NEWS
Column: Bush's new green thumb PRESIDENT BUSH is petting fish. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is hugging trees. Everything is going to be just ducky in our wetlands. It's a green revolution in the most arid administration in our lifetime, the political equivalent of seeding the Sahara. The question is whether it is merely an oasis amid desolation. In the last month, the administration has sounded like its main lobbyists were not Exxon but the Sierra Club. Three weeks ago, Kempthorne announced 800 miles of new hiking, biking, boat, and historical trails. Last Thursday, President Bush announced creation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, spanning the equivalent distance of Boston to St. Louis. Bush complimented the environmentalists who attended. One of them was filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of legendary marine ecologist Jacques Cousteau. In April, Jean-Michel showed the president and first lady Laura Bush his PBS documentary on the damage being done to the islands. It is a big day when an environmentalist has a movie night at the White House, especially since the film aired on PBS. The next day, Kempthorne, the former governor of Idaho, announced that the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission had approved projects and American and Canadian partnerships that will allow the US Fish and Wildlife Service to restore more than 87,000 acres of North American wetlands. On Monday, environmentalists rubbed their eyes in disbelief as Kempthorne ditched plans by the previous secretary, Gale Norton, that would have softened up the national parks for commercial development....
White House agrees to protect forests The Bush administration Wednesday approved requests from three Eastern governors to bar commercial logging in remote sections of national forests in their states. The petitions from Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, covering a total of 555,000 acres, were the first submitted to the administration since it eased logging restrictions on what are known as roadless tracts. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said from Washington, D.C., that he hoped the acceptance would show governors around the country, including four in the West who have sued to block such logging, that the administration is willing to work with them. "We've always been green," Rey said. "We just haven't gotten credit for it." The petitions still must go through a public review that could take years before the protections are in place. The three governors asked to return roadless areas in their states to the protections that existed under 2001 rules initiated by the Clinton administration....Well, if Mark Rey says they are green, I guess they are green, at least until November. One has to wonder if this sharp turn to the left on environmental policy will really help the Republicans maintain control of Congress. Their polling must be telling them something. What it tells me is that they've done a very poor job of public relations in explaining the little regulatory relief they have brought to the environmental policy arena.
Flights of Logic Twenty-point-four acres: That’s how much land the U.S. Forest Service determined would be occupied by oil and gas companies under last fall’s plan to expand mineral extraction in the nearly 2 million-acre Los Padres National Forest. “It doesn’t seem like much,” admits Jeff Kuyper of the environmental group Los Padres Forest Watch, especially when you consider that the Forest Service looked at a potential 750,000 acres. But there’s one problem with that little number, says Kuyper: “It’s grossly inaccurate.” The 20.4 figure is one of the reasons Kuyper’s group, along with the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife, served the federal government notice last week that they intend to sue if the feds fail to make significant changes to the oil and gas plan. There are others: the Forest Service failed to adequately assess the plan’s impact on endangered steelhead trout, the plan was written before U.S. Fish and Wildlife had agreed upon critical habitat for the endangered California red-legged frog, and biologists neglected to include “cumulative effects” in their studies. But the discrepancy in that acreage estimate gets to the heart of environmentalists’ concerns about oil drilling in the Los Padres: What looks reasonable in a written report may prove disastrous in practice....
Multiple-use sentiments dominate Forest forum Citizens concerned with a lack of focus on multiple-use recreation in the Flathead National Forest's draft management plan dominated an open forum Saturday at Flathead High School in Kalispell. The forum was hosted by the Flathead National Forest. Citizens were given three minutes to publicly address Forest Service employees and voice opinions on the draft forest plan. The public comment period for the draft plan ends Aug. 7, and the final plan is scheduled to be released this fall. The Flathead National Forest, along with the Lolo, Bitterroot, Kootenai and Idaho Panhandle National Forests, is among the first to submit a revised forest plan under the 2005 Planning Rule guidelines. Of the 35 citizens who made public comment, 34 criticized the forest plan for a lack of focus on multiple-use recreation, specifically motorized use and access. Displeasure of the Forest Services' management of timber was another common concern. Comments repeatedly focused on a belief that the Forest Service has not appropriately set the limits of timber harvest and has not harvested enough timber over the last few decades, resulting in a loss of jobs and tax money for schools, while consequently increasing the threat of wildfires and weakening Montana's timber industry infrastructure....
Vanishing Past Narrow your eyes here, and it's easy to imagine ancient Hohokam villages fanning across the flats, smoke from their low fires curling into desert. Tagged Los Morteros by archaeologists, for bedrock mortars found atop boulders, this Tucson Mountain site bustled with civilization long before civilization gave it a name. But open your eyes a bit wider, and now what you see is the subdivided sprawl of Continental Ranch. Today, entombed under Continental's tidy concrete--beneath the cul-de-sacs and curbing and meaty foundations--are the ghosts of this finally vanished world. Meanwhile, in areas less touched by development than Los Morteros, looters, vandals and off-roaders are taking up the slack. Last year alone, monitors with a state-run volunteer program reported 212 vandalism incidents, 27 lootings, 21 trashed signs, two unearthed human remains, 13 cases of spray-painting and two petroglyph thefts. Amongst deliberate destruction, blind ignorance and so-called progress, Arizona is quickly losing its prehistoric heritage. And that dismays Mary Estes, who runs the volunteer Arizona Site Steward Program for the State Parks Department....
House panel passes Trail of Tears expansion bill A bill calling for a major expansion of the trail memorializing the forced removal of Cherokee Indians from the Southeast in the 1830s passed a House committee today. The bill would require the National Park Service to certify two routes used by some of the 15,000 Cherokees exiled from homes in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., sponsor of the bill, said the full House is expected to vote on the measure sometime next month. The bill would add to the Trail of Tears such places as Ross’s Landing in Chattanooga and Fort Cass on the Hiwassee River in Calhoun, Tenn. The two segments, called the Benge and Bell routes, began at Fort Payne, Ala., and Charleston, Tenn., respectively....
Gabilan Ranch Preserved Local nature lovers can breathe a little easier following a more than $4 million deal between the Reeves-Baldocchi-Boyle family and the Nature Conservancy, which guarantees the 11,000 acre Gabilan Ranch just south of Gilroy will remain a wildlife habitat for generations to come. "The ranch is an ecological treasure, in part because its been under the same ownership for the past three generations," said Christina Fisher, Project Director for the Monterey Bay Area chapter of the Nature Conservancy. "There are few roads or developments except for the farm buildings, so the family has preserved much of the ecosystem … you still find native frogs and salamanders in the water, and there are 80 different species of birds here." The conservancy worked with the Gabilan Cattle Company for six years to acquire a $4.2 million conservation easement, which essentially guarantees the conservancy certain rights to the land while the family maintains ownership of the property and continues their cattle operation. In this case, the family promises not to develop the land in any way that might harm the plants, animals or water quality of the land. "There are two primary reasons we were interested in doing this in the first place," said Darrell Boyle, CEO of Gabilan Cattle Company. "First of course was to protect the land … the second was to keep the ranch in our family. We're the third generation running the ranch and we have a long history with this wonderful property."....
Budget pressures leave tough choices Once portals that lured gold-seeking pioneers, the black holes that dot the sun-baked mountainsides of this California desert haunt J.T. Reynolds. The Death Valley National Park superintendent fears tourists will tumble down the decrepit shafts or vanish into the rocky tunnels that abound in his park's famed Gold Rush-era mines and ghost towns. To completely "mine-safe" some 6,000 shafts and caves would take money that Reynolds does not have. "Most visitors do not realize that park resources have been under threat from deterioration, vandalism, neglect and rot for some time," Reynolds said. "We put up a good front and try to keep high visitor-use areas clean and neat. Even this facade is fading due to the lack of appropriate resources." Across the 390 parks, preserves and historic sites that make up the 90-year-old national park system, Reynolds' colleagues face similar tough choices as growing costs from labor, utilities, maintenance, operations and preservation exceed wartime budgets from Washington....
Park ranger accused of soliciting bribes from inmates he supervised A state park ranger took money from prisoners he supervised at a work-release program in exchange for special treatment, police said. Nelson Mompierre, 43, of Key Biscayne, was in charge of inmates who worked at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park on the southern tip of Key Biscayne. Miami-Dade police detectives and FBI agents began an investigation last June after receiving complaints that Mompierre had solicited money from one of the prisoners. For an $80 bribe, Mompierre allowed a visit at the park between an inmate and the inmate's girlfriend, according to an arrest affidavit. Mompierre also lent the inmate his cellphone, the affidavit said. The same inmate went to the FBI after Mompierre threatened to kick him out of the work-release program unless he paid Mompierre $2,500. An FBI agent posed as the wife of that inmate to infiltrate Mompierre's suspected scheme....
California men face fraud charges in Grand Canyon permit case Two California men have been charged in federal court with using the identities of dead or fictitious people to get permits for private rafting trips in the Grand Canyon. Stephen E. Savage, 61, of Diamond Bar, Ca. made an initial appearance in federal court in Flagstaff Tuesday and was ordered held on 11 counts of fraudulently obtaining rafting permits pending a detention hearing. Savage was arrested by National Park Service special agents at the Grand Canyon River Orientation Center in Lee's Ferry on Sunday. Timothy J. O'Shaughnessy, 45, of Whitewater, Ca. was arrested by authorities in California on Monday and turned over the U.S. Marshal's Service on the same charges, all misdemeanors. He was set for an initial appearance Tuesday afternoon, according the U.S. Attorney's office in Phoenix. Private rafting trip permits for trips in the Grand Canyon National Park are very difficult to obtain, with waiting lists of 10 to 15 years. The list system was abandoned earlier this year in favor of a lottery system. According to an affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, an investigation was launched against Savage in March 2004 after the Parks Service received an anonymous letter from a person who said Savage bragged about illegally getting permits....
More rare than the average bear Visitors to U.S. national parks may be in for some unpleasant surprises this summer: unkempt restrooms, shorter hours at visitor centers and fewer park rangers. In fact, many visitors may not see a National Park Service ranger, as the agency's threadbare budget has forced officials to recruit volunteers to fill jobs formerly performed by federal employees and to reduce or eliminate traditional visitor services. "The old saying in the park service is, `We can do more with less,' " said Craig W. Dorman, superintendent at Lava Beds National Monument, near the Oregon border. "I don't think that's true anymore. We're now in a position of doing less with less." Nationwide, the 390 parks, monuments, seashores and recreation areas managed by the park service are experiencing "challenging" times, said agency Director Fran Mainella....
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Jaguar Conservation Team Working Group Meeting on June 29-30
Dear Jaguar List
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of motels available in Douglas. Here's the numbers for the few that are available. If you have not reviewed the response from AZ Game and Fish on the comments for the draft framework, they can be found at:
http://www.azgfd.gov/pdfs/w_c/jaguar/June2007/JAGCTConservationFrameworkPublicComment.pdf
The new Memorandum of Agreement can be found at:
http://www.azgfd.gov/pdfs/w_c/jaguar/June2007/JAGCTMOA2006-2010Draft.pdf
Please read both documents and come prepared to discuss them.
We are supposed to be getting the revised conservation framework soon. Will let you know if and when it becomes available.
Judy Keeler
Motels available in Douglas
Motel 6 - 520-364-2457 - just down the street from the meeting
HUMMINGBIRD INN - 520-364-9356 - a bed and breakfast
Gadsden - no phone number - very historic, although doesn't always have enough hot water for all its guests - some of the rooms do not have airconditioning
----- Original Message -----
From: AZGFD
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 6:54 PM
Subject: Endangered Species Updates - Jaguar
Endangered Species Updates
May 31, 2006
Jaguar Conservation Team Working Group Meeting on June 29-30
Note: this meeting is open to the public, within the limits of available seating, on a first-come, first-seated basis
The next Jaguar Conservation Team (JAGCT) Working Group meeting is on June 29-30, at the Douglas Visitor’s Center, 345 16th Street, Douglas, Arizona. Subcommittee chairs: please contact Bill Van Pelt (602.789.3573) before June 16 regarding any photocopying needs.
The draft Conservation Framework, a summary of public comment on the previous draft, a draft Memorandum of Agreement, and a copy of the agenda will all be uploaded in pdf format to the AGFD jaguar webpage between Noon and 5 pm on Thursday June 1.
Agenda – June 29, 2006 – 10:00 am start time (local time)
A. Opening comments and ground rules
B. Agenda review/additional discussion points
C. Discussion of summary notes from April 27-28, 2006 JAGCT Working Group meeting
D. Discussion of possible additional signatories to the current and/or future Conservation Agreement under which the JAGCT operates
E. Task reports:
1. Update on AZ-NM sightings: Tim Snow and Jim Stewart
2. Kill verification activities/camera surveys: Jack Childs
3. Coordination with Mexico: Bill Van Pelt
4. Update on JAGCT progress report: Bill Van Pelt
F. Conservation Assessment and Framework
G. Memorandum of Agreement
H. Other Business
I. Close meeting (5 pm, or earlier if business has been completed)
Agenda – June 30, 2006 – 8:30 am start time (local time)
[Note: This session will not be held if work is completed on the previous day]
A. Conservation Assessment and Framework
B. Close meeting (3 pm, or earlier if business has been completed)
Note: For further information on jaguar conservation in the Southwest, please visit the JAGCT’s webpage at http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/es/jaguar_management.shtml.
Dear Jaguar List
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of motels available in Douglas. Here's the numbers for the few that are available. If you have not reviewed the response from AZ Game and Fish on the comments for the draft framework, they can be found at:
http://www.azgfd.gov/pdfs/w_c/jaguar/June2007/JAGCTConservationFrameworkPublicComment.pdf
The new Memorandum of Agreement can be found at:
http://www.azgfd.gov/pdfs/w_c/jaguar/June2007/JAGCTMOA2006-2010Draft.pdf
Please read both documents and come prepared to discuss them.
We are supposed to be getting the revised conservation framework soon. Will let you know if and when it becomes available.
Judy Keeler
Motels available in Douglas
Motel 6 - 520-364-2457 - just down the street from the meeting
HUMMINGBIRD INN - 520-364-9356 - a bed and breakfast
Gadsden - no phone number - very historic, although doesn't always have enough hot water for all its guests - some of the rooms do not have airconditioning
----- Original Message -----
From: AZGFD
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 6:54 PM
Subject: Endangered Species Updates - Jaguar
Endangered Species Updates
May 31, 2006
Jaguar Conservation Team Working Group Meeting on June 29-30
Note: this meeting is open to the public, within the limits of available seating, on a first-come, first-seated basis
The next Jaguar Conservation Team (JAGCT) Working Group meeting is on June 29-30, at the Douglas Visitor’s Center, 345 16th Street, Douglas, Arizona. Subcommittee chairs: please contact Bill Van Pelt (602.789.3573) before June 16 regarding any photocopying needs.
The draft Conservation Framework, a summary of public comment on the previous draft, a draft Memorandum of Agreement, and a copy of the agenda will all be uploaded in pdf format to the AGFD jaguar webpage between Noon and 5 pm on Thursday June 1.
Agenda – June 29, 2006 – 10:00 am start time (local time)
A. Opening comments and ground rules
B. Agenda review/additional discussion points
C. Discussion of summary notes from April 27-28, 2006 JAGCT Working Group meeting
D. Discussion of possible additional signatories to the current and/or future Conservation Agreement under which the JAGCT operates
E. Task reports:
1. Update on AZ-NM sightings: Tim Snow and Jim Stewart
2. Kill verification activities/camera surveys: Jack Childs
3. Coordination with Mexico: Bill Van Pelt
4. Update on JAGCT progress report: Bill Van Pelt
F. Conservation Assessment and Framework
G. Memorandum of Agreement
H. Other Business
I. Close meeting (5 pm, or earlier if business has been completed)
Agenda – June 30, 2006 – 8:30 am start time (local time)
[Note: This session will not be held if work is completed on the previous day]
A. Conservation Assessment and Framework
B. Close meeting (3 pm, or earlier if business has been completed)
Note: For further information on jaguar conservation in the Southwest, please visit the JAGCT’s webpage at http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/es/jaguar_management.shtml.
NMSU RODEO
NMSU roper Garza wins national team roping title
Date: 06/21/2006
Contact: Jim Dewey Brown, (505) 646-3659, brownji@nmsu.edu
Reporter: Darrell J. Pehr, (505) 635-2017, pehr@nmsu.edu
When the rope cinched tight around the rear legs of a steer Saturday night in the final round of the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, Wyo., Matt Garza and his team roping partner captured the first national title for New Mexico State University since 1990.
Garza, of Mesilla Park, N.M., and his partner, Central Arizona College team member Chance Means of Cliff, N.M., held off strong challenges throughout the weeklong National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association competition and won the timed event by less than half a second after four runs.
“I would have liked to have had a little more time to spare,” Garza said. “It made us that much more aggressive. We knew we had a pretty tough job to do. We knew we had to give it 110 percent.”
In their championship run Saturday, Means, the header on the team, quickly roped the steer’s head, then held and turned the steer to give Garza, the heeler on the team, a clear shot at the back legs, which also must be roped.
“My partner did an outstanding job, so I didn’t have to take a wild shot,” Garza said. “He didn’t make him really wild. He was gathered and his feet were together.”
The clock showed the time of the run – 6.5 seconds – fast enough for a championship.
“My partner threw his hat in the air,” Garza said. “When I realized we had won, I lost it. I went nuts. I threw my hat and we did our victory lap.”
NMSU also had top national finishes from calf roper Wacey Walraven of Datil, N.M., who placed ninth and Arcel Allsup of Duncan, Ariz., who took 10th in calf roping. NMSU barrel racer Krista Norell of Meeker, Colo., finished eighth overall.
For Garza and Means, their victory means $1,500 scholarships, custom roping saddles and other winnings. For NMSU’s rodeo program, the victory is symbolic of the success the growing program has seen over the past several years.
“It gives us a little recognition that we are contenders,” said Coach Jim Dewey Brown. “It shows that we do have great athletes coming to this school.”
The national title is the first for NMSU since 1990 when bareback bronc rider Randy Slaughter won the event.
Garza and Means roped together all season and captured the regional championship before heading to the national finals, where Garza was ranked eighth in the nation and Means was seventh. Means plans to transfer to NMSU in the fall.
Garza grew up around team roping and started competing when he was 14. His father, Homer Garza, taught him how to rope and has been his primary coach through the years. Matt Garza said attending NMSU offers him both an opportunity to be part of a good organization and the benefits of being able to practice at his home.
“This school’s a great school,” he said. “The championship means a lot to me. I’ve worked really hard. I was really excited to be going up there and representing our team. It’s unbelievable to come out on top. It was like a dream come true.”
Garza and Means have been friends since competing in high school rodeos, and, not long after going to college, they agreed to team up.
“I picked him because he’s really dedicated,” Garza said. “He always makes sure he has a really good horse and you can always find him in the arena. He’s a winner and you want to be with the best.”
What does it take to succeed at the national level?
“A lot of hard work and dedication,” Garza said. “If you want it bad enough and work on it hard enough, you can accomplish it. You have to have a good horse. You have to practice. You have to love the sport. I fell in love with it and ever since, I crave being out there and competing.”
Garza said the growth of the rodeo team, thanks largely to rodeo supporter Frank DuBois, made a big difference in helping him choose to attend NMSU.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be there rodeoing for NMSU,” Garza said. Garza was one of 21 recruits who were awarded DuBois scholarships in 2004-2005, along with Walraven and Norell. Garza was awarded the Hotch and Carolyn Manning rodeo scholarship. As of last fall, the team included 41 scholarship athletes in the program, which DuBois organized and expanded as the team has grown over the past several years.
NMSU roper Garza wins national team roping title
Date: 06/21/2006
Contact: Jim Dewey Brown, (505) 646-3659, brownji@nmsu.edu
Reporter: Darrell J. Pehr, (505) 635-2017, pehr@nmsu.edu
When the rope cinched tight around the rear legs of a steer Saturday night in the final round of the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, Wyo., Matt Garza and his team roping partner captured the first national title for New Mexico State University since 1990.
Garza, of Mesilla Park, N.M., and his partner, Central Arizona College team member Chance Means of Cliff, N.M., held off strong challenges throughout the weeklong National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association competition and won the timed event by less than half a second after four runs.
“I would have liked to have had a little more time to spare,” Garza said. “It made us that much more aggressive. We knew we had a pretty tough job to do. We knew we had to give it 110 percent.”
In their championship run Saturday, Means, the header on the team, quickly roped the steer’s head, then held and turned the steer to give Garza, the heeler on the team, a clear shot at the back legs, which also must be roped.
“My partner did an outstanding job, so I didn’t have to take a wild shot,” Garza said. “He didn’t make him really wild. He was gathered and his feet were together.”
The clock showed the time of the run – 6.5 seconds – fast enough for a championship.
“My partner threw his hat in the air,” Garza said. “When I realized we had won, I lost it. I went nuts. I threw my hat and we did our victory lap.”
NMSU also had top national finishes from calf roper Wacey Walraven of Datil, N.M., who placed ninth and Arcel Allsup of Duncan, Ariz., who took 10th in calf roping. NMSU barrel racer Krista Norell of Meeker, Colo., finished eighth overall.
For Garza and Means, their victory means $1,500 scholarships, custom roping saddles and other winnings. For NMSU’s rodeo program, the victory is symbolic of the success the growing program has seen over the past several years.
“It gives us a little recognition that we are contenders,” said Coach Jim Dewey Brown. “It shows that we do have great athletes coming to this school.”
The national title is the first for NMSU since 1990 when bareback bronc rider Randy Slaughter won the event.
Garza and Means roped together all season and captured the regional championship before heading to the national finals, where Garza was ranked eighth in the nation and Means was seventh. Means plans to transfer to NMSU in the fall.
Garza grew up around team roping and started competing when he was 14. His father, Homer Garza, taught him how to rope and has been his primary coach through the years. Matt Garza said attending NMSU offers him both an opportunity to be part of a good organization and the benefits of being able to practice at his home.
“This school’s a great school,” he said. “The championship means a lot to me. I’ve worked really hard. I was really excited to be going up there and representing our team. It’s unbelievable to come out on top. It was like a dream come true.”
Garza and Means have been friends since competing in high school rodeos, and, not long after going to college, they agreed to team up.
“I picked him because he’s really dedicated,” Garza said. “He always makes sure he has a really good horse and you can always find him in the arena. He’s a winner and you want to be with the best.”
What does it take to succeed at the national level?
“A lot of hard work and dedication,” Garza said. “If you want it bad enough and work on it hard enough, you can accomplish it. You have to have a good horse. You have to practice. You have to love the sport. I fell in love with it and ever since, I crave being out there and competing.”
Garza said the growth of the rodeo team, thanks largely to rodeo supporter Frank DuBois, made a big difference in helping him choose to attend NMSU.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be there rodeoing for NMSU,” Garza said. Garza was one of 21 recruits who were awarded DuBois scholarships in 2004-2005, along with Walraven and Norell. Garza was awarded the Hotch and Carolyn Manning rodeo scholarship. As of last fall, the team included 41 scholarship athletes in the program, which DuBois organized and expanded as the team has grown over the past several years.
MAD COW DISEASE - JAPAN TRADE
Japan To Finish Audit Of US Beef Plants By July 21 Japan is expected to wrap up its audit of U.S. beef producing plants by July 21, paving the way for a resumption of U.S. exports to Japan, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday. The USDA, in a prepared statement, said teams of Japanese auditors "will arrive in the U.S. this weekend and conclude their work by July 21. Upon completion of the audits, Japan has agreed to expeditiously resume beef trade." U.S. and Japanese negotiators reached an agreement early Wednesday morning EDT that bridged several disagreements between the two countries on how beef trade would resume. That agreement is expected to be implemented soon after the audits are completed. USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said later Wednesday that he is pleased with the deal reached by negotiators, but stressed he will "not be satisfied until U.S. beef is once again accepted into the Japanese market." U.S. and Japanese negotiators met for eight hours in two video conference sessions Tuesday and into the morning Wednesday to resolve their differences. One sticky issue was U.S. demands that Japan provide assurances that it won't allow future non-compliance issues with individual shipments to disrupt all beef trade. Johanns said he believes that was accomplished....
NCBA Statement On Japan’s Commitment to Resume Trade of U.S. Beef “America’s cattlemen appreciate the work by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and top officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their continued focus on U.S.-Japan trade discussions. But after years of empty promises and continued delays, U.S. beef producers remain skeptical of Japan’s dependability as a trading partner. “As we proceed with implementing steps toward trade resumption, NCBA will continue to insist on science-based standards. Under this current agreement, there remains no language to provide for the export of bone-in product or for beef from animals between 20 and 30 months of age. “The United States meets or exceeds all guidelines established by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to freely export beef and beef products from cattle aged 30 months and less. Japan’s requirement of boneless beef from cattle aged 20 months and less is an artificial and unscientific barrier to trade. “While we are hopeful these issues can be worked out over time, we know from experience that Japan has become an unreliable trading partner. Our cattlemen have paid a tremendous price for the continued delays by Japanese officials to resume beef trade based on scientifically-recognized principles....
Conrad/Roberts Bill Imposes Tariffs on Japanese Products Unless Date is Set U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) today introduced legislation to impose tariffs on Japanese products if a date is not set to reopen the Japanese market to U.S. beef. “Today’s announcement that the Japanese intend to open their markets to U.S. beef is a step forward, but Japan must make good on its commitment. Until there is a specific date for actual trade to resume, and product is at port in Japan, it's not a done deal." Senator Roberts said. “We have been through this before and need to demonstrate to the Japanese that U.S. beef is safe.” At issue is the continued delay by the Japanese Food Safety Commission in resuming normal beef trade, based on internationally recognized science, after the discovery in January of spinal cord material in a single shipment of U.S. beef. The legislation, introduced by Roberts and Conrad with wide bipartisan support, sets deadlines by which the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) must certify that Japan has reopened its borders to American beef. According to the bill, USTR must provide this certification or lack thereof to Congress by August 31, 2006....
Japan To Finish Audit Of US Beef Plants By July 21 Japan is expected to wrap up its audit of U.S. beef producing plants by July 21, paving the way for a resumption of U.S. exports to Japan, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday. The USDA, in a prepared statement, said teams of Japanese auditors "will arrive in the U.S. this weekend and conclude their work by July 21. Upon completion of the audits, Japan has agreed to expeditiously resume beef trade." U.S. and Japanese negotiators reached an agreement early Wednesday morning EDT that bridged several disagreements between the two countries on how beef trade would resume. That agreement is expected to be implemented soon after the audits are completed. USDA Secretary Mike Johanns said later Wednesday that he is pleased with the deal reached by negotiators, but stressed he will "not be satisfied until U.S. beef is once again accepted into the Japanese market." U.S. and Japanese negotiators met for eight hours in two video conference sessions Tuesday and into the morning Wednesday to resolve their differences. One sticky issue was U.S. demands that Japan provide assurances that it won't allow future non-compliance issues with individual shipments to disrupt all beef trade. Johanns said he believes that was accomplished....
NCBA Statement On Japan’s Commitment to Resume Trade of U.S. Beef “America’s cattlemen appreciate the work by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and top officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their continued focus on U.S.-Japan trade discussions. But after years of empty promises and continued delays, U.S. beef producers remain skeptical of Japan’s dependability as a trading partner. “As we proceed with implementing steps toward trade resumption, NCBA will continue to insist on science-based standards. Under this current agreement, there remains no language to provide for the export of bone-in product or for beef from animals between 20 and 30 months of age. “The United States meets or exceeds all guidelines established by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to freely export beef and beef products from cattle aged 30 months and less. Japan’s requirement of boneless beef from cattle aged 20 months and less is an artificial and unscientific barrier to trade. “While we are hopeful these issues can be worked out over time, we know from experience that Japan has become an unreliable trading partner. Our cattlemen have paid a tremendous price for the continued delays by Japanese officials to resume beef trade based on scientifically-recognized principles....
Conrad/Roberts Bill Imposes Tariffs on Japanese Products Unless Date is Set U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) today introduced legislation to impose tariffs on Japanese products if a date is not set to reopen the Japanese market to U.S. beef. “Today’s announcement that the Japanese intend to open their markets to U.S. beef is a step forward, but Japan must make good on its commitment. Until there is a specific date for actual trade to resume, and product is at port in Japan, it's not a done deal." Senator Roberts said. “We have been through this before and need to demonstrate to the Japanese that U.S. beef is safe.” At issue is the continued delay by the Japanese Food Safety Commission in resuming normal beef trade, based on internationally recognized science, after the discovery in January of spinal cord material in a single shipment of U.S. beef. The legislation, introduced by Roberts and Conrad with wide bipartisan support, sets deadlines by which the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) must certify that Japan has reopened its borders to American beef. According to the bill, USTR must provide this certification or lack thereof to Congress by August 31, 2006....
NEWS
Officials abandon checkpoint after 'hippie' run-in U.S. Forest Service officers drew their shotguns but then got into their vehicles and abandoned a checkpoint without firing a shot after about 200 people at the Rainbow Family gathering surrounded the officers, an agency spokeswoman said. ''We're not going to compromise the safety of our officers,'' agency spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said Tuesday. ''We have to reavaluate whether or not we're going to continue any checkpoints because of what happened.'' At least 500 people have converged in Routt National Forest for the gathering but the Forest Service had been turning away new arrivals from entering because the group hasn't gotten a permit for large groups. The group's annual event, often described as a huge gathering of hippies, is expected to draw between 15,000 and 20,000 people to the Routt National Forest for a weeklong July 4th event. About 60 to 80 people already at the event site approached the officers who had been turning people away and surrounded them in a ''hostile manner'', Ottaviano said. She said more than 100 other people who had been hanging out near the checkpoint because they were not allowed in joined the smaller group, forcing the officers to retreat. Ottaviano said the checkpoint has been disbanded. No one was stopping people from entering the area but officers will continue their patrols, she said....and Kit Laney gets five months in Federal Prison...soft on hippies and hard on ranchers appears to be the Bush Administration policy.
Judge hears suit over logging plan in Sierra forests The management plan for 11.5 million acres of national forest in the Sierra harms wildlife while illegally increasing logging under the guise of fire prevention, environmental groups told a federal judge Monday. They want the U.S. Forest Service to return to a 2001 plan approved in the last days of the Clinton Administration, a plan they say offers more protection for the environment and 200 scarce species such as the California spotted owl, martin and Pacific fisher. The hearing, set to conclude today, is the latest legal skirmish in a 15-year battle over managing the 11 national forests. U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. said he might schedule additional hearings before ruling in what he called an enormously complicated lawsuit. U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey approved the plan in March 2005, agreeing with Forest Service officials who advocated increased logging. They argued that thinning trees, particularly around communities, is needed to cut the risk of deadly wildfires such as the ones that cut a swath of destruction throughout Southern California in 2003....
Outfitters rallying for preservation Durango-area outfitter Mike Murphy has an answer to people who oppose preserving roadless areas in national forests and say public land should be open to everyone: Look at the satellite images of his corner of Colorado on the Internet. "You take a look at that map and look at all the roads in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico, and you won't want to see another road for a long time," Murphy said. Murphy, who has led hunting trips into Colorado's backcountry for 28 years, said he is being squeezed out of places by oil and gas development and increasing off-road vehicle use. He's one of 131 Colorado outfitters asking a state task force weighing the fate of 4.4 million acres of roadless national forest land to support keeping development out of the remaining remote spots....
Thomas at odds with drillers over forest use Oil and gas drilling in national forests should be allowed as industry works with land managers to put environmental safeguards in place, an energy executive said Monday. Bruce Hinchey with the Petroleum Association of Wyoming said he doesn't agree with U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas' statement Saturday that national forests should generally be off-limits to new drilling. "I don't think you need to totally have everything off-limits, because you still have logging and mining that occurs in the forest as well," Hinchey said. "It depends on the areas." Hinchey said there is not a lot of drilling on national forests, and what does occur happens on forest edges. Interior parts of national forest tend to be much costlier to explore because the areas are not easily accessible. Thomas, R-Wyo., said Saturday he does not think national forests should be open to oil and gas development because of the special qualities these areas possess. At issue specifically in Wyoming are lease parcels in the Wyoming Range. While there are some existing drilling operations there now -- and Thomas said existing operations should be allowed to continue -- new parcels are being sold for energy leases....
Biologists revive plan to save trout with poison For the fifth time, biologists are proposing to poison a remote Sierra stream to restore what may be America's rarest trout. In an effort dogged by controversy since 2002, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and California Department of Fish and Game are again contemplating the use of chemicals to clear non-native fish from Silver King Creek south of Lake Tahoe. The idea is to allow the threatened Paiute cutthroat trout to flourish in its native habitat, a goal supporters say would be a profound success for the Endangered Species Act. "It would be a huge success story," said Bob Williams, field supervisor for U.S. Fish and Wildlife. "This would be a species we can remove from the (endangered) list. "It's one of the rarest trout we have." Permit problems and opponents concerned about use of the chemical rotenone in the pristine mountain creek have halted the project each of the last four summers. Last August, a team hiking into the wilderness to perform the task was ordered to turn around after a federal judge sided with conservationists against the project....
Sierra Club investing heavily in state races The Sierra Club plans to shift millions in campaign cash from Congressional races to state and local campaigns this fall, a sign from the nation's oldest and largest environmental group that Washington is becoming less relevant to its cause. In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said his group is dedicating about a third of its anticipated $5 million to $10 million campaign fund to competitive state races this year. In past years, it has invested only 5 percent of its political money in state legislative campaigns. "We are putting 10 times as much energy into state races," Pope said. "We've never made that national investment in state races before." With partisan Washington deadlocked over most environmental issues, state governments nationwide have been taking a lead role on initiatives ranging from global warming to fuel economy standards. Despite Democrats' hopes to gain seats in the House and Senate, most political observers think the climate in Washington is unlikely to change....
Fences set up to protect archeological, biological heritage Fencing has been installed at the Comanche Springs area to protect and restore wetland habitat for several birds on the federal Endangered Species Act Species of Concern list and an archeological site that is on the National Register. "The intent is to fence out cattle, vehicles and people dumping trash around the wetlands," said Jacqueline Guilbault, director of the Manzano Conservation Foundation's special projects. Comanche Springs is in northeastern Valencia County, in the Manzano foothills. The goals are to improve wetland conditions, provide a safer environment for birds and wildlife and protect environmental, archeological and cultural resources. "Historically, the wetlands have experienced illegal dumping, cattle trespassing and target shooting. Also, trucks and off-road-vehicles drive through the wetlands area destroying vegetation, causing erosion, damaging archeological sites, polluting water, disturbing nesting of migratory birds and damaging habitat for birds and wildlife," she said....
Brit Guards' Bearskin Hats May Be Banned A British lawmaker is gathering support for his call to ban the towering bearskin hats worn for almost 200 years by the red-coated soldiers who guard the country's royal palaces. The motion, introduced by Labour party lawmaker Chris Mullin in March, declares the hats made from the fur of Canadian black bears "have no military significance and involve unnecessary cruelty." Conservative lawmaker Ann Widdecombe has now urged her party to support the motion aimed at replacing the bearskins with artificial substitutes. "Black bears, who are intelligent and curious animals, are slaughtered in Canada so that their skins may be used for ceremonial hats," Widdecombe wrote in a letter to her party colleagues on Thursday. Widdecombe's letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. So far, 180 of 646 lawmakers in the House of Commons have signed the motion. On Sunday, about 100 animal rights activists staged a naked demonstration in London to protest against the hats....
Trew: Wildfires top long list of life's hazards About the time I think I have "seen all, been there and done that" I encounter a new experience. The recent big prairie fires top all my lifeÃs previous dangerous episodes. I have suffered frostbite from being out in blizzards trying to save cattle, been caught in the open prairie with hailstones big as your fist bouncing off my head, survived floods with eight inches of rain raging along every creek and canyon, fighting prairie and wheat fires from Perryton to Canadian to New Mexico to back here at the ranch. I have survived countless horse wrecks and a couple of car wrecks, and thought I had experienced all the occupational hazards of agriculture and life in general. I was wrong. Sunday and Monday, March 12 and 13, take the grand prize of all my lifeÃs chapters. We were told by telephone a fire was burning along McClellan Creek north of the ranch. With winds at 60 mph, a prairie fire would move fast. We drove to a hilltop on Interstate 40 to see the fire already past our ranch moving to the northeast. It appeared to be past us and we prepared to go help our neighbors. Suddenly, the wind changed to the north and instead of a narrow fire burning northeast, we were faced with a 20-mile-wide fire traveling south straight to our ranch. We sat in the car and watched it cross both interstates and exit roads in seconds. We raced back to our home and prepared to fight as long as possible....
Officials abandon checkpoint after 'hippie' run-in U.S. Forest Service officers drew their shotguns but then got into their vehicles and abandoned a checkpoint without firing a shot after about 200 people at the Rainbow Family gathering surrounded the officers, an agency spokeswoman said. ''We're not going to compromise the safety of our officers,'' agency spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said Tuesday. ''We have to reavaluate whether or not we're going to continue any checkpoints because of what happened.'' At least 500 people have converged in Routt National Forest for the gathering but the Forest Service had been turning away new arrivals from entering because the group hasn't gotten a permit for large groups. The group's annual event, often described as a huge gathering of hippies, is expected to draw between 15,000 and 20,000 people to the Routt National Forest for a weeklong July 4th event. About 60 to 80 people already at the event site approached the officers who had been turning people away and surrounded them in a ''hostile manner'', Ottaviano said. She said more than 100 other people who had been hanging out near the checkpoint because they were not allowed in joined the smaller group, forcing the officers to retreat. Ottaviano said the checkpoint has been disbanded. No one was stopping people from entering the area but officers will continue their patrols, she said....and Kit Laney gets five months in Federal Prison...soft on hippies and hard on ranchers appears to be the Bush Administration policy.
Judge hears suit over logging plan in Sierra forests The management plan for 11.5 million acres of national forest in the Sierra harms wildlife while illegally increasing logging under the guise of fire prevention, environmental groups told a federal judge Monday. They want the U.S. Forest Service to return to a 2001 plan approved in the last days of the Clinton Administration, a plan they say offers more protection for the environment and 200 scarce species such as the California spotted owl, martin and Pacific fisher. The hearing, set to conclude today, is the latest legal skirmish in a 15-year battle over managing the 11 national forests. U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. said he might schedule additional hearings before ruling in what he called an enormously complicated lawsuit. U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey approved the plan in March 2005, agreeing with Forest Service officials who advocated increased logging. They argued that thinning trees, particularly around communities, is needed to cut the risk of deadly wildfires such as the ones that cut a swath of destruction throughout Southern California in 2003....
Outfitters rallying for preservation Durango-area outfitter Mike Murphy has an answer to people who oppose preserving roadless areas in national forests and say public land should be open to everyone: Look at the satellite images of his corner of Colorado on the Internet. "You take a look at that map and look at all the roads in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico, and you won't want to see another road for a long time," Murphy said. Murphy, who has led hunting trips into Colorado's backcountry for 28 years, said he is being squeezed out of places by oil and gas development and increasing off-road vehicle use. He's one of 131 Colorado outfitters asking a state task force weighing the fate of 4.4 million acres of roadless national forest land to support keeping development out of the remaining remote spots....
Thomas at odds with drillers over forest use Oil and gas drilling in national forests should be allowed as industry works with land managers to put environmental safeguards in place, an energy executive said Monday. Bruce Hinchey with the Petroleum Association of Wyoming said he doesn't agree with U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas' statement Saturday that national forests should generally be off-limits to new drilling. "I don't think you need to totally have everything off-limits, because you still have logging and mining that occurs in the forest as well," Hinchey said. "It depends on the areas." Hinchey said there is not a lot of drilling on national forests, and what does occur happens on forest edges. Interior parts of national forest tend to be much costlier to explore because the areas are not easily accessible. Thomas, R-Wyo., said Saturday he does not think national forests should be open to oil and gas development because of the special qualities these areas possess. At issue specifically in Wyoming are lease parcels in the Wyoming Range. While there are some existing drilling operations there now -- and Thomas said existing operations should be allowed to continue -- new parcels are being sold for energy leases....
Biologists revive plan to save trout with poison For the fifth time, biologists are proposing to poison a remote Sierra stream to restore what may be America's rarest trout. In an effort dogged by controversy since 2002, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and California Department of Fish and Game are again contemplating the use of chemicals to clear non-native fish from Silver King Creek south of Lake Tahoe. The idea is to allow the threatened Paiute cutthroat trout to flourish in its native habitat, a goal supporters say would be a profound success for the Endangered Species Act. "It would be a huge success story," said Bob Williams, field supervisor for U.S. Fish and Wildlife. "This would be a species we can remove from the (endangered) list. "It's one of the rarest trout we have." Permit problems and opponents concerned about use of the chemical rotenone in the pristine mountain creek have halted the project each of the last four summers. Last August, a team hiking into the wilderness to perform the task was ordered to turn around after a federal judge sided with conservationists against the project....
Sierra Club investing heavily in state races The Sierra Club plans to shift millions in campaign cash from Congressional races to state and local campaigns this fall, a sign from the nation's oldest and largest environmental group that Washington is becoming less relevant to its cause. In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said his group is dedicating about a third of its anticipated $5 million to $10 million campaign fund to competitive state races this year. In past years, it has invested only 5 percent of its political money in state legislative campaigns. "We are putting 10 times as much energy into state races," Pope said. "We've never made that national investment in state races before." With partisan Washington deadlocked over most environmental issues, state governments nationwide have been taking a lead role on initiatives ranging from global warming to fuel economy standards. Despite Democrats' hopes to gain seats in the House and Senate, most political observers think the climate in Washington is unlikely to change....
Fences set up to protect archeological, biological heritage Fencing has been installed at the Comanche Springs area to protect and restore wetland habitat for several birds on the federal Endangered Species Act Species of Concern list and an archeological site that is on the National Register. "The intent is to fence out cattle, vehicles and people dumping trash around the wetlands," said Jacqueline Guilbault, director of the Manzano Conservation Foundation's special projects. Comanche Springs is in northeastern Valencia County, in the Manzano foothills. The goals are to improve wetland conditions, provide a safer environment for birds and wildlife and protect environmental, archeological and cultural resources. "Historically, the wetlands have experienced illegal dumping, cattle trespassing and target shooting. Also, trucks and off-road-vehicles drive through the wetlands area destroying vegetation, causing erosion, damaging archeological sites, polluting water, disturbing nesting of migratory birds and damaging habitat for birds and wildlife," she said....
Brit Guards' Bearskin Hats May Be Banned A British lawmaker is gathering support for his call to ban the towering bearskin hats worn for almost 200 years by the red-coated soldiers who guard the country's royal palaces. The motion, introduced by Labour party lawmaker Chris Mullin in March, declares the hats made from the fur of Canadian black bears "have no military significance and involve unnecessary cruelty." Conservative lawmaker Ann Widdecombe has now urged her party to support the motion aimed at replacing the bearskins with artificial substitutes. "Black bears, who are intelligent and curious animals, are slaughtered in Canada so that their skins may be used for ceremonial hats," Widdecombe wrote in a letter to her party colleagues on Thursday. Widdecombe's letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. So far, 180 of 646 lawmakers in the House of Commons have signed the motion. On Sunday, about 100 animal rights activists staged a naked demonstration in London to protest against the hats....
Trew: Wildfires top long list of life's hazards About the time I think I have "seen all, been there and done that" I encounter a new experience. The recent big prairie fires top all my lifeÃs previous dangerous episodes. I have suffered frostbite from being out in blizzards trying to save cattle, been caught in the open prairie with hailstones big as your fist bouncing off my head, survived floods with eight inches of rain raging along every creek and canyon, fighting prairie and wheat fires from Perryton to Canadian to New Mexico to back here at the ranch. I have survived countless horse wrecks and a couple of car wrecks, and thought I had experienced all the occupational hazards of agriculture and life in general. I was wrong. Sunday and Monday, March 12 and 13, take the grand prize of all my lifeÃs chapters. We were told by telephone a fire was burning along McClellan Creek north of the ranch. With winds at 60 mph, a prairie fire would move fast. We drove to a hilltop on Interstate 40 to see the fire already past our ranch moving to the northeast. It appeared to be past us and we prepared to go help our neighbors. Suddenly, the wind changed to the north and instead of a narrow fire burning northeast, we were faced with a 20-mile-wide fire traveling south straight to our ranch. We sat in the car and watched it cross both interstates and exit roads in seconds. We raced back to our home and prepared to fight as long as possible....
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
NEWS
Roadless areas offered for drilling Parts of the White River National Forest and an adjacent forest that are currently designated as roadless areas could be opened up to drilling after an auction of oil and gas leases set for August. Some environmentalists say that would circumvent a state process designed to make recommendations to the federal government about which roadless areas should receive stiffer protections. With the state roadless task force set to meet in Glenwood Springs on Wednesday to discuss the White River National Forest, environmentalists are criticizing the decision by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to offer up these parcels before the group's work is done. "The goal posts are moving," said Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, one of the groups that has been vocal in seeking to protect roadless areas from development....
Editorial: Restoring sanity to the Interior IN ONE OF HIS FIRST ACTS as Interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne took the gratifying step of tossing out a proposal that would have ruined our national parks. Gone is language that would have opened them to mining and grazing as well as increased commercial development, snowmobiling and off-road-vehicle use. Restored is the National Parks Service's commitment to conservation. The parks were never intended for the mixed industrial and recreational uses commonly allowed on property under the Bureau of Land Management. Instead, their purpose is to preserve the nation's natural treasures as close to their original state as possible and to provide for recreation as long as it does not conflict with the main goal of conservation. On Monday, by announcing that he had rejected a management plan drafted under his predecessor, Gale Norton, Kempthorne returned to that original vision for the parks. It was a welcome and somewhat surprising move from the novice secretary who was no tree-hugger as a senator and governor from Idaho....
Ex-BLM firefighter pleads guilty to arson fires An ex-firefighter for the Bureau of Land Management pleaded guilty to setting three wildfires that burned hundreds of acres of national forest land in north-central Nevada last summer, federal prosecutors said Monday. Investigators alleged Mark E. Morgan of Reno started the fires that burned hundreds of acres of national forest land last August because he was bored and needed the paycheck, according to court documents. Morgan, 34, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, as well as being required to pay restitution for the damages to federal property, U.S. Attorney Daniel G. Bogden said. He entered the plea Thursday in U.S. District Court in Reno before Judge Edward C. Reed Jr., Bogden said in a statement Monday. Reed set sentencing for Oct. 23. Morgan was employed as a member of a BLM fire crew based in Austin at the time of the fires. He also had worked before fighting fires for the U.S. Forest Service....
Cutting edge niche When Aaron Nash moves through a thinning site, it’s obvious where he’s been and where he’s going: Sunlight illuminates the progress of his work while darkness shrouds what lays ahead. Nash brings light to practically any forest’s darkness, and makes a profit from it too — no matter what size the timber. “This little niche that I’m in, there’s a high demand,” Nash said of the small-diameter trees he harvests and has delivered to local markets. “We can sell all that stuff.” The niche of a one-man logger is making the most of a harvest site. Nash has figured that out, and has carved himself a corner of the timber market since starting his independent logging operation, Western Oregon Forest Management, nearly six years ago. “I’ve never not had a day of work,” said Nash, 38, of Curtin. A day of work for Nash is typically the thinning and harvest of another acre of trees. Cutting through the overcrowded understory of timber to promote old-growth characteristics and decrease fire fuels, Nash targets timber 3 inches in diameter and larger and designates its stock for particular markets....
BLM recommends lifting restrictions on millions of acres The federal Bureau of Land Management is recommending that Congress lift development restrictions on millions of acres of federal land in the state. In a report to Congress this month, BLM officials suggested lifting prohibitions on mining, oil and gas leasing, and other development on some large tracts. The restrictions were put in place in 1970s when the Interior Department secretary withdrew lands under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Native corporations were selecting 44 million acres granted by that 1971 law. Also, state officials were choosing land Alaska received under the Statehood Act of 1958. Congress froze huge swaths of Alaska until that process was completed. Three decades later, Native corporations are still making selections, as are state officials. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, got Congress to pass a bill two years ago to speed up the process. Part of the bill gave BLM a deadline to submit a report this month on what to do with any "left over" lands....
Opponents critical of natural gas pipeline Opponents are organizing against a proposed natural gas pipeline from Coos Bay to the Klamath Basin. “I’m here to stop the pipeline,” said Dennis Loper, a logger from Trail, told a crowd that packed a Grange hall near the path of the line in northern Jackson County. He said it would cross land owned by relatives in Jackson County, and involve the use of eminent domain. “These people here are gonna try to take your land whether you like it or not,” he said. Officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and of the companies proposing the pipeline said at the hearing last week that eminent domain would be used only as a last resort and involve easements, not taking the land outright. “We try to negotiate with people,” said Steve Potts, project manager for the Williams natural gas company. “We figure out what the fair market value is of an easement across their property and any construction inconveniences. We find we reach a settlement with a majority of property owners.”....
Archaeologists, courts debate artifacts' value In a case with ramifications for archaeological treasures across the West, the Justice Department is asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that freed two men convicted of stealing ancient petroglyphs in Nevada. "There is a good deal at stake here," said Sherry Hutt, a former Superior Court judge from Arizona who has written books on the subject and now heads a related program at the National Park Service. The appellate court in San Francisco concluded in March the two accused looters clearly were guilty of stealing the boulders with rare etchings of an archer and bighorn sheep but that the government failed to prove two critical elements in the case: The artifacts on national forest land were worth at least $1,000, and the accused looters knew or should have known what they were stealing was of archaeological value. The ruling "effectively provides a license to steal" petroglyphs and other things "that clearly have intrinsic -- and often culturally important -- value, but which defy efforts to reduce that value to monetary terms," assistant U.S. attorney Robert Don Gifford wrote in the petition for rehearing....
Editorial: BLM too industry friendly He who pays the piper calls the tune, goes the old saying. But the U.S. Bureau of Land Management not only is letting energy companies pay the piper, amazingly it's giving them a say in who the piper will be. The BLM has been under intense industry pressure to step up energy leasing across the West, but a 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that the agency doesn't have enough staff to process the crush of oil and gas applications and still properly mitigate environmental damage. It's become common for the energy industry to pay the costs of conducting environmental impact statements. The EIS process is used to determine whether energy leasing should occur, and if so, how any environmental, economic and social impacts will be mitigated. But there's a disturbing and qualitative difference in what BLM now proposes to do in northwestern Colorado. Over the next two decades, seven energy companies want to increase the number of wells to be drilled in the Meeker area from the 1,100 envisioned in BLM's existing plan to as many as 15,000, truly an eye-popping jump. The potential effect on the environment and nearby communities could be so extensive that BLM really ought to completely revise its basic management plan for the area. Instead, it's trying to squeeze by on the cheap, doing only an amendment to the current plan....
Cacti to limit OHV use at Factory Butte Concerns over the survival of a pair of imperiled cactus species will likely soon lead to emergency off-highway vehicle restrictions in the popular Factory Butte area of southern Utah. A petition filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance last year to halt, or at least limit, OHV activity at Factory Butte has been largely dismissed by the Bureau of Land Management. But concerns raised by the environmental group over the fate of the endangered Wrights Fishhook cactus and the threatened Winkler cactus have resonated with federal land managers. "We've got [OHV] conflicts where the country is open and people are running over and killing the cactus, so we probably will be looking at some kind of restrictions," Wayne Wetzel, associate manager for the BLM's Richfield Field Office, said this week. "It's not finalized, so we can't say at this point what they will look like. But it will probably be bigger than what the OHV groups want and smaller than SUWA wants it to be." User conflicts at Factory Butte, pitting off-road enthusiasts against environmentalists and non-motorized recreationalists, have vexed federal land managers for years. Located in the middle of Wayne County, the region is renowned for its wide open badlands terrain and breathtaking vistas....
Boy Survives Bear Attack A 14-year-old boy was attacked by a black bear and lives to tell about it. "I've got a good story to tell my kids when I get older," said Cruz Bentley. It all happened early Sunday morning at a campground along the Gila River near the small town of Hayden, north of Tucson. Bentley believes he stared death in the face after coming face to face with a young black bear. "I woke up and he was just sitting down like that and he was all blap, hit me again, and then he picked up on his four feet so I looked up at him and I tried to get up and then he was gone." The bear's long sharp claws left a deep puncture wound and a gash that required four staples on Bentley's head. "Oh I was bleeding a lot. It hurt for 10 seconds then it stopped. I think I went into shock." A fellow camper rushed Cruz to his mom's house and she took him to the hospital. He's ok now and even makes light of the situation as he proudly wears a shirt that one of his friend's mom gave him. It reads, "Been pawed?" Cruz says, "She gave me this shirt, she said I earned it."....
Bulldozer used for destructive joyride A vandal has twice taken a bulldozer for a joyride at a logging site, tearing up roads and destroying newly planted trees. The first incident happened about two week ago, said Don Robinson, the assistant district law enforcement ranger working in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Grants Pass and Glendale resource areas. Robinson said there was five hours worth of fuel in the bulldozer and the driver operated it until it was empty. The driver tore up the road, causing $1,800 in damage, and ripped up a half-acre of newly planted Douglas fir and incense cedar trees. The cost of replacing the trees is an estimated $1,200. The culprit returned last week. "That time they took it up the road a little ways," Robinson said. "It seemed to be another joyride." Robinson thinks vandals not environmental activists caused the damage because trees were destroyed and the logging unit has been free of controversy....
Study Seeks Balance in Rockies The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) today--with key support from leading energy producers in the Rockies--released first-year results from a study on how natural gas development in the Rockies might be influencing wildlife, particularly pronghorn antelope. The report--titled The Wildlife and Energy Development Report--represents initial data of a yet-to-be-completed five-year study by WCS, funded by Shell Exploration & Production Company, Ultra Resources, Inc., and others. The study focuses on how natural gas development influences wildlife in a region that serves as a critical wintering ground for pronghorn antelope, the focus species of the study. While subject to change after further data are collected, preliminary findings from the first year of the five-year study point to the following: 1) Pronghorn can adapt to the presence of humans when not hunted or harassed, but tend to avoid areas that are fragmented by gas fields, roads, and other types of development. 2) Based on statistical models, pronghorn are more prone to use undisturbed parcels greater than 600 acres in size. 3) Animals captured both in and among gas fields and outside of petroleum development areas had no differences in either body mass (a measure of an animal's health), mineral deficiencies, disease, fecundity, or contaminant levels, indicating that proximity to development had no effect on the health of the pronghorn....
Roadless areas offered for drilling Parts of the White River National Forest and an adjacent forest that are currently designated as roadless areas could be opened up to drilling after an auction of oil and gas leases set for August. Some environmentalists say that would circumvent a state process designed to make recommendations to the federal government about which roadless areas should receive stiffer protections. With the state roadless task force set to meet in Glenwood Springs on Wednesday to discuss the White River National Forest, environmentalists are criticizing the decision by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to offer up these parcels before the group's work is done. "The goal posts are moving," said Sloan Shoemaker, director of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop, one of the groups that has been vocal in seeking to protect roadless areas from development....
Editorial: Restoring sanity to the Interior IN ONE OF HIS FIRST ACTS as Interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne took the gratifying step of tossing out a proposal that would have ruined our national parks. Gone is language that would have opened them to mining and grazing as well as increased commercial development, snowmobiling and off-road-vehicle use. Restored is the National Parks Service's commitment to conservation. The parks were never intended for the mixed industrial and recreational uses commonly allowed on property under the Bureau of Land Management. Instead, their purpose is to preserve the nation's natural treasures as close to their original state as possible and to provide for recreation as long as it does not conflict with the main goal of conservation. On Monday, by announcing that he had rejected a management plan drafted under his predecessor, Gale Norton, Kempthorne returned to that original vision for the parks. It was a welcome and somewhat surprising move from the novice secretary who was no tree-hugger as a senator and governor from Idaho....
Ex-BLM firefighter pleads guilty to arson fires An ex-firefighter for the Bureau of Land Management pleaded guilty to setting three wildfires that burned hundreds of acres of national forest land in north-central Nevada last summer, federal prosecutors said Monday. Investigators alleged Mark E. Morgan of Reno started the fires that burned hundreds of acres of national forest land last August because he was bored and needed the paycheck, according to court documents. Morgan, 34, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, as well as being required to pay restitution for the damages to federal property, U.S. Attorney Daniel G. Bogden said. He entered the plea Thursday in U.S. District Court in Reno before Judge Edward C. Reed Jr., Bogden said in a statement Monday. Reed set sentencing for Oct. 23. Morgan was employed as a member of a BLM fire crew based in Austin at the time of the fires. He also had worked before fighting fires for the U.S. Forest Service....
Cutting edge niche When Aaron Nash moves through a thinning site, it’s obvious where he’s been and where he’s going: Sunlight illuminates the progress of his work while darkness shrouds what lays ahead. Nash brings light to practically any forest’s darkness, and makes a profit from it too — no matter what size the timber. “This little niche that I’m in, there’s a high demand,” Nash said of the small-diameter trees he harvests and has delivered to local markets. “We can sell all that stuff.” The niche of a one-man logger is making the most of a harvest site. Nash has figured that out, and has carved himself a corner of the timber market since starting his independent logging operation, Western Oregon Forest Management, nearly six years ago. “I’ve never not had a day of work,” said Nash, 38, of Curtin. A day of work for Nash is typically the thinning and harvest of another acre of trees. Cutting through the overcrowded understory of timber to promote old-growth characteristics and decrease fire fuels, Nash targets timber 3 inches in diameter and larger and designates its stock for particular markets....
BLM recommends lifting restrictions on millions of acres The federal Bureau of Land Management is recommending that Congress lift development restrictions on millions of acres of federal land in the state. In a report to Congress this month, BLM officials suggested lifting prohibitions on mining, oil and gas leasing, and other development on some large tracts. The restrictions were put in place in 1970s when the Interior Department secretary withdrew lands under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Native corporations were selecting 44 million acres granted by that 1971 law. Also, state officials were choosing land Alaska received under the Statehood Act of 1958. Congress froze huge swaths of Alaska until that process was completed. Three decades later, Native corporations are still making selections, as are state officials. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, got Congress to pass a bill two years ago to speed up the process. Part of the bill gave BLM a deadline to submit a report this month on what to do with any "left over" lands....
Opponents critical of natural gas pipeline Opponents are organizing against a proposed natural gas pipeline from Coos Bay to the Klamath Basin. “I’m here to stop the pipeline,” said Dennis Loper, a logger from Trail, told a crowd that packed a Grange hall near the path of the line in northern Jackson County. He said it would cross land owned by relatives in Jackson County, and involve the use of eminent domain. “These people here are gonna try to take your land whether you like it or not,” he said. Officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and of the companies proposing the pipeline said at the hearing last week that eminent domain would be used only as a last resort and involve easements, not taking the land outright. “We try to negotiate with people,” said Steve Potts, project manager for the Williams natural gas company. “We figure out what the fair market value is of an easement across their property and any construction inconveniences. We find we reach a settlement with a majority of property owners.”....
Archaeologists, courts debate artifacts' value In a case with ramifications for archaeological treasures across the West, the Justice Department is asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that freed two men convicted of stealing ancient petroglyphs in Nevada. "There is a good deal at stake here," said Sherry Hutt, a former Superior Court judge from Arizona who has written books on the subject and now heads a related program at the National Park Service. The appellate court in San Francisco concluded in March the two accused looters clearly were guilty of stealing the boulders with rare etchings of an archer and bighorn sheep but that the government failed to prove two critical elements in the case: The artifacts on national forest land were worth at least $1,000, and the accused looters knew or should have known what they were stealing was of archaeological value. The ruling "effectively provides a license to steal" petroglyphs and other things "that clearly have intrinsic -- and often culturally important -- value, but which defy efforts to reduce that value to monetary terms," assistant U.S. attorney Robert Don Gifford wrote in the petition for rehearing....
Editorial: BLM too industry friendly He who pays the piper calls the tune, goes the old saying. But the U.S. Bureau of Land Management not only is letting energy companies pay the piper, amazingly it's giving them a say in who the piper will be. The BLM has been under intense industry pressure to step up energy leasing across the West, but a 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that the agency doesn't have enough staff to process the crush of oil and gas applications and still properly mitigate environmental damage. It's become common for the energy industry to pay the costs of conducting environmental impact statements. The EIS process is used to determine whether energy leasing should occur, and if so, how any environmental, economic and social impacts will be mitigated. But there's a disturbing and qualitative difference in what BLM now proposes to do in northwestern Colorado. Over the next two decades, seven energy companies want to increase the number of wells to be drilled in the Meeker area from the 1,100 envisioned in BLM's existing plan to as many as 15,000, truly an eye-popping jump. The potential effect on the environment and nearby communities could be so extensive that BLM really ought to completely revise its basic management plan for the area. Instead, it's trying to squeeze by on the cheap, doing only an amendment to the current plan....
Cacti to limit OHV use at Factory Butte Concerns over the survival of a pair of imperiled cactus species will likely soon lead to emergency off-highway vehicle restrictions in the popular Factory Butte area of southern Utah. A petition filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance last year to halt, or at least limit, OHV activity at Factory Butte has been largely dismissed by the Bureau of Land Management. But concerns raised by the environmental group over the fate of the endangered Wrights Fishhook cactus and the threatened Winkler cactus have resonated with federal land managers. "We've got [OHV] conflicts where the country is open and people are running over and killing the cactus, so we probably will be looking at some kind of restrictions," Wayne Wetzel, associate manager for the BLM's Richfield Field Office, said this week. "It's not finalized, so we can't say at this point what they will look like. But it will probably be bigger than what the OHV groups want and smaller than SUWA wants it to be." User conflicts at Factory Butte, pitting off-road enthusiasts against environmentalists and non-motorized recreationalists, have vexed federal land managers for years. Located in the middle of Wayne County, the region is renowned for its wide open badlands terrain and breathtaking vistas....
Boy Survives Bear Attack A 14-year-old boy was attacked by a black bear and lives to tell about it. "I've got a good story to tell my kids when I get older," said Cruz Bentley. It all happened early Sunday morning at a campground along the Gila River near the small town of Hayden, north of Tucson. Bentley believes he stared death in the face after coming face to face with a young black bear. "I woke up and he was just sitting down like that and he was all blap, hit me again, and then he picked up on his four feet so I looked up at him and I tried to get up and then he was gone." The bear's long sharp claws left a deep puncture wound and a gash that required four staples on Bentley's head. "Oh I was bleeding a lot. It hurt for 10 seconds then it stopped. I think I went into shock." A fellow camper rushed Cruz to his mom's house and she took him to the hospital. He's ok now and even makes light of the situation as he proudly wears a shirt that one of his friend's mom gave him. It reads, "Been pawed?" Cruz says, "She gave me this shirt, she said I earned it."....
Bulldozer used for destructive joyride A vandal has twice taken a bulldozer for a joyride at a logging site, tearing up roads and destroying newly planted trees. The first incident happened about two week ago, said Don Robinson, the assistant district law enforcement ranger working in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Grants Pass and Glendale resource areas. Robinson said there was five hours worth of fuel in the bulldozer and the driver operated it until it was empty. The driver tore up the road, causing $1,800 in damage, and ripped up a half-acre of newly planted Douglas fir and incense cedar trees. The cost of replacing the trees is an estimated $1,200. The culprit returned last week. "That time they took it up the road a little ways," Robinson said. "It seemed to be another joyride." Robinson thinks vandals not environmental activists caused the damage because trees were destroyed and the logging unit has been free of controversy....
Study Seeks Balance in Rockies The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) today--with key support from leading energy producers in the Rockies--released first-year results from a study on how natural gas development in the Rockies might be influencing wildlife, particularly pronghorn antelope. The report--titled The Wildlife and Energy Development Report--represents initial data of a yet-to-be-completed five-year study by WCS, funded by Shell Exploration & Production Company, Ultra Resources, Inc., and others. The study focuses on how natural gas development influences wildlife in a region that serves as a critical wintering ground for pronghorn antelope, the focus species of the study. While subject to change after further data are collected, preliminary findings from the first year of the five-year study point to the following: 1) Pronghorn can adapt to the presence of humans when not hunted or harassed, but tend to avoid areas that are fragmented by gas fields, roads, and other types of development. 2) Based on statistical models, pronghorn are more prone to use undisturbed parcels greater than 600 acres in size. 3) Animals captured both in and among gas fields and outside of petroleum development areas had no differences in either body mass (a measure of an animal's health), mineral deficiencies, disease, fecundity, or contaminant levels, indicating that proximity to development had no effect on the health of the pronghorn....
CLEAN WATER ACT
Boston Globe - Supreme Court tackles wetland protection After fighting the federal government for more than 18 years, Keith Carabell is resigned to more uncertainty after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered another look at his plan to build condominiums in a wetland area. In a case so divisive it produced five separate opinions totaling more than 100 pages and no clear majority, the court ruled that the government can block development on hundreds of millions of acres of wetlands, even on land miles away from waterways, as long as regulators prove a significant connection to the waterways. The 5-4 decision sends Carabell and another Michigan developer's cases back to a federal appeals court -- with no end to the spat in sight. "I'm not sure I'll live to see the end of this," the 79-year-old accountant said. In his first major environmental case, Chief Justice John Roberts came up one vote short of dramatically limiting the scope of the landmark Clean Water Act. But at the same time, property rights advocates won a new test for when wetlands can be regulated. Moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said there must be a "significant nexus" between the wetland and a navigable waterway. Neither environmentalists nor property rights activists had a clear-cut victory. "It muddied already muddy waters on this issue," said Jim Murphy, wetlands counsel with the National Wildlife Federation....
NY Times - Justices Divided on Protections Over Wetlands The Supreme Court on Monday came close to rolling back one of the country's fundamental environmental laws, issuing a fractured decision that, while likely to preserve vigorous federal enforcement of the law, the Clean Water Act, is also likely to lead to new regulatory battles, increased litigation by property owners and a push for new legislation. With four justices on one side arguing for a sharp restriction in the definition of wetlands that are subject to federal jurisdiction, and four justices on the other arguing for retaining the broad definition that the Army Corps of Engineers has used for decades, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy controlled the outcome in a solitary opinion. Justice Kennedy said that to come within federal protection under a proper interpretation of the Clean Water Act, a wetland needs to have a "significant nexus" to a body of water that is actually navigable. He then made clear, in his 30-page opinion, that whether such a relationship existed in any specific case was largely a technical and scientific judgment on which courts should defer to the federal regulators. The four parcels of land at issue in the case, all in Michigan, were likely to meet the definition, he said. Environmental advocacy groups reacted to the decision, which sends the cases back to an appeals court, as if they had dodged a bullet, which in many respects they had. An opinion for four justices, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, would have stripped protection from many areas that federal regulators have treated as wetlands under the 1972 law. Justice Scalia's opinion, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said the Army Corps of Engineers had stretched its authority under the Clean Water Act "beyond parody" by regulating land that contained nothing but storm sewers, drainage ditches and "dry arroyos in the middle of the desert."....
Wall Street Journal Editorial - Parsing the Waters The Supreme Court tiptoed up to the edge of a landmark property-rights ruling yesterday, but in the end it merely dipped a toe in the water without deciding whether to jump in or not. The vote in the case left little room for doubt about the reason for the Court's indecision -- his name is Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Court split, in effect, 4-1-4 in Rapanos v. U.S., which covered two separate cases concerning federal jurisdiction over "wetlands" under the Clean Water Act. Mr. Rapanos had filled a wetland that was essentially a drainage ditch without a permit back in 1989. Five years later, the government filed suit against him. Mr. Rapanos lost, and that decision was upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court vacated that decision Monday and sent it back to the lower courts to try again. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for four of the Justices, clearly would have gone farther in reining in the expansive interpretations of the Clean Water Act that have taken hold over the last three decades. Thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers, the definition of "navigable waters" can now include puddles and drainage ditches and has turned the law-abiding likes of Mr. Rapanos into wetlands desperadoes. In his own separate opinion, Justice Kennedy agreed to vacate the ruling but refused to go as far as the rest of the majority. The result is that the final outcome in both the Rapanos case and Carabell v. U.S., another drainage ditch fiasco also decided yesterday, remains in doubt. On remand, the lower courts could modify their reasoning but uphold their decisions. As Justice Scalia noted in his opinion, Justice Kennedy seemed to "tip a wink" at the government in his concurrence, "inviting it to try its same expansive reading again" as long as it cites Justice Kennedy's logic. Chief Justice John Roberts -- who, with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, joined with Justice Scalia's opinion -- also wrote a concurrence in which he lamented that it was "unfortunate that no opinion commands a majority of the Court on precisely how to read Congress' limits on the reach of the Clean Water Act." As a result, he warned, "Lower courts and regulated entities will now have to feel their way on a case-by-case basis." In other words, welcome to the Kennedy Court....
Go here to read the case yourself.
Boston Globe - Supreme Court tackles wetland protection After fighting the federal government for more than 18 years, Keith Carabell is resigned to more uncertainty after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered another look at his plan to build condominiums in a wetland area. In a case so divisive it produced five separate opinions totaling more than 100 pages and no clear majority, the court ruled that the government can block development on hundreds of millions of acres of wetlands, even on land miles away from waterways, as long as regulators prove a significant connection to the waterways. The 5-4 decision sends Carabell and another Michigan developer's cases back to a federal appeals court -- with no end to the spat in sight. "I'm not sure I'll live to see the end of this," the 79-year-old accountant said. In his first major environmental case, Chief Justice John Roberts came up one vote short of dramatically limiting the scope of the landmark Clean Water Act. But at the same time, property rights advocates won a new test for when wetlands can be regulated. Moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said there must be a "significant nexus" between the wetland and a navigable waterway. Neither environmentalists nor property rights activists had a clear-cut victory. "It muddied already muddy waters on this issue," said Jim Murphy, wetlands counsel with the National Wildlife Federation....
NY Times - Justices Divided on Protections Over Wetlands The Supreme Court on Monday came close to rolling back one of the country's fundamental environmental laws, issuing a fractured decision that, while likely to preserve vigorous federal enforcement of the law, the Clean Water Act, is also likely to lead to new regulatory battles, increased litigation by property owners and a push for new legislation. With four justices on one side arguing for a sharp restriction in the definition of wetlands that are subject to federal jurisdiction, and four justices on the other arguing for retaining the broad definition that the Army Corps of Engineers has used for decades, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy controlled the outcome in a solitary opinion. Justice Kennedy said that to come within federal protection under a proper interpretation of the Clean Water Act, a wetland needs to have a "significant nexus" to a body of water that is actually navigable. He then made clear, in his 30-page opinion, that whether such a relationship existed in any specific case was largely a technical and scientific judgment on which courts should defer to the federal regulators. The four parcels of land at issue in the case, all in Michigan, were likely to meet the definition, he said. Environmental advocacy groups reacted to the decision, which sends the cases back to an appeals court, as if they had dodged a bullet, which in many respects they had. An opinion for four justices, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, would have stripped protection from many areas that federal regulators have treated as wetlands under the 1972 law. Justice Scalia's opinion, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said the Army Corps of Engineers had stretched its authority under the Clean Water Act "beyond parody" by regulating land that contained nothing but storm sewers, drainage ditches and "dry arroyos in the middle of the desert."....
Wall Street Journal Editorial - Parsing the Waters The Supreme Court tiptoed up to the edge of a landmark property-rights ruling yesterday, but in the end it merely dipped a toe in the water without deciding whether to jump in or not. The vote in the case left little room for doubt about the reason for the Court's indecision -- his name is Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Court split, in effect, 4-1-4 in Rapanos v. U.S., which covered two separate cases concerning federal jurisdiction over "wetlands" under the Clean Water Act. Mr. Rapanos had filled a wetland that was essentially a drainage ditch without a permit back in 1989. Five years later, the government filed suit against him. Mr. Rapanos lost, and that decision was upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court vacated that decision Monday and sent it back to the lower courts to try again. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for four of the Justices, clearly would have gone farther in reining in the expansive interpretations of the Clean Water Act that have taken hold over the last three decades. Thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers, the definition of "navigable waters" can now include puddles and drainage ditches and has turned the law-abiding likes of Mr. Rapanos into wetlands desperadoes. In his own separate opinion, Justice Kennedy agreed to vacate the ruling but refused to go as far as the rest of the majority. The result is that the final outcome in both the Rapanos case and Carabell v. U.S., another drainage ditch fiasco also decided yesterday, remains in doubt. On remand, the lower courts could modify their reasoning but uphold their decisions. As Justice Scalia noted in his opinion, Justice Kennedy seemed to "tip a wink" at the government in his concurrence, "inviting it to try its same expansive reading again" as long as it cites Justice Kennedy's logic. Chief Justice John Roberts -- who, with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, joined with Justice Scalia's opinion -- also wrote a concurrence in which he lamented that it was "unfortunate that no opinion commands a majority of the Court on precisely how to read Congress' limits on the reach of the Clean Water Act." As a result, he warned, "Lower courts and regulated entities will now have to feel their way on a case-by-case basis." In other words, welcome to the Kennedy Court....
Go here to read the case yourself.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Well-wishers bid farewell to Hage
About 300 ranchers and other well-wishers converged on the Pine Creek Ranch for the funeral of Wayne Hage Saturday, to pay respects to the humble man eulogized as a hero in the fight for property rights in the American West. Hage, 68, died at the ranch June 5, after a bout with cancer. People came from hundreds of miles to pay their respects, and conversations about cattle and rainfall were intermingled with talk about topics like resource management plans by the federal government and elk overgrazing. Signs on the fence read: "Has the West Been Won or Has the Fight Just Begun!" Another sign read: "Save the Stockmen from BLM and Forest Service." John Johnson said he drove all night from his ranch east of Payson, Arizona. "He was a modern-day John Wayne. He had a lot of answers for a lot of questions ranchers had. He spearheaded the fight for our rights on forest service allotments," Johnson said. "He's one of the last of the real patriots." Clark said she has been involved in Hage's case against the U.S. Forest Service since he filed it in 1991. "I had five kids and I had to spend pennies out of my pockets," she said. "We were dealing with the Forest Service with our hunting business when we heard about this. We wanted to learn all we could about the case." Former Elko County Commissioner Tony Lesperance, now living in Paradise Valley, said he's part of a group that's continuing the lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims in San Francisco in 2002 ruled Hage had vested water rights. The next stage, which Hage didn't live to realize, was the compensation he would receive through the federal court system. C.J. Tennant, publisher of Range magazine, eulogized Hage as the David vs. the federal bureaucracy Goliath. "Wayne grew up with ranching. And for 68 years he was adored, tolerated, despised, admired and feared," she said. Hage, wrote in 2002: "I paid for and own the surface water, ground water and grazing rights on my allotments. In the arid expanses of the West it takes a lot of acres to feed a cow and water is as precious as gold. Without those water and grazing rights, my family's ranch and all others like it will cease to exist. "For many years now, federal agencies and their environmental allies have been pretending that these genuine property rights are nonexistent ... This represents a major assault on the very concept of property rights." Hage, author of the book "Storm Over Rangelands," said property was being seized by the government under the guise of protecting endangered species, habitat, wild rivers, old timber, clean water, clean air and "other frauds." In conclusion, Tennant, choking back tears, said, "Wayne Hage is the only one who could have done it, or would have tried." His son, also named Wayne Hage, said, "It's very fitting the body laid on the land he fought for." "He was a meek man, not a weak man," Pastor Ken Wilde said. "In our culture today, we don't have many heroes. Wayne was a real hero."
About 300 ranchers and other well-wishers converged on the Pine Creek Ranch for the funeral of Wayne Hage Saturday, to pay respects to the humble man eulogized as a hero in the fight for property rights in the American West. Hage, 68, died at the ranch June 5, after a bout with cancer. People came from hundreds of miles to pay their respects, and conversations about cattle and rainfall were intermingled with talk about topics like resource management plans by the federal government and elk overgrazing. Signs on the fence read: "Has the West Been Won or Has the Fight Just Begun!" Another sign read: "Save the Stockmen from BLM and Forest Service." John Johnson said he drove all night from his ranch east of Payson, Arizona. "He was a modern-day John Wayne. He had a lot of answers for a lot of questions ranchers had. He spearheaded the fight for our rights on forest service allotments," Johnson said. "He's one of the last of the real patriots." Clark said she has been involved in Hage's case against the U.S. Forest Service since he filed it in 1991. "I had five kids and I had to spend pennies out of my pockets," she said. "We were dealing with the Forest Service with our hunting business when we heard about this. We wanted to learn all we could about the case." Former Elko County Commissioner Tony Lesperance, now living in Paradise Valley, said he's part of a group that's continuing the lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims in San Francisco in 2002 ruled Hage had vested water rights. The next stage, which Hage didn't live to realize, was the compensation he would receive through the federal court system. C.J. Tennant, publisher of Range magazine, eulogized Hage as the David vs. the federal bureaucracy Goliath. "Wayne grew up with ranching. And for 68 years he was adored, tolerated, despised, admired and feared," she said. Hage, wrote in 2002: "I paid for and own the surface water, ground water and grazing rights on my allotments. In the arid expanses of the West it takes a lot of acres to feed a cow and water is as precious as gold. Without those water and grazing rights, my family's ranch and all others like it will cease to exist. "For many years now, federal agencies and their environmental allies have been pretending that these genuine property rights are nonexistent ... This represents a major assault on the very concept of property rights." Hage, author of the book "Storm Over Rangelands," said property was being seized by the government under the guise of protecting endangered species, habitat, wild rivers, old timber, clean water, clean air and "other frauds." In conclusion, Tennant, choking back tears, said, "Wayne Hage is the only one who could have done it, or would have tried." His son, also named Wayne Hage, said, "It's very fitting the body laid on the land he fought for." "He was a meek man, not a weak man," Pastor Ken Wilde said. "In our culture today, we don't have many heroes. Wayne was a real hero."
Judge halts livestock grazing in Sawtooth NRA A federal judge has halted sheep grazing on a portion of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho to protect streams that contain federally protected salmon, bull trout and steelhead. U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill stopped the grazing for this year on the Smiley Creek allotment three days before 900 sheep were to be released. "The bottom line is that sheep will be grazing nearly the entire length of two creeks containing sensitive species of fish and fish habitat adversely affected by past grazing," Winmill wrote in his decision this week. Western Watersheds Project, a Hailey-based environmental group, asked Winmill to end grazing on four allotments but then narrowed its request to the Smiley Creek and Baker Creek regions. Winmill agreed to stop grazing only on the Smiley Creek allotment for one year....
Some see a deal to get river rolling The dried San Joaquin River might flow again, along with lots and lots of money, under a historic deal coming closer by the hour. Long-warring parties who beat the odds to become negotiating partners will march once again before a federal judge in Sacramento on Monday. In their hands could be an accord that reshapes California's water future. "The agreement is there," said Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa. Attorneys for farmers and environmentalists quietly concur, though the final haggling could well last all weekend. Negotiators are motivated. They know that if they fail, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton will impose his own unpredictable solution -- which might hit farmers hard. "The negotiators believe that it is possible to reach agreement in principle on the few remaining issues before June 19, and will continue to work between now and the status conference," attorneys advised Karlton on Thursday. Details are cloaked and negotiators tight-lipped. Still, any deal will be heard loud and clear throughout the West....
Smaller Mine Planned Near Cemex While the city spends its time and money fighting a proposed mega-mine just east of Santa Clarita, the U.S. Forest Service is reviewing plans for a smaller mine nearby. Soledad Enviromineral LLC General Manager Henry Fritzsche said he intends to go through with his plans to mine 3 million tons of anorthosite out of three parcels of land in the Angeles National Forest in between the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Fritzsche, a resident of Sedona, Ariz., said he has claims for mining rights for 320 acres of land — 16 claims at 20 acres each. He said his project would entail activity on three of the 20-acre claims, and added that he has held those federal mining claims since 1996. The project, Fritzsche said, would extract some 150,000 tons of anorthosite per year for 20 years, would have 20 to 25 truckloads a day on local highways during off-peak hours and mining would occur five days a week. He anticipates four to six mining blasts per year with two- to three-month buffers in between the blast sessions, which would blast anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 tons of earth per session....
When Dreams Collide For nearly three years, Chicken and Sami Dusenberry have been preparing a building site for their dream house on 46 undeveloped acres in Trail overlooking the Rogue River. Obtaining the proper county permits after a long struggle, they dug a septic system, drilled a well and installed electricity. They are about to apply for a building permit. "It's our dream," Sami Dusenberry said. "We want to live the rest of our lives out here. Now there is this pipeline. They wanted to go through the middle of the homesite but they said they will adjust it a little. "It's still going to be very close," she added. "It's devastating." They discovered this spring that their property lies in the path of the preferred route for the proposed Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline, which would pipe natural gas some 225 miles from Coos Bay to Malin in the lower Klamath Basin. The route would cross through the Dusenberry property, then under the Rogue River....
The leggiest millipede is only the latest specie to call the county home When it comes to being unique, San Benito is like no place else on earth. Beyond its agricultural roots as once being the hay and apricot capitol of the world, and its renown status as the rein-horse training ground of the universe, the county is gaining a new reputation among earth scientists far and wide: it is home to an array of rare species found in no other place on the globe. The latest find to be added to the list of unique species is I. plenipes millipede, a creature last seen 80 years ago and thought to be extinct, which has the distinction of being the world's leggiest animal - up to 750 of the appendages. The discoverer is not about to disclose the location of the millipede, except to say that it resides in a fragile, moist oak woodland environment. But last week, entomologist Paul Marek of North Carolina made his findings public in the prestigious scientific journal Nature and gave an interview to The Pinnacle. "I'd love to tell everybody where it is but it's an incredibly fragile habitat," Marek said. "It could be easily disturbed. "It occurs there and no where else on the planet," he added. "What we determined is that it resides in an area less than a kilometer square in size."....
Verde slated as critical habitat for spikedace minnow Portions of the Verde River are already designated as a refuge for both the southwest willow flycatcher and the razorback sucker. But soon the river's waters and riparian environment may become critical habitat for another threatened species, the spikedace minnow. Representatives of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and their consultants presented their findings from recent environmental and economic assessments to the public on Tuesday in Camp Verde. The presentation of the reports and the subsequent public comments are among the final steps the agency must to complete before designating over 600 miles of waterways in Arizona and New Mexico as critical habitat for both the spikedace and the loach minnows. There are no loach minnows in the stretch of the Verde being considered....
Polar bear protection review draws 140,000 public comment U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials in Alaska face some 140,000 submitted comments on whether to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but said they have no feel yet for how public sentiment is divided. The last day for the public to comment on the petition was Friday. Rosa Meehan, chief of the agency’s marine mammal management program, said the comment period was intended to seek biological, environmental or technical information, but the agency would not discount comments that simply advocate or oppose more protection for polar bears. ‘‘Someone took the initiative to do that,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s good to have a sense of the level of public interest.’’ The Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, petitioned in February 2005 to list polar bears. Classified as a marine mammal because they spend much of their lives on sea ice, polar bears are threatened because of drastic declines in ocean ice due to global warming, according to the petition. When the Fish and Wildlife Service did not meet deadlines in the law for action, the center and two other conservation groups sued. A settlement calls for the agency to make a decision by December 2006....
Rare plant getting helping hands An endangered plant found only in Spanish Fork Canyon is getting a lot of attention from nature lovers who want to give it a chance at survival. Federal, state and local agencies have teamed up in support of the clay phacelia, a bluish-purple flowering plant whose known population in recent years has been less than 10. The clay phacelia exists only in two areas of the canyon — one on private property of The Nature Conservancy, a project partner, and another about five miles away, north of U.S. 6. The collective goal is to establish additional populations at suitable sites on Uinta National Forest land and help the species shed its endangered status. "We're trying to develop a protocol for introducing clay phacelia into some of the habitat it looks like it should be in but isn't," said Susan Meyer, a research botanist with the U.S. Forest Service's shrub laboratory in Provo. A $25,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service got the recovery effort going in 2004. That year, project partners collected about 700 seeds from 57 mother plants. Those seeds produced 53 plants in a greenhouse setting at the Provo shrub lab. With some unexpected help from blue orchard bees, Meyer said she was able to harvest about 10,000 seeds....
Army called to fight toad invasion in Australia An Australian state government called for the army to be deployed against an invasion of toxic toads. Battalions of imported cane toads are marching relentlessly across northern Australia and the West Australian government wants soldiers to intercept the environmental barbarians. State Environment Minister Mark McGowan has written to Defence Minister Brendan Nelson asking permission to use soldiers based in the neighbouring Northern Territory to kill the toads. "The army in the Northern Territory is greater than any other part of Australia," McGowan told national radio. "We'd seek the Commonwealth (federal government) to help us in fighting this terrible threat to native fauna in Western Australia." The toads, Bufo Marinus, were introduced from South America into northeast Queensland state in the 1930s to control another pest -- beetles that were ravaging the sugar cane fields of the tropical northern coasts....
Column: The Appalachian Trail Conservancy The Appalachian Trail stretches 2,175 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Of course part of that trail goes through Pennsylvania, just west of Harrisburg, and north of Reading. If you have never had the opportunity to hike even a small part of it, you have missed a real joy in the outdoors. The idea for the Appalachian Trail was popularized in l921 by Benton MacKaye, who wanted to create a “peoples path” down the spine of the East Coast, where all people could reconnect with the earth, revel in the wonders of nature, and meet others who shared a desire for simplicity, strong recreation, and comradeship of the trail. The Conservancy was founded not long after. For 81 years the Conservancy is and has been a volunteer based, private non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail – a 250,000 acre greenway. Their mission is to ensure that future generations will enjoy the clean air and water, scenic vistas, wildlife and opportunities for simple recreation and renewal along the entire trail corridor. Each year more than 5,000 volunteers contribute more than 200,000 hours to maintenance and conservation efforts along the trail. Some of these efforts include cutting down deadfalls that block the trail after a storm. They also include shoring up landscape ties that stop soil erosion on the steepest grades....
Column: Report on PETA is Journalistic Malpractice When recently Borders Bookstore refused to display the Danish cartoons that were deemed insulting to many Muslims who responded by going on a rampage, some people expressed the view that Borders was being cowardly. Borders management explained they properly didn’t chose to place members of their staff in harms way. So, Borders wasn’t being cowardly but justifiably prudent. It isn’t necessary for Borders to sacrifice some innocent employees for the sake of taking a stand. There could be better ways to show solidarity with champions of freedom of speech and artistic expression. More recently some members of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) invaded a dinner where the pop star Beyonce Knowles was the host to various invited guests. PETA members “peppered the pop star with questions about her fur use,” reported the Associated Press. In the report AP gave a short characterization of PETA as “known for its untraditional methods of raising awareness about animal rights.” Never mind for a moment about PETA’s agenda. Certainly, AP’s characterization of PETA’s way of bringing attention to it should not be described in the cowardly fashion of calling them “untraditional methods.” PETA has been guilty of assault, battery, trespass, and harassment against numerous famous individuals who refuse to accept PETA’s viewpoint. These are way beyond “untraditional methods.” They are frequently out and out criminal and AP is plainly mischaracterizing PETA when it refuses to say so. Unlike Muslim radicals, who are reasonably feared to go on a rampage and perpetrated violence against Borders’ employees, AP wasn’t in harms way from PETA. Its conduct is, therefore, pretty clearly cowardly. But there is more. Using the expression “raising awareness about animal rights” is totally misleading, akin to writing about some group that they are invading people’s private parties in an effort of “raising awareness about ghosts.” There are no ghosts! There are no animal rights! AP might as well be writing its report as if the tooth fairy were something real....
Column: The Growth of Green Hype Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is but the most visible of “green” hypes these days, containing doom and gloom galore, the very predictions and prophesies that have been around for centuries and get repeatedly discredited by subsequent events. Gore is now being joined by the highly visible and widely respected New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, with his upcoming June 27th, 2006, Discovery Channel program, “Addicted to Oil.” This is not the place to analyze the content of these programs. Gore’s film has been scrutinized and the conclusion of most careful commentators has been that while Gore assembles credible evidence for global climate change, he hasn’t proven by a long shot that such change is due to anything that human beings have done or have failed to do. Indeed, it seems that over the centuries there has been ample and oft repeated climate change, not unlike what is being experienced now, in both directions, the warming and cooling of the planet. The misanthropic spin is largely gratuitous, reminiscent of the more faith based doctrine of original sin, not based on scientific reasoning. But never mind that. What can be noted here is how much hype surrounds offerings such as those by Gore and Friedman. Both of these men receive the most plentiful exposure on the media, yet they complain endlessly about how little attention they are receiving....
Some see a deal to get river rolling The dried San Joaquin River might flow again, along with lots and lots of money, under a historic deal coming closer by the hour. Long-warring parties who beat the odds to become negotiating partners will march once again before a federal judge in Sacramento on Monday. In their hands could be an accord that reshapes California's water future. "The agreement is there," said Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa. Attorneys for farmers and environmentalists quietly concur, though the final haggling could well last all weekend. Negotiators are motivated. They know that if they fail, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton will impose his own unpredictable solution -- which might hit farmers hard. "The negotiators believe that it is possible to reach agreement in principle on the few remaining issues before June 19, and will continue to work between now and the status conference," attorneys advised Karlton on Thursday. Details are cloaked and negotiators tight-lipped. Still, any deal will be heard loud and clear throughout the West....
Smaller Mine Planned Near Cemex While the city spends its time and money fighting a proposed mega-mine just east of Santa Clarita, the U.S. Forest Service is reviewing plans for a smaller mine nearby. Soledad Enviromineral LLC General Manager Henry Fritzsche said he intends to go through with his plans to mine 3 million tons of anorthosite out of three parcels of land in the Angeles National Forest in between the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Fritzsche, a resident of Sedona, Ariz., said he has claims for mining rights for 320 acres of land — 16 claims at 20 acres each. He said his project would entail activity on three of the 20-acre claims, and added that he has held those federal mining claims since 1996. The project, Fritzsche said, would extract some 150,000 tons of anorthosite per year for 20 years, would have 20 to 25 truckloads a day on local highways during off-peak hours and mining would occur five days a week. He anticipates four to six mining blasts per year with two- to three-month buffers in between the blast sessions, which would blast anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 tons of earth per session....
When Dreams Collide For nearly three years, Chicken and Sami Dusenberry have been preparing a building site for their dream house on 46 undeveloped acres in Trail overlooking the Rogue River. Obtaining the proper county permits after a long struggle, they dug a septic system, drilled a well and installed electricity. They are about to apply for a building permit. "It's our dream," Sami Dusenberry said. "We want to live the rest of our lives out here. Now there is this pipeline. They wanted to go through the middle of the homesite but they said they will adjust it a little. "It's still going to be very close," she added. "It's devastating." They discovered this spring that their property lies in the path of the preferred route for the proposed Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline, which would pipe natural gas some 225 miles from Coos Bay to Malin in the lower Klamath Basin. The route would cross through the Dusenberry property, then under the Rogue River....
The leggiest millipede is only the latest specie to call the county home When it comes to being unique, San Benito is like no place else on earth. Beyond its agricultural roots as once being the hay and apricot capitol of the world, and its renown status as the rein-horse training ground of the universe, the county is gaining a new reputation among earth scientists far and wide: it is home to an array of rare species found in no other place on the globe. The latest find to be added to the list of unique species is I. plenipes millipede, a creature last seen 80 years ago and thought to be extinct, which has the distinction of being the world's leggiest animal - up to 750 of the appendages. The discoverer is not about to disclose the location of the millipede, except to say that it resides in a fragile, moist oak woodland environment. But last week, entomologist Paul Marek of North Carolina made his findings public in the prestigious scientific journal Nature and gave an interview to The Pinnacle. "I'd love to tell everybody where it is but it's an incredibly fragile habitat," Marek said. "It could be easily disturbed. "It occurs there and no where else on the planet," he added. "What we determined is that it resides in an area less than a kilometer square in size."....
Verde slated as critical habitat for spikedace minnow Portions of the Verde River are already designated as a refuge for both the southwest willow flycatcher and the razorback sucker. But soon the river's waters and riparian environment may become critical habitat for another threatened species, the spikedace minnow. Representatives of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and their consultants presented their findings from recent environmental and economic assessments to the public on Tuesday in Camp Verde. The presentation of the reports and the subsequent public comments are among the final steps the agency must to complete before designating over 600 miles of waterways in Arizona and New Mexico as critical habitat for both the spikedace and the loach minnows. There are no loach minnows in the stretch of the Verde being considered....
Polar bear protection review draws 140,000 public comment U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials in Alaska face some 140,000 submitted comments on whether to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but said they have no feel yet for how public sentiment is divided. The last day for the public to comment on the petition was Friday. Rosa Meehan, chief of the agency’s marine mammal management program, said the comment period was intended to seek biological, environmental or technical information, but the agency would not discount comments that simply advocate or oppose more protection for polar bears. ‘‘Someone took the initiative to do that,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s good to have a sense of the level of public interest.’’ The Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, petitioned in February 2005 to list polar bears. Classified as a marine mammal because they spend much of their lives on sea ice, polar bears are threatened because of drastic declines in ocean ice due to global warming, according to the petition. When the Fish and Wildlife Service did not meet deadlines in the law for action, the center and two other conservation groups sued. A settlement calls for the agency to make a decision by December 2006....
Rare plant getting helping hands An endangered plant found only in Spanish Fork Canyon is getting a lot of attention from nature lovers who want to give it a chance at survival. Federal, state and local agencies have teamed up in support of the clay phacelia, a bluish-purple flowering plant whose known population in recent years has been less than 10. The clay phacelia exists only in two areas of the canyon — one on private property of The Nature Conservancy, a project partner, and another about five miles away, north of U.S. 6. The collective goal is to establish additional populations at suitable sites on Uinta National Forest land and help the species shed its endangered status. "We're trying to develop a protocol for introducing clay phacelia into some of the habitat it looks like it should be in but isn't," said Susan Meyer, a research botanist with the U.S. Forest Service's shrub laboratory in Provo. A $25,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service got the recovery effort going in 2004. That year, project partners collected about 700 seeds from 57 mother plants. Those seeds produced 53 plants in a greenhouse setting at the Provo shrub lab. With some unexpected help from blue orchard bees, Meyer said she was able to harvest about 10,000 seeds....
Army called to fight toad invasion in Australia An Australian state government called for the army to be deployed against an invasion of toxic toads. Battalions of imported cane toads are marching relentlessly across northern Australia and the West Australian government wants soldiers to intercept the environmental barbarians. State Environment Minister Mark McGowan has written to Defence Minister Brendan Nelson asking permission to use soldiers based in the neighbouring Northern Territory to kill the toads. "The army in the Northern Territory is greater than any other part of Australia," McGowan told national radio. "We'd seek the Commonwealth (federal government) to help us in fighting this terrible threat to native fauna in Western Australia." The toads, Bufo Marinus, were introduced from South America into northeast Queensland state in the 1930s to control another pest -- beetles that were ravaging the sugar cane fields of the tropical northern coasts....
Column: The Appalachian Trail Conservancy The Appalachian Trail stretches 2,175 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Of course part of that trail goes through Pennsylvania, just west of Harrisburg, and north of Reading. If you have never had the opportunity to hike even a small part of it, you have missed a real joy in the outdoors. The idea for the Appalachian Trail was popularized in l921 by Benton MacKaye, who wanted to create a “peoples path” down the spine of the East Coast, where all people could reconnect with the earth, revel in the wonders of nature, and meet others who shared a desire for simplicity, strong recreation, and comradeship of the trail. The Conservancy was founded not long after. For 81 years the Conservancy is and has been a volunteer based, private non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail – a 250,000 acre greenway. Their mission is to ensure that future generations will enjoy the clean air and water, scenic vistas, wildlife and opportunities for simple recreation and renewal along the entire trail corridor. Each year more than 5,000 volunteers contribute more than 200,000 hours to maintenance and conservation efforts along the trail. Some of these efforts include cutting down deadfalls that block the trail after a storm. They also include shoring up landscape ties that stop soil erosion on the steepest grades....
Column: Report on PETA is Journalistic Malpractice When recently Borders Bookstore refused to display the Danish cartoons that were deemed insulting to many Muslims who responded by going on a rampage, some people expressed the view that Borders was being cowardly. Borders management explained they properly didn’t chose to place members of their staff in harms way. So, Borders wasn’t being cowardly but justifiably prudent. It isn’t necessary for Borders to sacrifice some innocent employees for the sake of taking a stand. There could be better ways to show solidarity with champions of freedom of speech and artistic expression. More recently some members of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) invaded a dinner where the pop star Beyonce Knowles was the host to various invited guests. PETA members “peppered the pop star with questions about her fur use,” reported the Associated Press. In the report AP gave a short characterization of PETA as “known for its untraditional methods of raising awareness about animal rights.” Never mind for a moment about PETA’s agenda. Certainly, AP’s characterization of PETA’s way of bringing attention to it should not be described in the cowardly fashion of calling them “untraditional methods.” PETA has been guilty of assault, battery, trespass, and harassment against numerous famous individuals who refuse to accept PETA’s viewpoint. These are way beyond “untraditional methods.” They are frequently out and out criminal and AP is plainly mischaracterizing PETA when it refuses to say so. Unlike Muslim radicals, who are reasonably feared to go on a rampage and perpetrated violence against Borders’ employees, AP wasn’t in harms way from PETA. Its conduct is, therefore, pretty clearly cowardly. But there is more. Using the expression “raising awareness about animal rights” is totally misleading, akin to writing about some group that they are invading people’s private parties in an effort of “raising awareness about ghosts.” There are no ghosts! There are no animal rights! AP might as well be writing its report as if the tooth fairy were something real....
Column: The Growth of Green Hype Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is but the most visible of “green” hypes these days, containing doom and gloom galore, the very predictions and prophesies that have been around for centuries and get repeatedly discredited by subsequent events. Gore is now being joined by the highly visible and widely respected New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, with his upcoming June 27th, 2006, Discovery Channel program, “Addicted to Oil.” This is not the place to analyze the content of these programs. Gore’s film has been scrutinized and the conclusion of most careful commentators has been that while Gore assembles credible evidence for global climate change, he hasn’t proven by a long shot that such change is due to anything that human beings have done or have failed to do. Indeed, it seems that over the centuries there has been ample and oft repeated climate change, not unlike what is being experienced now, in both directions, the warming and cooling of the planet. The misanthropic spin is largely gratuitous, reminiscent of the more faith based doctrine of original sin, not based on scientific reasoning. But never mind that. What can be noted here is how much hype surrounds offerings such as those by Gore and Friedman. Both of these men receive the most plentiful exposure on the media, yet they complain endlessly about how little attention they are receiving....
NMSU RODEO
National Champion Team Roping Heeler
Chance Means and Matt Garza went into the final round in first place, so they were the last to rope. They had to be 6.8 to win, and were 6.5 to be National Collegiate Champion team ropers.
Matt is a sophomore from Las Cruces who attends NMSU, and Chance is a sophomore from Buckhorn,NM who attended Central Arizona College. More good news is that Chance will be at NMSU for his junior and senior year.
Krista Norell had a nice clean run at the barrels and won 8th in the nation.
For the twelve calf ropers in the final round, there were 7 no times, with two of those being the NMSU ropers. Even with the no times, Wacey Walraven placed 9th in the nation and Arsel Allsup placed 10th.
That's five years in a row a NMSU student athlete has placed in the top five in their event, including one reserve champion and one champion.
Congratulations to coach Jim Dewey Brown for another successful year at NMSU and thanks to all of you who have supported the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
National Champion Team Roping Heeler
Chance Means and Matt Garza went into the final round in first place, so they were the last to rope. They had to be 6.8 to win, and were 6.5 to be National Collegiate Champion team ropers.
Matt is a sophomore from Las Cruces who attends NMSU, and Chance is a sophomore from Buckhorn,NM who attended Central Arizona College. More good news is that Chance will be at NMSU for his junior and senior year.
Krista Norell had a nice clean run at the barrels and won 8th in the nation.
For the twelve calf ropers in the final round, there were 7 no times, with two of those being the NMSU ropers. Even with the no times, Wacey Walraven placed 9th in the nation and Arsel Allsup placed 10th.
That's five years in a row a NMSU student athlete has placed in the top five in their event, including one reserve champion and one champion.
Congratulations to coach Jim Dewey Brown for another successful year at NMSU and thanks to all of you who have supported the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Friday, June 16, 2006
NMSU RODEO: CNFR
After three full rounds, both NMSU teams are out of the top standings. However, we have 4 athletes who have made the championship round. Tomorrow night, the top 12 in each event are brought back for the final round.
Chance Means and Matt Garza are coming back in the number one spot in team roping. They have three steers down in 24.1 seconds.
Krista Norell is comin back in the 5th spot in barrell racing. She has a total of 44.11 seconds for three runs.
Arcel Allsup sits in 9th place in the calf roping, with a time of 38.9 seconds on three head.
Wacey Walraven is in 8th place in the calf roping, with three down in 36.6 seconds.
Daniel Etsitty road all three of his bareback horses, finishing in 15th place.
This is the first time since I started the scholarship we have had 4 athletes qualify for the final round.
After three full rounds, both NMSU teams are out of the top standings. However, we have 4 athletes who have made the championship round. Tomorrow night, the top 12 in each event are brought back for the final round.
Chance Means and Matt Garza are coming back in the number one spot in team roping. They have three steers down in 24.1 seconds.
Krista Norell is comin back in the 5th spot in barrell racing. She has a total of 44.11 seconds for three runs.
Arcel Allsup sits in 9th place in the calf roping, with a time of 38.9 seconds on three head.
Wacey Walraven is in 8th place in the calf roping, with three down in 36.6 seconds.
Daniel Etsitty road all three of his bareback horses, finishing in 15th place.
This is the first time since I started the scholarship we have had 4 athletes qualify for the final round.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Thinning the Ranks The Forest Service has long been regarded as a behemoth glacier of a federal agency, where change comes slowly, over generations, if at all. It’s more than a little ironic, then, that in this age of rapidly diminishing glaciers—government scientists say Glacier National Park’s namesakes will be gone by 2030—massive change is sweeping quickly through the Forest Service, too. In response to Bush’s management agenda, the agency has recently developed and begun implementing the “Green Plan,” a strategy that calls for systematic consideration of outsourcing more than 75 percent of Forest Service jobs nationwide. Jobs in everything from fire fighting to communications, from scientific data collection to engineering, and on down the line are on the block. The Green Plan, which national officials say is still in draft form and hasn’t officially been released, even though implementation has begun, represents an aggressive next step for an agency that has in recent years begun attempting to transform from its traditional, decentralized format into a lean, mean forest-managing machine. Gone are the days of rangers who handle everything in their necks of the woods, a method the Green Plan sterilely calls “job fragmentation,” with the critique that “although positions with multiple duties have provided extreme workforce flexibility and have served as an organizational strength, it can be perceived as inefficient, and adds extreme complexity to…competitive sourcing studies.” Welcome to the modern era, where public lands management is being molded to fit the private-sector cast. The stated goal in the president’s management agenda is to increase efficiency and decrease budgets in light of skyrocketing federal deficits and expenses. And nobody is arguing that improved savings and efficiency aren’t worthwhile goals. What is shaping up as the major debate, though, is whether outsourcing will prove to be an effective money-saving strategy for the Forest Service, and at what cost. Employee unions, and some of the agency’s own data, call into question just what might be accomplished by a massive reorganization with hypothetical consequences. Critics say that though downsized and centralized operations will obviously produce payroll savings, there are many accompanying costs to be factored: Millions of dollars are being taken off the top of the Forest Service’s already-stretched budget to fund the planning, research, management and monitoring of competitive sourcing studies and implement their results; thousands of staff are being diverted from their duties to devote their attention to executing the changes; and even employees and offices apparently unaffected by competitive sourcing must absorb leftover workloads....
Environmentalists ask judge to stop logging in roadless area Environmentalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to temporarily block logging of the first timber to be auctioned in a national forest roadless area since the Bush administration eased logging restrictions, arguing new studies show the logging will kill young trees and increase the danger of wildfire. Lawyers for the U.S. Forest Service countered that the 362 acres within the Mike’s Gulch timber sale boundaries amount to such a small percentage of the 500,000 acres burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire and the 188,000 acres of roadless area on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, that it does not meet the test of irreparable harm needed to stop the logging. U.S. Magistrate Owen M. Panner said he would rule on the request next Wednesday, noting that the primary issue will be whether any harm that might be caused by logging on the tract in southern Oregon is significant enough to justify the Forest Service starting the planning process over. Panner’s statement echoed a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week, refusing to stop the logging under a different lawsuit....
Insurance Companies Sue U.S. To Recover Hayman Fire Claims Three insurance companies filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to recover $7.04 million in claims paid for homes damaged or destroyed in the 2002 Hayman Fire. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. Inc., three Hartford insurance entities, and Allstate Insurance Co. claim the U.S. Forest Service was negligent, partly because of how the agency supervised the forestry worker who started the worst wildfire in Colorado history. Terry Lynn Barton, 42, pleaded guilty to a state felony arson charge for starting the blaze by burning a letter in a drought-stricken area, where a fire ban had been issued. The fire scorched 138,000 acres, destroyed 133 homes and forced more than 8,000 people to leave their homes. The lawsuit claims that the forest service was negligent in its duty to prevent and suppress wildfires and it breached its duty by allowing Barton to "act alone and unsupervised" by not having teams of two patrolling the area. Failure to keep radio dispatch lines available to report the fire and failure to adequately respond to the report also contributed to the forest service's negligence, the lawsuit claims....
Judge kills Big Bear condo project, fines developer $1.3 million A federal judge has killed a luxury condominium project at Big Bear Lake and fined the developer $1.3 million for violations of the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts. In his ruling issued late Monday, U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real said developer Irving Okovita deposited fill and dredged soil over wetlands, and caused erosion that damaged habitat of bald eagles that winter in the area. In addition to fining Okovita, Real ordered him to try to correct some of the damage done to the lake in the mountains 100 miles east of Los Angeles. "We're thrilled about the decision," said Sandy Steers, an activist from the tiny town of Fawnskin who led opposition to the development. "It has been a long struggle - over five years." Okovita's lawyer, Robert Crockett, called Real's ruling factually flawed and said he would ask the judge to rehear the case. If that fails, he said he would appeal the ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals....
Bush Administration to Ramp Up Aerial Gunning and Introduce Wildlife Poisons in Designated Wilderness and Research Natural Areas The Bush administration proposed last week to relax restrictions on aerial gunning and poisoning of “problem” wildlife such as coyotes, foxes, mountain lions and wolves in designated Wilderness areas and Research Natural Areas on Forest Service land. Wilderness and Research Natural Areas are the two most protective land management classifications the Forest Service has, and both were formerly off-limits to predator control programs except in limited circumstances. The changes the Forest Service announced last week would reverse the long-standing policies that protect wildlife in Wilderness areas and Research Natural Areas. The new rule would permit motorized and aerial trapping and killing of wildlife in both land designations. It would also make predator control an “objective” in Wilderness management, rather than reserving such activities for times when they are necessary to protect human life or endangered species. Worse, the new rule permits predator control when it is advised by a “collaborative process” that is undefined in the rule, but which presumably would entail meetings by livestock interests that are typically hostile both to Wilderness and to wolves, coyotes, cougars, bobcats, bears, lynx, foxes and other wildlife. “This rule is a dramatic and devastating blow to our nation’s wildlife and wilderness areas,” said Erik Ryberg, Staff Attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity....
Environmentalists ask judge to stop logging in roadless area Environmentalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to temporarily block logging of the first timber to be auctioned in a national forest roadless area since the Bush administration eased logging restrictions, arguing new studies show the logging will kill young trees and increase the danger of wildfire. Lawyers for the U.S. Forest Service countered that the 362 acres within the Mike’s Gulch timber sale boundaries amount to such a small percentage of the 500,000 acres burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire and the 188,000 acres of roadless area on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, that it does not meet the test of irreparable harm needed to stop the logging. U.S. Magistrate Owen M. Panner said he would rule on the request next Wednesday, noting that the primary issue will be whether any harm that might be caused by logging on the tract in southern Oregon is significant enough to justify the Forest Service starting the planning process over. Panner’s statement echoed a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week, refusing to stop the logging under a different lawsuit....
Insurance Companies Sue U.S. To Recover Hayman Fire Claims Three insurance companies filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to recover $7.04 million in claims paid for homes damaged or destroyed in the 2002 Hayman Fire. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. Inc., three Hartford insurance entities, and Allstate Insurance Co. claim the U.S. Forest Service was negligent, partly because of how the agency supervised the forestry worker who started the worst wildfire in Colorado history. Terry Lynn Barton, 42, pleaded guilty to a state felony arson charge for starting the blaze by burning a letter in a drought-stricken area, where a fire ban had been issued. The fire scorched 138,000 acres, destroyed 133 homes and forced more than 8,000 people to leave their homes. The lawsuit claims that the forest service was negligent in its duty to prevent and suppress wildfires and it breached its duty by allowing Barton to "act alone and unsupervised" by not having teams of two patrolling the area. Failure to keep radio dispatch lines available to report the fire and failure to adequately respond to the report also contributed to the forest service's negligence, the lawsuit claims....
Judge kills Big Bear condo project, fines developer $1.3 million A federal judge has killed a luxury condominium project at Big Bear Lake and fined the developer $1.3 million for violations of the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts. In his ruling issued late Monday, U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real said developer Irving Okovita deposited fill and dredged soil over wetlands, and caused erosion that damaged habitat of bald eagles that winter in the area. In addition to fining Okovita, Real ordered him to try to correct some of the damage done to the lake in the mountains 100 miles east of Los Angeles. "We're thrilled about the decision," said Sandy Steers, an activist from the tiny town of Fawnskin who led opposition to the development. "It has been a long struggle - over five years." Okovita's lawyer, Robert Crockett, called Real's ruling factually flawed and said he would ask the judge to rehear the case. If that fails, he said he would appeal the ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals....
Bush Administration to Ramp Up Aerial Gunning and Introduce Wildlife Poisons in Designated Wilderness and Research Natural Areas The Bush administration proposed last week to relax restrictions on aerial gunning and poisoning of “problem” wildlife such as coyotes, foxes, mountain lions and wolves in designated Wilderness areas and Research Natural Areas on Forest Service land. Wilderness and Research Natural Areas are the two most protective land management classifications the Forest Service has, and both were formerly off-limits to predator control programs except in limited circumstances. The changes the Forest Service announced last week would reverse the long-standing policies that protect wildlife in Wilderness areas and Research Natural Areas. The new rule would permit motorized and aerial trapping and killing of wildlife in both land designations. It would also make predator control an “objective” in Wilderness management, rather than reserving such activities for times when they are necessary to protect human life or endangered species. Worse, the new rule permits predator control when it is advised by a “collaborative process” that is undefined in the rule, but which presumably would entail meetings by livestock interests that are typically hostile both to Wilderness and to wolves, coyotes, cougars, bobcats, bears, lynx, foxes and other wildlife. “This rule is a dramatic and devastating blow to our nation’s wildlife and wilderness areas,” said Erik Ryberg, Staff Attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity....
DNA tests identify second trapped bear in fatal attack on girl A black bear that tests showed had human DNA under its claws has been identified as the killer of a 6-year-old girl, according to Tennessee wildlife officials who acknowledged that another bear was wrongly euthanized. Elora Petrasek, 6, of Clyde, Ohio, was fatally attacked April 13 and her mother and younger half brother were seriously injured while the family visited a swimming hole and waterfall in the Cherokee National Forest in southeast Tennessee. The bear "positively identified" as the attacker - a 211-pound male that had been trapped and held almost two months by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency pending the DNA tests - has now been euthanized, officials said at a Wednesday news conference. Lab tests by the FBI found the traces of human DNA, Assistant TWRA Director Ron Fox said. A necropsy will be performed to determine whether the bear had any illnesses or abnormalities that might have contributed to the attack. Fox said the bear was euthanized in keeping with TWRA policy regarding animals that kill humans. The family was mauled during a visit to a favorite swimming hole at the Chilhowee Recreation Area near the Ocoee River, a popular whitewater, camping and fishing location....
'Ecological jewel' now a national monument President Bush created a vast new marine sanctuary on Thursday, extending stronger federal protections to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the surrounding waters with their endangered monk seals, nesting green sea turtles and other rare species. The nation's newest national monument covers an archipelago stretching 1,400 miles long and 100 miles wide in the Pacific Ocean. It's home to more than 7,000 species, at least a fourth of them found nowhere else. "To put this area in context, this national monument is more than 100 times larger than Yosemite National Park," Bush said. "It's larger than 46 of our 50 states, and more than seven times larger than all our national marine sanctuaries combined. This is a big deal." Bush announced his creation of the nation's 75th national monument at a White House ceremony. The decision immediately sets aside 140,000 square miles of largely uninhabited islands, atolls, coral reef colonies and underwater peaks known as seamounts to be managed by federal and state agencies....
Grand Portage Band to track and study wolves How many wolves prowl Northeastern Minnesota, where they live and their interactions with prey species are things the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa hope to discover. The band recently received a $249,750 federal grant to help conduct a three-year effort tracking radio-collared wolves. "The primary goal is to estimate the number of wolves on reservation and ceded territory lands" where band members are allowed to hunt, fish and gather, said Seth Moore, fish and wildlife biologist with the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa. "We want to relate that information to moose and deer populations in the same area." The Grand Portage tribal council has emphasized that it's important to restore moose populations on the reservation. The reservation is home to an estimated 80 to 100 moose. The reservation moose harvest by band members decreased to four adults in 2004-05, down from a historical average of 15. The study may help determine how large a role wolves and deer -- which carry a parasite fatal to moose -- play in limiting moose numbers. "We are expecting a lot of information to come out of this," said John Leonard, U.S. Fish and Wildlife tribal liaison for this region. "It is going to contribute to the status of wolves and give us information on how the packs interact and where we are going with the predator-prey relationship."....
Column: Religious fanatics terrorize American farmers Media coverage of environmental regulators makes them look like dispassionate scientists. But too often they are dangerous religious fanatics. Years ago, when ranchers and farmers told me that our government's environmental regulatory agencies had been captured by fanatics so hostile to the idea of private property that they'd use the endangered-species law to drive just about every landowner off his land, I thought they were overwrought. Then I learned the story of the lynx. Thousands of lynx live in North America, but since environmental officials weren't sure whether there were any in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee National Forests in southern Washington state, they commissioned a million-dollar study to find out. The discovery of threatened or endangered species would be terrifying news to ranchers and farmers who depend upon use of the land for their livelihoods. Property-rights advocate Mike Paulson told us: "We basically say if you have an endangered species in your area, we're going to take your livelihood away, we're going to destroy your communities, and we're going to make it very difficult for your families to survive." The Endangered Species Act has been used to shut down logging, take away water rights, and stop multitudes of construction and development projects. I want to save endangered species, too, but government is supposed to protect the rights of the people -- not destroy their lives because threatened animals might be in their area. For their study in Washington state, government biologists nailed pieces of carpet soaked with catnip onto trees, hoping a lynx would rub up against them and leave some fur -- evidence of the lynx's existence in this particular area. Sure enough, when biologists sent carpet samples to a lab, they came back positive for hairs from a Canada lynx. That may sound like good evidence that there were Canada lynx in the area, but actually, the regulators went to a zoo, got hair samples from captive lynx, and sent those hairs to the lab to be tested....
GAO
Crop Insurance: More Needs to Be Done to Reduce Program's Vulnerability to
Fraud, Waste, and Abuse, by Daniel Bertoni, acting director, natural resources
and environment, before the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management, House Committee on Agriculture. GAO-06-878T, June 15.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-878T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06878thigh.pdf
Environmental Liabilities: Hardrock Mining Cleanup Obligations, statement
for the record by John B. Stephenson, director, natural resources and
environment, before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
GAO-06-884T, June 14.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-884T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06884thigh.pdf
Crop Insurance: More Needs to Be Done to Reduce Program's Vulnerability to
Fraud, Waste, and Abuse, by Daniel Bertoni, acting director, natural resources
and environment, before the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management, House Committee on Agriculture. GAO-06-878T, June 15.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-878T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06878thigh.pdf
Environmental Liabilities: Hardrock Mining Cleanup Obligations, statement
for the record by John B. Stephenson, director, natural resources and
environment, before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
GAO-06-884T, June 14.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-884T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06884thigh.pdf
Government Dines on Katrina Leftovers
With a history in the Black Panthers and Green Party, Malik Rahim does not fit the stereotype of a property-rights activist. But that is what he's become in the upside-down political world of post-Katrina New Orleans, where government response to the storm is creating some strange bedfellows. Nine months after the hurricane New Orleans remains in tatters, its population is down to about 200,000 from almost a half-million. Large parts of the city, from posh Lakeview to working-class Mid-City, still have few habitable buildings. Many businesses have not reopened or are gone for good. Almost a quarter of voters in May's mayoral runoff election voted absentee. To add insult to injury, the rights of property owners who had their homes and businesses damaged by Katrina's wrath now face a more powerful and potent threat. Local government officials, armed with the public health code, eminent domain powers and a bevy of dubious legal techniques, aim to demolish buildings--and, some fear, strip titles from owners--in what are being euphemistically called "forced buyouts." Mr. Rahim is the founder of Common Ground, a homegrown group borne of the aftermath of Katrina. It has established emergency supply distribution centers across southeastern Louisiana, including in the virtually abandoned Lower Ninth Ward, where signs reading "Somebody Lives Here" and "Eminent Domain for Who?" surround the bright blue house that serves as a de facto community center. Common Ground stepped in where government failed. Its Lower Ninth Ward headquarters is on the only street in the district with electricity or communications. Power was restored the morning after Michelle Shin, coordinator of the group's Lower Ninth Ward Project, mentioned it during an interview on ABC's Nightline. The rest of the ward remains in darkness. In the last nine months, liberal New Orleans has seen a radical transformation in beliefs about private property. Katrina came on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision on eminent domain in Kelo v. New London. While the city is today using its public safety police powers to justify the demolition of homes, Common Ground activists fear it may turn to full-scale eminent domain takings over the coming months. New Orleans and the surrounding communities will likely serve as a major battleground between the increasingly mainstream view of neighborhood collectivism and the renegades determined to preserve the sanctity of homeowners' rights. The fight that has been brewing since late last year is now coming to a head....
With a history in the Black Panthers and Green Party, Malik Rahim does not fit the stereotype of a property-rights activist. But that is what he's become in the upside-down political world of post-Katrina New Orleans, where government response to the storm is creating some strange bedfellows. Nine months after the hurricane New Orleans remains in tatters, its population is down to about 200,000 from almost a half-million. Large parts of the city, from posh Lakeview to working-class Mid-City, still have few habitable buildings. Many businesses have not reopened or are gone for good. Almost a quarter of voters in May's mayoral runoff election voted absentee. To add insult to injury, the rights of property owners who had their homes and businesses damaged by Katrina's wrath now face a more powerful and potent threat. Local government officials, armed with the public health code, eminent domain powers and a bevy of dubious legal techniques, aim to demolish buildings--and, some fear, strip titles from owners--in what are being euphemistically called "forced buyouts." Mr. Rahim is the founder of Common Ground, a homegrown group borne of the aftermath of Katrina. It has established emergency supply distribution centers across southeastern Louisiana, including in the virtually abandoned Lower Ninth Ward, where signs reading "Somebody Lives Here" and "Eminent Domain for Who?" surround the bright blue house that serves as a de facto community center. Common Ground stepped in where government failed. Its Lower Ninth Ward headquarters is on the only street in the district with electricity or communications. Power was restored the morning after Michelle Shin, coordinator of the group's Lower Ninth Ward Project, mentioned it during an interview on ABC's Nightline. The rest of the ward remains in darkness. In the last nine months, liberal New Orleans has seen a radical transformation in beliefs about private property. Katrina came on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision on eminent domain in Kelo v. New London. While the city is today using its public safety police powers to justify the demolition of homes, Common Ground activists fear it may turn to full-scale eminent domain takings over the coming months. New Orleans and the surrounding communities will likely serve as a major battleground between the increasingly mainstream view of neighborhood collectivism and the renegades determined to preserve the sanctity of homeowners' rights. The fight that has been brewing since late last year is now coming to a head....
Will feds assert wildlife control? An official with the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was short on answers Tuesday as Wyoming residents hammered him with questions about a recent memorandum outlining disease eradication in wildlife and livestock. Ryan Clarke, a regional epidemiologist with APHIS, repeatedly said he did not know ultimately how much power the federal agency would assert over states when working to eradicate the disease brucellosis in wildlife and livestock. Brucellosis can cause cattle and wildlife to abort, and has been a source of consternation for government agencies, ranchers and conservationists in northwest Wyoming. Clarke also repeatedly said the mission of his agency is to work cooperatively with state wildlife managers. Clarke made his comments to the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee at a meeting in Jackson. His comments related to a March 23 memorandum from APHIS that said the agency has "broad and expansive authority to seize and dispose of any animal, including wildlife" in the event of "an extraordinary disease emergency." APHIS has long had a hands-off approach to wildlife management, but it also has taken the position that brucellosis should be eradicated, not simply controlled. The elk and bison of the greater Yellowstone area constitute the sole remaining reservoir of brucellosis-infected animals in the country....
Horse rancher finds bridge between old, new Undulating waves of gold rise and fall amid the turbulent sea of the eastern Wyoming plains. Thin white wisps streak across a pastel blue canvas above. The wind eddies in draws and whips through the dormant grass and stunted scrub brush. Against this stark but beautiful backdrop, Steve Mantle ekes out a life in the tradition of ranchers and cowboys before him who tamed the wildness as much as it would permit. "Change is the only constant," Mantle says, brushing his hand through wiry brown hair with a dusting of gray. On the 3,020-acre expanse of land nestled midway between Chugwater and Wheatland known as Mantle Ranch, owner and operator Mantle works to tame wild horses like his father and grandfather before him....
Robert Duvall's path leads down 'Broken Trail' At 75, Robert Duvall is open to new trails. "I always try to think to myself, up to until the day I stop, that life is about being in the potential," he says in a telephone interview. "I always want to have something to give and learn." Despite being nominated for five Academy Awards, Duvall doesn't dismiss television. He is the star and executive producer of "Broken Trail," a two-part Old West miniseries airing 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday, June 25-26, on American Movie Classics (AMC). "Trail" marks the first original miniseries for the channel, known for playing such decades-old iconic films as "The Man From Snowy River" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Veteran film director Walter Hill ("Last Man Standing") was behind the camera of "Broken Trail," which was inspired by a true story. Production took four months and was shot mainly in Canada. Duvall plays Print Ritter, an uncle who enlists his estranged nephew (Church) to help in a drive of horses across the Midwest near the end of the 1800s. "I think the western is ours," says Duvall who was also part of CBS's epic western miniseries "Lonesome Dove." "The English have Shakespeare. The French have Moliere. The Russians have Chekhov ... and the western is uniquely ours ... it is our genre, and it's our thing."....
It's All Trew: Past generations better at doing without There's a big difference in the seemingly "throwaway world" of today and the "save it, use it up" world of yesterday. Our modern endless garage sales, acres of flea markets and thrift stores on every corner could not have operated in the past because the public saved and used their items until used up. Only an occasional estate sale featured such items. Yesterday, entire personal wardrobes could be hung behind a bedroom door on nails and the other items placed in a single dresser drawer. Sunday clothes and shoes were only for dress-up, patches were neat, showing pride and frugality, with the latest fashions often missing. Girls were taught almost from birth to save and make items for their dowry, with many owning "hope-chests" or receiving cedar chests upon graduation from high school. Yesterday, young married couples lived for years on less than many weddings cost today. Much of the old-time frugality came because credit did not exist except for business or serious purchases. Few items could be charged unless you were a well-known customer. Few charge accounts were allowed to continue long without payment in full. Saving and doing without was probably easier at this time because most people had just survived the Great Depression and Dust Bowl....
Horse rancher finds bridge between old, new Undulating waves of gold rise and fall amid the turbulent sea of the eastern Wyoming plains. Thin white wisps streak across a pastel blue canvas above. The wind eddies in draws and whips through the dormant grass and stunted scrub brush. Against this stark but beautiful backdrop, Steve Mantle ekes out a life in the tradition of ranchers and cowboys before him who tamed the wildness as much as it would permit. "Change is the only constant," Mantle says, brushing his hand through wiry brown hair with a dusting of gray. On the 3,020-acre expanse of land nestled midway between Chugwater and Wheatland known as Mantle Ranch, owner and operator Mantle works to tame wild horses like his father and grandfather before him....
Robert Duvall's path leads down 'Broken Trail' At 75, Robert Duvall is open to new trails. "I always try to think to myself, up to until the day I stop, that life is about being in the potential," he says in a telephone interview. "I always want to have something to give and learn." Despite being nominated for five Academy Awards, Duvall doesn't dismiss television. He is the star and executive producer of "Broken Trail," a two-part Old West miniseries airing 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday, June 25-26, on American Movie Classics (AMC). "Trail" marks the first original miniseries for the channel, known for playing such decades-old iconic films as "The Man From Snowy River" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Veteran film director Walter Hill ("Last Man Standing") was behind the camera of "Broken Trail," which was inspired by a true story. Production took four months and was shot mainly in Canada. Duvall plays Print Ritter, an uncle who enlists his estranged nephew (Church) to help in a drive of horses across the Midwest near the end of the 1800s. "I think the western is ours," says Duvall who was also part of CBS's epic western miniseries "Lonesome Dove." "The English have Shakespeare. The French have Moliere. The Russians have Chekhov ... and the western is uniquely ours ... it is our genre, and it's our thing."....
It's All Trew: Past generations better at doing without There's a big difference in the seemingly "throwaway world" of today and the "save it, use it up" world of yesterday. Our modern endless garage sales, acres of flea markets and thrift stores on every corner could not have operated in the past because the public saved and used their items until used up. Only an occasional estate sale featured such items. Yesterday, entire personal wardrobes could be hung behind a bedroom door on nails and the other items placed in a single dresser drawer. Sunday clothes and shoes were only for dress-up, patches were neat, showing pride and frugality, with the latest fashions often missing. Girls were taught almost from birth to save and make items for their dowry, with many owning "hope-chests" or receiving cedar chests upon graduation from high school. Yesterday, young married couples lived for years on less than many weddings cost today. Much of the old-time frugality came because credit did not exist except for business or serious purchases. Few items could be charged unless you were a well-known customer. Few charge accounts were allowed to continue long without payment in full. Saving and doing without was probably easier at this time because most people had just survived the Great Depression and Dust Bowl....
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Rattle of the diamondbacks
By Julie Carter
Not much is more detestable to talk about, see or even think about than snakes. Not your average little garden variety green snake, but the big Boone and Crocket-record book diamondbacks we have in these parts of New Mexico.
If you are still with me, you are like the many that are warily ready to hear the stories told through the ages about these creatures that grow bigger in the minds of men each time the story is told.
The fact that these cold-blooded creatures stir the imagination and conjure up the worst fears known to man makes them an interesting part of our past, present, and future. Stories through the ages are rife with tales of using snake dens to hide gold and treasures. Petroglyph drawings all over the southwest attest to the fascination of snakes for the rock writers of that day.
The role of snakes in everyday life to the dramatics of television and movies assures forever to set the stage for a wide range of emotions. Few people are truly neutral when it comes to snakes.
These critters have slithered into bedrolls, traveled up a catch rope to meet the cowboy trying to whip him to death and fallen out of trees on unsuspecting cowboys. They've made themselves at home under pickup seats, on the engine, or on the spare tire.
I even heard about a couple of cowboys staying in an old ranch house -- one went to town and one went to the couch for a little R&R only to have the couch start rattling. Seems not one but two BIG diamond backs had made prior claim an old couch that came with the house.
I realize some religious sects have a fascination for snakes but I don't understand it. A recent media story told about a girl in India who married a snake -- no, really, not the two-legged kind, but a real King cobra. She married the reptile at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests. She says they love each other. As someone pointed out, don't you just wonder how the family reunions will turn out? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are snakes. Big swallow-a-rabbit-whole kind of diamondbacks, that when they are coiled up and doing their rattling thing, the sound is similar to a propane tank that has sprung a leak.
These ominous reptiles have broad flatheads the size of your wallet and bodies as big around as a man's arm. Big doesn't always mean long, but it's more average than not to find them 5-6 feet long.
There are folks who hunt them for the rattlesnake round-ups and other assorted destinations for a still-live snake. Most of us just shoot and ask questions later, or not.
The weapon of choice is a shot-gun but it is my .22 rifle and pistol that have the most "I got'em" notches in it.
The tall boy-child in my house likes to collect the rattles off each one that meets its demise. They are stashed in drawers, boxes, pickup dashboards and an occasional shirt pocket. Nothing starts your morning like sorting laundry and hearing a snake rattle from the pile of laundry you just picked up.
This week it happened to be an extraordinarily large set of rattles 3 1/2- inches long. I was just thankful they weren't still attached to their owner.
Snake stories are like hunting and fishing tales. Everybody's got one and usually it is a bigger and better one than the last one just told.
I like my snake stories to be memorials. May they rest in peace.
Copyright Julie Carter 2006
By Julie Carter
Not much is more detestable to talk about, see or even think about than snakes. Not your average little garden variety green snake, but the big Boone and Crocket-record book diamondbacks we have in these parts of New Mexico.
If you are still with me, you are like the many that are warily ready to hear the stories told through the ages about these creatures that grow bigger in the minds of men each time the story is told.
The fact that these cold-blooded creatures stir the imagination and conjure up the worst fears known to man makes them an interesting part of our past, present, and future. Stories through the ages are rife with tales of using snake dens to hide gold and treasures. Petroglyph drawings all over the southwest attest to the fascination of snakes for the rock writers of that day.
The role of snakes in everyday life to the dramatics of television and movies assures forever to set the stage for a wide range of emotions. Few people are truly neutral when it comes to snakes.
These critters have slithered into bedrolls, traveled up a catch rope to meet the cowboy trying to whip him to death and fallen out of trees on unsuspecting cowboys. They've made themselves at home under pickup seats, on the engine, or on the spare tire.
I even heard about a couple of cowboys staying in an old ranch house -- one went to town and one went to the couch for a little R&R only to have the couch start rattling. Seems not one but two BIG diamond backs had made prior claim an old couch that came with the house.
I realize some religious sects have a fascination for snakes but I don't understand it. A recent media story told about a girl in India who married a snake -- no, really, not the two-legged kind, but a real King cobra. She married the reptile at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests. She says they love each other. As someone pointed out, don't you just wonder how the family reunions will turn out? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are snakes. Big swallow-a-rabbit-whole kind of diamondbacks, that when they are coiled up and doing their rattling thing, the sound is similar to a propane tank that has sprung a leak.
These ominous reptiles have broad flatheads the size of your wallet and bodies as big around as a man's arm. Big doesn't always mean long, but it's more average than not to find them 5-6 feet long.
There are folks who hunt them for the rattlesnake round-ups and other assorted destinations for a still-live snake. Most of us just shoot and ask questions later, or not.
The weapon of choice is a shot-gun but it is my .22 rifle and pistol that have the most "I got'em" notches in it.
The tall boy-child in my house likes to collect the rattles off each one that meets its demise. They are stashed in drawers, boxes, pickup dashboards and an occasional shirt pocket. Nothing starts your morning like sorting laundry and hearing a snake rattle from the pile of laundry you just picked up.
This week it happened to be an extraordinarily large set of rattles 3 1/2- inches long. I was just thankful they weren't still attached to their owner.
Snake stories are like hunting and fishing tales. Everybody's got one and usually it is a bigger and better one than the last one just told.
I like my snake stories to be memorials. May they rest in peace.
Copyright Julie Carter 2006
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