act as both prosecutor and judge....
Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews. Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work. It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general. Sources familiar with the halted inquiry said that if the probe had been allowed to continue, it would have examined Gonzales's role in authorizing the eavesdropping program while he was White House counsel, as well as his subsequent oversight of the program as attorney general. Both the White House and Gonzales declined comment on two issues -- whether Gonzales informed Bush that his own conduct was about to be scrutinized, and whether he urged the president to close down the investigation, which had been requested by Democratic members of Congress. Current and former Justice Department officials, as well as experts in legal ethics, question the propriety of Gonzales's continuing to advise Bush about the investigation after learning that it might examine his own actions. The attorney general, they say, was remiss if he did not disclose that information to the president. But if Gonzales did inform Bush about the possibility and the president responded by stymieing the probe, that would raise even more-serious questions as to whether Bush acted to protect Gonzales, they said....
Major Second Amendment Decision
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (commonly referred to as the "D.C. Circuit") today (Friday, March 9) issued a very important Second Amendment decision broadly upholding the right of individuals to possess and use firearms, in particular handguns, for self-defense in the home. The case involved a challenge, brought by six residents of the District of Columbia, to the District's handgun laws. These laws largely ban the private ownership of handguns in D.C. Even where such ownership is permitted (e.g., by retired D.C. police officers), the laws impose onerous restrictions on the use of such handguns, including a requirement that all firearms be kept unloaded and unassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device. (See Decision at 4.) The plaintiffs wanted to possess "functional firearms" in their homes for purposes of self-defense. The D.C. guns laws, obviously, frustrated these perfectly reasonable aims. The case was heard by a three-judge panel, composed of Laurence Silberman (appointed by President Reagan in 1985), Thomas Griffith (appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005), and Karen LeCraft Henderson (appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990). Judge Silberman and Judge Griffith concluded (in an opinion written by Judge Silberman, in classic originalist style) that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to "keep and bear arms" (as opposed to merely a collective right related to the maintenance of state militias); that handguns are among the types of "arms" protected by the Second Amendment; and that the District's handgun laws violate the Second Amendment insofar as they prohibit an individual from owning and using a handgun for self-defense in the home. Judge Henderson dissented from the decision. This is only the second time a federal appellate court has decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms. The Fifth Circuit also has reached this result. In contrast, the First, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits all have concluded that the Second Amendment only protects a collective right. (See Decision at 16.) The Second Circuit (which covers New York, Connecticut, and Vermont) still has not addressed the issue....
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