Federal land agencies: Planning for damage from climate change

The government needs a comprehensive plan to address the potential damage of climate change on forests, parks and other federal lands, experts agree. Land-holding agencies such as the Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management have begun assessing the impact of climate change on public lands, but no comprehensive strategy exists for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or mitigating the harm of rising global temperatures. Interior would receive $40 million in the Obama administration’s 2010 budget to assess the impact of climate change on the nation’s lands, fish and wildlife. Armstrong said the funding request is an important endorsement of the need for scientific analysis to understand and address climate change. Some ecosystems adapt rapidly enough to react to climate change, while others cannot. Those differences make it difficult to predict the impact from climate change on public lands overall, said Abigail Kimbell, chief of the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service. Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy and president-elect of the Society for Conservation Biology, said Congress needs to set an aggressive national goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to specify agency steps to manage the impact of climate change on public lands. Subcommittee Chairman Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he will hold additional hearings and ensure that federal lands are included in climate change legislation. “I feel strongly that while our public lands are threatened by climate change, they are also critical in finding solutions to combat climate change,” Grijalva said...Federal Times

Here they come, polar bear or no polar bear.

DOE made a $500 million "math error"

The Energy Department made a $500 million math error a year ago when it withdrew its support from a “near-zero emissions” coal plant in Illinois, Congressional auditors will say in a report to be released Wednesday. The error led the department to say mistakenly that the project, known as FutureGen, had nearly doubled in cost — an increase the Bush administration deemed too expensive. At the time, FutureGen was the leading effort to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. If the project were resumed and proved successful, it could provide a model for curbing the carbon dioxide that coal adds to the atmosphere. The new energy secretary, Steven Chu, has said that he will consider renewing support for FutureGen but that changes will be needed. He did not specify what those might be...NY Times

Salazar names Coloradan to Interior deputy post

A Colorado conservationist and former congressional candidate has been named the Interior Department’s deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Will Shafroth’s appointment Tuesday. Shafroth was a founding director of the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund, which distributes Colorado Lottery proceeds for wildlife, parks, rivers, trails and open space. Salazar, a former Colorado senator, worked with Shafroth on Great Outdoors Colorado. Shafroth served as GOCO’s executive director from 1994 to 2000. Shafroth was also a founding director of the Colorado Conservation Trust...Summit Daily News

Gun Alert On Omnibus Lands Bill

Gun Owners of America does not sound the "Emergency alarm" often -- and when we do, we mean it. Remember the massive land bill, S. 22, that passed out of the Senate last month? It was expected to pass quickly in the House, but your opposition to an expansion of gun control contained in the bill forced it to be pulled from the floor. GOA has just learned that after some backroom deals, the bill is headed to the floor WEDNESDAY MORNING, without any amendments to truly protect your Second Amendment rights on National Park Service (NPS) land. You have fought the battle over the NPS gun ban for a long time. Unlike U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, which allow for state and local law to govern firearms possession, NPS land is subject to a complete gun ban for any citizen who does not hold a concealed carry permit. The bill coming to the floor March 11 greatly expands NPS land, thus spreading the agency's anti-gun regulations into more areas. S. 22 is actually a compilation of over 190 bills, many of which were never even debated on their own merits...GOA

Trinidad, Colo. rancher finds mutilated cow

A cattle rancher made a horrific and mysterious discovery Sunday when he found the carcass of one of his cattle that was missing its udders and other female parts. No one is sure what killed the cow on a pasture near the Purgatoire River, but Trinidad rancher Mike Duran said he definitely finds the death unusual. Duran, 49, said Monday that after the cow had been missing for two days, he went to look for it in a pasture where he runs cattle a mile west of the town of Weston near Colorado 12. "I last saw her Friday. She's an older cow so I thought she may have died. "On Sunday, I spotted her near the (Purgatoire) river bottom and went and looked at her. She was on her side and it looked a little odd. "When I took a closer look I saw that her udders had been removed," Duran said. The cow had its udders cleanly cut off with no blood on or around the carcass, Duran said. "It was a perfect circle almost like a laser cut," he said. "It's not like a knife. it seemed to be cut and sealed at the same time," he said. This is not the first time Duran has found a mutilated cow on his ranch. In 1995, Duran said he found a cow that had been mutilated the exact same way on the same pasture. "The other cow's udders were snipped off the same way. It's hard to imagine what or who could have done this to me again," Duran said. The mutilation in 1995 never has been solved. Duran, who operates a 30-head cattle ranch, said that in both occurrences, there were no animal or human tracks around the carcasses. "There was no blood around either and if you cut off an udder there would be a whole lot of blood," Duran said. Duran said he has notified the Las Animas County Sheriff's Department about the mutilated cattle...Pueblo Chieftain

PETA Gives Oprah The Person Of The Year Award

The National Institute of Canine Experts is confused and dismayed by Oprah Winfrey's acceptance of PETA's Person of the Year Award for 2008. By accepting this award, it appears to NICE, The National Institute of Canine Experts, that Oprah Winfrey sends the message that she agrees with PETA's mission and actions. Oprah, 'Do you support eliminating medical research for American children who suffer from diseases such as cancer and AIDS? PETA does. PETA's president has said that 'even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we would be against it.' And PETA has repeatedly attacked many well-respected medical research foundations such as the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, solely because they support animal-based research. Oprah, 'Do you support organizations that kill 90% of their shelter animals?' PETA does just that. According to government documents, PETA employees have killed more than 19,200 dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens since 1998. In 2005, two PETA employees were charged with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty each, after authorities found them dumping the dead bodies of 18 animals they had just picked up from a North Carolina animal shelter into a Dumpster. PETA puts to death over 90 percent of the animals it accepts from members of the public who expect the group to make a reasonable attempt to find them adoptive homes. PETA spends part of its $32 million annual income on a contract with a crematory service to periodically empty hundreds of animal bodies from its large walk-in freezer...PR-Inside

NM fairgrounds future uncertain as Downs delays move

Warped plywood is all that keeps the dirt horse track at the state fairgrounds from crumbling over the path to the old grandstands. The owner of the Downs at Albuquerque Racetrack and Casino announced plans last year to move his operation from the fairgrounds to Moriarty so he can offer his customers a nicer, cleaner location. But he's now asking for an extension of his lease through 2012. Owner Paul Blanchard says Moriarty hasn't been able to fund the infrastructure to support the complex and a private company with a gas pipeline running under the proposed development has concerns. The delay has thrown off all fairgrounds redevelopment plans. A consultant's report on redevelopment options at the fairgrounds is due out by the end of March. AP

Bounty hunting for feral hogs

Hunting feral hogs from the air has been grounded. Importing alligators from Florida to control the population fell flat, but the latest idea to elminate the pests may work - bounty hunting. Coryell County officials are considering paying hunters and ranchers cash rewards for each feral hog shot dead. While the county hasn't estimated the exact price yet, County Judge John Firth said Tuesday the problem needs immediate action. "This is a real burden," he said...KXXV-TV

I'm sure we can't import alligators either, but we should sure consider importing these county officials.

West Texas Trail Ride to teach school kids about state’s pioneer roots

Thirty youngsters from three north and west Texas school districts will spend their Spring Break rolling through the rugged expanses of West Texas in covered wagons to get a taste of what their pioneering forebears experienced some 150 years ago. The youth outreach trail ride, sponsored by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Texas Equestrian Trail Riders Association, will cover roughly 75 miles from Marfa to Big Bend Ranch State Park outside Presidio. Trail riders will gather March 14 at the Marfa Fairgrounds, and depart the next morning for the MacGuire Ranch and points south. The trail ride concludes March 21 after several days of exploring local ranches and camping out at Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas’ largest state park. “We want to provide an educational program that gives youngsters a chance to experience what pioneer life might have looked like years ago from the confines of a wagon,” said trail ride boss Karl Cloninger, TPWD’s director of the Parrie Haynes Ranch in central Texas. “We’ll be teaching the children about the cultural resources of the Alamito Creek watershed and the history of ranching in the Big Bend. A top-notch educational team supported by numerous local ranchers and speakers will make this an experience not to be forgotten.”...North Texas E-News

AQHA Reviews Cloning; Delays Vote Until 2010

On Monday, March 9, the Board of Directors of the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) voted that action on a member proposal to approve the registration of foals produced by cloning be postponed until the 2010 AQHA Annual Convention. In the interim, the committee recommended the appointment of a task force to continue to seek information and input from informed sources regarding cloning, and to conduct further study of, among other things, parentage verification issues, the implications of cloning on the registration process, sentiment of the general membership, the impact of cloning with respect to genetic diseases, and to continue the effort to educate the general membership regarding cloning and its potential effect on the breed, the Association, and its members. Within the past couple of years, commercial cloning of a number of horses, including American Quarter Horses, has been well publicized. However, under Rule 227(a) of the AQHA Official Handbook, a rule that became effective in 2004, American Quarter Horses produced by any cloning process are not eligible for registration. The proposed change would allow a live foal produced via a particular type of cloning to be registered if its DNA matches that of a registered American Quarter Horse...The Horse.com

The Dulce Base: Fact or Fiction?

According to Hayakawa, Dulce, New Mexico, a sleepy little town of less than 4000 (inhabited by the Jicarilla Apache nation), has attracted quite a number of UFO and conspiracy buffs ever since rumors surfaced in the mid-80s that a U.S./alien joint biological laboratory and base exists a mile under the town's Archuleta Mesa. "This rumor has become so well known among UFO buffs around the world that anyone doing a Yahoo or Google search on Dulce, New Mexico would find the bulk of over 300,000 search results related to the alleged underground base," Hayakawa said. Skeptical of such claims, Hayakawa, a retired funeral director, visited the town of Dulce in 1990 with the crew of a Japanese television program to attempt to document the existence of such an alien base. Although he was unsuccessful in locating it, Hayakawa claims that he and the television crew were inexplicably detained by the police chief while interviewing the citizens on the street about UFOs and cattle mutilations. Now, almost 19 years later, Hayakawa and a few UFO enthusiasts from New Mexico, California and Arizona, would like to clear these unfounded rumors. They are planning to have a one-day public conference in the town of Dulce next March. It will be appropriately titled: "The Dulce Base: Fact or Fiction?" Hayakawa likes to separate fact from fiction. "There has not been any physical evidence whatsoever that there is such a base in or near Dulce," Hayakawa asserted. "However, when it comes to UFOs, many of the residents there are believers, since beginning around the mid-1970s and lasting till the mid-1980s, the entire town of Dulce was buzzed by frequent sightings of strange lights in the sky." This is fact, according to Hayakawa. Another fact is that many ranchers in the nearby communities began to report mysterious cattle mutilations and frequent sightings of military helicopters during that time. Some Dulce officials, concerned about these incidents, attended the first Cattle Mutilations conference in Albuquerque in 1979, including Raleigh Tafoya, who was the chief at the time. This also is fact, not fiction...UFO Digest

Enviro Orgs Looking To Add Diversity

When Jerome C. Ringo joined the board of the National Wildlife Federation in 1995, he was the only African-American at the meetings. Mr. Ringo, now president of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of environmental, labor and business groups, says that even today, he is often the only environmentalist in the room who is not white. “We’re not where we were, but we’re not where we want to be,” Mr. Ringo said of the environmental movement’s efforts to diversify. National environmental organizations have traditionally drawn their membership from the white and affluent, and have faced criticism for focusing more on protecting resources than protecting people. But with a black president committed to environmental issues in the White House and a need to achieve broader public support for initiatives like federal legislation to address global warming, many environmentalists say they feel pressure to diversify the movement further, both in membership and at higher levels of leadership. “Our groups are not as diverse as we’d like, but every one of the major groups has diversity as a top priority,” said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There’s great commitment to making the environmental movement representative of what the country is.”...NY Times

While you're at it, how about adding some diversity of ideas.

The Bush court sets back environmental litigation

The Bush environmental legacy won one and lost one on March 3. It lost when President Barack Obama scrapped last-minute regulations that had threatened to undercut the Endangered Species Act. The new Bush rules exempted any federal agency contemplating action that might jeopardize the recovery of an endangered species from consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service, arguing that the requirement consumed too much time. Consultation had been the rule before, and it is the rule again. Chalk one up for the tree huggers. But Bush’s legacy triumphed when his Supreme Court appointees joined for a 5-4 ruling against environmentalists who had challenged Forest Service regulations for small salvage logging projects in northern California and elsewhere. In Summers v. Earth Island Institute, the Court decided that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue, limiting the opportunity for environmentalists to challenge government actions in the future. How great a blow to environmental litigants will this be? “My suspicion is it will be raised in countless cases,” says Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles. “The other side will say this is the end of environmental law as we know it.” Boyles doesn’t buy that. The Supreme Court ruled on Constitutional grounds. The ruling doesn’t undercut statutory provisions for citizen suits under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, or other laws. And even the Constitutional concepts aren’t really new. The court has simply required more specificity. In the future, environmental plaintiffs can respond by getting more specific. Instead of saying they plan to visit a particular forest sometime in the future; they may name specific GPS coordinates and specific dates...Crosscut

Czech president gives keynote address to climate change doubters

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, addressed an audience of doubters of the manmade climate change theory at the second International Conference on Climate Change yesterday. The two-and-a-half day conference titled, "Global warming: Was it ever really a crisis?” features a number of speakers from the political and scientific communities and is billed as ‘the world’s largest-ever gathering of global warming skeptics.’ See the organization's video below for more on the event. Dr. Klaus, an economist by education, has been a very outspoken voice in expressing his doubts and is known not to mince words. At the conference, he had strong words for those he called ‘alarmists’ saying they, "are interested neither in temperature, carbon dioxide, competing scientific hypotheses and their testing, nor in freedom or markets. They are interested in their businesses and their profits--made with the help of politicians." Continuing, Klaus cast doubt on the very science that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bases its predictions of global climate disaster on. He said they are, "not able to explain why the global temperature increased from 1918 to 1940, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998, and decreased from 1998 to the present, irrespective of the fact that the people have been adding increasing amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere."...The Examiner

Among the Global Warming Skeptics

"Global warming alarmism has always been a political movement," declared Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard Lindzen during his keynote address at the second International Conference on Climate Change. Organized by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free market think tank, the conference has 700 registered participants who are attending the three day meeting in New York. Lindzen offered a few simple truths that "our side" often forgets. For example, skepticism about man-made global warming does not, by itself, make a good scientist. Nor does accepting global warming make one a poor scientist. Lindzen acknowledged that most of the atmospheric scientists he respects do endorse man-made global warming. He added, however, that most of their science is not actually about global warming. Lindzen decried what he sees as the intellectual corruption that global warming alarmism has brought to climatology. He noted that many climatologists are happy to issue ambiguous statements that are then spun by activists into alarms. The result is increased funding for climate research, so no one publicly complains about the spinning. Most of the funding for climate research would not be there were it not for the global warming issue. Lindzen added, "Most science funded under the rubric of climate does not actually deal with climate, but rather with the alleged impact of arbitrarily assumed climate change."...Reason

A decade after Headwaters deal, truce comes to Northern California redwood country

Ten years ago this week, the state and federal government spent $480 million to buy 7,472 acres from Pacific Lumber and other landowners to create the Headwaters Forest Reserve six miles south of Eureka. The deal ended one of the most bitter environmental conflicts in California history, pitting blue-collar loggers against tree-sitters in dreadlocks, and establishing Pacific Lumber owner Charles Hurwitz as the greatest eco-villain for U.S. environmental groups since the Exxon Valdez's Capt. Joseph Hazelwood. Today, the misty forest is a national preserve. Some of its trees are more than 320 feet tall — higher than the Statue of Liberty — and were growing during the Roman empire. But because of concerns over endangered species, the federal government has sharply limited public access, with only one year-round public trail into the forest. There is no visitor center and last year just 10,300 pilgrims came to this wooden cathedral, a fraction of the amount who visit Bay Area beaches on a single sunny weekend. Now the immense forest, 250 miles north of the Bay Area, is beginning a rebirth of sorts...Mercury News

Valles Caldera: A turning point

Joan Kavanau would love to see more of the green valleys and forests in the Valles Caldera National Preserve near Los Alamos. The Santa Fe resident has driven along the edge of the 88,900-acre preserve in the Jemez Mountains on N.M. 4, but never through the ancient collapsed volcano. Kavanau, 75, can't hike and there's no place to park a car and take a short walk or sit and have a picnic in the preserve's interior. Two years ago she joined a line of 1,500 cars trying to drive into the preserve on the first, and only, open access day. The line was so long she gave up. "It would be nice if they could open access more," Kavanau said. "Even to be given the opportunity to call and make an appointment to go see it. Right now it's inaccessible really except under their terms." Public access remains one of the biggest bones of contention between the Valles Caldera Trust that manages the preserve and the people who want to experience it. Congress bought the former ranch for $101 million in 2000 and established the preserve as an experiment in land management, with a 15-year initial timeline to meet a difficult set of goals: protect the natural resources, allow public access, maintain a working ranch and be financially self-sufficient...Santa Fe New Mexican

Conservation groups will challenge the removal of essential federal protections

Conservation groups, represented by Earthjustice, will send the Fish and Wildlife Service a notice that the delisting violates the Endangered Species Act when the government formally submits the rule to the Federal Register, presumably next week. If the agency does not reconsider the delisting rule, the conservation groups will again ask a federal court to reinstate federal Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the northern Rockies until wolf numbers are stronger and the states pledge to responsibly manage wolves. Suzanne Stone, northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife: "Nothing about this rule has changed since it was rejected and deemed unlawful in federal court. It still fails to adequately address biological concerns about the lack of genetic exchange among wolf populations and it still fails to address the concerns with the states' wolf management plans. If this rule is allowed to stand, nearly two-thirds of the wolves in the northern Rockies could be killed. We had hoped for a new delisting plan, based on current science that provides for a healthy, well connected wolf population in the region. Instead we are forced to, once again, challenge a bad rule forcing the expenditure of time and money that would have been much better served towards developing responsible state management plans." Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity: "Today's announcement means wolves will lose their federal protections before recovery is complete. And, as we saw last year before a federal judge reversed a Bush administration delisting rule, that will result in an unconstrained and unconscionable slaughter of these animals. It is disappointing that the Obama administration is choosing to follow a bad Bush policy to piecemeal wolf conservation efforts instead of prioritizing the development of a national wolf recovery plan. Setting up a system in which wolves in a population are both endangered and not endangered was not contemplated and is not supported by the Endangered Species Act."...Media-Newswire

Tools That Leave Wildlife Unbothered Widen Research Horizons

You may remember Senator John McCain’s criticism of a study of grizzly bear DNA as wasteful spending. And you may have wondered how the scientists got the DNA from the grizzlies. The answer is hair. The study, which Mr. McCain referred to during his run for president, was a large one, and it provided an estimate of the population of threatened grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, in and around Glacier National Park. The researchers did not trap the bears or shoot them with tranquilizers. Instead, they prepared 100 55-gallon drums with a mixture of whole fish and cattle blood that was allowed to ferment until it had the aroma of grizzly bear candy. They built 2,400 hair corrals — 100 feet of barbed wire around five or six trees — and placed the fish and blood mix in the center. When bears went under the wire to check it out they left hair behind. The team collected 34,000 hair samples in 14 weeks this way. And the population estimate from the study, announced late last year, was 765, a figure 2.5 times the estimate based on sightings of females and cubs, the previously used method. “Hair snaring has given us a much more precise number,” said Katherine C. Kendall, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey who designed and implemented the study. The results were just published in The Journal of Wildlife Management. It also gives a glimpse of a growing trend in wildlife biology toward research methods that are gentler — and cheaper — than the classic “capture, mark, recapture.” In that process researchers trap an animal, sometimes drug it and fasten on a radio collar or implant or attach a transmitter. Then they follow the radio signal or catch the animal again to see where it goes...NY Times

American Horse Council Urges Land Managers to Use Stimulus Funding for Equestrian Trails

The American Horse Council (AHC) has asked the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to use stimulus funding for trails. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 signed into law on February 17 appropriates over $1.7 billion for the NPS, USFS, and BLM that can be used for the maintenance and construction of trails and other infrastructure improvements on public lands. The AHC recently wrote to NPS Acting Director Dan Wenk, Chief of USFS Gail Kimbell, and BLM Acting Director Mike Pool urging the agencies to allocate a significant portion of stimulus funding to address the current backlog of needed infrastructure improvements on public lands, including maintenance and construction of trails and other facilities that are open to equestrians. The AHC cited the importance of public lands and trails to recreational riders around the country and the economic impact of the recreational riding community on the national economy...Industry News