Director of the Bureau of Land Management: Who Is Bob Abbey?

Confirmed on August 6, 2009, President Obama’s Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a twenty-five year veteran of the agency who was put forward for the position by Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the powerful Senate Majority Leader. Born circa 1951 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Abbey is a 1969 graduate of Clarksdale High School. He went on to earn a B.S. in Resource Management from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1973. Abbey spent more than 32 years in public service, working with state and federal land management agencies before retiring from the federal government in July 2005. Straight out of college, Abbey took a job with the Mississippi State Park system, where he worked for more than four years before accepting a position with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In that job, he first interacted with the BLM, to which he soon applied for a job. Abbey was hired by BLM in 1980 for a position in its Casper, Wyoming, field office. Between 1980 and 1992, Abbey worked there, moving on to positions as assistant district manager in Yuma, Arizona and as budget analyst in Washington, D.C. In 1992, Abbey was promoted to head of the Jackson, Mississippi, field office, where he remained into 1995, when he was named acting state BLM director in Colorado, where he served from 1995 through 1997. From 1997 to 2005, Abbey served as the Nevada State Director for BLM, providing oversight for 48 million acres of public land managed by the bureau in the state. Abbey retired in July 2005, after which he became a partner in a private consulting firm called Abbey, Stubbs, & Ford, LLC, which had offices in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. He also served as a member of the University of Nevada College of Agriculture Dean’s Advisory Committee and as a board member on several statewide and national non-profit organizations, including Friends of Nevada Wilderness...read more

Colo. lawmakers seek to extend Pinon Canyon ban

Four members of Colorado's congressional delegation are asking lawmakers to extend a ban on spending money to expand the Army's Pinon Canyon training site. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet and Reps. John Salazar and Betsy Markey asked a House-Senate conference committee on Tuesday to renew the ban through September 2010. The four Democrats cite unanswered questions about the need. The current ban expires Dec. 18. It's been in place since 2007. The Army wants to expand the site from 238,000 acres, or 370 square miles, to 338,000 acres, or 525 square miles. Commanders say they need the space for new weapons and tactics and additional soldiers. Ranchers fear the loss of so much agricultural land and say the Army hasn't demonstrated the need for it. AP

Activist at Utah oil auction to assert new defense

The federal government has acknowledged it never prosecuted anyone who failed to pay a bid for drilling rights in Utah until a college student offered his bogus bids in an act of environmental defiance. The admission is giving defense lawyers for Tim DeChristopher hope they can get the two felony charges against him dismissed based on an argument of selective prosecution. DeChristopher has said he offered bids last December that he couldn't cover to protect public lands between Arches and Canyonlands national parks in Utah, and to draw attention to climate change. Federal prosecutors said Tuesday they had disclosed a number of cases where drilling companies or land agents made bids at Utah auctions they didn't cover financially. The reasons weren't immediately clear. Defense lawyers said that shows the government is unfairly singling out DeChristopher for prosecution. Government lawyers dispute that and said DeChristopher — unlike other bidders — showed intent to violate the law...read more

Montana ranchers seek to curb residential wells

Ranchers in Montana are asking state officials to stop giving away water use rights to tens of thousands of new homes being built in areas once dominated by agriculture. Across the arid West, residential subdivisions and agricultural interests are vying for control of water supplies that have emerged as one of the region's most coveted natural resources. In the latest skirmish between the two groups, a group of Montana ranch owners on Tuesday filed a petition with the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, charging the state's water rules were stacked against them. The rules allow the small wells used by each house within larger subdivisions to qualify for exemptions from laws that otherwise give precedence to the "senior" rights of farms and ranches. Rancher Polly Rex says that's a loophole that could ultimately rob her of the means to grow hay and water her livestock. AP

PETA Wants to Help U.S. Troops Take a Bite Out of Bin Laden

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is featuring a vegan chocolate candy stamped with the likeness of Osama bin Laden in its holiday gift catalog. This is the same animal "rights" group that gave President Barack Obama a catch-and-release insect trap after he was shown swatting a fly during a television interview. The “Bin Laden Bites” are being marketed as dairy-free “delights” that will give U.S. troops in Afghanistan a way to get “some sweet revenge by taking a bite out of Osama’s head.” “We decided to include the chocolates in PETA’s catalog in memory of the animals who died of starvation and dehydration when their guardians were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center,” Rajt said, noting that some animals were left without care after their owners died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. PETA says other animals died when apartments were sealed off following the attacks, including dogs, cats, “companion” rats and mice, guinea pigs, gerbils, rabbits, and fish...read more

Baxter Black: 'Tis the season to be thankful

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for many things large and small. For instance, on the world stage, I am thankful that Saddam Hussein finally got what he had coming. But I'm also thankful for more personal things like the fact that there are still airports and convenience stores that have pay phones. They are as rare as a kind word for a legislator, but they are essential to us Verizaphobes. I'm thankful that we have not had a terrorist act in our country since Sept. 11, because of the strength and dedication of our troops stationed around the world in harm's way. On a small note, it is comforting that I can still find a restaurant that is not a chain store. One where the chef is really a chef and not a reheater! I'm thankful to see roads being built and repaired as part of our economic stimulus plan. It's long overdue, and it is creating jobs. Less world-shaking, I'm thankful I have friends and family who care enough to remind me of an anniversary, birthday or obscure bank holiday that I probably would have forgotten. I think it stems from being part of the agrarian community where every day is a holiday, or a work day, depending on your point of view. The livestock need fed rain or shine, Sunday or Monday, July 4 or April 15...read more

Song Of The Day #191

Today's tune on Ranch Radio is Ridin' The Same Old Range by Andy Parker and The Plainsmen.

My version of the song is on the 40 track 2 CD collection Call Of The Rollin' Plains. Amazon is not offering it, but they do have the 27 track CD Texas Belle by the group.

Leaked emails won't harm UN climate body, says chairman

There is "virtually no possibility" of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN's top global warming body, its chair said today. Rajendra Pachauri defended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel's fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007. The emails were made public this month after a hacker illegally obtained them from servers at the university. Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered. "The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report," he said...read more

Arctic ice meltdown remains severe: Scientist

Studies suggesting the Arctic sea ice has made a modest recovery following its record-setting retreat in 2007 are misleading and underestimate the severity of the polar meltdown, says one of Canada's top ice scientists. David Barber, Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, says satellite images used to track the overall extent of Arctic ice don't adequately perceive how weak and "rotten" the region's older, thicker, multi-year ice cover has become. His findings, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggest a transformative change in Arctic ecosystems is accelerating and that safe shipping in polar waters during the summer and fall will begin much sooner than many experts predict. "In 2008 and 2009 satellite data showed a growth in Arctic sea ice extension leaving some to reckon global warming was reversing," states a summary of the research. "Contrary to what satellites recently suggested, we are actually speeding up the loss of the remaining, healthy, multi-year sea ice."...read more

National parks seek share in discoveries

A soon-to-be-implemented policy for scientists who are permitted to conduct research in national parks will give the National Park Service a share of profits from their work. The policy is expected to go into effect early next year following more than a decade of concern and a lawsuit over "bioprospecting" in Yellowstone National Park. Bioprospecting -- a hybrid of the words "biodiversity" and "prospecting" -- is the search for organisms that promise scientific breakthroughs in medicine and chemistry. "This is about the public, which owns places like Yellowstone, getting some kind of benefit if someone has a commercial product based on research which started in the park," Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash said. The new "benefits sharing" policy does not specify what percentage of profit the National Park Service should receive in every case. But a document released Monday outlining the policy offers a rough estimate of the potential benefit to the park system -- between $635,000 and $3.9 million a year, eventually. The policy applies to all 84 million acres in the national park system, including the more than 200 parks hosting independent research. In those parks, including Yellowstone, the main quarry of bioprospectors is bacteria...read more

New Endangered Species Listings Wait as Obama Admin Charts New Course

The Obama administration is lagging behind the pace set by its predecessor for listing endangered species, and some environmentalists are not happy. So far, President Obama's Fish and Wildlife Service has offered protection to two U.S. species, both plants, out of nearly 250 on Endangered Species Act's "candidates" list. Candidate species have been deemed worthy of protection by federal biologists but are kept from formal listing because of other priorities for the department. The service also finalized listings for three foreign bird species and a segment of the Atlantic salmon population and edited the listings of two plants and two species of salamander that were previously listed as single species. Altogether, the new administration's total listings this year lag behind George W. Bush's administration, which finalized protections for 11 species in its first year. The Bush-era listings tapered off in subsequent years for an average annual listing rate of just under eight species per year -- far below the average 65 species listed each year under President Clinton and 58 under President George H.W. Bush...read more

Wyoming firm on wolf plan

No one is arguing Wyoming’s gray wolf population hasn’t recovered – yet the state is embroiled in court actions and its wolves are protected. Conservationists and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) say the state’s current management plan isn’t good enough to protect its wolves – and Wyoming is defending that challenge in Cheyenne’s U.S. District Court. At the heart is Wyoming officials’ belief that the state’s plan is indeed good enough, that Wyoming Game & Fish should oversee a “trophy-game area” with the “predator area” where wolves are treated like coyotes. One delisting lawsuit, filed against FWS by Earthjustice on behalf of a conservation coalition, is based in part over what it calls FWS’ “piecemeal” delisting approach when it delisted wolves in April in Montana and Idaho but left out Wyoming. This brought forth the state’s suit against FWS. With ongoing court battles over delisting, current management of Wyoming’s again-protected gray wolves falls to FWS, whose officials had accepted the state’s plan but after being sued, backed away. In the meantime, wolves in effect have almost no one controlling what they do and where they do it, some say. Last week, FWS Wyoming wolf program director Mike Jimenez stated Wyoming residents could shoot wolves physically attacking their livestock – but not if their dogs are attacked on public land. This is part of the FWS’ 10J rule, in effect while Wyoming’s wolves are listed. Thus, Bondurant lion-guide Scott Leeper on Nov. 13 lost three hounds to two groups of more than 20 wolves in the Upper Gros Ventre and could not protect them...read more

Panther wins against cabbage palm

If you like your conservation efforts served with a nice dusting of irony, consider what’s happening at the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge near Naples, Fla. Workers there are about to start tearing down dense stands of the official Florida state tree, the cabbage palm, in order to benefit the official state animal, the endangered Florida panther, that lives in the refuge. Refuge wildlife biologist Larry Richardson acknowledges that he hears from people who are confused about the project. But the fact is that the cabbage palms have grown so thick in places on the refuge that they are crowding out other plants that are necessary food for deer. That means the deer move on to find better feeding areas, and the panthers are deprived of the deer they need to prey on. So the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, hired Wildland Services, Inc., of Moore Haven, Fla., to cut down the invasive cabbage palms on more than 1,700 acres inside the refuge. The $171,000 contract is being funded by money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, popularly known as stimulus funds...read more

Idaho puts up hazard lights where wildlife and traffic too often collide

Idaho transportation officials think they've come up with a way to keep motorists and moose apart on a mountainous stretch of U.S. Highway 95 north of Moscow. A solar-powered infrared detection system was installed this fall along a 2,200-foot section of the highway on Steakhouse Hill on the west side of Moscow Mountain. At an elevation of 3,050 feet, the area is known for its migrating wildlife. When deer or moose pass through the infrared beam, a flashing beacon goes off to warn drivers that animals may be on or approaching the roadway. The beacon runs for about 40 seconds each time the beam is interrupted by an animal. The beacon is on top of a yellow warning sign that shows the image of a jumping deer. The $200,000 installation was financed by federal economic stimulus funds...read more

Scientists say buffelgrass on unstoppable march—and the saguaro is on its way out

Buffelgrass is forcing us to think the unthinkable: A Sonoran Desert in which the saguaro cactus is no longer the master of the landscape. Is this really possible? Could Arizona's cherished icon vanish from a substantial portion of its range? Actually, yes. The problem is fire. The Nature Conservancy biologist Dale Turner says the density and distribution of buffelgrass is increasing dramatically, and in those places where it becomes the dominant plant, the number of fires will increase. "That means every other plant that's both slow-growing and fire-sensitive will disappear," says Turner. "That's certainly the saguaro. I don't think it will go extinct, but we'll see saguaro populations either lost or seriously degraded." Prior to buffelgrass, fire was never a major player in the Sonoran Desert. Old-fashioned fires—if we can use that term—didn't burn too hot or too long, because native grasses don't have the biomass to create big blazes. Buffelgrass does, and it won't pause to catch its breath after a fire. It regenerates quickly and thicker than before, making subsequent blazes more intense, with plenty of fuel to run across entire valleys and up grassy slopes...read more

U.S. Unlikely to Use the Ethanol Congress Ordered

Two years ago, Congress ordered the nation’s gasoline refiners to do something that is turning out to be mathematically impossible. To please the farm lobby and to help wean the nation off oil, Congress mandated that refiners blend a rising volume of ethanol and other biofuels into gasoline. They are supposed to use at least 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012, up from less than seven billion gallons in 2007. But nobody at the time counted on fuel demand falling in the United States, which is what has happened during the recession. And that decline could well continue, as cars become more efficient under other recent government mandates. At the maximum allowable blend, in which gasoline at the pump contains 10 percent ethanol, updated projections suggest that the country is unlikely to be able to use all the ethanol that Congress has ordered up. So something has to give. In theory, the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to solve this problem by tweaking the mandates imposed by Congress, and it may act as early as next week. Each potential solution would anger one interest group or another, so the agency has been subjected to fierce lobbying, including from members of Congress lining up behind various factions. One possibility is to raise the maximum proportion of ethanol in gasoline to 15 or 20 percent. But that idea is opposed by some carmakers and pollution experts. They contend that high ethanol blends can cause damage to cars, including making catalytic converters run hotter...read more

Off-reservation Indian gambling raises concerns

An Indian tribe wants to build a grand, $1.5 billion Las Vegas-style casino resort on a swath of land overlooking San Francisco Bay - a spot more than 100 miles from its tribal lands. Across the country, some Indian tribes are seeking to construct casinos well away from their reservations or other tribal lands. The trend may be about to accelerate: The Obama administration is expected to decide soon whether to loosen the rules on some of these projects. The Guidiville tribe hopes to get the government to declare a 413-acre tract near the San Francisco Bay sovereign tribal land so the Indians can build a casino resort with more than 1,000 hotel rooms, shops, tribal housing and a shoreline park. Also, the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians is proposing a more modest casino nearby, 113 miles from their land near Clear Lake, Calif. Both tribes say their ancestral lands were in the Bay Area and that they were forced to retreat when white settlers arrived...read more

Ain't it amazing. For freedom to spread the tribes must acquire property, have uncle sam declare it part of their tribal lands and then they are free to do all sorts of things that many state governments and that same uncle sam won't allow us to do on non-tribal lands. How long will the feds allow this creeping of freedom last?

Strange events nothing new in Weld

Could it be starting again? The bizarre world of cattle mutilations has been quiet for a few years, but last week, a San Luis Valley rancher in southwest Colorado found four mutilated calves on his ranch, with no ready explanation of what happened to them. Rancher Manuel Sanchez has found no signs of human attackers, such as footprints or ATV tracks. And there are no signs of an animal attack by a coyote or mountain lion. It was like that in Weld County 10 to 30 years ago, and some farmers and ranchers have said they still find mutilated livestock, but they don't report it because of skeptics. In almost every mutilation case in Weld, the cattle and horses that were taken to Colorado State University for examination were determined to be mutilated by predators — usually coyotes — feeding on the dead animals. Farmers and ranchers joke that “coyotes with scalpels” have been mutilating the cattle. In the 1970s, Colorado Sen. Floyd Haskell asked for an FBI investigation after the reported mutilations reached 130 across the state. That investigation resulted in a 300-page, $45,000 report that stated the mutilations were the acts of natural predators. Speculation about the mutilations have led to various theories, from space aliens to Satan worshippers, battle-fatigued Vietnam War veterans to “animal cruelty deviants.” Most puzzling in many of the cases is the absence of animal prints, footprints or tire marks around the dead animals...read more

Grape board's ads immune to legal challenge

California can require grape growers to pay fees for statewide ads that promote their product as a healthy alternative to ice cream and French fries, despite some growers' objections to messages that imply all grapes are equal, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the California Table Grape Commission's billboard and radio advertising campaigns that tout fresh California grapes as nutritious snacks. Growers pay $11 million a year to support the work of the Fresno-based commission, which also includes crop research and trade negotiations, officials said. A group of growers led by Delano Farms sued in 1996, saying they objected to paying for the ads. Delano, which then paid the commission $600,000 annually, said the messages hurt its effort to promote its own brand by suggesting that table grapes all have the same quality. The appeals court revived the suit in 2003 and said the growers could try to prove the state violated their constitutional rights by making them subsidize a message they disagreed with. On Friday, however, the court said the suit was doomed by a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the federal government's promotional campaign for the beef industry...read more

By Air? New Routes of Exposure to Hormones

On any given day, some 750,000 U.S feedlots are beefing up between 11 million and 14 million head of cattle. The vast majority of these animals will receive muscle-building steroids — hormones they will eventually excrete into the environment. But traditional notions about where those biologically active pollutants end up may need substantial revising, several new studies find. They were reported at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, which ended Monday. A typical feedlot cow will shed 50 pounds of urine and feces per day. These wastes may be collected in lagoons or composted for later use in fertilizing fields. Throughout the past decade, scientists have become concerned about environmental risks that these wastes might pose if they wash, untreated, into waterways. Evidence has certainly linked waters receiving runoff from feedlots with sex alterations in fish — females that exhibit some masculinization and males that look somewhat feminized. But indicting specific livestock hormones to such changes is proving tricky. And one reason, argues Alan Kolok of the University of Nebraska, in Omaha, is that scientists have made a number of what now appear to be questionable assumptions. Such as that the excreted hormones affecting fish will always be in the water, that downstream concentrations of these steroids will be greater than upstream values and that hormone levels in tiny streams will be more concentrated than in substantially bigger waterways. “They’re all perfectly good a priori assumptions,” Kolok says. But in each case, he reports, “What we’re finding in the field is that they’re just not holding up.”...read more