Luna County wind energy project stokes debate

A proposed wind project in Northeastern Luna County has the Board of Commissioners on the fence. During a Tuesday work session, representatives of the Macho Springs Wind Project, Element Power and locals with deep agricultural roots in Luna County joined the Board of Commissioners to hear details on a proposed industrial revenue bond and potential impacts on the surrounding area, the Nutt Grasslands. A local rancher, Joe Bill Nunn, whose family owns ranches in the area, voiced concerns that wind turbine development could not only hurt the aesthetic value of the grasslands, but the property value as well. "We don't want to sell our property," Nunn told commissioners. "We plan on dying on this land, but we want to preserve the value of these lands, not only for the generations of our family that come after us and the generations of our neighbors' families, but also for the public and the people that enjoy the beautiful views that this area of Northeast Luna County has." On Wednesday, when reached for comment, local resident Jack Harmon expressed concern that some regulations might not be followed, as he has personally experienced when dealing with other large projects...more

"For me, I think they give a really good sales pitch, but it doesn't leave me with a comfortable feeling," he said. "My instincts tell me they are looking at us like other large contractors in the past, like we're a bunch of hicks and they can do what they want."

How Gillette landed the rodeo

Diane Shober hadn’t been on the job long as Cam-plex marketing director when the chairman of the Campbell County Public Land Board began to push the group to think beyond the run-of-the-mill events that so far had defined Cam-plex. “We were getting nowhere and the public didn’t think Cam-plex was worth a damn,” said Jim Anderson, who was chairman of the land board, which governs Cam-plex. “At one board meeting I said, ‘Look, let’s get this straight. You’ve got to get a national event that is going to get this place on the map.’” Some different ideas were tossed around, from RV rallies, to the National College Finals Rodeo. And somehow — neither Anderson nor Shober remember whose idea it was — the idea of the National High School Finals Rodeo came up. t wasn’t long before Shober and Rex Brown, then assistant marketing director at Cam-plex, were in Denver, dropping by the NHSFR office and asking for the specifications to be a host site. They headed back to Gillette with five long pages of criteria. Brown drove home and Shober read the specifications to her, noting those things that already existed at Cam-plex — like the rodeo arena and grandstands at Morningside Park — and circling those things they did not — like stalls for 1,400 horses. Despite the number of circles, the two began to have a glimmer of hope. This was possible. This could be done...more

Remington Museum to unveil bronze of Seabiscuit and jockey

On Saturday, July 17th, Canada’s contribution to America’s ‘Race of the Century’ will be honoured with the unveiling of a spectacular life-size bronze statue of the racehorse Seabiscuit mounted by The Iceman, George Woolf — the Cardston native who rode the horse in the 1938 win over War Admiral. The event was noted as the most famous horse race of the 20th Century. The frenzy was such that one out of every three Americans or 40 million tuned in to the broadcast that pitted Seabiscuit against the aristocratic Triple Crown winner. The immortal story will be commemorated in a life-size bronze capturing a moment from that fabled race. The statue will take pride of place near the stables of the Remington Carriage Museum in Cardston. “I always felt that George needed recognition for what he did. To go from a kid raised in a sod shack with nothing to becoming one of the best jockeys who ever lived; well, that’s quite the achievement,” said Jack Lowe, an area rancher who commissioned the bronze and grew up hearing about Woolf’s exploits. Seabiscuit and his two Canadian jockeys were the perfect story during the hard times of the Great Depression. Stocky and low-slung, the horse looked nothing like a winner despite being descended from the great Man O War. In the beginning of his racing career, Seabiscuit lost an outrageous 35 races as a two-year-old. It took a special trainer and two jockeys from Alberta to turn Seabiscuit into a superstar...more

Wyoming tribe's beef deal with Whole Foods ends

A deal for the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming to sell organic, grass-fed beef to Whole Foods Market Inc. has fallen through, a beef distributor said Wednesday. Panorama Meats Inc., which bought the beef from the tribe and sold it to Whole Foods, said the agreement ended in March when tribal officials asked for a 29 percent price increase. "That's a heck of a jump in one fell swoop," said Mack Graves, CEO of Vina, Calif.-based Panorama. Graves said the increase was more than Whole Foods wanted to pay. Panorama was buying about 40 head per week from the tribe, Graves said. Whole foods, based in Austin, Texas, was selling the beef at its stores in Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Utah. The deal, struck in April 2009, called for the tribe to get $1,400 per head. Panorama said at the time it was about 25 percent more than conventional beef fetches. Graves said Panorama temporarily bought beef from California ranches to make up for the loss of the Northern Arapaho supply, with Whole Foods' consent. Graves said he found other ranches in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming to supply organic, grass-fed beef and is now selling their products to Whole Foods. Graves said he is also talking with a New Mexico rancher about also supplying beef...more

Rumor has it they've been in contact with NM's most famous producer and advocate for organic beef...Jimmy Bason. Bason markets his cattle as Healthy Hillsboro Herefords and has changed his brand to CO...for Certified Organic.

I tried to reach Bason to confirm the contact. I was told he couldn't be reached, that he was travelling with Ted Turner to some secret meeting about organic chupacabras.

'Ugly Beast' Found in Texas: Another Chupacabra?

A rancher in Fort Hood, Texas, southwest of Fort Worth, found a strange-looking animal in his barn. The hairless (or nearly hairless) beast was shot by an animal control officer who described it as "ugly, real ugly." From there, things just get stranger. Samples of the body were taken for DNA analysis, though many people believe it is the blood-sucking beast "el chupacabra," the world's best known monster after Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. The chupacabra first appeared in Puerto Rico in 1995 and sightings soon spread to other Spanish-speaking countries and areas. No hard evidence of its existence has been found — though about a half-dozen alleged chupacabra carcasses have been found in Texas. In May 2004, a rancher near the Texas town of Elmendorf noticed a strange animal eating mulberries under a tree on his property. The thin creature had large ears and a bluish cast, and was nearly hairless. The rancher shot the beast, which because of its odd look was thought by many to be the chupacabra. Genetic testing later revealed it to be a domestic dog. The most famous Texas chupacabra was found in 2007 when a strange, nearly hairless creature was discovered near a ranch outside the town of Cuero. News spread worldwide, though DNA sequencing revealed it was a Texas coyote that may have been part wolf. In July 2009 a man living near Blanco, Texas, found a strange dead animal. It weighed about 80 pounds, had four legs and a tail, and resembled a coyote except for its dark chocolate color and the fact that it was mostly hairless. It, too, was thought to be a chupacabra, and even exhibited as one in a creationist museum...more

Westwater cattlewoman rode with the Wild Bunch

The country in eastern Utah around Westwater is rugged and not for the faint of heart. But it was not too rugged for Florence Harris Fuller, who became a legend as one of the best-known and highly respected cattlewomen in the West. She owned land in the Westwater area and on the west end of Pinon Mesa. Around 1885 or 1886 she showed up in Utah, which was still a territory. She had acquired several hundred head of cattle and was accompanied by her future husband, trail boss Bob Fuller. It is possible that she had won the cattle in a poker game. Apparently, cattle weren’t the only items of interest that Florence brought with her on her return. In the Journal article, Sylvia told how she enjoyed going through her Aunt Florence’s trunk “full of beautifully beaded dresses, the kind entertainers wore in those days.” “My family was always hush-hush when it came to talking about ‘Aunt Bote,’ Sylvia told Stanton. “This simply added intrigue and made Aunt Bote an even more exciting character.” Indeed, Florence was an interesting character. Dude Larsen remembered a story about the Wild Bunch (which included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) that Florence told him at the 1921 Cattleman’s Ball in Fruita...more

Song Of The Day #359

Yesterday Ranch Radio played a 1957 tune by George Jones. So for today we picked another song from 1957, Country Boy, by Johnny Cash.

Rep. Bishop Speaks At National Press Club

In this speech he covers:

° The amount of federal lands on the border
° The amount of wilderness on the border
° Why the Border Patrol is effective on private lands
° Why the Border Patrol is not effective on federal lands, esp. wilderness areas
° Why the drug cartels and human traffickers prefer federal lands



You can also view the speech on YouTube by going here.

3 killed in drug gang attack on police in Juarez

Members of a northern Mexico drug gang rammed a car that may have been packed with explosives or inflammable material into two police patrol trucks in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing two officers and a medical technician, and wounding nine people. Federal police said the attack Thursday — which may be one of the first uses of an explosive-packed car in Mexico — was in retaliation for the arrest of a top leader of the La Linea drug gang, Jesus Acosta Guerrero, earlier in the day. Seven officers and two civilians were wounded in the attack, said a state police source who was not authorized to be quoted by name. He said the compact passenger car had apparently been carrying some kind of explosive or inflammable device when it rammed the police pickup trucks. The crash left charred wreckage. Federal police confirmed in a statement that the car rammed the patrol vehicles, but were not immediately available to confirm what, if anything the car was carrying...more

Human Head Found in Arizona Fuels Political Debate

A controversy is brewing in Arizona over assertions by advocates of more stringent immigration laws that drug and human traffickers have beheaded illegal immigrants as a warning to rival cartels operating along the Arizona-Mexico border. A cowboy on the Atascosa Ranch in Santa Cruz County found the skull of an undocumented immigrant on June 27, 2008, and the property's owner, J. David Lowell, recounted the grisly discovery in a letter to Gov. Brewer this month. "On that day one of our ranch hands was working horseback and discovered a human head near a trail believed to be used by drug and alien smugglers," the letter read. "Although the head was missing the lower jaw, it was immediately apparent that much of the mass and flesh of the head was still present. The cowboy searched the area in hopes of finding the remainder of the body to no avail." Lowell notified officials at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, who went to the ranch and took possession of the head. Dr. Bruce Parks, who serves as the chief medical examiner for Pima and Santa Cruz counties, confirmed to FoxNews.com that the head was identified through DNA testing as that of 43-year-old Francisco Fuentes Dominguez, who was not a U.S. citizen. Parks said a cause of death was not determined, but there was no evidence of decapitation. Other "badly decomposed" parts of Dominguez's body were found nearby earlier in the year, he said. Another skull, which was never identified, was found by U.S. Border Patrol agents on Sopori Ranch in Tubac, Ariz., on June 9, 2008, said Parks, adding that no evidence was found linking that skull to decapitation. Lowell's letter also recounted a total of "five shooting incidents" on his ranch in the past seven months, most recently on July 2...more

Obama sticks with clean-energy goals

President Obama is looking again to convince voters that the billions of dollars he has pumped into embryonic clean-energy firms will build a better economy even if they generate only a modest number of jobs before the middle of the decade. The White House compares the effort to the government's investment in the Internet several decades ago, and Obama will highlight startups that make electric batteries for future fleets of zero-emissions cars and trucks. In a report due Wednesday, the president's economists say the loan guarantees and grants extended under the Recovery Act -- matched by billions of dollars in private investment -- have the potential to "stand up" new industries that could employ thousands of Americans by 2015. They estimate that for each dollar in federal investment translates to $3.50 of total investment. But it is too early to say whether early bets on electric vehicles, solar power and "smart" electric grids will create the booming industries the White House envisions. Politically, it is all but certain that the benefits of those efforts will not be visible in time to make voters feel better about the economy before the fall elections. Cars and trucks powered solely by electric batteries remain unproven in the mass market, and efforts to build a smarter power grid are opposed by 11 Northeastern governors, who say they are leery of subsidizing a $160 billion electric transmission line from their states deep into the population centers of the Midwest...more

The Green-Economy Mirage

If you got an email offering you the chance to invest in a business that would create new profitable industries, employ millions of people, reduce energy consumption without reducing quality of life, and improve environmental quality, would you be skeptical? And if the email went on to claim that the technologies to do all this exist now and could save existing businesses billions of dollars in just a few years by reducing waste and energy use, would you wonder why no one was already implementing all these “common sense” ideas? If the email went on to promise that you could do this all at no risk by investing borrowed money, you’d likely be reaching for the delete key. If we substitute “the federal government” or “the United Nations Environment Programme” or “the European Union” for “you” and change the email to a proposed law, however, we discover that politicians from Washington to Brussels are embracing measures to “green” the economy and create “green jobs” with an almost religious fervor, despite weak empirical support for these proposals. The Obama administration included billions of spending and tax incentives for green initiatives in its budget, and last spring’s “stimulus” bill poured $62 billion in transfers plus $20 billion in tax cuts into “green initiatives.” Unfortunately, the rhetoric about “greening the economy” or creating “green jobs” is just political window-dressing for some of the same central-planning measures proposed by the left for years. Behind that rhetoric are proposals built around government subsidies for favored technologies, measures to limit trade, and a great deal of wishful thinking about alternative energy measures not quite ready for prime time...more

FBI, ATF join probe into big Forest Service blaze

The site of district headquarters of the U.S. Forest Service in Enterprise has been declared a crime scene following a spectacular, fast-growing fire that destroyed the two-story log building. Local firefighters were informed of the crime-scene declaration about 9 p.m. Sunday, July 11, four hours after the blaze was first reported. Yellow "crime scene" tape surrounded the property and a reserve sheriff's deputy was stationed at the bottom of the driveway to restrict access. Investigators from the state fire marshal's office arrived to join a probe that was expected to include agents from the FBI and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives plus Oregon State Police arson investigators, said Rich Hoover, spokesman for the fire marshal...more

12 horses now dead from Nev. roundup; hearing set

Twelve wild horses have now died in a Nevada roundup directed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, half of them colts and mares. The BLM on Wednesday said four more animals died or were put down because of dehydration or water intoxication. The agency also announced emergency measures to truck water to large bands of mustangs still on the range in the roundup area. A federal judge scheduled a hearing for Thursday in Reno on a temporary restraining order sought by animal rights advocates to halt the roundup in northern Elko County. Late Wednesday U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks issued an emergency order that prohibits the BLM from further roundups until after that hearing. The order followed word that the BLM planned a 6 a.m. roundup. The BLM suspended the gather over the weekend when seven horses died of dehydration and water intoxication after being herded by helicopter on the first day of the roundup. Another horse broke a leg and was put down. Two more animals died Monday and two others were euthanized "because of complications related to water starvation and water intoxication," the agency said...more

Forest Service begins opening trails to vehicles

A Lewis and Clark National Forest official said Monday the forest has begun opening gates and modifying travel signs on 140 miles of roads and trails in the Little Belt Mountains that once again are open to travel by motorcycle and four-wheelers. A 2007 forest travel plan had banned motorized travel on the trails, leaving access to only hikers and skiers. The 140 miles is a portion of the roads that were closed by the Forest Service in a 2007 travel plan. The plan remains in force, except for the 140 miles. On July 2, U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon, overseeing a legal battle between motorized users and the U.S. Forest Service over the plan, ordered that the 140 miles be opened again. The Forest Service had closed the areas to protect habitat and wildlife, but Haddon said, in effect, that the agency went too far and also made some legal errors in crafting the plan. "We're encouraged this is going forward," said John Borgreen of the Russell Country Sportsmen. Russell Country Sportsmen is one of the groups that sued over the reduction in motorized access...more

Report: Climate change to have major impacts on Western water

Of all the current and future impacts of climate change, threats to water resources may be the most painful in the American West, according to a new report published Monday. “Protecting the lifeline of the West,” written by Western Resource Advocates, a Boulder-based environmental law and policy organization, brings together dozens of studies by climate and water experts, detailing the ways in which water, energy and climate are deeply entwined in states like Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona. “Of all the implications of a hotter climate, the water implications are the most dramatic or long-term,” said Bart Miller, the organization's water-program director. “There's no way to adjust by making more water.” The report's release coincides with the U.S. Senate's return to Washington to take up energy and climate legislation this week. Scientists have already documented trends in declining snowpack and earlier spring runoff across the West. Even if precipitation levels hold steady in places like Colorado's north-central mountains, snow will continue to melt sooner and faster, winter will be shorter, and less water will be stored in the peaks, according to Miller. And those changes in the water cycle can have negative implications for reservoir storage, aquatic habitat, ski seasons, rafting seasons and water quality...more

You can view the report here.

Forest Service chief upholds rejection of ski resort’s expansion plan

A representative of U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell upheld a local supervisor’s decision rejecting a proposal by Crested Butte Mountain Resort to develop lift-served skiing on Snodgrass Mountain. The decision was delivered Wednesday to the ski resort and the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison national forests. Gloria Manning, reviewing officer for Tidwell, affirmed the findings of an appeal reviewing officer, clarified some points made in the findings, and agreed Forest Supervisor Charlie Richmond’s determination to reject the proposal was consistent with policy, law and regulation. Manning’s decision is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s final administrative determination on the ski resort’s appeal, the Forest Service said...more

Corrupt BLM official sentenced to three years in federal prison

A former U.S. Bureau of Land Management official has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for schemes that cost the government nearly half a million dollars. U.S. District Judge Owen Panner on Monday ordered Luis Ramirez to repay the BLM the money he swindled while working as a contract administrator in the agency’s Medford office. Ramirez, 57, pleaded guilty last month to wire fraud, personal financial conflict of interest and making a false tax return statement. The government said Ramirez manipulated contracts, funneled subcontractor work to his son Evan and used a series of wire transactions to send money to himself. He used the proceeds for travel abroad, a condo in the Bahamas, the remodeling of his Medford home and a college education for his son. An anonymous tip to the FBI led to the unraveling of the crimes, the government said. As investigators closed in, Ramirez retired in July 2007 after 31 years with the agency...more

Timberline Lodge proposes lift-assisted mountain biking but faces opposition

Lift-assisted mountain biking could be coming to Mount Hood if a proposal by the operators of Timberline Lodge to develop a trail system for it wins approval from the Forest Service – and if environmentalist groups opposed to the plan don’t puncture Timberline’s tire. Lift-assisted mountain biking is what it sounds like: Bikers take ski lifts to the top of a system of trails and then ride down. Other ski resorts – most notably Whistler Blackcomb – have developed lift-assisted mountain biking areas to attract visitors in the skiing off-season. “Mountain biking is a very good complement to our winter and summer skiing,” said Jon Tullis, Timberline’s director of marketing and public affairs. Less positive was the response of a coalition of environmentalist groups led by Bark, a Mount Hood-focused organization. Bark staff attorney Lori Ann Burd said lift-assisted mountain biking is substantively different from what most people think of when they think of mountain biking – the bikes are heavier, the speeds are faster and the activity has more overall impact, she said. Bark and its partner organizations fear that lift-assisted mountain biking will negatively affect Timberline’s quiet summer character...more

So now we have to protect an area's "quiet summer character".

N.M. Oil and Gas Association names new president

Steve Henke, the former manager of the Bureau of Land Management's Farmington field office, will take the helm as president of New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, the industry advocacy group announced Wednesday. Henke, 56, starts work as NMOGA president Aug. 1. Henke replaces longtime association president Bob Gallagher, who was fired by the organization in January for reportedly damaging the group's credibility among state lawmakers. The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association is composed of rotating representatives of its member companies. NMOGA serves as an advocacy group for its members' collective concerns. Henke, a lifelong New Mexican and current Farmington resident, was an ideal choice for the job because his work with the Bureau of Land Management balancing environmental protection with new energy development built positive relationships with many of the companies the association represents, NMOGA Executive Committee Chairman Leland Gould said...more