NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranchers, environmentalists, BLM come to terms It's not often that livestock producers, environmentalists and federal agency officials can agree on anything. Least of all policies for public lands grazing. But, Friday evening, that's just what happened in a lawsuit that could have brought an end to livestock grazing on 800,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management grounds in the Jarbidge area. Still, the Hailey-based Western Watersheds, the BLM, and affected ranchers, including J.R. Simplot, signed a settlement agreement on a suit filed in April by the environmental group. If approved by the district court judge, the settlement allows grazing to continue, at reduced levels, over the next four to five years while the BLM conducts a comprehensive study of the ecological health of the sagebrush landscape. The settlement outlines an eight year process that includes developing a new management plant and environmental impact statement and issuing new grazing permits, Lucas said. The interim grazing plan grants tighter protections for native habitat, he said....
Ranch road has rocky past, changing future A four-mile stretch of rocky, rolling road that runs through this spread is used mainly as a cow trail, or as a spot for sunning rattlesnakes. Yet it's been fussed over by folks for years. Soon, this road in North Dakota's western Badlands may be smoothed into a thoroughfare, linking two state highways, cutting commute times for locals and allowing better access to the region's oil fields. "Theodore Roosevelt used to run his cows through this land," said Norma Eberts, one of the owners of a 5,298-acre ranch. "He gained his conservation principles and ethics from the time he spent out here. I think he'd be really disturbed about what's happening now." The ranch, shrouded by towering buttes next to Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch site, is owned by brothers Kenneth, Allan and Dennis Eberts and their families. They have been trying unsuccessfully to sell the picturesque property to the state or the National Park Service for public use and preservation. Billings County wants to use the road north of Medora to connect state Highways 16 and 85. It would cut as much as 100 miles off the commutes of many who live in the area and encourage economic development in the region, county officials say. The state Supreme Court in May ruled in the county's favor, reversing a temporary injunction granted by a judge and ordering the dismissal of the Ebertses' lawsuit seeking to permanently halt the road....
Feds authorize wolf kill The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has authorized the killing of the remaining adult gray wolves in the Chesimia Pack near Dworshak Reservoir. The pack has repeatedly preyed on livestock and hunting dogs in the region, officials said, and investigators believe the pack may be responsible for the recent death of an adult cow. Investigators with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services agency have confirmed that the pack killed a calf recently. Rancher Tom Beale of Pomeroy said he thinks the cow was killed at the same time or a little earlier than the calf, but the carcass was found later. Wolves in most of Idaho are protected under the Endangered Species Act but their special designation allows animals that prey on livestock to be killed....
Plan puts water back underground Forget running it down the draw. Forget spilling it into half-sliced-tire tanks for the cows. Forget infiltration ponds, in-channel reservoirs, "atomizers," zeolite treatment, Higgins loop ion exchange or gypsum applications. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is spending more than $50 million to do what many Powder River Basin residents hoped would have been the industry standard from the beginning: Re-inject coal-bed methane water back into the ground. "It eliminates a lot of problems," said Anadarko spokesman Rick Robitaille. Construction is set to begin on a 48-mile water pipeline from Anadarko's County Line field in eastern Johnson County to injection wells at the company's property near Midwest. The 24-inch diameter pipeline will flow as much as 400,000 barrels of coal-bed methane water per day to the Salt Creek Field area where it will be injected into the Madison aquifer....
Ringed by wolves In wild areas to the north and to the south of Colorado, the sound of howling wolves pierces the night air. Wolves haven’t moved into Colorado yet, but they are making plenty of noise here already. Wolves, gone from the mountains and valleys of Colorado for most of a century, are the subject of intensive studies of wildlife management, court cases and debates among such diverse groups as environmentalists and ranchers. And they are the stars of a symposium that runs through Tuesday at the Antlers Hilton in Colorado Springs. “Frontiers of Wolf Recovery” is the title of the fourth international wolf conference, sponsored by the International Wolf Center in collaboration with Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The conference seeks to raise awareness of wolves and their place in the natural environment, said Walter Medwid, executive director of the sponsoring organization that is based in Minnesota....
Managers determine grizzly's mortality threshold Earlier this year, the Wyoming Legislature passed a bill mandating the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to notify the county sheriff and local media of the county to which a grizzly bear has been relocated. The point, supporters argued, was to warn local residents that a known "problem" bear -- it likely had killed livestock but wasn't a safety threat to people -- was in their area. Opponents of the bill feared it would generate more anti-grizzly sentiment, and might even draw grizzly hunters to a relocation area to kill it. But supporters, including Jim Magagna and all but two legislators who voted for the bill, say it simply helps people be aware of potential grizzly risks. "These are problem bears, at least with livestock, which are more like to be problems with people," Magagna said. He said he had not heard of anyone having a problem in the past after a bear was relocated and a rancher had not known....
Property rights gain traction in overhaul of Endangered Species Act Missourians in Congress bedeviled by a homely fish and two skittish shorebirds exacted revenge last week by voting to strip the Endangered Species Act of protections on the books since 1973. The new version of the law approved by the House is unlikely to pass muster in the Senate, at least right away. Critics worry especially about a murky provision that could pay landowners tens of millions of dollars in damages for property devalued by restrictions due to rare critters or plants. Nonetheless, sponsors' success in getting this far and winning bipartisan backing shows widespread recognition of problems in one of the nation's most venerable environmental laws. In a barometer of emotions flowing on the issue, no fewer than four Old Testament books (Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Isaiah) were quoted during the daylong debate on the House floor. Members pointed fingers at one another as they spoke with passion about their core beliefs, whether they be saving "God's creatures" or protecting private property....
Juniper gobbling up Oregon wilderness Seventy-five years ago, about 1.5 million acres of Oregon's wilderness was covered in Western juniper. Now it has grown to 6.5 million acres, or about 10 percent of the state's surface — and the plant is spreading fast. A new survey by the U.S. Forest Service shows that juniper is taking over grassland, alarming biologists who see it as a threat to native habitats. "Some juniper is a good thing,'' said Rick Miller, a professor at Oregon State University. "But you can have too much of a good thing.'' Junipers send their roots deep beneath the surface, soaking up water before it reaches any other plants. "Eventually as they dominate, then you lose the shrubs, the grass and then you get bare ground,'' Miller said. Water runs off, gullying the landscape. Too little food or open range remains to support much wildlife....
Oil riches just out of reach Out in sagebrush country, Kenneth Brown is standing over part of the world's most concentrated energy resource, land that holds up to 1 million barrels of oil per acre. Too bad it's locked up in layers of rock in some places hundreds of feet underground. Such is the dilemma presented by the West's oil shale reserves, believed to contain more than 1 trillion barrels of oil - four times the holdings of Saudi Arabia, according to government and industry estimates. The problem is extraction: Underground layers of shale are as thick as 1,000 feet and were deposited over millions of years by an algae-producing sea. The Green River formation is potentially the world's most bountiful energy source - enough in theory to meet U.S. energy needs for a century - but it is an expensive nut to crack for energy companies. Plus, it could use up a lot of water in an arid region....
Overrun by elk Colorado is struggling with too much of a good thing - elk. The state's most majestic animals are denuding vegetation in national parks, gobbling shrubbery in Estes Park, threatening to contaminate valuable potato crops in the San Luis Valley and destroying livestock feed on Western Slope ranchlands. Some of the conflict lies in sheer numbers. About 338,000 elk were in Colorado before last year's hunting season, in which 63,336 were killed. That still left Colorado with 275,000 - more elk than any other state or Canadian province. It also was 86,000 above the state Division of Wildlife's objective of 189,000 animals....
Conata Basin recovery disputed Conata Basin is at the center of a long-running, multi-sided argument over prairie dogs, grazing, black-footed ferrets and conservation. After years of drought and a proliferating prairie-dog population, much of the vegetation had disappeared from parts of the basin on Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Now, after a season with more rainfall, the basin has recovered — to a degree. To what degree it has recovered is also in dispute among principals in the long-running debate over the proper role of prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets and cattle in the basin, which lies south of Badlands National Park. In 2004 and before, ranchers said prairie dogs — and, to a lesser degree, drought — had denuded the basin of most vegetation and ruined it for grazing. A handful of ranchers lease federal pastures for their cattle in the basin....
Grazing regulations won’t be reintroduced The U.S. Forest Service does not plan to reintroduce new grazing management proposals that drew the ire of North Dakota ranchers this summer, the state’s congressional delegation said Friday. The new policies, including one that barred ranchers who lease land or livestock in the national grasslands from obtaining grazing permits, were withdrawn for more public comment after ranchers and North Dakota politicians protested. Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., said U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey told them the agency will not move forward with the controversial changes....
Playing and paying The teeth-jarring dirt road to Leon Creek turns into a snarl of ATVs on some summer and fall days when off-road enthusiasts head out to enjoy the far reaches of this 53-square-mile flattop mesa. The growling machines, loaded with coolers, kids, cameras and dogs, veer off from here on the many trails unfurling over rises and into the trees. It has been a little more than 25 years since the first little 50cc ATV - a miniature Honda farm implement - putt-putted up a Jeep road in the Grand Mesa National Forest. Now, at any given time, hundreds of the machines - with engines packing up to 700 cubic centimeters and sporting double seats and megashocks - regularly roam the Engelmann spruce and aspen woods. As the nation's public forests turn 100, there are many such playgrounds. All-terrain-vehicle riders account for more than 5 percent of all visits to the nation's forests and grasslands. In Colorado, an estimated 11,000 ATVs were prowling the backcountry a dozen years ago. Now, there are more than 90,000 of them registered in the state....
Column: Forest Service Mocks Public Involvement The concept of public involvement is not hard to understand, but many agencies, most recently the Forest Service, don’t get it—and definitely don’t like it. Instead, agencies all-too-often purposely thwart the legally mandated public involvement process to implement internal plans decided in advance, regardless of what the majority of their customers think should happen. Witness the news this week from the Bitterroot National Forest. The Forest Service had proposed a hazardous fuel timber sale near Sula in the southernmost Bitterroot Valley, Montana’s first project under the provisos of the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act. The merits of this project are somewhat irrelevant to the point of this column. Good or bad, no matter. What matters is how the FS shammed the public involvement process—and gave us the proof of it, sort of like a bank robber dropping his business card during his getaway....
Forest Service applying letter of the law From cutting the Capitol Christmas tree to minor forest thinning, the U.S. Forest Service has put hundreds of small projects across the country on hold while it reviews a judge's ruling throwing out limits on the public's right to participate in forest decisions. However, a forest protection group that won the ruling contended Friday that the Forest Service has gone far beyond the intent of the ruling and appears to be intentionally holding up trivial projects. Among the projects the Forest Service put on hold is cutting an 80-foot spruce in New Mexico to serve as a holiday tree on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. As long as no substantive objections are raised during a 30-day public comment period starting Monday, the tree could be cut and shipped to Washington in time, said James Payne, Forest Service southwest regional spokesman, from Phoenix. Matt Kenna, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, said the plaintiffs have offered to work with the Forest Service to clarify what sorts of projects are covered by the ruling, but the Forest Service has refused....
Do You Remember the Last Time You Saw a Porcupine? One of the icons of our forests seems to be slipping away, virtually unnoticed, while wildlife managers scramble to find out what’s happening. Wildlife biologists know the porcupine population over most of the northern Rockies (USA and Canada) has declined sharply, but they don’t know why or how serious it is. Some wildlife biologists fear we might be witnessing a major extinction event—or I should say not witnessing it. “We know the porcupine population is declining, but we don’t know what’s going on,” notes Kerry Foresman, a professor of wildlife biology at the University of Montana and renown small mammal expert, “but we’re trying to get funding to find out.”....
Fish & Wildlife faces possible lawsuit on blue butterfly petition More than 17 months after submitting a petition to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to name the Sand Mountain blue butterfly an endangered species, the Center for Biological Diversity is tired of waiting for an answer. The Center, in accordance with the Xerces Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association, intend to file suit against the USFWS for violating the Endangered Species Act. Specifically, the Nevada division of the USFWS has taken longer than the required 90 days to answer a petition in favor of naming the blue butterfly an endangered species....
Groups defend relocating bears Nine grizzly bears have been relocated from the Upper Green River Valley this year after conflicts with livestock. But environmentalists and bear biologists defend the relocations, saying they're usually an effective way to prevent future run-ins. A case in point is a bear that was killed in a car crash near Moran this year - 12 years after it was tranquilized, captured and relocated because of conflicts with livestock. Louisa Willcox, wild bears project director with the Natural Resources Defense Council based in Livingston, Mont., said the bear had never again threatened livestock. That's typical, said Mark Bruscino, a bear management officer for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, who estimated that 70 percent of relocated bears never get in trouble with wildlife managers again. "Moving bears is an effective management tool the majority of the time," Bruscino said. "If we move them real quick, a lot of times they will go back to acting like a wild bear," he said....
Judge gives feds 1 year to create salmon plan Warning that threatened and endangered salmon are running out of time, a federal judge Friday gave federal agencies one year to come up with a new plan for protecting them from being killed by federal hydroelectric dams in the Columbia Basin. U.S. District Judge James Redden cut in half the time sought by NOAA Fisheries, the Bonneville Power Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to revise a plan, known as a biological opinion, that the judge had ruled in violation of the Endangered Species Act in May. He said he will keep a close watch over the process and, if he sees substantial progress, could grant a little more time. The latest biological opinion will be the fifth since the federal government took over efforts to save dwindling runs of Columbia Basin salmon from extinction. The fish have suffered from the combined effects of dams, overfishing, logging, grazing, water withdrawals for irrigation and urban development....
Gas boom's effect on wildlife unknown Outfitter Jeff Mead feels a lot more comfortable with his feet in a set of stirrups, steering his horse into the rugged Colorado forest, than on an airplane 11,000 feet over his stomping grounds. Mead soon forgot his unease during a recent tour over his backcountry haven as he pointed to the natural gas wells springing up across the land where he has taken hunters for 15 years. "Elk and deer move out when rigs move in," said Mead, a lanky, mustachioed 50-year-old. "Up on the mountain during hunting season, if you sneeze, you can hear the elk running. So, don't tell me they like eating by a drilling rig." The debate over what energy development is doing to wildlife is raging throughout the Rockies, where some of the nation's richest gas deposits lie under prime wildlife habitat....
A Quest for Oil Collides With Nature in Alaska The 217,000 acres of windblown water and mottled tundra here on the North Slope of Alaska, separating Teshekpuk Lake from the Beaufort Sea, are home in summer to 50,000 to 90,000 migratory birds. This corner of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve is also thought to be brimming with oil. From the presidencies of Ronald Reagan through Bill Clinton, federal officials put the bird habitat off limits to oil development. But after federal geologists in 2002 quadrupled their estimate of the oil available here in the northeast quadrant of the reserve, the Bush administration proposed putting the whole area up for lease to oil and gas companies. The move has touched off a fierce debate over whether new technologies can allow wildlife to coexist easily with oil exploration. Here, among the crazy-quilt pattern of land and water, the question is particularly keen, because this is where Pacific black brant, snow geese and other migratory birds annually shed their feathers, and for six flightless weeks have minimal disturbance and a clear line of sight against predators. How the dynamic of exploration, leasing and protest at Teshekpuk (pronounced teh-SHEK-puhk) and other parts of the oil patch plays out is seen by both sides in the debate as a harbinger of what awaits the Arctic shoreline - particularly as Congress prepares to vote this fall on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, east of Teshekpuk....
Column: R.S. 2477 means excess, not access, for Utah's public lands On Sept. 8, a federal appeals court overturned a Utah federal judge's decision that had, for four years, reined in a secretive, abusive and overreaching effort by Utah and county officials to claim that long-ignored dirt trails and other paths across federal public lands are actually "highways" under an 1866 law known as R.S. 2477. The new rule is that an R.S. 2477 claim is valid if the claimant can show 10 years of continuous use. The unfortunate response from Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s administration, which has partnered with long-time wilderness foes from certain county commissions, is a reinvigorated campaign to claim that faint tracks and hiking paths across federal public lands - lands cherished for their increasingly rare peace and quiet - are actually highways....
Column: Sell federal land The only thing about which Democrats and Republicans can agree these days, is the astronomical cost of rebuilding the storm-ravaged Gulf coast. Estimates, on either side of the political aisle, reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. How to pay these costs is a question fueling heated debate inside both parties. Rep. Tom Tancredo has the best idea to date: sell excess federal land. Why should the federal government own more than 700 million acres - more than 30 per cent of the total land area? Even after exempting all the military bases, and the lands that contain "other needful buildings," and all the national parks, the federal government still owns nearly 600 million acres, for no legitimate reason. American taxpayers are shelling out money every year so the federal government can make "payments in lieu of taxes" to the state and local governments that have limited political jurisdiction over these lands. American taxpayers are shelling out money every year so armies of federal employees can make an effort to "manage" these lands. Why?....
Column: Bruce Babbitt's new vision for American land use My purpose, instead, is to show how we can prevent the loss of natural and cultural landscapes and watersheds through stronger federal leadership in land-use planning. It may come as something of a surprise to learn there is such a thing as "federal land-use planning." The notion that land use is a local matter has come to dominate the political rhetoric of our age, obscuring the historical reality that the national government has been involved in land-use planning since the early days of the republic. In fact, there is, by whatever name, a considerable body of law that can and, in my view, should be used toward enhanced federal leadership in land-use planning and preservation. After eight years of intense participation in these battles as secretary of the Interior and subsequent years of observing from the sidelines, I believe the time has come for an armistice followed by a peace conference to which not just Westerners, but all Americans, are invited. The outcome should be a new constitution for public lands, in the form of federal legislation that subordinates (but does not eliminate) mining, grazing and logging to an overriding public mandate for long-term biological diversity, abundant wildlife and fisheries, and the ecological integrity of our streams and watersheds....
Rio Grande water debt finally is paid in full A long-standing Rio Grande water debt that pitted drought-stricken South Texas farmers against Mexico appears resolved with Gov. Rick Perry announcing the debt has been paid in full. "Our farmers, ranchers and cities will have 100 percent of the water they are entitled to, not just for the rest of this year, but for all of 2006," Perry said in a statement. "Now that the debt is paid, both countries must continue to work in good faith to meet the water demands of citizens on both sides of the Rio Grande for years to come." A 1944 treaty dictates that Mexico allow a certain amount of water from the Rio Grande and its Mexican tributaries to reach South Texas. In return, the U.S. releases Colorado River water to Mexico. Mexico fell behind on its obligations in the 1990s, and at the height of a mutual drought owed the U.S. enough water to cover 1.5 million acres a foot deep. By 2002, some South Texas farmers were going under, seething as satellite photos showed lush green spots suggesting healthy Rio Grande irrigation in Mexico....
Erasing ‘squaw' names moves slowly After five years of work, only about 10 of the place names in Oregon containing the word "squaw" in them have been changed, with far more to go. The number of changed names could triple this month when the Oregon Geographic Names Board meets to consider new names for 18 more land features. The word, derived from the Algonquin word for "woman," is now considered a derogatory way to refer to an American Indian woman — and Oregon tribes have pushed to have the word changed. Under a state law passed in 2001, all of the roughly 150 peaks, rivers, buttes, meadows and other land formations in Oregon containing the word were meant to be rechristened by this year. But even if all 18 of the most recent recommendations are accepted by the Oregon board and then approved by a national board, less than 20 percent of the names will have been changed by the law's deadline....
Program helps disabled hunters Brock was among 14 sportsmen and women from across the country at this year's Helluva Hunt, an annual event pairing disabled hunters with volunteer guides on more than 30,000 acres of private land offered by a handful of ranchers. Hunters leave Wyoming with more than a cooler full of meat and a trophy head mount to look forward to; they are empowered in their ability to hunt, which for many, was a way of life before tragic accidents or illnesses left them disabled. In 1984, Outdoor Life magazine editor Jim Zumbo received a letter from a disabled reader wondering why there weren't more opportunities out there for people like him. Zumbo, in turn, wondered why a disabled person should have to stop hunting and found like-minded attitudes in Jane and Gary Stearns of Douglas. The Helluva Hunt was born, and the rest is 21 years of friendships that last like family, an amazing mountain of memories and laughs, and of course, the record books: the longest shot, the biggest horns, even the biggest hunt lie (after all, it is a hunt)....
In outlying communities change is marked in subtle differences Harold Veltkamp's lament sounds much like those escaping the lips of a lot of long-time Gallatin Valley residents. "It's not going to be a valley like we've seen it if all this development happens," Veltkamp said recently. The 80-year-old rancher has raised cattle, wheat and barley on the same 320-acre plot north of Penwell Bridge Road for 46 years. In that time, he has watched as sweeping changes have transformed Southwest Montana. Subdivisions of new homes have drawn people and cars to his neck of the woods in increasing numbers, he said. Now, he said, a new challenge threatens his agricultural way of life. It sits kitty-corner from his property just north of Belgrade's city limits: the proposed 170-acre Ryen Glenn Estates subdivision....
US Congress Fails To Extend Livestock Price Reports System A government program requiring packers to report prices they pay for cattle, hogs and lambs, will expire Friday because the U.S. Congress has failed to extend it. Although packers won't be mandated to file the reports to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday, most will do so anyway, Agriculture Marketing Service Administrator Lloyd Day said Friday. Day said the USDA has reached out to packers and gotten good responses. "It's looking like it's going to be okay," he said. The Senate and House of Representatives each approved an extension earlier this month, but disagreements in how long the LMPR program should be extended resulted in a stalemate that won't be resolved this week now that the House has adjourned. On Sept. 13, the Senate approved a one-year extension for the program that has been helping livestock producers decide how to set their prices for six years. The next day, on Sept. 14, the House approved a five-year extension. Beyond the length of the extension, the two bodies of Congress also differed on whether or not to expand reporting on swine purchased by packers....
Phony beef cattle sales are alleged Federal regulators on Thursday charged that an Ohio broker created profits topping $1 million by conspiring with two large Nebraska feedlots to manipulate futures trading through sham sales of 4,500 beef cattle two years ago. The purportedly phony transactions were used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's closely watched weekly cash market report, causing futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to increase by $2.85 per hundredweight, said Gregory Mocek, director of enforcement at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Todd J. Delay of Columbus turned profits of $1.1 million for himself and his co-conspirators, Mocek contends. Of this, about $250,000 was received directly by Delay and relatives, Mocek asserted....
John Wesley Hardin meets his end while shooting a game of dice The dice tumbled across the top of the bar, and the player growled out an invective directed at either the uncooperative cubes or the grocer named Brown with whom he was matching for drinks. "Shake again," said the grocer. "You've got four sixes to beat," said the player as the dice spilled out of the cup. Those were the last words John Wesley Hardin would utter before an explosion from behind sent a lead slug into the back of his brain. The bullet came out through his left eye, leaving a neat hole in the lid, and then smashed into the mirror behind the bar. Shards of broken glass powdered the air and fell tinkling to the floor. Twisting as he fell, Hardin lay face up as Old John Selman quickly stepped up to the body and fired three more times into its chest, one of the shots tearing off the tip of the little finger on the left hand. A man with a badge, Young John Selman, ran into the saloon and grabbed his father's arm. "Don't shoot anymore! He's dead!"....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Toby Keith's dishrag hat is a good fit for frequent flier When I'm in the airport, I always wave at a cowboy hat ... a real cowboy hat. Somehow you can spot 'em. They inevitably turn out to be some bull rider on the way to a rodeo, a state cattlemen's association representative on the way to Washington, D.C., or a consultant of some kind or farmer or rancher on the way to a funeral or a graduation. Hats take a pretty good beating in the overhead storage on the airplanes. I got off the plane in southern Colorado, grabbed my hat from above and it had been smashed by a suitcase. It looked like it had been rained on, then put in a lunchbox to dry! I drove into town and found a Western store and asked if I could borrow their steamer. "Of course," they said, "have at it." Junior ambled over to visit. He occupied the job of "old-timer" in the store. He looked at my hat and asked if I'd backed over it with a D-8 Cat. It reminded him of one time when he and his pardner were out lookin' for some cows....

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Conaway Ranch

The Conaway Ranch is a 17,300 acre contiguous parcel located on the west side of the Sacramento River in Yolo County . It has over 15,000 acres of farmable land, the largest gas field in Yolo County , rights to 50,000 acre feet of Sacramento River water and significant groundwater resources. Almost half of the ranch is within the Yolo Bypass and subject to intermittent flooding, and all but some 2,000 acres is within the 100-year flood plain. Currently, the ranch is leased to several farmers who primarily grow rice, alfalfa, tomatoes, and other row crops on the property. The Ranch is famous for its great waterfowl habitat and duck hunting, and for the past fifteen years has maintained the Conaway Wildlife Plan to enhance and maintain the wildlife resources on the Ranch. One year ago, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors announced plans to acquire the Conaway Ranch from a bankrupt subsidiary of PG & E, either through a negotiated price or via eminent domain. Also, a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) was formed to oversee the management of the Ranch they hoped to acquire, which includes: Yolo County , the four cities of Yolo County , U.C. Davis, and the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. In the meantime, the Ranch was sold for the sum of sixty million dollars as part of the bankruptcy estate pursuant to a closed bidding process that was not legally open to the County of Yolo as a public agency. The land was purchased by the Conaway Preservation Group (CPG), a consortium of individuals and entities that include a farm holdings company, a non-profit organization, and local landowners, including developers Steve Gidaro and John Reynan, both of whom were former owners of the Ranch, and do not wish to sell. Shortly after the CPG’s acquisition of the Conaway Ranch, Yolo County initiated the eminent domain proceedings in Yolo County Superior Court to seize the Ranch from its owners for the stated public purpose of preserving agriculture and open space. As a longstanding supporter of private property rights, water rights, and rural agricultural communities, the Family Water Alliance stands opposed to Yolo County ’s use of eminent domain for the purchase of the 17,000 acre Conaway Ranch and its water rights. While FWA agrees that efforts to maintain the status quo of Conaway Ranch is a worthy goal, the use of eminent domain to achieve this end is not only unnecessary, but also in our opinion fiscally irresponsible and an abuse of local governmental power....

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SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

True colors

by Larry Gabriel

Just like the trees they so admire, the "green" movement is finally showing its fall colors.

After thirty years of endless debates and litigation about rare bugs, snails, rodents, birds and fish, we are finally hearing the real bottom line of what they want.

The line was clearly drawn in a recent Casper Tribune story about the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance's success in halting thinning projects on 50,000 acres in the Black Hills last year. They stopped these projects because they believe most areas of the public forests are best left to "natural processes".

Jeremy Nichols of the Alliance had the courage to come right out and say what many have known for twenty years. They want no management on most of our forests.

We have all seen the "zero cut" and "no cows" symbols of the movement, but they display no "zero management" symbol (at least not yet).

Nels Smith, a Wyoming rancher on the Black Hills Advisory Board, showed similar courage in calling the tactics of Biodiversity an abuse of the process that will produce a "biological desert".

Actually we could refuse to manage our forests, but many have warned that one cannot accumulate excess fuel for fifty years and let it burn without creating a black-glass wasteland.

If the federal government is not going to manage its forests, it certainly has no need of a Forest Service. We could give these lands to the National Park Service, abolish the Forest Service, and save billions.

But, what about the premise of Biodiversity's argument? Does "Mother Nature" really know best?

If she does, New Orleans should remain a swamp.

If she does, the homes built in the Mississippi drainage should wash into the Dead Zone of the Gulf of Mexico each spring.

If she does, no crops should be cultivated.

If she does, the horse is an invasive species and does not belong in America.

If she does, we don't need indoor plumbing.

If she does, we don't need houses and should stay outside when it rains.

If she does…never mind.

All of us with "enough sense to come in out of the rain" know the answer.

Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture.


Camouflage is ‘in” for another season

By Julie Carter

There was a time when garments dyed in splotches of green, brown, tan, and black so as to make the wearer indistinguishable from the surrounding environment were either military issue or seasonal garb for the civilian wildlife hunter.

Since the U.S. military forces became the focus of the mass media through the war on terrorism, camouflage has become a standard clothing choice for the world in general. But in my world at this time and place it is still mostly about hunting.

By the very definition, you are not supposed to be able to see camouflage. The dictionary says it is “concealment by disguise or protective coloring.”

I can see it. I see it everywhere I go and most prevalent at the sporting goods check out line in Wal-Mart. I see it at the filling stations, motels and restaurants in town. It is once again hunting season.

The word “season” would lead you to believe there is a beginning and end to this vision of green garb. There does not seem to be a definable period of time for “hunting season” as those dedicated sportsmen can find something to hunt just about every month of the year.

The fall months bring out the masses of them seeking trophy antelope, deer, elk. They drive into town in big powerful and very expensive vehicles pulling heavily loaded trailers full of all the essentials for a successful hunting camp. This would include at least 17 gigantic coolers filled with plenty of fine camp fare including t-bone steaks and cold beer, a selection of brand new ATV’s and camp trailers that completely take the “camp” out of camping.

While I tend to mock the current state of the sport of hunting, it is not foreign to me and mine. I come from a long line of meat hunters who indeed hunted first for sustenance for the family and then later as a simple sport. I have a son who wore his first camouflage as a toddler. I would pretend I couldn’t see him when we passed and would bump into him. He found no amusement in my entertainment at his expense.

He is now twelve years old and the lure of hunting has only grown with him. He is a stick hunter (archery) as well as rifle and is learning to do a little winter varmint trapping on the side. The highlight for him this fall was the discovery of marketed “scents” to disguise his people smell while sitting in an archery season elk hunt blind. Somehow the idea of wearing “elk urine” scent on his clothing was completely entertaining and delightful to him at an age when anything gross is absolutely hysterical.

Camouflage as a verb is “to conceal, usually through misrepresentation or other artifice.” That perfectly describes me and my magic drawer of makeup. The purpose of my camouflage is for it to conceal those very things one has come to know as camouflage--the green, tan and brown splotches of color. Although for me there is a definite upgrade in my choice of scents.

Color and smell. Most definitely beauty is in the eyes and nose of the hunter.

© Julie Carter 2005

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OPINION/COMMENTARY

More Doom That Wasn’t

Broadcast journalists have been the only ones bidding up gas prices lately. While they foretell a horizon of $4 and $5 gas, consumers on U.S. streets are paying an average of $2.81 – up just 6 cents since hurricane Rita. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News all covered the constant speculation about Gulf refinery damage and subsequent gas price spikes before and after Hurricane Rita’s September 24 impact. CNN used its 24 hours each day to raise fears about higher gas prices with show after show. A Nexis search of CNN transcripts around Rita’s landfall (from September 21 to 25) showed more than 20 mentions of the possibility of $4 or $5 gas from at least 12 different reporters in just five days on that network. “Hurricane Rita is sure to affect you even if you don’t live in the strike zone,” said CNN’s Kelly Wallace on the September 22 “Daybreak.” “How does $5 a gallon for gasoline sound?” Also on CNN September 22: Lou Dobbs: “oil analysts say $5 a gallon for gasoline is certainly not out of the question.” Miles O’Brien: “New predictions say gas could reach five. That’s right, $5 a gallon.” Paula Zahn: “One oil analyst is predicting $4 per gallon gasoline within two weeks, another analyst saying it could go as high as $5 a gallon.” A day earlier, Anderson Cooper warned viewers: “Just like after Katrina, gas prices could climb. But this time, the experts fear, it could be worse. Prices could hit a whopping $5 a gallon.”....

Another Energy Crisis?

But my Canadian friends keep telling me not to worry. Why? Because of the oil sands in Northern Alberta, which, they say, now have proven recoverable reserves of around 175 billion barrels - second only to the Saudis - and may in fact wind up having more reserves than any other spot on earth, especially as the technology to extract it improves. This oil is not pumped from the ground, however. It's mined, and the oil is then extracted from the sands in an enormously expensive process. At $10 a barrel, this extraction process is uneconomical, but at $60 a barrel, it is a highly profitable enterprise. (Break even is around $20 a barrel.) Many of the major oil companies have made multibillion-dollar investments in the oil sands, which are now producing about one million barrels a day, most of that going straight to the United States. Neil Camarta, who heads up Shell Canada's efforts, told me that he expected production to rise to three million barrels a day by 2010. Not having heard much about this before, I was a tad skeptical, so I called T. Boone Pickens, the 77-year-old former raider who knows more about oil markets than just about anyone I know. Mr. Pickens turned out to be quite excited about the oil sands. "That oil is the jewel of North America," he said. He says he thinks that production will never approach the 10 million barrels a day the Saudis currently export - "it's just too expensive to develop" - but that it could eventually get as high as 6 million barrels a day, which would cover more than half of America's oil import needs....

Newsday: Misrepresenting The Endangered Species Act

An editorial in today’s Newsday shows how far apart the right and left are in the Endangered Species Act. It also shows how far proponents are willing to go to distort the issue. Of Richard Pombo’s new bill, it states: One new feature of the bill is downright cynical: It requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond in an unrealistically short time to requests from property owners for rulings on whether a proposed action would harm endangered species. Pombo wanted 90 days, but during the markup of the bill, it became 180. That's still an outrageously short time for an agency without enough resources to meet deadlines now. If the agency doesn’t meet this new deadline, the property owner would be entitled to go ahead with the action. So? Property owners have rights, which the ESA has trampled on for over 30 years. Putting limits on a government agency is not cynical—it’s in the best tradition of individual rights. What’s cynical is violating individuals’ property rights by letting the process drag on and on with no deadline in sight. But wait. It gets worse. Pombo’s bill would also sock the taxpayer by compensating property owners who say they will suffer economically if they abstain from an action that might damage a listed species. A complex appraisal process would decide the amount of compensation, but whatever it is, it will constitute a shameless gift of public money. Well, it’s nice to see that Newsday is finally concerned with the long-suffering taxpayer! We can be sure they reiterate that concern the next time Ted Kennedy proposes more welfare spending. Too bad, though, that they are concerned about the taxpayer expense of something that is a legitimate government function: compensating property owners for the government “taking” of their property....

Improving the Endangered Species Act: Balancing the Needs of Landowners and Endangered Wildlife

The Endangered Species Act was intended to bring endangered species back from the brink, but over 30 years it has helped rescue only 10 of the nearly 1,300 species that have been listed—a success rate of less than one percent.[1] At the same time, the Act has dragged landowners into endless conflicts and litigation. Its vague classifications allow private property to be declared “critical habitats” almost arbitrarily, resulting in many use restrictions and seizures. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 (H.R. 3824), introduced by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Resources, would strengthen incentives for landowners to participate in conservation, to the benefit of endangered species, while clearing up the vague classifications that put private property at risk. According to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), 39 percent of all species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have an “unknown” status, 21 percent are “declining,” and only 6 percent are “improving.” This is unimpressive, and it may even be overstating ESA’s success. Many species that later studies have shown should not have been listed under ESA in the first place have subsequently been moved to “stable” status, falsely suggesting improvement. Data errors account for most of these changes in classification. Historically, such errors have been responsible for the delisting of more species than evidence of reduced survival threats or actual recoveries.[2] After 30 years, there is still a blurred line between “threatened” and “endangered” species. About 38 percent of the species classified as facing a “low” threat are listed as endangered rather than threatened.[3]This is a problem because faulty listings divert limited conservation resources from the species that need them most. Under ESA, species classification is based on the “best available” scientific data, a very vague standard that is responsible for much improper listing. Additionally, the current listing process is far from transparent, making it difficult for some stakeholders to participate. The end result is wasted resources and endless litigation....

Better Living, Sensible Regulation

The United Nations' Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was discussed last week in Vienna. It seeks to internationalize a "precautionary principle" approach essentially similar to the EU's REACH proposal, which is causing great concern in the chemicals industry in Europe. It appears that the US State Department is considering the UN proposal, and there are fears that it might adopt it. We strongly believe that the Bush Administration should continue to take a principled stand against international agreements based upon the precautionary principle, and continue to advocate the current international standard risk-based legislation. We have accordingly written as Members of the European Parliament to the US State Department, urging them to take this approach. On a recent visit to the United States, we were pleased to attend a meeting on Capitol Hill with representatives from the Bush Administration, who expressed firm opposition to the EU's forthcoming REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) Directive. With several elements of REACH contained in it, SAICM is equally burdensome, costly and impractical -- and possibly even a back-door way of introducing the problematic REACH Directive on an international level. The US State Department should already be aware that REACH in itself is complicated and controversial in the European legislative process. We have objected both to the principles that underpin this hazard-based legislation, and to the processes that it involves. As an international agreement, SAICM is equally objectionable and we urge all governments -- our own included -- to withdraw support for it....

Collapse: A Book Review

In Collapse, Jared Diamond asks: how could a society once so successful end up collapsing so utterly? One could ask a similar question about the thesis of Diamond’s latest work. Collapse floods the reader with as many anthropological anecdotes as it omits the deepest insights of economics and vital institutions. And that is a shame. The subtitle “How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” might have been better suited to the text of an institutional economist like the Nobel laureate Douglass North than to Diamond’s collection of post-Pulitzer assertions. According to Diamond, one of the basic ideas behind why societies collapse is resource depletion and so-called “tragedies of the commons.” Resources are overused when a rational person, directed by self-interest, uses some resource in an area before the next guy. If he doesn’t, you can bet the next guy will. The “tragedy” comes when everyone employs the same strategy and a resource is subsequently wiped out. It is therefore shameful that in a 525 page volume, Diamond devotes less than half of a single page to private property rights approaches to resource allocation and conservation issues. The idea is so simple as to be trivial: people have an incentive to protect and conserve resources that they own, because the expectation of future returns (or the preservation of amenities) depends on such conservation. Diamond skims over this fundamental axiom of economics—effectively ignoring an institution that has done more to generate wealth, conserve resources, and organize human society than perhaps any other human construct. Instead, Diamond gives us a “five-point” thesis, a preexisting environmentalist dogma that lies somewhere between sanctimony and paranoia....

Goodbye to anthropogenic global warming

When CO2 levels fall too low, natural processes cause it to be released from the soil -- as seems to be happening now. Researchers from the UK's Cranfield University found that some 13 million tons of carbon are being released from the soil every year, as Reuters recently reported. "Since the carbon appears to be released from soil regardless of how the soil is used, the researchers conclude that the main cause must be climate change itself. Though they could not say where all the missing carbon had gone, much of it may be entering the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, which many scientists say is causing global warming." Scientists from Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry wrote, "These losses thus completely offset the past technological achievements in reducing CO2 emissions, putting the UK's success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a different light." In other words, many Kyoto signatory nations have crippled their industry, spent vast amounts of money and caused rampant unemployment for absolutely nothing. Science -- not junk science based on hysteria and ideology, but real science based on data and reason -- suggests that global warming is driven more by the sun than anything humans have done. A recent study by Swiss and German scientists indicates that the sun is burning hotter than it has at anytime in the past thousand years. "The Sun is in a changed state," stated Dr. Sami Solanki, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. "It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently -- in the last 100 to 150 years." Does that time frame sound vaguely familiar? It's about the same time the Little Ice Age began to end -- the same time that Liberals claim humans began to cause global warming. Isn't it clear that the sun is the real cause? Shouldn't we at least examine this before ruining our economy for nothing? Every experiment must have a control, or a source of data uncorrupted by the experiment itself. There are no humans on Mars, and there's no way we could influence its climate. Yet Mars is also experiencing global warming, which strengthens the hypothesis that Earth's global warming is heliogenic, or sun-based, to the point of positive proof. It's simply not possible that the sun could cause environmental warming on Mars, but that similar warming on Earth is caused by SUVs and capitalism....

Local, State and Federal Gas Taxes Consume 45.9 Cents Per Gallon on Average

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that has followed, consumers are feeling the economic consequences of the disaster. Record gasoline prices are constantly in the headlines, which leaves many asking why prices are so high. While supply and demand are the primary determinants of gasoline prices, a significant portion of the price consumers pay at the pump can be attributed to gasoline taxes. In fact, the federal gas tax alone equals 18.4 cents for every gallon purchased (See Figure 1). In 1932, the federal government imposed the first federal gas tax. It began as a temporary levy with a rate of just 1 cent per gallon. Over the years, the tax burden has increased significantly. The Revenue Act of 1941 made the federal gas tax permanent and increased the rate to 1.5 cents per gallon to help fund the war effort. A decade later in 1951, the tax was increased to 2 cents per gallon to assist in the funding of the Korean War. After President Eisenhower’s idea of an interstate highway system had been instituted, the federal gas tax was raised to 4 cents per gallon in 1959. As recent as 1981, the federal gas tax remained at 4 cents per gallon. Significant tax increases in 1982, 1990 and 1993 increased the federal gas tax by 14.4 cents per gallon, or 360 percent from 1981 levels. In 1919, Oregon became the first state in the nation to place a tax on gasoline and every state has subsequently adopted this form of taxation. This year, according to the Energy Information Administration the average state gas tax is 20.8 cents per gallon. In addition to statewide taxes, often consumers pay local excise taxes on gasoline purchases (see Figure 2). Today, the combined burden of federal, state and local gas taxes costs American drivers an average of 45.9 cents on every gallon purchased. As Figure 2 illustrates, in some states the combined taxes exceed 60 cents for every gallon purchased....

NEWS ROUNDUP

House Votes for New Limits on Endangered Species Act By a vote of 229 to 193, the House of Representatives moved Thursday to undo some of the central provisions of the 32-year-old Endangered Species Act and to require that agencies enforcing the law reimburse property owners if the law's impact reduces the value of their land. Environmental groups expressed dismay at the measure, which, if enacted, would represent one of the most far-reaching reversals of environmental policy in more than a decade. Leading House Democrats also said it created an unlimited financial entitlement for landowners. The prospects for Senate passage are cloudy at best; even the bill's sponsor, Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman of the House Resources committee, said he did not expect quick action in the Senate. The vote, which came after the defeat of a rival measure that reworked the law but required enforceable protections for animals and plants in danger of extinction, was the culmination of a 12-year legislative mission by Mr. Pombo. The Bush administration gave its formal support to the measure a few hours before the vote....
Environmental Activists Target Small Property Owners While Calling Fifth Amendment a 'New Entitlement' The environmental community is in an uproar this week over a proposed measure that would reform the Endangered Species Act by including within it modest property rights protections for small landowners. The "Threatened and Endangered Species Reform Act" (TESRA) is being debated now and is expected to face a vote today in the House of Representatives. If green lobbyists and their congressional allies get their way, American property owners will continue to have their rights trampled by the Endangered Species Act, says the National Center for Public Policy Research. "In light of the enormous outcry over the dreadful Kelo v. New London ruling, it's hard to believe that anyone would so vehemently oppose protecting the property rights of American landowners," said Peyton Knight, director of the John P. McGovern MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "Indifference to the suffering of small property owners would be bad enough, but actively seeking to harm them is beyond the pale." Knight refers to the onslaught of anti-property rights rhetoric that has poured out of the environmental community this week as a result of the proposal that landowners should receive compensation when the government takes their property under the Endangered Species Act. Under current law, the ESA takes private property without paying the owner a dime....
Column: Pombo-Cardoza wildlife bill corrects many flaws As a Stanislaus County supervisor, I have witnessed firsthand the shortcomings of the current Endangered Species Act and the pressing need for reform. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005, sponsored by Reps. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, does just that. It will enhance the ESA by shifting the focus of the act away from unproductive litigation back to its original goal -- the actual recovery of species. In 2002, when more than 128,000acres of Stanislaus County was proposed as critical habitat for vernal pool species and plants, we were troubled to learn the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not based its decision on scientific or economic data, but simply on aerial photography. When pressed, the service acknowledged that it did not seek more accurate information and mapping from our county and other local governments because they were rushing to comply with an unrealistic court-imposed deadline. Our problems were further compounded when the service used only boilerplate economic analysis to review the economic impact on our county. When pressed as to why they didn't prepare an analysis that was specific to the proposed designation in our region, the response again noted a need to rush to comply with a court order. Unfortunately, in the haste to meet arbitrary court-imposed deadlines, the service actually designated parking lots and housing subdivisions as critical habitat for fairy shrimp....
Deal preserves land along North Rim Flagstaff environmental group Grand Canyon Trust will begin ranching on the Arizona Strip next year in what they're calling a move to conserve about 880,000 acres of public land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border. The environmentalists say they're saving the land from impacts of more cattle, seeking to graze as few head of cattle as possible and fence off more sensitive areas. "We'll ensure we're managing livestock in an as ecologically responsible way as possible," Grand Canyon Trust ranch director Rick Moore said. "...We think this will be a place to go out and take a real hard look at ranching in an arid environment." The Trust plans to reduce the 2,175 cattle allowed to be rotated around the pastures per year by about 10 percent and hire a rancher out of Wyoming to manage the new North Rim Ranch. "This area has been severely impacted by grazing," Moore said. The ranch has not been worked in recent years while a sale was pending....
Court order stalls Forest Service daily operation Bitterroot National Forest officials had planned to spend Thursday at the Darby Public Library talking about plans for forest management. But a Wednesday court order effectively tied the agency's hands and halted much of what the Forest Service does. Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Dave Bull said the agency will still be cleaning bathrooms, but that's about it. The order handed down from a U.S. District Court in California suspended a variety of projects on national forests because the public did not have the opportunity to comment on them or file appeals. The court found that public notice, comment and appeal provisions are required in all categorical exclusions - actions that were deemed not to have a significant effect on the environment and don't require environmental review. "There is a whole range of administration decisions that we make internally," Bull said. "Anything that did not have public notice, comment and appeal is effected." "The decision could suspend 100 or more projects underway in the Northern Region," regional forester Gail Kembell said in a news release. "Projects conducted by contract, permit or other means - like reducing hazardous fuels, improving wildlife habitat, repairing roads, fixing a toilet and even cutting firewood could be affected." Bull said officials at the national level were still scrambling to see how wide-ranging the order is and pursing legal remedies....
Thinning democracy When the Bitterroot National Forest decided to finally release the final Environmental Impact Statement for its preferred alternative on the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction project last Thursday, it was an invite-only affair. If you weren’t one of the lucky members of the community, the “credentialed press,” the Ravalli County Commissioners or the State Senate, you were likely to be escorted from the public building by armed (and armored) Forest Service law enforcement officers. That’s what happened to Bitterroot Valley residents and avowed conservationists Stewart Brandborg, Larry Campbell and Jim Miller. The three members of Friends of the Bitterroot (FOB), a local conservation group, say they have no history of criminal or violent behavior, yet their presence at the meeting was apparently deemed dangerous by Bitterroot Forest Supervisor Dave Bull, who later told the press that the men were removed by armed guards because the agency wanted to provide a “safe environment.” “The only violence inflicted here is that of the Forest Service against public participatory process guaranteed in the United States Constitution,” says Brandborg, 80, whose father was the Bitterroot forest supervisor from 1935 to 1955....
Agencies claim success in bison plan Federal and state agencies claim success in carrying out a five-year-old plan for managing bison that leave Yellowstone National Park, even though the plan still is in the first of its three phases. The assessment released Thursday determined the five agencies are not ready for the next step because five of the 14 objectives in the bison management plan have not been met. The unmet goals include inoculating bison against the disease brucellosis by administering vaccine using means such as darts fired from rifles. Steps to meet the various remaining objectives have been initiated, said Yellowstone spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews. The agencies said they have been successful in meeting the management plan's main goals, which include keeping bison and livestock apart, and preventing the potential spread of brucellosis to cattle from bison that enter Montana in search of forage....
Judge lets cougar hunt stand On Saturday, the mountain lions of the Black Hills will need their eagle-sharp eyesight, all their cagey, elusive instincts, and their ability to remain invisible as South Dakota's first-ever mountain lion hunting season gets under way. A judge's ruling late Thursday, after an all-day court hearing, clears the way for hunting to begin Saturday as scheduled. Circuit Judge Max Gors said the Mountain Lion Foundation and other opponents who had sued to stop the season failed to show that hunting will cause irreparable harm to the Black Hills lion population. The opponents argued that there was insufficient data to justify a lion season - warning that hunting could result in extinction of the big cats in South Dakota. As the largest - and often most misunderstood - predator in the state, the Black Hills mountain lion will now go from stalker to stalked. The season, which was approved earlier this year, has created more controversy than excitement in the state. Wednesday, the Mountain Lion Foundation, a national conservation agency, filed its lawsuit to stop the season before it began....
It's Always Fair Game for Wild Pigs Her quarry in these golden Mendocino hills was Sus scrofa, a squat, muscular wild boar with coarse dark hair, hairy ears, a thick armor-like hide and skewers for tusks, which is now overrunning the countryside to become the latest plague of California. Along with states like Texas, Florida and Hawaii, California has become a prime habitat for pigs, so much so that the state Department of Fish and Game has begun offering advanced wild boar hunting clinics to encourage people like Mrs. Straub, a 29-year-old executive secretary from Santa Rosa, to hunt pigs. The pigs are a nonnative hybrid species that can run up to 25 miles an hour and whose meat is prized by cooks - Mrs. Straub and her husband, Randy, among them. They flourish in all but two counties of the state, and their moonlit sashaying in search of grubs and acorns along Highway 1 near Carmel has become so treacherous to motorists that the state Department of Transportation put up "Pig Xing" signs last year. In a sense, Mrs. Straub and her pork-loving brethren are ground troops in an escalating war between man and beast. Although culinary politics here lean more toward organic broccoli than firearms, wild pigs are regarded as fair game by state fish and game officials, who have declared a 365-day open season on pigs, with no bag limit. Wild pigs, prolific breeders, can double their population every four months, causing environmental havoc. The fish and game department puts the population at 100,000 to 250,000 statewide....
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is Taking Aim at Wetlands After decades of slowing down, the loss of United States wetlands that are home to migratory birds and endangered species may start climbing again, following decisions by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to open up 11,000-15,000 acres of wetlands in 15 states since 2004 in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision narrowing Clean Water Act protections, according to an analysis conducted by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). Nearly five years ago, the Rehnquist-led Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Clean Water Act did not protect so-called "isolated" wetlands that provide critical habitat for migratory birds. The 15 states with the most wetlands exempted by the Corps' aggressive implementation of that decision since 2004 are: Nebraska (2,970-3,139 acres); North Dakota (2,134-2,474 acres); Florida (1,699-1,884 acres); Illinois (643-1,332 acres); Texas (642-887 acres); Georgia (539-1,104 acres); South Dakota (479-704 acres); Colorado (469-872 acres); Wisconsin (434-641 acres); Indiana (407-645 acres); Ohio (259-325 acres); California (215-344 acres); Minnesota (169-356 acres); Iowa (150-274 acres); and New York (140-205 acres)....
Congress Looking At Renewed Coastal Drilling A move is already underway to open up California’s coast to oil exploration. In the past, a large majority of Californians has strongly opposed any more oil and gas drilling off of our coast, but some members of Congress are hoping current events will cause people to take another look. “We’re looking at prices going up significantly during the winter months,” says Jeff Smith of PG&E. “The estimates right now are forty to fifty percent higher.” Some say the solution is renewed offshore drilling for California. New congressional legislation would end the longtime ban on energy development along the coast. The bill passed the House Resources Committee with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Opponents say it's a sham....
Column: Bush appointee’s assault on parks has deep roots Ten years ago this October, my fax machine rattled and hummed. It coughed out a couple of sheets of “minutes” transcribed from what had been an unpublicized closed meeting in West Yellowstone. Few people knew it had occurred. Details were passed on by an anonymous source with the hope they would be divulged in a newspaper column I was writing. Readers soon learned about the infamous “brainstorming session” that involved members of various Greater Yellowstone area chambers of commerce arrayed under the nebulous banner of the Yellowstone Gateway Alliance. The Gateway Alliance was led by Paul Hoffman, who in recent weeks as a Bush administration political appointee has come under fire again for orchestrating another brainstorming session, this time at the U.S. Interior Department. Hoffman, who once was a congressional aide to Dick Cheney, today serves as a deputy assistant Interior secretary. Beyond public scrutiny, he has been quietly rewriting the government manual that guides management principles in our national parks....
Woman fights to keep cabin in park bounds An 83-year-old woman moved a step closer to keeping her summer home inside Rocky Mountain National Park Wednesday when a U.S. Senate committee approved a deal that would provide her with a lifetime lease on the cabin. The National Park Service wanted to evict Betty Dick when her lease expired July 16, but after the intervention of two U. S. senators and a congressman, a compromise appears near. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved a bill that essentially extends Dick's lease, allowing her to rent the cabin and eight surrounding acres for $300 a year for the rest of her life. Under her previous lease, Dick got the cabin and 23 acres for $300 a year. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said the Park Service faces 186 similar disputes in 29 locations. He said he plans to introduce legislation setting up a process to settle them without resorting to "private legislation" like the bill resolving the Colorado case....
Alaska proves a prime hiding spot for man accused of abuse With a land mass constituting one-fifth of the continental United States, there are simply too many places to hide in Alaska. And that's the vexing part for Alaska State Troopers, who are scouring the vast Alaska wilderness and its sparsely populated communities for the man known as Papa Pilgrim, the patriarch of a self-styled pioneering family accused of sexually abusing one of his 15 children. But in Alaska, it can take a long time to ferret someone out of the wilderness, even if they want to be found. So it's worse when the person is Robert Allen Hale — Papa Pilgrim's real name — an experienced outdoorsman who apparently doesn't want to be found....
Herd killed to stem bovine TB The slaughter of a cattle herd this week in northwestern Minnesota is part of an ongoing effort to contain an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis, officials said. Eighteen Minnesota herds are under quarantine and will be tested for possible TB infection. Terry Bolding, veterinarian for the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, said it's still not clear where the TB originated. It may have come from cattle in another state, or it may have been spread to cattle by whitetail deer. He said it's possible for people to get the disease, but unlikely. They would have to drink unpasteurized milk from an infected cow or get sneezed on by an infected animal. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources plans to test about 500 deer killed by hunters this fall. Bolding said that if the disease is in deer, it will be much harder to control....
Cowboy up? Fort Worth hollers "heck yeah" Steve Murrin is the informal mayor of "the stockyards," a small area of "Wild West" saloons, steakhouses, honky-tonks and clothing stores that blossomed in the middle of a poor neighborhood. The Fort Worth Stockyards used to be the heart of a vibrant cattle industry within the city limits. Then, says Murrin, it became skid row. Now it's a tourist attraction - men wearing various authentic 19th-century cowboy costumes, for example, drive longhorn cattle down the brick streets twice every day - but it's also the home of Billy Bob's Texas and the White Elephant Saloon, a storied and superb live-music venue. The Cowtown Coliseum - an ornate Spanish-style building that holds rodeos on weekends - dominates a stretch of the Stockyards area....

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NEWS ROUNDUP

Testimony Supports More Cattle Grazing on Public Lands Dr. Richard L. Knight, Colorado State University Professor of Wildlife Conservation, testified today before the Senate’s Energy & Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. A noted wildlife biologist, Knight called ranching “the oldest sustainable use of Western lands” and said “more than any other justification, the timeless traditions of ranching legitimizes its existence and continuation.” Chairman Larry Craig (R-Idaho) called the hearing to review the grazing programs of the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, including proposed changes to grazing regulations, and the status of grazing permit renewals, monitoring programs and allotment restocking plans. Knight’s testimony focused on scientific evidence supporting ranching’s benefits to biodiversity and chastised politically-motivated attempts to end public lands grazing. “The reciprocal demonization of ranchers and environmentalists – the so-called ‘rangeland conflict’ – has dominated public debate for too long. It has not contributed to on-the-ground solutions,” says Knight. “It has divided people who might otherwise be united by common goals: the conservation of magnificent open spaces, scarce water resources, and imperiled wildlife. If it continues, both sides will lose what they purport to defend.”....
Historic kane and two mile ranches bought by the grand canyon trust and the conservation fund The Grand Canyon Trust (GCT) and The Conservation Fund (TCF) announced today that they have finalized the landmark $4.5 million conservation purchase of the Kane and Two Mile ranches from the Kane Ranch Land Stewardship and Cattle Company. The ranches, consisting of approximately 1000 acres of private land and associated water rights, and 850,000 acres of grazing leases on public lands managed by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Arizona State Land Department, stretch from the Grand Canyon’s north rim to the Utah border and connect three national monuments, two national recreation areas and eight wilderness areas. The Trust and The Conservation Fund have created North Rim Ranch LLC as the official holding company to own and operate the ranches. “The purchase of the Kane and Two Mile Ranches demonstrates one of the most important and innovative public-private conservation efforts of our time. Thanks to the leadership, vision and support of our partners, we will be able to do our part to make sure that this spectacular landscape and vital wildlife habitat will be preserved for future generations,” said Mike Ford, Nevada and Southwest Director of The Conservation Fund, which led the fundraising effort. “BLM looks forward to partnering with Grand Canyon Trust and The Conservation Fund to continue the multiple-use management of the public lands on the Kane and Two Mile ranches,” said Rob Roudabush, acting BLM Arizona Strip District Manager....
House set to act on overhaul of Endangered Species Act The nation's most prominent and contentious environmental law, the 1973 Endangered Species Act, could be in line for a major overhaul that would limit habitat protections while giving new rights to property owners. Legislation by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo would eliminate "critical habitat" for plants and animals where development is limited; would allow political appointees to make some scientific determinations; and would require the federal government to compensate property owners whose development plans are blocked to protect species. The fast-moving bill was approved by the Resources Committee last week and was set for a House vote Thursday. Pombo, a conservative rancher from California's Central Valley, has been aiming for more than a decade to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, arguing it forces landowners to bear unreasonable burdens to protect plants and animals, leads to costly lawsuits and isn't successful enough in recovering species....
Environmental Groups Applaud Efforts to Secure Strong Endangered Species Act In an attempt to thwart efforts by Congressman Pombo to weaken the Endangered Species Act, Congressmen Miller (D-CA), Boehlert (R-NY), Dingell (D-MI), Gilchrest (R-MD), Dicks (D-WA), Saxton (R-NJ), Tauscher (D-CA), and Kirk (R-IL) have introduced a bi-partisan amendment that would eliminate Rep. Pombo's damaging provisions and preserve the intent of the act to recover threatened and endangered plants and animals. The amendment is supported by a wide array of conservation organizations, including the Izaak Walton League of America, Trout Unlimited, the American Bird Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, The Ocean Conservancy, and the The Wilderness Society, in addition to Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, and the World Wildlife Fund. "This bi-partisan amendment is a responsible alternative to Congressman Pombo's irresponsible bill," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "We applaud these members' efforts to secure a stronger and more effective Endangered Species Act." The legislation not only addresses the current problems in Congressman Pombo's bill, but also improves the current law....
Bush administration scales back conservation program Changes are in store for a conservation program that pays farmers to take fragile land out of production, the Bush administration said Wednesday. An estimated 35 million acres of farmland are idled each year at a cost of nearly $2 billion through the Conservation Reserve Program, the Agriculture Department's biggest farm conservation effort. The department on Wednesday announced that only farmers and ranchers who own the most environmentally sensitive land would get new 10- to 15-year contracts, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. Other farmers and ranchers who have gotten such contracts in the past will be offered only contract extensions of two to five years. "We'll offer re-enrollments for those contracts that provide the highest level of environmental benefits, and extensions for the vast majority of other contracts," Johanns said. Contracts will expire on an estimated 26 million acres from 2007 through 2009. Officials expect many farmers and ranchers will drop out because they don't want short-term contracts....
Feds answer governor's roadless questions A federal official told Gov. Dave Freudenthal this week he expects the state and the federal agency to come to an agreement on roadless areas should Wyoming choose to petition for a certain fate. U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Mark Rey told Freudenthal in a letter dated Monday that a national committee will review state-submitted petitions for roadless areas, but stopped short of saying what that committee will look for. "We foresee that each petition will be unique and specific to the management, resources, and other circumstances for inventoried roadless areas in that State; therefore, each petition will be evaluated on its own merits rather than against specific criteria beyond those already provided in the rule," Rey wrote. And, in answer to Freudenthal's questions submitted to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns in July, Rey said there is no standard to which petitions will be held. "We expect that the final decision will be one in which the Governor and the Secretary of Agriculture will be in agreement," Rey said....
Group pledges funds for ranchers An environmental group has offered to help pay ranchers for livestock killed by wolves if Rocky Mountain National Park decides to reintroduce the predators to reduce its overabundant elk population. Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife has paid more than $500,000 to ranchers in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico for confirmed losses to wolves and bears. The group also has spent $470,000 on projects to keep wolves away from livestock. It pledges similar support in Colorado. "No matter how and when wolves come to Colorado, we will commit these funds," said Jonathan Proctor, who heads the group's Denver office. "We hope to save wolves by preventing conflicts in the first place," he said. Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Vaughan Baker said the group's offer would be taken into account when a decision is made....
Prairie dog poisoning postponed Appeals filed by opposing sides over a new U.S. Forest Service plan to control prairie dogs will delay prairie-dog poisoning for at least 60 days on federal grasslands in South Dakota and Nebraska. The poisoning could have begun next week but now will be delayed at least until late November, Forest Service officials say. The Nebraska National Forest, which administers the Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre national grasslands in South Dakota and Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska, on Aug. 3 issued an amendment to its forest management plan that would have allowed prairie-dog poisoning to begin shortly after Saturday, Oct. 1. The control plan is aimed at preventing prairie dogs on federal grasslands from encroaching onto adjoining private land. But seven conservation groups appealed the amendment, contending it would kill too many prairie dogs. On the other end of the argument, six counties and six grazing groups in South Dakota and Nebraska filed an appeal Monday, contending that the amendment would not kill enough prairie dogs....
Land swap plan raises concerns A proposed three-way land exchange that could significantly alter public holdings near two Wyoming communities has many Platte County residents deeply concerned, although people in the Big Horn Basin were expected to show strong support. Although the exchange has not yet been formally proposed, Western Land Group of Colorado, hired by Wheatland-area Notch Peak Ranch owner Pat Broe to facilitate the transfer, held public open houses this week in Wheatland and Lovell to gauge public opinion. The deal would take away some Forest Service lands from users in southeast Wyoming, while opening new areas to public use in the Big Horns. As it stands, Broe would trade off about 2,979 acres of scenic land at Devil's Canyon near Lovell to the Bureau of Land Management. In return, the U.S. Forest Service would give Broe about 4,597 acres adjoining his ranch in the Laramie Mountains, and the BLM would turn over about 483 acres in the same area. The Forest Service would acquire from Broe three separate parcels in southeast Wyoming totaling 804 acres. In all, 3,783 private acres would go to the Forest Service and BLM. Federal lands which would become private total 5,080 acres. After appraisals, Broe has agreed to pay a dollar value on any discrepancy in the exchange to the federal government....
No protected status for amphibian Colorado's boreal toad was removed as a candidate for the federal endangered-species list Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That could be good news for ski-slope developers - and maybe even for the toad itself. An exotic fungus that is hammering the warty, high-elevation amphibian made it a candidate for endangered-species protection in 1995. One of the mountain toad's habitats was right on the Breckenridge hillside the Vail Resorts Development Co. wanted for its Peak 7 expansion. To win approval for the project, the developer agreed to deed 56 acres of sensitive wetlands to the town, build new toad habitat when it builds a new base area and fund a toad study. "Would we have agreed to build new toad habitat or fund the study if it was not a candidate for listing?" said Alex Iskenderian, Vail's vice president of development. "No. Significant moneys were involved." Several state road projects have added costly toad underpasses....
U.S. Bans Beluga Caviar Imports to Protect Sturgeon The U.S., which imports three-fifths of the world's beluga caviar, will ban shipments of the eggs from the Caspian Sea region to protect falling sturgeon stocks. Legal trade in caviar is worth about $100 million a year, with black market trade worth as much as five times that amount, says CITES, the Geneva-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which lists sturgeon as threatened, rather than near extinction. Stocks of the fish have declined as much as 30 percent since mid-2004, according to a study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Sept. 16. The Bush administration in March gave nations around the Caspian Sea -- Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Russia -- six months to furnish the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with a coordinated management plan to address over-fishing and poaching of sturgeon or face a halt to trade....
Editorial: Endangering species ALTHOUGH THE South was victimized by two devastating hurricanes this year, it was also the site of a heartening natural event: the discovery that the rare ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct after all. There will be fewer such hair's-breadth escapes from extinction, though, if Congress passes pending legislation that would gut the Endangered Species Act. The law has been a bulwark of environmental protection since it was enacted in 1973 with unanimous approval from the Senate and just five opposing votes in the House. Without it, the grizzly bear, the American alligator, the Florida panther, the bald eagle, and the peregrine falcon would likely no longer exist in the lower 48 states. To increase the lamentably short roster of saved species, Congress should be working to strengthen the law, not weaken it. Legislation in the House, which could be acted on as soon as today, strikes at the existing law's core by greatly limiting the designation of critical habitat land. Under the bill, that designation would go only to areas that are necessary to save a species from imminent extinction but not to areas needed for its long-time recovery, a goal of the current law. Congressman Martin Meehan of Lowell, a critic of the bill, believes that the change would create small, isolated habitat ''islands" that could not lead to species survival....
BLM will go forward with horse contraception The Department of Interior ruled Wednesday that birth control may be used on the Pryor Mountain herd of wild horses in Montana and Wyoming. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management put off plans to inject 20 mares with contraceptives after two wild horse advocacy groups petitioned to block the program earlier this month. The department's board of appeals ruled that there is not sufficient evidence to show that the action should be blocked. The fertility control effort in the Pryor Mountain herd is overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which uses the contraceptive PZP, porcine zona pellucida, to control the number of wild horses. The herd, which ranges on the Wyoming-Montana state line south of Billings, has about 165 horses. The BLM has said its target population, based on the size and quality of the existing rangeland, is between 45 and 142 horses....
Drillers want year-round access For the second winter in a row, federal land managers have approved a short-term exemption for a small-scale "demonstration" of winter drilling in critical big game winter range in the Pinedale Anticline. The day after that Sept. 15 approval, a trio of natural gas developers jointly submitted another proposal, this time asking that seasonal stipulations be removed altogether and year-round drilling become the industry standard in the winter ranges. Anschutz Pinedale Corp., Shell Exploration & Production Co. and Ultra Resources say a year-round drilling scenario "will shorten the development time period in all areas affected by seasonal restrictions by up to 50 percent lessening habitat and wildlife disturbances overall," according to the proposal. Bureau of Land Management officials are moving quickly to process calls to remove seasonal restrictions in critical big game wintering ranges in the area, citing the many benefits of a year-round drilling program. The general idea is to allow the construction phase to happen without delay so the production and reclamation phases can begin sooner....
Ski area gets BLM pass Colorado's most extreme venue for skiing received long-sought approval Wednesday to let skiers venture out on its daunting slopes without guides. The remote Silverton Mountain ski area, whose easiest run is equivalent to the most difficult at most resorts, previously had held only a short-term permit to take 80 skiers a day out in guided groups. After three years of review, the Bureau of Land Management agreed to let Silverton lease 1,300 acres of terrain for the next 40 years, with up to 475 skiers a day allowed to take to the ultra-steep runs. "It's pretty big news," said Silverton Mountain owner Aaron Brill, who several years ago pored over topographical maps to find a site for the type of ski area he wanted to create. Now headed into its fifth season, the area will provide guided-only skiing options this winter because of the preparation involved in getting the area ready for unguided skiing, Brill said. Unguided skiing likely will begin in April after the most extreme avalanche danger has passed....
BLM raising fees at Sand Mountain User fees for off-road vehicles at Sand Mountain will double beginning Saturday in a move the Bureau of Land Management says is needed to maintain the recreation site and protect a rare butterfly. "The BLM is not driven by specific profit margin objectives as are private sector businesses, but it must attempt to recover costs for which funding is no longer available through appropriated funding sources," said Don Hicks, BLM field manager in Carson City. "We want to continue providing a clean and enjoyable recreation experience at Sand Mountain." Under the new rates, annual passes will jump from $45 to $90. Weekly passes will cost $40, up from $20....
Diminishing water supply threatens E. Washington farmers Without water, the Columbia Basin region would look like the sagebrush-covered desert it was before farmers and irrigators transformed it into some of the top-producing farmland in the United States. Thanks to water, 119 crops are grown in the Columbia Basin. In fact, Grant, Franklin and Adams counties are the first-, second- and fifth-largest potato-producing counties in the U.S. But this region's future is endangered because of its diminishing water supply. Much of the region relies on the vast Odessa sub-area aquifer for its water. But more water is being withdrawn from the aquifer than is being recharged. Wells in the sub-area are drying up or seeing a significant reduction in output due to the aquifer's dropping water table — as much as 400 feet since the 1960s. In fact, some wells are 2,000 feet deep. Farmers and people in area communities can't afford to continue drilling deeper for water because it's so expensive....
Portable sawmill offers unique on-site service Buying rough sawn lumber and beams at wholesale pricing, while enjoying excellent customer service, used to be a dream for local homeowners, ranchers and woodworkers. Thanks to Timberline Custom Saw-milling, it is now a dream come true. Since April, owners Mike and Barb Miller have offered lumber and beams for builders and private parties for use in homebuilding, barns, corrals, decks, fencing and crafts — all at the customer’s own site. Timberline’s way of doing business is the opposite of traditional sawmilling, where customers must trans-port their own logs to a stationary mill and later return to pick up the sawn lumber. “The portable sawmill is unique in that it can be transported to the log site and the logs are milled to the customer’s specifications on the spot,” said Mike Miller. This saves time, effort and expense — savings that are passed on to the customer....
Farm Freeloaders in Foreign-Aid Food Fight What's the WTO got against food aid? The organization has another word for sending developing countries free stuff: dumping. If that sounds a touch cynical, consider the circumstances under which the food aid program was developed in 1954. The U.S. was simultaneously experiencing a spike in agricultural production—notably wheat—and eager to solicit the goodwill of newly emerging states. Letting taxpayers buy and ship surplus carbohydrates evidently seemed like a good idea. Fifty years later, according to Oxfam, food aid still rises with surplus production and falls when supply is tight. When a bumper crop threatens to destabilize prices, the feds sweep in to buy and give away. Having trouble hawking California raisins? Soybean oil? Corn? Wheat? Rice? There's an African village with your name on it. The importance of food aid as an export outlet is nowhere near what it once was, but the business of disaster aid has given other industries an interest in maintaining the status quo. According to a July report by the Minnesota-based Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP), it's the shipping industry—not agribusiness—that has emerged as the lobbying behemoth behind food aid. The U.S. requires that 75 percent of procurement, processing, bagging and shipping be handled by U.S. firms. Fully a third of the money taxpayers spend sending free food (typically bought at 11 percent over market price) goes straight to shipping costs....
Empire Ranch where the real West was filmed The Old Tucson site was built as the set for "Arizona" starring Jean Arthur and William Holden in 1939. It just stayed in what is now Pima County's Tucson Mountain Park and grew as more films and TV shows were shot there. It came into its own in the 1960s when a man who's name is permanently linked with it took it over - Bob Shelton. Bob brought in the big guns. Space prohibits naming all the classics shot there over that great 30 years, but start with the classic John Wayne/Howard Hawks trilogy - "Rio Bravo" (1959), "El Dorado" (1966) and "Rio Lobo" (1970). But that wasn't the first time Hawks and Wayne were here. "Red River" (1948) was shot on the Empire Ranch, a bit further away and a lot closer to the real West. Started in 1876 on 160 acres bought by Walter Vail and Herbert Hislop, it grew to over 1 million acres at one point.
The discovery of silver helped and it was acquired by the Boice family in 1928 who sold it to Gulf American in 1969 but ranched it until 1975 when Anamax Mining bought it for its water and leased it to rancher John Donaldson. The Donaldsons still graze it, but the BLM acquired the ranch buildings and 42,000 acres in 1988. In 2000 it was designated the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. Every Year the Empire Ranch Foundation has a Round-up, Western Art Show, and sale from the very buildings were John Wayne, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru and Montgomery Clift filmed "Red River" and where well before that, the Vails fought off real Apaches and others to build the biggest ranch in the Southwest....
Matagorda Heritage Day planned for Oct.8 Matagorda County residents can celebrate the history of one of Texas’s oldest towns on Oct. 8 at the annual Matagorda Heritage Day. The event that began over 40 years ago will include a parade, carnival, karaoke contest, barbecue, fish fry and beer garden. The Art League of Bay City will be sponsoring an art show and there will be the annual Charles Siringo look-a-like contest. Siringo was a cowboy turned author who was employed by famed rancher Shanghai Pierce and other Matagorda area ranchers during the 1800s. The contest is open to ages 16 and above and the entry fee is $25....
Cowboys help kids explore new frontiers in reading Floral City Elementary School students recently had a rootin', tootin' kickoff for this year's Accelerated Reader program. During the event, featuring real cowboys, students were encouraged to keep in mind this year's theme: To Explore New Frontiers - Read. Accelerated Reader, commonly known as AR, promotes reading on an individual level. When a student reads a book, he or she then takes a comprehension test on a computer and the child is awarded points. Points are rewarded in a variety of ways throughout participating schools. At Floral City, Accelerated Reader was highlighted in the school's outdoor pavilion with presentations by longtime local rancher Valentine Rooks and high school rodeo performer Dakota Shipp. Rooks, dressed in Wranglers, boots and cowboy hat, described the life of a rancher and demonstrated how to crack a whip. He told the children about early Florida Crackers and how they earned the name with their whips. He said his mama knew when to get dinner out when she heard the cracking whips getting close to home....

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Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly. Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped. 'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?' Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan....

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Verne's monster of the deep caught on camera

A GIANT squid, the elusive behemoth of the deep that inspired Jules Verne, has been observed alive for the first time, scientists reported yesterday. The creature, which is as long as a London bus from tentacle tip to tail, has been filmed by Japanese researchers using a baited underwater camera, shedding new light on the lifestyle of one of nature’s most enigmatic living wonders. The first observed specimen measured about 26ft (8m) in total, with 16ft tentacles. Even so, it was something of a titch by the standards of the species as a whole, with the largest yet washed ashore, in New Zealand — at 59ft — more than twice as big. The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, has been known since the 16th century from dead specimens washed up on beaches or snared by fishermen’s nets, and from the occasional fleeting sighting when it has neared the surface. But it had never before been seen in its natural deep-water environment. Its size, fearsome tentacles and beak have captured the imaginations of sailors and writers, for whom it has become an emblem of the terrors of the deep. In Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus was attacked by a “squid of colossal dimensions” that almost destroyed the vessel....

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