Chihuahua gov't urges cooperation

Following New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's declaration of a state of emergency in four border counties on Friday, the Chihuahua state government called for greater cross-border dialogue to improve regional security. Richardson on Friday declared the area an emergency zone in order to get more federal funds to build a border fence and boost law enforcement with the aim of reducing crime related to drug and migrant trafficking and cattle rustling. He said Mexican authorities are doing their best to fight the problems but lack funds. On Saturday, the state of Chihuahua issued a statement in response. "We understand the concern of the New Mexican governor with defending the rights of his citizens and we will offer all the support we can to continue our good relationship with our northern neighbor," it read. A number of recent events have highlighted the region's insecurity. One was the shooting of New Mexican Marie Guerra by a Mexican policeman outside of Ciudad Juárez on July 30. Guerra, who was shot in the head, later died. Local officials say Guerra was trying to evade a checkpoint and the officer's gun went off accidentally as he tried to dodge her truck. The officer has since been indicted. Also, in recent weeks a sniper shot at a Columbus police chief while he was checking abandoned cars in the town, and a rancher witnessed on his land the attempted kidnapping of three female undocumented migrants by masked and armed men. Continued theft of livestock has also angered New Mexicans, and a nearly abandoned community, known as Las Chepas, has become a center for smugglers. On Friday, the Foreign Relations Secretariat said Richardson's declaration doesn't "jibe with the spirit of cooperation and understanding" and called for a meeting "to promote appropriate actions."....

Run for the Border

The politics of immigration are changing. On Friday Bill Richardson, the nation's only Hispanic governor, declared a "state of emergency" in four New Mexico border counties due to "a chaotic situation involving illegal alien smuggling and illegal drug shipments." His office has pledged $1.5 million for stepped-up law enforcement and also asked Chris Simcox, the president of the volunteer border patrol group Minutemen, for a meeting. Mr. Richardson, a man who wears his ambition for national office on his sleeve, has apparently decided he has to reposition himself on border issues. He's not the only Democrat to do so. Sen. Hillary Clinton made headlines when she embraced high-tech measures to control the border with Mexico and fines for employers who hire illegal aliens. "Democrats clearly sense frustration on immigration among Bush's base voters and are trying to outflank him rhetorically on the right," says Martha Montelongo, a talk-show hostess in California. President Bush is vulnerable on immigration. Earlier this summer House Republicans bluntly told him that his proposal to admit guest workers would be dead on arrival unless accompanied by more border enforcement....

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SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

You know you are a county fair mom when…

By Julie Carter

The glue that holds together every family participating in a county fair is typically and unequivocally the person known as “mom.”

During the days prior to the fair, Mom is charged with a long list of assorted responsibilities that must be completed before the family ever pulls out of the drive way headed to the fair grounds.

Usually at the top of that list are food, shelter and clothing. It will be she who gets the camp trailer ready for a week’s invasion. From blankets to baloney, it is Mom who must prepare the mobile castle with all the comforts of home.

That of course requires endless planning lists of shopping, cooking, and packing. Buy it, bring it home, cook it up, load it in the trailer and then try to be kind when the family insists on eating three squares at the concession stand.

On most occasions Mom is also an additional stable hand. She will be washing pigs while the child is walking goats. Dad will be clipping lambs while Mom is making a mad dash to the grocery store for forgotten ingredients needed for the contest cake to be baked the very same day the pigs are due in the show ring.

As kinfolk and town folk wander into the show barn, it is not hard to tell the “fair mom’s” from the visitors.

You know you are county fair mom when:

--For two weeks before the fair tempers flare and everyone is sniping at each other but mostly at Mom. After all, it’s her fault they have to get things done on time.

--Every night you talk about pigs in your sleep. Once at the fair, you are so exhausted but can’t sleep or even dream about pigs.

--For three days you have washed and ironed a weeks worth of clothes for the entire family. The family arrives looking starched and pristine while you are at the fair with no make up, wearing the same clothes you have had on for two days and flat hair.

--You finally arrive at the fair grounds intact with the entire family, four pigs, two lambs, a goat and a camp trailer only to realize two of your daughter’s novice 4-H projects didn’t make the trip. And it’s too late to go back and get them.

--You find yourself working up a sweat and getting no respect for the hard work it is to give orders all day to a family that is never listening. Others will recognize you as the woman at the edge of the show ring holding a halter, bucket, brush, blow dryer, clippers, spray bottle and can of Show Sheen.

--When you don’t care who sees you grab your child by the ear and drag him across the fairgrounds while giving him a tongue lashing. Any one foolish enough to comment gets the “Mom look” that says “You want some of this?”

--You are always the one who last had whatever it is they can’t find. Four days into the fair and couples are rarely seen speaking to each other and then only with a hint of civility. This wonderful family event has about broken the need for togetherness for a season.

--Your schedule for buying new footwear for the entire family is always after the fair knowing that any shoe that comes to the fair will be full of pig stuff, mud and carry an eternal odor.

--By the end of the week when the family loads up to go home, no one is speaking to anyone. But everyone will weakly wave and say “See ya next year!”


Julie can be reached for comment right after she gets home from the fair at jcarter@tularosa.net

© Julie Carter 2005

Received via email:


A husband had just finished reading the new Promise Keepers book, 'MAN OF THE HOUSE'.

He stormed into the kitchen and walked directly up to his wife.

Pointing a finger in her face, he said, "From now on, I want you to know that I am the man of this house, and my word is law!

I want you to prepare me a gourmet meal tonight, and when I'm finished eating my meal, I expect a sumptuous dessert afterward.

Then, after dinner, you are going to draw me my bath so I can relax.

And when I'm finished with my bath, guess who's going to dress me and
comb my hair?"

His wife replied, "The damned funeral director would be my guess."

I welcome submissions for this feature.

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OPINION/COMMENTARY

The Shifting Sands of the Clean Water Act

In the 1980s, Rapanos bought a 175-acre cornfield across from the old Dow plant and prepared it for development by leveling the property. When his grading equipment hit the concrete foundation of an old farmhouse that had been on the site, he took a natural sand pile and spread it over the concrete. That incident 20 years ago is why John Rapanos now faces jail time; that's why his family and companies face bankruptcy, and why the property remains undeveloped. This startling story is just another chapter in Clean Water Act (CWA) enforcement. Passed over President Nixon's veto in 1972, the CWA prohibits the "discharge of any pollutant into navigable water" without a federal permit. The language seems reasonable enough, but the statute has become a charter for federal control over the most local of decisions: real estate development, road building, driveway construction, even farming operations. The law doesn't seem to apply to John Rapanos' land, which consists of cornrows and a damp forest 20 miles from the nearest navigable waterway. But contorted interpretations of terms like pollutant and navigable water have made Rapanos' property as "navigable" as the mighty Mississippi. The pollutant Rapanos discharged wasn't oil, or nuclear waste, or chemical sludge: just sand. But the Clean Water Act doesn't distinguish between "pollutants," and it covers everything from solid waste to rock, sand, and even heat. In one case, federal regulators required Oregon ranchers to plant trees to block sunlight — which is a pollutant under the CWA....

ANWR: This is Not a Drill

Although the energy bill Congress recently passed doesn’t address the issue, drilling for oil on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska is sure to come up in budget discussions. Given the current energy situation in the United States, as well as our relationship with overseas oil providers, it’s imperative that we find the oil in ANWR and bring it back. Both sides have presented their “facts” on the issue, but if one looks at ANWR’s true pluses and minuses, it’s obvious that people in Alaska, as well as those in the Lower 48, would benefit from extracting these oil reserves. The current proposal before the House of Representatives would allow for exploration on 2,000 of the 19 million acres of ANWR. These do not have to be contiguous and can be connected by pipelines. However, this acreage is limited to the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain. Given these numbers, we would “sacrifice” 0.01 percent of the refuge for the benefit of between 5.7 and 16 billion barrels of oil, according to the Energy Department. This oil would be pumped south through the existing Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, which can carry as much oil as we import from the Persian Gulf every day. Taking the mean estimate of 10.4 billion gallons of oil in ANWR, opening the area for exploration would allow the pipeline to pump at full capacity for 24 years, giving the U.S. a reserve amount that would allow for freedom to supplement our importation of oil with this supply....

Michigan Landowner Wins Historic Case

An attempt by an environmental group to intervene in a lawsuit involving the right of an owner of lakefront property in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to use her property as allowed by Michigan law was denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on July 28, 2005. The case had been pending at the Sixth Circuit for more than six years when the Forest Service abandoned its appeal earlier this year. Thereupon, the environmental group asserted that it had the right to intervene to enforce federal law. The lakefront property owner, Kathy Stupak-Thrall, argued, in a brief filed in May 2005, that the group lacked the legal right, “standing,” to do so. “We are delighted that the Sixth Circuit agreed with Ms. Stupak-Thrall,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents Ms. Stupak-Thrall. “We are ecstatic that, after all these years, Ms. Stupak-Thrall won the final victory that she deserved. Our hat is off to her for her courage and perseverance.” Kathy Stupak-Thrall owns property on the northern edge of Crooked Lake in Gogebic County, Michigan. Under Michigan law, she has the legal right to use the entire surface of Crooked Lake so long as her use does not unreasonably interfere with the rights of other lakefront property owners. One of those owners is the U.S. Forest Service, which owns a majority of the remaining property that surrounds the wide and meandering lake. In 1987, Congress adopted the Michigan Wilderness Act in which it designated the Forest Service land, part of the Ottawa National Forest, as federal wilderness in accordance with the Wilderness Act of 1964. Both the 1964 statute and the 1987 statute protect “valid existing rights,” like those of Stupak-Thrall. Nonetheless, shortly after enactment of the Michigan Wilderness Act, the Forest Service adopted rules barring the landowners from using Crooked Lake. Ms. Stupak-Thrall’s first lawsuit, regarding her right to use sailboats, ended in a 7-7 ruling by the Sixth Circuit. Then, in March 1996, Ms. Stupak-Thrall sued the Forest Service when it sought to prevent her from using gas-powered motorboats on Crooked Lake. In December 1997, the District Court held that the Forest Service could not restrict her use of her property, that is, the surface of Crooked Lake....

The Energy Bill: It Could Have Been Worse

With Congress returning home for its summer recess, analysts are taking stock of the 1,724-page energy bill legislators passed last week on their way out the door. The press seems to be of the opinion that the bill did too little to address fundamental energy problems. That's an observation worth celebrating, not jeering. Past Congressional attempts to address "fundamental energy problems" resulted in an array of price controls, fuel-use restrictions, ambitious crash energy projects, and anti-profit regulation. The fact that Congress ignored such approaches this time around -- even in the face of higher energy prices -- is worth a few moments of grateful reflection. That's not to say that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 is good public policy. The legislation is premised upon the idea that energy markets are different from other markets and that they require political micromanagement. But price signals play the same role in the energy sector that they play in the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the public is content to leave energy choices to producers and consumers. Tax subsidies and regulations create investment and consumption patterns that would not exist if decisions were made by market actors. The good news is that this energy bill is radically different from those once routinely passed by Congress when energy prices rose....

Restricting Eminent Domain

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Kelo vs. New London decision, state and local governments are taking action to restrict the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes. To assist elected officials in these efforts, Reason Foundation has made available a variety of tools that can serve as a starting point toward eminent domain reform. Based upon the Institute for Justice’s model eminent domain legislation, these documents offer sample legislation and resolutions to curb eminent domain abuse, while also allowing public-private partnerships to thrive.

Possible Language for State Statutes Limiting Eminent Domain Abuse

One simple way to remove the threat of eminent domain for economic development is simply to delete the statutory authorization for such uses of eminent domain. For example, in 2004, Utah simply removed the authorization for eminent domain from its act giving powers to redevelopment authorities. Authorizations for eminent domain for private business generally appear in statutes dealing with economic or industrial development, redevelopment, and municipal powers.

Alternatively, a few possible approaches to a statute that would prevent the use of eminent domain for private development appear below.

Three other types of provisions that also discourage the abuse of eminent domain are (1) allowing a former owner to regain ownership of condemned property if the government fails to use it within a given period of time; (2) time limits on blight or redevelopment designations; (3) attorneys fees for condemnees challenging the validity of takings.

Requiring Eminent Domain for Public Use and Defining Public Use

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, neither this State nor any political subdivision thereof nor any other condemning entity shall use eminent domain unless it is necessary for a public use.

Public use: The term “public use” shall only mean the possession, occupation, and enjoyment of the land by the general public, or by public agencies; or the use of land for the creation or functioning of public utilities or common carriers such as a railroad, utility, or tollroad; the acquisition of property to cure a concrete harmful effect of the current use of the land, including the removal of public nuisances, structures that are beyond repair or that are unfit for human habitation or use, and the acquisition of abandoned property. The public benefits of economic development, including an increase in tax base, tax revenues, employment, general economic health, shall not constitute a public use.

Prohibiting Eminent Domain for Private Business

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, neither this State nor any political subdivision thereof or any other condemning entity shall use eminent domain to take private property without the consent of the owner to be used for private commercial enterprise, except that property may be transferred or leased (1) to private entities that are common carriers such as a railroad, utility, or tollroad; (2) to private entities that occupy an incidental area within a public project, such as a retail establishment on the ground floor of a public building; (3) the use of eminent domain eliminates a threat to public health or safety, such as the removal of public nuisances, removal of structures that are beyond repair or that are unfit for human habitation or use, or acquisition of abandoned property. Whenever property is condemned and will be used by a private party, the condemnor must establish by clear and convincing evidence that the condemnation of the property is necessary.

Prohibiting Eminent Domain for Economic Development and Defining Economic Development

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, neither this State nor any political subdivisions thereof nor any other condemnor shall use eminent domain to take private property without the consent of the owner to be used for economic development. Whenever property is condemned and will be used by a private party, the condemnor must establish by clear and convincing evidence that the condemnation of the property is necessary.

Economic Development: The term "economic development" means any activity to increase tax revenue, tax base, employment, or general economic health, when that activity does not result in (1) the transfer of land to public ownership; (2) the transfer of land to a private entity that is a common carrier, such as a railroad, utility, or tollroad; or (3) the transfer of property to a private entity when eminent domain will remove a threat to public health or safety, such as the removal of public nuisances, removal of structures that are beyond repair or that are unfit for human habitation or use, or acquisition of abandoned property; (4) the lease of property to private entities that occupy an incidental area within a public project.

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Editorial: Safer Beef

Fears of another case of mad cow disease in the United States have faded for the time being because tests on the most recent suspect animal came back negative. But that is no reason to feel confident about the American beef supply. American cows still eat food that can potentially infect them with mad cow disease. American meatpackers use dangerous methods that other countries ban. And the United States Department of Agriculture does not require enough testing to ensure that American beef is completely safe. U.S.D.A. officials and spokesmen for the meatpacking industry argue that the public is protected by current safety procedures. The chance of human infection is indeed very low - but the disease that mad cow induces in human is always fatal, so extreme caution is warranted. The Agriculture Department is hamstrung by its dual and conflicting mission: to promote the nation's meat industry and to protect the consumer. It's clear which is winning. Instead of winning other nations' trust by improving safety, Washington relies on clout. President Bush has personally lobbied Japan to accept American beef. Beef producers need not improve their safety practices when the Agriculture Department acts as their marketing arm. It is time for Americans to have the protection of a food safety agency separate from U.S.D.A....

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New Mexico Governor Declares Border Emergency To Free Up Funds

Gov. Bill Richardson on Friday declared an emergency in four New Mexico counties along the border, an action that lets him free up money to be spent on everything from fighting drug smuggling to fencing a livestock yard. The executive order, issued after Richardson toured the area around Columbus, makes $750,000 immediately available to Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties. He pledged an additional $1 million. ''Recent developments have convinced me this action is necessary - including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling and an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants,'' he said. The new fence will help prevent cattle from Mexico straying across the border, officials said. ''We don't want contagious diseases to contaminate our food supply and disrupt our agricultural economy,'' Richardson said in a statement before his trip. Daniel Manzanares, executive director of the Livestock Board, said at least 100 cattle from Mexico have been found in the area. The agency hasn't traced any outbreaks of disease to Mexican cattle, but Manzanares said he suspects some have carried bovine tuberculosis into New Mexico....

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GAO REPORT

Air Pollution: Estimated Emissions from Two New Mexicali Power Plants Are Low, but Health Impacts Are Unknown. GAO-05-823, August 12.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-823

Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05823high.pdf

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NEWS ROUNDUP

High court rules preserving trees around eagle nest not a taking The Oregon Supreme Court ruled today that a timber company did not qualify for compensation from the state when the Oregon Department of Forestry barred it from cutting down trees around a bald eagle nest. Reversing a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals, the Oregon Supreme Court in Salem concluded that regulating private property in line with public policy is not equivalent to taking a piece of property for public use, and in any event, the Department of Forestry had allowed logging on most of the property. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Rives Kistler, the Supreme Court found that a state wildlife regulation does not amount to a taking when it bars logging, and the state constitution clause guaranteeing compensation when private property is taken for a public use applies only when the full economic use of the property is denied, not just a portion....
Agreement reached in group's lawsuit over grayling The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to determine by April 2007 if the fluvial arctic grayling should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity also requires FWS to pay the group's attorney's fees - $111,408. It was approved by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. "The settlement agreement doesn't presuppose that the grayling will be listed," said Doug Peterson, a Fish and Wildlife Services fisheries biologist in Helena. "We will go through the process of evaluating its status." In May 2003, the center sued FWS, saying the agency hadn't done enough to protect the river-dwelling fish that has been reduced to a single, self-sustaining population in a stretch of the Big Hole River in southwestern Montana. The fish was once found throughout the upper Missouri River drainage....
Wildlife agency issues guidelines for wetlands Federal guidelines released Thursday for protecting seasonal wetlands favor development over species protection in a handful of fast-growing California counties. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that protecting all areas containing the so-called vernal pools would be too costly to the state's economy. The agency's revised guidelines are the latest version of a federal critical habitat plan that an environmental group has successfully challenged in court. They could lead to additional housing developments in a state where the median home price is about $450,000, 2½ times the national median. The wildlife agency says it tried to strike a balance between the pressure to build more homes in California's quickly developing Central Valley and the well-being of 15 rare species that dwell only in the shallow and temporary pools....
FWS approves conservation easement program for Front The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has approved a conservation easement program that could restrict development along the Rocky Mountain Front. The decision establishes the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area and gives FWS the power to buy easements on 170,000 acres of private land from among 561,700 acres that are eligible for protection. The program goes into effect next month, but $1 million in federal funding won't be available until later this fall. A number of landowners are already on the waiting list to put easements on their land, said Dave Gillund, project leader at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Landowners who take part in the voluntarily program can use their land for agriculture but face restrictions on subdivisions and commercial developments. In exchange, they get a one-time payment from the federal government. The amount of the payment are determined through an appraisal and negotiations with FWS. About 55,000 acres along the Front already are protected by easements, while other areas are protected by preserves and wildlife management areas....
BLM plans horse roundup in southern Red Desert The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is planning to round up about 1,000 wild horses from the southern Red Desert starting next week. The roundups will target the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek wild horse management areas, as well as any horses outside those areas. "We are exceeding our management levels for these two wild horse populations," said Alan Shepherd, head of the Wyoming BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program....
Column: Endangered Roberts? Some loud voices on the Green Left — the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth — are going after John Roberts. Listen in. Their yelling reveals a lot about the current state of the environmental movement. It also indicates what President Bush should expect in spades if in the future he nominates a judge with a longer environmental record. The bone of contention that the enviros are currently gnawing at is Roberts’s minority opinion in Rancho Viejo v. Norton. The Sierra Club complains that Roberts “strongly implied that Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to protect certain species under the Endangered Species Act.” Earthjustice (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) warns that in “a key environmental case, Judge Roberts questioned the constitutionality of Endangered Species Act safeguards.” Based on that, Earthjustice sent out an e-mail claiming that “much of what we know about Judge Roberts is quite troubling.” And Friends of the Earth claims that a “recent case dealing with the Endangered Species Act raises troubling concerns about Robert’s commitment to upholding Congress’s constitutional right to pass laws that protect our air, land and water.” Rancho Viejo v. Norton really shouldn’t rate high in propaganda value for Roberts’s opponents....
Colorado River plan applauded, criticized Water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada have joined with the federal government to enact a 50-year plan designed to both protect the lower Colorado River and ensure human needs are met. "This agreement represents the largest, the longest term, and the most innovative partnership plan for habitat restoration on a river system in the United States," said Craig Manson, assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, part of the U.S. Department of Interior. Labeled the "Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Plan," the program is intended to protect threatened and endangered species along 400 miles of river from Lake Mead to the Mexican border, while ensuring an uninterrupted flow of water and power. More than 8,000 acres of riverside, marsh and backwater habitat will be restored for at least 26 native species, including six federally protected species, among them the razorback sucker, bonytail chub and humpback chub. Critics, however, aren't so enthusiastic about the program derived through a "cooperative conservation" strategy endorsed by the Bush administration. "It is 'cooperation' between the water users, power producers and federal government to provide legal and political protection from litigation," claimed Michael Cohen of The Pacific Institute....
Decatur cowboy up for run toward NFR Trevor Brazile's season has been something like a train chugging up a mountain. The three-time world all-around champion has made gradual progress, but not with any great speed. However, after last weekend, like the slow-moving train, he hopes he might have finally reached the summit and will soon be picking up steam. Brazile hopes that his recent success could result in a clearer view of his final destination – the National Finals Rodeo in December. He turned in a gangbuster performance at the Dodge City (Kan.) Roundup Rodeo Sunday when he broke the arena record in tie-down roping with a 6.9-second run en route to the aggregate championship. He also competed in team roping and steer roping, making it to the final round in both, earning the all-around title for the third consecutive year. He finished with a payday of $9,994. That pushed his season earnings in the all-around category to $107,551 and, more importantly, moved him to eighth place in the tie-down event....

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FLE

NEW FOREST SERVICE LAW ENFORCEMENT CHIEF LACKS CREDENTIALS

In an unprecedented step, the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service has appointed a new Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations who lacks any previous law enforcement experience, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). To accommodate the move, the agency has hurriedly amended its manual to remove the requirement that the Director of Law Enforcement must be a peace officer, i.e., GS-1811 Criminal Investigator, and to allow the position "Top Secret access" without the normal background checks. On July 20, 2005, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth named John Twiss, a long-time Forest Service employee who has spent a good portion of his career in staff positions within Washington. D.C. headquarters, as the Director of Law Enforcement and Investigations effective July 24. Twiss is the first person without any law enforcement qualifications or credentials to occupy the top law enforcement slot. In his new job, Twiss will oversee approximately 660 Special Agents and uniformed Law Enforcement Officers who investigate resource crimes, such as timber theft and fossil poaching, as well as a range of other crimes, such as clandestine drug labs, on 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering more than 193 million acres. In addition to his lack of experience, Twiss' appointment also reverses a decade of progress in increasing the professionalism of the Forest Service law enforcement program in that a civilian will be making decisions about how criminal and other sensitive investigations will be conducted. Twiss has also signaled he will seek to end the independence of the law enforcement program by making investigators answer to the forest supervisors and rangers who are often the subject of investigations or may be embarrassed by the outcomes of internal probes. After a series of scandals in the early 1990s involving cover-ups of timber-theft, illegal alien exploitation and prostitution, Congress mandated that the Forest Service law enforcement be independent of, or "stove-piped" from, the agency chain-of-command....

ATTACKS ON NATIONAL PARK LAW ENFORCEMENT HIT ANOTHER ALL-TIME HIGH

Threats, harassment and attacks against National Park Service rangers and U.S. Park Police officers reached a new record in 2004, according to agency records released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Chronically understaffed NPS law enforcement is facing growing homeland security needs and increasingly violent situations with static resources and little agency support. National Park Service commissioned law enforcement officers were victims of assaults 111 times in 2004, nearly a third of which resulted in injury. This figure tops the 2003 total of 106 assaults and the 2002 total of 98. Law enforcement work in the National Park Service is the most dangerous in federal service. National Park Service officers are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents. Overall, NPS law enforcement has a morbidity rate triple that of the next worst federal agency....

Pentagon to Increase Domestic Surveillance for Counterterrorism

The Department of Defense has developed a new strategy in counterterrorism that would increase military activities on American soil, particularly in the area of intelligence gathering. The move is sparking concern among civil liberties advocates and those who fear an encroaching military role in domestic law enforcement. Critics say the fears raised by the Pentagon are being used as a justification for the military to conduct wider, more intrusive surveillance on American citizens. "Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr (search ), R-Ga., a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian. "This document provides a blueprint for doing just that." Barr said the new strategy is a back-door means of following through with a 2002 plan to create a massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals, called "Total Information Awareness." Congress killed TIA in 2003 because of civil liberties and privacy concerns....Go here(pdf) to view the new strategy....

Chertoff: Privacy fears not justified

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that Americans need to ease their concerns about turning over personal information to the government - especially if they want to fly safe from terrorism. Chertoff said there is too much worry over a plan by the Transportation Security Administration to collect passengers' full names and birth dates before they board. "The average American gives information up to get a CVS (drugstore discount) card that is far more in-depth than TSA's going to be looking at," Chertoff told reporters and editors at USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Va. "But I actually make that case that giving up a little bit more information protects privacy." "Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," he said, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag and they're going to ask you a lot of personal questions in the full view of everybody else?" Chertoff vowed to implement Secure Flight, a plan by the federal government to screen out potential terrorists by scrutinizing the backgrounds of passengers....

Civil-liberties board struggles into existence

A civil-liberties board ordered by the U.S. Congress last year has never met to discuss its job of protecting rights in the fight against terrorism, and critics say it is a toothless, underfunded shell with inadequate support from President Bush. Lawmakers including some Republicans, civil-rights advocates, a member of the Sept. 11 Commission and a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have expressed concerns. Lanny Davis, the only prominent liberal among the five people Bush nominated after a six-month delay, said he had not received a call from anyone related to the board since it was formally announced in June. Davis said he could not comment on specifics because the members had not yet met. The inactivity comes at a time when Congress is nearing reauthorization of several provisions of the Patriot Act, a controversial law that gave the government new powers to go after suspected terrorists. The intelligence reform law of December 2004 called for the oversight board in response to a recommendation from the Sept. 11 Commission, which feared increased governmental powers needed to fight terrorism could erode civil liberties....

Big Brother and the Bureaucrats

In April, Mr. Bolton told Congress that when he was an under secretary at the State Department, he repeatedly circumvented the privacy protections that govern federal eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant. In Mr. Bolton's defense, it emerged that his actions were in keeping with a widespread - though unacknowledged - practice in Washington. This was fairly shocking news even to those with long experience overseeing or reporting on our security agencies, and it flies in the face of three decades of assurances by the government that it does not spy on its own citizens. Congress cannot let the controversy be rendered moot by Mr. Bolton's recess appointment. It should begin a broader investigation immediately. But even as enshrined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the prohibition on domestic spying without a warrant has always been something of a legal fiction: the standard practice is to go ahead and eavesdrop on the conversations of foreigners, even if the party on the other end of the line is an American citizen. Summaries of these conversations are then routinely distributed throughout the relevant government agencies. The privacy of the American citizens involved is putatively preserved by replacing their names with the phrase "U.S. person" in the summary. During the Bolton hearings, however, it emerged that when he was at the State Department, Mr. Bolton on several occasions received summaries of intercepts between foreigners and "U.S. persons" and requested that the spy agency tell him who those Americans were. Without asking Mr. Bolton to show any cause for his request or going through a review process, the agency complied. Following this revelation, Newsweek discovered that from January 2004 to May 2005, the National Security Agency had supplied names of some 10,000 American citizens in this informal fashion to policy makers at many departments, other American intelligence services and law enforcement agencies....

Ex-lawmaker blasts Patriot Act

Most people would be hard-pressed to fill a room with card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association along with the American Civil Liberties Union without a shot being fired. But that's what former Republican Congressman Bob Barr did Tuesday night at Pensacola Junior College when he warned conservatives and liberals alike about the dangers of the USA Patriot Act. Some provisions of the law enacted in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will expire in December. Congress, however, is expected to vote on renewing those provisions, which include unlimited roving wiretaps, home invasions without warrants, seizure of personal finance and medical records -- even what magazines you buy. He told those in attendance Tuesday that those "sunset provisions" violate the Bill of Rights and urged them to call their legislators. "We all lose," Barr said to about 100 people ranging from teens to senior citizens. "They have the right to invade your privacy, gain access to your information without a reasonable suspicion that you have done wrong. That's the essence of privacy and freedom." Retired special agent David A. Akerman, 59, joined the ACLU when President Bush signed the Patriot Act. "I spent 30 years dealing with terrorism insurgency and U.S. government security operations, and I see no need for it," Akerman said. "I never had trouble getting a warrant from a judge."....

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GAO REPORT

Clean Water Act: Improved Resource Planning Would Help EPA Better Respond to Changing Needs and Fiscal Constraints. GAO-05-721, July 22. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-721

Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05721high.pdf

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NEWS ROUNDUP

BLM: Drilling will bring haze For the first time, public land officials acknowledged that increased natural gas drilling in Sublette County will possibly reduce visibility in Wyoming's two national parks -- as well as five wilderness areas and a roadless area. The Bureau of Land Management, in a supplemental air quality study for the Jonah Infill Drilling Project released this week, said the cumulative effects of more drilling will likely lead to haze above acceptable threshold levels in the national parks in the early stages of drilling. Haze would be caused by both release of pollutants from drilling and from increased traffic and wood stove smoke. That haze will affect Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the Bridger, Popo Agie, Fitzpatrick, Teton and Washakie wilderness areas, and the Wind River roadless area....
Loggers chase off suspected arsonist A suspected arsonist was thwarted in his attempt to set fire to heavy timber near Missoula by a pair of loggers working in nearby woods Tuesday morning. While deep in the Gold Creek drainage about 17 miles northeast of Missoula, loggers saw the man trying to set Plum Creek Timber Co. property ablaze, Missoula County Sheriff Mike McMeekin confirmed Wednesday night. As the loggers moved toward the man, he fled, leaving behind an active fire, which the workers quickly extinguished. The incident, which authorities hoped to keep quiet while it was under investigation, was aired in frustration by Bob Sandman, incident commander for the Interstate 90 fires, at a community information session in Alberton on Wednesday night....
County purchases conservation easement on land near Three Forks Nearly 10 square miles of farmland and wildlife habitat will be protected as a result of the Gallatin County Commission's decision Tuesday to contribute $300,000 toward a conservation easement. The property belongs to the Dyk family and is 11 miles north of Three Forks near Clarkston, Gallatin County Open Lands Coordinator Mike Harris explained Wednesday. The mix of wheat fields and rolling hills is considered prime antelope and elk habitat by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. For the Dyk ranch easement, several groups pitched in to come up with the $1 million needed, including $200,000 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, $150,000 from the Ted Turner Foundation and $70,000 from the Doris Duke Foundation....
Ensign says Forest Service will expedite Incline Lake purchase The U.S. Forest Service has agreed to help expedite a proposal to purchase more than 775 acres at Incline Lake along the Mount Rose Highway overlooking Lake Tahoe, Sen. John Ensign said Wednesday. The agency's commitment could make it possible for public acquisition of the land to be completed within a year, the Nevada Republican said during a tour of the site. "I have secured a commitment from the U.S. Forest Service that they will start laying the groundwork for this purchase immediately, allowing us to add this property to northern Nevada's must-visit list much faster than usual," Ensign said....
Air pollution increasing in Columbia River Gorge Something about the wind whistling down the Columbia River Gorge defines an image of clean pristine air from the sparsely settled regions east of the Cascades. No longer. "It's a very polluted soup," said Bob Bachman, a meteorologist and air resource specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. "You have very high nitrogen deposition rates," he said. "If you have a nice green yard and over-fertilize it, it turns brown and dies. That's what high levels of nitrogen deposition can do." Deposition rates at the upper levels of the eastern gorge are as high as they are in Southern California, he said....
Logging project is off-limits After three weeks of protests and blockades of the Hobson fire-salvage timber sale near Galice, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management closed public access to the logging project Tuesday. About 5.5 miles of Road 2411 and 4.5 miles of the Hobson Horn Trail, the only entryways to the sale, will remain closed to the public until Oct. 31. "Every other day protesters are throwing logs and boulders on the road to try to stop logging," said Patty Burel, spokeswoman for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "Technically, there has been two structures and one platform (erected by protesters to block logging). "The situation is unsafe for loggers, protesters, contractors and Forest Service and BLM employees, and for that reason, we issued the temporary road closures."....
Who built rural roads and when? Utah officials expected that challenges would be mounted to rural road claims they are making under an agreement signed by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton in 2003. They are getting them. Last year the state was forced to abandon its initial claim to a 99-mile road in Juab County known as the Weiss Highway after research revealed that the road was, in fact, built by federal road crews during the Great Depression. Now an environmental group is challenging two more backcountry roads the state is claiming in Millard County, for many of the same reasons. The Washington D.C.-based Wilderness Society says the Bureau of Land Management should reject Utah's claims to the roads - Alexa Lane and Snake Pass - because it cannot conclusively prove that it constructed the roads....
Top BLM official in Colorado named agency’s new director for Nevada Ron Wenker, the top official for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Colorado who worked 10 years as an agency field manager in Winnemucca, was named Wednesday the BLM’s new state director for Nevada. Wenker is expected to assume the post in October. He succeeds former BLM Nevada Director Bob Abbey, 54, who announced his retirement in June after 25 years with the agency. BLM State Director Kathleen Clarke announced his appointment Wednesday in a statement from Washington D.C., along with the appointment of Sally Wisely, currently BLM’s Utah director, as his replacement in Colorado....
Desert plea: Don't take our water Utah's west desert is one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions in the state, and the nation. So maybe it only seemed like everyone who lives there descended upon downtown Salt Lake City on Wednesday. Dozens of residents, government and education officials from the area - along with neighbors from across the state line in Nevada - arrived at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building following a 220-mile relay run from Baker, Nev., to deliver bundles of letters to congressional and state leaders. Their plea to Utah and its leaders: Reject a proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to tap wells on the Nevada side of the line and transport the water to Las Vegas via a 500-mile network of pipelines....
Wild horses test positive for chronic anemia Two wild horses in remote Ouray, Summit County, have tested positive for equine infectious anemia (EIA), federal and state officials said. Although there is no harm to humans, the chronic condition causes anemia, fever, weight loss and even death in horses. EIA is a contagious disease transmitted by biting insects. The infected horses, captured in a routine roundup of horses and burros by the Bureau of Land Management, were euthanized August 5. The remaining 13 in the group have been quarantined for a minimum of 60 days, until testing proves there are no signs of the virus. Because the location of the animals was so remote (about 55 miles southeast of Vernal), BLM officials and state animal health officials say there is no immediate reason to believe that the virus could spread....
New spotted owl rescue bids get under way "Alarming" studies showing Washington's spotted owl population dropping fast prompted federal and state officials this week to announce two initiatives that could protect the bird and the old-growth forests where it thrives. The focus of the timber wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the spotted owl was supposed to be saved mostly on federal land under a 1994 settlement hammered out by the Clinton administration. But a casualty of that settlement was a plan produced by federal scientists to guide the owl's recovery. It was dropped by the Clinton administration amid the tension of the timber struggle. This week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the Bush administration has authorized them to write a new owl-rescue blueprint. It's a requirement of the Endangered Species Act, whose protections were extended to the owl 15 years ago....
Take a Bough That's why the first-time author spun a New Yorker essay into the recently published The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed. The book centers on the dark-of-night destruction, in 1997, of a rare Sitka spruce in British Columbia's rugged, outlying Queen Charlotte Islands. The massive, 300-year-old tree -- which sported golden needles in the midst of a verdant forest -- was revered by the local Haida people, protected by the province's otherwise-voracious logging industry, and gawked at by tourists (who could even stay at the Golden Spruce Motel). But all that came to an end when a disgruntled, semi-psychotic timber surveyor cut the tree down. Grant Hadwin's action was intended as a protest against unconscionable old-growth logging in B.C. -- the "Brazil of the North" -- but it was met with outrage across the province, and eventually (thanks in part to Vaillant's magazine coverage in 2002) across the continent. Hadwin upped the fascination and furor when he disappeared in a kayak on his way to stand trial for the arbicide; his gear was discovered several months later on a nearby island, and his whereabouts remain unknown....
Viral disease confirmed in Montana horse A horse in Yellowstone County has tested positive for vesicular stomatitis, a viral disease that affects livestock and causes blister-like lesions similar to those associated with the more serious foot-and-mouth disease, Montana's state veterinarian said Wednesday. The case, involving a horse in the Laurel area, is the first in Montana since 1982, Tom Linfield said. He said the premises, including five horses, is under quarantine. This restricts the movement of the animals and is to remain in effect for three weeks after the lesions in the affected horse have healed, he said. The diagnosis could mean that horses and other livestock considered susceptible to VS, such as cattle and swine, will have to meet import requirements imposed by other states in response, he said....
Images From the Battleground Lyle Robinson's Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the Mexican border. It's a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the brick house and oak trees--bellotas in Spanish--decorate the surrounding landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries. It hardly seems possible that such a peaceful-looking spot could be the scene of anything momentous. But it is. Everyone in America has a stake in what's happening on the Tres Bellotas. Everyone in America should know about the events that play out daily on this remote ground, and on neighboring ranches, because they explain our present and foretell our future. This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground....long but interesting read....
Former Reata chef announces newest venture Cowboy chef Grady Spears, formerly of Reata and Worthington Hotel’s Chisholm Club, announced Wednesday that he is launching a new ranch-house eatery on far west Camp Bowie. Author of Cowboy in the Kitchen and other books, Spears said in a statement that he plans a full-service establishment -- part restaurant, part retail market -- described as the sort of place where locals gather to swap stories, "fill up on unpretentious regional food," or stop by for ice-cold beer. Spears will create a small, focused menu featuring dishes commonly found in any rural Texas market or ranch house, using items supplied by local ranchers and farmers, the statement said....
O'Connor recalls Arizona ranch days An Arizona cowgirl paused in her home state Tuesday to tell an overflow crowd about the life she led on a ranch before heading off to 24 years of riding herd on the nation's laws. O'Connor and her co-author brother, H. Alan Day, shared the podium to talk about their book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. Asked what their father would say about his daughter's ascension to what many have characterized as "the most powerful woman in America," O'Connor said it would be: "Here I am on this godforsaken ranch and nothing works, and I can't get any help. If you're so darned powerful, why don't you . . . " Her words were drowned out by laughter....
Windmill devotees explain love affair Ray Cirbo, 78, has since 1988 been obsessed with the old-fashioned water pumping devices. After retiring as an electrician at his doctor's behest -- Cirbo had two quadruple-bypass surgeries after having heart attacks -- he started buying junked, torn up windmills and restoring them. Now, more than a dozen, refurbished to near mint condition, dot the front yard of his Weld County home. Another 20, in various states of disrepair, line the fence, waiting to be repaired. "There's something about windmills that fascinates me," said the man who calls himself "Ray the Windmill Man." Cirbo, who repairs the windmills and then sells them to people all over the country, bought his first fixer-upper from a friend in Lafayette....

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NEWS ROUNDUP

Up to the antlers in elk There’s a pest ruining Bud Gates’ haystacks, tearing down his fences and eating his crops. The lifelong cattle rancher lives in rural, northwestern Eagle County, and is a less-than-enthusiastic neighbor to the largest elk herd in North America. Elk, after all, don’t pay much attention to trespassing laws. “It’s not so much what they eat, it’s what they destroy,” Gates said. “By the time they urinate all over the haystacks, the cattle won’t even eat it.” State wildlife officials estimate just under 42,000 elk live in the northwest corner of Eagle County, near the communities of Sweetwater and Burns....
BLM airs out position on air quality on Roan The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will be better off working to prevent air pollution on the Roan Plateau than monitoring it, an agency official said Tuesday. Jamie Connell, manager of the BLM’s Glenwood Springs Field Office, explained the agency’s plans for protecting air quality on the plateau during a meeting in Parachute. The BLM got together with representatives of government agencies cooperating with the BLM as it prepares its management plan for the plateau. Nicholls said the activity contemplated for the plateau is projected to result in visibility standards being exceeded in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison near Montrose and the Mount Zirkel wilderness near Steamboat Springs one day per year at most. Benzene and formaldehyde emissions could exceed standards regionally but would still be within the Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable range, he said. Parachute town administrator Juanita Satterfield reiterated concerns the town has about sufficiently protecting the Roan Plateau watershed, the source of the town’s water supply. She said sediment from well pads and other gas drilling activity has doubled sediment in that water supply in just the past two years. Satterfield also is worried about the prospect of illegal use of water on the plateau for drilling on top....
BLM drops oil, gas plans The Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday dropped plans for oil and gas drilling near the border of Canyonlands National Park in eastern Utah. The National Park Service had objected to the plans, saying drilling rigs would mar the spectacular views at the 527-square-mile park. BLM spokesman Don Banks said the bureau is reevaluating oil and gas development around the park with an eye to reducing the historic impact. "In the Canyonlands region, much of the land is currently under lease and over the years, dating back a half-century or so, more than 50 wells have been drilled. But there's been very little activity recently, and those old disturbances have been reclaimed," Banks said Tuesday. The BLM had previously withdrawn two parcels in the park's "viewshed," and on Tuesday dropped another two parcels about four miles east of the Canyonland's Needles district....
Gas group hears lawsuit warning Get a handle on who will be responsible for monitoring energy development in the Pinedale Anticline, or a judge most likely will decide for you, a state planning official told members of a federal advisory group here Tuesday. The group should decide soon who will ultimately be responsible for oversight of measures outlined in the final decision issued by the Bureau of Land Management in 2000 for the big natural gas project, Rob Sanford with the governor's planning office told members of the Pinedale Anticline Working Group. "You need to look at that decision and see if it's being done on the ground and determine who's responsible for this oversight of the terms of the decision...," Sanford said. "Will it be this group or the task groups or the BLM? You have to decide that, or a judge will answer that question for you."....
New energy law limits public's say in decisions A day after President Bush signed into law the sweeping Energy Policy Act, environmental and citizen activist organizations continued their angry denouncements of the bill they say is a multibillion-dollar giveaway to wealthy energy companies undeserving of taxpayer subsidies. But those who want to speak out against the new law may be in for a shock: Its provisions include new limits on public participation in energy-related decisions, alterations of clean water law and pre-emption of states' rights when it comes to building electricity transmission lines and liquefied natural gas port facilities. The bill alters the National Environmental Policy Act to allow the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to take shortcuts when granting permits for oil and gas drilling and essentially cuts the public out of the process, said Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance....
Chinese rig at work The first wave of Chinese workers and their rigs are up and running in the Piceance Basin in Garfield County, the state's oil and natural gas hot spot. Last week, a rig built in China's Sichuan province - set up by Chinese engineers and managed by a company run by Pakistani immigrants - began drilling its first well near Parachute, west of Rifle. And next month, two more Chinese rigs and workers will start drilling wells in Garfield and Moffat counties. A U.S. shortage of labor and equipment is driving local energy companies to seek out partnerships with the Chinese. "It is a matter of price and time," explained Bill Croyle, a partner in Western Energy Advisors....
Editorial: Chinese rigs will ease bottleneck We hope the news that a Chinese drilling rig with several Chinese technicians is now operating in Colorado's Piceance Basin doesn't trigger more alarm about the outsourcing - or insourcing, as it should be called in this case - of American jobs to foreigners. One big reason for the Chinese rigs and crews (more are on the way) is that energy production is already at full tilt and Americans trained for these jobs for the most part have more than they can do. During the resulting labor and equipment shortage, searching offshore for help is a no-brainer strategy for relieving a major bottleneck to energy production. This nation benefits in many ways, including the creation of good ancillary jobs....
Editorial: Huntsman must act to protect Utah's outdoor treasures The tsunami-like rush of oil and gas companies to explore and drill in some of the most scenic places in Utah will have a lasting impact, one that Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. should be taking a lead role in mitigating. The governor promised during his election campaign last year that he would "expend political capital" to protect the economic interests of Utahns. When he spoke to the Outdoor Retailers Association in January, he vowed to make protection of Utah's precious recreational treasures a priority. So far, however, Huntsman's leadership on the issue of what reasonable limits might be placed on the extractive industries in order to protect Utah's $5 billion-a-year tourism has been notably lacking. Which raises this question: If the governor isn't willing to speak and to act boldly to preserve Utah lands that are highly favored for river-running, fishing, hunting, hiking, backpacking and trail riding by off-road-vehicles, how effective a champion of economic development can he be?....
Thar's Uranium in Them Thar Hills Would-be uranium miners are dusting off their Geiger counters. A worldwide shortage of uranium is pumping up prices and has led to a rush for mining claims in the western United States. More than 15,000 new claims have been filed in uranium-rich states in the last year, up from just a few the year before. "This year alone we've received about 6,000," said Pam Stilles at the Bureau of Land Management's office in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "It's happened overnight." Wyoming, which has some of the biggest uranium deposits in the United States, hadn't seen more than 100 new mining claims over the last 10 years combined. But now claim offices are jumping across the region. Utah and Colorado, two big players in the market, have gone from virtually no new claims for years, according to the BLM, to a combined 8,500 and rising in uranium-rich counties in 2005....
U.S. Bureau of Land Management backtracks on grazing rules The Center for Biological Diversity expressed skepticism today regarding the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) announcement that it plans to supplement its June 2005 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed national rule changes that seek to “improve the agency’s working relationship with ranchers.” The original EIS is full of doctored science and controversial policies that jeopardize the health of 160 million acres of public land and cut the public out of the decision-making process. “We sincerely hope that the BLM has reconsidered its decision and will produce a supplement to the EIS that dramatically improves the rules and contains sound scientific opinion, wildlife protection measures, and more opportunities for public participation,” said Greta Anderson, botanist and range restoration coordinator with the Center for Biological Diversity. “However, we suspect that the agency is only trying to cover its tracks and avoid legal action on their seriously flawed EIS.”....
Feds claim ranch owners negligent in starting fire The U.S. government filed a lawsuit Monday against the owners of a western Colorado hunting ranch, alleging employees ignited a 2003 wildfire that burned about 5,300 acres and cost more than $2 million to fight. Federal prosecutors claim the owners and employees of Colorado Nature Ranch acted negligently when they started the Brush Mountain Fire while trying to clear brush on the ranch about 30 miles northeast of Grand Junction. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Denver. According to the lawsuit, ranch employees were involved in a brush-clearing project on the ranch in the spring and summer of 2003 and continued to burn piles of brush even after Garfield County commissioners issued a fire ban July 1....
Federal judge blocks another timber sale A federal judge has blocked a third planned sale of timber from the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin, ruling the U.S. Forest Service failed to fully assess the impacts of the logging on the environment. The ruling Monday byU.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman of Milwaukee said the forest service must consider the cumulative impacts of six national forest timber sales approved by the agency in 2003 instead of assessing the sales individually. The ruling blocked the timber sale of about 5,600 acres that straddle Sawyer and Ashland counties near Clam Lake until the federal government complies the National Environmental Policy Act....
Horseback riders repair stretch of Spanish Creek Trail Volunteers at the Spanish Creek Campground shoveled 30 pounds of gravel into buckets and then dumped six of them into mules' packs. The mules mostly did the rest. "I'm just like a truck driver or an engineer on a train," Bob Hoverson, who on Tuesday was leading the Nine Mile Mule Pack Train, of the U.S. Forest Service, from the campground into the Gallatin National Forest's wilderness. There, volunteers with Gallatin Valley Backcountry Horsemen were repairing a one-and-a-half-mile stretch of the Spanish Creek Trail. Hikers, bikers and horseback riders use the trail, and the Horsemen adopted it so that everyone could continue to enjoy it, Rich Inman, president of the organization supporting backcountry recreation on horseback, said. The team of stock animals, based near Missoula, were to make six trips into the woods Tuesday and several more on Wednesday and Thursday, hauling gravel that one or two volunteers then spread out over the trail....
National designation for Sedona's Red Rock area? The idea has been kicked around for much of the past decade and appeared to be on the fast track two years ago. After all, it seemed to be a natural pairing - the awe-inspiring Red Rock country in the Sedona area becoming a federally designated National Scenic Area, like the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest and California's Mono Lake. But even with Coconino National Forest, the city of Sedona and supervisors of Coconino and Yavapai counties supporting the measure, it has died on the vine thus far among the Arizona congressional delegation. Sedona-area realtors complain that such a designation would tie the hands of private-property interests and have found a receptive ear in U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., who represents the Sedona area....
Witwer aims to protect landowners, access to 14ers Private landowners who allow hikers on their property should be protected from lawsuits when those hikers get hurt, a Genesee lawmaker said last week. Rep. Rob Witwer reserved a bill title last week in response to several landowners who have asked hikers to stay off their property. Those landowners own private mining claims around four of the state's 14,000-foot peaks. The issue made headlines earlier this year when three landowners with mining claims around four fourteeners — Mount Democrat, Mount Bross, Mount Cameron and Mount Lincoln — told the U.S. Forest Service they didn't want hikers crossing their claims in order to reach the famed summits. The mountains are popular because they're straightforward hikes and all four can be climbed in a day....
Horse power helps maintain the trail The Pacific Crest Trail is not just a hiking trail but an equestrian freeway spanning three states. It's built to specifications that horses can handle, with more gentle descents than some hiking trails, one reason hikers find it so enjoyable. While about 300 hikers attempt the full 2,650-mile trail each year, only four parties on horseback are known to have completed it. Most equestrians use the trail for weekend or weeklong adventures. And, similar to conflicts between cars and big rigs on the freeway, there is friction between hikers and horseback riders on the Pacific Crest Trail....
Details scant on federal plan for spotted owl The shy northern spotted owl – last decade’s symbol of the Pacific Northwest logging wars – once again finds itself at the center of the dispute. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to develop a recovery plan for the rare bird, which has been listed as threatened with extinction since 1990. It’s too early to say whether it would further restrict logging in forests where the owl lives. “We are in the very early stages of developing a process for doing this,” said Joan Jewett, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spokeswoman in Portland. The move comes about nine months after the service reaffirmed its decision to extend Endangered Species Act protection to the creature....
Starting from scratch The crux of the effort is a transplant procedure that more recently features Zimmerman Lake as an important hub in providing a source of eggs from a free-ranging stock. Trouble is, DNA testing now reveals that the greenbacks established in Zimmerman in 1996 are not genetically pure. The current Zimmerman greenbacks resemble the pure strain in every way discernible to the unscientific eye. But continued use of progeny from this source to establish populations in additional waters would perpetuate a genetic flaw. Faced with hard choices, the recovery team elected to err on the side of caution. The solution? Eliminate the Zimmerman stock and start over, which is precisely what DOW biologist Ken Kehmeier and his crew will accomplish with a massive injection of the chemical Fintrol....
Three snails, one shrimp designed as endangered species The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it will list four invertebrates found in New Mexico and Texas as endangered and designate critical habitat for them. The decision settles a federal lawsuit filed in April 2004 by the Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Guardians. The groups sued the agency and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, claiming the survival of the four species was being threatened by groundwater depletion, water pollution, oil and gas development and destruction of their habitat. The four species are three types of tiny snails - the Roswell springsnail, Koster's tryonia and Pecos assiminea - and a freshwater shrimp called Noel's amphipod. All four are found within the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Roswell, N.M. The Pecos assiminea also is found in West Texas....
In switch, scientist backs dam removal An Idaho biologist who argued for a quarter-century that fish ladders were good enough to prevent salmon from dying out now says four dams on the Snake River in Washington state ought to be removed to help the endangered fish. Don Chapman, 74, wants to get rid of the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite dams, between the Idaho border and where the Snake River flows into the Columbia River. They produce an average of 1,239 megawatts of power, enough to light Seattle, and allow barge shipping of grain and other goods from Lewiston, Idaho, to Portland. Chapman for years worked as a consultant for electric utilities, arguing that man-made bypass systems for fish, such as ladders and barges, were enough to keep salmon populations viable. He now says warming of the Columbia River and its tributaries, and changes in the Pacific Ocean that may be caused by global warming, necessitate breaching of barriers to help fish migrate upstream....
Editorial: Utah should be skeptical of city's designs on water You can't drink the bottom half of a glass of water. Yet the ranchers who eke out a living along the Utah-Nevada border have good reason to believe that that is exactly what Las Vegas is trying to do, and they rightly fear what may happen to the top half as a result. The water authority that serves the mushrooming city of light says it is not casting its thirsty eye on the water that by law and tradition belongs to - or at least is used by - ranchers and other Snake Valley residents. It just wants the water next to it, and under it, as it reaches out to slake the growth of a community that has more than doubled in population in the past 15 years. The plan is to sink some wells near Baker, Nev., and pipe 25,000 acre-feet of water a year via a 500-mile pipeline into the parched cisterns of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Even though the pipeline won't cross the state line, it is clear that the project will have a hydrological impact on Utah. And, so, Utah state officials must sign off on it. Those officials should be very reluctant to do so, certainly not without exhaustive scientific study that has yet to be done. If the ranchers are right, they are far from the only ones who would suffer from the Vegas plan....
Column: The beginning of everywhere For me, this is the crux of the matter, because a local rancher, Tom Maclay, has proposed turning Lob Peak into a year-round resort, including ski lifts, a golf course and condos. He's carved ski runs into the hillside above his home on his land and has petitioned the forest service to extend his operation all the way to the summit of Lob Peak. He envisions a little Vail or Sun Valley, I imagine, or Alta. Although current land-use plans forbid development, he's looking for loopholes and ways around it -- which he just might find. What is at stake, I believe, is not one more mountain, one less mountain lion, or 10,000 more jobs. It is a sense of wholeness, of integrity and the idea of proportion. What's only now becoming understood, and still very hazily, is the idea that the interior and exterior landscapes depend on each other. What is unhealthy in one is reflected in the other. Emerson called us "part and parcel of nature," but we behave as though nature is something "out there."....
FDA: Progress Made In Revising Cattle Feed Ban The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has still made no changes to its mad-cow safeguard policy for cattle 18 months after announcing it needed to be strengthened, but officials are now claiming progress in the agency's efforts. Review of public feedback on FDA proposals to overhaul its "feed ban" is finished, spokeswoman Rae Jones said, and the agency has drafted a new rule being considered for publication. If the rule is agreed upon at the FDA, the agency will once again hold a public comment session. "A draft proposed regulation is under review," Jones said. The FDA oversees the safety of animal feed, and mad-cow disease - or bovine spongiform encephalopathy - is believed to spread through feed if it contains infected bovine material....
Rooster's tale The bright colors belie a bleak future for the 600-acre ranch. D.C. Cogburn, 66, lost a torturous two-year-long lawsuit against two hot-air balloonists who he claims panicked his ostriches into a lethal stampede. Disaster blew in on Feb. 3, 2002 - "my birthday," Cogburn noted - when two enormous hot-air balloons, propane burners roaring, loomed over his ranch near Picacho Peak. Cogburn said the ostriches mistook the balloons for predators. The ostriches stampeded, trampling 7,000 feet of fence to the ground. Two dozen ostriches died of injuries within days....
Woman hopes to lasso help to honor the last of the cowboys Anita Witt reluctantly accepts the fact that ranching is disappearing in the Roaring Fork Valley. But she's determined to preserve the legacy of the ranchers and cowboys. Witt, a longtime Missouri Heights resident and historian, wrote a book recently that tells the story of the last of the cowboys. Now she's part of a team that's trying to preserve interviews with those old cowpokes on film. Witt is working with the Mt. Sopris Historical Society, American Spirit Productions, and producers Chip Comins & Jolie Ramo to condense 20 hours of interviews into a 30-minute or so documentary called "Last of the Cowboys." It's important, she said, for future generations to understand what the valley was like before it was developed. The interviews were with 26 ranchers living in the Roaring Fork or lower Colorado River valleys. All subjects are elderly men who are second- or third-generation ranchers....
Home on the ranch Nowadays, people may think of the American cowboy's life as simplistic, as Hollywood portrays it in movies. But John Smith's life has been far from simple. On March 15, 1925, the day Smith was born, he began his life on a Texas ranch, and his future as a cowboy, on the 44,000-acre Smith Ranch, between Childress and Wellington, Texas, near the Red River. "My grandmother would put a pillow on the saddle horn and Granddaddy would put me in front and he rode in a trot, just riding," Smith said....

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NEWS ROUNDUP

Home again, but it's changed Wearing gray stubble and a sweat-soaked ball cap, 72-year-old Buddy Lobato rambles up a rough dirt road in a faded sky- blue Toyota pickup, leaving a thick cloud of dust in his wake. He brings the truck to an abrupt stop in front of a padlocked gate and hops out. With calloused hands, he pulls a silver key from the pocket of his work jeans and swings the metal gate open. The mountainous land he calls la merced, meaning "the gift" in Spanish, spreads for 124 square miles before him. He's home again after 45 years. "I never expected to be back. But I never gave up hope," he says. Lobato, a fifth-generation Hispanic rancher who began grazing 20 head of cattle on the land last summer, is one of 519 descendants of San Luis Valley homesteaders given legal permission in the past year - including 410 on July 26 - to return to a land that had been off limits for more than 40 years. Up to 1,000 settlers' descendants may eventually be given keys to the property....
Lawsuit says government erred in allowing wolf kills A federal agency didn't follow required procedures when giving Michigan and Wisconsin permission to kill wolves that attack livestock or pets, an animal protection group says. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued permits allowing the two states to use lethal control measures against problem wolves. Michigan's permit, received in April, says the state can kill up to 20 per year. In a lawsuit filed last week, the Humane Society of the United States and 11 other organizations said the agency failed to notify the public and take comments before issuing the permits, steps required under the Endangered Species Act....
Spotted owl is on a dangerous decline In Washington, the plan to save the spotted owl is not working. The little-seen bird that launched the gut-wrenching timber wars of the early 1990s is declining in this state at nearly twice the rate predicted by federal scientists. And the pace at which the bird is spiraling toward extinction is quickening, researchers say. Some of the steepest declines are in the Cascades just east of Seattle. Two-thirds of the owl nesting sites known in Washington a dec-ade ago have been abandoned, according to state researchers. Some of those forests on private land already have been cut, meaning it will be many decades before those lands shelter spotted owls again -- if ever....
Study aims to protect rare plant A study this summer of the rare blowout penstemon - a plant that was considered extinct for 20 years until it was rediscovered in Nebraska in 1968 - is expected to help protect the species and its sand dune habitat. The plant was found in shifting sand dunes in central Wyoming in 1996 by Frank Blomquist, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist. This summer, that population was studied by BLM staff, two university professors, a botanist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and an intern with the Chicago Botanic Gardens....
Ferret release scheduled State and federal wildlife officials plan to reintroduce a group of black-footed ferrets north of here in an effort to expand the range of the first reintroduced colony. Martin Grenier, a biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said about 50 captive ferrets from the department's Sybille Canyon facility - and possibly wild-born ferrets from South Dakota's Conata Basin - would be released this fall both north and south of the Shirley Basin site where the nation's first black-footed ferret reintroduction was a success. "Both areas are as good as any potential black-footed ferret habitat in North America," Grenier said. "By releasing more black-footed ferrets close to the established populations, it helps ensure the long-term viability of the species in the area," he said. "Ultimately we hope these successful reintroductions will serve to get the animal removed from the endangered species list."....
Otters to get federal standing Sea otters that live from southwestern Cook Inlet to the tip of the Aleutian Chain will now get more federal protection and a biological investigation into why their population has crashed by more than two-thirds since 1980. Alaska's southwest stock of northern sea otters will be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, officials with the local office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. If published today in the Federal Register as scheduled, the decision will take effect Sept. 8. Within a few months, officials hope to appoint a team that will find out what, if anything, people can do to help the animals recover, said biologist Doug Burn, sea otter team leader for the agency in Anchorage....
A new push for elusive oil shale A series of tight deadlines set forth in the nation's new energy bill will force the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to lease lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for oil-shale and tar sands development within 2 1/2 years. One of the key provisions for Utah is the language backed by the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, aimed at reviving the U.S. oil shale and tar sands development, which went bust in the 1980s. In the run-up to the bill's Aug. 1 passage, Hatch said that while it would be years before the oil shale resource could be on the market, the bill would send a message "to everyone, including [the Department of the] Interior, that we're tired of messing around."....
Safe treatment of wild horses urged during federal roundup Advocates for wild horses Monday urged humane treatment for the 90 or so animals of the Spring Creek herd that the Bureau of Land Management says it will round up Aug. 21 from the battered desert rangeland of Disappointment Valley. The BLM intends to cut the herd from just over 100 horses to about 35 in an effort to restore some health to the range, which also supports a few hundred head of cattle as well as elk and other wildlife. The area also is being considered for oil and gas development. BLM officials held a hearing Monday in Dolores on their plans to ultimately cull 58 adults and 15 foals from the Spring Creek herd, the smallest of four wild federally managed herds in the state....
Wilderness deal no longer OK with judge A federal judge on Monday at least temporarily withdrew his 2003 approval of the controversial "No More Wilderness" settlement between Utah and the Interior Department, saying he did not want the court to become part of what is essentially a policy dispute over how the federal government manages public lands in the state. At the same time, U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson emphasized that the settlement itself remains valid and in place. During a motion hearing at the Frank Moss Federal Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City, Benson said that he never intended for his approval of the settlement to be considered a consent decree - and thus binding in perpetuity. He feared that such a reading of the agreement would tie the hands of future administrations in their ability to manage public lands as they see fit....
Dinosaur discovery Eyes pinned to the ground, fossil hunters Greg Kovalchuk and Mike Kelly were searching Central Oregon's dusty crevices for mollusk fossils late last summer when Kelly saw it. On a spot on Bureau of Land Management land near Prineville was a jagged rock marked with a white triangle. Kelly instantly knew it was a tooth. Nearby, he found a black and bone-colored cone-shaped tooth with striations and enamel. Twenty feet away on a slope, Kovalchuk spotted a piece of jawbone sticking out of the dirt. The earth was spilling 100 million-year-old secrets from a time when dinosaurs prowled on land and reptiles slithered in and out of oceans. The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest....
It's bug versus weed in eastern Idaho pest battle Federal land managers are hoping a half-million beetles released last month in eastern Idaho will help them combat an outbreak of noxious weeds. Bureau of Land Management officials near Medicine Lodge released black dot spurge flea beetles and brown-legged spurge flea beetles to eat leafy spurge. They've resorted to so-called biological controls because they can't spray chemicals everywhere. Leafy spurge is feared because it can produce allergic reactions or blindness in humans and lesions on cattle....
USDA wants faster elk-feeding phase-out A federal agriculture agency is pushing a plan to quickly phase out supplemental feeding of elk here in order to best protect against the disease brucellosis. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, outlined its position in a May letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- the agency charged with examining how to eradicate the disease and manage elk and bison in the Jackson Hole area. The Casper Star-Tribune received a copy of the letter this week. Written by John R. Clifford, deputy administrator for veterinary services for APHIS, the letter supports elimination of supplemental feeding of elk and bison on the National Elk Refuge within five years -- Alternative 6 in a recently released draft bison and elk management plan. With the most aggressive timeline of any of the six alternatives, it also calls for fewer elk on the National Elk Refuge than "preferred alternative" of Fish and Wildlife....
Adult grizzly bear moved An adult male grizzly bear was relocated to the North Fork of the Shoshone River drainage this weekend after killing a sheep on public land. Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trapped the bear Saturday in the Upper Green River drainage on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where it had killed a sheep on a grazing allotment. The bear was relocated five miles east of Yellowstone National Park. The release site is northwest of Cody on the Shoshone National Forest and falls within the Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone....
Study: Wolves may help control wasting disease Predation by wolves may be an effective way to stop a deadly brain disease of deer and elk in Colorado, according to a recent study. A modeling study based on conditions at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado shows wolves could have "potent effects" on the rate of chronic wasting disease in the park's overabundant elk herds, according to three researchers. Existing control efforts, which focus on intensive culling to reduce herd numbers, have been expensive and, so far, ineffective....
Public lands are seeing an explosion in pot growing, and not by hippies FAMED for the biggest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is now No. 1 in another flora department: marijuana growing, with more land carved up by pot growers than any other park. Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage and areas off Mineral King Road, are no-go zones for visitors and park rangers during the April-to-October growing season, when drug lords cultivate pot on an agribusiness-scale fit for the Central Valley. "It's so big that we have to focus our resources on one or two areas at a time, because otherwise it's beyond our scope," says Sequoia's lone special agent assigned to the marijuana war, who, for his own safety, can't be identified....
Remains may return to Sand Creek site With the coming creation of a national historic site where militiamen killed more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women and children in a surprise attack in November 1864, tribal officials plan to return some of their ancestors' remains to the location. President Bush last week signed a bill authorizing the National Park Service to take over land to create the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near this Eastern Plains town. Tribal officials know of the remains of seven people killed in the attack and have already taken possession of three sets, said Steve Brady, a co-chairman of the Northern Cheyenne's Sand Creek Massacre Committee....
Trading green for green If you own a home in Las Vegas and want to make a buck, your most likely bet is to grab a shovel and attack your lawn. Homeowners there have been ripping out their grass feverishly in the name of water conservation, pulling up enough in the past few years to cover 900 football fields. The sod killers get $1 from the local water district for every square foot of green they remove. Now Flagstaff is following suit with its own one-time $500 rebate for households that remove at least 1,500 square feet of grass and replace it with rock or, ideally, hardy, native plants that don't need much water....
Anti-phone town not willing to change Ana Maria Spagna has to think hard about how long it's been since she talked on a telephone. Two months, she figures, maybe longer. It's not that Spagna is anti-social or suffering from some weird phone phobia. It's just that she, like nearly everyone else here in this remote mountain village, doesn't have a phone. And she'd like to keep it that way. More than a century after telephones came to towns like Seattle, a small company called WeavTel is pushing to connect Stehekin to the outside world. But instead of embracing the idea, many of the town's 100 or so year-round residents are fighting hard to keep WeavTel and the telephones out....
It's All Trew: Wild and woolly tales of animal encounters A neighbor working on a harvest crew in Rocky Ford, Colo., recalled waiting in line, sitting in a loaded grain truck at an elevator. He watched a string of dairy cows pass by alongside the fence across the road. Following close behind came a border collie faithfully bringing his herd in for the evening milking. About 15 minutes later, the dog returned in a long run barking at every leap. After another 15 minutes, he appeared again driving one cow he had missed. It figures that the dog's owner taught the dog to fetch the cows but needed to teach him how to count. A traveler near Miami, Texas, became sleepy and stiff from sitting. He stopped at a roadside windmill where some sheep were grazing nearby. Stepping over the fence, he stretched his back and started jogging toward the windmill to get a drink of cool water....

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