BLM cuts energy leasing in Wyoming range

The Bureau of Land Management has decided that thousands of acres in the Wyoming Range will be off-limits to oil and gas drilling, state BLM Director Don Simpson said. Energy companies had purchased 23 leases on 24,000 acres of the land in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, but the BLM held off on issuing the leases when conservation groups protested. Simpson did not elaborate on the BLM's decision, which he announced Sunday. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, conservationists and hunting outfitters attended the announcement. Dustin Child, an outfitter whose camp is in the Wyoming Range, said he was happy with the decision. "It's great," Child said. "It gives me great hope. We've probably won the battle." An additional 20,000 acres are also part of that challenge by conservationists, and the U.S. Forest Service is expected to address that land next month after completing an air quality analysis as part of an environmental study...AP

Minerals industry may face fee hikes

Under pressure to shore up federal budgets, the Obama administration has proposed several measures to speed up payments and increase processing fees on the minerals industry. For example, a $4,000-per-well processing fee that originated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 would swell to $6,500 per well. Another proposal would strip away the industry's ability to deduct drilling and other "intangible" expenses. On the coal front, there's a push to require that federal coal "bonus bids" be paid in lump-sum at the time of lease rather than the usual five-year payment plan. In a letter to Congress this week, Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States executive director Marc Smith said the measures are sold as an elimination of unnecessary subsidies. If enacted, the measures would severely cut available capital needed to continue to develop domestic energy resources, he said. "That means less capital available to be put back into drilling more wells, developing American energy, creating jobs and generating revenue for federal, state and local governments," Smith wrote to Congress...BillingsGazette

Spotted owls block Skamania wind farm expansion

Plans for a wind farm on some state land in Skamania County are on hold because it’s spotted owl habitat. The Department of Natural Resources is no longer considering leasing 2,560 acres to the SDS Lumber Co. for possible future expansion of the proposed Whistling Ridge Energy Project. “The reason it was withdrawn was because of issues with endangered species,” DNR spokesman Aaron Toso told the The Vancouver Columbian. “It will give us some time to work with the federal services to see how we can make wind energy work with our habitat conservation plan.” Last month, the agency found itself having to defend the Radar Ridge wind turbine lease on forest land in Pacific County after a team of biologists said the proposed turbines would harm or kill marbled murrelets, robin-sized seabirds that nest in that specific tract of old-growth trees near the coast...DailyWorld

Yup, that's our policy: habitat for animals trumps clean energy for humans.

Human needs should come first in environmental policy

Ever hear of the Yellowstone Sand Verbena? Probably not, since the only place this plant is currently known to grow in North America is a beach in the national park bearing that name in Wyoming. Or how about the Meltwater Lednian Stonefly, which is only found in Glacier National Park in Montana? That one will be gone by 2030, thanks to global warming, assuming global warming is a reality, as claimed by some scientists. Or it may be frozen by the new little ice age predicted by other scientists. These are two of 29 species -- including 20 plants, six snails, two insects and a fish -- the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says may require federal actions to avoid extinction under the Endangered Species Act. As Examiner Columnist and Chapman University Law School professor Hugh Hewitt explains elsewhere in today's edition, such policies will "essentially sequester large swaths of private property from all use for years." There won't be a dime of compensation for the private property owners involved, either. But the injustices to private property owners hardly begin to describe the full human toll exacted by current law, which embodies a fundamentally unbalanced view of the proper relationship between man and nature...WashingtonExaminer

Wild pigs increasing damage to Fresno Co. ag

Fresno County farmers and ranchers are accustomed to dealing with tiny insects and plant diseases. But their latest pest is a big one, weighing in at more than 100 pounds. And it has a voracious appetite. Wild pigs are ranging over more of Fresno County and causing more damage. "It used to be just rangeland that they would root up or livestock ponds that they would wallow in and destroy," said Fred Rinder, Fresno County Department of Agriculture's wildlife and weed management supervisor. "But not any more." These days, the pigs are venturing from the foothills in eastern and western Fresno County to devour oranges, almonds, grapes and vegetables on Valley farms. Their rooting can destroy berms and rip through irrigation lines. While many of the pigs average about 100 pounds, some have grown much larger. "A big 300-pound pig will rub up against an almond tree and put a 30-degree lean on that tree," Rinder said. At Harris Farms River Ranch near Sanger, as many as 200 pigs have been caught and killed over the last several years...FresnoBee

'I wanna be a cowgirl for a lifetime'

For a few hours Tuesday, a Bothell girl forgot about her life-threatening illness and lived her life-long wish. Saddling up to Sugar Pie is more than a horse ride for Alyssa McCarron-Thompson. It's her dream. "I wanna be a cowgirl for a lifetime, or until I get tired of horses," she said. The horse ranch in Maple Valley is a world away from the hospitals and headaches that have haunted this 7-year-old since April. Doctors discovered a brain tumor behind Alyssa's eyes. Surgeons could only remove 35 percent of the second grader's tumor. "If you took it all out, it would have messed up my eyesight," Alyssa said. Doctors say there's a strong chance it could grow back. Tuesday, the Make A Wish Foundation swapped her hospital gown for cowboy boots. Real life cowboys taught Alyssa the ropes, such as how to round up cows, and cut a calf from the herd, and that some ranchers have hearts as gold as her boot tips. "We're just here to help make her wish," said rancher Duane Herbert...KOMO-TV

End of the Line for Dude Ranches?

The Old West’s dude ranches have been dwindling for years, but home on the range this summer is starting to look like an Indian massacre. “Dude ranches in Colorado and elsewhere in the West are only at 60 to 70 percent capacity this summer, the Cody, Wyoming-based Dude Ranchers Association (DRA) admitted to the Associated Press,” said milehighonthecheap.com. That has translated into much lower prices. “With business down, some ranches are offering shorter stays, slashing already low children’s rates and including additional extras such as free massages,” the site said. The AP said the current problem for dude ranches is that they are not attracting enough ‘dudes and dudettes.’” Even before this summer, however, “the number of dude ranches is slowly decreasing,” wrote The Wall Street Journal more than two years ago...HotelInteractive

'Mayor of Mud Springs' a true Old West character

Bill Bowden remembers going off to Sunday school class each week in the mid-1920s hoping that his regular teacher would be absent. What he and the other boys in the small San Dimas church were hoping for was the appearance of a quiet man in his early 70s as their substitute teacher. Bowden and the rest of the boys knew it didn't take much to draw this teacher away from Bible study and into the Old West. Soon their teacher would be regaling them with colorful tales of Geronimo or Wyatt Earp or Tombstone, Ariz. or even the gold rush in the Yukon. The teacher was San Dimas citrus rancher John P. Clum, who could tell great stories because he had lived through most of them himself. "He had a perpetual twinkle in his eye and a soft voice," said Bowden, a resident of Goldsboro, N.C., when he wrote a recollection for the San Dimas Historical Society. "These were the Sundays we liked. Not because we didn't like David and Goliath, but Mr. Clum told us Indian stories. Stories like you wouldn't believe ..." After years in the mining towns of the West and Klondike, Clum spent some of his latter years in the relative quiet of a West Cienega Street ranch in San Dimas. While there, he was jokingly called the Mayor of Mud Springs, a reference to San Dimas' original name and because he was once mayor - in fact, the first mayor - of Tombstone. He went to Rutgers College as a divinity student but quit to take a job with the War Department. He was among the first employees of the new Meteorological Service, later the National Weather Service. After a long train trip to Colorado, he rode a bumpy stagecoach the remaining 100 miles to Santa Fe, N.M., carrying his fragile barometer in one hand and a derby hat in another, according a story he would tell friends. He made New Mexico's first official weather observation in November 1871...DailyBulletin

Song Of The Day #117

Ranch Radio is offering some early Gene Autry this morning, with his recording of The End Of The Trail

While Gene sings about a picture, the original The End Of The Trail was a sculpture by James Earle Fraser:

It was for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco in 1915 that Fraser produced his most recognized work, the doleful "End of the Trail." While intended to be cast in bronze, material shortages due to the war prevented this, and the original plaster statue slowly deteriorated until it was obtained by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 1968 and restored. The restored statue is currently on display in the entryway of the Oklahoma City museum, and the original that sat in Visalia, CA, was replaced with a bronze replica. Fraser was later to remark that he should have copyrighted the image and that many people, painters, print and calendar makers and even other sculptors, made more profit from this work than he did.













Today's selection is available on Autry's 12 track Back in the Saddle Again by Sony Records.

Impact of the Waxman-Markey Climate Change Legislation on New Mexico

On June 26, a 1,427-page climate change bill introduced by Representatives Henry Waxman (D–CA) and Edward Markey (D–MA) passed the House by a narrow margin. The bill, also known as Waxman–Markey, includes a number of alarming provisions, chief among them a cap-and-trade program that would attempt to curb global warming by imposing strict upper limits on the emission of six greenhouse gases, with the primary emphasis on carbon dioxide (CO2). The mechanism for capping these emissions requires emitters to acquire federally created permits (or "allowances") for each ton of greenhouse gas emitted.

Because these allowances carry a price—and because 85 percent of the United States' energy needs come from carbon-emitting fossil fuels—Waxman–Markey is best described as a significant tax on energy use. Since everything Americans use and produce requires energy, the tax hits U.S. pocketbooks again and again. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis forecasts severe consequences, including skyrocketing energy costs, millions of jobs lost, and falling household income and economic activity—all for negligible changes in the global temperature.[1]

Workers and families in New Mexico may be wondering how cap-and-trade legislation would affect their income, their jobs, and the cost of energy. Implementing Waxman-Markey would put a chokehold on New Mexico's economic potential, reducing gross state product by $2.93 billion in 2035.















Consumers would be hit hard. Between 2012 (when the restrictions first apply) and 2035 (the last year of this analysis), the prices of electricity and gasoline will rise sharply when compared to prices in a world without cap and trade. By 2035, Americans living in the state of New Mexico will see their electricity prices rise by $1,271.33 and their gasoline prices rise by $1.26 per gallon solely because of Waxman-Markey.














































As the economy adjusts to shrinking gross domestic product (GDP) and rising energy prices, employment will take a big hit in New Mexico. Beginning in 2012, job losses will be 9,875 higher than without a cap-and-trade bill in place. And the number of jobs lost will only go up, increasing to 11,450 by 2035.

Contrary to the claims of an economic boost from green investment and green job creation and "postage stamp" costs, the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation does the complete opposite by increasing energy prices-thereby causing a considerable reduction in the rate of economic growth, the amount of GDP, household incomes, and employment.

David W. Kreutzer, Ph.D., is Senior Policy Analyst for Energy Economics and Climate Change, Karen A. Campbell, Ph.D., is Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics, William W. Beach is Director of the Center for Data Analysis, Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment, and Nicolas D. Loris is a Research Assistant in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]Chip Knappenberger, Climate Impacts of Waxman-Markey (the IPCC-Based Arithmetic of No Gain), MasterResource, May 6, 2009, at http://masterresource.org/?p=2355 (August 3, 2009).

Experts: water issue crucial in world climate deal

Thousands of scientists and experts urged world leaders Friday to include strategies for global water management in the planned Copenhagen climate agreement. Participants at the World Water Week conference said climate change will severely affect water supplies and poorer countries need support to help them adapt. "At the moment the water issue doesn't get enough attention in the climate negotiations," Anders Berntell, head of the Stockholm International Water Institute, told The Associated Press. "To be effective, climate negotiations must factor in the impact and importance of water for the world and, indeed, human well-being." Scientists at the weeklong conference also demanded more effective use of water across borders and called for better cooperation between officials involved in land and forest management, climate questions and water issues...AP

Beetles, wildfire work together to ravage northern forests

A veil of smoke settled over the forest in the shadow of the St. Elias Mountains, in a wilderness whose spruce trees stood tall and gray, a deathly gray even in the greenest heart of a Yukon summer. "As far as the eye can see, it's all infested," forester Rob Legare said, looking out over the thick woods of the Alsek River valley. Beetles and fire, twin plagues, are consuming northern forests in what scientists say is a preview of the future, in a century growing warmer, as the land grows drier, trees grow weaker and pests, abetted by milder winters, grow stronger. Dying, burning forests would then only add to the warming. Along with shrinking the polar ice cap and thawing permafrost, scientists say, the warming of the Arctic threatens to turn boreal forest -- the vast cover of spruce, pine and other conifers blanketing these high latitudes -- into less of a crucial "sink" absorbing carbon dioxide and more of a source, as megatons of that greenhouse gas rise from dead, burning and decaying wood...AP

Grasshopper infestation raises toxic beetle worry

An outbreak of grasshoppers this summer could be behind recent detections in Wyoming of a toxic beetle that can be deadly if eaten by horses, according to agriculture officials. Ranchers in two Wyoming counties have reported blister beetles this summer, although neither has reported any livestock poisonings, said Scott Schell, assistant extension entomologist with the University of Wyoming. Still, the pests’ presence is worrisome. Horses that eat blister beetles can become severely ill or die from gastrointestinal, heart or kidney trouble. The first signs of blister beetle sickness are acute colic, diarrhea and excessive salivation. Blister beetle outbreaks often follow significant grasshopper infestations because the beetle larva eat grasshopper eggs, said state veterinarian Jim Logan. Cattle and sheep can also be sickened, but not usually to the same degree as horses...AP

Judge sets hearing over Montana, Idaho wolf hunts

Environmental and animal rights groups have been granted a last-minute hearing before a federal judge on their request to stop upcoming wolf hunts in the Northern Rockies. Wolves across much of the region were removed from the endangered species list earlier this year. Public hunts for the predators -- the first in the Lower 48 states in decades -- are scheduled to begin Sept. 1 in parts of Idaho and two weeks later in Montana. Combined, the two states authorized hunters to take 295 of an estimated 1,350 wolves, or about a fifth of the animal's population. Groups including Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society of the United States last week asked for a court injunction to bar the hunts. Today, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy said he would hold a three-hour hearing Aug. 31 in Missoula to hear arguments in the case...AP

A Solar-Powered Oil Field?

BrightSource Energy has broken ground on a 29-megawatt solar steam plant at a Chevron oil field in Coalinga, Calif. The 100-acre project’s 7,000 mirrors will focus sunlight on a water-filled boiler that sits atop a 323-foot tower to produce hot, high-pressure steam. In a conventional solar power plant, the steam drives a turbine to generate electricity. In this case, the steam will be injected into oil wells to enhance production by heating thick petroleum so it flows more freely. Oil companies typically rely on steam generated by natural gas or other fossil fuels to maximize oil recovery in places like the oil patch in California’s Fresno and Kern counties, where the petroleum is heavy and gooey. That part of California also has some of the state’s strongest sunshine and several large solar power plants are planned for the region...NYTimes

Who needs gasoline if you have old beer?

It sounds too good to be true: A residential system that allows people to make fuel from old beer, leftover wine and other waste products and use it to run their vehicles. That's what inventors of the E-Fuel MicroFueler claim, and there's support for the idea in government, industry and pop culture. MicroFueler buyers are eligible for a $5,000 tax credit. Former L.A. Laker Shaquille O'Neal is an investor in the system's distributor. The $10,000 E-Fuel MicroFueler consists of a 250-gallon tank for organic feedstock, such as waste wine and beer, and a still that converts it to pure ethanol, or E-Fuel. The still doubles as a fuel pump, which works similarly to those at gas stations. The only waste product is distilled water. "If we give everybody the ability to make their own fuel, you break the oil infrastructure," said MicroFueler inventor Tom Quinn, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who also developed the motion-control system for the Nintendo Wii gaming system, a version of which is used in his new micro-refinery...LATimes

Forest Service to add 140 jobs in Albuquerque

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez announced Monday that the U.S. Forest Service plans to add 140 employees to its local work force by January 2010. “We’re talking about high-paying jobs that pay between $40,000 and $70,000 annually,” Chávez told the Business Weekly. “In this economy, 140 new high-wage jobs is good news.” The Forest Service, currently housed in the old Sun Healthcare building at Journal Center in North Albuquerque, has been consolidating its financial services and human resources in Albuquerque for the past two years, Chávez said. The consolidation is creating more local positions and a need for at least 100,000 square feet of new space over the next 18 months...NMBusinessWeekly

Boy Dies After Dragged by Cow at Alaska Fair

A 9-year-old Alaska boy has died after he was dragged several hundred feet by his own cow at the Kenai Peninsula State Fair in Ninilchik. The boy's father, Blair Martin, says his son Mathias died at Providence Alaska Medical Center on Friday night, hours after he was dragged by the cow at the fairgrounds. He says his son died from head injuries. Martin says the boy put around his waist the rope attached to the cow's harness, and that something spooked the cow while Mathias was out of his family's view. He says bystanders' cries for help alerted him to the cow "dragging what I just thought was a jacket, and it turned out to be his ragdoll body bouncing in the background." AP

Texas Horse Dies of Rabies, Possible Human Exposure

Public health officials in Texas are alerting anyone who may have come in contact with a certain horse at the Scurry County Rodeo, held in mid-July in Snyder, that they might have been exposed to rabies. More than 250 contestants from Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas participated in the rodeo. The horse was at the rodeo July 16-18. It became ill July 28, died July 30, and tested positive for rabies on Aug. 5. The horse was not in any rodeo ceremonies or events and was in a stall the entire time. Officials say it is highly unlikely, but possible, that the horse was capable of transmitting the rabies virus while at the rodeo arena...TheHorse

16-Year-Old Quarter Horse Racehorse Still Winning

American Quarter Horse runner Silent Cash Dasher on Sunday won at Blue Ribbon Downs in Sallisaw, Okla. Owned and trained by Gary Earp of Jay, Okla., the gelding by Dash Easy is 16 years old. In a sport with the majority of its participants competing in futurities for 2-year-olds and derbies for 3-year-olds, Silent Cash Dasher has captured the hearts of many racing fans because of his longevity. Earp said the gelding led nearly all the way from the gates to the wire and finished nearly a length in front. The race was a triumph of age. A retired heavy equipment operator, Earp is 65 years old. Jockey Roy Brooks turned 68 on Aug. 1...TheHorse