Candy Magnate Loses Bid to Bar Drilling on Ranch A state judge has ruled that an energy company has the right to explore and drill for natural gas on a sprawling cattle ranch owned by the billionaire candy magnate Forrest E. Mars Jr., despite his opposition. The company, Pinnacle Gas Resources, began drilling 90 minutes after the judge issued his ruling Tuesday, because its leases were set to expire this week if Pinnacle did not act. “The company expects to learn a lot by drilling this first well,” said Chris Mangen, a lawyer who represented Pinnacle. “I expect they hope to find lots of gas.” Lonnie Wright, the son-in-law of Forrest Mars and the manager of the 82,000-acre Diamond Cross ranch, said he had no choice but to let the company in. “I don’t contemplate any other action,” Mr. Wright said. “I got lots I could add but nothing that would help the situation.” On Monday, ranch officials prevented Pinnacle workers from entering the property, telling them they would be in a “breach of the peace” if they tried to do so. The conflict is the latest skirmish in a long war between ranchers and energy companies over a natural gas known as coal-bed methane. Technology created in the 1990s allowed producers to cheaply tap natural gas that occurs near the surface in underground coal deposits. That prompted a boom in the West, especially in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. The technology has also generated controversy in cattle country because of something called split estate. The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 gave land to ranchers, but reserved the mineral rights underneath for the federal government, which leased it to energy companies. There are about 60 million acres of split-estate land in the West....
Livestock Lobby Pressures to Retain Wildlife Poisons As a public comment deadline looms, the livestock industry is ramping up to fight growing calls to ban two of the most deadly poisons used to kill wild mammals, according to documents released today by Sinapu and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The two poisons are sodium cyanide (used in M-44 ejectors) and sodium fluoroacetate, commonly called Compound 1080, used in “livestock protection collars” strapped onto the heads of sheep and goats. The poisons are distributed by Wildlife Services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture which used these two agents during 2006 to “dispatch” an average of 1.6 animals every hour. The poisons are part of a $100 million Wildlife Services’ program that killed more than 1.6 million animals during 2006. Last week, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) also introduced legislation outlawing production and use of the two agents, which EPA classifies as having the highest degree of “acute toxicity.” The basis for the proposed bans is growing reports of accidental poisonings of pets and “non-target” wildlife, including endangered species, and environmental damage. Nonetheless, the ranching lobby has opened a vigorous double-barreled campaign to block the poison bans. For example, nearly a month before Rep. DeFazio introduced his bill, the industry recruited Rep. John Salazar (D-CO) to circulate a letter discouraging co-authors....
Injured horse in Arizona confirmed as having been attacked by wolves A horse in Nutrioso, Ariz., was al­legedly attacked by wolves Sunday. Jess Carey, Catron County wolf investigator, gave the first report, saying that seven chunks had been bitten out of a horse belonging to Cindy Sessions. Sessions said she called Wildlife Services to report the attack and a representative investigated. She said he told her that the size of the bite marks indicated that they were caused by a wolf or wolves.
Chris Carrillo, district super­visor of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services and Animal and Plant Services, con­firmed that “based on the evidence at the scene, the attack was consistent with a wolf attack.' Session said that during the winter she and her family throw feed out to the horses in a 37-acre pasture adja­cent to the house. She said they went out about 7:30 or 8 Sunday morning, and four of their five horses came up to the fence. When the fifth one, Captain, didn’t move, they went to check on him. “His right front leg from the low shoulder down, and both rear legs from the knee down were covered in blood, and, although he was standing up, he was unresponsive,' Sessions said....
Wyden calls for thinning Sen. Ron Wyden has announced that he is working on legislation to overcome gridlock in national forest logging projects designed to reduce wildfires. Wyden, who plans to introduce a bill next month, identified two key issues to break the thinning gridlock: the U.S. Forest Service lacks the funding it needs to do major thinning projects, and too many projects that log large trees to pay for thinning are being delayed by appeals and lawsuits. He noted that less than 100,000 acres of forest have been thinned since the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act appropriated $760 million to reduce hazardous fuel buildup on 20 million acres of national forests. According to Wyden, he was heavily influenced by the testimonies of K. Norman Johnson and Jerry F. Franklin at a recent subcommittee meeting to make a legislative change. ...in their Dec. 13 testimony Johnson and Franklin stated, “We will lose these forests to catastrophic disturbance events unless we undertake aggressive active management programs.” They called for a focus on "forest restoration" and active management in the national forests of Oregon and Washington with an emphasis on reducing stand densities that can contribute to catastrophic wildfires and Western pine beetle infestations in old-growth stands. “To conserve these forests, we need to modify stand structure (e.g., treat fuels) on one-half to two-thirds of the landscape,” they testified....
Environmentalists Score Victory The Bush administration has dropped its appeal of a 2007 court decision that had overturned new management rules for 191 million acres of national forests. Opponents to the rules had argued they weakened protection for wildlife and the environment to the benefit of the timber industry. The Justice Department notified the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week that it was withdrawing its appeal, saying that the other parties, including the timber industry, would do likewise. "We are glad the Bush administration has thrown in the towel," said Trent Orr, an attorney for Earthjustice, one of the environmental advocacy groups that had challenged the new forest management rules in court. The court papers, filed Monday, were made available to reporters Tuesday by Earthjustice and the Western Environmental Law Center, both of which were involved in the case. Last March, a federal district court in California found that the U.S. Forest Service had bypassed required environmental reviews and provisions under the Endangered Species Act in its overhaul of the management rules, including changes in logging limits, for its national forests....
Enviros Object To Gas Line In Roadless Area An environmental group says it will sue to block construction of a natural gas pipeline through roadless forest land in western Colorado. The 25.5-mile Bull Mountain pipeline is planned south of Silt on the White River and Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management gave final approval Monday to the project to be used by Gunnison Energy and SG Interests in northern Gunnison County. The pipeline will run through three roadless areas: two in the White River forest and one in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison forest. Sloan Shoemaker of the Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop said the pipeline would violate a 2001 federal ban on development of roadless national forest land. BLM spokesman David Boyd said no roads will be built and the new pipeline will parallel an existing pipeline. Federal officials explored building the line around the roadless areas but concluded that would have greater environmental impacts because the route would be longer and go through riparian areas, Boyd said....
Shooting one owl to save another Biologists grappled Tuesday with the realities of shooting barred owls that invade the older forest habitat of federally protected northern spotted owls, a strategy critics say the Bush administration employs to help spotted owls while also trimming away at their preserves in an effort to open up logging. A scientist who experimented with barred owl control in Northern California said it proved relatively easy, at least in limited areas of accessible forests, and removing some adult barred owls before nesting season could control the broader population and open a window for spotted owls to come back. The cost would be relatively minor, Lowell Diller, a biologist with Green Diamond Resource Co. in Northern California, told researchers meeting Tuesday in Portland. He cautioned he wasn't trying to make light of it, but said, "This is almost like a redneck sport -- you do it from the tail of your pickup." The researchers are reviewing the scientific basis for a spotted owl recovery plan drafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The plan is the Bush administration's attempt to lay out a blueprint for the resurrection of the spotted owl, which suffered from intensive logging in past decades and is now being shouldered out of forests by the barred owl....
Rabbit review It should take about a year for the federal government to decide whether the pygmy rabbit receives protection under the Endangered Species Act. In the meantime, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department will conduct and share research with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assist in making a decision, a Game and Fish spokesman said Tuesday. “The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is conducting monitoring and research to learn more about this species,” Eric Keszler said. “We will be providing our data to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as they proceed with their status review.” In Wyoming, the pygmy rabbit is located primarily in Sweetwater, Uinta, Lincoln and Sublette counties. It has been identified as a "species of concern" by Game and Fish. Habitat for the rabbit is fairly secure today, Keszler said, but there are potential threats from oil and gas development. The Fish and Wildlife Service's Tuesday decision, commonly known as a 90-day finding, is based on scientific information about the species provided in a petition requesting listing of the species under the Endangered Species Act. The agency had earlier determined that the pygmy rabbit didn’t warrant protection, but will now undertake, under court order, a more thorough review to determine whether to list the species....
Salazars offer compromise on Roan Plateau drilling U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and his brother, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, both Colorado Democrats, said Tuesday they will drop their opposition to natural gas drilling atop the state's majestic Roan Plateau, while they work to minimize environmental impacts. The Salazars said their new stance is in the spirit of compromise, after they previously sought a one-year moratorium or even an outright ban on drilling on the Western Slope landmark. Those efforts were killed in the Senate version of the energy bill. "We may not get everything we want, but this is a pretty good compromise," Rep. Salazar said Tuesday in a news conference at the state Capitol. The Salazars' approach aligns them with Gov. Bill Ritter, who last month said he would work with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to minimize the impact of gas drilling atop the plateau....
F.T.C. Asks if Carbon-Offset Money Is Well Spent Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet. But where exactly is that money going? The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, raised the question Tuesday in its first hearing in a series on green marketing, this one focusing on carbon offsets. As more companies use offset programs to create an environmental halo over their products, the commission said it was growing increasingly concerned that some green marketing assertions were not substantiated. Environmentalists have a word for such misleading advertising: “greenwashing.” With the rapid growth of green programs like carbon offsets, “there’s a heightened potential for deception,” said Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the commission. The F.T.C. has not updated its environmental advertising guidelines, known as the Green Guides, since 1998. Back then, the agency did not create definitions for phrases that are common now — like renewable energy, carbon offsets and sustainability....

NOTE TO READERS

Was late getting home from a meeting of People for Preserving Our Western Heritage.

If you are interested in wilderness, grazing in wilderness, law enforcement in wilderness, access to wilderness, etc., then click on the link above and you may find something of interest.

You will also find proposed legislation providing an alternative to wilderness.

Will try to catch up on the news tomorrow.

OPEN Government Act Signed into Law On Dec. 31, 2007, President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act (S. 2488)(pdf), which includes long-sought reforms of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Though some important provisions were dropped in order to reach bipartisan agreement in Congress, the bill creates incentives to reduce agency backlogs of FOIA requests, increases reporting requirements, and increases the scope of who can make requests and what entities are covered by FOIA. In an effort to reduce agency backlogs and improve FOIA procedures, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13392 on Dec. 14, 2005. The order, though, did little to relieve agency backlogs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently reported, "Despite increasing the numbers of requests processed, many agencies did not keep pace with the volume of requests that they received." The OPEN Government Act, sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) in the Senate and Rep. Henry Waxman☼ (D-CA) in the House, seeks to resolve some of these problems....

Deadline Postponed on Polar Bear Listing Citing the complexity of the decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday it would not meet a deadline for a recommendation on listing polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming under the federal Endangered Species Act. The deadline for a listing decision by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is Wednesday. A listing could trigger restrictions on development that affect polar bears or their habitat. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency hopes to have a recommendation within weeks so that Kempthorne can announce his decision within a month. The department has never declared a species threatened or endangered because of climate change, Hall said, and the issue complicated the decision. "That's why this one has been so taxing and challenging to us," he said. Environmental groups, however, said that law calls for a decision unless there is "substantial scientific uncertainty" — and that there is none....
Candy Billionaire Fights Energy Firms A reclusive billionaire whose family owns the Mars candy empire is emerging as a formidable opponent to the energy industry's plans to expand development of some of the country's most productive coal and gas deposits. Forrest E. Mars Jr., the former chief executive of Mars Inc., owns a sprawling ranch along Montana's Tongue River — directly in the sights of companies hoping to tap the area's extensive coal and natural gas reserves. Through his previously undisclosed ownership of the 82,000-acre Diamond Cross ranch, Mars is bringing his $14 billion fortune to bear on the side of ranchers and conservationists trying to curb the companies' ambitions. The Mars family has a long-standing reputation for secrecy, and Forrest Mars' name is not listed as a party in any of the lawsuits pitting Diamond Cross against coal and natural gas developers. His ownership in the ranch was revealed in a Dec. 28 court affidavit reviewed by The Associated Press. O'Toole said Mars' opposition to energy development stemmed from the vast amounts of water such projects can consume. In the arid West, water is essential to keeping working cattle ranches such as Diamond Cross alive. Under a property regime known as split estates, landowners in many Western states do not necessarily control the minerals beneath their property. In the Diamond Cross case, Fidelity and another company, Pinnacle Gas Resources, have oil and gas leases on the ranch that predate Mars' ownership, according to public records and company officials. State law gives the companies the right to enter Mars' land to drill on those leases. So far, however, he's held them at bay....
Canyon bighorns lose most of their lambs Disease killed about 80 percent of the lambs born last spring to the bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon, and biologists call it the worst die-off since the breed was reintroduced there in the early 1970s. Researchers believe the deaths were triggered by one bacterium that inhibits the bighorns' ability to fight off another bacterium that leads to bronchopneumonia. Lambs appear to be most vulnerable because of undeveloped immune systems, said Vic Coggins, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. "This was the worst year I've ever seen for lambs," said Neil Thagart, spokesman for the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep in Cody, Wyo. The canyon of the Snake River is home to about 900 Rocky Mountain bighorns. Thagart has visited it after lambing season for about 10 years. The river separates Idaho from Oregon and Washington. The die-off appears to have spared a big share of the wild adult rams and ewes, Coggins said....
Baucus proposes ways to meet rising firefighting costs U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on Monday outlined two potential strategies for paying the growing costs of wildfires. He has introduced the Stable Fire Funding Act, which would establish a trust fund with $600 million in seed money for the Forest Service and $200 million in seed money for the Bureau of Land Management. The funds, which would generate interest, would be used to cover 80 percent of firefighting costs that exceed the agencies' appropriated budgets every year, he said. Baucus' other strategy would be funded by a provision he included in the Climate Security Act, which is aimed at curbing greenhouse gases and combating climate change. The bill was passed by a Senate committee in December. The provision would provide up to $1.1 billion annually to combat catastrophic wildfires, or the yearly cost to the federal government of the largest 1 percent of wildfires. Those severe fires account for 85 percent of wildfire suppression costs. Currently, the Forest Service and BLM borrow emergency fire suppression funds from their own budgets, which reduces funding for thinning the hazardous fuels that feed the fires. As of late October, the Forest Service and BLM had spent $1.7 billion on fire suppression in 2007, a figure that doesn't include the total cost of the California wildfires....
Federal Protection Sought for Rare New Mexico Butterfly Conservation groups Forest Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit in Washington, D.C. today against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to grant federal protection to the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly in response to a June 2007 petition filed by the groups. Under the Endangered Species Act, the Service is supposed to respond to a petition within 90 days. The butterfly occurs on less than 2,000 acres of private and Lincoln National Forest land within a six-mile radius around the village of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, and faces many threats in its narrow range. The most significant threats are insecticide spraying, climate change, habitat destruction from urban sprawl, off-road vehicles and livestock grazing, fire suppression, and exotic weed proliferation. In 2007, the heart of the butterfly’s range was targeted for insecticide spraying while butterfly larvae were actively feeding . In the face of this threat and new evidence on impacts from the climate crisis, Forest Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity filed the June petition and requested emergency listing, which helped force Otero County and the U.S. Forest Service to hold off on spraying until the checkerspots were no longer feeding. But the narrowly averted disaster for the butterfly underscores the species’ vulnerability and need for federal protection....
Nature Overrun Nearly 40 years ago, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order calling for a national strategy to protect wildlife by restricting off-road vehicles to carefully designated trails. President Jimmy Carter later gave the interior secretary the authority to ban such vehicles from sensitive lands. Unfortunately, except for a brief and encouraging crackdown during the Clinton administration, nobody has paid much attention to these directives since. There are now nine million off-road vehicles, meaning all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes (snowmobiles are a separate category). And their owners, with little resistance from the authorities that ought to be policing them, are transforming some of America’s most sensitive public lands into their personal playgrounds. Utah is an alarming case in point. The bureau is presently drafting six new land-use plans for Utah that would allow about 15,000 miles of designated trails. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental group, points out that many of these routes have been lifted straight from maps provided by the off-road vehicle associations and have not been independently surveyed to assess their potential damage to the soil, animal habitat and archaeological sites. Worse, some of the trails would crisscross about 2.5 million acres of breathtakingly beautiful country that the Clinton administration thought worthy of permanent wilderness protection....
BLM: Tar sand development may hurt parks Tar sands development could severely affect Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a stretch of the San Rafael Swell along Interstate 70, according to a Bureau of Land Management report. The 1,400-page government report, called the Oil Shale and Tar Sands Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, was released in December and outlines the landscape-altering changes that could occur when the BLM’s congressionally mandated commercial oil shale and tar sands leasing program for Utah, Colorado and Wyoming gets going. More than 100,000 acres of wilderness-quality land could be industrialized, construction of reservoirs would alter natural streamflow patterns, hydrocarbons and herbicides could cause “chronic or acute toxicity” in wildlife and habitat for 20 threatened or endangered species could be lost, the report says. If the BLM settles on the development scenario it prefers, nearly 25,000 acres in the “Tar Sands Triangle” adjacent to both Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Canyonlands National Park’s Maze District would be open to industrial tar sands development....
Japan's 34th BSE case reinforces fact that Canada's risk mitigation measures have serious shortcomings Japan recently announced its 34th case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, in a 15-year-old beef cow - the oldest case of all the BSE cases in Japan. Fortunately, because Japan tests every head of cattle for BSE before allowing the beef into the human food chain, none of the products from this animal will harm anyone. However, because BSE has an incubation period of up to eight years, it will be many, many years before Japan completely removes this disease from its cattle herd. While Japan is doing a much better job testing for BSE than Canada, R-CALF USA remains extremely concerned that policies implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that allow more high-risk Canadian cattle into the United States are putting the U.S. cattle herd and U.S. beef consumers at risk for this incurable and always fatal disease. "Countries like Japan that started out only detecting a few cases in the first few years continue to find even more cases now that those countries are testing more cattle for BSE," he said. "When applying that knowledge to Canada, we find Canada is following the same track - only detecting a few from the outset, but then the numbers begin to increase. "However, Canada is not testing near the numbers of cattle that Japan is, and Canada only has a voluntary testing program, which means there's likely numerous cattle in Canada that are going undetected for BSE, and that puts the U.S. cattle industry at risk because currently we are commingling Canadian cattle and beef with U.S. cattle and beef," Thornsberry pointed out....
Tucson Dude Ranch Industry Becoming Dud Another dude bit the dust in 2007. Citing difficulty in sustaining a dude guest ranch, the owners of Lazy K Bar Guest Ranch in Marana have leased the property and changed its focus to a venue for weddings and corporate gatherings. Its departure from the dude ranch scene leaves Tucson with just two spots where guests can check in, saddle up and play cowboy, or cowgirl. ``We are one generation away from no dude ranches existing in the way that we know today,'' said Russell True, co-owner of White Stallion Ranch in Tucson. ``I've watched Tucson go from 30-plus dude ranches to two.'' Although Tucson's tourism image is always evolving, interest in the rustic West is still high, said Jonathan Walker, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau. ``The dude ranch and the Wild West culture is still an important part of what we are,'' he said. And, it's an image that the visitors bureau actively promotes, especially in Europe, Walker said. He lamented the latest closure but predicts Tucson will always have some form of dude ranch presence. The state has 11 dude ranches from Wickenburg to Patagonia, according to the Arizona Dude Ranch Association. In the 1940s, there were close to 50 just in the greater Tucson area....
It's All Trew: Captain lived criminal highlife My recent column about "No Man's Land" in the Oklahoma Panhandle brought in a great true story from Roy McClellam of Spearman. Reading like a novel by Louis L'amour, this tale tells of a Robber's Roost located right here in the Panhandle area. No Man's Land was created after Kansas, Texas and New Mexico were admitted to the Union of States. This little corner, 35 miles wide by 168 miles long, was not included in any state and was left without law and order, for years making it a Mecca for outlaws. One of the earliest and most notorious was Captain William Coe, who established his Robber's Roost in the late 1860s. Located strategically on a long high ridge jutting southwest from a large mesa near the town of today's Kenton, Okla., the outlaw headquarters was large, made of rock walls three feet thick, was topped with a thick sod roof, had portholes instead of windows, sported a fully stocked bar, a piano and bevy of sporting ladies. His gang of outlaws numbered 30 to 50 members who pillaged and raided from Fort Union to the south, Denver to the north and Taos to the west. They stole both civilian and military mules and horses, changed the brands, then sold them in Missouri to settlers. A special canyon still exists today named Blacksmith Canyon, where the stolen stock were rested, the brands changed and their feet shod with equipment and supplies stolen from wagons raided along the nearby Santa Fe Trail. In 1867, the gang attacked a large sheep operation from Las Vegas, N.M., killing the men then driving the herds of sheep to Pueblo, Colo., to sell. This brutal outrage brought complaints to the U.S. Army at Fort Lyons located on the Arkansas River near Las Animas, Colo. No doubt the Army did intervene but the stories vary. Several versions exist telling of what happened when the Army attacked Robber's Roost....

Rural Landowners Declaration of Rural Independence

It is abundantly apparent that high-dense urban areas, known as cities, have an unfair electoral advantage in passing laws and deciding social and environmental policy.

This electoral advantage disenfranchises rural landowners who have no say in such policy and strips them of their constitutionally protected freedoms, their dignity and their property rights. In far too many cases, rural landowners are deprived of their rights of due process and just compensation, as required under the 5th Amendment.

Again, this electoral advantage allows cities to elect politicians that pass laws and dictate policy that ONLY affects rural landowners but leaves city folk virtually un-scathed. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) are just two examples of tens of thousands of laws, acts and ordinances that only affect rural landowners, while urban dwellers get off scot-free.

Rural landowners have come together to demonstrate just how important rural land is to the city's existence and to communicate to them that our disenfranchisement shall not stand.

Rural landowners have come together in the spirit of solidarity to stage a silent protest against the tyranny of the majority (cities) and their government counterparts that have sold rural landowners and this country, literally down the river.

We, the rural landowners of America, hereby declare the week of June 30th through July 6th, 2008 (including July 4th, "Independence Day") and each 4th of July week each year thereafter, as a declaration of rural independence.

Starting at 12:01 AM, Monday, June 30th, 2008 and ending at midnight July 6th, 2008, rural landowners, all across America, unite in the following actions, or in actions, as the case may be....

Navy's Use of Sonar Is Severely Limited A federal judge yesterday severely limited the Navy's ability to use mid-frequency sonar on a training range off the Southern California coast, ruling that the loud sounds would harm whales and other marine mammals if not tightly controlled. The decision is a blow to the Navy, which has argued that it needs the flexibility to train its sonar operators without undue restrictions. In her decision, however, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said the Navy could conduct productive training under the limitations, which she said were required under several environmental laws. In particular, Cooper banned the use of the sonar within 12 nautical miles of the California coast, expanded from 1,100 yards to 2,200 yards the Navy's proposed "shut down" zone in which sonar must be turned off whenever a marine mammal is spotted, required monitoring for the presence of animals for one hour before exercises involving sonar begin, and required that two National Marine Fisheries Service-trained lookouts be posted for monitoring during exercises. The judge also forbade sonar use in the Catalina Basin, an area with many marine mammals. Cooper's ruling comes as the Navy is in the midst of a two-year series of training exercises off Southern California that involve extensive use of active sonar, which is used to find a new generation of harder-to-detect submarines now operated by 41 nations....
Ranchers, farmers keep nature in and feds out Southern Colorado ranchers are setting aside land for conservation and inviting scientists on their property to study the imperiled Gunnison sage grouse. On the Eastern Plains, farmers are flagging nesting sites of the mountain plover to avoid plowing over them. The goal of the ranchers and the farmers is the same — to avoid strict regulations under the federal Endangered Species Act by helping animals at risk of extinction. These days, the embattled federal law that is designed to prevent the extinction of plants and animals often accomplishes its purpose in Colorado without ever being invoked. Local and state officials — and often private landowners — are scrambling to keep imperiled plants and animals off the endangered-species list by protecting habitat voluntarily rather than under the restrictions of federal law....
Drilling boom spurs demand for landmen Today, they're all working the Barnett Shale as landmen -- people who collect and manage mineral-rights leases. By most accounts, there are perhaps 1,000 landmen in Tarrant County and at least that many more throughout the region. The figure is hard to pin down because there are no licensing requirements and the vast majority are independent contractors, not employees of energy companies. The natural gas drilling boom in the vast field underlying Tarrant County and many surrounding areas has sparked demand for landmen to handle everything from researching deeds to gaining signatures from homeowners. Lured by pay that can top $450 a day for experienced landmen -- more than $100,000 a year -- hundreds of workers, many of them young people, have flocked to North Texas for a chance to get a piece of the Barnett action. They're jumping into a market that bears little resemblance to the past. "In the old days, you went out and talked to the farmer or rancher, came back and wrote up a report," said Terry McInturff, director of the Center for Energy Commerce at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. "You could do it so much more quickly. When you need, say, 160 acres for a well, a rancher with 10,000 acres is pretty sweet," he said. All that has changed now that drilling has moved into urban areas....
Regulating the wind The high winds that are part of life in southeast Wyoming make it a prime target for the development of systems to turn the gusts into a usable source of electricity. To prepare for the expected influx of towers and turbines that may dot the landscape, Laramie County is creating rules to monitor the future installation, operation and potential abandonment of wind energy systems. County officials say the proposed regulations are designed to ensure the orderly development of the systems. They also seek to protect public infrastructure and the quality of life for residents while encouraging the growth of this alternative energy source for personal and commercial uses. The proposal sets limits on how close wind towers can be to houses, utility lines and public roads as well as other wind energy systems. Also, power lines serving the systems would have to be buried, and advertising on the towers would be prohibited. Restrictions on the noise and light from the towers are also included. Many ranchers and large landowners say the rules make sense. But they caution that the final form of the regulations should be considered carefully, particularly because of the potential revenue wind farms can bring....
Big oil casts big shadow over Colorado's water future No one has ever rowed a boat across Stillwater Reservoir. Or caught a fish at Fourteenmile Reservoir. Or stood on the beach of Roan Creek Reservoir. These are all imaginary lakes. They exist only in the minds of oil company executives and attorneys. But the oil companies own legal rights to build and fill these reservoirs, which would be in Garfield and Rio Blanco counties. And as the companies take another look at Colorado's oil- shale deposits, which would require vast amounts of water to develop, they might make those imaginary lakes a reality. Their water rights are huge, and getting bigger. Shell has been buying large water rights on the Western Slope for the last five years and just completed a major purchase in July. State leaders are watching. "I've seen estimates that oil shale, if it is developed, would consume 100 percent of the remaining water in the Colorado River system," said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar....
Supreme Court won't hear water rights case (subscription) Chalk one up for Goliath (in this case, the federal government), even though he got whupped by David (two Idaho ranching families). By refusing to hear a landmark Idaho water rights case, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it official: An individual can defeat the U.S. government in court in every major battle but lose the war. The court declined to hear a case involving two Idaho ranching families who fought the government for nearly a decade over federal rangeland water rights. That means the two families, who were victorious in their cases, cannot recover attorney fees. Essentially, they've reached the end of their road in legal terms and face a bleak financial outlook after a long battle to defend their stock-watering rights. The two ranches were vindicated earlier this year when the Idaho Supreme Court ruled the federal government does not hold federal rangeland water rights. The ranches won on every major point and the court even said the government's argument reflected "a serious misunderstanding of water law." However, in a serious setback to the ranching operations, the court also ruled they could not recover attorney fees from the government. Considering they owe about $1.5 million combined - an amount roughly equal to the value of the ranches - that's no small matter. The two Owyhee County ranches, Joyce Livestock Co. and LU Ranching Co., appealed the court's decision not to award them attorney fees to the U.S. Supreme Court. They found out Oct. 31 the court would not hear their appeal. "We knew going in the Supreme Court took a mighty small percentage of cases," said LU Ranching owner Tim Lowry. "We were hoping against hope they'd take this one. But they didn't." Lowry said their next step would be "to figure out how to get the attorneys paid. Our options are pretty limited." The Idaho Supreme Court agreed with the ranches on virtually every point in their battle with the federal government over water rights on land covered by federally administered grazing allotments....
Bison market on the move “In the past five years, the bison industry definitely has rebounded,” said Russ Miller, who manages media mogul Ted Turner's 15 ranches, all but one of which run bison. With 45,000 animals, Turner is by far the biggest bison rancher in the nation. The next largest is a Wyoming operation that runs about 3,000 head. Just on Turner's Flying D Ranch south of Bozeman, about 3,500 bison roam, Miller said. Turner has played a large role in the turnaround of the bison industry, in part through the construction of 54 Ted's Montana Grill restaurants around the country, places where people are encouraged to sink their teeth into a slab of bison meat. The restaurants have introduced bison to a wide swath of diners. “They provide a good job of providing a good quality first bite of bison,” said Jim Matheson, assistant director of the National Bison Association. Turner's high profile celebrity status clearly helps bring people in the doors, and they get a dose of Turner's environmental ethic as well, which is part of marketing bison. Turner and other bison ranchers maintain that the shaggy giants are easier on the land than nonnative beef cows, plus the meat is higher in protein and lower in fat than most other meats. The restaurants help move a lot of bison but they also have a secondary effect. If customers enjoy their meal, they start looking a little more closely at the bison meat they're starting to see more regularly in supermarket coolers....
Leaner Pastures: As Horses Multiply,Neglect Cases Rise Across the U.S., the number of horses whose owners won't or can't properly care for them is mushrooming. Spurred by retiring baby boomers and their penchant for second homes in the country, horse ownership boomed in the U.S. over the past decade. Americans own more than nine million horses today, up from just over six million horses in the mid-1990s, according to the American Horse Council, a trade association. Along with the boom came backyard breeding, as owners without the discipline or financial muscle to obtain award-winning genes settled for whatever nature produced. More than two million Americans own horses, and more than a third of those owners have a household income of less than $50,000. As the horse population soared -- and the economy ceased to gallop -- selling the animals became more difficult. Some owners could no longer afford their investment. Until recently, a little-advertised market for unwanted horses existed at equine slaughterhouses, which in 2004 killed an estimated 65,000 horses, largely for human consumption in Europe and Japan. But the last three such plants closed in 2007, under pressure from animal-rights groups. "Animal lovers with big hearts and no idea what's required to take care of a horse have shut down slaughterhouses that were needed," says C.J. Hadley, publisher of a cowboy magazine called Range, based in Carson City, Nev. Calling horse lovers who oppose slaughterhouses "innocent," Ms. Hadley says, "Ranchers love their horses enough to put them down when the time comes." Now, some unwanted American horses wind up at Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses. But others linger and starve, often ending up at rescue homes and other charities....
Iconic Stetson First Made At Base Of Pikes Peak National park rangers proudly wear them. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have donned them for more than a century. Colorado State Patrol troopers wear them, too. Boy Scout leaders, military drill sergeants and even Smokey Bear, the renowned champion of forest protection, wear Stetson Boss of the Plains ranger hats. Perhaps they should be standard issue for Colorado Springs police, given that the distinctive flat-brimmed, felt hat with the "mountain peak" crown and leather band was conceived and created by John B. Stetson at a campfire at the base of Pikes Peak in 1862. Stetson, the son of a New Jersey hatmaker, was diagnosed with tuberculosis, so he left the family business and went to explore the West before he died. He worked as a brickmaker in St. Joseph, Mo., before joining a Pikes Peak gold-mining expedition. According to historical accounts, he was camped with a dozen men near Pikes Peak when he drew on his skills to fashion a hat out of beaver fur to protect him from the sun, rain and wind. Stetson wore his wide-brimmed, domed hat throughout the expedition that year -- at a time when bowlers and smaller hats were popular. He sold his first hat for a $5 gold piece to a cowboy on horseback in a mountainside mining camp....
Rancher Kenedy's known as more than just a pretty face As historic figures go, Petra's must have been terrific. Her looks stunned frontiersmen. And after researching her for years, biographers Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick concluded that Petra (1825-1885) was beautiful not merely physically, but spiritually as well. Forever helping friends, kin and her Catholic church, she gave away a wagonload of money to charities way before such acts earned tax credits. Historian John Henry Brown called her "a woman of superior accomplishments and great natural intelligence." He noted, "She was considered one of the handsomest women of her day." Indian warriors killed her father, ex-governor of Spanish Texas, and carried off three of her sisters, one of whom was never rescued. After marrying a Mexican army colonel, Petra Vela de Vidal had six children. Widowed, she then married steamboat tycoon Mifflin Kenedy and had six more children. She helped the captain build a ranching empire whose tall bunchgrasses and mesquites adorned oil deposits unknown to them that today are worth untold millions. If it weren't footnoted, Petra's Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy (Texas A&M Press) might be mistaken for soaring fiction. It is chockablock with crooked politics, cattle rustlers, land fraud, warfare, and enough illicit sex to populate South Texas courtrooms for generations. There were once about 300 claimants to the Kenedy estate....

Cowboys and pot-bellied pigs are a bad mix
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

By Julie Carter

I bet you thought this was going to be a New Year's Eve party report.

With that same title, it could be, but it's not. It really is about pigs, real pigs, and in this case, a couple of the pet pot-bellied variety.

Good cow horses will stand for a lot of things that would make the run-of-mill-backyard-variety equine lose their mind, jump upside down and get you hurt.

Rock had calmly avoided rattlesnakes, pheasants flying under his belly, bulls charging him and deer blowing out of the brush nearly on top of him.

He even put up with pilgrims in pink spandex pants petting him and children rolling under his feet. However, a pot-bellied pig did him in.

New to the area, the cowgirl and her cowboy had gone to help some neighbors gather cattle. As one does when one is at someone else's outfit, she got her instructions and began trailing cattle back to headquarters.

Following a little bunch of cattle that was headed to the main herd, she and Rock seemed to have things under control until out of nowhere a flock of sheep came on the run right through the middle of the cattle.

Rock pinned his ears and squatted back on his hindquarters but held his own against the white, hopping invaders without ever swapping ends and making a run for it. The worst was yet to come.

After the cattle had been re-gathered with the requisite amount of cussing, the corral sorting work was done and the waiting semi-trucks were loaded.

The horses were tied to the corral fence when the crew sauntered toward the house for lunch.

About halfway through the meal, the cowboys noted all their horses were in a dead run out across the pasture.

The first job was to capture them and then try to figure out what had set them off.

Next to the fence where all the broken bridle reins were hanging sat a fat, happy very ugly pot-bellied pig.

Horses snorted and shied from the fence and the pig looked them over inquisitively, hoping for a little more action out of them.

In this same part of the world, a rancher woke one morning to silence.

Not a good sign when he had, just the day before, weaned five pens full of calves that should be bawling their heads off for their mamas.

He raced to the corrals to find all but one pen of calves completely gone. Adios, por allá, missing! Gates torn down, fences laid over.

What he also found was a pair of pot-bellied pigs that had wandered a few miles to create such havoc. They'd taken up residence and seemed to think they were right where they belonged.

Those hogs left a lasting impression on the cattle, the horses and the cowboy.

He returned the pets to their home but once they had discovered the trail to so much fun, they made the trip often. Kind of like relatives that show up uninvited, stay too long and don't know they are not welcome.

For years after the event, the cowboy's horses snorted, shied and acted like there were unseen monsters in that set of corrals.

One of the pigs relocated when their owner did while one of them went MIA and is now listed with the rancher "cold-case" files.

The moral of the story goes with the saying that "good fences make good neighbors." It's a dangerous world out there. Keep your pigs at home.

Visit Julie on her website at julie-carter.com

When Government Plans, It Usually Fails

by Randal O'Toole

After more than 30 years of reviewing government plans, including forest plans, park plans, watershed plans, wildlife plans, energy plans, urban plans and transportation plans, I've concluded that government planning almost always does more harm than good.

Most government plans are so full of fabrications and unsupportable assumptions that they aren't worth the paper they are printed on, much less the millions of tax dollars spent to have them written. Federal, state and local governments should repeal planning laws and shut down planning offices.

Everybody plans. But private plans are flexible, and we happily change them when new information arises. In contrast, special-interest groups ensure that the government plans benefiting them do not change -- no matter how costly. Like any other organization, government agencies need to plan their budgets and short-term projects. But they fail when they write comprehensive plans (which try to account for all side effects), long-range plans or plans that attempt to control other people's land and resources. Many plans try to do all three.

Comprehensive plans fail because forests, watersheds and cities are simply too complicated for anyone to understand. Chaos science reveals that very tiny differences in initial conditions can lead to huge differences in outcomes -- that's why mega-projects such as Boston's Big Dig go so far over budget.

Long-range plans fail because planners have no better insight into the future than anyone else, so their plans will be as wrong as their predictions are.

Planning for other people's land and resources fails because planners will not pay the costs they impose on other people, so they have no incentive to find the best answers.

Most of the nation's 32,000 professional planners graduated from schools that are closely affiliated with colleges of architecture, giving them an undue faith in design. This means many plans put enormous efforts into trying to control urban design while they neglect other tools that could solve social problems at a much lower cost. For example, planners propose to reduce automotive air pollution by increasing population densities to reduce driving. Yet the nation's densest urban area, Los Angeles, has only 8 percent less commuting by auto than the least dense areas. Meanwhile, technological improvements over the past 40 years, which planners often ignore, have reduced the pollution caused by some cars by 99 percent.

Some of the worst plans today are so-called growth management plans prepared by states and metropolitan areas. They try to control who gets to develop their land and exactly what those developments should look like, including their population densities and mixtures of residential, retail, commercial and other uses. About a dozen states require or encourage urban areas to write such plans. Those states have some of the nation's least-affordable housing, while most states and regions that haven't written such plans mostly have very affordable housing. The reason is simple: Planning limits the supply of new housing, which drives up the price of all housing.

In states with growth management laws, median housing prices in 2006 were typically four to eight times median family incomes. In most states without such laws, median home prices are only two to three times median family incomes. Few people realize that the recent housing bubble, which affected mainly regions with growth management planning, was caused by planners trying to socially engineer cities. Yet it has done little to protect open space, reduce driving or do any of the other things promised.

Politicians use government planning to allocate scarce resources on a large scale. Instead, they should make sure that markets - based on prices, incentives and property rights -- work. Variably priced toll roads have helped reduce congestion. Pollution markets do far more to clean the air than exhortations to drive less. Giving people freedom to use their property, and ensuring only that their use does not harm others, will keep housing affordable.

Unlike planners, markets can cope with complexity. Futures markets cushion the results of unexpected changes. Markets do not preclude government ownership, but the best-managed government programs are funded out of user fees that effectively make government managers act like private owners. Rather than passing the buck by turning sticky problems over to government planners, policymakers should make sure markets give people what they want.

FLE

Attorney For D.C. in Gun Ban Case Fired Acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has fired the city lawyer who had been preparing to defend the District's longtime ban on handguns before the Supreme Court this spring, a move that some city officials fear could harm the case. Alan B. Morrison, who has argued 20 cases before the high court, was asked to leave his post as special counsel by the end of this week. Morrison had been hired by then-Attorney General Linda Singer and put in charge of arguing the handgun case. Singer resigned two weeks ago. Nickles declined to elaborate on his decision, but Morrison suggested in an interview that he was fired as part of a feud between Nickles and Singer. The case is one of the most important in the city's history, and the court's ruling could have a national impact, legal experts have said....
Dellinger to head D.C. team in handgun case A former acting U.S. solicitor general who is now with a private law firm has been named to defend the District's handgun ban in the U.S. Supreme Court. Walter Dellinger was chosen Thursday by acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles. Dellinger was already a member of the legal team working on the handgun case under D.C. special counsel Alan Morrison, who was fired by Nickles last week. Nickles says Dellinger helped Morrison write the brief and will be able to assume the lead role without difficulty....
Judge postpones trial for lawsuit over guns seized after Katrina A federal judge has agreed to postpone a trial for a lawsuit that the National Rifle Association filed against city officials for seizing hundreds of guns in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. Last week, NRA attorneys said the lobbying group needs more time to search for hundreds of gun owners whose firearms were confiscated by New Orleans police following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier agreed Friday to reschedule a Feb. 19 trial for the case. A new trial date is expected to be picked during a telephone conference with the judge later this month. The NRA and Second Amendment Foundation, a Bellevue, Wash.-based advocacy group, sued New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley over the city's seizure of more than 1,000 guns that weren't part of any criminal investigation after Katrina....
Elderly use canes for self-defence A martial arts expert has set up special walking stick self-defence classes for pensioners. Kevin Garwood, 58, of Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth, is showing them how to use their walking sticks to be more confident. And his lessons have already paid off after an old woman fought off two muggers, reports the Daily Mail. Mr Garwood currently teaches three walking stick self-defence classes a week and aims to start more sessions this year. Pupils practice sets of movements and learn simple strangleholds, arm locks and throws, using their walking sticks....Will they ban canes next?

Earth to Newt (subscription) Have you heard the one about the politician and the zookeeper? Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, and Terry L. Maple, former president and CEO of Zoo Atlanta, currently with the Palm Beach Zoo, have written a manifesto aimed at restoring the earth through cooperation, entrepreneurship, technology, and partnerships between and among governments, business corporations, and private philanthropy. A Contract with the Earth opens with an appreciative foreword by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, followed by a passionate preface by the speaker himself. Gingrich states that he and Maple share an environmental philosophy which is derived "from an enduring respect for wildlife in all its splendid diversity. We are personally diminished by the loss of each and every species or essential habitat that cannot resist extinction." He is concerned that "our failure to resolve serious environmental challenges will compromise the lives of our children and our grandchildren." Gingrich's love for wildlife, like that of Theodore Roosevelt and the former conservative senator from New York James L. Buckley (brother of William F.), is personal and deeply rooted. The speaker is a staunch defender of the Endangered Species Act, "an excellent example of the value of civility, consultation, and collaboration," and he believes that recent changes in the implementation of the law "have produced good results, a function of shared values and democratic ideals." Gingrich and Maple argue that the Endangered Species Act may be "America's best environmental success story"--a claim which will certainly get them a few emails from conservative bloggers....Some of you may remember how Gingrich killed the Domenici grazing bill, a bill which had passed the Senate and attempted to override Secretary Babbit's Rangeland Reform. Now we know why he killed it. The Bushies also left Rangeland Reform essentially intact. I wonder why.

Conservationists Want Probe into Reports of Wolf Baiting Conservation groups want the Interior secretary to order an investigation by the inspector general into allegations that a Mexican gray wolf was baited into killing a cow so the wolf in turn could be killed. Representatives of 15 conservationist and environmental groups, in a letter dated Thursday to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, said an investigation should be launched into the possibility the wolf was killed through abuse of government-provided telemetry radio receivers and by ranchers taking advantage of a rule that requires removal of any wolf that kills three head of livestock within a year. Kempthorne's office could not immediately comment until officials had seen the letter. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been looking into a December report in High Country News _ an online, independent biweekly news magazine _ that quoted an employee of Adobe-Slash Ranch in Catron County, Mike Miller, as saying, ``We would sacrifice a calf to get a third strike.'' The article alleged ranch hands branded cattle near the wolf's den. Miller denied the allegations in the article, written by contributing editor John Dougherty. High Country News editor Jonathan Thompson said the magazine stands by its story. The conservation groups also asked for an investigation by law enforcement, with prosecution if warranted....
The Next Great Hunt On a cold, sunny day on the treeless plains of north-central Montana, hunters close in on their prey. Several bison and their calves watch nervously as a pickup truck slowly circles them, a rifle pointed out of the passenger window. A shot rings out, and a few minutes later, a young bison calf plops down on the ground, grunting and squirming. The hunting party—a team of biologists—moves in, warily eyeing the larger bison, eager to get a blood sample and move away from the agitated creatures. Once they fill a giant plastic syringe, they give the calf a shot, and it stands up on wobbly legs and staggers back to the herd. Welcome to the American Prairie Foundation preserve, the front lines of the efforts to save America’s bison and restore a large swath of the North American Great Plains. The bison is often heralded as the nation’s first and greatest conservation victory—in the last century the population grew from fewer than 1,000 to half a million—but the story is not that simple....
Forest Service backs off from Meeker Ranch demolition Black Hills National Forest Supervisor Craig Bobzien is suspending plans to demolish decaying buildings at the old Meeker Ranch near Custer pending discussions with artist Jon Crane and others who want to save the place. Bobzien said Thursday that he plans to meet with Crane sometime in April, after the artist and his wife, Gail, return from a winter on the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. The Cranes are driving to Mexico now in a four-wheel-drive mobile home. Bobzien and other Black Hills National Forest officials had planned to demolish all but the original cabin at the ranch, located about four miles northeast of Custer. A house built later and other decrepit buildings on the ranch site, as well as a cistern, pose hazards for the public, Bobzien said. But Crane believes the buildings can and should be saved. He hopes to paint a series of watercolors of the place and dedicate a percentage of sales to its preservation. Crane said Thursday by cell phone from New Mexico that he was encouraged by Bobzien's decision. Crane wants to clear up some confusion about the wishes of the last private owner of the Meeker Ranch, Ina Davis. Davis sold the 278-acre ranch to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which then sold it to the U.S. Forest Service....
Road, Trails Protection Pact to Be Signed Soon Two documents currently being finalized will empower multiple agencies in the Ouray County area to preserve access to public roads and trails, dating back to when the county was created in 1877. The first document is a Memorandum of Understanding that will create a “partnership” between public land managers, members of the recreation community – including motorized and non-motorized users, and Ouray County public officials. Members of the various organizations are uniting in a unique effort to identify and codify which public roads and trails merit future protections from private encroachments. The purpose of the agreement is to “preserve and protect” trails “at risk of disappearing,” and with that historic public access into perpetuity. The Memorandum of Understanding provides for “acquisition of necessary easements” from private landowners, negotiation, reciprocal easements as may be acquired by the county through its development processes, and the United States Forest Service through “any appropriate regulations permitting land trades.”....
States prepare for wolf hunts With gray wolves in the Northern Rockies poised to come off the endangered species list in the coming weeks, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are moving ahead with plans to begin hunts as early as this fall. It's still unclear, though, how the states will use the hunts to manage the population in the long term and how many people will plunk down the money for a tag. "It's certainly uncharted territory for Montana, at least in recent times," said Quentin Kujala, management bureau chief for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife division. There are more than 1,500 wolves in the Northern Rockies, but hunting and other measures will likely keep the population between 880 and 1,250 after delisting, according to Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Federal officials said wolves in the three states are recovered and ready to come off the endangered species list. The delisting rule is expected to be published around Feb. 20 and take effect 30 days later. The decision will mean that Montana, Wyoming and Idaho officials will take over management. A key part of all three states' plans is instituting a hunt....
FWP seeks comments on grizzly resolution The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission is seeking public comment on a draft resolution that urges federal wildlife biologists to finish their status review of grizzly bears by the end of 2008. The measure also calls for Congress to provide complete funding for grizzly conservation efforts and for removing the bears from the Endangered Species List in the Lower 48 states. The agency estimates it will cost $1.6 million this year to manage the grizzly population. The commission wants grizzlies removed from federal protection. It tentatively adopted the resolution Dec. 20 and is taking public comments until Feb 1. The FWP is pushing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to fulfill its commitment to finish its analysis of grizzly bear populations in Montana, Idaho and Washington. The FWP commission wants all grizzlies in the state removed from the endangered list, not just those in the greater Yellowstone area....
Wildlife department looking into cattle killings State wildlife officers are looking for those involved in the recent shootings of 2 dozen cattle and a llama in northeastern Oklahoma. Captain Jeff Brown with the state Wildlife Department says it appears someone is driving around and shooting the animals just for meanness. Most of the shootings have been in the Chelsea area east of Oologah Lake and the latest occurred Christmas night when three cows and the llama were shot. Brown says it's often difficult to see if a dead cow has been shot because the hide closes over the bullet hole. He says any rancher who finds a dead cow should report it to authorities to determine if the animal was shot.
Argentinean Beef Industry Shrinks, Ranch Lands Decline By 10 Percent Despite Argentineans' love for beef, farms are switching to other crops caused by rising grain prices and beef export limits. Rather than raise herds, Argentinean farmers are slowly switching to planting wheat and other lucrative crops resulting to a 10 percent drop in ranch lands. Pablo Adreani, economic analyst of AgriPAC Consultores, said since 2005, 18.3 million acres (7.4 million hectares) have been converted to grain farms. The domestic market has been flooded with local beef as a result of an export cap placed by former Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner to contain inflation. The export limit caused the decline of Argentina's beef exports causing it to fall from number one until the 1950s to fourth in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's rankings, behind Brazil, Australia and India. By 2008, Argentina will likely slip to fifth place behind Canada....
Tough lives of ranchers captured For every Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, storied, wealthy Western cattlemen, there are a hundred "Red" Howells, maybe a thousand, with their small, hardscrabble outfits going from OK to bust, drought to glut. In "A Red Howell Fit" (Raging Brook Press, $20), Beth Smith Aycock and Jorga Riggenbach have created a historical novel based on the life of "a quintessential Southwest rancher, Lewis 'Red' Howell." Howell, who was born in Texas in 1886 and died in Arizona in the 1970s, ranched in West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Not a perfect human but a likable one, and eventually his bad luck overwhelmed the good. Aycock and Riggenbach paint an unsentimental picture of the hard, unpredictable lives that early ranchers lived.

Ranching still has a place on our public lands I found a recent photograph that shows three people in cowboy gear – I’m the one pouring coffee from a thermos into beat-up cups. We’d all just gotten down from our horses, and the guys are leaning on a pickup truck marked U.S. Forest Service. Here’s the surprise: We’re all laughing. I’m a rancher, and the picture was taken the day I accompanied two range technicians while they did annual monitoring work on our cattle-grazing permit in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Usually, that’s about as much fun as going to the dentist. I dread the ordeal, mainly because it usually includes a scolding from the federal grass cops about “Things Gone Wrong,” subtitled “Cows Eat Grass.” In recent years the government’s answer to any problem has been “fewer cattle, fewer days on national forest lands.” This can make it hard for a rancher to make a living. That day last summer, as the photo shows, it was sunny and warm, I had a good horse to ride in beautiful country, and the range conservationists were good company. I hadn’t met them before, but we visited easily as we stepped through the hoops of walking, counting, recording. After all, it’s not rocket science, measuring blades of grass. We’d been short of rain in Wyoming, and it was a relief to agree that the grass would be ready for our cattle when they completed their climb to these high ranges. Usually, the day carries tension and finger-pointing, but to my surprise, these guys avoided that approach. They were more interested in the country around us and its history, asking questions about the original boundaries and previous permittees, landmarks and trails....

A Nation of Dim Bulbs On December 19, President Bush signed an energy bill that will, among many, many other things, force you to buy a new kind of light bulb. He did this because environmental enthusiasts don't like the light bulbs you're using now. He and they reason, therefore, that you shouldn't be allowed to have them. So now you can't. Ordinary consumers may be surprised, once they understand what's happened. They probably haven't known that the traditional incandescent light bulb, that happy little globe shining so innocently from the lamp in the corner, has been a scourge of environmentalists for many years. With their stern and unrelenting moralism, the warriors of Greenpeace have even branded lightbulb manufacturers "climate criminals" for making incandescents, which are, they say, a "silent killer."... American environmental groups have long called for an outright national ban on the old-fashioned bulbs. But then they came to the realization, as a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council told the New York Times this spring, that such a ban might "anger consumers." "We've given up a sound bite, 'ban the incandescent,'" the spokesman said. Instead the groups joined with the Bush administration this year in advocating a steady increase in federally mandated efficiency standards for light bulbs. The effect of the tightened standards is to make it illegal to manufacture or sell the inefficient incandescent bulb by 2014. So it's not a ban, see. It's just higher standards. Which have the same effect as a ban--a slow-motion ban that's not really a ban. Not surprisingly, in long, self-congratulatory remarks at the bill signing last week, Bush neglected to mention that he and Congress have just done away with the incandescent light bulb. Maybe most of us won't notice until he's back in Crawford... Other people, however, perhaps a very large number, will prefer the old, pre-Bush bulbs. Their reasons have less to do with the wonderfulness of the incandescent and their disdain for environmentalists than with the inconveniences of the CFL. The new bulbs are particularly vulnerable to extremes of temperature, for example; you won't want to use them in your garage in winter. CFLs are also 25 percent longer in size than the average incandescent. This makes them unsuitable for all kinds of lighting fixtures--particularly chandeliers and other ceiling lights--which will have to be either discarded or reconfigured, at considerable expense, after the Bush ban goes into effect. You can't use most CFLs with dimmer switches, either; ditto timers. Newer models that can be dimmed and are adaptable to timers will require you to buy new CFL-compatible dimmers and timers. The quality of the light given off by CFLs is quite different from what we're used to from incandescents. The old bulb concentrates its light through a small surface area. CFLs don't shine in beams; they glow all the way around, diffusing their illumination. They're terrible reading lights. Many people find fluorescent light itself to be harsh and unpleasant. Moreover--in a variation of the old joke about the restaurant that serves awful food and, even worse, serves it in such small portions--a CFL bulb can take two to three minutes to reach its full illumination after being turned on. And once it's fully aglow, according to Department of Energy guidelines, you need to leave it on for at least 15 minutes. In a typically chipper, pro-ban article last week, U.S. News and World Report explained why: "Turning a CFL on and off frequently shortens its life." Odd, isn't it--an energy-saving device that you're not supposed to turn off?....

Klamath farmers face continuing water questions Tulelake grower Sid Staunton, who has farmed in the Klamath Basin for the past 35 years and who was personally impacted by the water shut-off of 2001, said he would rather not experience it again. Now, with the 2008 growing season fast approaching, he and other farmers are worried about the development of new federal biological opinions that will guide water deliveries and impact the region's agriculture for the next 10 years. "During the water shut-off of 2001 we gave up production on over 60 percent of our farm base. We had to buy water, install a well, we implement a lot of different measures to survive," said Staunton, who grows potatoes, onions, wheat, peppermint and alfalfa. "For me to sit and hope for a big winter so I get to farm again, that is pretty idiotic when I've got to make investments to stay modern in today's current agriculture." The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently released a final biological assessment, which evaluates the potential effects of the proposed operation of the bureau's Klamath Water Project on listed species under the Endangered Species Act....
A road forward on roadless issue The notice last week in the Federal Register was a milestone for roadless policy in Colorado. Three pages of small type summarized years of debate over how the state would manage roadless national Forest Service lands. It also defined a path forward, setting a timeframe for an environmental analysis and creation of specific rules. As a national policy on the same issue is caught up in court challenges, Colorado is moving along with its own policy, one that was created by a bipartisan task force with significant public input. While we understand the criticism of some environmentalists who would prefer stricter rules, we think the Colorado approach is a sound, homegrown plan for managing approximately 4 million acres of national forest land. The state-generated plan would ban development of most of Colorado's roadless forest land. The plan allows exceptions for ski areas, and when a temporary road is needed to fight forest fires, to use federal mineral leases and to extract coal via federal leases from certain national forest land in western Colorado....
BLM imposes $4,000 drilling permit fee The Bureau of Land Management has begun charging a $4,000 processing fee for each new oil and gas drilling permit application, the agency announced on Wednesday. The directive to charge for the permits, which are known as an application for permit to drill (APD), was inserted into a $555-billion spending bill that President Bush signed on Dec. 26. Before the change, the BLM did not charge for processing APDs, according to the agency. The money generated by the fees “is not new revenue, but rather a reimbursement to the U.S. Treasury for the estimated cost of processing new APDs” for the agency’s 2008 fiscal year, according to the BLM. The fees became effective the day Bush signed the spending bill. “To carry out this congressional directive, the BLM has developed interim guidelines for its field office regarding the collection and handling of the new fees,” a statement released by the BLM said. “Final guidance will be developed over the next several weeks.”....Amazing. Bill signed on 12/26 and implemented on Jan 2. Anyone ever see BLM move so fast? They can sure move fast when it comes to sucking money out of the private sector.
BLM manager arrested in child abuse case The field manager of the Bureau of Land Management's Kanab office has been arrested by Kanab police and charged in two separate cases of child sexual abuse. Rex Lee Smart, 60, is facing charges in one case of sodomy upon a child, attempted rape of a child, child kidnapping and three counts of aggravated sexual assault, all of which are first-degree felonies. He also faces two counts of sexual abuse of a child, which are second-degree felonies. In the other case, Smart is charged with child kidnapping, sodomy upon a child, and three counts of aggravated sexual abuse, all first-degree felonies. He was booked into the Kane County Jail on Friday and later bailed out on $125,000 bail, according to jail officials....
Study of bear hair will reveal genetic diversity of Yellowstone grizzlies Locks of hair from more than 400 grizzly bears are stored at Montana State University, waiting to tell the tale of genetic diversity in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. Ranging from pale blond to almost black, the hair is filed in a chest freezer where the temperature is -77.8 degrees. Some of the tufts are almost 25 years old. The hair will head to Canada in a few months to be analysed at Wildlife Genetics International in Nelson, British Columbia, said Chuck Schwartz, head of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team based at MSU. The team is monitoring the genetic diversity of the Yellowstone grizzlies over time and wants to know when new DNA appears. The team will also compare the Yellowstone bears with those in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem where a similar study has been done. Field crews from a variety of federal and state agencies plucked the hair the study team is storing, Schwartz continued. Each lock came from somewhere off the bears’ shoulders, but the way it was collected varied....I sure wish they would hurry. I've been concerned about bear diversity for oh so long. But, due to drastic cuts in the Forest Service budget, we've been woefully short of bear hair pluckers.
DOI budget takes bite from states' revenue shares US oil and gas producing states will lose nearly $43 million of their shares of revenues from federal oil and gas production within their borders under a provision of the Department of Interior's fiscal 2008 budget. President George W. Bush signed DOI's budget into law on Dec. 26 as part of the omnibus budget bill approved by Congress earlier that week. Known as net receipts sharing, the provision attempts to charge states for part of the federal government's oil and gas royalties program's administrative costs. It effectively will reduce each state's share of federal oil and gas revenues to 48% from 50%. Then-Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.) first proposed the assessment in 1991 when he chaired the US House's Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. Congress included it in DOI's annual budget until 2000 when producing states, through the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission and their governors and congressional delegations, convinced federal lawmakers to repeal it....Surely some of that $43 million can be spent to hire fully-trained and certified bear hair pluckers.
Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in West In the San Juan National Forest here, an iron rod gate is the last barrier to the Weminuche Wilderness, a mountain redoubt above 10,000 feet where wheels are not allowed. But the gate has been knocked down repeatedly, shot at and generally disregarded. Miles beyond it, a two-track trail has been punched into the wilderness by errant all-terrain-vehicle riders who have insisted on going their own way, on-trail or off. From Colorado’s forests to Utah’s sandstone canyons and the evergreen mountains of Montana, federally owned lands are rapidly being transformed into the new playgrounds — and battlegrounds — of the American West. Outdoor enthusiasts are flocking in record numbers to lesser-known forests, deserts and mountains, where the rules of use have been lax and enforcement infrequent. The federal government has been struggling to come up with plans to accommodate the growing numbers of off-highway vehicles — mostly with proposed maps directing them toward designated trails — but all-terrain-vehicle users have started formidable lobbying campaigns when favorite trails have been left off the maps....
Mouse doesn’t deserve spot on protection list One might interpret the sparse turnout at last month’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service meeting on the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse as a sign of indifference and acquiescence. Or one might take it as a sign of resignation and silent protest — evidence that most citizens by now recognize the agency will do everything in its power to keep the animal on the endangered species list, no matter what contradictory evidence or arguments are made. It might also have had something to do with the meeting being scheduled for 4 o’clock in the afternoon on a Monday in the midst of the holiday season — a time when normal people are working, commuting, greeting returning school kids, Christmas shopping and leading busy lives. If it’s a choice between going to happy hour and sitting through another seemingly pointless act in this charade, most people quite wisely would choose the former. Unless a Preble’s mouse has infiltrated their homes and is gnawing away at the base of the Christmas tree, most people have higher priorities than attending another dog-and-pony show. Of course those who support the agency’s decision to keep the mouse listed in Colorado showed up. What else do professional agitators and advocates have to do? This isn’t just an interest of theirs: It’s their mission in life. They’ve turned their obsessions into a vocation. Most of the rest of us, even if we care, are sprinting to stay two steps ahead of the tax collector, so USFWS bio-crats can hold meetings and pretend to listen, but go on regulating as if this creature is on the brink of extinction. It obviously isn’t on the brink of extinction, judging from the agency’s proposal to lift federal protections in Wyoming but keep them in place in Colorado. One dubious subspecies has thus spawned two more: the Colorado Preble’s meadow jumping mouse and the Wyoming Preble’s meadow jumping mouse....
It's all Trew: Chisholm Trail was preferred path There were many reasons why the Chisholm Trail became the path for millions of cattle bound for Kansas railheads. First, it followed almost a straight line from San Antonio, Texas, to Abilene, Kan. Second, the famous path was almost level the entire distance with waves of abundant grasses for grazing. Third, the trail crossed ten major rivers, eight major creeks and a multitude of smaller creeks, assuring good water supply each day of a trail drive. The original trail began at Wichita, Kan., and ended at Counsel Grove, Okla. The Cattle Drive Era extended the old trail on south to Del Rio on the Rio Grande River and north to the rail yards at Abilene. The approximately 1,500-mile journey required four months of driving a herd if no problems arose. Very few drives were made without problems of some kind or another. There were two famous men named Chisholm. John Chisholm was a famous rancher operating in far west Texas and New Mexico, and was an associate of Charles Goodnight and Charles Loving who drove many trail herds north during the era. Jesse Chisholm, 1806-1868, established the Chisholm Trail yet was not a rancher and never drove trail herd cattle. He was an Indian trader, Army scout, guide and interpreter for both Indians and whites....

Blowin’ in the wind In sun-seared West Texas, oil and gas producers have driven the regional economy since the mid-1920s. Now there’s a new player in town—electricity-generating wind turbines. The turbines are sprouting by the hundreds on the low mesas that dot the desert landscape. Wind turbines came to the small West Texas town of McCamey with the millennium. Construction began in 2000, and the first machines came on line in 2001. Florida Power and Light (FPL) now runs 688 area turbines. “There are three things you’re going to have to find,” says Neil James, production manager for the FPL wind operations around McCamey. “That’s the wind, the transmission lines and the land. The McCamey area is very abundant in those three things.” McCamey, population 1,600, has always been blessed with petroleum resources, but the oil business boom-and-bust cycles have taken their toll. Oil production in Upton County dropped almost 25 percent from 1972 (when it was 12.5 million barrels) to 1999 (9.4 million barrels). Wind power has restored McCamey’s economy. It now bills itself as the “Wind Energy Capital of Texas.” “It was dying there for a little bit,” admits Alicia Sanchez, who heads McCamey’s economic development office. “Now taxes have increased 30 percent from 2004 to 2007. All we can see is positive.” Texans apparently agree. An FPL-commissioned study released earlier this year said 93 percent support further development of wind energy in the state. Texas’ other historic industry, ranching, loves the turbines. Rancher Ernest Woodward said he can’t imagine any harm coming to his livestock from nearby turbines. For some ranchers, wind turbines bring with them an economic incentive that oil and gas does not. “Wind power is a surface activity,” Doehn says. “With oil and gas the minerals are underneath, and a lot of ranchers don’t own the mineral rights. Many of them sold off the minerals in order to get enough money to retain the surface rights when times were tough.”....

A Divide as Wolves Rebound in a Changing West Sheltered for many years by federal species protection law, the gray wolves of the West are about to step out onto the high wire of life in the real world, when their status as endangered animals formally comes to an end early this year. The so-called delisting is scheduled to begin in late March, almost five years later than federal wildlife managers first proposed, mainly because of human tussles here in Wyoming over the politics of managing the wolves. Now changes during that time are likely to make the transition even more complicated. As the federal government and the State of Wyoming sparred in court over whether Wyoming’s hard-edged management plan was really a recipe for wolf eradication, as some critics said, the wolf population soared. (The reworked plan was approved by the federal government in November.) During that period, many parts of the human West were changing, too. Where unsentimental rancher attitudes — that wolves were unwelcome predators, threatening the cattle economy — once prevailed, thousands of newcomers have moved in, buying up homesteads as rural retreats, especially near Yellowstone National Park, where the wolves began their recovery in 1995 and from which they have spread far and wide. The result is that there are far more wolves to manage today than there once would have been five years ago — which could mean, biologists say, more killing of wolves just to keep the population in check. And that blood-letting might not be quite as popular as it once was....

FLE

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program. But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime. The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure. To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed. In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them....
AT&T engineer says Bush Administration sought to implement domestic spying within two weeks of taking office Nearly 1,300 words into Sunday's New York Times article revealing new details of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, the lawyer for an AT&T engineer alleges that "within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.” In a New Jersey federal court case, the engineer claims that AT&T sought to create a phone center that would give the NSA access to "all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through" a New Jersey network hub. The former AT&T employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Times said he took part in several discussions with agency officials about the plan. "The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review," Times reporters Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane wrote. "There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said."....
Individual privacy under threat in Europe and U.S., report says Individual privacy is under threat in the United States and across the European Union as governments introduce sweeping surveillance and information-gathering measures in the name of security and controlling borders, an international rights group has said in a report. Greece, Romania and Canada had the best privacy records of 47 countries surveyed by Privacy International, which is based in London. Malaysia, Russia and China were ranked worst. Both Britain and the United States fell into the lowest-performing group of "endemic surveillance societies." "The general trend is that privacy is being extinguished in country after country," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. "Even those countries where we expected ongoing strong privacy protection, like Germany and Canada, are sinking into the mire." In the United States, the administration of President George W. Bush has come under fire from civil liberties groups for its domestic wiretapping program, which allows monitoring, without a warrant, of international phone calls and e-mail messages involving people suspected of having terrorist links. "The last five years has seen a litany of surveillance initiatives," Davies said. He said little had changed since the Democrats took control of Congress a year ago....
Police in thought pursuit The Pope had his Index of Forbidden Books. Japan had its Thought Police against subversive or dangerous ideologies. And the United States Congress and President Bush have learned nothing from those examples. Congress is perched to enact the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 20007 (Act)," probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, the bill passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a 404-6 vote under a rule suspension that curtailed debate. To borrow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, the First Amendment should not distract Congress from doing important business. The Senate companion bill (S. 1959), sponsored by Susan Collins, Maine Republican, has encountered little opposition. Especially in an election year, senators crave every opportunity to appear tough on terrorism. Few if any care about or understand either freedom of expression or the Thought Police dangers of S. 1959. Former President John Quincy Adams presciently lamented: "Democracy has no forefathers, it looks to no posterity, it is swallowed up in the present and thinks of nothing but itself." Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example, opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. The Act will inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further "violent radicalization;" and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list. Political discourse will be chilled and needed challenges to conventional wisdom will flag. There are no better examples of sinister congressional folly....
FBI Dusts Off Famous Case of D.B. Cooper Skyjacking The FBI says it has released new information it hopes will jog someone's memory and help them determine who the legendary skyjacker Dan Cooper, who bailed out of a commercial jet over southwest Washington in 1971, really was. The man calling himself Dan Cooper, also known as D.B. Cooper, boarded a jet in Portland for Seattle the night of Nov, 24, 1971 and commandeered it, claiming he had dynamite. In Seattle he demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes and demanded to be flown to Mexico. Shortly before reaching the Oregon border, it is believed, he jumped with two of the chutes, one of which was a trainer and sewn shut. Agents say they are almost certain he didn't survive. "Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open," Seattle-based agent Larry Carr said. Carr is taking a new look at the decades-old mystery. On Monday the FBI posted pictures they say are probably closer to what Cooper looked like. "Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? We're providing new information and pictures and asking for your help in solving the case," the FBI said in a statement on Monday....

Ranch Of The Week: Major Cattle Company The Major Cattle company horse program began back in the 1930's with Mike's grandfather, Malcomb Major. The ranch was north of Magdalena, New Mexico, and it all began with calvary remount studs. In the 1950's Mike's dad, Buddy Major, bought a Leo and Hardtwist stud to up grade the horse herd for the nine ranches he had put together in New Mexico and Colorado. Buddy ran a lot of his horses on the track and had some of the best cow and rope horses around. By the late 1970's Mike was breaking most all of the colts, but desired to raise his own herd. Mike tried to buy a handful of fillies that he thought were the best of the bunch, but his dad wouldn't sell them to him. The only way Mike was going to get those mares was to break and ride five mules Buddy had purchased. Mike really didn't want to break those five mules, with all the good colts they had around, but it was the only chance he had to get Buddy to trade him for the mares. Mike really wanted the fillies, and he finally did get them, But says now, "You couldn't give me a mule today even if it had a thousand dollar bill tied to it's neck." These were the first brood mares in Mikes mare band. The first stud Mike owned was a black horse named Leovada Chick, with Leo and Three chicks breeding. In 1982 Mike ventured out on his own starting his horse operation in Vequita, New Mexico. Here Mike traded for another horse, a Mito Bars, and Sugar Bars stud. In 1989 another purchase was made, a gray stud named Joys Double Feature, Smoky. He had Beduino, Rebel Cause, and Truckle Feature breeding. Smoky was an outstanding rope and cow horse, anything you wanted from him he would give you everything he had. He was an excellent stallion with a lot of speed and cow, who won several ranch rodeos, and ropings. Several of Smokey's fillies are still in the brood mare band today being crossed on the cow breed studs. In 1990 he purchased the Flying A ranch in Fowler, Colorado, where he currently still lives. The ranch got it's name from the previous owners, Gene Autry, and Harry Knight. This is where there rodeo company was ran. In 2000 Mike and Holly were married, and it didn't take long for Mike to realize that she was just as crazy about good horses as he is. Owning, and riding several good Doc O' Dynamite horses previously Mike and Holly made there next purchase in Montana at John Scott's dispersal sale. Smart Whiskey Doc, and Dynamite Bravo Doc were purchased. Then in 2001 Mike and Holly went to the Forth Worth futurity where they purchased a Playgun colt, and a Playgun mare. At the next sale Mike was watching the horses warm up, he looked around, and dang if Holly hadn’t just bought another stud, a Doc's Stylish Oak. Still wanting a Smart Little Lena stud for there horse program; in 2003 Mike and Holly went to Virginia where they purchased Love a Little Devil, an own son of Smart Little Lena and out of a Colonel Freckles mare. Although some of their mares still trace back to some of the first horses raised by the major cattle company, 70 years ago, Mike and Holly have purchased several more cow bred mares, and continue to upgrade the horse program. They have tried to bring some of the best blood lines into this part of the country that you can get. Mike and Holly are very excited to get the crosses with these studs, and think that the colts have the ability and mind to go in any direction a performance horse could go. The hope is that people who buy colts from us, or breed to our stallions are as happy with the horses as we are, and come back again. Although the horses are a huge part of the ranch, the ranch is still a working cattle ranch. Mike and Holly work hard running a large cattle operation of yearlings every year on the Flying A Ranch, and a large cow calf operation on the Rio Puerco in Belen, New Mexico. Like the horses, the cattle have always been a main part of all the ranches. In the future they believe, anyone seeing an animal with the stik horse brand will know the quality and care that stands behind the mark.

Wolf Attack So, yesterday a friend an I took our families out sliding and ended up having a little more excitement than we had anticipated. There we were having a good time......Rod was towing 3 of the kids (2 four yr olds and a 3 yr old) on a tobogan behind the quad, at the bottom of the hill. I was in the Argo with my 3 month old at the other end of the hill. Rods wife was warming up in the truck with there 2 yr old and my wife was at the top of the hill with our dog...........we had no idea that all hell was about to break loose......... Two wolves appear out of nowere............and they are heading toward the "bait" dragging behind the quad.... at first I had no idea what was up, but I heard my wife start yelling. I look up at her and see the dog break out of her arms and start running like mad, diagonally down the hill toward the truck (the direction Rod was heading with the kids). Rod sees the wolves coming, just as he is getting close to the truck, he speeds up a little, but can't go too hard for fear that one of the kids might fall off. As he gets to the truck the wolves are about 20 feet from the kids, on the tobogan. Rod bolts back toward the kids, just as my dog "Shadow" intercepts the lead wolf. Teeth flash and the battle is started............Rods wife leaps from the truck and starts throwing kids inside, as Rod grabs a shovel from the back of the truck, smashing the shovel blade off as he goes to help the dog. Second wolf has joined the fight, and although Shadow is a very heafty 120lbs+ Rotty Cross, he is not faring all too well. The wolves break off as Rod gets close, but they are not afraid, they circle around and stay about 50 feet out of reach....Click on the title to read the whole post and see photos. Hat tip to Wolf Crossing