Save the jaguar Consider nature, science and politics. The beauty of nature is enhanced only by its gee-whiz factor. For example, in addition to being drop-dead gorgeous, each jaguar has a unique pattern of spots. Scientists turn that uniqueness into valuable data. For example, biologists who use remote-sensor cameras to document jaguar visits to southern Arizona can identify individual animals by the pattern of their spots. They know jaguars still prowl a small part of their historic range in Arizona. Politics should provide a way to protect and enhance those jaguar populations. After all, the Endangered Species Act exists because Americans care about conservation. But politics can block wildlife-management goals for unscientific reasons. For example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's announcement that it will not pursue a recovery plan for the jaguar looks more like an easy way out than a sound scientific decision....
How government makes things worse WHAT DO ethanol and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Each is a good reminder of that most powerful of unwritten decrees, the Law of Unintended Consequences - and of the all-too-frequent tendency of solutions imposed by the state to exacerbate the harms they were meant to solve. Take ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel made (primarily) from corn. Ethanol has been touted as a weapon in the fashionable crusade against climate change, because when mixed with gasoline, it modestly reduces emissions of carbon dioxide. Reasoning that if a little ethanol is good, a lot must be better, Congress and the Bush administration recently mandated a sextupling of ethanol production, from the 6 billion gallons produced last year to 36 billion by 2022. But now comes word that expanding ethanol use is likely to mean not less CO2 in the atmosphere, but more. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline by 20 percent - the estimate Congress relied on in requiring the huge increase in production - ethanol use will cause such emissions to nearly double over the next 30 years. The problem, laid out in two new studies in the journal Science, is that it takes a lot of land to grow biofuel feedstocks such as corn, and as forests or grasslands are cleared for crops, large amounts of CO2 are released. Diverting land in this fashion also eliminates "carbon sinks," which absorb atmospheric CO2. Bottom line: The government's ethanol mandate will generate a "carbon debt" that will take decades, maybe centuries, to pay off. Actually, that's not quite the bottom line. Jacking up ethanol production causes other problems, too. Deforestation. Loss of biodiversity. Depletion of aquifers. More ethanol even means more hunger: As more of the US corn crop goes for ethanol, the price of corn has been soaring, a calamity for Third World countries in which corn is a major dietary staple....
Southern Baptist leaders shift position on climate change Several prominent leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention said Monday that Baptists have a moral responsibility to combat climate change -- a major shift within a denomination that just last year cast doubt on human responsibility for global warming. Forty-six influential members of the Southern Baptist Convention, including three of its past four presidents, criticized their denomination in a statement Monday for being "too timid" in confronting global warming. "Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed," the statement says. "We can do better." The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, adopted a resolution last year urging Baptists to "proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research." The resolution said "many scientists reject the idea of catastrophic human-induced global warming." On Monday, however, dozens of Southern Baptist leaders expressed a different view....
Forest Service stock found dead Six U.S. Forest Service stock animals that went missing in January were found dead earlier this week, according to an agency news release. Forest Service employees have searched for 10 horses and mules owned by the Forest Service and four privately owned stock animals since mid-January, when their absence was noticed during a routine inspection. The missing horses and mules were part of a herd of about 135 animals wintering on pasture land near Choteau. Employees of the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Ranger District found the 14 animals Wednesday on Chute Mountain. Ten of the animals were dead, including four privately owned stock animals. The causes of death are unknown, but appear to be starvation, dehydration, exposure or some combination of those factors, the news release states. Forest Service employees, ranch hands and other volunteers worked throughout the night Wednesday to clear a 1.5-mile trail through deep snow so the four surviving animals could get to a lower elevation....
Ninth Circuit: Still crazy after all these years Once again, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal has gone off the deep end. They ruled the United States Forest Service should not have allowed expedited logging in the National Forests, although Congress approved the process. (This process calls for "thinning" certain areas by taking only a few trees at a time from a given region). The three judge panel said the Forest Service failed to, " properly analyze the rule, causing 'irreparable injury' by allowing more than 1.2 million acres of national forest land to be logged and burned each year without studying the ecological impacts." The Forest Service told the court they took the actions to provide a secure "fire safe" environment, using a program approved by Congress that allowed selective logging (a process where a small number of trees in a given area are cut to thin the forest land so fire will not spread rapidly). The Forest Service told the court their actions saved thousands of homes in Southern California during last year's San Diego fires, a statement that fell on deaf ears. Judges on the "Ninth Circus" have shown a callous disregard for the welfare for the people and critters who reside in forested areas of the west including those of us who live in Paradise. The Ninth Circuit Court is the most overturned one in the nation, and hopefully this decision will be quickly reversed....
Politics of powder in Aspen's backcountry It’s an average day on an Aspen Skiing Co. powder tour when Bob Perlmutter points out a pair of snowmobilers cruising into a closed area. The two powder poachers on sleds are oblivious to the dozen customers in the snowcat sneering through the windows, and Perlmutter, the tour’s manager, is not about to turn around to verbally berate a few law-breaking snowmobilers. “There you can see snowmobiles go right by a bunch of signs that say, ‘No snowmobiles beyond this point,’” Perlmutter said. “That’s part of the issue.” Only the skiing company is allowed to use motorized vehicles to bring skiers to the powder on Richmond Ridge, a mix of public and private land roughly twice the size of Aspen Mountain. In the Wild West of Richmond Ridge — Aspen’s closest and most accessible backcountry skiing — the rules don’t always make a difference. Furthermore, enforcing and managing those rules seems to be less and less of a reality....
Government denies protected status for wolverines in mainland U.S. Wolverines in the contiguous United States were denied federal protection Monday at a time when new studies suggest they could become extinct within 45 years if climate change eliminates the snow zone they depend upon. Scientists say they are still puzzling out new revelations and investigating unanswered questions about wolverines' year-round dependence on remote mountains that have a deep spring snowpack, from denning, foraging and mortality to traveling “superhighways” in search of mates. But just as salmon, polar bears and other species are tied to the landscape in ways that are both obvious and mysterious - and increasingly affected by humans - the wolverine has found its niche threatened as snow coverage diminishes. Environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1995 and 2000 and filed a lawsuit in 2006 in an effort to list wolverines in the Lower 48 states under the Endangered Species Act. The agency said Monday that wolverines do not warrant federal protection because they aren't geographically or genetically separated from wolverine populations in Canada and Alaska and thus aren't significant to the species' survival....
Mountain biking gets pinched If you’re a mountain biker, the Telluride Trail offers a grueling climb to the gondola, followed by a ripping, brain-boiling descent back to town. The Ridge Trail is a tooth-chattering ride down to Mountain Village. And Telluride’s annual Full Tilt race is the area’s premiere mountain-biking event. But get ready to say goodbye to all that. Citing safety concerns, the U.S. Forest Service wants to bar mountain bikers from the Telluride and Ridge trails this summer. And the Telluride Ski Resort pulled its support from the Full Tilt race, a three-day contest that draws about 1,000 people to town. “It’s just really discouraging,” said Dan Goss, who’s part of the San Miguel Bike Alliance, a local mountain bikers’ group. Mountain biking is a thorny issue on the south side of Telluride, where helixes of legal and illegal trails crisscross Telski property and federal land....
Forest Service driver’s blood had pot, alcohol Investigations into the exact cause and repercussions of an accident at the 25th annual Mount Taylor Quadrathlon are still in progress. New Mexico State Police Trooper Craig Vandiver, on the scene when a U.S. Forest Service truck went out of control and damaged 23 high-end bicycles, nearly striking numerous participants, volunteers and spectators, said in a state police report that Craig Trinkle, the driver, appeared to be still in the throes of a seizure when officers reached the truck. When Vandiver opened the truck to turn off the engine, Trinkle was disoriented and abnormally stiff, the report said. Medical reports obtained by court order revealed the Trinkle had some level of alcohol and marijuana in his system in addition to prescription drugs. The level of intoxicating substances has not been released. Based on the medical evidence, Trinkle was arrested and ordered to appear in magistrate court in Grants on March 13. Chuck Hagerdon, district ranger for the forest service, said the information given him indicated that Trinkle tested negative in a “breath-alyzer” test at the scene and his office is waiting to hear more specific results....
Bush Administration Refuses to Protect Endangered Species Habitat in Michigan and Missouri National Forests Environmental groups challenged the federal government’s decision to exclude all national forest land from a recent endangered species ruling in federal court today. The suit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Center for Biological Diversity, Northwoods Wilderness Recovery, Michigan Nature Association, Door County Environmental Council (DCEC) and the Habitat Education Center, charges that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s designation of critical habitat for the Hine’s emerald dragonfly violates the federal Endangered Species Act by excluding all 13,000 acres in Michigan’s Hiawatha National Forest and the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. While much of the dragonfly’s most important habitat lies on these national forest lands, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service chose not to extend them full legal protections, arguing that the Forest Service would be more cooperative if the National Forest land were excluded. “These striking insects are named for their amazing green eyes. But those good looks will not be enough to protect them as they cling to habitats in Michigan and Missouri, thanks to one governmental agency that does not want to hold another to its legal obligations,” said John Buse, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity....I like green eyes, but on a dragonfly?
Lynx prefer dense forests over sparse landscape, study finds In the largest study of Canada lynx in the Lower 48 states, researchers in western Montana have found that the rare cat prefers to make its dens under downed logs deep within mature, dense forests. Earlier research in Canada focused on the structure of lynx dens, but the new study explored the landscape surrounding dens in the contiguous United States, where scientists are in the early stages of understanding the elusive feline. The study's results suggest that mechanically thinning old forests and clearing away deadfall - rather than maintaining a mosaic of natural conditions - creates poor habitat for lynx, a threatened species, and their primary prey, snowshoe hares. The results come at a time when federal wildlife managers have proposed to dramatically expand the amount of critical habitat for lynx, which were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2000 in the Lower 48 states. The proposed critical habitat is in Montana, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Washington state and Wyoming....
State believes disease responsible for big horn die-off The Nevada Department of Wildlife has been investigating an apparent bighorn sheep die off in the Hay’s Canyon Range, a chain of mountains in northwestern Nevada. The news of a possible disease event in this area came from a 2007 bighorn sheep tag-holder after the hunter observed what appeared to be a sick ewe that was found dead a few hours later. Game wardens retrieved the carcass, which was submitted for veterinary diagnostic work-up and a thorough necropsy examination. The results of the examination, backed up by various laboratory results, confirmed that the ewe died from severe bacterial pneumonia. With funding from Nevada Bighorns Unlimited, the state performed a follow-up aerial survey of the Hay’s Canyon area immediately following the discovery of the first dead ewe and only seven live sheep were observed....
Land Exchange Could Bring Jobs To Santa Teresa Union Pacific railroad's freight volume has increased up to 300 percent in the last 12 years. That is causing the company to target land between El Paso and Los Angeles to create a new fueling and transfer station. New Mexico has made some land in Santa Teresa more attractive. The Union Pacific Railroad hopes to open a rail yard near the Santa Teresa airport to become more efficient in the west. The land is currently owned by the Bureau of Land Management or BLM, and it's working out a deal with the state. The BLM will give up land just west of the airport. In exchange, the BLM will get land in other parts of New Mexico. "When we pick up these lands from BLM we're giving them choice lands in Northern Dona Ana County," said Pat Lyons, NM Commissioner of public lands. Lyons said when that happens, Union Pacific will open its rail yard on 780 acres, bringing up to 350 jobs and a $300 million investment in the economy....If BLM owns the land and Union Pacific needs it, why doesn't BLM just sell it to them? Why go through the huge cost of this land exchange, which even includes lands in Chavez County? This may have as much to do with the lesser prairie chicken as Union Pacific.
Full stream ahead for Lower Owens As blizzards whipped across nearby High Sierra peaks, ecologist William Platts lifted off in a helicopter here and headed north, about 1,000 feet above a river that looked as if it were throwing a tantrum. Beneath him, the squiggle of green was overflowing its banks, inundating a patchwork of oxbows, marshlands, forests and sagebrush. Culverts were nearly filled to capacity, and mats of dislodged tules and muck hurtled down the river. "I really like what I see down there," the 80-year-old Platts told the chopper pilot through the headphone radio. "But we'll need three or four more seasonal pulses to kick-start this ecosystem into gear." The Lower Owens River has flooded for millenniums, but this flood was man-made, part of the most ambitious river restoration project in the West. The river mostly disappeared when the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1913, but 15 months ago engineers began redirecting some aqueduct water into the channel....
Wolf blamed for Two Dot sheep killings Wildlife officials confirmed Friday that a wolf killed five sheep and injured five more near Two Dot. On March 5, a landowner reported seeing a black wolf near his flock. After investigating, USDA Wildlife Services officials concluded that a wolf had attacked the sheep. It is not known if the wolf was alone, and other evidence of wolves in the area was not found. No known wolf packs have been documented in the Two Dot area. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials plan to catch the animal, fit it with a radio collar and release it for further observation. Fish, Wildlife and Parks could not be reached Monday night for more details.
Grouse hunt recommended Biologists with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department recommend that the state continue with an 11-day hunting season for sage grouse this year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether sage grouse should be protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. A federal judge in Idaho recently condemned the agency for failing to use the best available science when it decided not to list the bird two years ago. In January 2005, the federal agency determined the chicken-sized bird was not in danger of extinction. The bird's traditional habitat stretches across the West, from eastern California and Washington to Colorado, North Dakota and southern Canada. Biologists with the Wyoming game department, as well as some conservationists, say degradation of the birds' habitat, not hunting, poses the most serious threat to the species' long-term survival. The biologists are recommending the state stick to hunting regulations nearly identical to last year's....
Music that everyone can dance to Country music in a rural honky-tonk inspires writer Rebecca Solnit to ponder the class and cultural underpinnings of the “crisis of environmentalism,” which has caused so much green soul-searching in recent years. “One Nation Under Elvis: An environmentalism for us all,” in the latest issue of Orion Magazine, explores the divide between urban and rural, left and right, environmentalist and rancher in musical tastes. Solnit recalls enviros she’s known who seemed more offended by rural culture and lifestyle (and music) than by any actual damage that culture was doing to the land, or liberals who scorn backward rednecks for their religion and politics. There’s the other side, of course, like people wearing t-shirts that say WRANGLERS (Western Ranchers Against No-Good Leftist Environmental Radical Shitheads). It begins to sound cliché, but of course there’s common ground. Not always, but often, these are artificial divides that we have missed important opportunities to bridge....
The scandal in Boulder that won’t go away The scandal that people are still talking about in Boulder, Colo., isn’t the murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey; it’s about a rich couple “stealing” land from their neighbors -- and getting away with it in court. The latest tidbit involving Dick McLean, a former Boulder Mayor and district court judge, and his wife, an attorney, was revealed recently by local police. It seems that in December, someone sent the couple a package enclosing bullets and a threatening letter (“Back in the old West we had a way to deal with your kind…”). Police said they’ve gotten nowhere on finding the perpetrator, but as a sign of how contentious the issue remains, several online commentators in the Boulder Daily Camera insisted that the couple had sent the package to themselves to garner sympathy. You might wonder why this story about a pricey lot on the ironically named Hardscrabble Drive could rouse such passion. But the land, surrounded by publicly owned open space and spectacular mountain views, is one of the few remaining undeveloped parcels in the neighborhood, where homes sell upwards of $1.2 million. Don and Susie Kirlin have owned the lot since the mid-1980s as part of their retirement plan. In the meantime, they live less than a half-mile away. Like lots of property owners, the Kirlins had never heard of the legal doctrine known as adverse possession before it struck home....
California Regents Sue Animal Activists It was late into the night when 25 people in ski masks descended on professor Dario Ringach's family home. Pounding on the door, frightening his small children, they screamed into megaphones, "Animal killer! We know where you live! We will never give up!" And they apparently meant it. That year, 2006, according to court documents, animal rights activists launched a summer-long campaign of harassment against Ringach, an assistant professor of psychology and neurobiology at the University of California at Los Angeles and other scientists who conduct research with laboratory animals. They hurled firecrackers at his house in the middle of the night and planted Molotov-cocktail-like explosives at other faculty houses, threatening to burn them to the ground. UCLA hired private security, but Ringach feared for his family. "Effectively immediately, I am no longer doing animal research," he finally wrote in an e-mail to his persecutors, pleading to be left alone. "Please don't bother my family anymore." The University of California regents have responded by suing UCLA Primate Freedom, the Animal Liberation Brigade, the Animal Liberation Front and five people allegedly affiliated with them. It is a tactic that the regents successfully employed nine years ago. The regents hope to win a permanent injunction similar to one granted against Last Chance for Animals in 1989. But some experts note that the regents now are battling more violent, Internet-savvy foes who thrive in online communities, post faculty "targets" on Web sites and upload how-to guides for their attacks....
Beef industry reeling from rising feed costs With 11,000 hungry mouths to feed, breakfast at the Weschenfelder Feedlot in Shepherd is measured in tons. Serving time's at 7 a.m. The cattle head to the trough where Dan Weschenfelder doles out the grub for three hours straight. Lately, the dinner bill's been getting bigger. Corn prices, which have more than doubled largely because of ethanol production, have the beef industry staggering. The price per pound for beef isn't rising nearly as quickly as feed costs, and nationally some ranchers are reducing the size of their herds. That reduction of cows to slaughter was the main reason cited by the world's largest meat producer, Tyson Foods, for shuttering a Kansas packing plant in January, leaving 1,500 middle-class workers jobless. Corn costs even drew the attention last week of President Bush, who told ethanol producers that they needed to tap other biofuel sources. The country now produces four times as much ethanol, roughly 6.4 billion gallons in 2007, as it made eight years ago. Much of that fuel is corn-based. Weschenfelder and others in the cattle industry contend they'd be better off if biofuel subsidies weren't driving up corn costs. "Corn is up and it's staying up and, of course, everybody knows that it happened when they started this ethanol stuff," Weschenfelder said. "Yes, it's my preferred feed. I feed up to 400 tons a day, depending on what we're doing. Right now we're feeding 75 tons a day, and corn's $225 a ton. Three years ago, I fed corn for $80 a ton."....

Kissing Off Canada What country has the world's largest oil reserves? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Nigeria? Venezuela? Wrong on all counts. The answer is Canada. And our neighbor to the north is worried we don't want it. Canada has an estimated 1.6 trillion barrels of oil on its territory, much of it locked in tough-to-excavate tar sands in the province of Alberta. By comparison, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has an estimated 270 billion barrels left. It isn't even close. Yet, according to the Financial Times of London, Canada's government recently sent U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates a letter of warning that it might not be able to sell the U.S. any of its oil, which the Pentagon desperately needs for national defense. For that, you can thank the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, passed with great gusto and self-righteousness by the Democratic Congress. Under Section 526 of that law, tar sands are considered to be an alternative fuel. But the law requires oil sold to the U.S. government and produced from alternative sources to emit fewer greenhouse gases than oil produced from conventional crude sources. That's a big problem. Estimates show that removing the highly sticky, coagulated oil found in tar sands produces as much as five times the amount of greenhouse gas as pumping from a conventional well. "Classifying the oil sands as a nonconventional fuel," said Tristan Landry, a spokesman for Canada's Embassy in Washington, "would unnecessarily complicate the integrated Canada-U.S. energy relationship." "Unnecessarily complicate" is putting it politely. Really, it's like someone dying of thirst but refusing to drink from a burbling spring just feet away. It makes absolutely no sense....

Texas ranchers, Army work together Cattle and cannon fire are a poor mix, but ranch families and the Army have been mixing them together on 200,000 acres at Fort Hood, Texas, for more than 50 years. Home of the III Corps and the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood is the Army's largest armor training post, covering 217,000 acres just north of Killeen, Texas. The post was established in the early days of World War II when the Army was racing to prepare for war overseas and needed training bases quickly. So the War Department condemned the ranches and farms of some 300 families to create then-Camp Hood in the cedar-covered hill country between Austin and Waco. The Army expanded the post again during the Korean War (1950-53). "My family lost land both times," said Steve Manning, a rancher and member of the Central Texas Cattlemen's Association, an exclusive group of ranchers whose families were evicted to make Fort Hood. "When the Army expanded the post during the Korean War, it reached out to the landowners and agreed to let them continue to graze cattle on the land. It was sort of a package deal and we've been doing that since 1954." In Southeastern Colorado, the Army and area ranchers have been at odds for two years now over a plan to expand the 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site northeast of Trinidad....
Indian River County Ranchers might get $9.5 million to settle land dispute Veteran cattle rancher Pat Corrigan says he and his family would rather accept millions of dollars from regional water managers to settle a flooding dispute than fight public sentiment against a proposed land trade. "We just got to where we said to heck with it, we've got to get this over with some time," Corrigan said Friday. Last summer, the Corrigans were ready to add almost 1,300 public-owned acres, known as Sand Lake, to their 9,000-acre ranch near Fellsmere and get a check for $657,000 in tax dollars from the St. Johns River Water Management District. The district was going to get 460 flooded acres from Corrigan's ranch in the trade — but also avoid lawsuits the family was considering after years of district operations flooding parts of the ranch. Indian River County officials filed a legal challenge in October with Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet, arguing the 1,300 acres of conservation land should not be classified as surplus and allowed to be traded away. Corrigan said the family decided to take a different approach last fall after tiring of public criticism and the slow progress of the deal....
Compensation sought by families over easements Does a property owner have rights to just compensation and clear title when railroad easements on one’s land are abandoned? Such is the question posed to the Federal Court of Claims in Washington, D.C., by several Cochise County families as they fight a federal law that took railroad easements across their lands and placed them in a state of limbo as the railroad and interested parties negotiated over the strips of land that could become public trails. The Rails-to-Trails Act was an amendment to earlier federal legislation that was initiated to put a hold on abandoned railroad line beds so the tracks could be replaced and service could resume if the railroad industry recovered. Railbanking, as it is called, allowed organizations and local governments to snap the rail beds up for use in the interim as public trails, said attorney Thor Hearne, from the firm Lathrop & Gage, L.C., in St. Louis, Mo., who is representing the families involved. Unfortunately, the law did not include compensation to the property owners for the public’s use of their lands. Over the past 20 years, the government has been the defendant in a number of civil suits filed by property owners who wanted just compensation for the loss of their lands. In many instances, they won their suits. Hearne cites a case known as Presault II that went before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in which the justices concluded that “the taking that resulted from the establishment of a recreational trail is properly laid at the doorstep of the federal government … That it was a valued public use is not the issue. We have a straightforward taking of private property for public use for which compensation must be paid.”....
Biologist withdraws rabbit claim A Montana biologist has withdrawn his claim in a recent study that a rabbit species has disappeared from the Yellowstone area. Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said Thursday that he has been contacted by at least six biologists and naturalists refuting his conclusions about the white-tailed jack rabbit. He said they provided photos and anecdotal evidence the rabbit still lives in the area. "Yes, there were some left," Berger said. "I've got egg on the face, absolutely." Berger's study, published in January in the science journal Oryx, claimed the once-common rabbit had disappeared from the Yellowstone region sometime last century, for unknown reasons. His findings were written about by news organizations, including The Associated Press. On Thursday, Berger said he now believes the rabbits survive in small numbers within Yellowstone National Park and nearby Gardiner. He provided a copy of a letter he said will correct the record in Oryx's April issue....
Elk dying from eating lichen Scientists say elk are dying again in the Red Rim area of southern Wyoming, apparently from eating lichen. A biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said three elk have died in the Red Rim southwest of Rawlins in the last week. The three were possibly poisoned from eating a rare form of lichen that causes them to lose the use of their legs. Scientists say they have not seen any hint that a catastrophic die-off is looming similar to one that killed hundreds of elk in the area in 2004. Three hundred animals from an 800-elk herd died after eating lichen in the same area four years ago. Scientists later determined that the lichen can kill elk, even though antelope can eat it with no ill effects.
Prairie Chicken Festival set for April 11-13 Once a year, the small eastern New Mexico community of Milnesand hosts the annual High Plains Prairie Chicken Festival, drawing spectators from near and far, to watch the mating dance of the lesser prairie chicken. Registration is now being taken for the seventh annual High Plains Prairie Chicken Festival which is slated for April 11-13. The three-day event centers around the lesser prairie chicken, an icon of the Southern Great Plains, as it congregates on traditional breeding grounds called “leks.,” according to a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish news release. Events will include birdwatching, talks with ranchers and biologists working to conserve prairie chickens, and education about the Southern Great Plains ecosystem through tours of prairie dog ecology, archeology, plant identification and playa lakes. In addition, field tours will be conducted on plants, soils and land use and there will be guided bird tours. Information will also be offered on photo tips, reptiles and amphibians and grassland habitat and restoration....Now ain't that something. A three day festival to watch birds screw.
Rosebud tribe tells feds to remove ferrets Several years ago, the federal government placed some endangered black-footed ferrets on Rosebud Sioux tribal land. Now, the tribe wants the feds to take them back. The tribal council has passed a resolution that tells two federal agencies to remove the animals and reimburse the tribe for its expenses. The council's action apparently involves its objection to a federal investigation of the tribe's prairie dog poisoning program. Prairie dogs are the ferrets' main food source but ranchers dislike prairie dogs for the damage they do to rangeland. The tribe's resolution says the federal government is threatening to prosecute tribal employees or agents carrying out the tribe's prairie dog management plan despite a lack of evidence that prairie dog poisoning killed any ferrets. Federal officials generally refuse comment.
Yellowstone bison killings may set record The number of Yellowstone National Park bison killed through disease management and hunting is on track to hit an all-time high this winter, after another 87 animals were captured Friday. The planned slaughter of those animals would bring to 1,090 the number of bison killed by government agencies and hunters this winter. The previous high was 1,084, in 1997. Wandering bison worry ranchers because many of the park's bison have brucellosis. If the disease spreads to cattle, it can cause cows to abort their calves. The mounting death toll in Yellowstone this winter underscores the difficulty government agencies have had in finding a lasting solution to the disease. A state-federal agreement signed in 2000 was intended to give bison more room to roam outside the park over time, but that has largely not happened....
Bringing in the Harvest Throughout the year, America’s farmers work hard to produce the staples of life – food, fiber, renewable forest products and crops for homegrown biofuels. While National Agriculture Day, observed on March 20, celebrates farmers’ and ranchers’ contributions to American society, many farmers will tell you the true celebration can’t really start till their job is done. The job? Making sure as many Americans as possible have the opportunity to enjoy the bounty produced on our nation’s farms and ranches. That’s why Farm Bureau and America’s Second Harvest – our nation’s premier network of food banks – team up on a program called Harvest for All. Through Harvest for All, spearheaded by Farm Bureau’s Young Farmer and Rancher participants, farmers across the United States work together to donate food, funds and people power to move us closer to reaching the goal of a hunger-free America....
Cattle Rustlers Still Thriving Out West Two guys and a four-door sedan. That's all it took for cattle rustlers to relieve dairy owner Pete Wiersma of three valuable calves. Once the province of outlaws and the bane of hardscrabble ranchers who grazed their cattle on the open range, cattle rustling has never gone away. Like the livestock industry, it's only gotten more efficient. In general, cattle rustling tends to increase whenever beef prices are high, said Larry Hayhurst, head of the Idaho State Patrol Division of brands. Because the price of cattle feed has been relatively high this year — making the cattle more expensive to raise and lowering the potential profit — the theft reports should be on a downswing. But in rural dairy regions — where milk cows can nearly always fetch a high price and methamphetamine use is becoming as much a part of the landscape as grain silos and milking barns — the rustling reports seem to stay fairly constant. The Idaho State Police gets between 300 and 500 reports of lost or missing cattle a year, Hayhurst said. The numbers have been consistent for about a decade. "Most of the rustlers are stealing for the money, the profit — whether it be to put food on the table or to trade for drugs," said Idaho State Police brand inspector Sean McCarthy....
Rural veterinarians scarce in New Mexico On a freezing morning last week, Michael Callahan was driving in the ice-packed Pecos Canyon when his truck started sliding backward down a steep hill. The longtime veterinarian put the truck in park, "but it just kept sliding," he said. Callahan finally had to chain the truck to a tree and call his client for help. Eventually, he got around to the reason he was out in the cold to begin with: castrating a horse. It's all in a day for Callahan and other rural veterinarians in New Mexico. Their patients run the gamut from hamsters to cows. They never know what to expect from day to day. "I enjoy what I do. I like the rural practice where it's always different," said Callahan, who owns the Pecos Valley Veterinary Hospital. But there are fewer rural veterinarians like him in the state and around the West. Eight New Mexico counties have no veterinarians, according to the American Veterinary Medicine Association. Six of the counties, with at least 25,000 or more cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens, have no veterinarians who work on food animals....
Longhorns in Luverne Saturday marked the fifth annual Prairie Rock Longhorn Sale in Luverne, and buyers and sellers came from as far as Montana and Wyoming for the opportunity to sell some stock and acquire new additions for their herds. Conducted at the Luverne Livestock Auction Barn, the special Texas Longhorn sale drew roughly 300 head of cattle. John Siebenahler, owner of Prairie Rock Ranch in rural Luverne, organizes the sale. Siebenahler raises longhorn cattle in both southwest Minnesota and South Dakota and said he probably has the largest longhorn herd in the Upper Midwest with close to 500 head. On the auction block were an assortment of bulls, cows, breeding heifers and feeder steers — including some older trophy steers with horn lengths of 90 to 110 inches from tip to tip, Siebenahler said. “We get consignors and buyers in the Upper Midwest, from Wyoming and Montana to Wisconsin, southern Iowa and Nebraska,” he added. “The biggest call is for ropers — people use them for roping or penning.”....
10-day ride boosts Cracker horse's chance for Florida honor Bless the Florida Cracker horse. Last week, a pair of horsemen finished up a 10-day ride to raise awareness about the breed -- and boosted a campaign to designate them the state's official Heritage Horse. Billy Ray Hunter and Carlton Dudley followed the path of Hernando de Soto, leaving from the Tampa area. The Cracker horse is genetically linked to the Spanish horses that made landfall with de Soto. While Hunter and Dudley were joined by riders and the media along the way, it would have been neat if the trail could have passed through Osceola and Polk counties. The Cracker horse owes a bunch to Osceola's ranchers -- including members of the Bronson, Whaley and Partin families. The small, agile horses hark back to days when the range was open. The horse was first introduced to Florida by Spanish explorers and were among the first horses to reach the continental United States. They are known for their unusual strength and endurance, herding instinct, quickness and fast walking gait....
Marlins take heat over hog-hunting hurler Could be a long season for the Florida Marlins, and not just because of the expected losses. The environmental group that saw 27 of its members arrested last month in a protest against FPL is telling the Marlins they need to rein in pitcher Logan Kensing, or else. What did the reliever do? The off-season rancher finds it rewarding to track wild hogs and coyotes with a helicopter hovering over his native Texas, then gun them down from above. "We want the Marlins to make him agree to stop," said the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition's co-chair, attorney Barry Silver. On Saturday, he sent a strongly worded letter to Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. "They have 10 days from Monday to reprimand the player for behavior that isn't one of a role model. If they don't, we will be persistent. We'll infiltrate the fans and pull out signs. We'll picket. If we're willing to have 27 people arrested, it's obvious we're committed." In a Feb. 21 interview with The Palm Beach Post, Kensing talked about his hobby in these terms: "The pilot's pretty good. He gets right next to them. We spot them, he flies in sideways, glides and we shoot them." As a matter of fact, Kensing thinks it's so much fun that he now wants his own chopper....Congrats to the headline writer, I just love that "hog-hunting hurler." He could also be called "coyote-killing Kensing." Let's just hope he can pitch as good as he can shoot.
History in the soles of your shoes When you're trying to impress your socially prominent out-of-town guests, the last thing you want to do is let them fly into a public airport. So, if you've got the moolah and own the top of Lower Table Rock, you carve out a ¾-mile-long runway through the solidified lava, vernal pools and fairy shrimp, and charter an airplane or two to give everyone a chance at the most impressive landing of a lifetime. You let your visitors admire the view for a few minutes, then take them down on a drive by the river, where you keep them entertained and offer them a chance to purchase some quality real estate. The brain behind this operation in 1948 was John Day. For those who don't remember, Day was a popular local rancher, owner of a land development company and an enthusiastic outdoorsman. Day and two partners had partitioned some land near the Gold Ray Dam, called it the Table Rock Estates, constructed some luxury houses, and then invited a few Hollywood celebrities and executives to a three-day party. Only an adventurous few actually landed on the newly built airstrip on that first weekend in November. The rest felt much safer flying into the well-established 17-year-old Jackson County Airport. Ginger Rogers, who had bought a ranch near Shady Cove in 1941, served as hostess to the group, which, according to a Mail Tribune reporter, had left "most of the trappings and artificiality of Hollywood behind."....
Collectors wired for the barbs that won the West As a collectible, barbed wire has everything it needs - a wire guru, annual conventions and a special kind of wire that is the crown jewel of every collection, the coveted Dodge Star. But recent wildfires in Texas have threatened the supply of collectible antique wire. There are six state associations in the United States for people who find beauty in the sharp-edged spools of wire that were once strung across millions of acres of land, and each hosts its own yearly barbed wire show. There are more than 2,000 varieties of the stuff, and the rarest can fetch nearly $1,000 for an 18-inch strand. The Devil’s Rope Barbed Wire Museum, one of two barbed wire museums, has roughly 1,300 different types of barbed wire on display, according to estimates by Gipson, manager and curator of the museum for the last 14 years. The Barbed Wire Identification Encyclopedia is the primary resource for collectors, and Harold L. Hagemeier, an author and former chairman of the Antique Barbed Wire Society, updates it whenever a new wire is discovered. A hero in barbed wire lore, John Warne Gates, better known as “Bet-A-Million” Gates, was one of barbed wire’s luminaries. In 1876, Gates bet a group in San Antonio that he could build a wire pen on the grounds of the Alamo that could contain a group of longhorn cattle. Fencing materials were scarce in Texas and cattle usually roamed freely - the ability to fence them in pens would provide a great benefit to ranchers seeking to keep track of their longhorns. Gates’ product, a type of barbed wire he brought with him from Illinois, the birthplace of barbed wire, met the challenge, and he became a millionaire overnight, according to the legend....

Received from American Land Rights Association

House Vote on 26,000,000 NLCS BLM Acres Wed. 3-12

...Congress seeks to codify new NLCS Land Grab -- (From Federal Parks and Recreation Newsletter); Seventeen House members from both parties teamed up in April, 2007 to introduce legislation (HR 2016) that would give the National Landscape Conservation System official Congressional certification.

The system, administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), was created administratively by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the Clinton years.

In June 2000 the Interior Department under the guidance of former Secretary Babbitt established the 26 million acre NLCS in BLM to protect what they called special areas.

The NLCS consists of major conservation areas in 12 western states, including 15 national monuments, 13 national conservation areas, Steens Mountain area in Oregon, Headwaters Forest Reserve in northern California, 36 wild and scenic rivers, 148 wilderness areas, 4,264 miles of national trails, and more than 600 wilderness study areas.

Making the NLCS permanent threatens recreation, access, grazing, mining, oil and gas and many other uses. Gradually these areas will be turned into parks with traditional uses strangled and roads cut off. Private property owners and inholders in the areas can say so long to their property rights. You will see new areas nominated for NLCS status gradually eroding BLM multiple-use.

Four Democratic senators introduced counterpart legislation (S 1139) in April, 2007. Said chief sponsor of the Senate bill, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), "Given the broad public support for these areas, I expect this bill to be non-controversial and it is my hope that it will be able to move quickly through the Congress and enactment into law." Bingaman chairs the Senate Energy Committee. Non-Controversial?

The four lead House sponsors of HR 2016, all co-chairs of an NLCS caucus, are Reps. Mary Bono (R-CA), Rick Renzi (R-AZ), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Jim Moran (D-VA). Reps. Bono and Renzi need to receive lots of contacts. The others are not likely to change their position but should receive as many calls as possible.

Creating this massive new conservation area program (read land grab) will take money especially from the National Park Service that is way behind in deferred maintenance and other uses. It will also take money from vast areas of BLM lands. The NLCS will eventually become a huge new agency with thousands of additional bureaucrats added over time.

Any promises made when these areas like Steens Mountain and the Missouri Breaks National Monument and all the other affected monuments as well as the Grand Staircase National Monument and many others will be conveniently forgotten as more and more regulations are added.

The NLCS will convert millions of acres of now accessible BLM land into park-like areas with park-like regulations and will be gradually managed like a park. Gradually existing uses will be strangled out of existence.

Supporters of the NLCS insist they are not competing with other conservation programs for fiscal 2008 appropriations. One said, "We do want to see a shift in the funding priorities of the BLM itself. Specifically, the oil and gas program of the BLM has become the dominant program of the BLM at the expense of some the best lands and waters of the American West."

It is the nature of the Congressional appropriations beast that money for all programs in the Interior appropriations bill comes out of the same pot and the programs compete with each other.

One of the sponsors of the bill to codify the NLCS, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), said the measure would not affect management of lands or existing rights or public access. Added Salazar, "The bill does, however, recognize that these landscapes are of great interest to the American people and should be managed to protect their values."

Does anyone believe setting up the NLCS would not change the management of these areas? If that were true, why would Congress want to do it?

American Land Rights will be sending out thousands of faxes, letters and e-mails to alert landowners, rural communities and allies about the danger and work to build more allies in Congress to stop the NLCS from passing. ALRA needs your support to defeat the massive new National Landscape Conservation System.

It is critical that private property owners and Federal land users make a big push now to head off this attack on private property and access to Federal lands. It is so much cheaper to fight it early than to wait. Hit it hard now. Call, write and fax your Congressman. You must overwhelm his or her office with calls between now and 5:00 pm Wednesday, March 12th. You may call any Congressman at (202) 225-3121....

WRANGLER TIMED EVENT CHAMPIONSHIP

Been going to this event since 1992, taking my family and joining my uncle Curley McCarey and his family. Curley will be 92 this May and was still ridin' and ropin' at 90.

Curley is the one who encouraged me to return to college after I got hurt steer wrestling. He's also the one who made sure I had a construction job with Fluor Corp. each time I went broke going to school. No Curley, no degree, no legislative assistant, no Secretary of Agriculture and no The Westerner.

Curley recently had a minor stroke and was unable to attend the WTEC. I can't travel alone and my son couldn't get off work, so I wasn't able to attend either.

I didn't get to see Curley this weekend, but I do want to publicly thank him for all he has meant to me and my family.

Hang in there Curley, and I hope to see you soon.

DANIEL GREEN IS A TWO-TIME WORLD CHAMPION

GUTHRIE, Okla., Sunday, March 9th, 2008 – Daniel Green of Oakdale, California came into the fifth performance on Sunday with a 31-second lead on the “King of Rodeo” Trevor Brazile and a field of World Champions. Not only did Green win his second title and hold off the world’s best cowboys, but shattered the arena record in the average set one-year ago by Brazile. Green posted a 276.1 over 25 head of livestock worth $57,000.00 and joined the elite fraternity of multiple-time world champions at the 24th Annual Wrangler Timed Event Championship this weekend at the Lazy E Arena.

Green had a stellar weekend and used consistent runs, great horses, and world class helpers to rise above his fellow nineteen competitors that made up one of the greatest fields of contestants ever assembled to compete for the prestigious “Iron-Man” title. Brazile, after winning his record fifth title last year, finished the event as the runner-up, recorded the fastest over-all go-round time, and placed again in the 5th round for an event total of $41,000.00 bringing Brazile’s career WTEC earnings to $508,500.00. Keeping on the west coast, Los Alamos, California cowboy Casey Branquinho took home third place honors and earned $15,000.00.

Each round of competition featured excitement with the leaders changing after every run, with only seconds separating them. The champion wasn’t determined until the last rope was thrown, the flag was dropped and the clock stopped. The Wrangler Timed Event Championship was developed by the Lazy E in 1985 to determine the best all-around timed event cowboy in the world — the man who could stand out in more than his specialty event, the man who could be consistent in all five timed events. The majority of today’s professional rodeo cowboys no longer compete in multiple events, but specialize in one, possibly two. This event attracted the biggest names in the rodeo industry that correlated into 38 World Championship titles, in addition to over 23,000 fans representing 48 states from across the country! Some of the cowboys that competed for the $150,000.00 purse include: eight-time NFR qualifier, Cash Myers; 2005 PRCA All Around World Champion, Ryan Jarrett; World Champion Steer Wrestler Luke Branquinho; veterans’ Jimmie Cooper and Paul Tierney; and new stars such as the 2007 PRCA Runner-Up World Champion All-Around, Josh Peek.

The Wrangler Timed Event Championship is sponsored by Wrangler in conjunction with, Ariat Boots, Coors, Priefert Ranch & Rodeo Equipment, Cross Bar Gallery, Boyd Gaming, Environmental Management, Dodge, John Vance Motors, Gist Silversmiths, the AQHA, Cactus Saddlery, the USTRC, Hot Heels, Clear Channel Radio, The Oklahoman, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco, News 9, the Best Western Edmond, the Whitten Inn – OKC, and the Fairfield Inn & Suites – Edmond.

The 2008 Wrangler Timed Event Championship is a Lazy E Production. For more information on the Wrangler Timed Event Championship or other Lazy E events, contact the Lazy E Arena, 9600 Lazy E Drive, Guthrie, OK 73044, (405) 282-RIDE, (800) 595-RIDE or visit www.lazye.com.

2008 Wrangler Timed Event Championship Standings

Average
1.) Daniel Green, Oakdale, CA............... 276.1.... $50,000.00
2.) Trevor Brazile, Decatur, TX............. 298.4.... $25,000.00
3.) Casey Branquinho, Los Alamos, CA.. 349.2.... $15,000.00
4.) Cade Swor, Chico, TX...................... 374.9.... $10,000.00
5.) Josh Peek, Pueblo, CO..................... 390.2.... $7,500.00
6.) K.C. Jones, Burlington, WY............. 390.5.... $5,000.00
7.) Chance Kelton, Mayer, AZ............... 398.4.... $4,500.00
8.) Kyle Lockett, Visalia, CA................. 429.6.... $3,000.00

Fastest Rounds
1.) Trevor Brazile, Decatur, TX.......... 44.6 (Round 3) $10,000.00
2.) Trevor Brazile, Decatur, TX.......... 48.1 (Round 5) $7,000.00
3.) K.C. Jones, Burlington, WY........... 49.2 (Round 5) $5,000.00
4.) Daniel Green, Oakdale, CA ........... 50.9 (Round 3) $4,000.00
5.) Luke Branquinho, Los Alamos, CA. 51.1 (Round 1) $3,000.00
6.) Steve Duhon, Sonora, TX.............. 51.7 (Round 1) $2,000.00

Arena Record Bonuses
Daniel Green, Oakdale, CA 276.1 – Fastest Average Record $3,000.00
Scott Snedecor, Uvalde, TX 9.4 – Steer Roping Record $3,000.00

Total Payout: $156,000.00

2008 Contestants
TREVOR BRAZILE Decatur, TX
K.C. JONES Burlington, WY
KYLE LOCKETT Visalia, CA
DANIEL GREEN Oakdale, CA
JESS TIERNEY Hermosa, SD
SCOTT SNEDECOR Uvalde, TX
PAUL TIERNEY Oral, SD
KYLE HUGHES Olney Springs, CO
LUKE BRANQUINHO Los Alamos, CA
CHANCE KELTON Mayer, AZ
JIMMIE COOPER Monument, NM
CASEY BRANQUINHO Los Alamos, CA
STEVE DUHON Sonora, TX
CASH MYERS Athens, TX
CADE SWOR Chico, TX
RYAN JARRETT Summerville, GA
JOSH PEEK Pueblo, CO
JAKE HANNUM Ogden, UT
BRET FLEMING Worden, MT
BEAU FRANZEN Sidney, MT

Rejected by eHarmony dot com
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

By Julie Carter

Never did I think I'd know anybody personally that would sign up for a "perfect match" on eHarmony, let alone have the outfit tell them, "Sorry, no can do."

However, the news of the rejection was made public this week.

After much sport at the expense of the rejected lad, I pondered the situation further.

I'm not sure what kind of questions an online dating service asks, but if truth is forthcoming, I suppose there are a number of folks with traits that make them unmatchable.

Cowboys, as a rule, most definitely have some traits that make them charming characters but not always desirable as "a keeper."

While having skills that mark them "cowboy," they often don't have much finesse in other trades.

For example, there is Billy.

Billy had gone to the Texas Panhandle to work in one of the feedlots.

As it does in that part of country, the winter got much too cold for him (and anybody else in their right mind to be horseback riding cattle pens.)

He recalled his grandmother's fondness for warmth and that she liked it in the old folk's home where they keep it about 85 degrees all day.

So he went to the local old folks home and got a job as the maintenance man. He didn't know anything about maintenance beyond how to fix floats on cattle waters, but that didn't slow him down.

There were a few incidents, but the old folk's home didn't actually fire him until somebody flushed a toilet and the lights went out.

Billy is now back home in south Texas.

A prospective date might scowl at the fact that Billy's rope horse, Hombre, is his drinking buddy. Hombre is about 30 years old, but Billy figures he only has to run about five seconds at a time, so he continues to use him in the roping arena.

Hombre can hold his liquor a little better than Billy, but it might simply be that relative to his size, he doesn't get quite the load.

The recent eHarmony reject received a follow-up letter from eHarmony explaining some of their issues for dismissal.

In part, it read:

"A guy in a skirt is not attractive, even if you call it a kilt in reference to whatever it is you wanna-be Scottish boys wear when you want a breeze around parts usually covered by jean-wearing men.

"The picture of you with the potato in your pants was a new wrinkle for us. We weren't sure what you intended by the location of said spud, but we advise that putting it in the front instead of the back would provide a more suggestive appearance.

"The pickup line, 'Hey Baby! Want some of this?' went out years ago. In fact, it was never in.

"In reference to your last date, there is the reminder that if you holler 'put out or walk,' you should be in your own vehicle.

"We do think there is someone out there for you. Our suggestion is a mail-order bride from Russia with a moustache who has never met you prior to the nuptials.

"Thank you so much for the application. We will frame it and keep it as a reminder that we were wrong. We can't help everyone."

I'm thinking that most eHarmony rejects will resort to the old-fashioned way of picking up girls - buying them a beer at last call just before closing time.

Visit Julie's Web site at www.julie-carter.com

OPINION

McCain, Republicans, and "Global Warming" Think you can sidestep the issue of “global warming,” simply by voting Republican? Think again. Now that Senator John McCain is officially the Republican nominee for President, global warming is, whether anyone likes it or not, an “issue” for both of our nation’s dominant political parties. McCain has been gravitating towards this issue for several years, and made his mark with it during his chairing of the U.S. Senate hearings on global warming back in 2004. Today, Mr. McCain articulates a position on the matter that is far more moderate and reasonable, and far more hospitable to our free market economy, than those of his two Democratic competitors. The question remains whether or not American voters, Republican voters in particular, will embrace McCain’s vision...Obama and McCain have both essentially abandoned the term “global warming” in favor of “climate change” (Clinton has not made this shift), and all three of the candidates have connected their “climate agendas” to the pursuit of alternative energy sources. But from there, the candidates diverge. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Clinton is proposing a dramatic, if not radical level of government intervention with America’s automobile manufacturers, and both she and Obama seem ready to bow to the United Nations’ environmental policy dictates. But fortunately, McCain casts a very different vision. ....
Protectionism in the Name of Environmentalism Amidst the flurry of economic topics and data being discussed at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York City on March 2-4, a point leaped out twice to grab my attention. It had to with international trade, and environmental taxes and/or regulation. Specifically, it was noted that there's more talk coming out of Europe about using trade sanctions to punish nations that are deemed high emitters of carbon-dioxide, including developing nations and the United States. One speaker was concerned that this could simply become an excuse for protectionism. Of course, this development should not surprise anyone. After all, anti-free traders in the U.S. have been pushing for some time now to have labor and environmental standards included in trade accords. That is, that the U.S. should impose its own regulatory requirements regarding labor and environmental issues on other nations. For some, such demands come from an honest belief that this would be a good thing, while others simply use it to disguise bad old trade protectionism. Either way, the economic realities do not change. First, developing nations simply do not possess the wealth and productivity to impose these costly regulations on their economies. It would be economic suicide. Second, this would serve to constrain international trade, and thereby constrain global economic growth. Third, the worst case scenario is that such environmental regulations serve to spark a trade war, which, as history shows, would mean outright economic decline....
Capping Emissions, Capping Growth What's often forgotten in the debate over climate change is economics. That is, reality gets largely ignored when it comes to energy consumption and economic growth. The fundamental issue is that greater economic growth and development is tightly correlated with greater energy consumption and more carbon-dioxide emissions. Quite simply, capping or slashing global CO2 emissions, as many favor, means having to cap or slash economic growth. This core point was addressed by various economists speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York City on March 2-4 hosted by the Heartland Institute. For example, Vaclav Klaus is an economist, who also happens to be the president of the Czech Republic. He was just re-elected in February. Klaus spoke on the morning of March 3, and highlighted the link between economic growth and emissions (direct quotes from text of prepared speech): "As an economist, I have to start with the obvious. Carbon dioxide emissions do not fall from heaven. Their volume is a function of GDP per capita, of the number of people and of the emissions intensity, which is the amount of CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP... What this relationship tells is simple: If we really want to decrease emissions ... we have to either stop the economic growth and thus block further rise in the standard of living, or stop the population growth, or make miracles with the emissions intensity."....
Oil Reserve Can Wait ...Barring domestic drilling, Bush said his energy policy was focused on "renewables," such as ethanol, and "conservation." This thin-beer policy is spelled out in detail on the Energy Department's home page, which looks more like the Sierra Club's Web site. There, you'll find a campaign called "Change a light, change the world," which encourages Americans to switch out their incandescent bulbs to energy-saving compact fluorescents. Somehow we doubt this will change the world. Oil apparently is a dirty word at DOE; you won't find it mentioned anywhere on its home page. Focusing policy on biofuels such as corn-based ethanol isn't going to solve the problem. In fact, it's making it worse. Food prices are skyrocketing alongside gas, thanks to the ethanol boom. The price of corn has doubled in the past year, which has driven up feed costs for poultry, beef and pork. What's so maddening is that while DOE is obsessed with the long-term prospects of renewables and conservation, it could be easing energy prices right now by just changing its Strategic Petroleum Reserve policy. The administration refuses to stop withdrawing oil from a tight market to fill the reserve, even though doing so is driving prices higher. Goldman estimates that filling the reserve has raised oil prices by as much as $6 a barrel and 25 cents a gallon at the pump....

NUCLEAR NEW MEXICO

Cannon considered for nuclear reactor The secretary of the Air Force says Cannon Air Force Base could be the future home of a nuclear reactor, but other Air Force officials cautioned Friday that it’s too early to speculate on location, even if a reactor is built. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted in a copyrighted story by InsideDefense saying, “The thoughts are, right now, we’re talking about Cannon out in New Mexico and Mountain Home up in Idaho.” InsideDefense is an Internet news service covering defense and the aerospace industry. The story also reported Air Force officials plan to sign a letter of intent with members of the nuclear power industry by November in the hopes of ensuring “at least one small, next-generation nuclear-power plant on an Air Force base in the coming decades,” will be maintained by the next presidential administration. The Air Force said U.S. Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Pete Domenici, R-N.M., suggested nuclear energy to the military branch about a year ago and they began exploring the possibility....
N.M. among sites considered for uranium enrichment factory A company is considering building a $2 billion uranium enrichment factory in southern New Mexico, the same general area where another company already is building one. The proposed factory would enrich uranium provided by utilities to fuel their commercial nuclear reactors, said Nancy Lang, external communications manager of Areva Inc., based in Bethesda, Md. Areva Inc., a subsidiary of Paris-based Areva, also is mulling possible sites in Idaho, Ohio, Texas and Washington state, she said Friday. The company hopes to select a site "in the coming weeks," said Lang, who declined to pinpoint the New Mexico site under consideration. Areva Inc. would employ about 1,000 people during the factory's construction and about 250 people when the facility is in regular operation, she said. The market for nuclear fuel is expected to increase as global warming concerns make nuclear energy more popular. Mining companies have been showing renewed interest in uranium in the Grants area of northwestern New Mexico as the price has hovered around $90 to $100 a pound. Louisiana Energy Services is building its $1.5 billion National Enrichment Facility on one square mile of desert in southeastern New Mexico five miles east of the small community of Eunice. The factory will make fuel for commercial nuclear power plants....

Bush insists on carbon reductions from emerging economies President George W Bush on Wednesday told an international energy conference in Washington that any plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must include commitments from emerging economies, like China and India. "Should there be an international agreement? Yes, there should be, and we support it," Bush told the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC), stressing an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change must be focused on results. "In order for there to be effective international agreements, it must include - these agreements must include commitments, solid commitments, by every major economy, and no country should get a free ride," he said. The issue has been a sticking point in crafting an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which the US has not ratified. The US insists developing nations be given targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions alongside developed countries in any new agreement to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012....
Can states cut carbon? EPA says no The political tussle over whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant subject to government regulation has gone on for years. Early in his first term as vice president, Al Gore pushed a tax on CO2. Democrats and Republicans in Congress were both skeptical. The idea went nowhere. As a presidential candidate, George Bush seemed to think regulating CO2 was a good idea. At least he said so. After his election, then-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Christie Whitman marched forth in support of what she thought was White House policy. She quickly got reeled back. Two years later she resigned, complaining that Vice President Dick Cheney kept pushing for weaker air pollution controls. Fast forward to the present, and the fight continues – this time pitting the Bush administration against a group of 19 governors led by Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) of California....
What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? The final morning of the conference began with a rousing speech by Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic. He made it clear that to call him a global warming skeptic would be a bit of an understatement. A point Klaus makes crystal clear in his just published book, Blue Planet in Green Chains - What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? "My answer is clear and resolute: 'it is our freedom.' I may also add 'and our prosperity,'" declared Klaus. Klaus noted that ideological environmentalism appeals to the same sort of people who have always been attracted to collectivist ideas. He warned that environmentalism at its worst is just the latest dogma to claim that a looming "crisis" requires people to sacrifice their prosperity and their freedoms for the greater good. Let me quote Klaus at length. "Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will, nevertheless, be identical—the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality," warned Klaus. "What I have in mind [is], of course, environmentalism and its currently strongest version, climate alarmism." Klaus added, "What I see in Europe (and in the U.S. and other countries as well) is a powerful combination of irresponsibility, of wishful thinking, of implicit believing in some form of Malthusianism, of cynical approach of those who themselves are sufficiently well-off, together with the strong belief in the possibility of changing the economic nature of things through a radical political project."....
Grand Canyon flushed with millions of litres of water More than one million litres per second of water were unleashed on the Grand Canyon Wednesday in a scientific experiment designed to rebuild beaches used by wildlife and visitors alike. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said the flood of water released into the canyon from the upstream Glen Canyon Dam was an attempt to recreate a natural process that has occurred for millions of years, and the sheer volume of water being released was at a rate more than twice that of similar actions in 1996 and 2004. "The water will be released at a rate that would fill the Empire State Building within 20 minutes," said Kempthorne, who was on hand to open the jet tubes at the Glen Canyon Dam that began the process. The water will flow for 60 hours through the 446-kilometre stretch of the Colorado river that makes up the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Scientists hope the stronger surge will give them an insight into how to rebuild eroded beaches downstream in the canyon by moving sediment that has built up over the years and creating new sandbars and beaches that will benefit endangered species living in the region.
Ranchers Say Grizzly Bill is Not Enough Idaho's ranchers may get some relief from all the grizzlies this year, lawmakers are very close to giving the final approval to legislation that would pay for the livestock they've lost because of grizzly activity. But some are saying that's not going to entirely fix the problem. "They're just expensive. What goes into the feed and the care and the years that it takes is a loss it is," Rancher Deanna Orme said. Deanna and Larry Orme breath a little easier when there's snow on the ground because their cattle are wrapped in the safety of winter, and the grizzlies are still hibernating. "That is situation one grizzly bear habitat and the bear are top priority. You can't harass them. You can't shoot them," Larry Orme said. This summer the Orme's photographed the grizzlies that frequented their grazing land near Ernest Lake, quite often the bears would feed on their skittish cows. Each one a thousand dollar meal. "If I count the calf and the yearlings, probably about five, and we had several that were hit with their claws and got infected and ultimately died," Larry added. "You try to bring them home and doctor them and they're so frightened and so injured and it's a loss they never recover for some reason," Deanna said....
Agency probes wolf-baiting claims Already stained by the blood of dead wolves and suffering from a variety of other setbacks, the program to reintroduce endangered Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest is now at the center of two criminal investigations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is formally looking into the disappearance of two wolves in New Mexico and a rancher’s claim that he intentionally baited wolves in order to get them killed. “We had requests that we do a criminal investigation, and we are,” says agency spokeswoman Elizabeth Slown. In an interview last year, New Mexico ranch hand Mike Miller told High Country News that he deliberately baited a wolf with cattle in order to trigger the federal “three strikes” rule, which mandates the shooting or capturing of any wolf that kills three cows in one year’s time. Miller works for the 275,000-acre Adobe-Slash Ranch, which is owned by Mexican businessman Eloy Vallina. Miller, who has an unlisted number, could not be reached for comment, and Gene Whetten, his supervisor, declined to answer questions when contacted by HCN on Feb. 26. “Mr. Miller works for me and he’s forbidden to talk to you,” Whetten says. He alleges that the paper “fabricated” most of its story, and that the ranch is considering legal action against HCN. The criminal investigations face significant challenges, according to a Fish and Wildlife source. In interviews with law enforcement officials, Miller reportedly denied making the statements attributed to him by HCN. Furthermore, according to the Interior Department, the fact that Miller branded cattle on private land within half a mile of a known wolf den does not in itself violate federal wolf reintroduction rules, which give ranchers wide leeway in how they operate even when wolves are nearby....
House Dems want firefighting fund The federal government would revamp how it pays for firefighting and take some of the burden off the U.S. Forest Service by creating a permanent fund for devastating blazes, under legislation introduced Thursday by key House Democrats. As wildfire seasons have grown increasingly expensive over the last decade, the cost of fighting fires has eaten an ever larger portion of the Forest Service budget -- now about 48 percent of it. That has left the agency with less money for other programs and priorities. The new fund would be used only for catastrophic, emergency wildland fire suppression. It would be separate from the money budgeted each year by Congress for anticipated and predicted fire suppression activities for the Forest Service and Interior Department; that allocation would continue. The amount of money in the new fund would be appropriated annually and based on the average amounts spent by the Forest Service and Interior to suppress catastrophic fires over the preceding five fiscal years. Last year, the Forest Service spent $741 million more than budgeted and Interior spent $249 million more than budgeted for emergency wildfire suppression, or a total of nearly $1 billion. The secretaries of the departments would be able to declare fires eligible for the fund by issuing a suppression emergency declaration that would evaluate the size, severity and threat of the fire....
Rey: States that back roadless forests should pay for fire costs California and other states that want to ban road-building in large swaths of national forests should have to pay for the resulting increased costs of fighting wildfires on those federal lands, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Thursday. Rey, the undersecretary for natural resources and the environment in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, said the Bush administration has encouraged states and local governments to offer input in the management of federal lands. But he told a Wildland Urban Interface conference that one of the unintended consequences is that state-imposed moratoriums on development in roadless areas boost the cost of fighting fires because of reduced access to housing subdivisions that sprout up on the edge of those forests. "In a number of cases, most recently in the state of California, the states have weighed in with a profound desire not to see any roadless area incurred as a broad matter of environmental priorities. And I frankly don't have any quarrel with that as a statement of environmental policy," Rey said. "However, if we are going to keep those areas completely undeveloped and not even maintain the option for access for administrative and suppression purposes, we're going to increase the cost and complexity of suppression to protect those new subdivisions. That's a given with which their is almost no dispute," he said in a speech to the conference in Reno sponsored by the International Association of Fire Chiefs....
Over the River creators share dream Finally, a water project that doesn’t use water. Instead, it will employ cables, anchors, panels of fabric and a dash of imagination. Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude explained their Over the River project to an audience of about 275 Thursday at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center. They also talked about their 50-year collaboration that has brought them worldwide fame, and a happy marriage as well. If permitting goes as planned, the project would be open for viewing for about two weeks in the summer of 2012 in the Arkansas River canyon between Canon City and Salida. The project has created both excitement and controversy in the Upper Arkansas Valley. Most of those at Thursday’s presentation fell into the excited camp. The fabric panels that would cover about 6 miles of the 40-mile reach of river would present different views to those who view it from the shore and those who travel underneath. One of the reasons the Arkansas River was chosen for the project was because it is one of the most heavily rafted rivers in the West, Christo explained. “The Gates was a winter project, this will be a summer project,” Christo said, referring to the 2005 project in New York City’s Central Park that featured 16-foot-tall gates with hanging saffron panels....
The wood and the trees The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which owns 2.6m acres (1m hectares) of Oregon, now proposes to increase the tree harvest to four-and-a-half times last year's level. It wants to clear-cut large swathes of its forests, including some ancient ones. As it admits, this would mean less space for fluffy fauna. A second review concerns the spotted owl, which some claim is threatened less by logging than by a competitor, the barred owl. The prospect of a return to mass logging delights Robbie Robinson of Starfire Lumber. “Here we are in the timber capital of the world, and I have to go to Canada to get enough wood to employ 75 people,” he complains. It also pleases rural counties, which used to derive much of their income from timber sales and now depend on handouts from Washington, DC. These have become unreliable: Oregon's politicians are still fighting to get cash for the coming financial year. Yet even those who long for a return to clear-cutting doubt that it will happen soon. If the past is any guide, environmentalists will tie it up in court. Opinions are hardening against logging: last month Eugene's city council passed a resolution against it. Faye Stewart, a Lane county commissioner who lists “saw-milling” as one of his hobbies, says that the area has filled up with people who do not want their pretty new home denuded of greenery....
Judge rules Ariz. eagles to stay on endangered list A federal court Thursday granted Arizona's bald eagles at least nine more months on the Endangered Species List. Other U.S. bald eagles came off the list in July. In a decision handed down in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, Judge Mary Marguia agreed with Arizona conservation groups that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it refused to act on the groups' 2004 petition to review the Arizona eagles' endangered status as a distinct population. Fewer than 50 breeding pairs exist in Arizona. "Our desert nesting bald eagle has been taken off death row. It's a great day," said Dr. Robin Silver of the Center for Biological Diversity, which, with Maricopa Audubon, had sued Fish and Wildlife....
Some bald eagles raising fine families in suburbia From a nearby perch, a bald eagle keeps her yellow eyes trained on her nest. Two 5-week-old chicks waddle and stretch their wings on a platform the size of a dinette table. This bald eagle had just fed her two chicks in their nest in a pine tree in the Patriots Plantation neighborhood off Fort Johnson Road. The chicks will grow to about the same size as their parents before taking their first flight About 300 feet away, another mother cares for her young. Amy Dickson looks after her 6-week-old son, Edmund, in her Patriots Plantation home. "We're doing the same thing," Dickson said. The discovery of the James Island eagles' nest came about eight years ago, when construction began on the subdivision on one side of the nest, and a soccer complex on the other. Now, in the northern reaches of West Ashley, another nest is turning suburban. Carolina Bay at Essex, a development off Glenn McConnell Parkway, boasts an eagle nest 660 feet into the thick pine trees surrounding the subdivision. About 20 nests statewide are in the same position, said S.C. Department of Natural Resources biologist Charlotte Hope....
Polar bears and melting ice Aware of the public's affinity toward the polar bear, environmentalist litigators have adopted the bear as their vehicle — their poster species — for achieving drastic regulatory prohibitions of the everyday human activities that, in their view, are causing irreversible environmental degradation. Pursuant to that agenda, in 2005 the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to add the polar bear to the Endangered Species Act list of threatened species. Their petition claims global warming is shrinking the bears' ice floe habitat, and without the ESA's protection, the bear will decline toward extinction within the next 45 years. On this basis, in 2007 FWS proposed listing the polar bear as a threatened species. What makes the polar bear's expected listing exceptionally news worthy is that it would be the first species given ESA protection because of global warming. Although global warming is still debatable as to cause and degree, tying it by regulatory fiat to the ESA creates a new paradigm. With the listing, unprecedented forces will be unleashed that economically could bring the country to its knees. Under the ESA, listing determinations are to be based on "the best scientific" data available." FWS interprets this to mean any data that will support the listing. Under this approach, FWS can disregard the fact that there are now 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears, up from a low of 5,000-10,000 in the 1950s and '60s, and higher than at any time in the 20th century....
Stricter study of Baca refuge drilling urged The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency joined with other state and federal agencies in calling for a tougher environmental review of a plan to drill exploratory oil and gas wells deep into the Baca National Wildlife Refuge. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's environmental analysis of the project didn't "provide sufficient information," wrote Larry Svoboda, director of the EPA's National Environmental Policy Act program in Denver. The agency, the National Park Service, the state Division of Wildlife and Saguache County, as well as thousands of private citizens, are requesting a more thorough study. Canada-based Lexam Exploration acquired the mineral rights to the property in 2000 before the federal government bought the Baca Ranch for $33 million to preserve the region's wide-open landscape and treasured wetlands....
State budgets $2.5 million for wolf management Wyoming will spend nearly $2.5 million on wolf management during the next two years, according to a bill Gov. Dave Freudenthal signed Wednesday. Wyoming is expected to take over management of wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Area in late March following the removal of the northern Rockies gray wolf from the endangered species list. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials announced the delisting Feb. 21. Part of the money will fund salaries for a wolf management coordinator and three biologists who will oversee monitoring, research and control efforts. The bill was part of a budget package that passed both chambers last week. Wyoming Game and Fish director Terry Cleveland said the money will go exclusively for management activities in the northwest corner of the state, where wolves will be considered trophy game and a hunting license will be required to shoot them. Outside northwest Wyoming, wolves will be considered predators and people will be able to kill them any time by any means and without a license....
California Wildlife Agency Ignores Global Warming Threat The California Fish and Game Commission will vote Friday whether to accept a scientific petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the American pika under the California Endangered Species Act from the impacts of global warming. The American pika is a small mammal related to the rabbit that lives in high-elevation mountain peaks throughout California and the west and cannot withstand warm temperatures. The petition is the first to seek California Endangered Species Act protection for a species threatened by global warming. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a similar petition to list the American pika under the federal Endangered Species Act, as well as petitions to protect other species, such as the polar bear, from the effects of climate change. “Fish and Game’s attempt to bury its head in the sand is an embarrassment to California’s efforts as a national leader in the fight against climate change,” said Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity....The polar bear under federal law, the pika under state law...are you beginning to see a pattern here?
Ex-Ducks Unlimited official cited for shooting swan A former Nevada official of the conservation group Ducks Unlimited was cited Monday for illegally shooting a swan in an Eastern Nevada game refuge, wildlife officials said. Alexander "Shay" Byars, formerly the regional director in Nevada and Arizona for Ducks Unlimited, was cited for four misdemeanor violations in connection with the Nov. 29 incident at Ruby Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, said Rob Buonamici, chief game warden for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Bail for the violations is $2,552, and Byars also faces a $2,000 civil assessment. "From my perspective, this is a serious violation. It's not to be taken lightly," Buonamici said. Byars, 30, was cited after Nevada wildlife officials traced him to Florida, where he had moved from his former home in the Las Vegas area shortly after the incident, Buonamici said....
Lawmakers demand USDA list beef recall stores Democratic lawmakers on Thursday demanded the U.S. Agriculture Department release by next week a list of stores which received the 143 million lbs of beef recalled by a California company last month, but administration officials said that may not be possible. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Agency first proposed two years ago that retail establishments which received recalled products be identified publicly, to give consumers important information more quickly. USDA had planned to begin listing retailers later this year, but lawmakers and consumer groups are now pushing the department to do it sooner following the February 17 recall by Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co of 143 million lbs of meat, mostly beef. The meat from the recall, the largest in U.S. history, was delivered to just under 10,000 suppliers who later distributed the product to restaurants, retailers and other establishments, according to USDA. Most of the meat probably already has been consumed, and no illnesses have been reported....
Congress expected to subpoena meat company chief after massive beef recall House lawmakers are expected tomorrow to order the head of the company responsible for the largest beef recall in U.S. history to appear before Congress. The subpoena, if approved, comes a little more than week after the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. chief executive didn’t show up to testify at a congressional hearing on food safety. Several food company executives were invited. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight is scheduled to vote at 9:30 a.m. to subpoena Steve Mendell, the co-owner of the plant. Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell expects lawmakers to approve the action, which will legally require Mendell to testify March 12, according to a committee spokesman....
Some Canadian cows can't enter Mexico through Texas, ag boss says The Texas agriculture commissioner on Tuesday prohibited certain Canadian cattle from crossing into Mexico through state facilities after learning that the U.S. had not approved allowing trade of some animals. Reports first indicated the U.S. had signed off on an agreement between Canada and Mexico that permitted trading of specific dairy and beef cattle under 30 months old — including breeding stock. But Todd Staples, the state's ag commissioner, learned that U.S. Department of Agriculture officials had not approved the deal. Currently, Mexico only allows U.S. dairy heifers under the age of 24 months to be imported, despite in-depth international negotiations to broaden this to breeding stock. The trading agreement, Staples said in a statement, is not consistent with international standards set by the World Organisation of Animal Health. If the USDA permits the cattle to cross into this country from Mexico, they won't come through any of Texas' livestock export facilities along the border, according to the statement. The export sites are in Brownsville, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, El Paso and Laredo. There are also two privately owned operations in Texas....
Peterson again backs mandatory national animal ID A mandatory national animal identification system is coming, at least if House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson has anything to say about it. In perhaps one of the underreported stories of the National Farmers Union (NFU) convention, House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, in a phone call to NFU members gathered Sunday night in Las Vegas, that Congress is likely to impose a mandatory animal ID program after this year’s elections. Peterson cited the recent bovine tuberculosis outbreak in Minnesota, and noted a similar recent outbreak in Michigan. Those examples, Peterson said, are why mandatory national animal ID is inevitable. “We are kidding ourselves if we don’t understand that we need to have a mandatory ID system,” declared Peterson. Resistance to national animal ID has been particularly strong in the cattle industry. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and R-CALF-USA, groups which disagree on many issues, are unified in their opposition to a mandatory system. But according to Peterson, those that resist implementation of mandatory animal ID will be compelled to participate. “Now, there’s going to have to be some people that are going to have to be forced to come along,” Peterson warned....
Judge Rules Poultry Are Not 'Livestock' A San Francisco judge has ruled that chickens are not "livestock," and, as a result, are not subject to the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, according to court filings. A lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States against the Agriculture Department argued that USDA had misinterpreted the 50-year-old act. "The court finds the legislative history strongly demonstrates unambiguous congressional intent that livestock, as used in the HMSA, does not include poultry," U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel wrote in her opinion. Judge Patel granted summary judgment in USDA's favor and dismissed the lawsuit. HSUS's argument was based on a 1958 dictionary definition of livestock that said that the word encompassed "useful" animals on a farm, while USDA said that the term livestock has always internally meant to exclude poultry. "The plain language of these bills indicates that Congress intended to exclude poultry from the definition of livestock when it enacted H.R. 8308, the bill that eventually became the HMSA," Patel wrote....

FLE

FBI says warrantless wiretapping lasted until 2006 The FBI indicated Wednesday that widespread irregularities in a program to gather confidential data on people in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks continued into at least 2006. The bureau's use of national security letters to gather phone, Internet and credit records in terrorism and espionage investigations -- a power magnified by the Patriot Act -- first came under attack last March in a report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. In a study covering 2003 to 2005, Fine reported numerous instances of FBI personnel violating internal guidelines and procedures in how they obtained and used national security letters, which are a form of administrative subpoena. Testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that a second audit by the Justice Department's internal watchdog office, scheduled to be released soon, will show a continuation of problems into 2006. But Mueller said agency reforms he instituted are starting to work. National security letters are controversial because the FBI issues them without having to get court approval. The lack of protection led a federal judge in New York last year to strike down the practice, which he called "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering." The Justice Department is appealing that ruling....
DHS Strains As Goals, Mandates Go Unmet Stumping for President Bush's ill-fated immigration overhaul in 2006, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed that his department would wrest "operational control" of the nation's borders away from human and drug traffickers within five years. That projection was based on the prospect of tough new enforcement measures as well as a temporary-worker program meant to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, including the most ambitious use of surveillance technology ever tried on the U.S.-Mexico border. Two years later, the legislative overhaul has been shelved, development of the "virtual fence" has been delayed, and its designers are going back to the drawing board. Completion of its first phase has been put off until as late as 2011, congressional investigators say. The possibility of this outcome was flagged early on by internal and external watchdogs, who warned of unrealistically tight deadlines, vague direction to contractors, harsh operating conditions and tough requirements of Border Patrol end-users. Among a slew of high-profile projects that have gone astray, DHS has struggled to field next-generation explosive-detection "puffer devices" at airports and has projected it could take $22 billion and 16 more years to deploy advanced baggage-screening systems in airports. It scaled back and indefinitely delayed the "exit" half of a $10 billion, biometric entry-exit system to track foreign visitors using digital fingerprints and photographs, citing technological and cost problems. Homeland Security also faces a congressional mandate after the Dubai Ports World controversy to scan 100 percent of U.S.-bound shipping containers overseas, while scientific and logistical problems have hampered a $1.2 billion effort to field highly effective nuclear detection devices....
Brain Scanner Can Tell What You're Looking At Tell me what you see. On second thought, don't: A computer will soon be able to do it, simply by analyzing the activity of your brain. That's the promise of a decoding system unveiled this week in Nature by neuroscientists from the University of California at Berkeley. As the decoder is refined, it could be used to explore the phenomenon of visual attention -- concentration on one part of a complicated scene -- and then to illuminate the dimly understood intricacies of the mind's eyes. After that, the decoding model could be harnessed for more visionary purposes: early warning systems for neurological diseases or interfaces that allow paralyzed people to engage with the world. Other uses may not be so noble, such as marketing campaigns crafted for maximum mental penetration or invasions of mental privacy mounted in the name of fighting terrorism and crime. Eventually, Haynes said, the Berkeley model could be harnessed for something akin to mind reading....Just wait 'till the TSA gets ahold of this.
Border Fence Divides Government, Landowners Washington plans to build 670 miles of fencing along stretches of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border from California to Texas to help stem the tide of illegal immigration. More than 300 miles are already built, and the U.S. government is pushing hard to finish this year as mandated by Congress. But opposition by landowners could slow the project, about 54 percent of which is to be built on private property, a government watchdog agency said in a report in February. "Until the land issues are resolved, this factor will continue to pose a risk to meeting the deployments," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. Tamez is one of many opponents along the border who are fighting the fence. Ranchers fear they will lose access to irrigation pumps; ecologists worry it will block the migration of endangered species such as the jaguar and ocelot; anglers and boaters do not want to be cut off from the river. And in western states like Texas and Arizona, the government's concerns over illegal immigration clash with cherished values of landowner rights, which have helped sustain U.S. President George W. Bush's Republican Party in the region. "That was everybody's dream, we'll come out here ... develop the West and civilize it. Now the government is coming and saying 'Oh, we'll take that back, because we're going to build a wall. It's unAmerican,"' said rancher John Ladd of Naco, Arizona, whose land runs for 10 miles along the border with Mexico....
National Dragnet Is a Click Away Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots. As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues. Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time. "It's going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age, that's what it's like," said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink....
Firearms database won’t work, study says Collecting ballistic "fingerprints" from millions of new firearms in the United States would create a database too unreliable to be useful in solving gun crimes, a team of scientists said Wednesday. In a 300-page report from the National Research Council, the scientists advised against a proposal that some lawmakers recommended in the aftermath of the 2002 sniper shootings in Washington and its outskirts. The concept relies on the assumption that individual guns leave unique markings, like fingerprints, on bullets and shell casings. Some in Congress have said that every new gun sold in the United States should be test-fired so those markings could be entered into a database. The thinking was that investigators could use the database to identify the firearm that fired bullets found at crime scenes. The study said the idea is not feasible because digital imaging technology is not sufficiently reliable to distinguish tiny differences in the markings....
Police, feds OK'd to check on mail U.S. postal authorities have approved more than 10,000 law enforcement requests to record names, addresses and other information from the outside of letters and packages of suspected criminals every year since 1998, according to U.S. Postal Inspection Service data. In each of those years, officials approved more than 97% of requests to record the information during criminal inquiries. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, the most recent year provided, officials granted at least 99.5% of requests, according to partial responses to inquiries filed by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act. Postal officials have closely guarded the warrantless surveillance mail program, used for decades to track fugitives and to interrupt the delivery of illegal drugs or other controlled substances such as explosives. In other government surveillance, such as most wiretap programs, a judge approves requests. In this one, the USPIS' chief inspector has authority to grant or deny a request. The Postal Service handles 214 billion pieces of mail each year. Correspondence and packages transported by private carriers, such as FedEx and UPS, are not subject to the surveillance. Postal officials also would not discuss how much mail is being opened for content examinations, which do require a warrant authorized by a judge....
FBI boosts training in Islamic 'sensitivity' The FBI believes its agents still aren't sensitive enough to Muslims and their culture, so the bureau has extended by "a few weeks" its Islamic cultural "enrichment" training program, WND has learned. During a recent outreach event at a Washington-area mosque, FBI officials also reassured a large turnout of concerned Muslims that the bureau is not profiling Arabs and Muslims for terrorism, and has made investigating alleged "hate crimes" against them and other minorities "the second-highest priority in the criminal division of the FBI." Among the officials who attended the Feb. 8 "town hall meeting" at the large ADAMS Center mosque were Timothy Healy, deputy assistant director for FBI intelligence, and Dave Bennett, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office. The officials said terrorism is "not a new phenomenon" limited to Muslims, and they cited abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph as an example of a Christian terrorist. While they said they are concerned about the threat from "homegrown terror" perpetuated by second-generation Muslim immigrants, the officials assured the Muslim audience they are no more concerned about such homegrown attacks than they are "about bank robberies," and are not targeting the Muslim community for special surveillance....
Illegal-immigrant criminals siphon funds The next time a San Diego sheriff's deputy arrests a man who tries to steal a car, hauls him to a county detention center, starts asking questions and discovers he's in the country illegally, here's what will happen: The tax-supported district attorney's and public defender's offices will handle his case, a tax-supported judge will preside if it goes to trial, he'll spend an average three weeks in the local jail at $100 each day, a state prison could house him for years at $121 a day, and tax-funded probation officers will follow his progress. Only after that will he be deported. For years, the White House and border communities such as San Diego have argued over who should pay for all this. As a group of border states yesterday unveiled a report on the costs of incarcerating illegal immigrants linked to crimes, President Bush is again trying to eliminate all federal reimbursement for the task. One study released last summer found that illegal immigrants cost the San Diego County law enforcement system about $75 million a year. The county received just under $2.5 million in federal reimbursements in fiscal 2007....
UK - ID database will be 'universal' by 2017 All British citizens will be signed up to a national ID scheme within 10 years under plans outlined by the Government today. Millions of people in sensitive jobs, including teachers, carers and health workers will be among the first to be entered onto the identity register. Up to 100,000 airport staff will be issued with unique personal identity number starting later this year in a bid to kick-start the multi-billion pound project. Foreign nationals working in Britain will be issued with cards over the next two years. From 2010 young people will be able to get an identity card if they choose. Later that year the scheme will be opened to voluntary applicants of any age. From 2011 - after the next general election - anyone applying for a new passport will automatically be fingerprinted and their personal details logged on the database. In one change from original plans, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said it will be possible to decline the card itself and rely upon a passport as an identity document. Miss Smith said the aim of the timetable was to make coverage of the population "universal" by 2017....
Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003. "What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that." Pasdar won't name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit. According to his affidavit, Pasdar tumbled to the surveillance superhighway in September 2003, when he led a "Rapid Deployment" team hired to revamp security on the carrier's internal network. He noticed that the carrier's officials got squirrelly when he asked about a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" -- a 45 megabit/second DS-3 line linking its most sensitive network to an unnamed third party. Quantico, Virginia, is home to a Marine base. But perhaps more relevantly, it's also the center of the FBI's electronic surveillance operations....

Grand Canyon much older than previously thought The Grand Canyon, carved out over the eons by rushing river water, began to form 17 million years ago, making it nearly three times older than previously thought, scientists said on Thursday. The general consensus among geologists had been that the famed natural landmark in Arizona was about 6 million years old. But now University of New Mexico scientists say it is far older based on their findings using a technique called uranium-lead isotope to date mineral deposits in caves from nine sites in the canyon's walls. The cave formations provided a record of a dropping water table as the canyon deepened. The gorge is 277 miles long, 1.1 miles deep at its deepest point and up to 18 miles wide. The Colorado River that runs through it arises in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and flows southwest about 1,400 miles to the Gulf of California. The scientists found that there is a kind of dual history to the canyon, with the western portion starting to form about 17 million years ago when water from a predecessor to the Colorado River began the slow, inexorable process of eroding the rock, they said. The eastern portion began forming closer to the 6 million-year-old date that had been the estimate for the whole canyon, they said....

Owners, vet think coyotes killed dog in back yard When Candelario and Jessica Gabaldon adopted Sophie, a small and friendly corgi, three years ago from a Florida rescue shelter, they saved her life. But last week, the couple couldn't save her from what they and their veterinarian believe was a pack of coyotes. The Gabaldons, who live on Amistad Drive just off Sichler Road, had just returned home from dinner last Wednesday evening when they realized that 8-year-old Sophie, who was in their backyard with her playmate, a young boxer, had been brutally attacked. "She was in mad pain," Candelario said. "Her right front leg was almost ripped right off. You could see muscles and tendons and bone." "The best way I could describe it was someone ripping off the drumstick of a turkey on Thanksgiving," Jessica said. "We just couldn't believe it." Van Otten said that, as he began to shave the dog for surgery, he found many more puncture wounds and actual tears on the animal's neck and back. He found that the dog's other leg had also sustained considerable damage. The ligaments holding the animal's elbow together were displaced and a bone was broken.Van Otten said, from what he observed of Sophie's wounds, it looked as if she was pulled apart from each limb. He said he felt that her injuries were beyond his capabilities to repair and he suggested that the Gabaldons put their beloved corgi to sleep. They agreed. "Based on the teeth marks I saw, I do suspect coyotes, but I can't be 100 percent certain," Van Otten said. "I've never seen an arm torn off like that. These corgis don't back down; they're tenacious little dogs." Van Otten, whose office is down the road from where the Gabaldons live, said he has seen coyotes in the area as recently as a month ago....