Court hears arguments about cross on federal land

The Supreme Court is taking up a long-running legal fight over a cross honoring World War I soldiers that has stood for 75 years on public land in a remote part of California. The cross, on an outcrop known as Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve, has been covered in plywood for the past several years following federal court rulings that it violates the First Amendment prohibition against government endorsement of religion. The justices were to hear arguments Wednesday in a case the court could use to make an important statement about its view of the separation of church and state. The Obama administration is defending the presence of the cross, which court papers describe as being 5 feet to 8 feet tall. A former National Park Service employee, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued to have the cross removed or covered after the agency refused to allow erection of a Buddhist memorial nearby. Frank Buono describes himself as a practicing Catholic who has no objection to religious symbols, but he took issue with the government's decision to allow the display of only the Christian symbol...read more

Groups ask BLM to suspend streamlined drilling reviews

Fifteen conservation groups are asking the Bureau of Land Management to suspend use of a streamlined approach to regulating oil and gas drilling, pending an internal review of the practice. The groups’ request comes after the Government Accountability Office said in a September report the BLM’s use of what are called categorical exclusions in Colorado and elsewhere “has frequently been out of compliance with both the law and BLM’s guidance.” Meanwhile, the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States has released a position paper detailing its concerns about the report. These include its contention that the GAO ignored frequent violations of the law involving the BLM’s failure to use the exclusions for drilling projects that qualified for them under criteria mandated by Congress. Congress created the exclusions in 2005 to exempt certain drilling-related activities from the new environmental analyses that normally are required...read more

Shaping the Future of America’s Outdoor Recreational Resources

The nation’s parks, public lands, waterways, and other outdoor recreational assets provide the American public a multitude of benefits, but a new study by Resources for the Future concludes that they face major challenges in funding and maintaining the condition of these lands and associated amenities. This wide-ranging study, The State of the Great Outdoors: America's Parks, Public Lands, and Recreation Resources, delves into the status of America’s outdoor resources, the demand for recreation, and the financing of conservation, parks, and open space. It was carried out in conjunction with the Outdoor Resources Review Group, a bipartisan assemblage of public officials, conservation specialists, and recreation professionals that released its own policy recommendations in a July 2009 report. In the new study, the first comprehensive review of outdoor recreation since the late 1980s, RFF Researchers Margaret Walls, Sarah Darley, and Juha Siikamäki highlight notable trends and identify several emerging issues of concern for policymakers. According to the authors, declining government support for parks and other public lands “have led to maintenance backlogs, deteriorating infrastructure, resource degradation, and overall reductions in the quality of the recreational experience in many locations.” These developments have had consequences for some 655 million acres currently managed by federal agencies, including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Reclamation. Original surveys by the authors revealed that state and local parks are also suffering...read more

Military Progresses on Alternative Fuels

On track to certify its aircraft fleet to use synthetic Fisher-Tropsch (F-T) fuel by 2011, the U.S. Air Force has launched a similar certification effort for hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) biofuels and is now becoming interested in fuels from cellulosic feedstocks. The Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), which buys fuel for the services, has awarded contracts to supply almost 600,000 gallons of renewable jet fuel for testing and certification. "That's an unprecedented amount," says Kim Huntley, DESC commander. Sustainable Oils, Solazyme and Honeywell company UOP will supply 400,000 gallons of fuel to the Air Force and 190,000 to the Navy. Sustainable Oils will use camelina as the feedstock, Solazyme will use algae and UOP will use animal fat, or tallow, supplied by food producer Cargill. All three will use UOP's processing technology...read more

Airline asks passengers to use the toilet before boarding... so they will weigh less and help cut carbon emissions

A Japanese airline has started asking passengers to go to the toilet before boarding in a bid to reduce carbon emissions. All Nippon Airways (ANA) claims that empty bladders mean lighter passengers, a lighter aircraft and thus lower fuel use. Airline staff will be present at boarding gates in terminals to ask passengers waiting to fly to relieve themselves before boarding, The Independent reported. ANA hopes the weight saved will lead to a five-tonne reduction in carbon emissions over the course of 30 days. The airline began the policy on October 1, according to Japan’s NHK television...Read more

Groups Challenge Route in Utah Off-Road Plan

The Forest Service snuck a 220-mile route for off-road vehicle use into a designated trail system for national forest land near Ogden, Utah, four environmental groups say in Federal Court. The Sierra Club and three other groups claim the agency "hastily designated" the Shoshone Trail system for off-road vehicle use in 2007, in what they deem an administrative action to avoid environmental analysis. The travel plan revision added 16 miles of new off-road vehicle trails while disregarding the impacts of 54 miles of unauthorized routes, the lawsuit states. The upland plateau, rugged mountains and canyons in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest are important for wildlife, the groups say, and the snow that covers the trees is the main water source for the neighboring town of Ogden. The Forest Service has allegedly promoted and built facilities for the Shoshone Trail system, actions that require environmental analysis. The revised travel plan failed to consider cumulative effects such as dispersed camping and neglected to analyze mitigation measures or give due consideration to alternatives, the lawsuit claims...read more

Public Citizen Sues Texas Over Greenhouse Gases

Public Citizen opened up a new front today in a battle to toughen the way Texas regulators administer the Clean Air Act, this time trying to force them to regulate greenhouse gases. Texas was already under fire from the EPA, which last month threatened to yank approval for several key aspects of the state's clean-air permitting programs for failing to meet standards of the federal Clean Air Act. Now, the public advocacy group Public Citizen has filed a lawsuit arguing that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is required by state law to consider climate change when approving new coal-fired power plants – and that it is refusing to do so. The lawsuit asks the Travis County District Court to declare that interpretive rules the commission uses to avoid regulating CO2 emissions are unlawful. The group's members are worried about their land and livelihoods as the climate changes, and they need to be heard, the lawsuit says. For example, one member is a pecan farmer near Bay City who would be unable to use the Colorado River to irrigate crops if sea levels rose and saltwater intruded further up the river. Another is a rancher who has noticed species disappearing and ponds that used to freeze staying ice-free all winter. Gulf Coast residents also worry about more intense hurricanes...read more

Texas pulling final plug on corridor

The Texas Department of Transportation is pulling the last plug on the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's embattled plan to build a toll-road network across the state. The agency said earlier this year it was scaling down the project and dropping the name "Trans-Texas Corridor." Now, transportation officials say it's fully dead. Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of the decision in a report posted online Tuesday. The news comes a day after Perry's Republican primary opponent, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, secured the coveted endorsement of the powerful Texas Farm Bureau — a vocal opponent of the corridor and a group that has been at odds with Perry over eminent domain and private property rights. Farmers and ranchers did not like the corridor plan because of the private land it threatened to take. On Wednesday, transportation officials are expected to announce they have decided against building the TTC-35, a key part of the corridor that was to parallel Interstate 35 between Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio. The development contract with a private company is being terminated. "The reason that's being given for the no-build option is that people don't want it," Meadows said. "They said 'Hell no.' "...read more

House Proposes Bill to Ban Traps in Wildlife Refuges

Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey of New York introduced the bill, calling the continued use of the traps in federally protected wildlife areas "inexcusable" and "shameful." More than half of the country's 550 federal refuges allow steel jaw leg-hold traps, Conibear traps and snares, which will be made illegal under the proposed legislation. Among the traps that fall under the proposed ban are Conibear traps, which are designed to collapse on an animal's spinal column but can catch the chest or pelvis, prolonging the animal's death. If approved, the law would be called the Refuge From Cruel Trapping Act, which Animal Welfare Institute President Cathy Liss called a "critical step toward reducing the suffering inflicted on our nation's wildlife."...read more

E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states. Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe. Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say...read more

A lodge's last days: Recession hits Bear Mountain Lodge hard

Bear Mountain Lodge, a local guest lodge owned by the Nature Conservancy, is the latest victim of a struggling economy. After being willed to the conservancy 10 years ago, the lodge will close and the conservancy plans to put the property on the market. The last guests of the lodge will check out today, said Esther Scherf, kitchen manager at the lodge for the past four years. Until mid-June, Scherf said, the lodge served dinner and was popular with locals, as well as guests. But because of budget cuts within the organization, the lodge had to cut back, and the dinners were one of the things to go, along with two other cooks who helped with the operation. The lodge also phased out its staff naturalist position and relied on volunteers to fill in. At its peak, the lodge had about 12 employees during her tenure, Scherf said. Now there are eight, and pretty soon there will just be one to stay on and take care of the place while the property is readied for the market. Terry Sullivan, state director for the Nature Conservancy, which is based in Santa Fe, said the property, which he said encompasses 190 acres, will not be subdivided...read more

Jeff Witte receives honor from National Association of State Departments of Agriculture

Jeff Witte, New Mexico Department of Agriculture’s director of agricultural biosecurity, received the James A. Graham Award for Outstanding Service to Agriculture during the annual meeting of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture in Montgomery, Ala., Sept. 20. Witte was honored for his work with the Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center (SWBFSDC), which is housed at New Mexico State University, where he has worked closely with various private entities, state and federal agencies, and research institutions on issues related to agriculture and homeland security. “I am extremely honored that Miley Gonzalez, New Mexico’s secretary of agriculture, nominated me, and I am very humbled to receive this award,” Witte said. “We have a great team at NMDA and NMSU, and I have a great team at home. This work could not be accomplished without support from them all.” The award is presented annually to honor an individual who provides outstanding services to agricultural producers. Witte is co-founder and co-director of the Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center, a partnership between NMDA and NMSU’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. The New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has charged the Center with administering all programs related to agro-security in the state...read more

I have no idea what Witte does over there, but I do know this: whatever Witte does he does damn well.

'Rut nuts' hunt for traces of old wagon trail

Members of the Utah chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association got a little taste Saturday of what early travelers experienced as they traversed the Virgin Valley on their way to and from California. The history buffs followed Leo Lyman, a historian who has written two books on the overland trail, or the Southern Route, between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It is one of the toughest of western trails, Lyman said, and the Virgin Valley section is the most difficult part of the journey. Travelers came from Cedar City to Mountain Meadows, then down the Utah Hill to Beaver Dam, following the winding course of the Virgin River. It was a treacherous route along the river, Lyman told about 30 members of OCTA and half-dozen people from Mesquite. “The wagons crossed the river 12 times between here and Littlefield,” he said, as the group (they call themselves “rut nuts”) looked over the valley about six miles downstream from Bunkerville. “Quicksand was a huge problem, and wagons were lost. There are still wagons under that mud.”...read more

For these cowgirls, rodeo skills come naturally

Eight teams will compete Friday and Saturday in the 2009 Women's Ranch Rodeo Finals at the Bar K Bar Arena at Celebration Centre. "In this competition, it's the luck of the draw," said WRR special agent Billie Franks. "A bad cow can put you down pretty quick in more ways than one." The rodeo will feature two competitions daily, at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. The eight teams, with four women to a team, will compete in calf branding, roping, sorting, doctoring, trailer loading and tie-down/mugging, which involves roping a calf, dogging it down and tying three legs. "Not to take away from the girls who ride barrels and pole bending, but ranch-based competition makes people aware of the ranching end of riding," Franks said. "A lot of the girls who are there are out on the ranch every day. It's a part of our heritage."...read more

Book offers "cowboy" recipes

"Cooking the Cowboy Way" is subtitled "Recipes Inspired by Campfires, Chuck Wagons and Ranch Kitchens." From the rural life in Florida to Texas to Alberta, author-restaurateur and chef Grady Spears has gathered recipes that take hearty ranch and trail fare and kicked them up to a delectable sophistication with the use of authentic ingredients with a twist. Many are the specialties of inns and ranch restaurants around the country. The book is more than a recipe collection; it is a celebration of a life lived in harmony with nature and the outdoors and the active life of ranchers and rural folks, celebrating the myths and realities of what Grady calls "the Cowboy Way." From "Cooking the Cowboy Way" by Grady Spears and June Naylor (Andrews McMeel Publishing, October 2009):...recipes

Song Of The Day #150

Song of The Day #150! That calls for a double dose.

Let's stay with the western swing genre. Anyone who has followed Tommy Duncan's career knows he was a big fan of Jimmie Rodgers. Here he is with Bob Wills and their 1934 recording of Rodger's Mean Mama Blues. We'll follow that up with a good Ocie Stockard fiddle tune Crafton Blues, recorded in 1937 by Jimmie Revard & His Oklahoma Playboys

Both tunes are available on the 4 CD box set Stompin' Singers & Western Swingers: More from the Golden Age of Western Swing.

The Other Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis in Global Land Use

Although I’m a climate scientist by training, I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. Learning from the research my colleagues and I have done over the past decade, I fear we are neglecting another, equally inconvenient truth: that we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization. Our use of land, particularly for agriculture, is absolutely essential to the success of the human race. We depend on agriculture to supply us with food, feed, fiber, and, increasingly, biofuels. Without a highly efficient, productive, and resilient agricultural system, our society would collapse almost overnight. But we are demanding more and more from our global agricultural systems, pushing them to their very limits. Continued population growth (adding more than 70 million people to the world every year), changing dietary preferences (including more meat and dairy consumption), rising energy prices, and increasing needs for bioenergy sources are putting tremendous pressure on the world’s resources. And, if we want any hope of keeping up with these demands, we’ll need to double, perhaps triple, the agricultural production of the planet in the next 30 to 40 years. Meeting these huge new agricultural demands will be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. At present, it is completely unclear how (and if) we can do it...read more

Here they come directly after ag with a new "crisis". Guess global warming wasn't getting the job done.

Vegas forges ahead on pipeline plan

The hoopla over the most recent development in the groundwater saga obscures a larger reality. Patricia Mulroy has tackled the groundwater project with far less secrecy than William Mulholland would have used. Still, over the past three years, she has moved to lock in the water she needs for the project with remarkable finesse. The Southern Nevada Water Authority now has at least 37 billion gallons of water lined up for the project, which will span seven valleys on the east side of Nevada, from Coyote Springs Valley to Spring Valley, and Snake Valley on the Nevada-Utah line. "We already have the necessary water rights to go all the way to Spring Valley," says Mulroy. But even as the Water Authority has amassed the permits it needs to fill the pipeline with water, unsettling questions have emerged regarding the project's impacts on desert springs ecosystems. And one of Mulroy's own scientists says her agency is hiding the effects that groundwater pumping will have on the Great Basin...read more

Exile for Non-Believers

The price for speaking out against global warming is exile from your peers, even if you are at the top of your field. What follows is an example of a scientific group that not only stopped a leading researcher from attending a meeting, but then—withoutdiscussing the evidence—applauds the IPCC and recommends urgent policies to reduce greenhouse gases. What has science been reduced to if bear biologists feel they can effectively issue ad hoc recommendations on worldwide energy use? How low have standards sunk if informed opinion is censored, while uninformed opinion is elevated to official policy? If a leading researcher can’t speak his mind without punishment by exile, what chance would any up-and-coming researcher have? As Mitchell Taylor points out “It’s a good way to maintain consensus”. And so it is. But it’s not science...read more (pdf)

Agencies Told To Reduce Emissions

The federal government will require each agency to measure its greenhouse-gas emissions for the first time and set targets to reduce them by 2020, under an executive order signed by President Obama Monday. The measure affects such things as the electricity federal buildings consume and the carbon output of federal workers' commutes. "As the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, the federal government can and should lead by example when it comes to creating innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy efficiency, conserve water, reduce waste, and use environmentally-responsible products and technologies," Obama said in a statement. Each agency must report its 2020 emission targets to the Council on Environmental Quality within 90 days. Administration officials said they could not estimate the federal government's carbon footprint, since it has never been measured before, but the government ranks as the nation's largest energy consumer. It occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles and employs more than 1.8 million civilian workers...full story

That last sentence doesn't come close to measuring the fed's carbon footprint. Think of all the road and other construction projects funded by the feds. Think of all the private contractors doing work directly for the feds. Think of all the gov't grants, etc.