Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Tools That Leave Wildlife Unbothered Widen Research Horizons
You may remember Senator John McCain’s criticism of a study of grizzly bear DNA as wasteful spending. And you may have wondered how the scientists got the DNA from the grizzlies. The answer is hair. The study, which Mr. McCain referred to during his run for president, was a large one, and it provided an estimate of the population of threatened grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, in and around Glacier National Park. The researchers did not trap the bears or shoot them with tranquilizers. Instead, they prepared 100 55-gallon drums with a mixture of whole fish and cattle blood that was allowed to ferment until it had the aroma of grizzly bear candy. They built 2,400 hair corrals — 100 feet of barbed wire around five or six trees — and placed the fish and blood mix in the center. When bears went under the wire to check it out they left hair behind. The team collected 34,000 hair samples in 14 weeks this way. And the population estimate from the study, announced late last year, was 765, a figure 2.5 times the estimate based on sightings of females and cubs, the previously used method. “Hair snaring has given us a much more precise number,” said Katherine C. Kendall, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey who designed and implemented the study. The results were just published in The Journal of Wildlife Management. It also gives a glimpse of a growing trend in wildlife biology toward research methods that are gentler — and cheaper — than the classic “capture, mark, recapture.” In that process researchers trap an animal, sometimes drug it and fasten on a radio collar or implant or attach a transmitter. Then they follow the radio signal or catch the animal again to see where it goes...NY Times
American Horse Council Urges Land Managers to Use Stimulus Funding for Equestrian Trails
The American Horse Council (AHC) has asked the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to use stimulus funding for trails. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 signed into law on February 17 appropriates over $1.7 billion for the NPS, USFS, and BLM that can be used for the maintenance and construction of trails and other infrastructure improvements on public lands. The AHC recently wrote to NPS Acting Director Dan Wenk, Chief of USFS Gail Kimbell, and BLM Acting Director Mike Pool urging the agencies to allocate a significant portion of stimulus funding to address the current backlog of needed infrastructure improvements on public lands, including maintenance and construction of trails and other facilities that are open to equestrians. The AHC cited the importance of public lands and trails to recreational riders around the country and the economic impact of the recreational riding community on the national economy...Industry News
Sharpshooters kill 5 coyotes in Broomfield, Colo.
Five coyotes in Broomfield were shot by the Colorado Division of Wildlife last week following the most recent coyote attack. Sharpshooters killed the animals after earlier attempts failed to locate the coyote that bit a 38-year-old Broomfield man Feb. 23. The man was bitten while walking his dogs near Trails Park in the city's Westlake neighborhood. He was playing fetch with one of his dogs, which spotted a coyote and chased it. A second coyote bit the man in the arm. The coyote involved in the incident could not be identified, so all were killed as a precautionary measure, wildlife officials said. "Since this coyote seemed to be an especially aggressive coyote, we wanted to do everything we could to remove an aggressive animal," said Larry Rogstad, an area wildlife manager with the division. The coyotes were living near the Tom Frost Reservoir in Broomfield County Commons Park. Wildlife officers determined the pack used public trails to move through the city. Coyotes also bit a 9-year-old Erie boy in December and a 26-year-old Broomfield resident in the Anthem neighborhood in January...Denver Post
Ornery owl attacks late-night skiers in Maine
Cross-country skiers who set out on a crisp, moonlit night for a peaceful outing in Bangor's city forest are being targeted by a least one ornery and territorial owl. Over the past three weeks, at least eight skiers and a few romping dogs apparently have fallen victim to a great horned owl that swoops down from a tree with talons outstretched and smacks them on the head. Jim Allen of Bangor said he was skiing in the dark on East Trail in the Rolland F. Perry City Forest when he got hit. "I've got my headlamp on, and all of a sudden, I felt a whack in the back of my head and this stinging, and I understood what everybody was talking about," said Allen, who said he screamed and waved his poles. His thick winter hat protected him from scratches. Others haven't been so lucky. Dr. Dan Cassidy, a local physician and avid night skier, said three skiers suffered small lacerations, but none needed stitches to close their wounds. Cassidy has been documenting owl attacks after one of the noctural birds swooped down on him in nearby Orono in January. He was able to identify it as a great horned owl, and he and others suspect that one or more of those owls are the culprits in the Bangor attacks...AP
Ike’s salty floods leach ranches of life
The two brothers are the sixth generation of their family to oversee one of the state’s oldest ranches, dating back to 1819. But Steven and Bill White could never have imagined their 60,000-acre spread in Chambers County would look the way it does, today. Patches of salt encrust the soil where rice should have been planted this month. Most of the pasture, which should be feeding 2,500 head of cattle, is so dead that thebrothers’boots crunch when they walk across it. “Look at that,” said Bill White, squatting to pick up dead baby crabs. Further proof, he noted, that for 12 days after Hurricane Ike’s surge, their ranch became part of the Gulf of Mexico. The water has receded eight miles back into the Gulf, but it left behind a salty residue that continues to threaten the ranchers and farmers who live in the surge zone east of Houston in Chambers, Jefferson and Orange counties. About 4,800 cows and 5,600 calves drowned in the three-county surge zone, the Farm Service Agency estimates. Bill Wilson, a rancher and farmer from Beaumont, lost more than half his herd in the Sept. 13 storm. His soybean fields also were underwater, and afterward his 16.000 acres looked like “somebody had sprayed it with Roundup,” he said. Most ranchers have had to relocate their herds as much as 400 miles outside the surge zone and pay for grazing rights ($15 each month per head). Others, including Ralph Leggett and Leroy Ezer in southern Chambers County, opted to sell their herds at discounted prices because they had nowhere to keep them. All the fences keeping cattle penned in the surge zone — 1,700 miles’ worth — had been blown down...Houston Chronicle
'Grand Ole Opry' great Hank Locklin dies at 91
Hank Locklin -- the Grand Ole Opry star and singer of country music classics “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” and “Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On” — died Sunday at his home in Brewton, Ala. He was 91. Mr. Locklin sang in a tenor both pliant and unadorned, and his voice remained a powerful instrument throughout most of his life. Even in his late 80s, he sang his hits (and a thrilling cover of Irish standard “Danny Boy”) on the Opry stage and performed the songs in the keys in which they were initially recorded. Born in the Florida Panhandle town of McLellan in 1918, Mr. Locklin began playing the guitar at age 9, after an accident — he was hit by a school bus — left him bedridden. He made his radio debut at a Pensacola, Fla., station in the 1930s, and in the 1940s he and a band began working clubs and southern radio stations. Mr. Locklin’s recording career began in earnest in 1949, when he recorded “The Same Sweet Girl” for California-based Four Star Records. He also wrote “Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On” in 1949. Often, he’d play the song live on radio stations, and listeners would then mail their own pillows to him in care of the station. “The pillows started rollin’ in,” he told journalist Rich Kienzle, in a conversation recounted in the liner notes of Mr. Locklin’s RCA Country Legends CD. “Let Me Be The One” was Mr. Locklin’s first No. 1 country hit, in 1953. Two years later, he signed with RCA Victor in Nashville. Chet Atkins was a fan of Mr. Locklin’s voice, and Atkins began producing and playing guitar on Mr. Locklin’s sessions. At one of those sessions, Atkins recorded Mr. Locklin’s pillow song, which stalled at No. 5 on the Billboard country chart but which endured to become a much-covered composition: It would later be recorded by the Everly Brothers, Dwight Yoakam, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, Dolly Parton and others...The Tennessean
Monday, March 09, 2009
Mileage Tax Would ‘Track Where Motorists Have Been’
Gas tax revenues declined by $78 million in FY 2008 according to the USDOT. Americans drove 12.9 billion miles less in November 08 than they did in November 07. We are driving less and cars are more efficient. Isn't that what they wanted?
Yes, except for one itty, bitty, little thing. We are supposed to cut back but the Politically Superior Ones are not. If conservation cuts revenues, then something must be done. Enter the mileage tax.
With gas tax revenue declining and fuel efficiency the holy grail of car manufacturers, officials across the country are testing systems that could move Americans from paying a per-gallon tax at the pump to some form of fee based on road usage. The challenges with such a shift are immense. Economists are not sure the idea will be practical, and privacy advocates oppose the notion of governments monitoring motorists’ driving habits. But millions of dollars are being spent on experiments with ways to collect such fees, and the idea seems to be gaining support in some quarters...NY Times
The mileage tax studies are being conducted nationally and locally. The feds are spending $16.5 million on 1,200 volunteers in 6 cities whose vehicles have tracking devices "to record where motorists have been." Oregon has already completed a field test. Others considering the tax are North Carolina, Massachusetts and Nevada.
Here's a classic quote from a Politically Superior One in Nevada:
“We’re seeing more fuel-efficient cars or even cars that run on electricity,” said Susan Martinovich, director of the Nevada Department of Transportation. “Those people are not paying as much, and yet they’re still on the road and still causing congestion and impacting pavement. How do I get at those people?”
She's going to "get at" you with a mileage tax.
The NY Times article concludes:
Despite the problems, some move to replace or supplement the gas tax seems inevitable.
They are planning to "get at" you wherever you go.
Driving less, and driving more fuel efficient vehicles (even electric ones) has the big spenders upset. Imposing the mileage tax would cause consumers to seek out even less costly modes of transportation, such as a horse-drawn cart or wagon.
Then we could look forward to a "horse turd tax."
Yes, except for one itty, bitty, little thing. We are supposed to cut back but the Politically Superior Ones are not. If conservation cuts revenues, then something must be done. Enter the mileage tax.
With gas tax revenue declining and fuel efficiency the holy grail of car manufacturers, officials across the country are testing systems that could move Americans from paying a per-gallon tax at the pump to some form of fee based on road usage. The challenges with such a shift are immense. Economists are not sure the idea will be practical, and privacy advocates oppose the notion of governments monitoring motorists’ driving habits. But millions of dollars are being spent on experiments with ways to collect such fees, and the idea seems to be gaining support in some quarters...NY Times
The mileage tax studies are being conducted nationally and locally. The feds are spending $16.5 million on 1,200 volunteers in 6 cities whose vehicles have tracking devices "to record where motorists have been." Oregon has already completed a field test. Others considering the tax are North Carolina, Massachusetts and Nevada.
Here's a classic quote from a Politically Superior One in Nevada:
“We’re seeing more fuel-efficient cars or even cars that run on electricity,” said Susan Martinovich, director of the Nevada Department of Transportation. “Those people are not paying as much, and yet they’re still on the road and still causing congestion and impacting pavement. How do I get at those people?”
She's going to "get at" you with a mileage tax.
The NY Times article concludes:
Despite the problems, some move to replace or supplement the gas tax seems inevitable.
They are planning to "get at" you wherever you go.
Driving less, and driving more fuel efficient vehicles (even electric ones) has the big spenders upset. Imposing the mileage tax would cause consumers to seek out even less costly modes of transportation, such as a horse-drawn cart or wagon.
Then we could look forward to a "horse turd tax."
Is George Soros a Global Warming Turncoat?
NASA’s global-warming-alarmist-in-chief James Hansen is urging the public to join the likes of Greenpeace and the Ruckus Society and others in a March 2 rally in Washington to protest the burning of coal for electricity. But before further clogging the already busy streets of the nation’s capital perhaps Hansen ought to first lay siege to the offices of billionaire supporter George Soros. According to a February 17 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, investment funds managed by Soros own more than $112 million worth of stock in Arch Coal and CONSOL Energy — the third and fifth largest coal companies in the U.S. Other SEC filings indicate that Soros began investing in coal during 2008 — hardly an auspicious time for such investment. Odder still is that this is the same George Soros who, in October 2007, told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo “I think we have to stop the increased use of coal if we want to bring climate change under control…” This is also the same George Soros who, through his Open Society Institute, may have provided as much as $720,000 in 2006 to help finance Hansen’s global warming activism. Coal investments may not be Soros’ only problem with Hansen on the day of reckoning. Soros also owns and/or manages $900 million worth of the Brazilian state oil company, $218 million of Hess Corp., $177 million of ConocoPhillips and $72 million of oil driller Schlumberger...Fox News
Battle Of The Bighorn: Sheep Ranchers Lose
A battle on the steep slopes of the Snake and Salmon river canyons that pits one of Idaho's most iconic wild animals against one of the state's historic industries is inching toward a conclusion. Managers of the Payette National Forest are faced with what looks like a stark choice between preserving majestic bighorn sheep or reducing and maybe even eliminating grazing by domestic sheep on much of the forest. Years of deliberation, research and political maneuvering appear to be tilting in favor of the wild sheep and at the expense of a handful of ranching families with decades-long ties to the land. The complex issue boils down to a simple reality in the eyes of wild sheep advocates and game and land managers. When wild bighorns and their domestic cousins mix, the bighorns die from pneumonia. Scientists don't know all the hows or whys. But game and land managers say the science is clear enough for them to proclaim the two species should be kept apart. "When you put domestics and bighorns together, the bighorns die. We don't need to know any more than that. It is clear we have to have separation," said Keith Lawrence, director of the Nez Perce Tribe's wildlife department. To that end, managers on the Payette National Forest are working on a plan that attempts to keep domestic sheep from commingling with bighorns. The preferred alternative of the plan draft would reduce sheep grazing on the forest by about 60 percent. Other alternatives call for steeper cuts and some allow more liberal grazing. Many environmental groups and bighorn advocates favor an alternative that ends sheep grazing or one that reduces grazing even more. The ranchers say if the preferred alternative is selected, it will spell doom for their livelihoods...Salt Lake Tribune
Can't see the forest for the fees
I’ve said this before and it never ceases to be true: giving government agencies near-total control with virtually zero accountability is always — always — a bad idea. This axiom is playing itself out again in the Kern River Valley where Sequoia National Forest Service officials have earned the community’s ire by bumping up day use and camping fees. Everyone knows it costs money to keep up with the potties, trash and vandalism massive crowds bring with them over the summer. What’s sticking in residents’ craws, however, is this: • The Forest Service isn’t keeping up with trash, sanitation and vandalism. • It isn’t providing better amenities. • It hasn’t properly accounted for fees it’s collected and spent over the last several years. And, in the process of doubling its fees on several sites, it also proposed a host of new fee sites the community feared would ensnare the whole lake and upper Kern River into a scheme that would have seen visitors charged $10 for parking to snap a few pictures...Bakersfield Californian
Analysis for Navajo power line in question
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is reconsidering a decision on a right-of-way easement for an electrical transmission line that is expected to carry energy from the Navajo Nation to areas across the Southwest. The federal agency granted the easement for a 3.4-mile stretch of the line near Shiprock, N.M., in September. A group of environmentalists later appealed, saying the bureau relied on an outdated environmental analysis in issuing its decision and that the analysis should include both the transmission line and a proposed coal-fired power plant because the two projects would go hand in hand...KNXV-TV
Water plan hits wall of foes
A water war is brewing on the Yampa River. A bid by the Shell Exploration and Production Co. for a 15 billion- gallon water right has sparked opposition letters from 25 federal, state and local agencies, along with businesses and environmental groups. The battle runs from Parker, which is seeking more water amid Front Range suburbs, to Dinosaur National Monument, where National Park Service officials worry that Shell's plan to divert water for oil-shale development may hurt the park. Other objections filed with the Steamboat Springs water court came from a coal company, a power company, an agricultural ditch company and Cross Mountain Ranch, a hunting resort. The Shell application and the opposition letters will be reviewed by the water court, a process that water lawyers say could take a year. The Shell bid is provoking such a strong reaction because the Yampa is Colorado's last river with unclaimed water...Denver Post
Grazing: Good or bad for wildfires?
The Bureau of Land Management is launching studies to find out if livestock grazing can be a tool to reduce the threat of wildfires or if it may make them worse. Mike Pellant, coordinator of the Great Basin Restoration Initiative for BLM, said grazing and anti-grazing proponents made claims on both sides of the issue after the 2007 Murphy Complex fire, Idaho's second-largest wildfire on record. "Our own studies indicate grazing made a difference and can be a tool, but it needs to be used properly. We think targeted grazing by specific kinds of livestock might be an answer, but we need solid, scientific data," Pellant said. He said the BLM wants to develop internal guidelines for grazing to reduce fuels. Tom Dyer, Idaho director for BLM, put together a group to study the issue, Pellant said. "We're requesting funds for pilot projects, which would involve participation by permittees," he said. The agency is also continuing to monitor its own tools and methods of evaluating fires...Capital Press
A toxic home on the range?
For 200 years, Randy Mumme’s family has raised cattle on the same plot of southeast Texas land. Then, about 10 years ago, something began to change. His steers were losing weight. Cows were miscarrying; one gave birth to a calf with three legs. Many calves were stillborn. The family’s ranching practices had not changed over the centuries, but the environment had: His ranch is four miles downwind of large industrial plants that spew tons of carcinogens and other toxic substances into the air. Mumme and other ranchers in Point Comfort suspect the factories are contributing to the ill-health of their cattle. Now scientists have found DNA evidence that suggests the ranchers’ suspicions might be true, heightening concerns about their cattle as well as their own health. Tests have revealed that herds as far as six miles downwind of the factories have more DNA disturbances than other herds not downwind, according to scientists at Texas A & M University. The changes in chromosome structure and other genetic damage can increase the animal’s risk of cancer and reproductive damage...Environmental Health News
NMSU expert says New Mexico in the midst of a land rush for wind
At times, the formidable winds known across much of the Western United States can be unpleasant, but now Western farmers and ranchers are seeing dollar signs in the wind as they look to lease portions of their land to wind farm developers. “We are seeing a wind land rush in New Mexico by more than two dozen wind developers of all stripes and shades,” said Robert Foster, associate director of New Mexico State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness in the College of Agriculture and Home Economics. He also is a program manager for NMSU’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. Three elements necessary for a successful wind farm, Foster said, include land with a good wind resource, access to transmission lines and a contract to sell the energy. A piece of land is considered optimal for a wind farm if it has average annual winds greater than 15 miles per hour. On average, a wind farm’s footprint with roads and transmission lines is only about 10 percent of the land, so 90 percent is still available for livestock or crops. “Livestock are not scared of wind turbines and you’ll often see cows sitting in the shade of a turbine. Birds can easily see wind turbines and avoid flying through them. There are occasional bird kills, but usually during bad weather, such as fog, when they cannot see the turbines. That’s generally not a problem in New Mexico,” Foster said. Currently, ranchers in New Mexico receive about $1.8 million a year for leasing their lands for wind farms...Southwest Farm Press
Some ranchers at odds with state over antelope roundup
Some area ranchers are at odds with the recent herding and exporting of prong horned antelope from Quay County by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. Starting on Feb. 26 the DGF set up traps in Quay County to capture and move 161 antelope to the Santa Ana Pueblo near Albuquerque and to three areas of Mexico, said Dan J. Williams, media relations DGF. “I am against any antelope being taken out of this area,” said Van Robertson, a Quay County rancher. “In fact, there are very few people in this area that wanted this done.” Robertson said that he has tried to maintain and manage the antelope population on his property through hunts. “I am in the business of hunting,” Robertson said. “Hunting has become a business for area ranchers and they are taking that away.” One rancher disagreed with the method of herding the antelope, and in particular by helicopter. “I did not allow them on my land,” Michael Perez said. “They don’t realize that those antelope will go through fences because of helicopters and I have repaired enough fence in the past because of the antelope.” Perez said that the increase in numbers is due to the DGF taking away their hunts several years ago. “Now, we are overrun by antelope,” Perez said...Quay County Sun
Is family ranching a thing of the past?
The future of family ranching is bleak in the eyes of one Catron County rancher who recently told me he foresees the day that such ranching will end. "The days of family ranching are over," said Ace McPhaul, 32, while sitting at the home headquarters of the Southern Cross Ranch, a ranch he's managed for three years with his wife, Timber, and two small children. Instead of belonging to families, Ace said he foresees the day when the land is taken over as investment property and "as an afterthought, put cattle on it. We'll see more and more of incorporations becoming somehow involved." "It's only by passing on ranches" that the familial history of ranching will survive, he added. "We will never be able to pay for a cattle ranch with cows," he said. Those aren't very encouraging words to hear from a man whose 3-1/2 year-old daughter, Denim Bleu, and son, Blazen Trails, 1 1/2, will be the fifth generation McPhauls in Pie Town. McPhaul's great-grandfather and his three brothers drove their cattle herd out of Texas after a bad winter, said Ace. "They wanted more trees and a little more protection," he said. They headed west and stopped in Pie Town. "When they got to Pie Town, heaven only knows why they stopped," he laughed. "We've been here ever since." The Southern Cross Ranch, a 40,000-acre or 60 section ranch, runs approximately 250 to 300 head of mostly Black Angus beef cattle. The terrain of the ranch makes it difficult to run much more then that, said Ace...Silver City Sun-News
Ranch girls just wanna have fun
For someone who enjoys the company of others but lives on a ranch where the nearest neighbor is four miles away, Timber McPhaul's life on the Southern Cross Ranch may seem like a dichotomy, but she makes due with what she has. "The hardest thing is to stay involved in the community," she said. "I'm a social bug; sometimes I'm like I just need to see someone." McPhaul is a former competitive ballroom and swing dancer who teaches a class at the Quemado High School. She is now a full-time mother of daughter Denim Bleu, 3 1/2, and son Blazen Trails, 1 1/2, and helps her husband, Ace, on the ranch. "As a successful ranch wife, you participate in ranching," she said. "I can load the kids up and go with Ace. That way, you feel like you're a part than just sitting here at home. I would lose my mind." Living on the ranch near Pie Town in west-central New Mexico makes shopping trips few and far between and Timber said she usually travels to Socorro or Springerville, Ariz. "The hardest thing for me is groceries," she said. "If I go big shopping, I go every couple of months." The woman on this ranch said she likes to keep about six months' worth of canned food in the pantry and they usually butcher one beef cow a year. Most of their groceries are purchased in bulk, she said...Silver City Sun-News
Record red meat production in 2008
There was more red meat produced in 2008 than any other year in U.S. history. According to the USDA, beef, pork, veal, lamb and mutton production was 50.362 billion pounds, up 3% from 2007, as strong demand was met by the large supply of available livestock. Also, economic concerns pushed more animals to market as producers were facing high feed prices last year. Four states - Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas - accounted for roughly half of all red meat production...Brownfield
Pancho Villa rides again in U.S. border town
Scores of Mexican riders, some dressed as bandits and toting sabers, trotted across the U.S. border Saturday to remember a raid by Francisco "Pancho" Villa that left 18 Americans dead and this dusty U.S. frontier town a smoking ruin. The riders crossed the border in an annual commemoration of bandit-turned revolutionary Villa's bloody attack on Columbus, New Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution in March 1916. The reenactment is organized by historical enthusiasts from both sides of the border, and draws hundreds of tourists and residents who gather to watch and hold picnics. Villa raided the town in reprisal for the U.S. government's support for his rival, the nationalist government leader Venustiano Carranza. His gun-toting pistoleros crept into the streets under cover of darkness, attacked the U.S. Army garrison here killing 10 soldiers and eight civilians, and torched adobe and timber-framed homes across Columbus. Villa's raiders looted stores, stole machine guns and ammunition as well as horses and mules before running for the border and refuge in revolutionary Mexico. Sixty-seven of his men were killed out of more than 500. Outraged by the raid, the U.S. government dispatched an expeditionary force of 10,000 troops in a failed bid to capture Villa, who had dispersed his insurgents and vanished...Reuters
A Knack for Hooking the Longest Rattlers
Favorable rattlesnake weather calls for temperatures in the high 70s, with a gentle southerly breeze to float chaparral kisses deep into the tableland of the Balcones Escarpment. Blessed with such conditions on a weekday in late February, Eric Carl Timaeus loaded an assortment of wood crates, canvas sacks and hooked poles into his pickup truck, where a black rosary swung from the rearview mirror, and set off past miles of caliche pits and Border Patrol checkpoints into the short-grass country. “I’m on the way that way, thought I’d make sure you didn’t have a problem with me going out there today,” Timaeus, 57, said to a rancher on his cellphone. As the reptilian hibernation months have drawn to an end, ranchers across the Rio Grande Valley have been inviting Timaeus to prowl their spreads. A retired soldier with mottled features and a trim goatee, he has compiled nine consecutive titles in the length competition at the Sweetwater Jaycees Rattlesnake Roundup, held each March in West Texas. In recent years Timaeus has made it his practice to arrive at the start of the weekend festival, drop off a 100-pound pile of slithering western diamondbacks and return on Sunday to claim his prize of about $400. Along the way Timaeus has gained a certain renown. Unlike many snake hunters, he does not use gas to flush out dens. He leaves females to breed, babies to grow. He harvests only the longest, heaviest males. And he carries no weapon, preferring to coax live prey into his bag with a dull metal hook in the manner of a charmer. For such intimacy, such delicacy and such sport, directed at these lowest of earthbound creatures, Timaeus has been rewarded with uncontested dominance...NY Times
It's all Trew: Everyone was GTT: Gone to Texas
A special treat awaits historical readers who purchase the book "Going To Texas - Five Centuries of Texas Maps" by the Center For Texas Studies at Texas Christian University. It is published by TCU Press, Fort Worth. Five centuries means 500 years and that's a long time. The state's boundaries changed so many times during this span of time more than 50 maps were needed to show all the changes in the evolution of our Grand State. The text describing the maps alone is worth the price of the book. During one span from 1800 to 1900, the most famous initials in America was GTT, which stood for "Gone to Texas." It seemed that no matter where you lived, where you were going or the route you took part of your journey would probably go through Texas. Whether you were seeking "The Promised Land" or were just curious about "The Great Space of Land Unknown," travelers listened to the land promoters and read the newspapers as they sought a better life for themselves and their families. No doubt many were dedicated to seeking a better life and fortune for their families as they broached the Great Unknown. However, many were merely struck with wanderlust, bored with their drab, harsh lives and responsibilities. Like the earlier Gold Strike Days in California or the later Great Land Run in Oklahoma, they were easily lured with vague promises of a pot at the end of the rainbow. When they left, the excuse was left written somewhere ... GTT...Amarillo Globe-News
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Wrangler Timed Event Championship Finals
GUTHRIE, Okla., March 8, 2009 – The Ironman event of ProRodeo celebrated twenty-five fabulous years this weekend at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Trevor Brazile who had previously won 5 WTEC titles and second last year, reclaimed his “Ironman Title” by besting a field of the world’s best cowboys. For two and a half decades, this one-of-a-kind event has showcased the greatest timed event cowboys competing in the most unique event in rodeo – the Wrangler Timed Event Championship.
Most fans of the Wrangler Timed Event Championship of the World leave the Lazy E Arena with programs and memories. Trevor Brazile of Decatur, Texas leaves with championships. On Sunday, the 32-year-old self-proclaimed fan extended his record WTEC title collection to six with 313.4 on 25 head. It was a dramatic win.
Brazile led by 28.1 seconds after 22 head. But then his heel loop got away from him in the next event and he dropped to third in the average at 294.1 seconds on 23 head behind two-time WTEC Champion Daniel Green of Oakdale, Calif. (269.9 on 23 head) and Josh Peek of Pueblo, Colo. (293.0 on 23 head). However, Green suffered a 60-second time in the steer wrestling. A 60-second time is used instead of a no-time at the WTEC. Peek tossed his steer in 5.3 seconds and Brazile was 7.4. So with one run left - the steer roping - Peek led Brazile by 3.2 seconds. Brazile's Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association gold buckles include two in steer roping. Brazile clocked an 11.9-second run. Peek, who had to be 15-seconds or faster for the win, ran into trouble and took a 60.0-second time (a loop missed that ultimately cost him $40,000).
In celebration of the 25th year of the prestigious WTEC, all former champions - of which there are 10 - gathered for a special recognition dinner on Saturday. When it came time for Brazile to speak, he said "I am a fan." Looking out at a room filled with gold buckle cowboys, he said, "I was watching." Whether the notes he was taking were mental or on a piece of paper, it's safely said that he studied well. Besides winning $50,000 for the average this year, he tacked on $6,000 for placing second in the fastest rounds with a 45.7-second showing in the second round. Bringing his total earnings at the WTEC to $564,500.
Brazile, a six-time all-around and nine-time overall Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion, claimed a share of the lead with Green during the first run of the second round, or the sixth of 25 head. He held that until the team roping - heeling on Sunday. But he worked his way back to claim the win and dedicated it to the memory of the late Clem McSpadden, Hall of Fame Announcer and the voice of the Lazy E Arena.
Green not only earned $25,000 for second in the average with 344.7 seconds on 25 head, but also had the fastest round with 45.5 seconds in the fourth round for $10,000 and 50.2 seconds in the second round for sixth fastest round and $2,000 – all totaling a weekend take of $37,000.
Finishing third was three-time WTEC champion Jimmie Cooper, who at age 52 totaled 358.2 on 25. Cooper was the PRCA all-around World Champion in 1981. The 25th WTEC included record-breaking efforts in individual events. Cade Swor of Chico, Texas broke a 10-year-old arena record in the tie-down roping. Swor roped and tied his calf in 7.9 seconds in the fourth round breaking the 1999 mark of 8.1 seconds by Blair Burk of Durant, Okla. In the team roping - heeling, the record was 5.2 seconds set by Green in 2000. In the fourth go, PRCA World Champion Chad Masters of Clarksville, Tenn., stopped the clock in 5.1 seconds, assisted by Luke Brown on the heading end. Just a few minutes later Jo Jo LeMond of Andrews, Texas froze the scoreboard clock in 4.9 seconds, with PRCA World Champion Matt Sherwood as his header. The Lazy E Arena pays a $3,000 bonus when a contestant breaks a WTEC arena record - meaning Swor, Masters and LeMond collected $3,000 each.
The WTEC featured twenty of the world’s best cowboys in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) competing in pro rodeo’s most unique event that is often referred to as “The Ironman” — it is a true test of versatility and stamina. Each contestant is required to compete in all five grueling timed events: tie-down roping, steer roping, heading, heeling and steer wrestling – over five rounds in three days.
In addition to the competition, numerous special functions were held to commemorate this special anniversary event that included appearances and highlights from previous champions such as two-time WTEC Champion Leo Camarillo; 1986 Champion Mike Beers; 1990 Champion Bobby Harris and 1995 Champion Olie Smith. These great WTEC ambassadors who are now retired, joined current competing past champions for special festivities that included Brazile; four-time Champions Paul Tierney and K.C. Jones; three-time champion Jimmie Cooper; two-time champion Daniel Green; and 2005 champion Kyle Lockett. In addition to the past champions being on hand, the Lazy E Arena paid tribute to the late Clem McSpadden honoring his twenty-four years of service to the Lazy E Arena and the WTEC. The Lazy E presented Donna McSpadden and family with a “Champion” WTEC buckle with Clem’s name inscribed and also presented long-time gate man Delmar Smith with a Shorty’s Caboy Hattery 50X hat in tribute to McSpadden establishing the first annual Clem McSpadden Pioneer Award...Lazy E
Average - Final Results
1. Trevor Brazile, Decatur, Texas 313.4 Seconds on 25 Head, $50,000
2. Daniel Green, Oakdale, Calif. 344.7 Seconds on 25 Head, $25,000
3. Jimmie Cooper, Monument, N.M. 358.2 Seconds on 25 Head, $15,000
4. Josh Peek, Pueblo, Colo. 358.3 Seconds on 25 Head, $10,000
5. Kyle Lockett, Visalia, Calif. 366.5 Seconds on 25 Head, $7,500
6. Beau Franzen, Sidney, Mont. 378.1 Seconds on 25 Head, $5,000
7. Chance Kelton, Mayer, Ariz. 400.2 Seconds on 25 Head, $4,500
8. Rhett Kennedy, Chowchilla, Calif. 412.1 Seconds on 25 Head, $3,000
Fastest Rounds - Final Results
1. Daniel Green , Oakdale, Calif. 45.5 Seconds (4th round), $10,000
2. Trevor Brazile, Decatur, Texas 45.7 Seconds (2nd round) $6,000
3. K.C. Jones, Burlington, Wyo. 47.4 Seconds (5th round) $5,000
4. Josh Peek, Pueblo, Colo. 48.3 Seconds (3rd round) $4,000
5. Steve Duhon, Sonora, Texas 48.9, Seconds (4th round) $3,000
6. Daniel Green, Oakdale, Calif. 50.2 Seconds (2nd round) $2,000
Arena Record Bonuses
Cade Swor, Chico, Texas 7.9 Seconds (Tie-Down Roping), $3,000
Chad Masters, Clarksville, Tenn. 5.1 Seconds (Heeling), $3,000
JoJo LeMond, Andrews, Texas 4.9 Seconds (Heeling), $3,000
$159,000 Total Pay-Out
Most fans of the Wrangler Timed Event Championship of the World leave the Lazy E Arena with programs and memories. Trevor Brazile of Decatur, Texas leaves with championships. On Sunday, the 32-year-old self-proclaimed fan extended his record WTEC title collection to six with 313.4 on 25 head. It was a dramatic win.
Brazile led by 28.1 seconds after 22 head. But then his heel loop got away from him in the next event and he dropped to third in the average at 294.1 seconds on 23 head behind two-time WTEC Champion Daniel Green of Oakdale, Calif. (269.9 on 23 head) and Josh Peek of Pueblo, Colo. (293.0 on 23 head). However, Green suffered a 60-second time in the steer wrestling. A 60-second time is used instead of a no-time at the WTEC. Peek tossed his steer in 5.3 seconds and Brazile was 7.4. So with one run left - the steer roping - Peek led Brazile by 3.2 seconds. Brazile's Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association gold buckles include two in steer roping. Brazile clocked an 11.9-second run. Peek, who had to be 15-seconds or faster for the win, ran into trouble and took a 60.0-second time (a loop missed that ultimately cost him $40,000).
In celebration of the 25th year of the prestigious WTEC, all former champions - of which there are 10 - gathered for a special recognition dinner on Saturday. When it came time for Brazile to speak, he said "I am a fan." Looking out at a room filled with gold buckle cowboys, he said, "I was watching." Whether the notes he was taking were mental or on a piece of paper, it's safely said that he studied well. Besides winning $50,000 for the average this year, he tacked on $6,000 for placing second in the fastest rounds with a 45.7-second showing in the second round. Bringing his total earnings at the WTEC to $564,500.
Brazile, a six-time all-around and nine-time overall Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion, claimed a share of the lead with Green during the first run of the second round, or the sixth of 25 head. He held that until the team roping - heeling on Sunday. But he worked his way back to claim the win and dedicated it to the memory of the late Clem McSpadden, Hall of Fame Announcer and the voice of the Lazy E Arena.
Green not only earned $25,000 for second in the average with 344.7 seconds on 25 head, but also had the fastest round with 45.5 seconds in the fourth round for $10,000 and 50.2 seconds in the second round for sixth fastest round and $2,000 – all totaling a weekend take of $37,000.
Finishing third was three-time WTEC champion Jimmie Cooper, who at age 52 totaled 358.2 on 25. Cooper was the PRCA all-around World Champion in 1981. The 25th WTEC included record-breaking efforts in individual events. Cade Swor of Chico, Texas broke a 10-year-old arena record in the tie-down roping. Swor roped and tied his calf in 7.9 seconds in the fourth round breaking the 1999 mark of 8.1 seconds by Blair Burk of Durant, Okla. In the team roping - heeling, the record was 5.2 seconds set by Green in 2000. In the fourth go, PRCA World Champion Chad Masters of Clarksville, Tenn., stopped the clock in 5.1 seconds, assisted by Luke Brown on the heading end. Just a few minutes later Jo Jo LeMond of Andrews, Texas froze the scoreboard clock in 4.9 seconds, with PRCA World Champion Matt Sherwood as his header. The Lazy E Arena pays a $3,000 bonus when a contestant breaks a WTEC arena record - meaning Swor, Masters and LeMond collected $3,000 each.
The WTEC featured twenty of the world’s best cowboys in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) competing in pro rodeo’s most unique event that is often referred to as “The Ironman” — it is a true test of versatility and stamina. Each contestant is required to compete in all five grueling timed events: tie-down roping, steer roping, heading, heeling and steer wrestling – over five rounds in three days.
In addition to the competition, numerous special functions were held to commemorate this special anniversary event that included appearances and highlights from previous champions such as two-time WTEC Champion Leo Camarillo; 1986 Champion Mike Beers; 1990 Champion Bobby Harris and 1995 Champion Olie Smith. These great WTEC ambassadors who are now retired, joined current competing past champions for special festivities that included Brazile; four-time Champions Paul Tierney and K.C. Jones; three-time champion Jimmie Cooper; two-time champion Daniel Green; and 2005 champion Kyle Lockett. In addition to the past champions being on hand, the Lazy E Arena paid tribute to the late Clem McSpadden honoring his twenty-four years of service to the Lazy E Arena and the WTEC. The Lazy E presented Donna McSpadden and family with a “Champion” WTEC buckle with Clem’s name inscribed and also presented long-time gate man Delmar Smith with a Shorty’s Caboy Hattery 50X hat in tribute to McSpadden establishing the first annual Clem McSpadden Pioneer Award...Lazy E
Average - Final Results
1. Trevor Brazile, Decatur, Texas 313.4 Seconds on 25 Head, $50,000
2. Daniel Green, Oakdale, Calif. 344.7 Seconds on 25 Head, $25,000
3. Jimmie Cooper, Monument, N.M. 358.2 Seconds on 25 Head, $15,000
4. Josh Peek, Pueblo, Colo. 358.3 Seconds on 25 Head, $10,000
5. Kyle Lockett, Visalia, Calif. 366.5 Seconds on 25 Head, $7,500
6. Beau Franzen, Sidney, Mont. 378.1 Seconds on 25 Head, $5,000
7. Chance Kelton, Mayer, Ariz. 400.2 Seconds on 25 Head, $4,500
8. Rhett Kennedy, Chowchilla, Calif. 412.1 Seconds on 25 Head, $3,000
Fastest Rounds - Final Results
1. Daniel Green , Oakdale, Calif. 45.5 Seconds (4th round), $10,000
2. Trevor Brazile, Decatur, Texas 45.7 Seconds (2nd round) $6,000
3. K.C. Jones, Burlington, Wyo. 47.4 Seconds (5th round) $5,000
4. Josh Peek, Pueblo, Colo. 48.3 Seconds (3rd round) $4,000
5. Steve Duhon, Sonora, Texas 48.9, Seconds (4th round) $3,000
6. Daniel Green, Oakdale, Calif. 50.2 Seconds (2nd round) $2,000
Arena Record Bonuses
Cade Swor, Chico, Texas 7.9 Seconds (Tie-Down Roping), $3,000
Chad Masters, Clarksville, Tenn. 5.1 Seconds (Heeling), $3,000
JoJo LeMond, Andrews, Texas 4.9 Seconds (Heeling), $3,000
$159,000 Total Pay-Out
Wrangler Timed Event Championship Round 4: 3 Arena Records Broken
After 20 head, the leaders in the standings:
1. Trevor Brazile, Decatur, Texas 214.2
2. Daniel Green, Oakdale, Calif. 237.2
3. Josh Peek, Pueblo, Colo. 265.7
4. Kyle Lockett, Visalia, Calif. 298.8
5. Jimmie Cooper 301.5
Round #3 Summary
GUTHRIE, OK -- 3:30PM / March 7, 2009
What does 170 pounds of iron look like? It wears a black shirt and black cowboy hat and is named Trevor Brazile. The 5-11, 170-pounder of Decatur, Texas came into this year's "Iron Man" competition, the 25th Wrangler Timed Event Championship of the World, with a record five titles to his name.
But don't close that record book. After three rounds, the 32-year-old is showing why he's won more than a half-million dollars at the WTEC as he leads with 160.9 seconds on 15 head. He went into Saturday afternoon's third round with a 4.2 margin on 10 head over the other 19 cowboys competing this weekend at the Lazy E Arena. But Brazile, a six-time All-Around and nine-time overall Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion, will stretch a lead in a hurry. And he did. After 15 head he is 30.8 seconds ahead of the field. What does that mean? On the first run of the weekend he was 13.9 seconds in the team roping heading when his heeler picked up a 5-second penalty for roping only one leg. Brazile's been faster than 13.9 seconds on every run since.
Sitting second is defending and two-time WTEC champion Daniel Green of Oakdale, Calif. with 191.7 seconds on 15 head. Moving up the leadboard Saturday afternoon was former PRCA Reserve All-Around World Champion Josh Peek of Pueblo, Colo. who used a round of 48.3 seconds, the second fastest this year, to move to third in the average at 201.4 seconds on 15 head. The fastest round this year continues to be Brazile's 45.7 second showing in the second round.
For complete times & standings go here.
1. Trevor Brazile, Decatur, Texas 214.2
2. Daniel Green, Oakdale, Calif. 237.2
3. Josh Peek, Pueblo, Colo. 265.7
4. Kyle Lockett, Visalia, Calif. 298.8
5. Jimmie Cooper 301.5
Round #3 Summary
GUTHRIE, OK -- 3:30PM / March 7, 2009
What does 170 pounds of iron look like? It wears a black shirt and black cowboy hat and is named Trevor Brazile. The 5-11, 170-pounder of Decatur, Texas came into this year's "Iron Man" competition, the 25th Wrangler Timed Event Championship of the World, with a record five titles to his name.
But don't close that record book. After three rounds, the 32-year-old is showing why he's won more than a half-million dollars at the WTEC as he leads with 160.9 seconds on 15 head. He went into Saturday afternoon's third round with a 4.2 margin on 10 head over the other 19 cowboys competing this weekend at the Lazy E Arena. But Brazile, a six-time All-Around and nine-time overall Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion, will stretch a lead in a hurry. And he did. After 15 head he is 30.8 seconds ahead of the field. What does that mean? On the first run of the weekend he was 13.9 seconds in the team roping heading when his heeler picked up a 5-second penalty for roping only one leg. Brazile's been faster than 13.9 seconds on every run since.
Sitting second is defending and two-time WTEC champion Daniel Green of Oakdale, Calif. with 191.7 seconds on 15 head. Moving up the leadboard Saturday afternoon was former PRCA Reserve All-Around World Champion Josh Peek of Pueblo, Colo. who used a round of 48.3 seconds, the second fastest this year, to move to third in the average at 201.4 seconds on 15 head. The fastest round this year continues to be Brazile's 45.7 second showing in the second round.
For complete times & standings go here.
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
The tally book - cowboy records for all timesJulie Carter
Most folks think that if a cowboy has a brain, he wears it under his hat.
Truth of the matter is everything of importance that he might know is written in a little book carried in his shirt pocket. In fact, it's been said that was very reason for inventing pockets for shirts - that and a place to carry cigarette papers and a bag of Bull Durham.
The tally book usually sports an embossed name on the cover endorsing the company that provided it to the cowboy. This is typically a bank that has a vested interest in the cowboy keeping track of his business.
It's his little black book, often red or green, but has little if anything to do with collecting phone numbers of girls, albeit there is occasionally a need to jot one of those down.
Preprinted dates and categories in the book mean nothing. The cowboy keeps his own style of books and may mark the spot he needs to turn to often with a folded dollar bill or a toothpick.
The data that may set the course for risk management, purchases, hedging, selling or retained ownership could ultimately end up on some computer run by a guy in high-water britches and a pocket full of mechanical pencils. However, the origin of all cattle information is recorded first in the cowboy's tally book.
Similarities to methods and information end there. The detailed cowboy will record the exact date cattle were purchased, their weight and price per pound. He'll record when they were moved from one place to the other and give an estimated weight based in prior knowledge of gain per day in a specific pasture.
Death loss will be noted and counts corrected. Medicine given is accounted for, as are dates, amounts and types of feed and supplementation.
Dates are noted when the bulls are turned in with cows, how many, where and when they were pulled back out of the pastures.
At branding time, numbers of new baby heifers and steers calves are recorded from each pasture and how many are left as bull calves. Those same calves' weaning weights and price per pound will be recorded in the fall, giving historical value to the tally books that end up in a desk or dresser drawer to be found by the generations to come.
A few pages may be dedicated to phone numbers for the feed salesman, parts house, veterinarian and fuel dealer. Others will detail well information, pump jacks and windmills, including when it was last pulled, if new leathers were put in place and when pipe or sucker rod was replaced.
The personal nature of the business showed up when the cowboy recorded information about a particular cow, one of a thousand, like it was someone he knew personally. The notation would read, "White-faced cow, short in the hind quarters, 3 years old, late to breed, check next year." Or "motley-faced cow, horn cut, open last spring, light bred now.
All this critical information in one little book that, in theory, is close at hand and available, always.
But things happen. If he bends over a drinker to fix a broken float and the pocket flap wasn't snapped, the book falls in the water and it's a cussing-fit accident.
If the little woman snags up his dirty shirt off the floor at the end of the day and loads it in the washing machine without first checking the pockets, it's the end of the free world.
There's no question, there are now computer cowboys who ride a variety of noisy, expensive motorized "horses," but even so, they still have a little tally book in their shirt pocket. Likely, right next to their BlackBerry smart phones.
Julie can be reached for comment at www.julie-carter.com
Sympathizing With NCBA’s Disappointment
C.R. Jolley
The NCBA issued a press release expressing their disappointment in a denial of their petition by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for a review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule that regulates dust under the Clean Air Act.
“We are very disappointed with the Court’s decision,” NCBA Chief Environmental Counsel Tamara Thies said. “There is no scientific evidence that agriculture dust causes adverse health effects, and its regulation under the Clean Air Act is completely unjustified.”
Unjustified and ridiculous. Unfortunately “ridiculous” has no legal standing. Otherwise a whole honeywagon full of decisions by the feds would have deep-sixed a long time ago.
The NCBA release said, “The regulation of agriculture dust means that activities ranging from soil tilling, cattle movements in feedyards, driving on unpaved roads, and planting and harvesting crops could all come under the regulatory strong-arm of the EPA.”
If I understand the possibilities correctly, before you plow the south 40 this spring, you’ll have to make sure the field is sufficiently damp, but not muddy, of course. Yeah, that perfect condition happens all the time. Check the wind sock at the local airport, too, to make sure you know which way the wind is blowing.
Cattle will be forced to stand absolutely still. Any movement that might stir up a little dust will mean a visit from your good friends at the EPA who will deliver a stern lecture and maybe a bill for clean up. Sure glad we don’t have to worry about the dust kicked up by wild horses and other large wild animals that tend to stir up things in rural America.
And driving your tractor down that unpaved farm road? Sorry. You’ll have to wait until the state authorities, flush with all that bail out tax money, pave it over and turn it into 4 lanes of interstate highway, secure in the knowledge that road construction is a dust free enterprise. Dirt roads will be strictly off-limits.
No spreading fertilizer during the growing season. When it comes time to harvest – if there is a crop? Gotta do it with semi-legal campesinos because combines will definitely kick up a lot of dust. With ICE stoutly defending our southern border, though, I don’t know where you’ll find enough people to get the job done.
More from the NCBA’s Theis: “Our producers already carry out stringent dust control measures each and every day. But the requirements imposed by EPA’s rule are simply unnecessary and unattainable. In today’s tough economic times, this unwarranted and burdensome government interference could prove to be devastating for America’s cattle producers.”
And corn producers, hog producers, soy bean growers; the list goes on far into that dusty country horizon. You might conjure up a picture of a saddened John Wayne astride his horse, riding off into the sunset. Except all four hooves would be kicking up little patches of highly illegal and possibly toxic dust clouds.
I’m also wondering what the EPA will do about those thousands of square miles of drought-ridden fields in Texas that are barren. Even a slight wind can create an enormous and now illegal dust storm and the responsibility could fall on the poor rancher who owned the land. That’s a government mandated ‘gotcha’ that is only comprehensible when viewed in the dim light of some even more incomprehensible federal regulations.
"The Clean Air Act is intended to regulate pollutants that cause adverse health or environmental effects," Thies explained. "Clearly, expanding this to include the regulation of agriculture dust goes beyond the intent of the Act."
Clearly. The D.C. Court of Appeals must be staffed by people who’ve never been outside the increasingly tight beltway. The NCBA and friends need to find another court to press their point. Cattle Network
The NCBA issued a press release expressing their disappointment in a denial of their petition by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for a review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule that regulates dust under the Clean Air Act.
“We are very disappointed with the Court’s decision,” NCBA Chief Environmental Counsel Tamara Thies said. “There is no scientific evidence that agriculture dust causes adverse health effects, and its regulation under the Clean Air Act is completely unjustified.”
Unjustified and ridiculous. Unfortunately “ridiculous” has no legal standing. Otherwise a whole honeywagon full of decisions by the feds would have deep-sixed a long time ago.
The NCBA release said, “The regulation of agriculture dust means that activities ranging from soil tilling, cattle movements in feedyards, driving on unpaved roads, and planting and harvesting crops could all come under the regulatory strong-arm of the EPA.”
If I understand the possibilities correctly, before you plow the south 40 this spring, you’ll have to make sure the field is sufficiently damp, but not muddy, of course. Yeah, that perfect condition happens all the time. Check the wind sock at the local airport, too, to make sure you know which way the wind is blowing.
Cattle will be forced to stand absolutely still. Any movement that might stir up a little dust will mean a visit from your good friends at the EPA who will deliver a stern lecture and maybe a bill for clean up. Sure glad we don’t have to worry about the dust kicked up by wild horses and other large wild animals that tend to stir up things in rural America.
And driving your tractor down that unpaved farm road? Sorry. You’ll have to wait until the state authorities, flush with all that bail out tax money, pave it over and turn it into 4 lanes of interstate highway, secure in the knowledge that road construction is a dust free enterprise. Dirt roads will be strictly off-limits.
No spreading fertilizer during the growing season. When it comes time to harvest – if there is a crop? Gotta do it with semi-legal campesinos because combines will definitely kick up a lot of dust. With ICE stoutly defending our southern border, though, I don’t know where you’ll find enough people to get the job done.
More from the NCBA’s Theis: “Our producers already carry out stringent dust control measures each and every day. But the requirements imposed by EPA’s rule are simply unnecessary and unattainable. In today’s tough economic times, this unwarranted and burdensome government interference could prove to be devastating for America’s cattle producers.”
And corn producers, hog producers, soy bean growers; the list goes on far into that dusty country horizon. You might conjure up a picture of a saddened John Wayne astride his horse, riding off into the sunset. Except all four hooves would be kicking up little patches of highly illegal and possibly toxic dust clouds.
I’m also wondering what the EPA will do about those thousands of square miles of drought-ridden fields in Texas that are barren. Even a slight wind can create an enormous and now illegal dust storm and the responsibility could fall on the poor rancher who owned the land. That’s a government mandated ‘gotcha’ that is only comprehensible when viewed in the dim light of some even more incomprehensible federal regulations.
"The Clean Air Act is intended to regulate pollutants that cause adverse health or environmental effects," Thies explained. "Clearly, expanding this to include the regulation of agriculture dust goes beyond the intent of the Act."
Clearly. The D.C. Court of Appeals must be staffed by people who’ve never been outside the increasingly tight beltway. The NCBA and friends need to find another court to press their point. Cattle Network
Path of the Jaguar
Alan Rabinowitz envisions a different ending to the story. He imagines that the young jaguar, when he leaves his birthplace, will pass unseen by humans through a near-continuous corridor of sheltering vegetation. Within a couple of days he'll find a small tract of forest harboring enough prey for him to stop and rest a day or two before resuming his trek. Eventually he'll reach a national park or wildlife preserve where he'll find a home, room to roam, plenty of prey, females looking for a mate. Rabinowitz is the world's leading jaguar expert, and he has begun to realize his dream of creating a vast network of interconnected corridors and refuges extending from the U.S.-Mexico border into South America. It is known as Paseo del Jaguar—Path of the Jaguar. Rabinowitz considers such a network the best hope for keeping this great New World cat from joining lions and tigers on the endangered species list. In the 1990s, having censused jaguars across their range, Rabinowitz and other specialists identified dozens of what they called jaguar conservation units (JCUs): large areas with perhaps 50 jaguars, where the local population was either stable or increasing. At the heart of most of the JCUs were existing parks or other protected areas, which Rabinowitz hoped to expand and secure with surrounding buffer zones. "I felt that the best thing we could hope to do was to lock up these great populations in these fragmented areas," he said. Within a few years, though, the new science of DNA fingerprinting—studying genetic material to determine family and species relationships—revealed an amazing fact: The jaguar is the only large, wide-ranging carnivore in the world with no subspecies. Simply put, this means that for millennia jaguars have been mingling their genes throughout their entire range, so that individuals in northern Mexico are identical to those in southern Brazil. For that to be true, some of the cats must wander regularly and widely between populations. Rabinowitz hopes to convince national governments throughout the jaguar's range to maintain this web of habitat through enlightened land-use planning, such as choosing noncritical areas for major developments and road construction. Diana Hadley of the Arizona-based Northern Jaguar Project works to protect the northernmost jaguar population in Mexico, with the long-term goal of seeing the species return to the United States. Hadley said the project and its Mexican partners "fully support" Paseo del Jaguar...National Geographic
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Wrangler Timed Event Championship Round 3
After 15 head, hear are the top 7:
Trevor Brazille 160.9
Daniel Green 191.7
Josh Peek 201.4
Beau Franzen 211.0
Bret Fleming 214.6
Kyle Lockett 224.0
Jimmie Cooper 230.0
Round #3 Summary
GUTHRIE, OK -- 3:30PM / March 7, 2009
What does 170 pounds of iron look like? It wears a black shirt and black cowboy hat and is named Trevor Brazile. The 5-11, 170-pounder of Decatur, Texas came into this year's "Iron Man" competition, the 25th Wrangler Timed Event Championship of the World, with a record five titles to his name.
But don't close that record book. After three rounds, the 32-year-old is showing why he's won more than a half-million dollars at the WTEC as he leads with 160.9 seconds on 15 head. He went into Saturday afternoon's third round with a 4.2 margin on 10 head over the other 19 cowboys competing this weekend at the Lazy E Arena. But Brazile, a six-time All-Around and nine-time overall Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion, will stretch a lead in a hurry. And he did. After 15 head he is 30.8 seconds ahead of the field. What does that mean? On the first run of the weekend he was 13.9 seconds in the team roping heading when his heeler picked up a 5-second penalty for roping only one leg. Brazile's been faster than 13.9 seconds on every run since.
Sitting second is defending and two-time WTEC champion Daniel Green of Oakdale, Calif. with 191.7 seconds on 15 head. Moving up the leadboard Saturday afternoon was former PRCA Reserve All-Around World Champion Josh Peek of Pueblo, Colo. who used a round of 48.3 seconds, the second fastest this year, to move to third in the average at 201.4 seconds on 15 head. The fastest round this year continues to be Brazile's 45.7 second showing in the second round...LazyE
Trevor Brazille 160.9
Daniel Green 191.7
Josh Peek 201.4
Beau Franzen 211.0
Bret Fleming 214.6
Kyle Lockett 224.0
Jimmie Cooper 230.0
Round #3 Summary
GUTHRIE, OK -- 3:30PM / March 7, 2009
What does 170 pounds of iron look like? It wears a black shirt and black cowboy hat and is named Trevor Brazile. The 5-11, 170-pounder of Decatur, Texas came into this year's "Iron Man" competition, the 25th Wrangler Timed Event Championship of the World, with a record five titles to his name.
But don't close that record book. After three rounds, the 32-year-old is showing why he's won more than a half-million dollars at the WTEC as he leads with 160.9 seconds on 15 head. He went into Saturday afternoon's third round with a 4.2 margin on 10 head over the other 19 cowboys competing this weekend at the Lazy E Arena. But Brazile, a six-time All-Around and nine-time overall Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association World Champion, will stretch a lead in a hurry. And he did. After 15 head he is 30.8 seconds ahead of the field. What does that mean? On the first run of the weekend he was 13.9 seconds in the team roping heading when his heeler picked up a 5-second penalty for roping only one leg. Brazile's been faster than 13.9 seconds on every run since.
Sitting second is defending and two-time WTEC champion Daniel Green of Oakdale, Calif. with 191.7 seconds on 15 head. Moving up the leadboard Saturday afternoon was former PRCA Reserve All-Around World Champion Josh Peek of Pueblo, Colo. who used a round of 48.3 seconds, the second fastest this year, to move to third in the average at 201.4 seconds on 15 head. The fastest round this year continues to be Brazile's 45.7 second showing in the second round...LazyE
Obama Delists Wolf In Idaho & Montana
In a blow to environmental groups and a boost for ranchers, the Obama administration announced Friday that it would take the gray wolf off the endangered species list in Montana and Idaho, though it left the predator under federal protection in Wyoming. The delisting allows Montana and Idaho to assume complete management of the animal, which will include a hunting season in both states. The move also delists wolves in the western Great Lakes and parts of Oregon, Utah and Washington. The new policy was announced by the Bush administration in January, but its adoption was delayed so the incoming Obama administration could assess it. “The recovery of the gray wolf throughout significant portions of its historic range is one of the great success stories of the Endangered Species Act,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said. “Today, we have more than 5,500 wolves, including more than 1,600 in the Rockies.” Jenny Harbine, a lawyer with Earthjustice in Bozeman, Mont., which has sued to keep the federal protections, said, “We’re disappointed.” She added, “Idaho has shown an eagerness to kill as many wolves as possible, and they are drawing up plans for killing wolves as we speak.” Officially, however, Idaho has agreed in its state plan to maintain a population of 500 wolves. Montana has agreed to keep 400 wolves. If the number of animals falls below 150 total and 15 breeding pairs for three years in a row, the wolf will be relisted in that state...NY Times
Wrangler Timed Event Championship Round 2
After two rounds:
Trevor Brazille 103.0
Kyle Lockett 107.2
Daniel Green 107.3
Bret Fleming 121.2
Beau Franzen 127.4
Jimmie Cooper 148.2
Trevor has the fastest round so far at 45.7
Trevor Brazille 103.0
Kyle Lockett 107.2
Daniel Green 107.3
Bret Fleming 121.2
Beau Franzen 127.4
Jimmie Cooper 148.2
Trevor has the fastest round so far at 45.7
Friday, March 06, 2009
THE WRANGLER TIMED EVENT CHAMPIONSHIP RETURNS TO THE LAZY E ARENA TO CELEBRATE 25 YEARS OF WORLD CHAMPIONS
The Ironman event of ProRodeo will celebrate twenty-five fabulous years this coming March 6th, 7th, and 8th, 2009 at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie, Oklahoma. For two and a half decades, this one-of-a-kind event has showcased world champion cowboys competing in the most unique event in rodeo – the Wrangler Timed Event Championship.
The WTEC features twenty of the world’s best cowboys in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) competing in pro rodeo’s most unique event that is often referred to as “The Ironman” — it is a true test of versatility and stamina. Each contestant is required to compete in all five grueling timed events: tie-down roping, steer roping, heading, heeling and steer wrestling – over five rounds in three days.
In addition to the competition, numerous special functions are being planned to commemorate this special anniversary event that will include appearances and highlights from previous champions such as two-time WTEC Champion Leo Camarillo; 1986 Champion Mike Beers; 1990 Champion Bobby Harris and 1995 Champion Olie Smith. These great WTEC ambassadors who are now retired, will join current competing past champions for special festivities that include five-time WTEC Champion Trevor Brazile; four-time Champions Paul Tierney and K.C. Jones; three-time champion Jimmie Cooper; two-time and defending champion Daniel Green; and 2005 champion Kyle Lockett.
Last year, Daniel Green of Oakdale, California went into the fifth performance with a 31-second lead on the “King of Rodeo” Trevor Brazile and a field of World Champions. Not only did Green win his second title and hold off the world’s best cowboys, but shattered the arena record in the average set in 2007 by Brazile. Green posted a 276.1 over 25 head of livestock worth $57,000.00 and joined the elite fraternity of multiple-time world champions.
Green had a stellar weekend and used consistent runs, great horses, and world class helpers to rise above his fellow nineteen competitors that made up one of the greatest fields of contestants ever assembled to compete for the prestigious “Iron-Man” title. Brazile, after winning his record fifth title in 2007, finished the event as the runner-up, recorded the fastest over-all go-round time, and placed again in the 5th round for an event total of $41,000.00 bringing Brazile’s career WTEC earnings to $508,500.00. Keeping on the west coast, Los Alamos, California cowboy Casey Branquinho took home third place honors and earned $15,000.00.
Each round of competition features excitement with the leaders changing after every run, with only seconds separating them. The champion isn’t determined until the last rope is thrown, the flag is dropped and the clock has stopped.
The Wrangler Timed Event Championship was developed by the Lazy E in 1985 to determine the best all-around timed event cowboy in the world — the man who could stand out in more than his specialty event, the man who could be consistent in all five timed events. The majority of today’s professional rodeo cowboys no longer compete in multiple events, but specialize in one, possibly two. This event attracts the biggest names in the rodeo industry that correlates into 40 World Championship titles, in addition to thousands of fans representing 48 states from across the country! Some of the cowboys scheduled to compete against defending champion Green for the $150,000.00 purse include: eight-time PRCA World Champion Trevor Brazile; World Champions Luke Branquinho, Steve Duhon, Scott Snedecor; ten-time NFR qualifier, Cash Myers; 2005 PRCA All Around World Champion, Ryan Jarrett; Veteran World Champions Jimmie Cooper and Paul Tierney; and new stars such as the 2007 PRCA Runner-Up World Champion All-Around, Josh Peek.
First Round Results:
Kyle Lockett 55.10
Josh Peek 55.9
Daniel Green 57.10
Trevor Brazille 57.3
Brett Fleming 59.5
Predator Clash: Wolves Kill Mtn. Lion Near Homes
An age-old conflict between two formidable foes ended with the death of a well-traveled mountain lion in the foothills above Elkhorn this week. The epic fight likely occurred Sunday night, Hailey-based Idaho Department of Fish and Game Conservation Officer Lee Garwood said as he ran his hand through the cougar's matted fur just after noon on Monday. "There's still some warmth," he said. According to Garwood, the confrontation likely pitted the solitary, 2-year-old male cougar against an unknown number of wolves from the Phantom Hill pack. Tipped off by nearby residents, the seasoned officer found the crumpled remains of the big cat near the carcass of a cow elk it had likely been feeding on before its fateful encounter. Only a few hundred yards from where Garwood stood was the first of several large homes in the lower end of Parker Gulch...Idaho Mountain Express
Sawmill shuts down because of enviro lawsuits
Environmental lawsuits have long made it difficult for Sierra Pacific Industries, the second-largest lumber producer in the United States, to obtain local timber for its small-log sawmill in the tiny Northern California town of Quincy. This week, the flagging economy hit the final nail into the mill's coffin: The company announced on Monday that it will close the plant in May. The mill was conceived to use small-diameter logs from programs that thin trees on national forest lands for the purpose of reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. But due to a long series of administrative appeals and lawsuits from environmental groups that object to any commercial logging in national forests, the Forest Service has only achieved 20 percent of its overall sales targets, said Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI). Nearly two-thirds of this year's timber sale program is being held up by pending litigation, the company said. The result is that SPI has had to haul logs from farther away to run the mill and make up for the difference...NY Times
A fine way to create jobs and stimulate the economy. I guess they can all get green jobs.
A fine way to create jobs and stimulate the economy. I guess they can all get green jobs.
Capping Economic Growth
Tax-challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Budget Director Peter Orszag went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to defend a federal budget that assumes $650 billion in revenue from a cap-and-trade carbon emissions scheme that may be worse than Bill Clinton's defeated Btu tax on energy. Under the plan, the Obama administration would sell or auction off emission credits based on a predetermined cap of carbon emissions arbitrarily set for the U.S. economy. Lower-polluting companies could then trade their excess. At least that's the theory. The problem is that capping emissions based on dubious climate science will also kill hopes for a rapid economic recovery. Any good that comes from the stimulus package will be wiped out by this energy tax that will be passed on to every consumer through everything we produce and consume. Money that could be spent on creating jobs will be wasted trying to save the polar bear...IBD
Extensive wilderness bill could thwart new energy development
The 111th Congress is poised to usher in the largest expansion of the nation's wilderness in a generation, with 2.1 million acres of public land in line for the strictest environmental protections allowed under federal law. An omnibus lands bill that could receive final congressional approval this month would create new wilderness areas in nine states -- from the San Gabriel Mountains of California to Michigan's Lake Superior shoreline to a portion of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia -- covering almost as much land as the 2.4 million acres designated during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency. Meanwhile, Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) last month introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, which would designate 24 million acres of mostly Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land in five states as wilderness area. At issue is the National Wilderness Preservation System and attempts to add to the 107 million acres of public land already designated as wilderness. The centerpiece of the latest effort to expand wilderness designations is the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act," which the Senate approved in January. The bill consolidates dozens of individual wilderness bills, from designating 37,000 acres within the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia to 700,000 acres and 105 miles of rivers and streams in California. If Congress approves the measure, it will be the single largest wilderness designation since the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, which extended the highest federal protection to 3.5 million acres of BLM lands in the Mojave Desert. One reason environmentalists are pushing to expand wilderness areas is to protect plants and animals from the damaging effects of climate change. While larger than anything proposed under the last several Congresses, the 2009 wilderness proposals are just a glimpse of things to come, congressional watchdogs and conservation leaders say. Once the omnibus lands bill is approved, the floodgates will open and lawmakers will introduce dozens of wilderness proposals covering potentially millions of acres, experts say. "There's a whole suite of bills ready to go," said Spitler of the Wilderness Society...NY Times
Group files petition to stop Karuk Tribe from fishing Klamath River
An ongoing battle between miners, ranchers, loggers, and Native Americans over uses of Klamath River water is taking a new turn. On Monday, a coalition made up of miners and others who have been the target of Karuk efforts to limit Klamath River use filed a petition with the California Fish and Game Department to stop Karuk Tribe members from operating a dip-net fishing site on the lower Klamath River. The petition says natives have no legal right to take salmon while at the same time alledging fish kills from other river users. In a response, Karuk officials called the petition vengeful, and suggested the action is retribution for recent lawsuits to stop suction dredge mining...
Go to News Watch 12 for the video report.
Go to News Watch 12 for the video report.
Wyoming Groups Unveil "Thank a Rancher" Campaign
On March 4, look for three new billboards on Wyoming’s roads, expressing appreciation for the state’s ranchers and the role they play in Wyoming open space and conservation efforts. To raise awareness of how ranchers help to conserve Wyoming’s wide open spaces, abundant wildlife and unparalleled recreation opportunities, a group of sportsmen, conservation and outdoor interests has organized the campaign, uniting to articulate a shared desire to recognize the importance of agriculture in land protection, and the need to work together to maintain what is unique about Wyoming. The group – working in conjunction with the Wyoming Stockgrowers Agricultural Land Trust - includes Audubon Wyoming, Trout Unlimited, Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife and The Nature Conservancy, and is committed to preserve Wyoming’s open landscapes, healthy wildlife populations, and iconic views. “Wyoming still has what so many other places have failed to protect. We recognize that our ranchers and farmers are important caretakers of our wildlife habitat and open spaces” said Brian Rutledge, Executive Director of Audubon in Wyoming. “The stewardship and cultural values embodied by the ranching community are critical in preserving what Wyoming values”...Nature Conservancy
Stimulus - Archaeologists concerned about NEPA & NHPA compliance
With all these stimulus projects coming down the road, the Society for American Archaeology has raised the issue of agencies having sufficient funding and personnel to perform NEPA and NHPA compliance. The SAA is concerned about the "haste" to implement economic relief and feels the Obama administration's efforts to ensure NHPA compliance have been "cursory, at best." They also doubt that many of the stimulus projects are "shovel-read", i.e. that they have "completed all their NEPA and NHPA reviews."
The SAA has expressed their concerns in a letter to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. You can read their letter here.
So, will the government comply with their own laws? Will historic preservation and environmental reviews hold up many of these projects? Will the enviro's sue over NEPA compliance? How many new jobs for archaeologists will be created in this spending frenzy?
It will be interesting to watch.
The SAA has expressed their concerns in a letter to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. You can read their letter here.
So, will the government comply with their own laws? Will historic preservation and environmental reviews hold up many of these projects? Will the enviro's sue over NEPA compliance? How many new jobs for archaeologists will be created in this spending frenzy?
It will be interesting to watch.
Moose moseys on slopes as skiers marvel
A moose on the ski slopes of Steamboat turned heads recently, including catching the eye of a vacationer with a video camera. "It was cool," said Ben Satterfield of Tennessee, who was with his family at the resort and took the video. "I was amazed. I've been skiing all my life and had never seen anything like it." Satterfield and about 100 other skiers were at the slope base Feb. 12 enjoying a collective après-ski moment when people started screaming "Moose! Moose!" The moose came out of a parking lot, crashed through a plastic mesh fence and trotted upslope. That's when Satterfield trained his camera on it. "You just never know what's going to happen when a wild animal — a moose — shows up," he said. For the most part, skiers on camera at Steamboat did the right thing, giving the moose plenty of space and not trying to get too close or aggressively interact with it...Denver Post
Here's the video:
Here's the video:
AgCam’s images are on the waiting list
It was a seven-year wait before UND’s AgCam was launched into space. It will be a little longer, maybe late summer, before its first high-resolution images are seen. AgCam sits aboard the International Space Station orbiting from 2,200 to 2,600 miles above Earth. The original plan was to have it unpacked and mounted by late March. Next week’s scheduled launch of the Discovery Space Shuttle is pushing every project back at least a month on the ISS schedule. Once operational, UND students will command AgCam from Room 270 in Clifford Hall. Its data will be used by farmers, ranchers and natural resource scientists to make decisions concerning land and crop management. For its first year, Olsen said AgCam’s images will come from the Great Plains, but its lens could open wider to worldwide interest. “Once we see it works, if we can get the support and staffing, we can go 24/7 anywhere,” Olsen said. “It’s just a matter of funding.”...Grand Forks HeraldThis info is from NASA's website:
Brief Summary The Agricultural Camera (AgCam) will take frequent images, in visible and infrared light, of vegetated areas on the Earth, principally of growing crops, rangeland, grasslands, forests, and wetlands in the northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions of the United States. Images will be delivered within 2 days directly to requesting farmers, ranchers, foresters, natural resource managers and tribal officials to help improve their environmental stewardship of the land for which they are responsible. Images will also be shared with educators for classroom use. The Agricultural Camera was built and will be operated primarily by students and faculty at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND.
Description...Current Earth remote sensor platforms typically collect data too infrequently for rapidly changing short-season northern crops that often are under cloud cover, or deliver data with too much latency for effective in-season decision support; those that can meet the preceding needs have spatial resolutions that are too coarse for evaluation of in-field variability. AgCam will allow selection of specific geographical areas of interest and request collection of AgCam imagery in both red and near-infrared bandpasses, and at medium-high spatial resolution. The AgCam sensor will be able to point up to 30 degrees off-nadir, enabling frequent (multi-week to multi-day) imaging of a requested area, dramatically improving chances of obtaining cloud-free images. Collected images will be downlinked, processed on the ground, and delivered to the requesting end users within 1-2 days of image collection. Farmers using variable-rate application and other precision agriculture techniques will be able to dynamically delineate management zones as the crop vegetation canopy changes during the growing season; this can result in more effective use of fertilizer and other chemical inputs and reduce negative environmental effects. Further, crop canopy reflectance in AgCam spectral bands is correlative to nitrogen concentrations in the plant biomass; knowledge of variability of plant nitrogen across fields can be used to improve in-season nitrogen application decisions. Ranchers will be better able to determine livestock carrying capacity of rangelands; this can help avoid ecosystem damage due to overgrazing and erosion. Rapid delivery of imagery for these and other applications will enable management decisions to be applied to the current season's operations...Italics are mine
How long will it be before the FS & BLM contract with NASA to count cows and set carrying capacity? They'll be laying off all them danged old range cons. County Assessors and other tax collectors will sign up. Did you get that horse inspected the last time you crossed a district line? The brand board will sign up. Is your premises registered with USDA? No need, they'll sign up.
Urban folks raise hell about red-light cameras but that's nothing compared to this. Hell, cowboys will have to go to town to feel "free." Ain't that a switch.
Senators Introduce Bill To Reform FDA's Food Safety Systems
U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) today introduced bipartisan legislation that will dramatically improve the way the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects the safety of the nation’s food supply. The bipartisan bill focuses on four key areas where FDA’s authorities and resources need to be improved: food-borne illness prevention; food-borne illness detection and response; food defense capabilities; and overall resources. Specifically, the bill improves the ability to prevent food safety problems with these steps: Hazard analysis and preventive controls: Requires all facilities to have in place preventive plans to address identified hazards and prevent adulteration, and gives FDA access to these plans and relevant documentation.
Access to records: Expands FDA access to records in a food emergency.
Third party labs and audits: Allows FDA to recognize laboratory accreditation bodies to ensure U.S. food testing labs meet high quality standards and requires food testing performed by these labs to be reported to FDA. Allows FDA to enable qualified 3rd parties to certify that foreign food facilities comply with U.S. food safety standards.
Imports: Requires importers to verify the safety of foreign suppliers and imported food. Allows FDA to require certification for high-risk foods, and to deny entry to a food that lacks certification or that is from a foreign facility that has refused U.S. inspectors.
Detection: Improves Our Capacity to Detect and Respond to Food-borne Illness Outbreaks
Inspection: Increases FDA inspections at all food facilities, including annual inspections of high-risk facilities and inspections of other facilities at least once every four years.
Surveillance: Enhances food-borne illness surveillance systems to improve the collection, analysis, reporting, and usefulness of data on food-borne illnesses.
Traceability: Requires the Secretary of HHS to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods for rapidly and effectively tracking/tracing fruits and vegetables in the event of a food-borne illness outbreak.
Mandatory Recall: Gives FDA the authority to order a mandatory recall of a food product when a company fails to voluntarily recall the product upon FDA’s request.
Suspension of Registration: Empowers FDA to suspend a food facility’s registration if there is a reasonable probability that food from the facility will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.
Enhances U.S. Food Defense Capabilities: Directs FDA to help food companies protect their products from intentional contamination and calls for a national strategy to protect our food supply from terrorist threats and rapidly respond to food emergencies.
Increases FDA Resources: – Increases funding for FDA’s food safety activities through increased appropriations and targeted fees for domestic and foreign facilities...Ag Network
Solid, But Falling Profits At Agricultural Banks
The U.S. financial crisis has trimmed the profitability of agricultural banks and other commercial banks. However, agricultural banks performed much better than their banking peers. The strongest performance emerged from smaller agricultural banks.
Based on Agricultural Finance Databook information, the financial performance of agricultural banks weakened in 2008.1 The Federal Reserve defines agricultural banks as commercial banks with agricultural loans accounting for more than 14 percent of their loan portfolio.2 According to the Federal Reserve, the average return on assets and equity at agricultural banks steadily declined in 2008. By September 2008, the return on equity at agricultural banks declined to 7.6 percent, and the rate of return to assets edged down to 0.8 percent (Chart 1).
Agricultural bank returns, however, were much stronger than returns at other commercial banks. By September 2008, returns for all commercial banks had plummeted more than 70 percent, with the return on equity dropping to 2.86 percent and return on assets falling to 0.28 percent.3 Agricultural banks also had much stronger performance than other similarly sized small commercial banks, those with less than $500 million in assets. The return on equity and assets at smaller banks was 2.4 and 0.3 percent, respectively, well below the returns at agricultural banks.
Several factors contributed to the dip in agricultural bank profits. First, interest rates on agricultural loans have declined, trimming gross revenue on loan activity. According to agricultural credit surveys from the Federal Reserve, interest rates on all types of agricultural loans have dropped significantly below 2006 levels.4 The average interest rate on operating loans dropped from more than 9.0 percent in 2006 to 7.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. During the same time, the average rate on farm real estate loans fell from roughly 8.5 percent to 6.75 percent...AG NETWORK
Based on Agricultural Finance Databook information, the financial performance of agricultural banks weakened in 2008.1 The Federal Reserve defines agricultural banks as commercial banks with agricultural loans accounting for more than 14 percent of their loan portfolio.2 According to the Federal Reserve, the average return on assets and equity at agricultural banks steadily declined in 2008. By September 2008, the return on equity at agricultural banks declined to 7.6 percent, and the rate of return to assets edged down to 0.8 percent (Chart 1).
Agricultural bank returns, however, were much stronger than returns at other commercial banks. By September 2008, returns for all commercial banks had plummeted more than 70 percent, with the return on equity dropping to 2.86 percent and return on assets falling to 0.28 percent.3 Agricultural banks also had much stronger performance than other similarly sized small commercial banks, those with less than $500 million in assets. The return on equity and assets at smaller banks was 2.4 and 0.3 percent, respectively, well below the returns at agricultural banks.
Several factors contributed to the dip in agricultural bank profits. First, interest rates on agricultural loans have declined, trimming gross revenue on loan activity. According to agricultural credit surveys from the Federal Reserve, interest rates on all types of agricultural loans have dropped significantly below 2006 levels.4 The average interest rate on operating loans dropped from more than 9.0 percent in 2006 to 7.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. During the same time, the average rate on farm real estate loans fell from roughly 8.5 percent to 6.75 percent...AG NETWORK
Thievery occurs in agriculture too
Manufacturers build big warehouses for storage of their products so they won’t be stolen. Agriculturists can’t do that. Crops in the field can’t be locked up. Neither can cattle or sheep — or horses. Since prevention is difficult, punishment after the fact was considered the next best option, the sooner the better, in the old days. So horse thieves were summarily hanged from the nearest big tree. Actually, cattle rustlers and horse thieves were the main reasons for the formation of livestock associations in the late 1800s and for branding livestock to prove ownership. The possibility of theft also is why most ranches don’t have their shipping pens and loading chutes near a highway. No use making the thieves’ getaway easier. Times have changed...Clovis News Journal
Farm Bureau Calls ‘Cow Tax’ Bill Timely and Critical
Legislation introduced today to prevent a “cow tax” on farmers and ranchers is both “timely and critical,” said the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a letter to the bill’s sponsors, Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), AFBF commended their bipartisan efforts and said the organization would work with them to ensure that the legislation gains broad support. The Thune-Schumer bill would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing Title V operating permits on U.S. agriculture operations under the Clean Air Act. Those permits automatically result in mandatory fees. If EPA were to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under the act, as the agency indicated it was considering last year in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, AFBF calculated that it could cost farmers and ranchers $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per beef cow and $21.87 per hog. The fees were arrived at using publicly available government data...Farm Bureau
There are many dairy cows in New York...just in case you thought Schumer was doing this out of the kindness of his heart.
There are many dairy cows in New York...just in case you thought Schumer was doing this out of the kindness of his heart.
Rodeo cowboys doing better economically
Unlike people in many other occupations, professional rodeo cowboys say they're faring better economically this year. ``The pay is still the same. We're rolling down the road, fuel, diesel and gas prices are down right now. We're doing better than we were six, eight months ago _ a lot better,'' said Texan bareback rider Wes Stevenson. Stevenson, 29, is one of 684 contestants who entered the 84th Annual Fiesta de los Vaqueros, which ran through Sunday at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds. That's nearly a 6 percent increase in entries from the 2008 Tucson Rodeo. The increase in entries isn't limited to the Tucson Rodeo but extends to Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association rodeos in general. Entries into PRCA rodeos are up 16 percent since the start of the year, said Jim Bainbridge, a PRCA spokesman...KTAR
2009 College National Finals Rodeo Dates Set
The nation’s best college cowboys and cowgirls from eleven different regions will enter the College National Finals Rodeo (CNFR) arena at this June in Casper, Wyo. The 61st Annual event will begin June 14 and run through June 20. National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA) members will compete for national titles in saddle bronc, bareback, bull riding, steer wrestling, calf roping, team roping, barrel racing, breakaway roping, and goat tying. In addition men’s and women’s team and all-around champions will be determined. The top three students in each event, and top two men’s and women’s teams from the NIRA’s 11 regions will qualify for the CNFR. Student athletes will also be competing for over $200,000 in scholarships from the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. Scholarship Awards Program. Two special “Bulls, Broncs and Breakaway,” performances will be held on Sunday, June 14th, a matinee at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. All remaining performances begin at 7:00 p.m., including the Saturday Championship Round. Slack will be held on the mornings of Monday, June 15th and Tuesday, June 16th, at 7:00 a.m...Rodeo Attitude
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Obama's endangered species ruling could allow climate legal action
President Obama took another step towards regulating carbon this week, calling on agency officials to review changes to the Endangered Species Act imposed during the last months of the Bush adminstration that limit the prospect of climate change-related legal action against carbon intensive projects. Rule 50 CR Part 402 eliminated a requirement under the Endangered Species Act for agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) or National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). These Agencies, which fall under the Department of the Interior, are responsible for ensuring that the Act is upheld. The rule, which was listed in the Federal Registry on December 16 and came into force on January 15, just days ahead of Obama's inauguration, not only removed this requirement for many cases, but also explicitly dismissed any connection between climate change and endangered species, on the grounds that "effects of such action are manifested through global processes and cannot be reliably predicted or measured at the scale of a listed species' current range". Obama's transition team had already vowed to reverse such environmental regulations, which were designed in part to stop environmental groups from using the Endangered Species Act as a carbon regulation tool. For example, some green groups had been investigating using the climate change-related threat to the Polar Bear posed by the disappearance of its habitat to underpin legal action against carbon intensive industries...Business Green
Team Obama May Not Grant Ca. Emissions Waiver
Will the Obama administration grant California’s wish to toughen auto-emission standards? It may not be a sure thing. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday she is “not sure” the Obama administration will let California regulate automobile greenhouse-gas emissions and said she believes the administration would prefer a single national standard governing the industry’s fuel economy and emissions levels. Ms. Granholm, who was at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday for a conference on climate change, was responding to a reporter’s question about how a decision by the administration to allow California to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions would affect Michigan, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and is home to ailing auto giants General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., and Chrysler LLC. Automakers reported dismal February sales numbers again Tuesday. “I’m not sure they will,” Ms. Granholm said. “I think there’s an interest in making sure there’s a unified standard,” she said. Ms. Granholm’s comments are significant because she is a close political ally of Mr. Obama...Environmental Capital
Oil Prices: Here Come Tighter Oil Supplies, Higher Prices
It’s a classic good-news, bad-news scenario. First, the good news. Analysts are scouring data for signs that the economy may be bottoming out and oil types are seeing faint signs of firmness on the energy front. Now, the bad news. If the economy does start to get back on its feet later this year, it could get a repeat wallop from higher fuel prices. Forecasters are basing their hunch that oil is heading upward partly on mounting signs that the economic crisis and lower oil prices are shuttering projects around the world. OPEC countries—which meet next week to consider another output cut—have voluntarily slashed production by around three million barrels a day since last fall. But the big and lasting cuts are coming in non-OPEC countries, where companies are postponing or canceling projects in droves. Bernstein Research said this week that non-OPEC oil production could fall by 2.5 million barrels/day over the next year...Environmental Capital
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