NM carbon capture, storage bill runs out of time

Long days roaming the halls of the New Mexico Legislature, shaking hands with lawmakers and sitting through hours of committee meetings never deterred Jack Chatfield in his quest to clarify a property right that could someday prove valuable in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The northeastern New Mexico rancher and his legislation simply ran out of time. The bill would have established ownership rights for empty spaces deep underground. Supporters of the measure say the so-called pore space will be valuable as technology advances to capture and store emissions from fossil-fuel power plants and other industries. The bill needed to be considered one last time by the full Senate so it could be sent to the governor. However, it was lost in the frenzied crunch just before adjournment...read more

Portales jury: Watson not guilty in Chunn slaying

A Roosevelt County jury has found farmer William “Billy Joe” Watson not guilty of hiring an Aryan Brotherhood member to murder Causey rancher Jimmie Bo Chunn and not guilty of attempting to manufacture methamphetamine. The verdict came about noon Tuesday. Watson was accused of hiring Rogers native Donald Taylor to kill Chunn in 2005 in exchange for anhydrous ammonia for methamphetamine manufacture and then providing the chemical to undercover agents after Chunn’s death. Last year, Taylor pleaded guilty to shooting Chunn in a deal to avoid the death penalty. Defense attorney Gary Mitchell said he appreciated the fair trial and attentive jury...read more

Cecily, the chicken?

Trail-toughened ranchers seldom spare a nod to chickens, except when eating eggs. We had a few chickens, though we never bragged much about it. Though I realize there are lots of folks who show fowl and are deeply involved, all I'm saying here is that most ranchers, as a group, tend not to shed much admiration in the direction of chickens. And, as creatures go, chickens aren't typically thought of as possessing a deep richness of personality. Now that I've said all that, I have to mention Cecily, a Rhode Island Red hen we had for several years until she disappeared. Born to a squawky hen who insisted on laying her eggs anywhere but the egg boxes (and who finally managed to hatch a clutch of seven chicks which she raised somewhat feral) Cecily roamed and scratched with her chicklings over a wide range, but always came back to the barnyard to get a peck of the fine goat milk that we put out for the other hens, and the three roosters, all named Walter. From the original clutch of seven, all the feral chicks eventually came into the fold except Cecily, who stayed outside, never daring to enter the chicken house. She perched atop a long, skinny fence post, safe from most terrestrial predators, and stayed there even in wicked weather. I once saw her flap off a hawk descending on her for dinner. Cecily laid her eggs in one, predictable location which we habitually harvested, a fact that never caused her to trick us by laying in another feral nest. She always laid in the same place, and we always gathered them, which might explain why Cecily bore an expression of being perpetually scandalized...read more

Song Of The Day #247

Ranch Radio continues with Wills Week. Today we feature Bring It On Down To My House Honey recorded in 1937, followed by one of my favorites Dusty Skies recorded in 1941.

All selections this week are from the Bear Family collection San Antonio Rose.

Let's hope the first song gets the Crayola Cowboy's heart started and the second one gets him settled back down.

Utah monuments

The feds say they aren't sneaking around behind our backs, plotting a land grab of epic proportions. However, the Interior Department is considering two areas in Utah as future national monuments. Since they are already mostly public lands, managed by the federal government, that's hardly a land grab. But setting aside these starkly beautiful areas as national monuments would have a huge impact on Utahns. With the exception of some parcels owned by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, they are not state-owned. But they are used for grazing and are popular recreation sites. Since a department memo listing the two Utah sites as possible monuments surfaced last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Gov. Gary Herbert have talked. Herbert says he is confident Interior won't move ahead without first laying some groundwork with locals. Salazar says he will meet with the governor's Balanced Resources Council, and the governor plans to have conversations with Salazar's top deputy and the head of the Bureau of Land Management, which now oversees the two tracts...read more

Also see:

In the West, ‘Monument’ Is a Fighting Word

Obama to create new national monuments?

Hatch calls White House to complain about monument plan

My original post disclosing this plan is here.

COMMENT: Neither the NY Times, the Salt Lake Tribune, nor Senator Hatch or Governor Herbert mention the other part of this program disclosed in my original post - the acquisition of 26 million acres of private land. The Tribune says the program is "hardly a land grab." Twenty-six million acres transferred to the feds is not a land grab? I wonder if they've even read the document. One also has to ask why Hatch & Herbert, both Republicans, aren't raising this as an issue. At least the public will have some say in that phase of the program - the funds must be appropriated by Congress.

CORRECTION: That should be 2.6 million acres, not 26.

Interior Department faulted for preservation lapses

Inspectors say it is just one too-typical example of how Interior Department agencies care for — or don't — the artifacts in their museums and research. At the Boston National Historic Park, "antique furniture, carts and bicycles were stacked on top of each other or were leaning against each other without protection" in a storage area, a new inspector general report says. At California's Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, pests threatened displays of historic furniture. But "pest management controls were removed from the site due to the large volume of pests being trapped and they were unable to keep up with removing the pests being caught," the report says. "Countless artwork, artifacts and other museum objects are in jeopardy" because proper preservation and protection has been neglected at sites nationwide, according to reports on five separate Interior agencies released by the department's inspector general last week. The new reports follow up a report issued in December that said the department largely doesn't know what is in its collections, often doesn't know if items were obtained legally and didn't appear to care for many items properly...read more

COMMENT: And this is who they demand keep these artifacts, to protect them from the public and the private sector. Looks to me like someone needs to protect them from the oink sector.

Obama Climate Agency Head Tried to Suppress Data

The scientist who has been put in charge of the Commerce Department's new climate change office is coming under attack from both sides of the global warming debate over his handling of what they say is contradictory scientific data related to the subject. Thomas Karl, 58, was appointed to oversee the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, an ambitious new office that will collect climate change data and disseminate it to businesses and communities. But Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist affiliated with the University of Colorado who has crossed horns with Karl in the past, says his appointment was a mistake. He accused Karl of suppressing data he submitted for the IPCC's most recent report on climate change and having a very narrow view of its causes. The IPCC is charged with reviewing scientific data on climate change and providing policy makers and others with an assessment of current knowledge. Pielke said he agrees that global warming is happening and that man plays a significant role in it, but he said there are many factors in addition to the release of carbon into the atmosphere that need to be studied to fully understand the phenomenon. He said he resigned from the IPCC in August 2005 because his data, and the work of numerous other scientists, were not included in its most recent report. In his resignation letter, Pielke wrote that he had completed the assessment of current knowledge for his chapter of the report, when Karl abruptly took control of the final draft. He said the chapter he had nearly completed was then rewritten with a too-narrow focus...read more

Climate Change to Receive More Attention under NEPA

Climate change will receive more attention in the analysis of environmental impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), according to a Draft Guidance issued on Feb. 18 by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Charged with advising federal agencies on the implementation of NEPA, CEQ proposes that the environmental analysis of major projects consider the effect on climate change of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that would be emitted by the proposed project, as well as the potential impact of climate change on the project itself. Although some courts have come to the conclusion that NEPA requires such analysis, this is the first time that CEQ has spoken out on the issue, sparking a debate over the role that climate change should play when the federal government makes major decisions affecting the environment. Because those decisions include a vast array of essential permits and other approvals, the stakes for private developers of major projects are potentially high. CEQ is receiving public comment on the Draft Guidance for 90 days after its publication in the Federal Register, which should occur shortly...read more

BLM proposes wild horse roundups

Federal officials are proposing to round up hundreds of excess wild horses in southwest Wyoming later this year in a continuing effort to reduce the animal's numbers to more manageable levels, according to Bureau of Land Management administrators. The agency plans to use a combination of helicopter roundups and fertility control methods to reduce wild horse numbers in the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek herd management areas. The proposed roundup is part of a larger agency effort to remove thousands of wild horses that now roam public rangelands across the West. In 2003, after wild horse populations in Wyoming soared upwards of 7,000 animals, the state and the BLM signed a "consent decree" dictating that the BLM meet the state's wild horse population objective with roundups. Under the decree, when data is gathered that indicates a herd management area is determined to be over its population objective, the BLM has one year from discovery to remove wild horses to the low range of the management area. Population surveys conducted in July 2009 revealed approximately 1,950 wild horses were within the two herd management areas. The appropriate management range for the Adobe Town unit is 610 to 800 wild horses, according to agency data. The appropriate range for the Salt Wells Creek management area is between 251 and 365...read more

Solar project gets OK for $1.4 billion in US loan guarantees

The Obama administration on Monday gave preliminary approval for $1.4 billion in federal loan guarantees for a sprawling solar-energy project in California's Mojave Desert. The offer from the U.S. Energy Department for Oakland-based BrightSource Energy would support the construction of three solar-energy plants capable of powering 140,000 homes. The project must clear state and federal environmental reviews, and BrightSource must meet other financial requirements before the loan deal can close, the department said. It is the sixth conditional loan guarantee issued by the department for renewable energy development, and the largest so far for solar...read more

Legal action is underway to ban OHV traffic in forest

The center for Sierra Nevada conservation, and center for biological diversity, plaintiffs, are asking the court to order the Eldorado National Forest Service (FS) closed to all OHV use until each route has gone through site specific analysis with public comment to determine its environmental acceptability before designation. It has taken the FS 15 years to get this far without site specific analysis and it took the FS 15 years to complete the Rock Creek EA & EIS. The forest service doesn’t have the funds to undertake site specific analysis. There are provisions in the travel management plan stating that if adequate funds are not available to manage OHV routes they shall be closed. We cannot let the FS be the sole defendants of our interests. Our legal interests in the action are not identical, and on many issues are contrary to the FS defendants’ interests, and we anticipate a need to present different information and legal arguments that might be presented by some or all defendants. We are particularly concerned about the prospect of settlement negotiation and wish to have a role in any possible settlement discussions. In settlement or formal litigation CERA and the OHV community typically presents different issues, arguments, and evidence than that presented by governmental agencies’ legal counsel...read more

Hot debate: Clean air vs. jobs

A coalition of environmental advocacy groups this week petitioned federal agencies to join its efforts in pressuring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require the strictest of pollution control upgrades at Four Corners Power Plant. EPA is in the process of drafting regulations requiring plant operator Arizona Public Service Co. to install equipment that reduces the facility's emissions of regional haze-causing pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. At question is the balance between total upgrade costs and potential air quality. The proposed technological improvements range between a $500 million upgrade capable of removing at least 30 percent of the pollution and a $1.06 billion upgrade that would eliminate as much as 90 percent of the haze-causing materials, according to APS. That, plant officials say, could affect jobs. The company has warned if EPA requires the most expensive improvements, the high costs could force a shutdown of a portion of the Fruitland power plant, laying off more than 300 area plant workers and affecting hundreds of additional coal mining jobs at the neighboring San Juan Mine. A petition to the U.S. National Park Service, Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service requests the federal agencies certify to EPA impairment-of-visibility issues. The concern includes at least 16 neighboring national parks and wilderness areas and is "reasonably attributable to air pollutant emissions for Arizona Public Service Company's coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant," according to documents filed this week in Washington...read more

Song Of The Day #246

Ranch Radio is still in the mood for western swing. In fact we're still cravin' Bob Wills, so we will just make this a Wills Week.

Today we feature two of Will's fiddle tunes: Bob Wills Stomp from 1941 and Lone Star Rag from 1940.

Yesterday I gave you a link to all of his music, but the tunes we will feature this week are from his 12 disk box set San Antonio Rose from Bear Family Records. This collection covers all his studio recordings during his strongest period, 1932 through the 40's.

Rabies in a Raccoon, Fox from Sierra County

For Immediate release:
February 22, 2010

Department of Health Confirms Rabies in a Raccoon, Fox from Sierra County
Owners Urged to Vaccinate Their Pets, Horses

(Santa Fe) – A raccoon and a fox found dead on ranchland in Sierra County have tested positive for rabies. No known human or pet exposures were reported. The New Mexico Department of Health and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish are urging pet and livestock owners in Sierra County and surrounding areas to protect their dogs, cats, horses and other valuable livestock by getting them vaccinated against rabies.

The raccoon was submitted by a private veterinarian, and a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish officer picked up the fox last week. Both animals were found on ranchland about 15 miles southwest of Truth or Consequences and tested positive at the Department of Health’s Scientific Laboratory in Albuquerque. Testing done at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta confirmed that both animals had the Arizona gray fox rabies strain. Fox rabies has been a problem for several decades in Arizona and spread into western New Mexico and was first detected in the Glenwood area in 2007.

“Since first finding fox rabies in Catron County in 2007 there has been steady animal-to-animal movement of the virus into Grant, Hidalgo, and Sierra counties,” said Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian with the health department. “These latest cases demonstrate a significant eastward movement of the fox rabies strain past the Gila and Black Range and closer to human and animal populations in the Rio Grande valley.”

Pet dogs and cats that roam and hunt can come into contact with rabid animals and potentially transmit it to people, it is very important to make sure all dogs and cats are up-to-date on their rabies vaccinations. Several pet dogs have been euthanized because they were not vaccinated against rabies and were bitten by a rabid fox.

If you see a sick or dead wild animal or a wild animal that is acting abnormally in this area, report it to New Mexico Department of Game and Fish at (505) 532-2100. Rabid animals may show no fear of people and may even seem friendly or become aggressive.

Sam Hamilton, USFWS Director, Is Dead at 54

Sam D. Hamilton, who turned a Southern youth’s love of fish and waterfowl into a 30-year career with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, becoming the service’s director last year, died Saturday on a ski trip in Colorado. He was 54. His death was confirmed by the coroner’s office in Frisco, Colo. According to a statement from the coroner, Mr. Hamilton was pronounced dead after being transported off a mountain at the Keystone ski area suffering from chest pains. “The circumstances are consistent with an underlying heart-related medical issue,” the statement said. Mr. Hamilton was nominated in June by President Obama to be the service’s 15th director. He was sworn in three months later, after promising in his confirmation hearings before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that he would deliver a “science-driven, strategic, big-picture approach” to address the “overarching threat posed by climate change” and other issues, including habitat fragmentation, invasive species, limited water supplies and the illicit trade in wildlife...read more

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings. The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century. At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher. Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion. "Retraction is a regular part of the publication process," he said. "Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances." Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007...read more

Climate-Change Fervor Cools Amid Disputed Science, Defections

Three years after former Vice President Gore won a Nobel Prize for sounding the alarm on climate change and GE joined a coalition of companies pushing for a cap on greenhouse gases, public concern is flagging, along with U.S. and global efforts to mount government responses. Polls find more Americans questioning whether human activity is leading to climate change, or whether the trend is so dire as to justify reshaping U.S. energy use during an economic slump, as President Barack Obama has proposed. Record snowfalls in the U.S. also are fueling doubts. “The consensus of anybody who studies American opinion has to be that there’s less concern, rather than more, on global warming,” said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Organization Inc., a Washington-based polling company. The latest blow to those urging action against global warming came last week, when Yvo de Boer said he would step down as United Nations climate chief, two months after 193 countries meeting in Copenhagen failed to reach a binding agreement on curbing greenhouse gases. The resignation may reduce the possibility that a worldwide market aimed at reducing carbon emissions is within reach, said Trevor Sikorski, an emissions analyst for Barclays Capital in London...read more

Obama decisions on wildlife raising environmentalists' ire

During his first year in office, President Barack Obama won praise from environmental groups for a wide range of decisions, from toughening gas mileage rules to spending billions on renewable energy projects. But now there's grumbling on his green flank. A growing number of environmentalists are clashing with the administration over its management of America's struggling wildlife populations and what they call its reluctance to use the nation's most powerful environmental law, the Endangered Species Act, to stand up to industry. Last week, five conservation groups, led by the Sierra Club, sued the federal government after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refused to draw up critical habitat maps for the Florida panther. Florida's state animal, the iconic panther once widely roamed the South, but today numbers 100 or fewer. Protecting its habitat would limit development in parts of South Florida, an explosive political issue. Two weeks earlier, the administration sparked controversy when it announced it would not add the American pika to the endangered species list. In its first year, Obama's administration added only two new species to the endangered list, the fewest in any president's first year since Ronald Reagan in 1981...read more

Rangelands could go off the sick list

Western history is replete with bloody chapters about the battle for control of vast stretches of rangelands. The legacy from countless land disputes with murky resolutions is polluted streams, noxious weeds, grasslands depleted from overgrazing and record wildfires. But in a rare display of cooperation, several government agencies and ranchers in northern Utah are working together to prove that the landscape can be healed and those ills combatted on a grand scale. A project has been proposed to improve 136,000 acres of rangeland in Rich County that's nearly twice the area of Salt Lake City. Livestock are an integral part of the plan, which would combine a patchwork of Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and state grazing areas into a single management unit. The number of cattle and sheep on public lands would remain the same. But under so-called, time-controlled grazing, livestock would be rotated across the range throughout the season. Only 20 percent of the land would be open for grazing at any given time, and herds would be frequently moved so that plants would be bitten once, rather than multiple times. Pastures also would be opened at different times each season, allowing a diversity of plant life to reseed. "No one agency, industry or individual is to blame for poor rangelands," said Bill Hopkin, who is director of the state's Grazing Improvement Program and is also spearheading the project. "It's going to take a cooperative effort to improve the landscape."...read more

EPA plans to spend $2.2B to protect Great Lakes

The federal government plans to spend $2.2 billion to clean up pollution in the Great Lakes and halt the spread of invasive species over the next five years. That plan, announced Sunday, marks a "significant investment" in fighting some of the biggest environmental threats to the nation's largest freshwater lakes, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said. The EPA will use the money to prevent beach pollution, clean up toxic hot spots, and fight Asian carp and other invasive species. That effort "will leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation than the condition in which we inherited them," Jackson said. Among the EPA's priorities is cleaning up long-polluted sections of the lakes. In the 1980s, the U.S. and Canadian governments identified 31 toxic hot spots on the U.S. side; since then, only one has been fully cleaned up. The EPA now plans to finish work at four others by 2014, though spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency hasn't figured out which. The plan also takes a "zero tolerance" approach to invasive species such as Asian carp, which could crowd out native fish and imperil the Great Lakes fishing industry if they reach Lake Michigan...read more