Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action. ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’ Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation...read more

A U.S. ClimateGate?

Climate researchers and the Weather Channel's founder accuse NASA of the same data manipulation as Britain's Climate Research Unit. Were weather stations cherry-picked to hide the temperature drop? We recently commented on how our space agency for two years refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has had to repeatedly correct its climate figures. In a report on global warming on KUSI television by Weather Channel founder and iconic TV weatherman John Coleman, that reticence has been traced to the deliberate manipulation and distortion of climate data by NASA. As Coleman noted in a KUSI press release, NASA's two primary climate centers, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York City, are accused of "creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based."...read more

UN climate panel to review claim on natural disaster

Controversy-ridden UN climate panel has said it is reassessing another of its claim for linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters, bringing fresh embarrassment to it. The latest criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) comes after the panel admitted its mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The report also included another claim that rapidly rising costs from events such as floods and hurricanes were linked to climate change. “We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific,” The Sunday Times quoted professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the IPCC as saying. The newspaper claims that report, which won the panel a noble peace prize, was based on an unpublished paper that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny. When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it said: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.” Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month, the paper said. Two scientific who checked drafts of the report had urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts, but were ignored...read more

Idaho grazing debate sparks ESA rancor

The endangered species debate in Idaho has long been complicated by another longstanding issue — public-lands grazing. Environmentalists have never been wild about the way some ranchers treat the public lands they grazed on. But over the past two decades in Idaho, spurred especially by the rise of environmental watchdog Western Watersheds Project, the disagreements between the two have taken on new heat. Grazing opponents and advocates have made it clear how they view each other. “It comes from a lot of things,” said Katie Fite, WWP’s biodiversity director, speaking recently about her view that ranchers feel entitled to public resources. “It comes from who are really the sixth-generation ranchers: displaced Confederate soldiers, hating the federal government from day one.” “How can our outfit be the bad guy all the time, and these others never are?” rancher Ted Hoffman bemoaned during a recent interview. It’s hard to find common ground by this point. Steve Damele argues that his ranch and the public land he grazes near Mountain Home winters 600 elk and thousands of deer. He’s working with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation on some habitat improvements, currently focused on what grasses thrive in a test plot. It all could become subdivisions if he and other ranchers are kicked off, he said...read more

Endangered species clashes: far from extinct

Listing an endangered species is a serious business. Steve Damele was one Idahoan who did his best to protect a troubled Western plant. One of several private landowners with slickspot peppergrass, he followed other ranchers and joined a state-led effort to preserve the plant on his Mountain Home land by altering a number of his rangeland practices. Then last October, after a decade of scientific studies and lawsuits, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would list slickspot peppergrass as threatened. And Damele, along with the others, now asks why he should bother to help any species when it won’t make a difference. “It’s safe to say everything gets listed eventually,” said Damele’s fellow rancher Ted Hoffman. The Endangered Species Act isn’t that simple. But locals and state officials who have dealt with it daily argue that the peppergrass decision is the latest sign that something is wrong...read more

Endangered Species Act 101

A key to some terms related to the Endangered Species Act: Candidate species: Any species formally considered for listing as endangered or threatened. Conservation: The use of every method necessary to recover endangered and threatened species. Consultation: The requirement for biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or NOAA Fisheries to review any federal project with a potential impact on listed species. Critical habitat: Specific areas designated by the government as essential for a species’ recovery. Endangered species: Any species — other than insects considered as pests — in danger of going extinct in all or a significant part of its range. Endangered Species Act: First passed in 1973, it governs the U.S. approach to identifying and aiding animals and plants at risk of going extinct. Endangered species list: The list of all species deemed threatened and endangered in the U.S. and abroad by the U.S. government. “God Squad”: A nickname for the Endangered Species Committee, a Cabinet-level group with the power to allow federal projects to move forward despite any harm to listed species...read more

Next move in jaguar capture case now up to US Attorney's Office

Federal investigators are weighing whether the evidence gathered in the case of jaguar Macho B merits prosecution of anyone involved in its capture last year, an official said Friday. The criminal investigation is now under "prosecutorial review" by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tucson, said Nicholas Chavez, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's law enforcement chief for the Southwest. "It's an ongoing investigation with coordination and consultation going on between the service and the U.S. Attorney's Office," said Chavez, who declined to comment on specifics. The U.S. Attorney's Office will not comment on the case because of the ongoing criminal investigation, said Sandra Raynor, a spokeswoman for the office in Tucson...read more

Jaguars Don’t Live Here Anymore

EARLIER this month, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would designate “critical habitat” for the endangered jaguar in the United States and take the first steps toward mandating a jaguar recovery plan. This is a policy reversal and, on the surface, it may appear to be a victory for the conservation community and for jaguars, the largest wild cats in the Western Hemisphere. But as someone who has studied jaguars for nearly three decades, I can tell you it is nothing less than a slap in the face to good science. What’s more, by changing the rules for animal preservation, it stands to weaken the Endangered Species Act. The 1997 decision not to determine critical habitat for the jaguar was the right one, because even though they cross the border from time to time, jaguars don’t occupy any territory in our country — and that probably means the environment here is no longer ideal for them. Despite the continued evidence, the two conservation advocacy groups continued to sue the government. Apparently, they want jaguars to repopulate the United States even if jaguars don’t want to. Last March, a federal district judge in Arizona ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit its 2006 determination on critical habitat. The facts haven’t changed: there is still no area in the United States essential to the conservation of the jaguar. But, having asserted this twice already, the service, now under a new president, has bent to the tiresome litigation. On Jan. 12, Fish and Wildlife officials claimed to have evaluated new scientific information that had become available after the July 2006 ruling. Lo and behold, they determined that it is now prudent to designate critical habitat for the jaguar in the United States...read more

Ranchers look to roll back state land grazing rule

The Idaho Cattle Association is working on a constitutional amendment designed to nullify a proposed rule that gives sportsmen and conservation groups the chance to compete for grazing leases on state land. The cattleman's group hopes to introduce the amendment in the Legislature this year. It targets rules adopted by the Idaho Land Board last year that await approval by the 2010 Legislature. The land board, seeking to end years of legal wrangling over state policy for managing leases on about 1.8 million acres of endowment lands, drafted a rule that clears the way for conservation groups, sportsmen and others to bid on leases. For decades, those leases have been the exclusive domain of cattle and sheep ranchers. If approved by lawmakers, livestock producers contend the rule would harm the industry and a way of life. They also say the rule would enable groups more interested in forcing a wider debate on all public lands grazing to target leases critical to specific allotments that also include federal land...read more

Tracking the trail of attorney fees

Wyoming attorney Karen Budd-Falen has worked in recent months with the Western Legacy Alliance, a group formed in Idaho to promote ranching, mining and other “traditional” public-lands interests. The alliance tracks money the federal government pays to cover attorney fees for groups such as Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians and the Sierra Club. The groups are high-profile targets — the net worth of many measured in millions of dollars. Budd-Falen argues the money is a large part of what allows such groups to tie environmental issues up in the courts and maintain the cycle of court filings. Plaintiffs must be considered to have “prevailed” over the government to collect EAJA fees. Individuals must have a net worth of no more than $2 million; the limit rises to $4 million for organizations. But nonprofits such as many environmental groups have no limit. A $125-per-hour cap on legal fees can also be waived in special cases — and often when environmental lawyers get involved, Budd-Falen alleged. In December, Budd-Falen said she’d tracked $34.3 million in payments from 13 environmental groups in 18 states. The fees were requested in nearly half of 1,159 cases; in 47 of those, the amount paid by the government was not publicly revealed...read more

Prairie burns may violate proposed new air pollution limits

Each spring, huge swaths of the Flint Hills are burned to help preserve the prairie and provide richer fodder for cattle. With the flames come smoke and airborne particulates. A widespread burn last spring bumped Wichita's air pollution levels to the worst in the nation, driving Sedgwick County's ozone levels 25 to 30 percent over federal air pollution limits. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering stricter ozone limits, urban areas including Wichita and Kansas City worry that the annual grassland burns could push them out of compliance. On Friday, the state Senate Natural Resources Committee started hearings focused on the proposed EPA regulations and burning in the tallgrass prairie...read more

Ranchers want bison kept away from herds

Some ranchers are opposed to a proposal to move 14 wild Yellowstone bison to a state park in southeast Wyoming, despite assurances from state officials that the animals are free of an animal disease that can cause abortions among cattle. Wyoming suggested Guernsey State Park as a possible home as Montana seeks to move them out of a Gardiner, Mont., quarantine facility and avoid their slaughter. Montana is also considering sending another 74 bison to billionaire Ted Turner's ranch in that state. Eastern Wyoming's ranching community is skeptical about introducing the animals in an area that's free of brucellosis. Fears over the disease helped sink an earlier attempt to move the quarantined animals to Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reservation. "People that I've talked to, they'd like to keep brucellosis, any chance of having brucellosis, out of the herds in this part of the country," said Charlie Stevenson, a Wheatland rancher and board member for the Independent Cattlemen of Wyoming. State and federal officials say the bison have been tested extensively for brucellosis and see no risk in releasing the animals elsewhere...read more

Tamarisk-loving camels enlisted to battle an invasive species

Tamarisk is one hard-to-kill invasive plant. Since it was first introduced from Eurasia to the United States in the 1800's, it has spread through the West like wildfire. Actually, faster than wildfire. Efforts to eradicate it by burning it, cutting it, or dowsing it in herbicides have all failed. But tamarisk does have at least one formidable foe which some officials are now proposing could be a solution: hungry camels. Usually known for their stubborn personalities, humpy postures and ability to survive for weeks without water, camels and dromedaries also have a keen appetite for salty bush-- and tamarisk is as salty as they come. That's why local ranchers in Colorado have begun enlisting the inglorious beasts to eat their way to eradicating this invasive species once and for all, according to High Country News. "They will eat all day if given the opportunity," says Maggie Repp, a camel rancher in Loma, Colorado. "My camels have killed every tamarisk on our place, so why not give it a whirl?" A drooling dromedary may not have been who you first imagined as your next landscaper, but they do a darn good job. Repp reckons that 10 camels could destroy half an acre of tamarisk in just 2 days. That's not necessarily a solution for clearing the pesky shrub from the whole expanse of the Great Plains, but it's the perfect remedy for removing the odd tamarisk patch off your pasture...read more

Humane Society Buys Stock in Two Chains

In an effort to encourage Jack in the Box and Steak 'n Shake to implement animal welfare changes many of their competitors have made, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) announced that it purchased stock in both restaurant chains. The HSUS intends to use its stockholder position to move the companies away from egg suppliers that confine hens in cages and pork suppliers that breed pigs in crates. The HSUS will also encourage Jack in the Box and Steak 'n Shake to influence their poultry suppliers to switch from their current slaughter system to controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK), which has been shown to greatly improve animal welfare. Matthew Prescott, corporate outreach director for the HSUS's factory farming campaign, says that Jack in the Box's and Steak 'n Shake's lack of movement on animal welfare puts them in a bad position against competitors and public opinion...read more

National Western Stock Show: Denver still international hub for cattlemen

Over the past 104 years, bigger livestock expositions have faded into history, but the National Western Stock Show in Denver is still going strong, pulling in more than 600,000 visitors every year from around the world. Unique from other shows, Denver invites visitors to “the yards,” where “carloads” of bulls and heifers are on display during the 16-day run. It’s a nod to the past, although the cattle no longer arrive in railcars and often return home to sell through on-farm production sales. On the last full weekend of this year’s show, some breeders had already packed up and moved out, while a section of pens normally used to promote breed associations and herd sires was in the process of being converted into an arena for stock dog trials. Still, streams of visitors continued to flow into the yards drawn by mild weather. Hereford breeder Walter Douthit of St. Francis, Kan., was still hoping to make a sale or two before the show’s conclusion. “This has always been a tough market, but this year it’s even tougher,” he said. He noted that some of his potential Mexican customers had been impacted by the growing violence and instability in that country, saying that getting animals across the border is becoming more difficult. Raul Tellez, a marketing specialist with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, brought several Mexican ranchers to the show. He has suspended his routine trade trips to Mexico due to the violence there, but said it hasn’t dampened the interest of ranchers to come to Denver and see the cattle. “They don’t want to spend their time at the show, they want to spend their time in the yards,” he said. “If a Mexican rancher wants to look and buy, he’s going to buy.”...read more

Cowboy meets his Alberta crush just days before dying

Champion barrel racer Lindsay Sears was having a terrible year when a call came with an unusual request: Would she consider phoning a young bull rider battling cancer? Sears didn’t know Cody Stephens. He’d seen her race on the rodeo circuit and admired her when she nabbed the world championship in 2008. From afar, the cowboy from small-town Kansas developed a big crush on the cowgirl raised south of Calgary in Nanton, Alta. Stephens had hoped one day to meet Sears, maybe even marry the lean blond beauty, but time was running out. Last spring he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The National Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas loomed. She’d have to defend her title. But she hadn’t ridden Martha in months. She decided to quit pro rodeo. Then came the call from Stephens’ friend Ann Brumback. It set in motion a series of encounters that would profoundly change Sears’ outlook on life, and bring some comfort to Stephens...read more

Cowgirl Round-Up At Cowboy Library

In an 1851 Indiana newspaper editorial, John B.L. Soule famously advised: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Apparently, young women were either better off back East, or didn't need to grow up. In any case, a lot of young women did go West, and many of them found the freedom of the frontier allowed them to escape their traditional Victorian roles as wives and mothers. Oklahoma's The Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has organized an exhibit that highlights the women who took advantage of Manifest Destiny to forge a freer future for themselves. The exhibit, Not Just A Housewife: The Changing Roles Of Women In The West, highlights 13 women whose boots were made for walking miles away from home and hearth. Some of their names are well known, such as Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley. But others are unsung heroines of the Wild West. Their stories may be unfamiliar, but their refusal to be fenced in by stereotypes made them true female mavericks. The life and career of one of these women, rodeo star Fox Hastings, proves that the "weaker sex" was often anything but. Eloise Fox (1898? -1948) caught frontier fever early. She ran away from a convent school at age 16 with her steer-wrestling beau, Mike Hastings, and joined him on the rodeo circuit. When they married, she shed her feminine first name for the more marquee-friendly moniker "Fox Hastings." The newly-minted Mrs. Hastings didn't let marriage slow her down. She became a rodeo star herself as a trick rider and bucking bronco buster, known for a daring ability to perform on the fastest horses in the Irwin Brothers' Wild West Show...read more

Song Of The Day #225

Ranch Radio will move into the 60's this Monday a.m. with Carl Smith performing How I Love Those Old Songs. That's what Ranch Radio is all about.

It's available on his 24 track The Sixties Hits Of Carl Smith.

Critical Habitat Is Now Prudent for Jaguars?

By Judy Keeler and Sue Krentz

The recent ruling from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declaring critical habitat for jaguars in the U.S. is now prudent reverses every “finding” the Service has issued up until this time. In our opinion, it is one of the most ignorant, egregious and politically motivated decisions they’ve ever made.

We’ve served on the Jaguar Conservation Team since its inception in March of 1997. Through those years the Team has gathered the historical sightings records of jaguars in Arizona and New Mexico, consulted with wildlife biologists that are experts in jaguar behavior and habitat suitability, developed a jaguar conservation strategy based on this information, and an educational plan that promotes critical thinking skills in students.

The Service would benefit by using some of these critical thinking skills. In our opinion, their “finding” is not supported by the best available science, but based upon their fear of the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuits, pseudo-science and for political expediency.

Although the Service claims to have reached their decision using the best available science, it’s obvious, to us, they didn’t.

If they intend to use the best available science to prepare their proposed rulemaking for jaguars they would not include some of the literature cited in their federal register notice as the “best available science”; i.e., Robinson 2006 and Sierra Institute 2000.

These reports were not taken seriously by most of the members of the Jaguar Conservation Team. In fact, the Sierra Institute’s report and recommendations to develop a captive breeding program and reintroduction plan for jaguars were challenged by the Jaguar Scientific Advisory Group. Yet, these reports are included in the Service’s notice.

The federal register notice also states that the Service will continue to subject “proposed” critical habitat in the U.S. to conservation actions under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, even though there is no science to support their assumption that jaguars currently occupy any area in the borderlands. What has been proven is there are corridors the recently sighted jaguars have used to enter the U.S. from Mexico.

These “corridors” should not be confused with historical jaguar reports and land-use suitability characteristics. Anyone that has lived in the borderland areas for any length of time is only too aware of drying trends over the last 500 years. It is well documented that jaguars are the only cats in the world that enjoy water. Where are they going to find it in the Borderlands?

The wildlife biologists that served on the jaguar advisory group believed "for at least the last century the jaguar has been a regular, albeit infrequent, visitor to a small area of the borderlands region.” They also surmised that "if there had been a resident breeding population of jaguars in the U.S. in the recent past, it was probably a very small population, short-lived, and not viable.”

So where’s this science in the federal register notice?

The Jaguar Conservation Team always tended to agree that Mexico and the countries in Central and South America were sovereign and we had no right to impose our jaguar conservation strategies on them. Not the Service. They will be using their “authority” to work with other agencies to conserve and recover jaguars in these nations.

Mexico will probably hate our arrogance but love the money we’ll be sending them to “conserve” jaguars in their country.

It saddens us that our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has sold out their integrity to comply with a federal judge’s order and the threat of more lawsuits when the Center doesn’t get its way.

Mark our words; this decision is just another step towards more lawsuits. If the Service does not comply with the Center’s every request, they will sue again, and again and again.

In an effort to be transparent, let’s lay all our cards on the table. The agenda behind the lawsuits, protests and media coverage is a plan called the Wildlands Project, or Wildlands Network as it is now named. These lawsuits are not meant to protect jaguars, wolves, polar bears, bats or any other “endangered” species. The animals are just the surrogates to implement the “plan”.

The Endangered Species Act is their tool and the citizen’s lawsuit provision is the means by which these radical organizations continue to hammer the economies of the small, rural communities that must live under their “Rewilding” scheme.


Sue Krentz and her husband Rob ranch in the Chiricahua Mountains of Southeast Arizona. The family has ranched in Arizona for over 100 years.

Judy Keeler and her husband Murray ranch in the Peloncillo Mountains in Southwest New Mexico. The family has ranched in New Mexico for over 100 years.

Both ladies are dedicated members of the Jaguar Conservation Team.

For additional information call:
Judy Keeler: 575-548-2520

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

A little cow psychology

by Julie Carter

It's still winter and so far, not much sign of that letting up. While we turn up the thermostat to knock the chill off the house, or burn up another cord of wood doing the same, it is also a time of new life making its way into the world.

Calving and foaling are annual payday events, as is lambing, kidding and other birthings for those in the livestock industry.

For every new baby that hits the ground, the stories are the same - smooth going with a happy ending or a bad deal with some sort of heartbreak involved (financial or emotional).

Count on it. The best brood mare on the place, proven to consistently throw moneymaking colts, will be the one that absolutely will not, under any circumstances, drop her colt on the ground if she's in a barn, foaling stall or anywhere except outside in the elements.

She's the one that will keep a cowboy up at night checking on her, tripping through the ice and snow, flashlight in hand, making sure nothing has gone wrong. The science of knowing "when" the blessed event is going to happen narrows the watch down to weeks, but even with a lifetime of experience and noting the sign of the moon, it is a prediction at best.

It is the same way with those aggravating heifers having their first calves. Not only will they surprise you when they have that baby, but they are just as likely to get up and walk away from it if circumstances don't let their instincts give full focus to what just happened to them.

That wet, mewling thing on the ground next to them isn't necessarily something they understand.

It is those nuances to the calving/foaling business that keep it interesting and continue the requirement of the all- night watch.

It was a late winter afternoon when the cowboy made his last check of the first-calf heifer herd in the pasture. The black cattle were bedding down and blending into the darkness falling over the landscape.

His count came up one short. He drove, walked, looked and as darkness got ahead of him, he still hadn't been able to spot her. Not overly concerned since black cattle and darkness make for a difficult visual, he went back to the barns and finished up his chores.

About 8 o'clock, he returned to the pasture, thinking that now the cattle would all be bedded down in a bunch and he could get a better count.

When he pulled into the pasture, the cattle were nowhere to be seen in their usual bedding grounds. He drove to all the spots he would normally find them and found nothing.

Finally, he located them. They were bunched up on the back side of the pasture, up against the fence and all looking the same direction with some snorting and wary breathing rustling the night air.

When the cowboy followed the cattle's gaze, he saw a little glow-in-the-dark all-white baby calf lying off in the grass. His first chuckle was in recognition that obviously somebody's Charolais bull had come visiting at one time or another and the second was at the reaction of the heifers to this "thing" in their pasture.

He was quickly over the humor of it and into the aggravation when not one of them acted like they might be the mama to the new baby. Too dark to investigate, he loaded the baby up, took him to the house and rustled up a bottle and some milk to get him through the night.

The next day he rode out horseback and quickly located the heifer with the tight bag and haughty attitude.

Some nylon rope therapy made her think she wanted to load into the trailer where the white baby calf awaited.

She proceeded to try to kick the tarnation out of the calf every time he tried to partake of a little milk, which earned her some more nylon adornment, this time in the form of hobbling her legs to either side of the trailer.

Once immobilized, the calf filled his belly and she regained her motherly composure, deciding maybe that little white critter wasn't so bad after all.

A happy ending to an all too common tale of calving-time cow psychology.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net.