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Where U.S.-Mexico border fence is tall, it works U.S. border patrol agent Michael Bernacke guns his SUV down the wide desert-sand road that lines the U.S.-Mexican border through urban San Luis, Ariz. To his right stands a steel wall, 20 feet high and reinforced by cement-filled steel piping. To his left another tall fence of steel mesh. Ten yards beyond, a shorter cyclone fence is topped with jagged concertina wire. Visible to the north, through the gauze of fencing are the homes and businesses of this growing Southwest suburbia of 22,000 people. "This wall works," Bernacke said. "A lot of people have the misconception that it is a waste of time and money, but the numbers of apprehensions show that it works." The triple-and double-layered fence here in Yuma is the kind of barrier that U.S. lawmakers - and most Americans - imagined when the Secure Fence Act was enacted in 2006. The law instructed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to secure about one-third of the 1,950-mile border between U.S. and Mexico with 700 miles of double-layered fencing - and additionally through cameras, motion sensors, and other types of barriers - by the end of the year to stem illegal immigration. Bankrolled by a separate $1.2 billion homeland security bill, the Secure Fence Act would, President Bush said in 2006, "make our borders more secure." By most recent estimates, nearly half a million unauthorized immigrants cross the border each year....
Nearly 50 illegal immigrants working as security guards arrested A task force led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50 illegal immigrants in weekend raids of mostly Latino night clubs in Dallas, officials said Sunday. Authorities raided 26 businesses, including night clubs, restaurants and pool halls. They were targeting employees working as security guards for two security companies, which officials declined to identify. Law enforcement teams of local, state and federal officials simultaneously hit the 26 businesses around 11 p.m. Saturday and arrested 49 people. They recovered four pistols. Those arrested will faces charges of being in the United States illegally. Federal law also prohibits illegal immigrants from possessing weapons. Four people arrested were from El Salvador and the rest were from Mexico, officials said....
Mexican drug cartels move into human smuggling As U.S. border security has tightened, Mexican drug cartels have moved in on coyotes, human smugglers who are paid to bring illegal immigrants into the United States. The traffickers now use their expertise in gathering intelligence on border patrols, logistics and communication devices to get around ever tighter controls. They are slowly gaining control of much of the illegal passage of immigrants from Mexico to the United States, U.S. border officials say. "This used to be a family business. The coyote and the migrant were from the same town; they were connected," said Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez, chair of the department of transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at Arizona State University. "Now, because of the so-called security needs of the border, what's been created is this structure of smuggling in the hands of really nasty people who only treat the migrant as a commodity." U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Special Agent Joe Romero and other law enforcement officials say the Mexican drug cartels have even merged human smuggling with drug trafficking, forcing immigrants to act as "mules" in transporting drugs as the price of passage. "The drug cartels have determined this is big business," Romero said as he overlooked a narrow strip of desert between El Paso, Texas, and the nearby Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez. Drug cartels "control these corridors. Just like we're watching them here, they're watching us. ... It used to be, 'Get across the fence and run.' Now it's a lot more organized." Moreover, crimes committed by drug gangs that have become common in Mexico are now crossing the border, police officials say. Phoenix Police Cmdr. Joe Klima notes that 350 kidnappings were recorded in the city last year, a crime he describes as previously nonexistent....
Critics call Border Patrol standards lax As the U.S. Border Patrol expands into one of the nation's largest federal law enforcement agencies, critics say it should establish minimum educational requirements and end a long-standing policy of accepting recruits without a high school diploma or GED. Concerns about Border Patrol's hiring efforts come as the agency races to satisfy a Bush administration mandate to have 18,319 agents on the job by December. In the last year, the agency has been criticized for taking too many shortcuts, such as cutting its academy training schedule, as part of the biggest recruitment campaign in its history. Recruiting standards are higher at most other federal law enforcement agencies. For example, a college degree and three years of professional experience are required by FBI agent recruits. The Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff's Office require not only high school, but two years of college. ''Since that has not been a requirement since our inception, it stands to reason that we would have had agents who did not have a high school education or GED, however few those may be," said Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol assistant chief for security operations....
Cartels training recruits near U.S. The ranch near this border community is isolated, desolate and laced by arroyos - an ideal place, experts say, for training drug-cartel assassins. Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps. The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico are used to train cartel recruits, ranging from Mexican army deserters to American teenagers, who then carry out killings and other cartel assignments on both sides of the border, authorities say. "Traffickers go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle," said a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Part of that preparation is live firing ranges and combat training courses. ... And that's not something that we have seen before." Many of the camps are temporary, used for a time and then abandoned or used intermittently. Others are hidden on private land behind locked gates and have more permanent facilities, the officials said....
FBI: Eco-Terrorism Remains No. 1 Domestic Terror Threat For nearly seven years, the nation has turned its terror focus on Al Qaeda and the hunt for Usama bin Laden. But there is a domestic terror threat that federal officials still consider priority No. 1 — eco-terrorism. The torching of luxury homes in the swank Seattle suburb of Woodinville earlier this month served as a reminder that the decades-long war with militant environmentalists on American soil has not ended. "It remains what we would probably consider the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat, because they have successfully continued to conduct different types of attacks in and around the country," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko. The FBI defines eco-terrorism "as the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature." For years, officials have battled against members of shadowy groups such as the Earth Liberation Front and its brother-in-arms, the Animal Liberation Front. Law enforcement has made strides prosecuting cells, but it's been unable to end the arsons that have plagued developments encroaching on rural lands in the West. FBI estimates place damages from these attacks at well over $100 million....
Supreme Court won't intervene in Jefferson case The Supreme Court Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that curtails the FBI's power to search congressional offices. The case arose out of the FBI's raid of the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) in 2006. Jefferson, who is fighting federal corruption charges, sought the return of the seized materials, claiming they were protected by the constitutional privilege known as the Speech and Debate Clause. That clause is intended to ensure that legislative process is free from interference from the executive branch. Last year, in a setback for the government, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. ruled that some of the materials grabbed by the FBI were likely protected by the privilege--even though agents had properly obtained a search warrant-- and should have been subject to Jefferson's review before they were handed over. The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which Monday declined to hear the case. That lets the appeals court decision stand. The court's ruling means that the Speech and Debate clause applies to searches by federal agents. The Justice Department complained that the decision would force it to give members of Congress advance notice before a raid is conducted, but the opinion doesn't say that. It simply requires that the member be given some opportunity to review and set aside materials related to the legislative process....
More than 10% of pilots allowed to fly armed More than one in 10 of the nation's airline pilots are cleared to carry a handgun while flying, and the number will continue to grow, according to a Transportation Security Administration projection. The TSA, which has declined to disclose the number of armed pilots, revealed in a recent budget document that 10.8% of airline crewmembers were authorized to carry guns. The Federal Air Marshal Service, a TSA agency that runs the armed-pilots program, reports that 85,000 to 90,000 pilots and crewmembers flying domestic passenger and cargo planes are eligible to carry a gun. That puts the number of armed pilots at about 9,500 — a figure Air Marshal spokesman Nelson Minerly did not dispute. The marshal service keeps the exact number confidential. The TSA projects the program to grow to 16.5% of eligible pilots by the year 2011....
Citizens’ group calls for independent investigation of in-flight mishap to prevent cover-up The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today is calling for an independent investigation of an in-flight discharge of a pistol carried by an armed U.S. Airways pilot to prevent any whitewashing, cover-up or scapegoating in the incident. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said the incident is alarming because of allegations that the pilot may have been following strict Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rules when the mishap occurred. Those rules came under fire today from the Airline Pilots Security Alliance (APSA), which represents thousands of commercial airline pilots. “Today, we are calling for an independent investigation of this incident, to be conducted by a panel of civilian firearms instructors and gun safety experts,” Gottlieb stated. “This will eliminate any possibility or future assertion that the TSA whitewashed this incident and used the pilot as a scapegoat to preserve unsafe regulations. “Conversely,” he added, “such an investigation by non-government experts who are also not connected to APSA or the airlines could determine, without bias and free from any influence or coercion, whether the pilot was handling his firearm safely, or in an unsafe manner. We want the truth....
State leads way on RFID privacy Washington state has passed some of the first laws in the country related to privacy and radio-frequency-identification (RFID) technology. Last week, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed into law two bills protecting consumer privacy by making it a felony to possess information gained from an RFID-enhanced driver's license, except when crossing international borders, or to maliciously scan someone's identification remotely without their knowledge and consent. As a state with many travelers who cross the border frequently, Washington has become a test bed for RFID. It's one of four states that have signed agreements with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to use RFID technology in optional-enhanced driver's licenses that became available in January. Critics say that is a precursor to establishing a national ID card. While the new technology "does simplify border crossings with neighboring countries, it also presents new and broad opportunities for identity theft and surveillance," said Rep. Deb Eddy, D-Kirkland, who sponsored HB 2729, which goes into effect in June. Because the data on the chip is not encrypted, its unique number can be captured from a distance, Eddy said. The licenses are shipped with a foil sleeve to prevent radio transmission. HB 2729 says personal information on identity cards may be released to law-enforcement agencies only for customs and border-protection purposes. Personally identifying information may be released to law-enforcement agencies for other purposes "only if accompanied by a court order," the law states....
States fight as REAL ID deadline nears Frustrated by unfunded federal mandates, a number of states are revolting. The latest case in point: stiff resistance to REAL ID, a controversial post-9/11 law that aims to make driver's licenses more secure. The Department of Homeland Security set Monday as the deadline for states to get an extension for implementing REAL ID. Miss this deadline, DHS warned resistant states, and come May, your residents won't be allowed to board planes with their current driver's licenses. Montana is one state that's been opposed to the DHS requirements. Rather than request an extension, it sent DHS a letter explaining what it's already doing to strengthen licenses. Still, DHS responded on March 21 by granting an extension. New Hampshire, another REAL ID holdout, took a similar path with DHS and also got an unasked-for extension last week. Beyond REAL ID, a series of federal moves in recent years have stepped on states' toes, including the No Child Left Behind Act and federal tort reforms, says David Davenport, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University in California. "The pendulum is swinging a little bit back towards states' rights now, and that's one context in which to see this REAL ID battle," he says. The law requires that states make it harder to tamper with driver's licenses, and it makes state motor-vehicle agencies more secure. It also tightens standards for how people may use documents to establish their identity. Many states balked at the measures. Seventeen, including Montana, passed legislation opposing REAL ID. With no states near compliance, most opted to request an extension, but Montana, New Hampshire, Maine, and South Carolina refused to do even that....
U.S. business interests at risk from domestic spying At what point does government snooping become a hindrance to commerce? That must be the question a lot of companies such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. must be asking themselves after a recent episode in Canada where a controversy over the use of online tools has emerged. It began with a Lakehead University switch from dedicated computer systems to using various Google services and tools that reside in the Internet cloud. While saving the school money and proving the unique viability of hosted software services, concerns over U.S. snooping resulted in a debate over privacy. While none of this discussion has swept into the U.S. media as yet, the implications are clear. In an article in the Globe and Mail this revealing trend was expressed: "Some other organizations are banning Google's innovative tools outright to avoid the prospect of U.S. spooks combing through their data," Simon Avery wrote. "Security experts say many firms are only just starting to realize the risks they assume by embracing Web-based collaborative tools hosted by a U.S. company, a problem even more acute in Canada where federal privacy rules are at odds with U.S. security measures." Eyes on our data So any company wanting to develop "software as a service," hosted services, Web-based email or any sort of initiative that involves remote databases that are accessed over the Internet, now has to deal with one big privacy question: Will the U.S. government be snooping in on our data? You must assume that the answer is yes. There goes the Software as a Service strategy from Microsoft and others -- down the drain....
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Save The Earth — Hug A Logger As environmental alarmists entertain themselves by turning off lights, their efforts sometimes lead to unintended consequences. A new study, for example, shows they may be warming the earth by saving trees. In the green scheme of things, trees are a good thing and deforestation is bad. We must plant as many trees as we can to suck up all that CO2, the pollutant that sustains all plant and therefore all animal life on earth. Old-growth forests must be protected from those nasty loggers. Trouble is, according to Thomas Bonnicksen, professor emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University, forests left in "pristine" condition have too many trees and too many dead ones, both of which provide fuel for the devastating forest fires that ravaged California last year. Bonnicksen is also a visiting scholar at the California Forest Foundation and has authored a study available at its Web site (calforestfoundation.org). It shows that four large California wildfires produced 38 million tons of greenhouse gases through fire and subsequent decay of dead trees — 10 million from the fires themselves and 28 million from the post-fire decay. This is equivalent to the emissions from 7 million cars for an entire year. Bonnicksen says the four fires studied involved forests averaging 350 trees per acre where 50 an acre is considered normal. Some California forests, he says, have more than 1,000 trees per acre, with young trees growing under big trees, serving as "ladder fuel" and dead trees and woody debris on the ground. He advocates "thinning" the forests so they're less like time bombs waiting to explode. "Harvested trees can be turned into long-lasting wood products that store carbon," he notes, adding that it's important to remove trees destroyed by fires and insects "so that they don't decay and send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." So it just might be forest fires that are causing global warming, not the other way around, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently claimed....
New Mexico faces possibility of new wilderness designation It is the first day of spring 2008 and New Mexico rancher Tom Mobley has yet to push a blade of sediment from the dry earthen stock pond on his Dona Ana County ranch. “I started the request to clean this tank in October 2007 and I still don’t have the approval to do a thing,” he said, as he thumbed through a 16-page document he had received from the Las Cruces, NM, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office detailing the procedure he would have to follow upon receiving final approval for the work. The tank that Mobley is worried about happens to be located in one of a number of Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) scattered across part of the 2,400,000 acres of Dona Ana County. Because the location is in the WSA, the allowance to clean it does not follow normal BLM procedures for maintenance of such structures. Mobley must wait for the process, which includes interested party comments, to conclude. “This is one reason why ranching under wilderness designation in this country won’t work!” he concluded as he throws his hands up and heads out the door. Miles south of Mobley’s ranch in the Potrillo Mountains, rancher Dudley Williams is out early checking windmills before the wind comes up. “Can you imagine our dilemma trying to maintain these mills without having unrestricted access to them?” Dudley shakes his head. The Williams Ranch spreads over some 345 sections of country that runs nearly to the Mexican border on its southern extension. The ranch has over 95 miles of pipelines, 200 miles of fence, and 175 miles of roads. It also has a 150,000-acre WSA footprint overlaying it. A group of Dona Ana County ranchers and loyal allies mobilized and formed a group they call People for Preserving Our Western Heritage (PFPOWH). Their effort is aimed at countering the efforts of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA), which had positioned three paid staffers within the community, along with an extended organization that is tied to major environmental entities, for the purposes of securing their ideas of wilderness within the county. In draft legislation presented to the New Mexico congressional delegations in December 2007, PFPOWH introduced the concept of Rangeland Preservation Area(s) (RPA). This designation would elevate similar protective measures as wilderness, but also allow local conditions to be honored and considered....
Post-delisting wolf kills begin At least three wolves were killed by Wyoming residents over the weekend, after the animal was removed from the federal endangered species list. Large numbers of hunters reportedly prowled the state’s newly designated wolf predator area in Sublette County Friday, Saturday and Sunday, locals and outfitters said. At least two wolves were killed near an elk feedground in the Pinedale area, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Another was killed, also in Sublette County, by a rancher, a local predator board member said. The Star-Tribune received reports that a fourth wolf was possibly taken, also in Sublette County, but that kill has not yet been confirmed. All three of the confirmed wolf kills happened in the Cowboy State’s newly designated predator zone for wolves, where the animals can be shot on sight without limits, as long as the time, location and sex of each kill is reported to the Game and Fish Department within 10 days. Wolves in the state’s extreme northwest corner are now in the animal’s trophy game zone, and are still afforded some protection. Wolves in the rest of the state are considered predators, similar to coyotes. Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department, said the two wolf kills reported so far both happened Friday, about one to two miles west of the Jewett feedground outside of Pinedale. Both were gray-black, one male and one female. One rancher outside the trophy game zone killed a wolf Friday on his private property, said Cat Urbigkit, a member of the Sublette County Predator Board....
Pacific Ethanol suffers a bigger-than-expected loss Pacific Ethanol Inc., a California biofuels darling that boasts political connections and an investment from Bill Gates, is short on cash and suffering from higher corn and plant construction costs, which threaten to derail the once-promising biofuels maker. The Sacramento company on Monday posted record-high sales but a larger-than-expected $14.7-million loss in the fourth quarter, reflecting a financial squeeze that has clouded prospects for ethanol producers nationwide. Pacific Ethanol reported the loss just days after it shored up its depleted coffers with a $40-million cash infusion from Lyles United, a company whose affiliates have provided construction services to Pacific Ethanol and had previously lent it funds. The Lyles investment provided a bit of good news for the company and helped remedy several violations of Pacific Ethanol's credit agreement with a group of lenders. The company recently postponed construction of its Imperial Valley ethanol plant, said it suffered from large construction cost overruns and admitted to having a "material weakness" in its financial controls -- problems it says it has since fixed. The company operates ethanol plants in Madera, Calif., and Boardman, Ore., and has a major interest in an ethanol production plant in Windsor, Colo. Two others have yet to come on line; a plant in Burley, Idaho, is in the start-up process and a plant in Stockton is set to open this year....
As Fight for Water Heats Up, Prized Fish Suffer It’s a simple fact of life across the rural West, as it is here in Montana’s mountain-ringed Big Hole River Valley. Flooding river bottoms to grow hay sustains the economy but means less water in the river for the prized wild trout population. The competition for water is not new, but it is intensifying as the climate here gets warmer and drier. “The biggest worry for trout is that smaller streams will simply run dry in late summer and temperatures in the remaining pools will exceed lethal levels,” said Steven W. Running, a climate scientist at the University of Montana in Missoula who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Even if the stream has good flow 11 months of the year, fish have to survive the highest stress conditions in late summer. We could lose the populations in these smaller streams, and they won’t come back.” By all accounts, these kinds of changes in the West’s celebrated trout fisheries are happening quickly — faster, experts say, than in other parts of the country. A new report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, based on research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows temperatures in the West the last five years increased by 1.7 percent, compared with 1 percent elsewhere. Floods, wildfires, livestock grazing and roads only make the picture worse. Some studies project the loss of Western trout populations in some regions could be more than 60 percent, and the loss of bull trout could exceed 90 percent by 2050. Salmon will also see a decline, up to 40 percent....
Petrified Forest park expansion stalled Government plans to more than double the size of Petrified Forest National Park appear to be in jeopardy because Congress has failed to come up with the cash to buy surrounding properties it approved for expansion in 2004. Without government funding, an irreplaceable treasure of dinosaur bones and Indian ruins may be lost as ranchers sell off their spreads for subdivision and development, according to David Gillette, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Petrified Forest is just one of 56 federal historic and recreation sites that "could lose land inside their borders to developers this year," according to a study to be released April 8, by the non-profit National Parks Conservation Association. The report, "America's Heritage: For Sale," identifies Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland as other examples. According to Helsel, Congress has appropriated $44.4 million for National Parks expansion purchases in 2008. The National Parks Service has a wish list of 1.8 million acres it would like to acquire, she said, at a projected cost of $2 billion. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., who chairs the Committee on House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, has proposed a mandatory spending program of $100 million annually over the next decade....
Forest roadwork may drive up state jobs U.S. Forest Service officials and environmentalists say the $4.7 million that Congress recently allocated for roadwork in the Northern Region national forests will provide a mini jolt of economic and ecological benefits. But with Montana, northern Idaho and North Dakota facing a critical road maintenance backlog of hundreds of millions of dollars on their national forests, the funding will only address the worst cases of crumbling roads and culverts damaging water quality and blocking fish passage. “This is a huge opportunity to get a jump on some of these needs that are affecting water quality and fish passage, but there's a long way to go,” said Fred Bower, the Forest Service's regional transportation planner in Missoula. Nationwide, the Forest Service has long struggled to keep up the 400,000 miles of roads that crisscross national forest land. The agency currently has an estimated $10 billion nationwide backlog of road maintenance needs. Congress' recent $39.4 million allocation was the first time it has set aside money specifically for decommissioning national forest roads. The funding, which is part of the Legacy Roads and Trails program, will be spent on road and trail decommissioning and maintenance, bridge repairs and the removal of fish barriers, especially in areas where forest roads are harming water quality and threatened or endangered species....The local NPS and FS employees can't go up on the hill and lobby for larger appropriations from Congress, but they are good at using the media to accomplish the same thing.
Colorado looks at new oil, gas regs After three months of debate over a preliminary plan, state officials Monday released a draft rewrite of Colorado's oil and gas regulations that yanked or modified parts that drew the most fire from the industry. The proposals will implement new laws requiring that decisions about oil and gas development give additional weight to public health, wildlife and the environment. Supporters say regulations must be updated in the face of an unprecedented, statewide natural gas boom. The industry warned that preliminary proposals released in January could drive up costs and dampen companies' interest in Colorado, where the industry generates billions of dollars in economic benefits and employs tens of thousands of people. State officials said they listened and made changes, including dropping a proposed application for drilling permits that the industry argued would add months to the approval process. Instead, the state has proposed expanding an existing form to include more information to evaluate the potential health and environmental impacts. "The industry talked about regulatory uncertainty and that time is money," said Mike King, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. King said the state also listened to landowners and communities near gas fields concerned about water quality. A new proposal would prohibit construction of oil and gas facilities within 500 feet of drinking water sources and impose conditions within a half-mile. The rules would apply in a 5-mile zone upstream from where the water enters a community system. Grand Junction and other communities protested gas leases that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved on federal land in their watershed. King said state officials "are adamant" that the draft rules would apply to federal land because of the state's jurisdiction over water and wildlife. King said the state is talking to federal officials and wants to work with them....
Can't Say 'No' To Canada's Tar Sands Oil At a time when saying anything good about fossil fuels is like declaring war on the environment, it may seem like wishful thinking to press for an expansion of U.S. oil refining capacity. Yet it is precisely this sort of thinking that is necessary if we are to make use of a vast, secure and reliable supply of fuel from Canada's oil sands. The tar sands hold an estimated 174 billion barrels of crude oil, making Canada's oil-sands deposits second only to Saudi Arabia in global reserves. The U.S. currently obtains 1 million barrels a day from Canada's tar sands, but with planned investments the daily supply could exceed 3 million barrels by 2015. But extracting heavy oil from tar sands and transporting it by pipeline for refining is a difficult and costly process. Producers are developing new drilling techniques to reduce the large volumes of natural gas and water needed to separate the oil from sand. And the oil companies, which have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions in their operations, are making the needed investments to meet environmental regulations. Yet the greenhouse-gas issue overshadows all other considerations. The challenge is how to produce and refine enough oil to meet rising energy demand, while mitigating carbon dioxide emissions. Refiners have set a goal to improve energy efficiency 10% over the next decade, and one way they are making progress is capturing excess heat from their operations to produce additional electricity. An indication of change is the way oil companies now see unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands. Refineries throughout the Midwest and Gulf Coast are being retrofitted to accommodate the heavier oil. And companies are investing larger sums than ever in developing new technologies to reduce airborne and water emissions. Even though the companies are confident they can meet environmental requirements, opponents are determined to block the necessary permits. If our refineries can't take advantage of this secure source of oil from tar sands, other countries — notably China — will move in....
Green Fuel Plants Turning Rivers Brown In their haste to save the environment, “green” fuel enthusiasts are turning public waterways brown as some companies eager to get processing plants up and running quickly are failing to honor the conditions of their environmental permits. "What is being sold as green fuel just doesn't pencil out," California Representative Brian Bilbray, who spoke out against the $18 billion energy package recently passed by Congress that provides tax credits for biofuels, told the International Herald Tribune. According the National Biodiesel Board, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, even sensitive riparian ones. But scientists — and people living near biodiesel refineries — say that’s seriously understating its potential environmental impact. Some biodiesel plants are discharging glycerin, which is normally non-toxic and the principal biodiesel byproduct, into rivers and streams. "You can eat the stuff, after all," says Environment Canada researcher Bruce Hollebone, one of the world's leading experts on the environmental impact of vegetable oil and glycerin spills. "But as with most organic materials, oil and glycerin deplete the oxygen content of water very quickly, and that will suffocate fish and other organisms. And for birds, a vegetable oil spill is just as deadly as a crude oil spill."....
Parody Ad Takes Up Cause of Ringed Seals, Says Polar Bear Populations are Prosperous and Growing In light of environmentalist campaigns pressuring the Administration to list the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, the National Center for Public Policy Research, joined by Citizens United, has released for the Internet a lighthearted parody political ad to remind the public that the polar bears' situation isn't as dire as some environmental organizations are leading the public to believe. The ad, a parody of the wild charges and breathless style of many political campaign ads, lets the public know what is not always clear from environmentalist lobbying campaigns: The global population of polar bears is 22,000, about double what it was just four decades ago. "Many people will be surprised to learn there are 22,000 polar bears and their population has doubled," said David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "While obviously many aspects of our parody ad - such as the polar bears in suits, lobbying Congress - are complete fiction, the steady growth in the global polar bear population is real. We hope that people who view our parody ad seeking a laugh will remember that fact, and perhaps be inspired to look a little more deeply into the basis of environmentalist claims regarding the polar bear." The ad is being released in conjunction with a National Center for Public Policy Research policy paper, "Listing the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act Because of Projected Future Global Warming Could Harm Bears and Humans Alike," by Peyton Knight and Amy Ridenour....
WTO rejects EU beef hormone ban but also raps US, Canada The World Trade Organisation on Monday ruled that the European Union, United States and Canada all failed to respect global trade rules in a long-running row over beef treated with growth hormones. The EU was at fault because its present justifications for an import ban -- which were revised after a previous WTO ruling -- were not backed up by scientific evidence, the WTO said. The US and Canada meanwhile did not follow WTO procedures strictly by maintaining retaliatory measures against Brussels, the global trade body found in a report. The case goes back nearly 10 years to 1998 when the WTO ruled Washington and Ottawa could slap higher tariffs on a list of EU products after it condemned Brussels for banning beef producing with certain growth-promoting hormones -- used by the US and Canada -- without a scientific assessment of the risk. The EU had contested these sanctions, saying that they were no longer justified because it had found a new scientific basis for banning hormone-treated beef and had updated its law in 2003. Brussels then filed two fresh complaints against the United States and Canada for maintaining their retaliatory measures....
New Mexico faces possibility of new wilderness designation It is the first day of spring 2008 and New Mexico rancher Tom Mobley has yet to push a blade of sediment from the dry earthen stock pond on his Dona Ana County ranch. “I started the request to clean this tank in October 2007 and I still don’t have the approval to do a thing,” he said, as he thumbed through a 16-page document he had received from the Las Cruces, NM, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office detailing the procedure he would have to follow upon receiving final approval for the work. The tank that Mobley is worried about happens to be located in one of a number of Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) scattered across part of the 2,400,000 acres of Dona Ana County. Because the location is in the WSA, the allowance to clean it does not follow normal BLM procedures for maintenance of such structures. Mobley must wait for the process, which includes interested party comments, to conclude. “This is one reason why ranching under wilderness designation in this country won’t work!” he concluded as he throws his hands up and heads out the door. Miles south of Mobley’s ranch in the Potrillo Mountains, rancher Dudley Williams is out early checking windmills before the wind comes up. “Can you imagine our dilemma trying to maintain these mills without having unrestricted access to them?” Dudley shakes his head. The Williams Ranch spreads over some 345 sections of country that runs nearly to the Mexican border on its southern extension. The ranch has over 95 miles of pipelines, 200 miles of fence, and 175 miles of roads. It also has a 150,000-acre WSA footprint overlaying it. A group of Dona Ana County ranchers and loyal allies mobilized and formed a group they call People for Preserving Our Western Heritage (PFPOWH). Their effort is aimed at countering the efforts of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA), which had positioned three paid staffers within the community, along with an extended organization that is tied to major environmental entities, for the purposes of securing their ideas of wilderness within the county. In draft legislation presented to the New Mexico congressional delegations in December 2007, PFPOWH introduced the concept of Rangeland Preservation Area(s) (RPA). This designation would elevate similar protective measures as wilderness, but also allow local conditions to be honored and considered....
Post-delisting wolf kills begin At least three wolves were killed by Wyoming residents over the weekend, after the animal was removed from the federal endangered species list. Large numbers of hunters reportedly prowled the state’s newly designated wolf predator area in Sublette County Friday, Saturday and Sunday, locals and outfitters said. At least two wolves were killed near an elk feedground in the Pinedale area, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Another was killed, also in Sublette County, by a rancher, a local predator board member said. The Star-Tribune received reports that a fourth wolf was possibly taken, also in Sublette County, but that kill has not yet been confirmed. All three of the confirmed wolf kills happened in the Cowboy State’s newly designated predator zone for wolves, where the animals can be shot on sight without limits, as long as the time, location and sex of each kill is reported to the Game and Fish Department within 10 days. Wolves in the state’s extreme northwest corner are now in the animal’s trophy game zone, and are still afforded some protection. Wolves in the rest of the state are considered predators, similar to coyotes. Eric Keszler, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department, said the two wolf kills reported so far both happened Friday, about one to two miles west of the Jewett feedground outside of Pinedale. Both were gray-black, one male and one female. One rancher outside the trophy game zone killed a wolf Friday on his private property, said Cat Urbigkit, a member of the Sublette County Predator Board....
Pacific Ethanol suffers a bigger-than-expected loss Pacific Ethanol Inc., a California biofuels darling that boasts political connections and an investment from Bill Gates, is short on cash and suffering from higher corn and plant construction costs, which threaten to derail the once-promising biofuels maker. The Sacramento company on Monday posted record-high sales but a larger-than-expected $14.7-million loss in the fourth quarter, reflecting a financial squeeze that has clouded prospects for ethanol producers nationwide. Pacific Ethanol reported the loss just days after it shored up its depleted coffers with a $40-million cash infusion from Lyles United, a company whose affiliates have provided construction services to Pacific Ethanol and had previously lent it funds. The Lyles investment provided a bit of good news for the company and helped remedy several violations of Pacific Ethanol's credit agreement with a group of lenders. The company recently postponed construction of its Imperial Valley ethanol plant, said it suffered from large construction cost overruns and admitted to having a "material weakness" in its financial controls -- problems it says it has since fixed. The company operates ethanol plants in Madera, Calif., and Boardman, Ore., and has a major interest in an ethanol production plant in Windsor, Colo. Two others have yet to come on line; a plant in Burley, Idaho, is in the start-up process and a plant in Stockton is set to open this year....
As Fight for Water Heats Up, Prized Fish Suffer It’s a simple fact of life across the rural West, as it is here in Montana’s mountain-ringed Big Hole River Valley. Flooding river bottoms to grow hay sustains the economy but means less water in the river for the prized wild trout population. The competition for water is not new, but it is intensifying as the climate here gets warmer and drier. “The biggest worry for trout is that smaller streams will simply run dry in late summer and temperatures in the remaining pools will exceed lethal levels,” said Steven W. Running, a climate scientist at the University of Montana in Missoula who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Even if the stream has good flow 11 months of the year, fish have to survive the highest stress conditions in late summer. We could lose the populations in these smaller streams, and they won’t come back.” By all accounts, these kinds of changes in the West’s celebrated trout fisheries are happening quickly — faster, experts say, than in other parts of the country. A new report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, based on research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows temperatures in the West the last five years increased by 1.7 percent, compared with 1 percent elsewhere. Floods, wildfires, livestock grazing and roads only make the picture worse. Some studies project the loss of Western trout populations in some regions could be more than 60 percent, and the loss of bull trout could exceed 90 percent by 2050. Salmon will also see a decline, up to 40 percent....
Petrified Forest park expansion stalled Government plans to more than double the size of Petrified Forest National Park appear to be in jeopardy because Congress has failed to come up with the cash to buy surrounding properties it approved for expansion in 2004. Without government funding, an irreplaceable treasure of dinosaur bones and Indian ruins may be lost as ranchers sell off their spreads for subdivision and development, according to David Gillette, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Petrified Forest is just one of 56 federal historic and recreation sites that "could lose land inside their borders to developers this year," according to a study to be released April 8, by the non-profit National Parks Conservation Association. The report, "America's Heritage: For Sale," identifies Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland as other examples. According to Helsel, Congress has appropriated $44.4 million for National Parks expansion purchases in 2008. The National Parks Service has a wish list of 1.8 million acres it would like to acquire, she said, at a projected cost of $2 billion. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., who chairs the Committee on House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, has proposed a mandatory spending program of $100 million annually over the next decade....
Forest roadwork may drive up state jobs U.S. Forest Service officials and environmentalists say the $4.7 million that Congress recently allocated for roadwork in the Northern Region national forests will provide a mini jolt of economic and ecological benefits. But with Montana, northern Idaho and North Dakota facing a critical road maintenance backlog of hundreds of millions of dollars on their national forests, the funding will only address the worst cases of crumbling roads and culverts damaging water quality and blocking fish passage. “This is a huge opportunity to get a jump on some of these needs that are affecting water quality and fish passage, but there's a long way to go,” said Fred Bower, the Forest Service's regional transportation planner in Missoula. Nationwide, the Forest Service has long struggled to keep up the 400,000 miles of roads that crisscross national forest land. The agency currently has an estimated $10 billion nationwide backlog of road maintenance needs. Congress' recent $39.4 million allocation was the first time it has set aside money specifically for decommissioning national forest roads. The funding, which is part of the Legacy Roads and Trails program, will be spent on road and trail decommissioning and maintenance, bridge repairs and the removal of fish barriers, especially in areas where forest roads are harming water quality and threatened or endangered species....The local NPS and FS employees can't go up on the hill and lobby for larger appropriations from Congress, but they are good at using the media to accomplish the same thing.
Colorado looks at new oil, gas regs After three months of debate over a preliminary plan, state officials Monday released a draft rewrite of Colorado's oil and gas regulations that yanked or modified parts that drew the most fire from the industry. The proposals will implement new laws requiring that decisions about oil and gas development give additional weight to public health, wildlife and the environment. Supporters say regulations must be updated in the face of an unprecedented, statewide natural gas boom. The industry warned that preliminary proposals released in January could drive up costs and dampen companies' interest in Colorado, where the industry generates billions of dollars in economic benefits and employs tens of thousands of people. State officials said they listened and made changes, including dropping a proposed application for drilling permits that the industry argued would add months to the approval process. Instead, the state has proposed expanding an existing form to include more information to evaluate the potential health and environmental impacts. "The industry talked about regulatory uncertainty and that time is money," said Mike King, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. King said the state also listened to landowners and communities near gas fields concerned about water quality. A new proposal would prohibit construction of oil and gas facilities within 500 feet of drinking water sources and impose conditions within a half-mile. The rules would apply in a 5-mile zone upstream from where the water enters a community system. Grand Junction and other communities protested gas leases that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved on federal land in their watershed. King said state officials "are adamant" that the draft rules would apply to federal land because of the state's jurisdiction over water and wildlife. King said the state is talking to federal officials and wants to work with them....
Can't Say 'No' To Canada's Tar Sands Oil At a time when saying anything good about fossil fuels is like declaring war on the environment, it may seem like wishful thinking to press for an expansion of U.S. oil refining capacity. Yet it is precisely this sort of thinking that is necessary if we are to make use of a vast, secure and reliable supply of fuel from Canada's oil sands. The tar sands hold an estimated 174 billion barrels of crude oil, making Canada's oil-sands deposits second only to Saudi Arabia in global reserves. The U.S. currently obtains 1 million barrels a day from Canada's tar sands, but with planned investments the daily supply could exceed 3 million barrels by 2015. But extracting heavy oil from tar sands and transporting it by pipeline for refining is a difficult and costly process. Producers are developing new drilling techniques to reduce the large volumes of natural gas and water needed to separate the oil from sand. And the oil companies, which have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions in their operations, are making the needed investments to meet environmental regulations. Yet the greenhouse-gas issue overshadows all other considerations. The challenge is how to produce and refine enough oil to meet rising energy demand, while mitigating carbon dioxide emissions. Refiners have set a goal to improve energy efficiency 10% over the next decade, and one way they are making progress is capturing excess heat from their operations to produce additional electricity. An indication of change is the way oil companies now see unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands. Refineries throughout the Midwest and Gulf Coast are being retrofitted to accommodate the heavier oil. And companies are investing larger sums than ever in developing new technologies to reduce airborne and water emissions. Even though the companies are confident they can meet environmental requirements, opponents are determined to block the necessary permits. If our refineries can't take advantage of this secure source of oil from tar sands, other countries — notably China — will move in....
Green Fuel Plants Turning Rivers Brown In their haste to save the environment, “green” fuel enthusiasts are turning public waterways brown as some companies eager to get processing plants up and running quickly are failing to honor the conditions of their environmental permits. "What is being sold as green fuel just doesn't pencil out," California Representative Brian Bilbray, who spoke out against the $18 billion energy package recently passed by Congress that provides tax credits for biofuels, told the International Herald Tribune. According the National Biodiesel Board, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, even sensitive riparian ones. But scientists — and people living near biodiesel refineries — say that’s seriously understating its potential environmental impact. Some biodiesel plants are discharging glycerin, which is normally non-toxic and the principal biodiesel byproduct, into rivers and streams. "You can eat the stuff, after all," says Environment Canada researcher Bruce Hollebone, one of the world's leading experts on the environmental impact of vegetable oil and glycerin spills. "But as with most organic materials, oil and glycerin deplete the oxygen content of water very quickly, and that will suffocate fish and other organisms. And for birds, a vegetable oil spill is just as deadly as a crude oil spill."....
Parody Ad Takes Up Cause of Ringed Seals, Says Polar Bear Populations are Prosperous and Growing In light of environmentalist campaigns pressuring the Administration to list the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, the National Center for Public Policy Research, joined by Citizens United, has released for the Internet a lighthearted parody political ad to remind the public that the polar bears' situation isn't as dire as some environmental organizations are leading the public to believe. The ad, a parody of the wild charges and breathless style of many political campaign ads, lets the public know what is not always clear from environmentalist lobbying campaigns: The global population of polar bears is 22,000, about double what it was just four decades ago. "Many people will be surprised to learn there are 22,000 polar bears and their population has doubled," said David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "While obviously many aspects of our parody ad - such as the polar bears in suits, lobbying Congress - are complete fiction, the steady growth in the global polar bear population is real. We hope that people who view our parody ad seeking a laugh will remember that fact, and perhaps be inspired to look a little more deeply into the basis of environmentalist claims regarding the polar bear." The ad is being released in conjunction with a National Center for Public Policy Research policy paper, "Listing the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act Because of Projected Future Global Warming Could Harm Bears and Humans Alike," by Peyton Knight and Amy Ridenour....
WTO rejects EU beef hormone ban but also raps US, Canada The World Trade Organisation on Monday ruled that the European Union, United States and Canada all failed to respect global trade rules in a long-running row over beef treated with growth hormones. The EU was at fault because its present justifications for an import ban -- which were revised after a previous WTO ruling -- were not backed up by scientific evidence, the WTO said. The US and Canada meanwhile did not follow WTO procedures strictly by maintaining retaliatory measures against Brussels, the global trade body found in a report. The case goes back nearly 10 years to 1998 when the WTO ruled Washington and Ottawa could slap higher tariffs on a list of EU products after it condemned Brussels for banning beef producing with certain growth-promoting hormones -- used by the US and Canada -- without a scientific assessment of the risk. The EU had contested these sanctions, saying that they were no longer justified because it had found a new scientific basis for banning hormone-treated beef and had updated its law in 2003. Brussels then filed two fresh complaints against the United States and Canada for maintaining their retaliatory measures....
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sierra Club removes leadership of its Florida chapter The Sierra Club's national board voted March 25 to remove the leaders of the Club's 35,000-member Florida chapter, and to suspend the Chapter for four years. It was the first time in the Club's 116-year history that such action has been taken against a state Chapter. The leadership of the Florida Chapter had been highly critical of the national board's decision in mid-December 2007 to allow The Clorox Company to use the Sierra Club's name and logo to market a new line of non-chlorinated cleaning products called "Green Works." In return, Clorox Company will pay Sierra Club an undisclosed fee, based partly on product sales. The Clorox Company logo will appear on the products as well. A 2004 report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund named The Clorox Company as one of the nation's most chemically dangerous. The Clorox deal has angered and embittered Club members all across the country, not just in Florida. Since the deal was announced in January, 2008, the Club's national leadership has deflected many requests by Club members to see the text of the legal agreement signed with
Clorox....
'Lights Out' for Earth Hour From Rome's Colosseum to the Sydney Opera House, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change. The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were. The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe in cadence with the setting of the sun. Several U.S. cities also planned symbolic blackouts or dimmings of monuments, including at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change....
Evangelicals Like It Hot SUPPOSEDLY GLOBAL WARMING IS the wedge issue that will peel evangelicals away from their conservative voting habits and their ostensible preoccupation with sexual mores. So when the president of the conservative-led 16 million member Southern Baptist Convention signed a Global Warming statement, headlines blazed, and the evangelical left cheered. But the church's president has since attempted to clarify. And the head of the denomination's official public policy arm is publicly opposing congressional legislation mandating increased carbon caps. The March 10 "Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change" was organized by 25-year-old seminary student Jonathan Merritt, the son of a former Southern Baptist president. His father and another former church president signed the statement, along with prominent seminary faculty, adding nearly 50 notable signatures. Richard Land, head of the church's official Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, conspicuously declined to sign, disagreeing that the church had been "too timid." He also explained that endorsing a stance at variance with the church's official position would be "misleading and unethical." Land was referencing the church's 2007 resolution "On Global Warming," which was notably skeptical about human-induced climate change. It declared that "global temperature has risen and fallen cyclically throughout geologic history" and that the "scientific community is divided regarding the extent to which humans are responsible for recent global warming." It also warned that "forcing developing countries to comply with Kyoto will significantly inhibit their economic development and the development of the international economy" and that "proposed carbon offset programs will have little impact on reducing rising temperatures if human activity is not a significant cause of recent global warming."....
World governments start talks on halting greenhouse gases Governments from 163 countries will launch discussions Monday on forging a global warming agreement, a process expected to be fraught with disagreements over which countries should take the lead to reduce greenhouse gases by as much as half by 2050. The weeklong, United Nations climate meeting in Bangkok comes on the heels of a historic agreement reached in December to draft a new accord on global warming by 2009. Without a pact to rein in rising greenhouse gases in the next two decades, scientists say warming weather will lead to widespread drought, floods, higher sea levels and worsening storms. "(There is a) very cooperative and constructive mood, a great enthusiasm to take this work forward," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is hosting the Thailand meeting. However, de Boer also said Sunday it would be "incredibly challenging" to craft such a complex agreement over the next two years....
Gore Launches Ambitious Advocacy Campaign on Climate Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history. The Alliance for Climate Protection's "we" campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from "American Idol" to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." It highlights the extent to which Americans' growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change. "This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing this crisis," Gore said. "I've tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it." Private contributors have already donated or committed half the money needed to fund the entire campaign, he said....
American West Heating Nearly Twice As Fast As Rest Of World The American West is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the world, according to a new analysis of the most recent federal government temperature figures. The news is especially bad for some of the nation’s fastest growing cities, which receive water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The average temperature rise in the Southwest’s largest river basin was more than double the average global increase, likely spelling even more parched conditions. “Global warming is hitting the West hard,” said Theo Spencer of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “It is already taking an economic toll on the region’s tourism, recreation, skiing, hunting and fishing activities. The speed of warming and mounting economic damage make clear the urgent need to limit global warming pollution.” For the report, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) analyzed new temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 11 western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007 the average temperature in the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, was 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the historical average for the 20th Century. The temperature rise was more than twice the global average increase of 1.0 degree during the same period. The average temperature increased 1.7 degrees in the entire 11-state western region....
A Wolf Saved From Extinction but Snared in Politics The uncertainty surrounding the Mexican gray wolf, also known as el lobo, highlights the challenge of meshing conservation with politics. While biologists and zookeepers have saved the Mexican wolf, the most genetically distinct subspecies of gray wolf in North America, federal managers are struggling to translate this success into a working recovery program in the field. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Fish and Wildlife Service paid a trapper named Roy McBride to capture several Mexican wolves south of the border. That group of five, which has expanded in captivity to more than 300, is the source of every Mexican wolf that now exists in the United States, posing a genetic challenge for biologists hoping to help the species recover. At first glance, there is no reason that Mexican wolves should not make the same sort of robust recovery that gray wolves have made in the northern Rockies. But the northern wolves have more than three times as much quality habitat as the wolves in the Southwest. And a trickier problem government officials face is that the politically influential ranching community in the Southwest has opposed the wolves' reintroduction, and the officials, in seeking to accommodate those interests, have satisfied no one. Early in the process, federal officials created what Oakleaf called "artificial boundaries where wolves can be present or not" -- if a wolf goes beyond the official Blue Range Recovery Area, which spans 9,290 square miles, it is relocated. In addition, in 2005, Fish and Wildlife put into place "standard operating procedure 13.0," which calls for the permanent removal of wolves that come into conflict with livestock....
Wolves Delisted, Local Rancher Is Still Worried It's official, wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are no longer on the endangered species list. This means each state is preparing for a fall hunt, the first of it's kind in decades. One Challis Rancher says almost 50 of his head of cattle have been killed by the growing population of wolves and he's not convinced the delisting will make a dent in the growing population. "We are sustaining tremendous losses as a result of the wolves," says Rancher Gary Chamberlain. Chamberlain started his Challis ranch in the late 60's, back when wolves were virtually extinct in Idaho, "I fell in love with the country," he says. He says it's unfortunate that the wolves love the country around Challis too. "Problem we've got is as numbers of wolves have gotten to be so many they've moved into area that now effect those people that are grazing." Right now Chamberlain's cows are in his pastures, where they're safe. The danger comes when they move into the range in the mountains come May. "In 2006 we lost 18 calves and 11 cows out in Morgan Creek," recalls Morgan. In 2007 he says he lost 11 calves and 6 cows. The grand total of deaths between the two years is 46. A number of kills Chamberlain had never seen before wolves were reintroduced. Interestingly, of all the cows killed Wildlife Services was only able to confirm one as a wolf kill. Chamberlain says that's because it's difficult to prove. "Problem we get is if it's been a day or two, they have the animal cleaned up to the point that you have troubles. Unless you can find wolf scat, or tracks its difficult to determine if its a wolf kill."....
What's next for Wolves? George Edwards doesn't work for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, the agency now in charge of managing wolves in the state. But his work will play a large role in maintaining a viable wolf population in Montana by building public acceptance of the wolf, particularly in the ranching community, state officials said. Edwards, who works for the Department of Livestock, is the state's first livestock loss mitigation coordinator. Beginning next month, livestock producers will submit their financial claims to Edwards for animals hunted and killed by the state's now thriving wolf population. Wolves, which number more than 400 in Montana and 1,500 in the Northern Rockies, came off the federal endangered species list Friday, turning management over to the states. The price tag for reimbursing ranchers, as well as funding guard dogs and other conflict prevention efforts, is expected to cost more than $200,000 annually. The money won't just come from the state, as federal funding also will be sought. One of Edwards' main jobs will be fundraising. Edwards noted that some of the state's most prominent residents, such as cable TV mogul Ted Turner, will be asked to contribute....
Family sues state, feds over deadly bear attack In the moments after a black bear hauled off her 11-year-old son in American Fork Canyon last June, Rebecca Ives said she clutched her other son until help, summoned by her husband, arrived. Rescuers placed yellow tape around the family's campsite and took them to safety. What makes her angry is that such markers should have been placed around the site before the family arrived. The bear that killed Sam Ives raided campers earlier that morning and authorities were notified. The question she asked Friday after she and her family filed federal and state lawsuits: Why weren't they warned? "We would have known something was up if there was just yellow tape up there, and I would still have my son," a tearful Ives said at attorney Allen K. Young's Provo office. Their suits are seeking $2 million from the U.S. Forest Service and $550,000 from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR), which is protected by a state-mandated damages cap. The suits - they name Ives, husband Tim Mulvey, and Sam's natural father, Kevan Francis, as plaintiffs - take the agencies to task for not warning campers that a dangerous bear was on the loose and failing to close the campground until officials could locate and kill the bear....
State, wildlife advocates spar over cattle grazing issue He's just a Kittitas County cattleman trying to make a living, but controversy swirls all around Russ Stingley. On one side are the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Washington Cattlemen's Association, brought together by the governor's office to allow grazing on large swaths of state wildlife land. On the other side are critics who oppose letting cattle graze on land specifically purchased for wildlife and question its benefits. One Idaho-based conservation group has even sued, saying the state took shortcuts in order to fast-track cattle grazing. In the middle stands Stingley, awaiting state approval to put his cattle out on 18,500 acres over six pastures of rolling shrub-steppe land known as the Skookumchuck, located east of Ellensburg and home to thousands of elk. The state Fish and Wildlife Commission is expected to sign off on the grazing permit in the next two or three weeks. But every day he waits costs money. Like many Eastern Washington cattlemen, Stingley has more cattle than land and relies on lease permits to graze his livestock on state, federal and private land....
Government scientists look askance at an administration logging proposal for Oregon's Coast Range A Bush administration proposal to accelerate logging in Oregon's Coast Range faces new criticism by the government's own scientists, who say the plan probably underestimates the environmental harm it would do and may exaggerate how much timber could actually be cut. The scientists, including state and federal experts on forests, fish, wildlife and economics, also said the logging blueprint issued last year by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management did not use the most recent and relevant science on subjects such as wildlife habitat and water quality. The blueprint affects about 2.5 million acres of federally managed forestland rich in timber and wildlife. Logging in the region dropped sharply more than a decade ago amid extra protection for such species as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, and coastal counties have pressed to push logging levels back up. The Bush administration struck a 2003 legal deal with the timber industry to look at eliminating permanent wildlife reserves on the land -- a move that would promote more logging. The BLM issued a draft proposal advancing that approach last year and asked the panel of state and federal scientists to review it. The opinion of the scientists, posted on a BLM Web site about a week ago, fills nearly 100 pages and is very critical. It suggests that the BLM used simplistic models to examine the effects of logging on fish and wildlife habitat, and generally ignored major environmental issues such as climate change, which could contribute to more wildfires that leave fewer trees to cut....
Officials: 'Trans-Texas Corridor' a taboo, but need real The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that lawmakers now question whether it's wise for the Texas Transportation Department to continue planning the huge project in its current form. But transportation officials say they must press on. While opposing views must be respected, the state can't afford to ignore its growing traffic problems, Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston said this week. "Clearly the Trans-Texas Corridor name has developed some controversy in and of itself," Holmes said. "That does not diminish the need for mobility in the state." In the past two years, the Metroplex region and the Houston region both have created more jobs than any state in the union, he said. Despite Morris' hesitation to mention the Trans-Texas Corridor by name, North Texas leaders generally back the plan. Most are desperate to fix the region's growing traffic problems, clean up the air and keep the economy going in the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan area. Elsewhere in Texas, common criticisms are that the corridor plan would take too much property out of the hands of private landowners, impose tolls in rural areas where drivers don't want them and turn over control of Texas roads to private, often foreign-owned companies....
Bison killing rumors whisper through Fairplay It is whispered maybe a dozen times a day in this tiny former gold mining town plopped in the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness. It is a fairly odd statement that at first makes the head spin. "The Indians did it." It is always said in an under-the-breath, highly conspiratorial way, the speaker at first shifting his or her eyes this way and that, before leaning back and nodding. "The Indians," they whisper, tapping your hand. It is the talk of this town of 752 souls, the horrific slaughter two weeks ago of rancher Monte Downare's 32 bison by at least 14 men, the majority of whom were caught standing over or not far from their kills. What appears clear, townsfolk and lawmen here say, is that the slaughter is but the latest chapter in the long-running feud between Monte Downare (pronounced Dawn-ARE-ray) and Texas high-tech exec Jeff Hawn, whose ranches abut each other southeast of Hartsel near here in southeastern Park County. "The men who did this are lucky the sheriff, and not the men in here, caught them first," Duke Marsh, 68, bellows while standing in the middle of the crowded Silverheels Truck Stop just off U.S. 285 near the entrance to the town. "They would still be hanging by their (genitals)," he spits to the nodding approval of the others. "No feud should end with the killing of any man's livestock."....
Family Study Associates Pesticide Use With Parkinson's Risk Parkinson's disease has been linked to exposure to pesticides in a new study comparing people with the neurological disorder and their unaffected relatives. The study, published online in the open-access journalBMC Neurology, found the strongest ties to the use of herbicides and insecticides, such as organochlorides and organophosphates. Drinking well water or living or working on a farm, two common experiences for pesticide exposures, did not appear to be associated with Parkinson's. Many Parkinson's disease cases are thought to be due to an interaction between genetic and environmental factors. By studying related individuals who share environmental and genetic backgrounds, researchers said they could identify specific differences in exposures between individuals with and without the disease....
Farmers consider how much corn to plant As spring planting nears, farmers are making a choice that could affect what Americans pay for everything from car fuel to chicken wings. If they choose to plant as much corn as possible, prices that have soared to record highs above $5 a bushel could stabilize. But if many farmers rotate their plantings to other crops such as soybeans, or the season is disrupted by bad weather or drought, the price of this key ingredient could soar even further. That would leave other food producers — especially poultry, beef and pork companies, where corn feed comprises up to three-quarters of their operating costs — with little choice but to raise their prices as well. Livestock producers typically blame higher corn prices on demand for the crop from ethanol plants, saying the alternative fuel drives up costs for everyone. But ethanol makers say the rising corn prices hurt them as well....
Willie Nelson protests dairy and cow treatment Country singer Willie Nelson has joined a campaign targeting Dublin-based Challenge Dairy for using products that come from a calf ranch that "violates state anti-cruelty laws," according to a lawsuit filed by the Animal Legal Defense Fund. An online petition urges the Dublin facility as well as St. Paul, Minn.-based Land O'Lakes to stop using milk from calves raised at the Mendes Calf Ranch in Tipton in the Central Valley. "As a cowboy, I must stand up for cows," Nelson said in a cover letter for the petition, which now has more than 23,000 signatures. "It's a tragedy to see the small-town farmer, who cared deeply for his backyard animals, is rapidly being edged out by huge facilities that look more like factories than farms -- and treat animals no better than machines." The petition was started in October. In June 2006, the ALDF filed lawsuit against Mendes for allegedly isolating and confining newborn calves in crates, which they say is illegal....Any comments on Willie calling himself a "cowboy"?
JBS Swift Merger Plan Sparks Opposition In Cattle Country The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) joined with over 70 organizations to ask the Department of Justice to block acquisition of Smithfield Beef and National Beef by JBS Swift. In a letter to the department, the groups asked the Antitrust Division to “scrutinize the merger, issue a second request, and strongly consider blocking the deal.” The organizations stated the proposed merger “will harm price, choice, innovation and competition in the beef industry.” The groups’ main concern is with the buying market for cattle. The organizations also noted that fewer major meat processors would likely have adverse effects on consumers. JBS Swift, a Brazilian company, announced plans in March to buy the companies, two of biggest U.S. meat packers. If approved, the merger would make JBS Swift the largest meat packer in the U.S. and the world. The acquisition would reduce the largest meat packers in this country from five to three. Many Western ranchers have long been concerned with the consolidation of the meat packing industry and its impact on family-based livestock producers....
Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West Courtney White. Island, $25.99 (218p) ISBN 978-1-59726-174-6 In a time when environmental reporting has become justifiably gloomy, this book is a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism. Environmentalist White highlights quirky, visionary individuals and their innovative methods to improve the quality of the ranges and mountains of the West, such as biologist Bill Zeedyk, who restores riparian areas and water tables using sticks and rocks to simply and cheaply mimic a creek’s natural meandering, and activist Dan Dagget, who has been able to unite environmentalists and ranchers by focusing on common goals (open space, wildlife, restored streams). White promotes implementation of the “New Ranch,” operating “on the principle that the natural processes that sustain wildlife habitat, biological diversity and functioning watersheds are the same processes that make land productive for livestock... where erosion has diminished, where streams and springs, once dry, now flow, where wildlife is more abundant, and where landowners are more profitable as a result.” White’s vision of stewardship, openness to new ideas, giving as well as taking, and flexibility will inspire anyone who loves humanity or the great outdoors. (June)
Cattle dogs, owners compete to see who is the best It takes more than just bark to move a full-grown steer into a holding pen, it takes courage. “They have to have a lot of courage because of what their job is. They might have to move a 1,200-pound cow. Sometimes the only way they can get across what they are doing is with a bite,” said Jon Gamble, trials director for the sixth annual Billy Hindman Memorial Cattle Dog Trials. The event is a two-day cattle dog competition at Nine Mile Ranch, just south of Touchet. In the competition, master and dog team up to drive cattle into various holding pens. At the heart of the competition is the chance to show your dog’s stuff. “It’s a chance for ranch people with working dogs to show their dogs to see who is the best,” Gamble said. But nowadays you don’t have to be a rancher to be into cattle dog competitions. “You get people from all walks of life, people who are carpet layers, people who aren’t ranchers,” Gamble said. “People who are there for a love of the sport.” This weekend some 60 owners entered the cattle dog competition, which includes various classes from pro class to nursery class (younger dogs). Last year’s purse came to around $2,000 for the winner. Gamble had yet to tabulate what this year’s winner will take home, but he did add that winning here can lead to an even bigger payoff at the national competition in Red Bluff, Calif, where dogs are know to sell for $16,000 or more....
Story of Carlsbad's cowboys now published A book highlighting some of Carlsbad's cowboy days will be the subject of an upcoming local presentation by the novel's two authors. "A Red Howell Fit," written by Beth Smith Howell Aycock and Jorga Riggenbach, is a historical novel based on the life of southwestern rancher Lewis "Red" Howell — Aycock's father. "These people were all real," said Aycock, 88. "Of course I embellished it. You are not writing a history, but that's the way we lived during that era." Aycock was born on a ranch near Lakewood, in Eddy County. "I lived there until around 1929, then we moved to Weed, New Mexico," she said. "A Red Howell Fit" includes references to Queen, area rodeo grounds and nearby ranches, she said. Aycock said she still has family in the area....
Doctor made house calls — by parachute More than 60 years ago, before helicopters were used for mountain and wilderness rescues, Helena’s Dr. Amos “Bud” Little was making rescues from the sky. In 1944, Little, then 27 and serving as an Air Force “paradoctor,” gained national recognition for one of the most daring parachute rescues in U.S. history in a remote region of the Colorado Rockies known as Hell’s Half Acre. “Shortly after midnight on June 14, 1944, a B-17 Flying Fortress out of Rapid City, S.D., bound for Greeley, Colo., had crashed on the north side of Crown Peak in the Roosevelt National Forest, just below the snow and timberline at 10,800 feet,” according to a July 1999 Wildland Firefighter magazine article titled “The Savior Who Fell From The Sky” by Mark Matthews. Three of the bomber’s 10 crew members were killed instantly. Another died the next morning. Two survivors were able to walk down from the mountain. The other four were injured too badly to leave the site, including one with a broken back. Little’s heroics were reported in three national magazines — Time, Coronet and Reader’s Digest. “Soon, a bomber, with an Army doctor aboard, was on its way to the rocky ledge where the four injured men lay,” stated the Time article of July 10, 1944. “The doctor first dropped a parachute load of supplies from the circling (UC-54), then jumped himself. When the main rescue party arrived by land, nearly four hours later, the patients had been fed, bandaged and drugged to ease their pain....
Clorox....
'Lights Out' for Earth Hour From Rome's Colosseum to the Sydney Opera House, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change. The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were. The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe in cadence with the setting of the sun. Several U.S. cities also planned symbolic blackouts or dimmings of monuments, including at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change....
Evangelicals Like It Hot SUPPOSEDLY GLOBAL WARMING IS the wedge issue that will peel evangelicals away from their conservative voting habits and their ostensible preoccupation with sexual mores. So when the president of the conservative-led 16 million member Southern Baptist Convention signed a Global Warming statement, headlines blazed, and the evangelical left cheered. But the church's president has since attempted to clarify. And the head of the denomination's official public policy arm is publicly opposing congressional legislation mandating increased carbon caps. The March 10 "Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change" was organized by 25-year-old seminary student Jonathan Merritt, the son of a former Southern Baptist president. His father and another former church president signed the statement, along with prominent seminary faculty, adding nearly 50 notable signatures. Richard Land, head of the church's official Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, conspicuously declined to sign, disagreeing that the church had been "too timid." He also explained that endorsing a stance at variance with the church's official position would be "misleading and unethical." Land was referencing the church's 2007 resolution "On Global Warming," which was notably skeptical about human-induced climate change. It declared that "global temperature has risen and fallen cyclically throughout geologic history" and that the "scientific community is divided regarding the extent to which humans are responsible for recent global warming." It also warned that "forcing developing countries to comply with Kyoto will significantly inhibit their economic development and the development of the international economy" and that "proposed carbon offset programs will have little impact on reducing rising temperatures if human activity is not a significant cause of recent global warming."....
World governments start talks on halting greenhouse gases Governments from 163 countries will launch discussions Monday on forging a global warming agreement, a process expected to be fraught with disagreements over which countries should take the lead to reduce greenhouse gases by as much as half by 2050. The weeklong, United Nations climate meeting in Bangkok comes on the heels of a historic agreement reached in December to draft a new accord on global warming by 2009. Without a pact to rein in rising greenhouse gases in the next two decades, scientists say warming weather will lead to widespread drought, floods, higher sea levels and worsening storms. "(There is a) very cooperative and constructive mood, a great enthusiasm to take this work forward," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is hosting the Thailand meeting. However, de Boer also said Sunday it would be "incredibly challenging" to craft such a complex agreement over the next two years....
Gore Launches Ambitious Advocacy Campaign on Climate Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history. The Alliance for Climate Protection's "we" campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from "American Idol" to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." It highlights the extent to which Americans' growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change. "This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing this crisis," Gore said. "I've tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it." Private contributors have already donated or committed half the money needed to fund the entire campaign, he said....
American West Heating Nearly Twice As Fast As Rest Of World The American West is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the world, according to a new analysis of the most recent federal government temperature figures. The news is especially bad for some of the nation’s fastest growing cities, which receive water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The average temperature rise in the Southwest’s largest river basin was more than double the average global increase, likely spelling even more parched conditions. “Global warming is hitting the West hard,” said Theo Spencer of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “It is already taking an economic toll on the region’s tourism, recreation, skiing, hunting and fishing activities. The speed of warming and mounting economic damage make clear the urgent need to limit global warming pollution.” For the report, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) analyzed new temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 11 western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007 the average temperature in the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, was 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the historical average for the 20th Century. The temperature rise was more than twice the global average increase of 1.0 degree during the same period. The average temperature increased 1.7 degrees in the entire 11-state western region....
A Wolf Saved From Extinction but Snared in Politics The uncertainty surrounding the Mexican gray wolf, also known as el lobo, highlights the challenge of meshing conservation with politics. While biologists and zookeepers have saved the Mexican wolf, the most genetically distinct subspecies of gray wolf in North America, federal managers are struggling to translate this success into a working recovery program in the field. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Fish and Wildlife Service paid a trapper named Roy McBride to capture several Mexican wolves south of the border. That group of five, which has expanded in captivity to more than 300, is the source of every Mexican wolf that now exists in the United States, posing a genetic challenge for biologists hoping to help the species recover. At first glance, there is no reason that Mexican wolves should not make the same sort of robust recovery that gray wolves have made in the northern Rockies. But the northern wolves have more than three times as much quality habitat as the wolves in the Southwest. And a trickier problem government officials face is that the politically influential ranching community in the Southwest has opposed the wolves' reintroduction, and the officials, in seeking to accommodate those interests, have satisfied no one. Early in the process, federal officials created what Oakleaf called "artificial boundaries where wolves can be present or not" -- if a wolf goes beyond the official Blue Range Recovery Area, which spans 9,290 square miles, it is relocated. In addition, in 2005, Fish and Wildlife put into place "standard operating procedure 13.0," which calls for the permanent removal of wolves that come into conflict with livestock....
Wolves Delisted, Local Rancher Is Still Worried It's official, wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are no longer on the endangered species list. This means each state is preparing for a fall hunt, the first of it's kind in decades. One Challis Rancher says almost 50 of his head of cattle have been killed by the growing population of wolves and he's not convinced the delisting will make a dent in the growing population. "We are sustaining tremendous losses as a result of the wolves," says Rancher Gary Chamberlain. Chamberlain started his Challis ranch in the late 60's, back when wolves were virtually extinct in Idaho, "I fell in love with the country," he says. He says it's unfortunate that the wolves love the country around Challis too. "Problem we've got is as numbers of wolves have gotten to be so many they've moved into area that now effect those people that are grazing." Right now Chamberlain's cows are in his pastures, where they're safe. The danger comes when they move into the range in the mountains come May. "In 2006 we lost 18 calves and 11 cows out in Morgan Creek," recalls Morgan. In 2007 he says he lost 11 calves and 6 cows. The grand total of deaths between the two years is 46. A number of kills Chamberlain had never seen before wolves were reintroduced. Interestingly, of all the cows killed Wildlife Services was only able to confirm one as a wolf kill. Chamberlain says that's because it's difficult to prove. "Problem we get is if it's been a day or two, they have the animal cleaned up to the point that you have troubles. Unless you can find wolf scat, or tracks its difficult to determine if its a wolf kill."....
What's next for Wolves? George Edwards doesn't work for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, the agency now in charge of managing wolves in the state. But his work will play a large role in maintaining a viable wolf population in Montana by building public acceptance of the wolf, particularly in the ranching community, state officials said. Edwards, who works for the Department of Livestock, is the state's first livestock loss mitigation coordinator. Beginning next month, livestock producers will submit their financial claims to Edwards for animals hunted and killed by the state's now thriving wolf population. Wolves, which number more than 400 in Montana and 1,500 in the Northern Rockies, came off the federal endangered species list Friday, turning management over to the states. The price tag for reimbursing ranchers, as well as funding guard dogs and other conflict prevention efforts, is expected to cost more than $200,000 annually. The money won't just come from the state, as federal funding also will be sought. One of Edwards' main jobs will be fundraising. Edwards noted that some of the state's most prominent residents, such as cable TV mogul Ted Turner, will be asked to contribute....
Family sues state, feds over deadly bear attack In the moments after a black bear hauled off her 11-year-old son in American Fork Canyon last June, Rebecca Ives said she clutched her other son until help, summoned by her husband, arrived. Rescuers placed yellow tape around the family's campsite and took them to safety. What makes her angry is that such markers should have been placed around the site before the family arrived. The bear that killed Sam Ives raided campers earlier that morning and authorities were notified. The question she asked Friday after she and her family filed federal and state lawsuits: Why weren't they warned? "We would have known something was up if there was just yellow tape up there, and I would still have my son," a tearful Ives said at attorney Allen K. Young's Provo office. Their suits are seeking $2 million from the U.S. Forest Service and $550,000 from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR), which is protected by a state-mandated damages cap. The suits - they name Ives, husband Tim Mulvey, and Sam's natural father, Kevan Francis, as plaintiffs - take the agencies to task for not warning campers that a dangerous bear was on the loose and failing to close the campground until officials could locate and kill the bear....
State, wildlife advocates spar over cattle grazing issue He's just a Kittitas County cattleman trying to make a living, but controversy swirls all around Russ Stingley. On one side are the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Washington Cattlemen's Association, brought together by the governor's office to allow grazing on large swaths of state wildlife land. On the other side are critics who oppose letting cattle graze on land specifically purchased for wildlife and question its benefits. One Idaho-based conservation group has even sued, saying the state took shortcuts in order to fast-track cattle grazing. In the middle stands Stingley, awaiting state approval to put his cattle out on 18,500 acres over six pastures of rolling shrub-steppe land known as the Skookumchuck, located east of Ellensburg and home to thousands of elk. The state Fish and Wildlife Commission is expected to sign off on the grazing permit in the next two or three weeks. But every day he waits costs money. Like many Eastern Washington cattlemen, Stingley has more cattle than land and relies on lease permits to graze his livestock on state, federal and private land....
Government scientists look askance at an administration logging proposal for Oregon's Coast Range A Bush administration proposal to accelerate logging in Oregon's Coast Range faces new criticism by the government's own scientists, who say the plan probably underestimates the environmental harm it would do and may exaggerate how much timber could actually be cut. The scientists, including state and federal experts on forests, fish, wildlife and economics, also said the logging blueprint issued last year by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management did not use the most recent and relevant science on subjects such as wildlife habitat and water quality. The blueprint affects about 2.5 million acres of federally managed forestland rich in timber and wildlife. Logging in the region dropped sharply more than a decade ago amid extra protection for such species as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, and coastal counties have pressed to push logging levels back up. The Bush administration struck a 2003 legal deal with the timber industry to look at eliminating permanent wildlife reserves on the land -- a move that would promote more logging. The BLM issued a draft proposal advancing that approach last year and asked the panel of state and federal scientists to review it. The opinion of the scientists, posted on a BLM Web site about a week ago, fills nearly 100 pages and is very critical. It suggests that the BLM used simplistic models to examine the effects of logging on fish and wildlife habitat, and generally ignored major environmental issues such as climate change, which could contribute to more wildfires that leave fewer trees to cut....
Officials: 'Trans-Texas Corridor' a taboo, but need real The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that lawmakers now question whether it's wise for the Texas Transportation Department to continue planning the huge project in its current form. But transportation officials say they must press on. While opposing views must be respected, the state can't afford to ignore its growing traffic problems, Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston said this week. "Clearly the Trans-Texas Corridor name has developed some controversy in and of itself," Holmes said. "That does not diminish the need for mobility in the state." In the past two years, the Metroplex region and the Houston region both have created more jobs than any state in the union, he said. Despite Morris' hesitation to mention the Trans-Texas Corridor by name, North Texas leaders generally back the plan. Most are desperate to fix the region's growing traffic problems, clean up the air and keep the economy going in the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan area. Elsewhere in Texas, common criticisms are that the corridor plan would take too much property out of the hands of private landowners, impose tolls in rural areas where drivers don't want them and turn over control of Texas roads to private, often foreign-owned companies....
Bison killing rumors whisper through Fairplay It is whispered maybe a dozen times a day in this tiny former gold mining town plopped in the middle of a lot of central Colorado nothingness. It is a fairly odd statement that at first makes the head spin. "The Indians did it." It is always said in an under-the-breath, highly conspiratorial way, the speaker at first shifting his or her eyes this way and that, before leaning back and nodding. "The Indians," they whisper, tapping your hand. It is the talk of this town of 752 souls, the horrific slaughter two weeks ago of rancher Monte Downare's 32 bison by at least 14 men, the majority of whom were caught standing over or not far from their kills. What appears clear, townsfolk and lawmen here say, is that the slaughter is but the latest chapter in the long-running feud between Monte Downare (pronounced Dawn-ARE-ray) and Texas high-tech exec Jeff Hawn, whose ranches abut each other southeast of Hartsel near here in southeastern Park County. "The men who did this are lucky the sheriff, and not the men in here, caught them first," Duke Marsh, 68, bellows while standing in the middle of the crowded Silverheels Truck Stop just off U.S. 285 near the entrance to the town. "They would still be hanging by their (genitals)," he spits to the nodding approval of the others. "No feud should end with the killing of any man's livestock."....
Family Study Associates Pesticide Use With Parkinson's Risk Parkinson's disease has been linked to exposure to pesticides in a new study comparing people with the neurological disorder and their unaffected relatives. The study, published online in the open-access journalBMC Neurology, found the strongest ties to the use of herbicides and insecticides, such as organochlorides and organophosphates. Drinking well water or living or working on a farm, two common experiences for pesticide exposures, did not appear to be associated with Parkinson's. Many Parkinson's disease cases are thought to be due to an interaction between genetic and environmental factors. By studying related individuals who share environmental and genetic backgrounds, researchers said they could identify specific differences in exposures between individuals with and without the disease....
Farmers consider how much corn to plant As spring planting nears, farmers are making a choice that could affect what Americans pay for everything from car fuel to chicken wings. If they choose to plant as much corn as possible, prices that have soared to record highs above $5 a bushel could stabilize. But if many farmers rotate their plantings to other crops such as soybeans, or the season is disrupted by bad weather or drought, the price of this key ingredient could soar even further. That would leave other food producers — especially poultry, beef and pork companies, where corn feed comprises up to three-quarters of their operating costs — with little choice but to raise their prices as well. Livestock producers typically blame higher corn prices on demand for the crop from ethanol plants, saying the alternative fuel drives up costs for everyone. But ethanol makers say the rising corn prices hurt them as well....
Willie Nelson protests dairy and cow treatment Country singer Willie Nelson has joined a campaign targeting Dublin-based Challenge Dairy for using products that come from a calf ranch that "violates state anti-cruelty laws," according to a lawsuit filed by the Animal Legal Defense Fund. An online petition urges the Dublin facility as well as St. Paul, Minn.-based Land O'Lakes to stop using milk from calves raised at the Mendes Calf Ranch in Tipton in the Central Valley. "As a cowboy, I must stand up for cows," Nelson said in a cover letter for the petition, which now has more than 23,000 signatures. "It's a tragedy to see the small-town farmer, who cared deeply for his backyard animals, is rapidly being edged out by huge facilities that look more like factories than farms -- and treat animals no better than machines." The petition was started in October. In June 2006, the ALDF filed lawsuit against Mendes for allegedly isolating and confining newborn calves in crates, which they say is illegal....Any comments on Willie calling himself a "cowboy"?
JBS Swift Merger Plan Sparks Opposition In Cattle Country The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) joined with over 70 organizations to ask the Department of Justice to block acquisition of Smithfield Beef and National Beef by JBS Swift. In a letter to the department, the groups asked the Antitrust Division to “scrutinize the merger, issue a second request, and strongly consider blocking the deal.” The organizations stated the proposed merger “will harm price, choice, innovation and competition in the beef industry.” The groups’ main concern is with the buying market for cattle. The organizations also noted that fewer major meat processors would likely have adverse effects on consumers. JBS Swift, a Brazilian company, announced plans in March to buy the companies, two of biggest U.S. meat packers. If approved, the merger would make JBS Swift the largest meat packer in the U.S. and the world. The acquisition would reduce the largest meat packers in this country from five to three. Many Western ranchers have long been concerned with the consolidation of the meat packing industry and its impact on family-based livestock producers....
Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West Courtney White. Island, $25.99 (218p) ISBN 978-1-59726-174-6 In a time when environmental reporting has become justifiably gloomy, this book is a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism. Environmentalist White highlights quirky, visionary individuals and their innovative methods to improve the quality of the ranges and mountains of the West, such as biologist Bill Zeedyk, who restores riparian areas and water tables using sticks and rocks to simply and cheaply mimic a creek’s natural meandering, and activist Dan Dagget, who has been able to unite environmentalists and ranchers by focusing on common goals (open space, wildlife, restored streams). White promotes implementation of the “New Ranch,” operating “on the principle that the natural processes that sustain wildlife habitat, biological diversity and functioning watersheds are the same processes that make land productive for livestock... where erosion has diminished, where streams and springs, once dry, now flow, where wildlife is more abundant, and where landowners are more profitable as a result.” White’s vision of stewardship, openness to new ideas, giving as well as taking, and flexibility will inspire anyone who loves humanity or the great outdoors. (June)
Cattle dogs, owners compete to see who is the best It takes more than just bark to move a full-grown steer into a holding pen, it takes courage. “They have to have a lot of courage because of what their job is. They might have to move a 1,200-pound cow. Sometimes the only way they can get across what they are doing is with a bite,” said Jon Gamble, trials director for the sixth annual Billy Hindman Memorial Cattle Dog Trials. The event is a two-day cattle dog competition at Nine Mile Ranch, just south of Touchet. In the competition, master and dog team up to drive cattle into various holding pens. At the heart of the competition is the chance to show your dog’s stuff. “It’s a chance for ranch people with working dogs to show their dogs to see who is the best,” Gamble said. But nowadays you don’t have to be a rancher to be into cattle dog competitions. “You get people from all walks of life, people who are carpet layers, people who aren’t ranchers,” Gamble said. “People who are there for a love of the sport.” This weekend some 60 owners entered the cattle dog competition, which includes various classes from pro class to nursery class (younger dogs). Last year’s purse came to around $2,000 for the winner. Gamble had yet to tabulate what this year’s winner will take home, but he did add that winning here can lead to an even bigger payoff at the national competition in Red Bluff, Calif, where dogs are know to sell for $16,000 or more....
Story of Carlsbad's cowboys now published A book highlighting some of Carlsbad's cowboy days will be the subject of an upcoming local presentation by the novel's two authors. "A Red Howell Fit," written by Beth Smith Howell Aycock and Jorga Riggenbach, is a historical novel based on the life of southwestern rancher Lewis "Red" Howell — Aycock's father. "These people were all real," said Aycock, 88. "Of course I embellished it. You are not writing a history, but that's the way we lived during that era." Aycock was born on a ranch near Lakewood, in Eddy County. "I lived there until around 1929, then we moved to Weed, New Mexico," she said. "A Red Howell Fit" includes references to Queen, area rodeo grounds and nearby ranches, she said. Aycock said she still has family in the area....
Doctor made house calls — by parachute More than 60 years ago, before helicopters were used for mountain and wilderness rescues, Helena’s Dr. Amos “Bud” Little was making rescues from the sky. In 1944, Little, then 27 and serving as an Air Force “paradoctor,” gained national recognition for one of the most daring parachute rescues in U.S. history in a remote region of the Colorado Rockies known as Hell’s Half Acre. “Shortly after midnight on June 14, 1944, a B-17 Flying Fortress out of Rapid City, S.D., bound for Greeley, Colo., had crashed on the north side of Crown Peak in the Roosevelt National Forest, just below the snow and timberline at 10,800 feet,” according to a July 1999 Wildland Firefighter magazine article titled “The Savior Who Fell From The Sky” by Mark Matthews. Three of the bomber’s 10 crew members were killed instantly. Another died the next morning. Two survivors were able to walk down from the mountain. The other four were injured too badly to leave the site, including one with a broken back. Little’s heroics were reported in three national magazines — Time, Coronet and Reader’s Digest. “Soon, a bomber, with an Army doctor aboard, was on its way to the rocky ledge where the four injured men lay,” stated the Time article of July 10, 1944. “The doctor first dropped a parachute load of supplies from the circling (UC-54), then jumped himself. When the main rescue party arrived by land, nearly four hours later, the patients had been fed, bandaged and drugged to ease their pain....
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Proposed NCA for the Peloncillo Region: Trying to Preserve Wild Land
From: Keeler Ranch
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:08 PM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: Proposed NCA for the Peloncillo Region: Trying to Preserve Wild Land
Every once in awhile it's good to reach back into the past and pull up some information that may have previously slipped by unnoticed. So here's an article - originally published in the Albuquerque Journal in June of 1997 - that needs to be repeated. Unfortunately, the article can not found on the web, it was written before such items got posted to the internet. I still have the original article if you care to view it!!
The newly proposed National Conservation Area (NCA) for the Peloncillo Mountains has its roots in this article. I was sending this information to a gentleman I met yesterday and thought I'd better pass it along for your review too. Perhaps it will lend some understanding as to what is being planned for our area.
Please note the Wildlands Project, as stated in this article, calls for using conservation biology.... "The idea is to design natural areas for the benefit of animals requiring the most space -- bears, wolves, bison and jaguars, for example." Conservation biologists call these "umbrella species." The theory on which the Wildlands Project is based claims that protecting these species will result "automatically in protection for other plant and animal species."
The Wildlands Project, as published in 1992, calls for "wilderness areas" to become the "core areas" - home to "unfettered life, free from industrial human intervention .... Vast landscapes without roads, dams, motorized vehicles, powerlines, overflights, or other artifacts of civilization" that must be designed to "save biodiversity." Although the land-use restrictions in the buffer zones and corridors "would be less restrictive than in the core areas", the plan does call for these areas to be managed by federal agencies to protect their "wilderness qualities". Within the preserve design would be "wilderness core areas", with "buffer zones around those cores and corridors connecting the core areas".
The Wildlands Project is based on the concept that large preserves such as "the "Greater Gila Sky Islands" are needed to protect large "umbrella species". Initially, it was planned to "encompass 40,000 square miles, roughly half of which would be in Mexico". Just a few years later the preserve design had grown to "70,000 acres". It's anybody's guess how many acres it has morphed into today.
The Wildlands Project, as acknowledged in this article, is a "theory" folks - an experiment that will be performed on us, the local landowners!!
I've attached the map for the proposed "Peloncillo Coordinated Management and Protected Area Planning Boundary". It came with the "Executive Summary" for the NCA. If you'd like to read the executive summary, drop David Hodges, Sky Island Alliance, a note: dhodges@skyislandalliance.org
Feel free to pass this along!! I believe everyone who will be impacted by this agenda should get a heads up on what the Sky Island/Nature Conservancy is proposing for our area. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, all the NCA will do is take away the private property rights of the people living within its boundaries. Everyone needs to know what is being planned for their property.
Why do I include the Nature Conservancy? In my opinion, they are inextricably involved in this planning process. Other areas all over our nation are already being impacted by this HUGE agenda.
Do your homework. If you would like to read what a NCA did for landowners in California - please read this article:
http://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/fall99/strange_equality.htm
Maybe it's time for a congressional investigation into how the Wildlands Project is being used to determine land-use planning in the New Mexico and Arizona, as well as the other states in our nation.
Judy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albuquerque Journal
June 15, 1997
TRYING TO PRESERVE WILD LAND
Mike Taugher Journal Staff Writer
WILD NEW MEXICO: A Delicate Balance
* Conservationists and biologists are working together on a plan to design vast nature reserves
Think of those most lightly touched of western lands -- the national parks, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas -- as islands in a sea of civilization.
To a growing number of conservationists and biologists, that's exactly what they are.
And in the field of conservation biology, where scientists agree that steps must be taken to preserve biodiversity, the view is that those islands are not only necessary but may have to be expanded for the survival of numerous plant and animal species.
Conservationists and biologists are working together on a plan to design vast nature reserves around these protected islands.
The Wildlands Project is highly ambitious, if not radical, because it would remap chunks of North America from a conservation biologist's point of view. Today, it has a small paid staff based in Tucson and a budget of about $500,000, mostly from grants and some individual donations.
Co-founded by Dave Foreman, an Albuquerque resident who in 1980 co-founded the radical environmental group Earth First!, the Wildlands Project shows how over the last few decades wilderness advocates have shifted some of their emphasis on wilderness as a place for scenery and recreation to wilderness as a place for preservation of plant and animal species.
"A lot of this stuff, it's always been there. It's just that as we become more and more aware of the extinction crisis going on and the importance of wilderness in preserving that, the ecological values became more and more emphasized," said Foreman, who has long since disassociated himself from Earth First! because "they turned into a bunch of left-wing, counter-culture radicals."
In the 1960s and 1970s, wilderness advocates concentrated on high mountain areas that were typically pretty, attractive to users of the outdoors and where wilderness designation was not too objectionable to commercial interests, Foreman said.
The result was that wilderness areas were designated in scenic, high-altitude areas that were beautiful but not necessarily rich in trees, minerals or grazing land.
"We've done a really good job of protecting alpine tundra but we've done a really poor job of protecting riparian areas. Most of that is due to a recreational bias. Part of it is entirely a practical matter. There hasn't been a lot of conflict over alpine tundra, but there has been a lot of conflict over riparian areas," Foreman said.
One of the Wildlands Project's first proposals would be in southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico.
In its preliminary form, the "Greater Gila Sky Islands" reserve would encompass 40,000 square miles, roughly half of which would be in Mexico. Within that area would be wilderness core areas, buffer zones around those cores and corridors connecting the core areas. Land-use restrictions in the buffer zones would be less restrictive than in the core areas.
The organization for the most part is keeping its cards close to the vest, but it plans to release detailed maps for the Greater Gila Sky Islands project in about a year.
"This is going to be a very political thing in the future," said Jack Humphrey, program coordinator for the Sky Islands Alliance, an organization formed to design the biological reserve.
"This is the most ambitious thing the conservation movement has ever thought about, and it's in its infancy still," he added. "If it takes 200 years, it takes 200 years. This land isn't going anywhere."
Humphrey pointed to the bison that were shot after they migrated out of Yellowstone National Park as an example of the need for such designs. Many of those bison were shot because of ranchers' fears that they might bring disease to their cattle. The Wildlands Project's cores, buffers and corridors would take into account the space bison need.
The idea is to design natural areas for the benefit of animals requiring the most space -- bears, wolves, bison and jaguars, for example. Conservation biologists call those "umbrella species." The theory on which the Wildlands Project is based says that protecting those species will result automatically in protection for other plant and animal species.
The theory is that if animals at the top of the food chain are protected, the lower species also should flourish. That theory, Foreman and Humphrey said, never has been tested.
Once the maps are completed, wildlands supporters would try to implement the plan by purchasing private land or conservation easements on private land, by influencing planning processes for public lands and through congressional action, for example.
"In some cases it's going to be just a tweaking of a management plan. In other areas, it's going to take wilderness designation," Humphrey said.
As proof that the Wildlands Project may not be as pie-in-the-sky as it seems, supporters point to an effort in Florida to protect about half of that state's land for wildlife. The state Legislature there appropriated $3 billion for the effort, according to Wildlands Project supporters.
Supporters say they may have an advantage in western states that doesn't exist in Florida: There is a lot more public land out here.
From: Keeler Ranch
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:08 PM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: Proposed NCA for the Peloncillo Region: Trying to Preserve Wild Land
Every once in awhile it's good to reach back into the past and pull up some information that may have previously slipped by unnoticed. So here's an article - originally published in the Albuquerque Journal in June of 1997 - that needs to be repeated. Unfortunately, the article can not found on the web, it was written before such items got posted to the internet. I still have the original article if you care to view it!!
The newly proposed National Conservation Area (NCA) for the Peloncillo Mountains has its roots in this article. I was sending this information to a gentleman I met yesterday and thought I'd better pass it along for your review too. Perhaps it will lend some understanding as to what is being planned for our area.
Please note the Wildlands Project, as stated in this article, calls for using conservation biology.... "The idea is to design natural areas for the benefit of animals requiring the most space -- bears, wolves, bison and jaguars, for example." Conservation biologists call these "umbrella species." The theory on which the Wildlands Project is based claims that protecting these species will result "automatically in protection for other plant and animal species."
The Wildlands Project, as published in 1992, calls for "wilderness areas" to become the "core areas" - home to "unfettered life, free from industrial human intervention .... Vast landscapes without roads, dams, motorized vehicles, powerlines, overflights, or other artifacts of civilization" that must be designed to "save biodiversity." Although the land-use restrictions in the buffer zones and corridors "would be less restrictive than in the core areas", the plan does call for these areas to be managed by federal agencies to protect their "wilderness qualities". Within the preserve design would be "wilderness core areas", with "buffer zones around those cores and corridors connecting the core areas".
The Wildlands Project is based on the concept that large preserves such as "the "Greater Gila Sky Islands" are needed to protect large "umbrella species". Initially, it was planned to "encompass 40,000 square miles, roughly half of which would be in Mexico". Just a few years later the preserve design had grown to "70,000 acres". It's anybody's guess how many acres it has morphed into today.
The Wildlands Project, as acknowledged in this article, is a "theory" folks - an experiment that will be performed on us, the local landowners!!
I've attached the map for the proposed "Peloncillo Coordinated Management and Protected Area Planning Boundary". It came with the "Executive Summary" for the NCA. If you'd like to read the executive summary, drop David Hodges, Sky Island Alliance, a note: dhodges@skyislandalliance.org
Feel free to pass this along!! I believe everyone who will be impacted by this agenda should get a heads up on what the Sky Island/Nature Conservancy is proposing for our area. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, all the NCA will do is take away the private property rights of the people living within its boundaries. Everyone needs to know what is being planned for their property.
Why do I include the Nature Conservancy? In my opinion, they are inextricably involved in this planning process. Other areas all over our nation are already being impacted by this HUGE agenda.
Do your homework. If you would like to read what a NCA did for landowners in California - please read this article:
http://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/fall99/strange_equality.htm
Maybe it's time for a congressional investigation into how the Wildlands Project is being used to determine land-use planning in the New Mexico and Arizona, as well as the other states in our nation.
Judy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Albuquerque Journal
June 15, 1997
TRYING TO PRESERVE WILD LAND
Mike Taugher Journal Staff Writer
WILD NEW MEXICO: A Delicate Balance
* Conservationists and biologists are working together on a plan to design vast nature reserves
Think of those most lightly touched of western lands -- the national parks, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas -- as islands in a sea of civilization.
To a growing number of conservationists and biologists, that's exactly what they are.
And in the field of conservation biology, where scientists agree that steps must be taken to preserve biodiversity, the view is that those islands are not only necessary but may have to be expanded for the survival of numerous plant and animal species.
Conservationists and biologists are working together on a plan to design vast nature reserves around these protected islands.
The Wildlands Project is highly ambitious, if not radical, because it would remap chunks of North America from a conservation biologist's point of view. Today, it has a small paid staff based in Tucson and a budget of about $500,000, mostly from grants and some individual donations.
Co-founded by Dave Foreman, an Albuquerque resident who in 1980 co-founded the radical environmental group Earth First!, the Wildlands Project shows how over the last few decades wilderness advocates have shifted some of their emphasis on wilderness as a place for scenery and recreation to wilderness as a place for preservation of plant and animal species.
"A lot of this stuff, it's always been there. It's just that as we become more and more aware of the extinction crisis going on and the importance of wilderness in preserving that, the ecological values became more and more emphasized," said Foreman, who has long since disassociated himself from Earth First! because "they turned into a bunch of left-wing, counter-culture radicals."
In the 1960s and 1970s, wilderness advocates concentrated on high mountain areas that were typically pretty, attractive to users of the outdoors and where wilderness designation was not too objectionable to commercial interests, Foreman said.
The result was that wilderness areas were designated in scenic, high-altitude areas that were beautiful but not necessarily rich in trees, minerals or grazing land.
"We've done a really good job of protecting alpine tundra but we've done a really poor job of protecting riparian areas. Most of that is due to a recreational bias. Part of it is entirely a practical matter. There hasn't been a lot of conflict over alpine tundra, but there has been a lot of conflict over riparian areas," Foreman said.
One of the Wildlands Project's first proposals would be in southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico.
In its preliminary form, the "Greater Gila Sky Islands" reserve would encompass 40,000 square miles, roughly half of which would be in Mexico. Within that area would be wilderness core areas, buffer zones around those cores and corridors connecting the core areas. Land-use restrictions in the buffer zones would be less restrictive than in the core areas.
The organization for the most part is keeping its cards close to the vest, but it plans to release detailed maps for the Greater Gila Sky Islands project in about a year.
"This is going to be a very political thing in the future," said Jack Humphrey, program coordinator for the Sky Islands Alliance, an organization formed to design the biological reserve.
"This is the most ambitious thing the conservation movement has ever thought about, and it's in its infancy still," he added. "If it takes 200 years, it takes 200 years. This land isn't going anywhere."
Humphrey pointed to the bison that were shot after they migrated out of Yellowstone National Park as an example of the need for such designs. Many of those bison were shot because of ranchers' fears that they might bring disease to their cattle. The Wildlands Project's cores, buffers and corridors would take into account the space bison need.
The idea is to design natural areas for the benefit of animals requiring the most space -- bears, wolves, bison and jaguars, for example. Conservation biologists call those "umbrella species." The theory on which the Wildlands Project is based says that protecting those species will result automatically in protection for other plant and animal species.
The theory is that if animals at the top of the food chain are protected, the lower species also should flourish. That theory, Foreman and Humphrey said, never has been tested.
Once the maps are completed, wildlands supporters would try to implement the plan by purchasing private land or conservation easements on private land, by influencing planning processes for public lands and through congressional action, for example.
"In some cases it's going to be just a tweaking of a management plan. In other areas, it's going to take wilderness designation," Humphrey said.
As proof that the Wildlands Project may not be as pie-in-the-sky as it seems, supporters point to an effort in Florida to protect about half of that state's land for wildlife. The state Legislature there appropriated $3 billion for the effort, according to Wildlands Project supporters.
Supporters say they may have an advantage in western states that doesn't exist in Florida: There is a lot more public land out here.
Horse trading isn’t just for horses
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
Julie Carter
The cowboy stood at the door in what, at one time, in some other lifetime, might have been a red canvas jacket.
Today it was more on the aged side of pink, fringed with very raveled seams, and had a pocket that was holding on only by a creative thought. He was headed to town.
After some verbal exchange with his wife, who knew he owned a better coat and reminded him of that, he drove off.
His rationale was that he was on his way to bargain for something and it was politically incorrect to go horse-trading (a term used for any kind of bartering in the West) in new or even salvageable clothes.
It is the nature of the work to be done that drives the appearance.
There is a cowboy on the east side of the state that has a ranch, free and clear of mortgages and enough money in the bank to stock cattle on it without the banker's permission. At shipping time, he would always appear at breakfast dressed the same as rest of the cowboys. He would stay that way until the cattle were penned.
Sometime just after the gate closed on the last steer and the cow buyer who had been waiting at the road with the cattle trucks showed up, this rancher would transform into a pitiful creature.
He would be clad in a sweater with holes at the elbows, cuffs hanging by a thread, a hat that had been through the big war and boots with more holes than a prairie dog patch.
The cow buyer would arrive clean and shiny with creases in his jeans like George Strait, driving a new Lincoln, a white, new out-of-the-box Stetson, and wearing a big pinkie ring with a diamond the size of a robin's egg. The contrast was always appreciable.
And even though the actual numbers for the trade had been signed for months before and were not questioned, it never failed to come up in a conversation that the next time the buyer would have to do a little better.
Trading, bartering and making a deal, whether buying or selling, keeps a cowboy's heart pumping strong the same way riding a good horse following fat cattle in belly-deep grass does.
There is an art to "horse trading" that is passed down through generations. It is honed to a sharp edge, practiced constantly, even on the wife and kids, and often has nothing to do with a horse.
But if it is about a horse, the trading will often go beyond the monetary value of the animal. It is not unusual for the dickering conversation to go on for hours when the transaction involves something other than cash.
When a prospect shows up at a trader's place with a trailer hooked to the pickup, it puts a spring in the step of the man with the merchandise for sale. It is a wiser, more-common practice to leave the trailer parked a couple of miles away, maybe at the truck stop, and arrive with only any other tradable goods to start the transaction.
Before the discussion of cash floats into the conversation, there may a considerable amount of time given to offering other livestock, horse trailers, saddles, pasture leases, colt breaking, day working or pick of the new litter of blue heeler pups as part of the "deal."
It is pinnacle entertainment to listen to horse traders while standing out in a dusty lot watching one "trader" pit his wits against another. A true regret to this unheralded talent is the increase of horses being bought and sold over the Internet, losing the tone and the visual of the transaction.
An entire art and language is being lost on the cyber highway. Without it, the Western world will be a less colorful place.
More than ever, the "buyer beware" phrase needs to be pasted to the pickup windshield or perhaps to the computer monitor.
Visit Julie at her website at www.julie-carter.com
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
Julie Carter
The cowboy stood at the door in what, at one time, in some other lifetime, might have been a red canvas jacket.
Today it was more on the aged side of pink, fringed with very raveled seams, and had a pocket that was holding on only by a creative thought. He was headed to town.
After some verbal exchange with his wife, who knew he owned a better coat and reminded him of that, he drove off.
His rationale was that he was on his way to bargain for something and it was politically incorrect to go horse-trading (a term used for any kind of bartering in the West) in new or even salvageable clothes.
It is the nature of the work to be done that drives the appearance.
There is a cowboy on the east side of the state that has a ranch, free and clear of mortgages and enough money in the bank to stock cattle on it without the banker's permission. At shipping time, he would always appear at breakfast dressed the same as rest of the cowboys. He would stay that way until the cattle were penned.
Sometime just after the gate closed on the last steer and the cow buyer who had been waiting at the road with the cattle trucks showed up, this rancher would transform into a pitiful creature.
He would be clad in a sweater with holes at the elbows, cuffs hanging by a thread, a hat that had been through the big war and boots with more holes than a prairie dog patch.
The cow buyer would arrive clean and shiny with creases in his jeans like George Strait, driving a new Lincoln, a white, new out-of-the-box Stetson, and wearing a big pinkie ring with a diamond the size of a robin's egg. The contrast was always appreciable.
And even though the actual numbers for the trade had been signed for months before and were not questioned, it never failed to come up in a conversation that the next time the buyer would have to do a little better.
Trading, bartering and making a deal, whether buying or selling, keeps a cowboy's heart pumping strong the same way riding a good horse following fat cattle in belly-deep grass does.
There is an art to "horse trading" that is passed down through generations. It is honed to a sharp edge, practiced constantly, even on the wife and kids, and often has nothing to do with a horse.
But if it is about a horse, the trading will often go beyond the monetary value of the animal. It is not unusual for the dickering conversation to go on for hours when the transaction involves something other than cash.
When a prospect shows up at a trader's place with a trailer hooked to the pickup, it puts a spring in the step of the man with the merchandise for sale. It is a wiser, more-common practice to leave the trailer parked a couple of miles away, maybe at the truck stop, and arrive with only any other tradable goods to start the transaction.
Before the discussion of cash floats into the conversation, there may a considerable amount of time given to offering other livestock, horse trailers, saddles, pasture leases, colt breaking, day working or pick of the new litter of blue heeler pups as part of the "deal."
It is pinnacle entertainment to listen to horse traders while standing out in a dusty lot watching one "trader" pit his wits against another. A true regret to this unheralded talent is the increase of horses being bought and sold over the Internet, losing the tone and the visual of the transaction.
An entire art and language is being lost on the cyber highway. Without it, the Western world will be a less colorful place.
More than ever, the "buyer beware" phrase needs to be pasted to the pickup windshield or perhaps to the computer monitor.
Visit Julie at her website at www.julie-carter.com
FLE
Every bank transaction triggers snooping The web of snooping in which federal investigators and regulators are now able to ensnare any person who engages in any form of financial transaction has become so complex and pervasive that almost no person anywhere in the world can escape its clutches. The ability of the government to manipulate this vast power is magnified many fold by virtue of the manner in which our laws and regulations require the active complicity of the entire cadre of persons working in, or in some manner connected with, banks and other entities that provide or facilitate financial transactions. The seeds of this modern-day Orwellian financial web were sown in the late 1960s and early 1970s when such expansive federal laws as the Bank Secrecy Act were enacted with bipartisan support. Designed as tools to ferret out organized crime figures, major drug traffickers and international money launderers, this family of far-reaching regulatory-cum-criminal laws initially was used largely as intended. During this era also, many of the “Suspicious Activity Reports” (or SARs) required by the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, for example, were largely ignored by investigators and prosecutors, who viewed them as burdensome and difficult to catalog and utilize. Bank employees were not pressured to file such reports as an operative component of their job descriptions. Two events have conspired to change all that. First, the advent of digital technology has elevated dramatically the ability of the government to gather, analyze, manipulate, retrieve and disseminate the SAR data. In the digital age, there are virtually no limits on the ability of agents to use high-speed computers to identify, correlate and retrieve the data in ways limited only by imagination. The second factor changing the power of using SARs and the reporting requirements in the sister “Currency Transaction Report” (CTRs) and other federal reporting instruments, was, of course, the events of 9/11 and the ensuing USA Patriot Act. These two things institutionalized fear as the driving force in virtually all federal policies, including those relating to financial reporting....
Spy drones in demand by U.S. police departments A small pilotless vehicle manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and "staring" using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to be introduced soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades. If use of the drone wins U.S. Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14 pound, or 6.35 kilogram, drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting. "Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes," said Detective Juan Villalba, a police department spokesman. "We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission," he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with "barricaded subjects." And the Miami-Dade police are not alone. Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the United States have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions. Known in the aerospace industry as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, drones have been under development for decades in the United States. The CIA acknowledges that it developed a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the "Insectohopter" for laser-guided spy operations as long ago as the 1970s. And other advanced work on robotic flyers has clearly been under way for quite some time. "The FBI is experimenting with a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles," said Marcus Thomas, an assistant director of the bureau's Operational Technology Division. "At this point they have been used mainly for search and rescue missions," he added. "It certainly is an up-and-coming technology and the FBI is researching additional uses for UAVs."....
Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects." Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. "I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' " That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security. Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look. No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely....
NSA Had Access Built into Microsoft Windows A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled. The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA. Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:Windowssystem directory of your computer. ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do....
DEA Losing More Guns, Fewer Laptops The Drug Enforcement Administration is losing more guns but fewer laptops than it was about five years ago, the Justice Department's inspector general said Friday. The follow-up report found that some of the same problems cited in a 2002 audit remain: Policies for storing weapons and laptops are not always followed and, when they are lost, officials don't regularly report them. The report credited the DEA with a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen. But the inspector general said officials often have no idea what information was on the computers when they were stolen. Officials are required to document whether sensitive material was on a lost or stolen computer. But of the 231 laptops lost in the 5 1/2 years covered by the report, such documents were filed only five times. Auditors said the DEA lost 22 firearms and had an additional 69 stolen over the 5 1/2-year period. The stolen weapons included pistols, rifles, shotguns, and a submachine gun. The majority of stolen guns had been left in an official's car, despite a policy prohibiting leaving a weapon unattended in a vehicle. The report cited examples of guns stolen from cars parked outside restaurants, hotels, schools and gyms. Some agents had their guns taken from their cars while they were shopping or getting coffee. One firearm was stolen while the car was at the body shop....
New Hampshire Joins Montana in Real ID Victory Détente has arrived in the fight between independence-minded states and a federal bureaucracy keen to claim a unanimous victory in its drive to create a de facto national identity database. The key? The renegade states send a nice letter that is not a request for an extension of a looming deadline but touts the security of their driver's licenses, which the Department of Homeland Security accepts as an official extension request. That lets DHS save face, even as it backs down from repeated threats to punish the citizens of rogue states. On Thursday, New Hampshire became the second of the four holdout states to get an unasked-for extension, following the path blazed by Montana's feisty Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer last Friday. Schweitzer told Threat Level he sent DHS "a horse, and if they want to call it a zebra, that's up to them." The legislators in the Live Free or Die state, like those in Montana, banned the state from complying with the Real ID mandates, citing state's rights, the inequity of unfunded federal mandates, and privacy issues. Under the rules, almost all license holders will have to return to the DMV with notarized "breeder documents" like birth and marriage certificates, and states will have to interlink their databases of digital photos and personal information. Citizens of states that opt out can't use their licenses for federal purposes, such as entering airport screening lines or going to a Social Security office....
California Backs Off Real ID For a short moment Thursday, millions of Californians were in danger of facing pat-downs at the airport and being blocked from federal buildings come May 11. In a Tuesday letter (.pdf) to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, the head of California's DMV said that while California had already applied for and gotten an extension on the Real ID deadline, it wasn't actually committing to complying with Real ID rules by 2010. That's when states who ask for extension have to begin issuing driver's licenses and state IDs that comply with the federal rules. "California's request for an extension is not a commitment to implement Real ID, rather it will allow us to fully evaluate the impact of the final regulations and precede with necessary policy deliberations prior to a final decision on compliance," DMV director George Valverde wrote. States have until March 31 to request a two-year extension, and DHS had said before Thursday it won't grant Real ID extensions to states who don't commit to implementing the rules in the future. That meant Tuesday's letter looked like enough to join California to the small rebellion against the Real ID rules. For Californians that would mean enduring the same fate facing citizens of South Carolina, Maine, Montana and New Hampshire. But after Threat Level provided Homeland Security spokesman Laura Keehner with the letter, Keehner said California's commitment to thinking about commitment is good enough. "For right now, there is nothing that says they will not comply with Real ID," Keehner said....
304,000 Inmates Eligible for Deportation, Official Says At least 304,000 immigrant criminals eligible for deportation are behind bars nationwide, a top federal immigration official said Thursday. That is the first official estimate of the total number of such convicts in federal, state and local prisons and jails. The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julie L. Myers, said the annual number of deportable immigrant inmates was expected to vary from 300,000 to 455,000, or 10 percent of the overall inmate population, for the next few years. Ms. Myers estimated that it would cost at least $2 billion a year to find all those immigrants and deport them. This week, Ms. Myers presented a plan to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security intended to speed the deportation of immigrants convicted of the most serious crimes by linking state prisons and county jails into federal databases that combine F.B.I. fingerprint files with immigration, border and antiterrorism records of the Homeland Security Department....
Deporting some immigrant inmates a big break for states Programs in New York and Arizona aimed at cutting the prison sentences of certain immigrant inmates so they can be deported faster have federal officials urging other states to adopt similar policies. Officials in the two states say they have saved millions by turning over for early deportation some non-violent immigrant criminals who have served at least half of their sentences. Eligible inmates include both legal immigrants who committed certain crimes and illegal immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the federal government also saves money when immigrant inmates get sent home early, and hopes to expand the program in the next few months. "This program does not apply to your rapists, your murderers, your serious criminals," says Julie Myers, homeland security assistant secretary for ICE....
Mexico sends troops to Texas border to battle drug lords Nearly 1,000 Mexican troops arrived at the Ciudad Juarez airport Friday to deal with a surge in drug war violence that's sent tremors throughout the country, local media reported. Mexican authorities said they're part of the more than 2,000 soldiers and federal policemen involved in "Operation Joint Chihuahua" who are being dispatched to combat narcotrafficking operations that have terrorized much of the state of Chihuahua, particularly Ciudad Juarez, Palomas and the city of Chihuahua, the state capital. More than 200 people have been killed in the area, which borders El Paso, Texas, since the beginning of the year, according to local media reports. Thirty were killed over the Easter weekend....
Nassau County proposes ban on brightly painted guns Owning or selling brightly colored guns may soon be illegal in Nassau County under a proposed ban because the painted weapons could pass as toys, police and county officials said yesterday. Suffolk County officials are considering a similar ban. The proposal in Nassau County was spurred by a Wisconsin company's introduction last week of a line of bright gun paints called the "Bloomberg Collection," which taunts Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2006 ban of colored guns in New York City, said Nassau police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey. Along with County Executive Thomas Suozzi and Legis. Joseph Scannell (D-Baldwin), Mulvey said he intends to support Bloomberg by outlawing the possession of painted guns in Nassau County, even if they were legally purchased and licensed elsewhere....
Every bank transaction triggers snooping The web of snooping in which federal investigators and regulators are now able to ensnare any person who engages in any form of financial transaction has become so complex and pervasive that almost no person anywhere in the world can escape its clutches. The ability of the government to manipulate this vast power is magnified many fold by virtue of the manner in which our laws and regulations require the active complicity of the entire cadre of persons working in, or in some manner connected with, banks and other entities that provide or facilitate financial transactions. The seeds of this modern-day Orwellian financial web were sown in the late 1960s and early 1970s when such expansive federal laws as the Bank Secrecy Act were enacted with bipartisan support. Designed as tools to ferret out organized crime figures, major drug traffickers and international money launderers, this family of far-reaching regulatory-cum-criminal laws initially was used largely as intended. During this era also, many of the “Suspicious Activity Reports” (or SARs) required by the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, for example, were largely ignored by investigators and prosecutors, who viewed them as burdensome and difficult to catalog and utilize. Bank employees were not pressured to file such reports as an operative component of their job descriptions. Two events have conspired to change all that. First, the advent of digital technology has elevated dramatically the ability of the government to gather, analyze, manipulate, retrieve and disseminate the SAR data. In the digital age, there are virtually no limits on the ability of agents to use high-speed computers to identify, correlate and retrieve the data in ways limited only by imagination. The second factor changing the power of using SARs and the reporting requirements in the sister “Currency Transaction Report” (CTRs) and other federal reporting instruments, was, of course, the events of 9/11 and the ensuing USA Patriot Act. These two things institutionalized fear as the driving force in virtually all federal policies, including those relating to financial reporting....
Spy drones in demand by U.S. police departments A small pilotless vehicle manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and "staring" using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to be introduced soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades. If use of the drone wins U.S. Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14 pound, or 6.35 kilogram, drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting. "Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes," said Detective Juan Villalba, a police department spokesman. "We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission," he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with "barricaded subjects." And the Miami-Dade police are not alone. Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the United States have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions. Known in the aerospace industry as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, drones have been under development for decades in the United States. The CIA acknowledges that it developed a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the "Insectohopter" for laser-guided spy operations as long ago as the 1970s. And other advanced work on robotic flyers has clearly been under way for quite some time. "The FBI is experimenting with a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles," said Marcus Thomas, an assistant director of the bureau's Operational Technology Division. "At this point they have been used mainly for search and rescue missions," he added. "It certainly is an up-and-coming technology and the FBI is researching additional uses for UAVs."....
Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects." Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. "I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' " That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security. Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look. No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely....
NSA Had Access Built into Microsoft Windows A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled. The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA. Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:Windowssystem directory of your computer. ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do....
DEA Losing More Guns, Fewer Laptops The Drug Enforcement Administration is losing more guns but fewer laptops than it was about five years ago, the Justice Department's inspector general said Friday. The follow-up report found that some of the same problems cited in a 2002 audit remain: Policies for storing weapons and laptops are not always followed and, when they are lost, officials don't regularly report them. The report credited the DEA with a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen. But the inspector general said officials often have no idea what information was on the computers when they were stolen. Officials are required to document whether sensitive material was on a lost or stolen computer. But of the 231 laptops lost in the 5 1/2 years covered by the report, such documents were filed only five times. Auditors said the DEA lost 22 firearms and had an additional 69 stolen over the 5 1/2-year period. The stolen weapons included pistols, rifles, shotguns, and a submachine gun. The majority of stolen guns had been left in an official's car, despite a policy prohibiting leaving a weapon unattended in a vehicle. The report cited examples of guns stolen from cars parked outside restaurants, hotels, schools and gyms. Some agents had their guns taken from their cars while they were shopping or getting coffee. One firearm was stolen while the car was at the body shop....
New Hampshire Joins Montana in Real ID Victory Détente has arrived in the fight between independence-minded states and a federal bureaucracy keen to claim a unanimous victory in its drive to create a de facto national identity database. The key? The renegade states send a nice letter that is not a request for an extension of a looming deadline but touts the security of their driver's licenses, which the Department of Homeland Security accepts as an official extension request. That lets DHS save face, even as it backs down from repeated threats to punish the citizens of rogue states. On Thursday, New Hampshire became the second of the four holdout states to get an unasked-for extension, following the path blazed by Montana's feisty Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer last Friday. Schweitzer told Threat Level he sent DHS "a horse, and if they want to call it a zebra, that's up to them." The legislators in the Live Free or Die state, like those in Montana, banned the state from complying with the Real ID mandates, citing state's rights, the inequity of unfunded federal mandates, and privacy issues. Under the rules, almost all license holders will have to return to the DMV with notarized "breeder documents" like birth and marriage certificates, and states will have to interlink their databases of digital photos and personal information. Citizens of states that opt out can't use their licenses for federal purposes, such as entering airport screening lines or going to a Social Security office....
California Backs Off Real ID For a short moment Thursday, millions of Californians were in danger of facing pat-downs at the airport and being blocked from federal buildings come May 11. In a Tuesday letter (.pdf) to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, the head of California's DMV said that while California had already applied for and gotten an extension on the Real ID deadline, it wasn't actually committing to complying with Real ID rules by 2010. That's when states who ask for extension have to begin issuing driver's licenses and state IDs that comply with the federal rules. "California's request for an extension is not a commitment to implement Real ID, rather it will allow us to fully evaluate the impact of the final regulations and precede with necessary policy deliberations prior to a final decision on compliance," DMV director George Valverde wrote. States have until March 31 to request a two-year extension, and DHS had said before Thursday it won't grant Real ID extensions to states who don't commit to implementing the rules in the future. That meant Tuesday's letter looked like enough to join California to the small rebellion against the Real ID rules. For Californians that would mean enduring the same fate facing citizens of South Carolina, Maine, Montana and New Hampshire. But after Threat Level provided Homeland Security spokesman Laura Keehner with the letter, Keehner said California's commitment to thinking about commitment is good enough. "For right now, there is nothing that says they will not comply with Real ID," Keehner said....
304,000 Inmates Eligible for Deportation, Official Says At least 304,000 immigrant criminals eligible for deportation are behind bars nationwide, a top federal immigration official said Thursday. That is the first official estimate of the total number of such convicts in federal, state and local prisons and jails. The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Julie L. Myers, said the annual number of deportable immigrant inmates was expected to vary from 300,000 to 455,000, or 10 percent of the overall inmate population, for the next few years. Ms. Myers estimated that it would cost at least $2 billion a year to find all those immigrants and deport them. This week, Ms. Myers presented a plan to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security intended to speed the deportation of immigrants convicted of the most serious crimes by linking state prisons and county jails into federal databases that combine F.B.I. fingerprint files with immigration, border and antiterrorism records of the Homeland Security Department....
Deporting some immigrant inmates a big break for states Programs in New York and Arizona aimed at cutting the prison sentences of certain immigrant inmates so they can be deported faster have federal officials urging other states to adopt similar policies. Officials in the two states say they have saved millions by turning over for early deportation some non-violent immigrant criminals who have served at least half of their sentences. Eligible inmates include both legal immigrants who committed certain crimes and illegal immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the federal government also saves money when immigrant inmates get sent home early, and hopes to expand the program in the next few months. "This program does not apply to your rapists, your murderers, your serious criminals," says Julie Myers, homeland security assistant secretary for ICE....
Mexico sends troops to Texas border to battle drug lords Nearly 1,000 Mexican troops arrived at the Ciudad Juarez airport Friday to deal with a surge in drug war violence that's sent tremors throughout the country, local media reported. Mexican authorities said they're part of the more than 2,000 soldiers and federal policemen involved in "Operation Joint Chihuahua" who are being dispatched to combat narcotrafficking operations that have terrorized much of the state of Chihuahua, particularly Ciudad Juarez, Palomas and the city of Chihuahua, the state capital. More than 200 people have been killed in the area, which borders El Paso, Texas, since the beginning of the year, according to local media reports. Thirty were killed over the Easter weekend....
Nassau County proposes ban on brightly painted guns Owning or selling brightly colored guns may soon be illegal in Nassau County under a proposed ban because the painted weapons could pass as toys, police and county officials said yesterday. Suffolk County officials are considering a similar ban. The proposal in Nassau County was spurred by a Wisconsin company's introduction last week of a line of bright gun paints called the "Bloomberg Collection," which taunts Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2006 ban of colored guns in New York City, said Nassau police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey. Along with County Executive Thomas Suozzi and Legis. Joseph Scannell (D-Baldwin), Mulvey said he intends to support Bloomberg by outlawing the possession of painted guns in Nassau County, even if they were legally purchased and licensed elsewhere....
U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, March 27, 2008
Friends of Yosemite Valley v. Kempthorne, No. 07-15124
In a suit alleging that the National Park Service failed to prepare an adequate Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) for the Merced Wild and Scenic River, summary judgment for plaintiff is affirmed where: 1) a 2005 Revised Plan did not describe an actual level of visitor use that would not adversely impact the Merced's Outstanding Remarkable Values because it required a response only after degradation has already occurred; 2) interim limits were based on current capacity limits and NPS did not show that such limits protect and enhance the Merced's ORVs; 3) the CMP was not a single, self-contained plan; and 4) a supplemental environmental impact statement violated NEPA because a "no-action" alternative assumed the existence of the very plan being proposed, the three action alternatives were unreasonably narrow, and for the first five years, the interim limits proposed by the three alternatives were essentially identical
Friends of Yosemite Valley v. Kempthorne, No. 07-15124
In a suit alleging that the National Park Service failed to prepare an adequate Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) for the Merced Wild and Scenic River, summary judgment for plaintiff is affirmed where: 1) a 2005 Revised Plan did not describe an actual level of visitor use that would not adversely impact the Merced's Outstanding Remarkable Values because it required a response only after degradation has already occurred; 2) interim limits were based on current capacity limits and NPS did not show that such limits protect and enhance the Merced's ORVs; 3) the CMP was not a single, self-contained plan; and 4) a supplemental environmental impact statement violated NEPA because a "no-action" alternative assumed the existence of the very plan being proposed, the three action alternatives were unreasonably narrow, and for the first five years, the interim limits proposed by the three alternatives were essentially identical
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