6-pound foal born in NH may be world's tiniest

A diminutive horse born in New Hampshire could lay claim to the world record for lightweight foal. The pinto stallion named Einstein weighed just 6 pounds and measured 14 inches tall when he was born Friday in Barnstead, N.H. Those proportions fit a human baby just about right but are downright tiny for horse, even a miniature breed like Einstein. Dr. Rachel Wagner, Einstein's co-owner, says the Guinness Book of Records lists the smallest newborn horse as weighing in at 9 pounds. Breeders say that unlike the current record holder, Thumbelina, Einstein shows no signs of dwarfism. He's just a tiny horse. AP

Song Of The Day #296

Ranch Radio continues with answer songs this morning. Today's selections are Geisha Girl by Hank Locklin (1957) and Lost To A Geisha Girl by Skeeter Davis (1958).

National Blueprint on Wildfire Management

On Wednesday April 21 at the Wildland Fire Leadership Council in Washington, DC, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar jointly announced a blueprint for the first comprehensive national strategy for wildfire management. The council was attended by numerous state governors, as well as local and tribal government representatives. The FLAME Act of 2009 requires the Forest Service and Department of Interior to submit to Congress a report that contains a cohesive wildfire management strategy consistent with recommendations in recent General Accountability Office (GAO) reports regarding management strategies. Following its formal approval by the Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Interior by October 2010, the Cohesive Wildfire Management Strategy is to be revised at least once during each five year period to address any changes with respect to landscape, vegetation, climate, and weather conditions...more

According to the blueprint, the report will emanate from a "Cohesive Strategy Oversight Committee" made up of rep's from "National Association of State Foresters, International Association of Fire Chiefs, Western Governors’ Association, National Association of Counties, Intertribal Timber Council, non-governmental organizations, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management." This then goes to the "Wildland Fire Leadership Council" who...well hell here is their schematic:


















I'm sure it will be a short, jargon-free report which will save The West. FYI, "cohesive" may soon be joining "collaborate" on my b.s. list.

Similar committees should be forming soon to manage your health care.

Livestock waste found to foul Sierra waters

As director of the emergency room at the UC Davis Medical Center, Robert Derlet always wondered what made people sick. Each summer, on hiking trips into the high Sierra, he brought that curiosity along, asking himself: Where do you get infections in the wilderness? The most obvious possibility, he believed, was the water. Now, after 10 years of fieldwork and 4,500 miles of backpacking, Derlet knows for sure. What he has learned – after analyzing hundreds of samples dipped from backcountry lakes and streams – is that parts of the high Sierra are not nearly as pristine as they look. Nowhere is the water dirtier, he discovered, than on U.S. Forest Service land, including wilderness areas, where beef cattle and commercial pack stock – horses and mules – graze during the summer months. There, bacterial contamination was easily high enough to sicken hikers with Giardia, E. coli and other diseases. In places, slimy, pea-green algae also blossomed in the bacteria-laden water. Overall, the worst water quality he found was on the Stanislaus and Humboldt-Toiyabe national forests, north of Yosemite National Park. Elsewhere, particularly at high elevations in Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, Derlet found a striking difference: Most lakes and streams were clear as champagne and pollution-free. That contrast has prompted Derlet and Charles Goldman, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Research Center, to mount a publicity campaign calling for dramatic management change in the Sierra. Cattle, they say, should be moved to lower elevations. And Forest Service areas where they now graze should be turned into national parks. "At one time, cattle were important for developing civilization here," said Derlet. "But now, with 40 million people in California, the Sierra is not for cattle. It's for water. We need water more than Big Macs."...more

I'm sure Derlet is an objective collector and analyzer of data, especially since he calls cattle "weapons of mass destruction" and considers himself to be like Gandhi.

Still though, curiosity leads me to ask Derlet the following: Of the 178 million annual recreational visitors to Forest Service lands, what percentage wind up in emergency rooms from their exposure to the water?

Idaho sheep station won't graze grizzly area

The U.S. Sheep Experiment Station north of Dubois in eastern Idaho won't turn out sheep in one of its grazing plots because of concerns over grizzly bear habitat. Sandy Miller Hays is a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the sheep station. Hays said the East Summer plot wouldn't have a direct effect on grizzly habitat, but to reach it sheep would have to cross U.S. Forest Service land designated as a sensitive habitat area for grizzlies. "Our allotment has not been shut down," Hays told the Post Register. "We just can't get there."...more

I'm immediately reminded of the old joke with the punch line "you just can't get there from here."

Anyway, somebody up there in Idaho should tell Hays if you "can't get there", then yes, you have been shut down.

After reading many times about grizzlies killing livestock I'm surprised there is no grazing in grizzly bear habitat. And to not even be able to cross habitat when it doesn't have "a direct effect"? I'm thinking that during the cold winters in Idaho those U.S.D.A researchers lost all their gonads. Please take the name Dubois off that place. Besides they don't even spell it right.

Come to think of it, there is a scientific explanation for what is happening. Those researchers were around so much of that water polluted by livestock ("weapons of mass destruction"), that their gonads shrunk up and sloughed off before they could get to Derlet at the UC Davis Medical Center!

ESA lawsuit against Forest Service in Ariz. & NM

Today the Center for Biological Diversity formally notified the U.S. Forest Service that it will sue the agency for failing to protect endangered species in Arizona and New Mexico national forests, where it continues to approve projects that destroy endangered species habitat without carrying out legally required monitoring of the species and their habitat. The lawsuit will involve at least nine threatened and endangered species, including the Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake, Chiricahua leopard frog, Apache trout, Chihuahua chub, loach minnow, spikedace, and ocelot. “The Forest Service’s refusal to honor its responsibility to monitor and protect endangered species is not only illegal but potentially devastating to wildlife,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. On June 10, 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with enforcing the Endangered Species Act, issued a formal “biological opinion” on the impacts of implementation of forest plans for Arizona and New Mexico’s 11 national forests on threatened and endangered species. The document requires the Forest Service to monitor populations and habitats for the species that occur on the forests. In October 2008 the Forest Service issued a report admitting that it had not done the monitoring. It also conceded that it might have exceeded the amount of harm, or “incidental take,” allowed by the biological opinion. On April 17, 2009, it requested that the Fish and Wildlife Service redo the opinion...more

Forestry trend is putting Oregonians out of work

Another logger is out of work today. Actually, it is Jamie the loader operator, Rex the hook tender, Don the chaser, Jerry the truck driver and a half dozen other men, all with names and families. Last week they were taxpaying citizens; this week they will begin collecting unemployment checks and food stamps. To the greenies, this is good news. Fewer trees will be harvested, and that's what the zealots have wanted all these long decades. They have protested and litigated forest plans and timber sales for every real, theoretical and whimsical reason they could conjure up. Please don't ever complain about the price of toilet paper, lumber or new houses in the future. More sympathetic readers may sadly wag their heads and talk about how those loggers should have seen it coming. The company should have bought new equipment to embrace forest health and bio-energy. Nice theory, except the new equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars with no guarantee there will be any work for it. Banks won't loan money to distressed homeowners, let alone to loggers who are viewed with disdain. After 27 years of impeccable credit and financial solvency, the bank suddenly canceled the credit line and bank accounts of this logging company because it was deemed a "bad risk." How's that for stimulation?...more

Hidden Gems Wilderness Unsafe

With the growing threat of catastrophic wildfires, due to the mountain pine beetle infestation, it is unconscionable for the Hidden Gems (HG) Campaign to be proposing wilderness designation for so much of Eagle and Summit counties. The HG Campaign itself acknowledges “extensive impact from the mountain pine beetle in recent years.” Especially “…Summit County, where many communities and neighborhoods lie near or in the forest and near the wilderness proposal areas.” The Wilderness Act of 1964 and documents supporting the proposed Hidden Gems all have a clear intent of “fire control,” but no fire prevention. A wilderness designation would impact the Forest Service and our local fire district's ability to prevent wildfires through programs like fuel mitigation and forest treatments. We have seen valiant efforts by our government officials to reduce wildfire risks; including Governor Ritter's “Colorado Healthy Forests and Vibrant Communities Act” and the USDA announcement in Dec. 2009; “U.S. Forest Service will commit an additional $40 million to address public safety concerns and forest health needs arising from the millions of acres of dead and dying trees from bark beetle infestation in the West.” Our own Senator Gibbs and State Rep. Scanlan just testified in Washington in support of a bill which “would enable the Forest Service to better protect communities and watersheds from catastrophic wildfire in anticipation of the upcoming fire season.” Hidden Gems is directly contrary to these efforts and jeopardizes the safety of our communities...more

Scientist: Money to fight beetles as fire mitigation not productive

Insect infestations are not the major cause of forest fires in Colorado, and allocating federal assistance to combat the critters would be unproductive, one scientist has told a U.S. Senate subcommittee. “The best available science indicates that outbreaks of mountain pine beetle and spruce beetle do not increase the risk of fire in most types of forests," said Dominik Kulakowski, testifying Wednesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. Udall's bill, in part, seeks to provide increased federal assistance to 12 “affected" Western states, including Colorado, which have large numbers of forest lands containing disease-ridden trees caused by beetle outbreaks and other insect infestations. Kulakowski, a former research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and current professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, discounted this notion during his testimony. He said climate, not insects, plays the most important role in forest fires, as wildfires are more likely to occur during droughts. Scientific evidence indicates that fires do not burn more quickly or more severely in dead, disease-ridden forests than in dense, live forests under current climate conditions, Kulakowski said...more

Horse meat in Wyo?

A plan to give the Wyoming Livestock Board an alternative to selling abandoned horses is getting stiff opposition from animal rights advocates. And it is coming even before the new law goes into effect July 1. The plan by members of the United Organization of the Horse is to set up something like a triage operation at the old railroad stockyards in Cheyenne for abandoned or unwanted horses. The horses would be screened and provided rehabilitation, training or slaughter, depending on their condition. The plan is ultimately to market horse meat in the state. Rep. Sue Wallis, R-Gillette, was the prime sponsor of House Bill 122, which was signed into law by Gov. Dave Freudenthal. "The animal rights people have put this on their agenda," Wallis said last week in a telephone interview. She said members of the United Organization of the Horse met April 2 and developed a plan for a "unified equine system." If people have horses they cannot sell or keep, they can donate the horses to the nonprofit United Organization of the Horse and get receipts for tax deductions for the value of the horses, Wallis explained. Brand inspectors and law enforcement officers who find starving horses can turn them over to the organization if they can provide clear titles, she added. If the horses are in reasonably good condition, they would go into a rejuvenation program with special food and care. If they have any potential and are in good shape, they can go into a rescue and training program. Horses unsuitable for slaughter, such as horses with foals, will be held. Horses that are old and past a productive life or are dangerous and untrainable will be slaughtered, but in a humane way, Wallis said...more

Song Of The Day #295

Ranch Radio will bring you some "answer songs" this week. We'll start with two classics by Hank Thompson & Kitty Wells: The Wild Side Of Life & It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.

I remember reading somewhere that this same melody went to #1 on the charts 4 times. The two offered here, The Great Speckled Bird by Roy Acuff and for the life of me I can't remember the fourth this morning. If you know, please email me.

The myth of the harmless wolf

On March 9, 2010, Candice Berner, a 32 year-old special education teacher working in Chignik Lake, Alaska, went jogging at dusk on a road near town and was attacked and killed by wolves. On October 28, 2009, Canadian folk singer Taylor Mitchell was hiking in a Provincial Park in Nova Scotia when she was attacked and killed by two coyotes, which were subsequently identified by park rangers as a wolf-coyote hybrid. In November of 2005, college student Kenton Carnegie was hiking on a road near Points North Landing in northern Saskatchewan when he was attacked and killed by wolves. There was some dispute over whether Carnegie was killed by wolves or a bear, but a provincial inquest found that wolves were responsible. The attacking wolves in these three incidents were not rabid. Some light on wolf-human encounters was shed in 2002 when Alaskan wildlife biologist Mark McNay published a report of a two-year study documenting 80 aggressive encounters between wolves and people in North America in the 20th century. In only 12 of the attacks were the wolves rabid. Since McNay's report came out there have been three fatal attacks by healthy wolves, and an unknown number of non-fatal aggressive encounters and attacks on people and their pets in the U.S. and Canada. So what's up? "In Wolves In Russia," Will Graves reports on a long history of wolf attacks on people in Eurasia, especially Russia, Pakistan, India and Kazakhastan, including thousands of fatal ones. Have Siberian wolves sneaked across the Bering Sea ice in winter and turned our harmless wolves into bad guys? People were killed by wolves in North America before the 20th century. The appearance of people with firearms led to the demise of wolves in the Lower 48 as there was concentrated effort to eradicate Canis lupus. More than two million wolves were killed in the process. Not nearly as many people in Eurasia are armed...more

Senators postpone climate bill unveiling

Monday's unveiling of a compromise Senate climate bill was postponed on Saturday, Democratic Senator John Kerry said, after a dispute arose over unrelated immigration reform legislation. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said earlier on Saturday he would have to pull out of the bipartisan climate change effort because of concerns Democrats would push forward with a debate on immigration reform, rather than the climate change bill, in the Senate. Kerry said he hoped to keep working for passage of a climate bill. He said that after more than six months of detailed meetings with Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, "we believe that we had reached" an agreement on the details of a bill to reduce smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases associated with global warming. They were planning to outline those details at a news conference on Monday that would have been attended by some environmental and industry representatives...more

Something is awfully fishy here. Let's be kind and hope Graham finally realized this was a bill to ration energy and raise taxes.

President Barack Obama wields executive clout on green policy

For eight years, environmentalists cried foul as President George W. Bush used his executive power to weaken clean-air and clean-water regulations, open public lands to increased oil and gas drilling and block action to fight climate change. Now, President Barack Obama is exercising that same authority to reverse course, and business groups are the ones yelling. Obama has moved to improve the fuel efficiency of cars, halt new uranium mines near the Grand Canyon, strengthen anti-smog rules, protect endangered species and regulate global-warming emissions from power plants, factories and cars. Environmentalists say that unchecked climate change is a much greater threat to the U.S. economy than regulation because of the potentially devastating coastal flooding, Midwest droughts and other disasters it could cause. And the Obama administration touts its efforts to boost renewable energy
and wean America off foreign oil as a way to create more U.S. jobs. While denouncing what he called Obama's move toward "a regulation nation," conservative energy analyst Myron Ebell acknowledged that the administration is taking some business concerns into account. One thing both sides agree on is that Obama and Bush used presidential power on environmental issues in part because they saw Congress as unwilling or unable to act...more

Earth Day Agriculture and Sustainable Intensification

What’s the most sustainable way to grow the food we eat? The answer environmentalists give is always “local and organic.” But, increasingly, the answer from the scientists who’ve studied the question is the exact opposite. A study from England’s Royal Society issued last October concluded that genuinely sustainable agriculture must embrace the use of science and technology for producing more food on less land. It suggests that a healthy concern for protecting the environment necessitates the greater adoption of sophisticated agricultural technologies, including fertilizers, pesticides, and bioengineered (or GM) crops. Why? Because protecting the environment will require growing vastly more food without bringing new land into agriculture–what the report calls “sustainable intensification.” And, just last week, the US National Academy of Sciences’s National Research Council issued an in-depth study on The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States, concluding that, “when best management practices are implemented, GE crops have been effective at reducing pest problems with economic and environmental benefits”...more

Los Payasos - Gov't At Work

As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN. "During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time," said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general's office. More than half of the workers made between $99,000 and $223,000. All the cases took place over the past five years...more

Coyote vs. Greyhound: The Battle Lines Are Drawn

Hunting coyotes with greyhounds goes back generations. President Theodore Roosevelt did so on this land, about 70 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, in the early 1900s. It remains largely a regional pursuit that is part of the area’s lore, like the cattle drives along the Chisholm Trail. Ranchers and farmers have long viewed coyotes as pests because they kill livestock. Yet hunting coyotes with greyhounds — all members of the Canidae family — is banned in some states, including Washington and Colorado. But Hardzog, a 65-year-old lifelong Oklahoman who wears pressed Wrangler jeans and a rodeo belt buckle the size of a bread plate, called his favorite form of hunting “one of the cleanest sports out there.” Using greyhounds to hunt is natural, Hardzog said. “When you get the dogs running in a dead run after a coyote, now that’s a sport,” Hardzog said before spitting snuff into a tiny gold spittoon. “The coyote is just about the smartest wild animal alive because they always have an escape route. I respect them. They can outsmart you. But greyhounds are smart, too. I think they’re the neatest dog ever made.” Hardzog, who eschews seat belts and scoffs at “too many laws,” was 7 when he first hunted coyotes with his father. Now he has 40 greyhounds and greyhound mixes, some with scarred legs and faces, that he bred on his 318-acre ranch. Sometimes, they gnaw on stillborn calves and clean their teeth on the bones. He said he spent $600 on their monthly upkeep. They have names like Matthew, Luke, Venus and Little Bit. Some are part Irish wolfhound, others part Saluki. All have a strong prey drive and hunt by sight. Only a handful have failed as coyote hunters, Hardzog said...more

Famed Writer, Rancher, and Environmentalist to Speak at Carleton College

Dan O’Brien, famed western writer and Headley Distinguished Visitor-in-Residence in environmental studies, will present a public reading on Tuesday, April 27 at 5 p.m. in Boliou Hall, room 104, on the Carleton College campus. A wildlife biologist, falconer, and rancher for almost 30 years, O’Brien has used his “keen and poetic eye…” to give a bold literary voice to the Great Plains through his numerous works of award-winning fiction and non-fiction. This event is free and open to the public. For twenty years Dan O’Brien struggled to make ends meet on his cattle ranch in South Dakota. But when a neighbor invited him to lend a hand at the annual buffalo roundup, O’Brien was inspired to convert his own ranch, the Broken Heart, to buffalo. Starting with thirteen calves, “short-necked, golden balls of wool,” O’Brien embarked on a journey that returned buffalo to his land for the first time in more than a century and a half. Intent on narrating the story of his ranch’s conversion from beef to buffalo, O’Brien wove the history of the Great Plains, the hardships of ranching, and vivid portraits of the Great Plains together to create Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch (Random House, September 2001). The book was recently purchased by Universal Studios to be commissioned into a screenplay starring actor Edward Norton...more

We got seed grain, boys

When Morey Skaret turned eight, the age at which a lad made the leap from haphazard chores to full-time farmhand, his father made him the hog boss. Morey took his new position seriously, executing his duties with the same care, precision and panache that would one day make him a leader of men, and propel him to the top of many professions. Not only did life on the prairie make men out of boys before their time; it meted out many other tough lessons as well. "My mother had six children, all told," Morey says, combing through an old photo album. His older brother, Johannes, died in 1909. "He was just a child," Morey recalls. "They buried him behind the house. All the homesteaders had private plots." They didn't have a cemetery. There was just a house here; then two miles, another house. And they just buried their dead at the home place. Another of the prairie's more sobering lessons was on the danger of shortcuts. Literally. "A kid came from Crow Hill School," Morey recalls, "and his last name was Zeemer. We followed the fence when the snow was blowing hard, almost a blizzard. But we followed that fence. And then the snow got higher and higher. Pretty soon you can't see the fence ahead of ya. You gotta feel for it. "And this one fellow, Zeemer-I forget his name-he said he's gonna short-cut. He said, 'I don't wanna follow this fence line all the way along here to your house, and then follow your fence line down to my house,' which was another two miles. "So he says, 'I'm gonna short-cut from here, right across the prairie, and catch this fence over here. And then I can catch the other fence that goes to our farm, over here.' "Well, the sad part of it was: he started to short-cut. But boy, in a blizzard, you don't have any sense of direction, and that prairie's flat. There's no trees or anything. And what you usually do is you walk in a circle, when you get to the point where you can't see any marks to go by. "And you walk to the left if you're right-footed. Your right foot is stronger, and it'll gain maybe half a foot on every step you take; you just go in a circle."...more

It's All Trew: Book offers county tales of the Texas Panhandle

A book titled "Presenting the Texas Panhandle" by Lan-Bea Publications in 1979 provides many interesting facts about the Texas Panhandle.

--"The counties of the Texas Panhandle were originally drawn in a "paper survey" by politicians in Austin laying a ruler on a Texas map, starting on the east with the 100th Meridian and drawing lines every thirty miles in every direction."

--The town of Panhandle was first named Panhandle City. Childress was first named Childress City, barely beating out a town named Henry for county seat.

--The census taker for the 1880 census count in today's Collingsworth County rode horseback for nine days trying to find six young cowboys, the only residents for the vast open prairie area.

--During an election in Collingsworth County, only after "the whiskey flowed generously" did the name of Wellington beat out the name of Aberdeen for county seat.

--Dalhart was once named Denrock, Twist and Twist Junction in its earliest days.

--Texline once boasted, "It is the biggest and best and the fastest and hardest and the busiest and wildest and roughest and toughest town in this section of the Panhandle."...more