Property Rights Group Asks Members to Fight Crapo's Owyhee Bill A national private property rights group is urging its members to "deluge" Republican Sen. Mike Crapo's office with calls and e-mails asking him to back off of the Senate bill that would protect wilderness and public land ranchers in Owyhee County. But Fred Grant, president of another national private property group and one of the leaders of the collaborative group that negotiated Crapo's bill, says the American Land Rights Association's claims that Crapo has sold out private property rights "is not right or truthful." The association sent out an alert Monday urging its members to target Crapo for his efforts to gain votes for the Omnibus Public Lands Bill, a collection of 150 bills, including more than a half-dozen wilderness measures to protect more than 900,000 acres of wild land in Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, Virginia and West Virginia. The lands group calls the omnibus bill a land grab and focused its opposition on the provision codifying the National Landscape Conservation System, 26 million acres of lands with special protection, including national monuments, managed by the Bureau of Land Management. "It will add dozens of new National Heritage Areas and Wilderness Areas that will eventually be a land-use control noose around the necks of local people and rural America," the lands group said in its alert. "For eight years, the ranchers and land owners in Owyhee County, many of whom have fought a lonely fight through the years, without noticeable support from the private property organizations now attacking Sen. Crapo, have worked to craft a bill that will add private land to the tax base of the county, protect their ranching rights and gain the largest comparable release of wilderness study area acres ever seen in any bill to reach a vote," Grant said....

Dorgan says Forest Service to scrub grassbank plan Sen. Byron Dorgan says the chief of the U.S. Forest Service has assured him the agency will scrub plans to manage a scenic badlands ranch in western North Dakota as a forage reserve without traditional grazing. Dorgan said Wednesday that he spoke with Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell, who told him that grazing rights on the Billings County land would continue. The Forest Service proposed last month that the 5,200-acre ranch and 18,000 acres of nearby federal grasslands be managed as a "grassbank" for area ranchers to use during times of drought, grass fires or when their own ranch lands need a rest. The Forest Service's Dakota Prairie Grasslands supervisor, Dave Pieper, said Wednesday that the agency will continue to take public comment on its grassbank plan until Nov. 24. He said he had not been ordered by agency bosses to halt the plan. "We're going to follow the law," Pieper said. "We are moving forward with the public process. It's just a proposal at this stage."....

Hunter survives bear attack after days of waiting for help t's a story of survival you just have to hear to believe. A bear attack in Kodiak left a hunter severely injured as he waited days for help to arrive. Matthew Sutton traveled all the way from Montana to Kodiak Island for a deer hunting trip, where it was on that trip he was mauled by a bear. Now he's finally out of the hospital and up on his feet. It started out as the trip of a lifetime. 32-year old Sutton and his buddy Bill Bush flew into Viekoda Bay in Kodiak for a deer-hunting trip. Matthew got one and was dragging back to camp, when a brown bear sow and her two cubs ambushed and attacked him. Sutton recalled, "At one point the bear had his paw on my chest and I could look up at it just me to you away [about 3 feet away] it was very terrifying, and I thought to myself, really this is it?" The bears were in fact after the deer carcass, but they took a few bites out of Sutton as well. One of the bears attacked him repeatedly in his belly, legs, arms, neck, and face. It attacked until he stayed on the ground and yelled to his friend who couldn't get there in time. So remote there were no cell phones, no transportation, no nothing. The two waited three days after the attack, with Matthew bleeding through his makeshift bandages for help to arrive....

"Lucky Billy": A grown-up profile of Billy the Kid There seem to be two ways to write a historical novel. One is to lay out all the facts before the reader, with a glossary, a guide to the book's dramatis personae, a chronology of the period's watershed events and other devices to help place the reader comfortably in the story's context. The other is to drop the reader into the midst of unfamiliar surroundings and let him experience them as their inhabitants experienced them — unpredictably, with the ultimate outcome unknown. John Vernon ("Peter Doyle," "The Last Canyon") adopts Method No. 2 in his new novel about Billy the Kid. He throws you in among a welter of changing names and shifting alliances as he plays with chronology and alternates point-of-view. From his complex layers of narrative, startling landscapes emerge — and so do startling characters. "Lucky Billy" is, among other things, a tale of free enterprise run amok. Set mostly in New Mexico in the late 1870s and early 1880s, it tells of a troubled youngster's entanglement in the Lincoln County War of 1878 — a small-town conflict between rival merchant-ranchers that escalated into a blood feud. Both trigger-happy sides, convinced they had the law behind them, wound up deputizing themselves and taking out warrants for the others' arrest....

Vilsack possible ag chief? Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack gave up his own long shot presidential bid after just a few months, but he might just win a seat at the table after all. The prominent Iowa Democrat has appeared on almost every published list of possible appointees to be the next U.S. secretary of agriculture under Barack Obama. On Monday, a Washington Post report called him a "near shoo-in." If chosen, Vilsack would continue a long tradition of farm state governors being tapped for the position. Nebraska Republican Gov. Mike Johanns held the post and was succeeded by Ed Schafer, a former North Dakota Republican governor, in October 2007. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said Vilsack would make an excellent choice for the job. "We're facing an energy crisis in our country today that continues to threaten the economy," Nelson said. "Agriculture is going to play a major role in this." Nelson, also a former governor, said Vilsack's experience as a governor and state legislator would give him insight into the challenges faced by the nation's farmers and ranchers....

Gov't wants to change course of forest experiments For more than a decade, the federal government has spent millions of dollars pumping elevated levels of carbon dioxide into small groups of trees to test how forests will respond to global warming in the next 50 years. Some scientists believe they are on the cusp of receiving key results from the time-consuming experiments. The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists to chop down the trees, collect the data and move on to new research. That plan has upset some researchers who have spent years trying to understand how forests may help stave off global warming, and who want to keep the project going for at least a couple of more years. Ronald Neilson, a U.S. Forest Service bio-climatologist in Corvallis, Ore., said the experiments should continue because they still have potential to answer key questions about how rainfall and fertility affect how much carbon a forest will store long-term — essential to understanding how forests may soften the blow of climate change. But the Energy Department, following the advice of a specially convened panel of experts, believes that chopping down the trees and digging up the soil will allow the first real measurements of how much carbon the leaves, branches, trunks and roots have been storing, said J. Michael Kuperberg, a program manager with the agency....

Forest Service Directives Distance Bicycling From Motorized Uses The U.S. Forest Service is taking important steps to differentiate mountain biking from motorized use. Fresh revisions to administrative directives include important new language clarifying bicycling as a non-motorized activity. This comes on the heels of a landmark internal memo on the same topic, announced at the IMBA World Summit in June. With more than 130,000 miles of trails, the Forest Service provides some of the best riding on both coasts, and nearly everywhere in between. "Mountain biking is incredibly popular in national forests and we believe it's appropriate to clarify the distinction between mountain biking and motorized use. Better policies will foster improved partnerships and riding experiences," says IMBA Executive Director Mike Van Abel. For several years, IMBA has asked the Forest Service to further document its mountain biking policies. While most national forests understand bicycling is a quiet, non-motorized activity, a few have implemented rules rendering bicycles akin to motorized travel. IMBA believes the new revisions to the Forest Service Handbook and Manual-the primary basis for control and management of agency programs-represent an important step in standardizing mountain biking management at the field level....

Like their cattle on BLM land, family of ranchers stands firm Don’t let the 1,000-pound weight difference fool you — burrowing desert tortoise and plodding cattle are both big grazers. They both eat tender new shoots of wildflowers and grasses. That’s why advocates for the tortoise say keeping cattle out of officially designated critical tortoise habitat, including parts of the proposed Gold Butte National Conservation Area, is so important. Try telling that to the Bundy family, organic-melon farmers and cattle ranchers who have been grazing herds on federal land in the area since the late 1800s. The Bundys, led by family patriarch Cliven Bundy, have been back and forth – and in and out of court – with the Bureau of Land Management over their cattle for a decade and a half, according to records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center for Biological Diversity. Bundy admits he has cattle roaming free on federal land. But he claims to have forage and access rights to land in the Gold Butte area and own range improvements there. According to BLM records that were part of the request, however, all of Bundy’s rights have been terminated. Bundy said that if the BLM attempts to remove the cattle he will contact the sheriff, and we could have an old-fashioned range war stand-off on our hands....

On Gold Butte, a tug of war between access, protection To get close to the copper-colored rocks of Gold Butte and the 1,000-year-old petroglyphs etched on them, it takes not only four-wheel drive, but a sturdy set of hiking shoes. And that’s the way Gold Butte enthusiasts want to keep it. Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, who visited Gold Butte for the first time in August, introduced legislation in late September to make the back country near Mesquite a national conservation and wilderness area. Her spokesman said the visit to what locals call “the Red Rock of Mesquite” won her over. Republican Congressman Jon Porter’s staffers shopped the proposal around for months to the rural communities near Gold Butte that are part of his district. While they did that, they asked the Nevada Wilderness Project and Friends of Gold Butte to keep private the pitch for a 360,000-acre conservation area that would include 220,000 acres of strictly protected wilderness. Then, after the town advisory board in Bunkerville said it opposed the proposal, Porter’s office abandoned it....

Group appeals Forest Service oil and gas decision Western conservationists want the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider a decision they say opens up tens of thousands of acres to oil and gas development in a northern New Mexico forest. The Santa Fe National Forest amended its land and resource management plan in August to give forest officials more guidelines for dealing with oil and gas exploration and development on forest land that borders the San Juan Basin, one of the largest natural gas fields in the nation. Forest Supervisor Dan Jiron said his decision doesn't authorize any ground-disturbing oil and gas activities, but it spells out stipulations such as prohibiting surface disturbance on steep slopes and in roadless areas that must be followed if the Bureau of Land Management were to issue leases in the area. WildEarth Guardians claims the decision clears the way for the BLM to lease more than 113,000 additional acres of the forest and with any lease comes a right for an oil or gas company to develop that lease....

Federal officers arrest scofflaws by the dozens Federal law-enforcement officers cracked down on scofflaws, rounding up about 60 people in Lake and Marion counties who failed to pay fines or show up in court as directed. "We're just trying to get the word out that we're serious about what happens in the forest," said Officer James Willett of the U.S. Forest Service. The arrestees, including 25 people who live in Lake County, had been charged with a variety of crimes committed on federal lands, including drug possession and mud-bogging. Some offenders had as many as six outstanding tickets, Willett said. Some arrestees immediately paid fines, but others were transported to Ocala, where they faced federal Magistrate Gary R. Jones. Forest Service spokeswoman Heather Callahan said last week's roundup was a joint effort with the U.S. Marshal Service and the Lake and Marion sheriff's offices.

Arizona Game and Fish Department Announces Wolf Reintroduction Near Sedona Arizona In order to meet ongoing Mexican wolf reintroduction project objectives, a pair of wolves will soon be placed in a temporary holding pen in preparation for their release in eastern Arizona. Arizona Game and Fish Department officials say the wolves will be moved to the pen site, located near Middle Mountain on the Apache National Forest in northern Greenlee County, during the third week of November. The pair, called the Moonshine Pack, consists of a male and female wolf. The male was born in 2006 and has extensive experience in the wild. Project biologists captured it this past spring after it became ensnared in a leg-hold trap which was lawfully set by a trapper in New Mexico. The female was born in 2003 at the Minnesota Zoo, a participant in the Mexican wolf captive breeding program. Both wolves, especially the female, have genetic characteristics that will enhance the free-ranging wolf population currently in the wild. They have bonded since being placed together in captivity in March....

Timber industry asks court to enforce Species Act The timber industry and environmental groups find themselves in the strange position of agreeing that the Bush administration failed to follow the Endangered Species Act when it developed a plan to boost logging on federal lands in Western Oregon. The American Forest Resource Council is afraid that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's failure to go through formal consultation with federal scientists over the potential harm to northern spotted owls and salmon will "derail" the Western Oregon Plan Revision, said Tom Partin, president of the timber industry group. The industry group filed a recent motion asking the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to uphold a 2003 agreement with the Bush administration that calls for increasing logging on 2.6 million acres of BLM lands in Western Oregon. Deadline for the plan is Dec. 31, just weeks before the Bush administration leaves office. The motion argues that failing to do the formal consultation will ultimately lead to a court ruling blocking the plan, making it unlikely for BLM to meet the deadline for completion set in the 2003 agreement....

'Lead bullets' warning is just crazy talk The wealthiest animal rights organization in the country, the Humane Society of the United States, is again asking for a nationwide ban on lead-shot ammunition. The bad part here is the venom spewed by Andrew Page, the senior director of the Wildlife Abuse Campaign for HSUS. "Extremist hunters have long contaminated watersheds and habitat, dooming animals to slow and painful deaths," he said. "Now that hunters know their actions are directly putting themselves and other people at risk, there are no more excuses to use the ammo that just keeps on killing." A little education is called for Page and his ilk, who say you should avoid eating venison killed by lead bullets. Well, you can't kill venison. You kill deer. Once the deer is down and you field-dress it, skin it, cut, wrap and label the meat, it becomes venison....

Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland If you are looking for a different read on this country and not wanting to rely on FOX News pundits or CNN experts, then Red State Rebels might be what you need. Co-editor of the excellent online news site CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair has teamed up with Joshua Frank (the author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Re-elect George W. Bush) to bring us a fabulous collection of essays that demolishes the checkerboard world of Red States and Blue States. The focus of this collection is on the lively grassroots activism that is currently taking place in what are generally deemed Red States, but by no means does this book suggest that this grassroots activism is connected to the Democratic Party. In fact, there are numerous stories shared in Red State Rebels of grassroots resistance in GOP territory that is also in opposition to the Democrats. In one essay by St. Clair entitled "The Origin of Western Greens," the co-editor states that during the Clinton years there was tremendous erosion of environmental standards, including....

Economic downturn leaves horses abandoned Tough economic times, the high price of hay, a glut of horses and a lack of market for the animals are all reasons for the upsurge in horses being neglected and abandoned. In a single incident last month in Fremont County, one horse had to be killed and three others were sent to an animal rescue center due to malnutrition and neglect. At the time, Fremont County Sheriff Ralph Davis told Standard Journal reporter Joseph Law that his office understands the plight of some animal owners caught in an economic crunch because of the high price of hay. But he said it's reasonable to expect people to feed and take care of their animals. In Lemhi County, the Bureau of Land Management recently had a report of a private party dumping horses' remains on public land. A client in Utah told Sugar City horse dealer Max Palmer that horses have been found abandoned at churches on Sunday morning in his Utah community. And in Nevada, Palmer's colleagues have seen horses still with halters on abandoned to run with wild herds on public land. For horse owners feeling an economic crunch who want to sell, the options are slim. And selling old, unbreakable, unusable and disabled horses, an option once available to horse owners, is closed. All horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. have been closed. While slaughterhouses that supply horsemeat to European and Asian markets still are operating in Canada and Mexico, the cost of shipping the horses to slaughter is more than the price people get for the horses -- if there is a market at all....Thank the animal rights industry and the US Congress.

Cache Valley has growing unwanted horse problem Cache County equine experts say a growing population of unwanted horses has become a major issue across the Cache valley. University of Utah Extension veterinarian Kerry Rood said the closing of several horse processing facilities has left more animals abandoned and abused. A dip in the economy has also forced some families to choose between feeding themselves or the horse. USU’s equine facility manager Rebecca Lewis used to take the animals in. But these days Lewis says “nay” more often than “yay.” The facility’s capacity is 30 horses, but Lewis is currently boarding a fluctuating 33 to 35 daily. Five horses are for sale a “rock-bottom” prices, she said. Each year some horses are abandoned on Bureau of Land Management parcels. Rood said owners mistakenly think the animals will easily adapt and join a band of other horses. That’s a “pipe dream,” said Rood. Most animals found by the BLM are low in body weight because they’ve been unable to find adequate food....ditto

NM chile industry on downward trend Trouble is growing for New Mexico's chile industry. The prized crops are well-known around the world, but New Mexico chile is on a quiet yet quick slide in the global marketplace. At its peak just a few years ago, chile packed a half billion dollar impact into New Mexico's economy. Now, it's only about half as much. Five thousand full time workers have swindled away to three thousand as farmers have cut back chile acreage by two thirds. Chile industry leaders told a legislative hearing Tuesday afternoon that it's all because of new players in the game. 'The cost of labor is significantly higher than countries such as China and India or Central and South American countries. We can't compete with them and the chile industry, frankly, is still a labor intensive industry," said Dino Cervantes of the New Mexico Chile Association....

Trainer eyes Dec. 14 run for Peppers Pride Peppers Pride has notched her 18th straight victory and now trainer Joel Marr is looking to the next race. Marr says the five-year-old New Mexico thoroughbred will run December 14th in the $125,000 New Mexico Racing Commission Handicap at Sunland Park. She’ll be seeking her 19th victory in 19 career starts. Marr says it could be her last race. He says owner Joe Allen is considering whether to run the 5-year-old again next year or place her into a breeding program. Marr says no decisions have been made.

A bit of Brush history... The history of Brush throughout the 20th century was always closely associated with the cattle and livestock industry. Because of this, Brush came to be known as Cattletown, U.S.A. From its earliest beginnings, even before the turn of the century, ranching, livestock feeding and marketing were big factors in the economy, and livestock was by far the biggest industry for Brush. Near the turn of the century shortly after the huge cattle drives were concluded, Brush became an important shipping point for livestock on the rail lines. Ranchers would bring their animals to the stockyards in town where they were then loaded onto rail cars and shipped by rail to the packing plants in the Midwest, in Sioux City, Omaha, St. Louis, Chicago, and other points. A small business known as the Brush Livestock Commission Company was organized by the railroad, and in 1937 Ted Rediess, together with several other associates, bought the Company and in time it became the largest sale barn in Colorado. The Company brought together livestock sellers and buyers, and over a period of 50 years hundreds of thousands of cattle were run through the sales pavilion. During this period several cattle feed lots were built in the vicinity, the largest of which was probably the Boxer-Weisbart yard located just northwest of town with a capacity of more than 25,000 head....

Obama looks to undo Utah drilling decisions President-elect Barack Obama could move quickly once in office to halt oil and gas drilling near national parks in Utah, Obama's top transition adviser said Sunday. But it's unclear whether Obama would be able to reverse the Bush administration's decision to hand out leases to about 360,000 acres of federal land in Utah; the leases, some of which lie near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument, are scheduled to go on sale a month before Obama is sworn in. John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama's transition team, said on Fox News Sunday that the president-elect is looking at several ways to overturn some Bush administration actions, and Podesta singled out the sale of Bureau of Land Management parcels in Utah. The Bush administration wants "to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah that they're going to try to do right as they - walking out the door," Podesta said. "I think that's a mistake."....

Colo. landowners urge action on easements Frustrated landowners want the state to call a time out on conservation easements and fix problems they say were created by laws that encouraged donation of the easements without a procedure to track and stop abuses. “The state misjudged how many landowners were so poor that they would take such a small share of the value in cash if they could just keep farming and ranching,” said Jim Butcher, a Pueblo subdivision developer. “And that those farmers and ranchers needed the cash so bad they would hire all those experts at great expense to comply with all the state and federal tax laws.” Butcher was just one speaker in a parade of woeful tales that have grown from conservation easement audits by the Internal Revenue Service and Colorado Department of Revenue in recent years. Both state and federal laws allow tax credits for the development value of a property that a landowner passes up when donating a conservation easement. Colorado allows the tax credits to be sold....

BLM aims to tame cost of caring for wild horses To protect Utah rangelands from overgrazing, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management removes 300 to 400 wild horses and burros a year, but it is able to adopt out only 250 of them. The agency will not destroy the rest for fear of public outcry — so it cares for escalating numbers of them in captivity. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said Monday such practices throughout the West have reached a crisis point, where BLM officials now manage "almost the same number of animals off the range as they do in the wild." It says the agency must either destroy or sell for slaughter thousands of the horses in captivity — or run out of money to care for horses in the wild, where neglect could increase horse deaths from effects of drought or starvation. "BLM decided not to destroy excess unadoptable animals (beginning in 1982) ... because of public dismay," when it killed 47 horses the previous year, said the GAO, a research arm of Congress. Because of that, the BLM now cares for just over 30,000 wild horses and burros in captivity. The GAO said the BLM manages about 33,100 horses and burros in the wild in the West — or just a bit more than it now has in captivity....

NIMBY: Nukes In My Backyard Al Gore says the same fervor that elected Obama president can be used to save the planet. Actually, a new type of nuclear power plant the size of a garden shed might do the trick. In a Sunday New York Times op-ed, Gore called for "an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis." To that end, he proposed "a commitment to producing 100% of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years." Oddly, Gore does not mention nuclear power, a source from which we already get 20% of our electricity and from which we could get more, thanks in part to the development of a new type of power plant that compares roughly to the evolution from the room-size vacuum-tube computers of the 1950s to today's laptops. Using technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and licensed from the U.S. government, New Mexico-based Hyperion Power Generation Inc., has taken its first orders for miniature nuclear power plants that could literally fit in your backyard. The module produces about 70 megawatts of thermal energy or 27 megawatts of electricity via steam turbine, enough to power about 20,000 American-style houses. The units are factory-sealed, can be delivered by truck and are buried underground. Like a car battery, there are no moving parts and no danger of a Chernobyl-type event. The module uses very low enriched materials that remain sealed for the five- to seven-year life of the module. It's also terrorist-proof....

Documentary explores Southwest water issues Los Angeles filmmaker Jim Thebaut has made documentaries about a contract mafia killer, death row and the Cold War. In his most recent project, he took on the Southwest's growing water problems. "We need to change the way we do things, change our culture," Thebaut said. "We waste energy, we waste water. We need to restore an ethic of conservation." Thebaut will talk about Running Dry in the American Southwest on Tuesday at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Thebaut directed, wrote and produced the film, which is narrated by Jane Seymour. It explores water issues in the dry landscapes of the Navajo and Hopi reservations, in glittering Las Vegas, Nev., and in Washington, D.C. New Mexico's U.S. senators, Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici, are featured in the film....

More officials join against JBS purchase of National Beef Four more state attorneys general have joined the Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to block the purchase of National Beef Packing Co. by JBS S.A. Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America — R-CALF USA — said Arizona, Connecticut, New Mexico and Mississippi attorneys general have joined in the lawsuit filed in Chicago by the Justice Department last month. There were 13 attorneys general in the original suit, including Colorado. JBS S.A. is the parent company of JBS Swift & Co. of Greeley. Earlier this year, it announced it intended to buy National Beef, the fourth largest meatpacker in the U.S., along with the Smithfield Foods beef division and Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding. The purchase of Smithfield and Five Rivers was completed soon after the lawsuit was filed Oct. 20....

PETA Wants to Lease Giant Tex Randall Statue for Anti-Leather Campaign This morning, PETA dispatched a letter to Danny Byrd, owner of the 47-foot-tall, 8,000-plus-pound Tex Randall statue in Canyon, Texas, offering to lease the imposing piece of Americana in order to save it from being torn down by the property owners or moved out of Canyon. Although Byrd owns the statue--as well as the nearby Wrong Way Diner--he doesn't own the land that the statue sits on and isn't eager to part with the reported $50,000 needed to move it to his diner. PETA's plans? To hang a sign on Tex reading, "For Cows' Sake, Give Leather the Boot!"--making him the world's most recognizable cow-friendly cowboy. "It's a lofty goal, but we hope that by saving Tex Randall we can help save cows' hides," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "This old icon could have a new purpose--as the world's tallest cow-defending cowboy--and PETA hopes Byrd will take us up on our offer."

Comanche: Legendary War Horse Up until World War II, there was a market for horses in America in the form of U.S. Army remounts. Before mechanized transportation was put into use, which gradually and finally replaced the horse, many western ranchers supplemented or even built their business by supplying the government with cavalry horses. These were of a different type than those needed for draft purposes in the Army, especially in the American West of the 1870’s and 1880’s. In the vase frontline of the “Indian Wars”, the cavalry had need of tough, sturdy, horses that could carry troopers long distanced on poor feed and stand under small arms and artillery fire, among many other hardships and conditions contrary to equine instinct. At the time, the Army was fighting some of the best lightly mounted cavalry the world has ever seen – Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Sioux, and others. Not since Ghenghis Khan and his troops had the horse been used so effectively in battle. Someone, probably not in the higher levels of brass, realized that horses from the western frontier would be best suited for the troopers on the western frontier. So bands of mustangs were rounded up and sold to the Army as cavalry remounts. Around 1868, a sorrel colt was in with a bunch of mustangs from Texas that were purchased by General Custer’s brother for the cavalry. After being broken and trained, the 6 year old gelding was assigned to Sgt. Keogh of the 7th Cavalry, Troop I. This mustang proved his worth in the western campaigns, even receiving wounds in battle. Somewhere along the way, Keogh named his mount Comanche, perhaps in honor of the enemy’s courage and strength, which Keogh was well acquainted with....

It's All Trew: Pear preserves always worth the work Each year in late September or early October, if Mother Nature allows, the Trews "put up pear preserves." As long as I can remember this annual routine has taken place. This year two sons and wives joined us around the big kitchen table, knives and pans at ready and all peeled and sliced pears for hours. We stayed focused and serious except when we were laughing. Our family "get-togethers" tend to get a little silly after a while, and the monotony of peeling pears doesn't help. Since pears are slick and hard to hold, shrapnel flies in all directions. Basically, to the unlearned, making pear preserves includes peeling the fruit, cutting out all bad places and bruises. Next, slice the meat into small slivers eliminating the core. The slices are then soaked in a pan for six to eight hours with two parts pears to one part sugar. Last, cook until "they look just right" turning a light brown and becoming sort of clear. Then place in sterilized jars with lids. After cooling the pears contract and the lid pops in, signaling the jar is sealed. My wife, Ruth, says, "the most satisfying sound in a country woman's life is when after a hard day's work canning, the lids start to pop and the count comes out right."....

UN Official Hopes for U.S. Role in Climate Change The head of the U.N.'s climate change body said Friday he hopes the United States will take a more active role in fighting global warming once Barack Obama becomes president. "With President-elect Obama, my hope is that the U.S. can take on a leadership role and help to move the negotiations forward," said Yvo de Boer, executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. DeBoer spoke in a news conference at a U.N.-sponsored climate change conference in China's capital. The two-day meeting will discuss technology transfers between nations and comes before a U.N. conference set for early December in Poland, where countries will begin negotiations for a climate change accord to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012....

The Climate for Change by Al Gore THE inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis. Here’s what we can do — now: we can make an immediate and large strategic investment to put people to work replacing 19th-century energy technologies that depend on dangerous and expensive carbon-based fuels with 21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth. What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced. First, the new president and the new Congress should offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants in the Southwestern deserts, wind farms in the corridor stretching from Texas to the Dakotas and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots that could produce large amounts of electricity. Second, we should begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used....

Over-Hyping of Green I have been studying and teaching weather and climate for more than 50 years and have been making real-time seasonal hurricane forecasts for a quarter-century. I and many of my colleagues with comparable experience do not believe that CO2 gas emissions are anywhere near the threat to global climate as the environmental and liberal media groups have led us to believe. Most people are not aware of how flimsy are the physical arguments behind the human-induced warming scenarios. There has yet to be a really open and honest scientific dialogue on this topic among our country’s most experienced weather and climate experts. Most knowledgeable global warming skeptics have been ignored and/or their motives questioned. Many have been falsely tagged as tools of the fossil fuel industry--reminding me a bit of the McCarthy period. By contrast, those harping the loudest on the dangers of CO2, such as Al Gore, typically have little real understanding or experience in how the atmosphere and ocean really function. The global climate model (GCM) simulations by large U.S. and foreign government laboratories and universities on which so much of the warming science scenarios are based have basic flaws. These global models are not able to correctly model the globe’s small-scale precipitation processes. They have incorrectly parameterized the rain processes in their models to give an unrealistically warming influence from CO2 increases. These GCMs also do not properly model the globe’s deep ocean circulation, which appears to be the primary driving mechanism for most of the global temperature increases that have been observed. Most GCMs indicate that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 towards the end of the twenty-first century will lead to global warming of 2-5ºC. My best estimate of global warming for a doubling of CO2 is about 0.3-0.5ºC, 5-10 times less than the models estimate....

Internet revolution that elected Obama could save Earth: Gore Former US vice president Al Gore said an Internet revolution carrying Barack Obama to the White House should now focus its power on stopping Earth's climate crisis. The one-time presidential contender turned environmental champion told Web 2.0 Summit goers in San Francisco Friday that technology has provided tools to save the planet while creating jobs and stimulating the crippled economy. "The young people who have been inspired by Barack Obama's campaign and the movement that powered Barack Obama's campaign want a purpose," Gore said. "One of the reasons we were all thrilled Tuesday night is it was pretty obvious this was a collectively intelligent decision." The Internet's critical role in Democrat Obama's victory in the presidential race against Republican John McCain was a "great blow for victory" in addressing a "democracy crisis" stifling action against climate change, Gore said....

Corn ethanol, a poor solution More corn can be seen growing in NE Colorado than before the federally funded incentives and mandates for growing, and for making ethanol. This corporate welfare program is a good example of how not to solve the very real problem of achieving energy independence. Analyses of the various issues involved in using corn-derived ethanol fuel for transportation just do not make ecological, financial or logical sense. The amount of coal, oil, and natural gas energy required to make corn ethanol is more than the energy contained in the ethanol. Because most of this additional energy is sourced from fossil fuels, burning ethanol instead of gasoline actually releases 1.7 times more carbon dioxide for a comparable number of vehicle miles traveled. This is a startling finding and so the reader is encouraged to more deeply research the issue. An in-depth corn ethanol paper may be viewed on the Independence Institute Website. The Federal and Colorado taxpayer funded subsidies for making corn ethanol are about $1.05 for the equivalent energy contained in a gallon of gasoline. If tax-paying consumers had a choice, they may well prefer that the dollar of subsidy be directly applied to their price of gasoline at the pump....

Proposed Road in Refuge Raises Fears About Drilling This isolated outpost, where grizzly bears outnumber people and the one-page phone book is dubbed "the yellow page," is fast emerging as a flash point in the nation's debate over drilling. A plan to construct about 20 miles of road, half of which would be in the wilderness of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, has turned into a heated battle between area residents, who say they need better access to the airport here, and environmentalists, who suspect, without concrete evidence, that the oil industry is secretly behind the effort. In a state still recovering from the bruising fight over opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, all eyes have turned to Congress, which is expected to vote during a lame-duck session this month on a land swap that would open the way for road construction. But residents who live on the other side of the refuge, across an inlet, in the 800-person village of King Cove simply point to the wreckage of small planes that failed to reach their narrow gravel airstrip and now litter Mount Dutton, a dormant volcano. "Go up and look at that graveyard," said Herman "Buddy" Bendixen, 83, an Aleut elder and lifelong resident. "They got sick and couldn't get out."....

Elk droppings may have sickened kids Elk droppings in the Evergreen area contain the same strain of E. coli bacteria that sickened eight children in three mountain counties, state health officials reported today. Lab testing confirmed a genetic match between the bacteria. Health officials suspected elk droppings as a potential source of the exposure. It's not known how the elk were infected. Elk droppings can be found virtually everywhere around Evergreen, including near homes and schools. For that reason, health officials issued warnings to students to not eat on athletic fields and to wash their hands after being outside. The cases began appearing in July, with the last one reported Oct. 22. The children, ages 4 to 12, do not attend the same school, although all live in or have visited the Evergreen area....

Two grizzlies drown; another death under investigation Authorities learned of three additional grizzly bear deaths in 2008 that won't be counted against the mortality quota for the threatened bear in northwestern Montana because they were natural or occurred outside of the official recovery zone. In one case, a young male was shot this past spring on the Milk River six miles south of the Canadian border on the eastern edge of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, more than 10 miles outside of the grizzly recovery zone. n that case, a rancher driving a four-wheeler came up on a bear eating a cow that previously died and told authorities he shot the animal after the bear charged, but the case is under investigation to see if it was a case of self-defense, Carney said. Two other bears drowned. One was a cub crossing the Swan River in the spring. The other bear, a yearling, drowned in May in a high-flowing irrigation ditch near the Teton River....

Public lands management of particular concern to Cowboy State A U.S. president can often have a direct impact on the lives and livelihoods of Cowboy State residents. And a president's cabinet has more direct sway in Wyoming, in some respects, than in most other states. Nearly half of Wyoming -- about 47,000 square miles of it -- is owned and managed by the federal government. Only four states in the nation, all of them in the West, have a higher percentage of their landmasses owned by Uncle Sam. The way that national parks, forests and other public lands are managed here has implications for individual residents, groups and industries. Among those who can be directly affected by a president's land management policies are ranchers, oil and gas drillers, miners, hunters, fishers, outdoors enthusiasts, loggers, sawmill operators and conservationists. So, what does an incoming Barack Obama administration signal about the way Wyoming's public lands will be managed? All interested parties seem to agree there will be a shift -- and perhaps a big one -- from the approach of the Bush administration. But fewer agree on what the ultimate effects of that shift will be....

Landowner tackles game law If wildlife destroys your property, who is responsible? Richard Murray thinks the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife should pay, and he’s enlisted the Oregonians in Action legal center to file a tort claim notice with the state. “You have to give [the state] notice within 180 days of when the game damage happens,” Murray said. “So I’ve done that. I have another year and a half to file the claim.” Beyond that, Murray hopes to gather funds to support an initiative petition to change Oregon law. Murray notes ODFW claims regulatory jurisdiction over the wild animal population, and that the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana provide partial payment for game damage to private property, while Oregon and California do not. Ross Day and Dave Hunnicut of Oregonians In Action were in The Dalles recently consulting with Murray about the case. “There’s a Clean Water Act case in, I think, in Grant County where an environmental group has sued a rancher, claiming that the rancher’s cattle are destroying the beds and banks of the river there,” Dave Hunnicut said. “Well, the rancher has photos showing it’s the wild horses and elk that are in there, tromping around through the water. What’s the real source of the problem, and who’s going to ultimately end up dealing with it? This is just an extension of a much larger problem that affects states throughout the west.”....

Biologists say wolves are spreading into Oregon but without conflict As more and more gray wolves arrive in the state, Oregonians are gradually recognizing that the once-native predators may find ways to live in Oregon without stirring up the conflict or trouble some had feared, a state biologist says. "People are beginning to understand that if there are wolves around, even multiple wolves or a breeding pair like we have now, bad things aren't automatically happening," said Russ Morgan, the state biologist handling wolf issues for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. He was one of several speakers at a weekend conference at Portland's Concordia University that sought to bring rural and urban interests together to discuss a future for wolves in Oregon. Agricultural leaders also spoke about the restrictions they face under the Endangered Species Act, which now protects wolves....

U.S. to Open Public Land Near Parks for Drilling The Bureau of Land Management has expanded its oil and gas lease program in eastern Utah to include tens of thousands of acres on or near the boundaries of three national parks, according to revised maps published this week. National Park Service officials say that the decision to open lands close to Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument and within eyeshot of Canyonlands National Park was made without the kind of consultation that had previously been routine.The inclusion of the new lease tracts angered environmental groups, which were already critical of the bureau’s original lease proposal, made public this fall, because they said it could lead to industrial activity in empty areas of the state, some prized for their sweeping vistas, like Desolation Canyon, and others for their ancient petroglyphs, like Nine Mile Canyon. The bureau’s new maps, made public on Election Day, show not just those empty areas but 40 to 45 new areas where leasing will also be allowed. The tracts will be sold at auction on Dec. 19, the last lease sale before President Bush leaves office a month later....

Restitution tops $4M in eco-terrorism case A federal judge has raised restitution to $4.14 million in the case of an environmental activist who committed arson at Michigan State University and 12 other acts of destruction. This week was the deadline for Frank Ambrose or prosecutors to object to a new tally. Nothing was filed. Ambrose, 33, of Detroit recently was sentenced to nine years in federal prison. He and Marie Mason committed arson at MSU’s Agriculture Hall on New Year’s Eve 1999 to protest genetic-crop research. They admitted to many other acts, including tree spikings in Indiana and fires at four homes under construction in the Detroit area. U.S. Chief District Judge Paul Maloney had ordered $3.7 million in restitution Oct. 20 but raised it to $4.14 million after a “discrepancy.”....

Obama outlines views on agriculture Now that Obama has been elected, here’s a look at his views on agriculture as stated during the presidential campaign. Obama wants to make a disaster assistance program permanent so farmers would not have to wait for Congress to decide whether aid is needed in the wake of individual natural disasters. The Democrat supports country-of-origin labeling, which requires meat and perishable farm products to indicate from where they came. The Farm Bill expanded the list of products covered by the law effective Sept. 30. Obama would increase funding for a cost-sharing program for organic certification to help farmers afford the costs of complying with national standards for organic food, a fast-growing sector of the American food market. There are not enough young people entering farming, according to Obama, so he would help the public university system and farm extension service work with youth groups to identify and prepare future farmers. He also favors tax breaks for landowners selling to beginning family farmers and for people going into farming....

Ranchers cut herd size to survive drought California's worst drought in decades is forcing the state's cattle ranchers to downsize their herds because two years of poor rainfall has ravaged millions of acres of rangeland used to feed their cows and calves. The parched, yellow pastures on Joe Gonzales' cattle ranch attest to the severity of a dry spell that is devastating the economic fortunes of many of the state's beef producers. Gonzales, who normally runs 500 cows on his 2,000-acre spread about 30 miles south of San Jose, cut his herd by half over the past year and may have to sell more if the drought persists. "When there's no rain, there's no grass," said Gonzales, 65. "As the drought continues, you have to either continue to feed your cattle or sell them. ... It's the worst I've seen it in more than 30 years." During most dry years, California cattlemen send their herds to places with healthier pastures or buy supplemental feed to sustain their animals until the rainy season. But high fuel prices, a lack of green pastures in California and neighboring states, and the soaring cost of livestock feed have left ranchers little choice but to sell off their mother cows because they can ill afford to feed them....

Montague Stevens And Grizzly Bears In Catron County Montague Stevens, an Englishman, was one of the first and the last to hunt grizzly bears in Catron County. Stevens moved to New Mexico Territory in the 1800s and went into the cattle business establishing ranches near Alma, Reserve and Datil with his headquarters at Horse Springs. He published a book in 1942 titled Meet Mr. Grizzly and wrote about his move to New Mexico: “It was in the fall of 1882 that I bought my first ranches from early settlers and so little was known of New Mexico in the East that I was several times asked if we had monkeys and parrots here … I have ranches scattered over an area of some 80 by 30 miles, generally known as the SU Ranches and range, the SU being my cattle brand.” Grizzly bears were a major problem for Stevens and early settlers. They often attacked without warning, taking livestock and supplies. Stevens and his ranch foreman, Dan Gatlin, started training hounds to hunt grizzlies in 1889. By trial and error, Stevens and Gatlin raised an exceptional group of hunting dogs, which consistently tracked down grizzly bears when other hounds failed. Bounties were offered on troublesome grizzlies. Stevens described two grizzly bears and the naming of Bear-Trap-Canyon in the San Mateo Mountains. He wrote, “On a mountain 30 miles southwest of Magdalena, two grizzlies had been killing a good many cattle and a generous bounty was offered to anyone who would kill them. Two trappers, therefore, decided to try to catch a big grizzly in a bear-trap, so they camped near the place where the tracks of these bears seemed to show up the most and set their trap.” They waited outside the trap for longer than a week, but did not see the grizzlies. Next, they built a log cabin, about 8 feet by 10 feet with sturdy log walls. A trap door was placed at one end and a deer carcass at the other. When the trappers returned the next morning, the trap had been sprung and was empty. They found another grizzly had dug under the trap from the outside and helped free the one inside. They both escaped, and since the area has been referred to as Bear-Trap-Canyon....

Indian Trial Two Young County lawyers ably defended the arch villains of the frontier — Satanta and Big Tree — after the Warren Wagon Massacre. The trial was unusual and sensational in many ways.Indians had never been tried in the civil courts for their crimes on the frontier. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Army tried to keep the keep the Indians from raiding and attacking settlers. But both sides broke treaties and crossed boundaries. At that time, if Indians raided, they crossed the Red River into the safety of Indian Territory where soldiers were forbidden to go. Three Kiowa chiefs — Satank, Satanta and Big Tree — led an attack in Young County in retaliation for the earlier death of Satanta’s son. They attacked a group of teamsters carrying loads of corn and killed seven men. Since Gen. Sherman was there to see the aftermath, the Indian chiefs faced severe punishment. They were arrested and Satank committed suicide — only Satanta and Big Tree would face a jury. Neither the townspeople of Jacksboro or the army thought that the Indians would get a trial much less a real defense team....

Ex-FBI agent John Connelly found guilty of murder Jurors have found ex-FBI agent John Connolly guilty of second-degree murder for his role in helping Boston mobsters assassinate an accountant in South Florida in 1982. He was found not guilty of a second charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. In the 1970s and '80s, Connolly was a star agent in the FBI's Boston office, developing criminal informants and helping dismantle the New England Mafia. But in a closely followed saga in Boston and one the FBI's most embarrassing scandals, Connolly's two star informants corrupted him, prosecutors said. The allegation: James ''Whitey'' Bulger and Stephen ''The Rifleman'' Flemmi ordered the murder of John Callahan based on a tip from Connolly. The agent is accused of telling the gang Callahan would likely cooperate with agents probing the gang's 1981 murder of Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler, who owned World Jai-Alai and had resisted Callahan's overtures to buy the gambling company....

Mistrial ends murder case against Ariz. border agent A judge in Tucson declared a second mistrial in the high-profile murder prosecution of a Border Patrol agent. A defense attorney said he was told that prosecutors will not seek a third trial. The mistrial on Tuesday left Border Patrol agents feeling vindicated and human-rights groups worried that violence against illegal immigrants on the border could increase. The jury in the two-week-long retrial of agent Nicholas Corbett reached deadlock after deliberating three days. The reason for the impasse was unknown because the jury foreman's note to the judge was sealed....

Older? Female? No gun for you! Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish. The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days. Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele's Lewes gun shop last August. Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction....

Lawsuit aims to test Iowa's concealed weapons law An Ocheyedan man has filed a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of an Iowa law that requires individuals obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon.Paul Dorr, 52, said Thursday that Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber wrongly denied on a political whim his and his 18-year-old son's requests for permits to carry concealed weapons. Dorr filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Sioux City against Weber and Osceola County because Weber turned down the permit applications of both Dorr and his son in 2007. Dorr alleges that the sheriff denied his Second Amendment right to bear arms and 14th Amendment right to due process. "He just denied my permit to carry without foundation," said Dorr, a consultant for taxpayer and political groups. "That denial just brought to mind the lack of objective process that Iowa code allows for sheriffs." Dorr is bringing the lawsuit on behalf of anyone who has been denied a permit to carry in Iowa. The case is believed to be the first of its kind challenging part of a state code that gives sheriffs discretion in deciding who should receive permits to carry concealed weapons, according to the Iowa attorney general's office....

ACORN uses public funds to steal elections, now your gun rights ACORN, the publicly-funded national organization linked to voter fraud in several states is now actively interfering with the exercise of firearm civil rights in New Jersey, and the Second Amendment Foundation is calling for an immediate federal investigation. “ACORN has, since 1998, received an estimated $31 million in government funding,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “Now they have intervened in a New Jersey gun rights case in defense of an illegal Jersey City one-gun-a-month ordinance that violates the state preemption statute. “The organization is currently under FBI investigation over allegations of voter fraud in several states,” he added. “Bad enough that ACORN is implicated in fraudulent activities in several states, but now an ACORN chapter in the Garden State is working against the ability of New Jersey gun owners to exercise a constitutionally-protected individual civil right to own a handgun....

Pot Wins in a Landslide On Tuesday, largely under the radar of the pundits and political chattering classes, voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana. Michigan voters made their state the 13th to allow the medical use of marijuana by a whopping 63 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin ever for a medical marijuana initiative. And by 65 percent to 35 percent, Massachusetts voters decriminalized the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, replacing arrests, legal fees, court appearances, the possibility of jail and a lifelong criminal record with a $100 fine, much like a traffic ticket, that can be paid through the mail. What makes these results so amazing is that they followed the most intensive anti-marijuana campaign by federal officials since the days of "Reefer Madness." Marijuana arrests have been setting all-time records year after year, reaching the point where one American is arrested on marijuana charges every 36 seconds. More Americans are arrested each year for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking, just possession -- than for all violent crimes combined....

U.S. border agents detain Mexican troops Seven members of the Mexican military were found inside the United States on Friday, telling border agents they had become disoriented while on patrol and accidentally crossed into the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said. The incident began about 8 a.m. Friday, when the Border Patrol's Yuma, Arizona, sector was notified that a military-style Hummer was broken down, Customs and Border Patrol said in a written statement. Agents said they found the vehicle about 200 yards from the Colorado River, and the seven individuals were dressed in military-style clothing. Customs and Border Patrol later determined that the troops' entry was unauthorized. U.S. agents told the Mexican troops they were inside the United States and "peaceably" took them into custody, the statement said. "At no time were any hostilities exchanged between the agents and military officials."....

Roping on a reputation
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

By Julie Carter

There was a really big roping coming up where trucks, trailers, saddles, buckles and a pile of cash were to be awarded.

It had been advertised for months and Dan, Jess, Tim and the rest of the gang had decided to enter up. The only problem was that they all lived in the middle of Texas and the roping was down in Louisiana, fairly close to New Orleans.

Being cowboys, they were also experiencing a bit of a cash flow problem. The only solution was to win enough to pay for the fuel, and maybe even enough to fill up the new truck they hoped to win.

The plan would work. All they had to do was practice as much as possible and since they all had arena dust in their veins, this would not be a problem. They vowed that rain, sleet, snow or the necessity of making a living wouldn't get in their way.

Jess and Dan worked hard at perfecting their runs down the arena behind a spotted steer. There had been some discussion of changing ropes, changing loops or other possible improvements, but in the end, they stayed with what had worked before, most of the time anyway.

Blaine and Tim had made a few changes to their style. Tim had a new rope. It might catch the steer or it might catch the header. Sometimes he threw one of those soil sampler loops and the steer remained quite safe from capture.

Tim was hauling his old, experienced horse. Strychnine could get him into position most of the time, and didn't need to be scored any more.

The theory was that the horse was almost old enough to vote, and Tim had spent lots of time scoring cattle the first 15 years he owned him. Strychnine likely didn't have that many more runs left in him, and there was no point in wasting them.

Besides his regular partner Dan, Jess had picked up a new heeler for an extra entry at the big roping. There hadn't been much time to practice with this new guy, but everybody had heard the story that he had won $32,000 one time when he went to a big USTRC roping. That was a good enough resume for Jess.

When they got to the roping, everybody was wound pretty tight. Word in the warm-up arena was that these cattle would be Nascar fast. With the usual cautious optimism, each team in the crew figured they would probably draw the only dirty one in the bunch.

They had their hearts set on winning big cash and so they patiently waited their turn to rope with all the confidence they could muster through their nervous sweat. They knew they were good at what they did and held onto that thought.

As it turned out, there were hundreds of other "good-at-what-they-did" ropers entered and some of them were just a tick better than this bunch.

Jess and Dan had caught all their steers but were just a little long on time and out of the money. The new man caught one leg the first round and missed completely the second round.

They were all giving him a hard time about not using his skill that won him the reputation $32,000.

He grinned, "Well, I never said I won it roping. I was just at a roping. I won the money playing blackjack."

Julie’s new book, Cowboys You Gotta Love ’em is come of the presses the end of Nov. Order now at a sale price and/or bundle both books together for a deal. Think Christmas! www.julie-carter.com

Gone With The Wind

From California to Missouri, four of five environmental initiatives lost at the ballot box. Voters are clearly still not ready for exorbitant costs and excessive regulation without clear benefits.

President-elect Obama may have felt "a righteous wind" at his back during the campaign, but it did not translate into environmental victories at the ballot box, where one green initiative after another failed for a variety of reasons.

California voters shot down both clean-energy propositions on the ballot. Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40% of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50% by 2025. It lost 65% to 35%.

Proposition 10 would have created $5 billion in general obligation bonds to help consumers and others purchase certain high-fuel-economy or alternative-fuel vehicles, and to fund research into alternative fuel technology. It failed 60% to 40%.

Even in San Francisco, the capital of liberalism and greenie fervor, voters rejected Proposition H, which would have mandated a rapid increase in the city's use of clean energy to achieve its goal of being 100% renewable by 2040. It would also have meant taking over the city's private electric company.

Obama took the former red state of Colorado, which also elected environmentalist Senate candidate Mark Udall over oil executive Bob Shaffer. Yet Coloradans struck down a measure to pay for conservation and clean energy by increasing taxes on oil companies.

Only in Missouri did green energy score a victory. There, Proposition C mandated a 15% increase in renewable energy by 2021 with slow and steady yearly increases that energy companies felt they could phase in without disruption and with which voters felt more comfortable.

The mantra is that oil and car companies are blocking the increased use of renewable energy. The truth is that consumers, through their choices and their votes, are slowing the stampede. They worry about the cost in tough economic times and whether such efforts are worth it based on dubious evidence of global warming. Energy independence is one thing, but going bankrupt to achieve it is quite another.

When gasoline prices were over $4 a gallon, the chant "drill baby drill" grew loud enough that Democrats were forced to back off renewing a ban on offshore drilling. Now in complete control, they can block offshore drilling, nuclear power and shale oil in their Ahab-like pursuit of alternative energy.

Texas consumers are finding out how expensive the pursuit of alternative energy can be. Their state generates more electricity from wind than any other, and people like oil legend T. Boone Pickens want to generate more.

A just published study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, "Texas Wind Energy: Past, Present and Future," says that to achieve even modest amounts of wind energy would cost rate payers and taxpayers at least $60 billion through 2025. That includes transmission costs, production costs, subsidies, tax breaks, economic disruption costs and grid-management costs.

Because of the intermittent nature of wind, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas uses a figure of only 8.7% of wind power's installed capacity when determining available power during peak periods.

On cloudy and windless days, solar and wind are useless and require conventional power sources as backup. Output is not steady and cannot be increased on demand. You can't make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder during peak periods.

A Feb. 27 Reuters story illustrated the point. Headlined "Loss Of Wind Causes Texas Power Grid Emergency," it told of an electric grid operator forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of power to customers on just 10 minutes' notice. The wind simply stopped blowing.

Wind turbines generally operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear plants. A single 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant would generate more dependable power than 2,800 1.5-megawatt, occasionally operating wind turbines sitting on 175,000 acres.

Nuclear power is clean energy, and you wouldn't have to wait for a sunny or windy day to plug in your electric car.