NEWS ROUNDUP
Judge blocks Sequoia forest logging A federal judge halted the Bush administration's bid to keep logging 2,000 acres in Giant Sequoia National Monument, saying he "called into question" the scientific analysis used to justify cutting in a preserve that houses two-thirds of the world's largest trees. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, ruling in a lawsuit brought by environmentalists, also questioned whether fire control was the government's real motive for allowing commercial logging in the monument. The so-called "Saddle Project" was approved years ago, but cutting only commenced this summer, when timber prices were high. The government, Breyer wrote late Friday in issuing a preliminary injunction barring further logging, "waited five years to execute this contract because of unfavorable timber prices."....
Pine seeds saved for new trees Workers are collecting a bumper crop of pine cones in San Bernardino and Riverside counties and extracting seeds in an effort to boost reforestation. The San Bernardino National Forest pine cone crop, described as the best in two decades because of heavy winter rain, comes after millions of trees have been killed by wildfires, drought and bark beetle infestation. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Forest Service store the seeds for use statewide. Poor pine cone crops during the past 20 years have diminished reserves of seeds. "The need was huge," said Terri Griffis, who manages the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's cone and seed processing facility in Davis. She said CDF has no sugar pine seed, has a very low level of ponderosa pine seed and needs Jeffrey pine seed. The agencies anticipate collecting up to 1,850 bushels of pine cones from Lake Arrowhead to Idyllwild. The pine cones are bagged and trucked to seed banks in Northern California for reforestation projects statewide.
1.6 million acres safeguarded A mish-mash of cities, counties, government agencies and nonprofit groups preserved 1.6 million acres in Colorado in the past 25 years, according to data collected by a land conservation group. The Colorado Conservation Trust announced the total figure Monday, the first time anyone has taken the laborious step of adding up the efforts of more than 80 public and private entities devoted to protecting the state's rugged vistas, alpine meadows, valley ranches and wildlife-thick forests from development. The 1.6 million acres amounts to 2.4 percent of Colorado's more than 66 million acres, an area about the size of Pueblo County or about five times the size of Rocky Mountain National Park, according to the trust. The organization's report, titled "Colorado Conservation at a Crossroads," also details another 2 million acres important to farming, wildlife and scenery that the organization believes should be a high priority for preservation over the next decade....
Boise Initiates Discussions on Company Policies With Environmental Groups Boise Cascade announced today that the company will proactively fund a scientific review by technical experts in forest restoration to determine the impact on forest health of salvage harvesting and replanting. Tom Stephens, Boise chairman and CEO, made the commitment at a meeting he initiated with the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in San Francisco to get input on Boise's environmental policy. It is Stephens' philosophy to solicit feedback on how the company can improve its wood procurement and environmental methods from a variety of stakeholders. "One of our core values is to manage our businesses to sustain environmental resources for future generations," Stephens said. "To ensure we do so, we feel it is important to seek input from environmental organizations, government agencies, academia, and others on how to sustain and restore forest resources." "Our conversation with RAN made it clear that there is a need for more scientific facts about the impact on forest health of removing dead trees from forests destroyed by wildfires and replanting those forests," Stephens said....
Giving a Hoot for the Spotted Owl Research scientists studying spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest are using a host of technologies to stave off extinction of the birds, which many consider to be a poster child for the plight of the Western forests. Almost every night, researchers scour huge swaths of forest to create a detailed, real-time database of the owls' locations using radio telemetry, global positioning satellite and geographic information systems. Forest managers and agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rely on the database for up-to-the-minute locations of spotted owls, said project leader Dennis Rock. "The Endangered Species Act says they can't cut a tree within 80 acres of a known spotted owl site, so they need to know on a close to real-time basis where the birds are, or may be, before they start thinning or harvesting timber," he said....
Teeny Phones for Tweety Birds Humans may not be the only animals using cell phones in the near future. Ornithologists and engineers at Oregon State University are planning to strap tiny mobile phones to songbirds and monitor the birds' migration with unprecedented accuracy. But the birds will not "phone home" like college kids calling from spring break destinations. Instead, the cellular devices will send simple codes to cell towers along migratory routes. The devices attached to the birds will share unique identification numbers with cell towers as they pass within range. Network service providers will record the ID numbers, the towers contacted and the times when contact was made....
Grouse projects get funding In the Big Horn Basin, they'll do some mosaic sagebrush mowing. In southwest Wyoming, they're concentrating on creating educational displays, including taxidermy mounts and restaurant placemats for youth. And in the Upper Green River Basin, they're going to partner with the oil and gas industry to link all past mapping, research and habitat treatments into a single, accessible database. All of these projects -- and 17 others -- will be funded this year with Wyoming Sage Grouse Conservation Fund money, state Game and Fish commissioners decided last week in Casper. The projects are part of the state's efforts to address the long-term declines of sage grouse numbers over the past 50 years. Gov. Dave Freudenthal and the Legislature appropriated $425,000 for sage grouse projects in Wyoming....
Piece by piece FOR years, hikers in the South Bay have treated Portuguese Bend, hiding on the far side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Donald Trump's Ocean Trails Golf Course, like their own wild, immutable backyard. Miles of unmarked trails, some of them hundreds of years old, wind through tilted fields of coastal sage scrub, up and down empty canyons and around the occasional endangered California gnatcatcher nest. Million-dollar views in this landslide-prone area overlook Abalone Cove, Catalina Island and the Pacific Ocean. But these trails cut through private property in an area that has long been a tug-of-war between conservationists and equally tenacious land developers. To preserve miles of hiking trails and earmark habitat for rare and endangered species, the nonprofit Palos Verdes Land Conservancy has been working to patch together what is poised to be L.A. County's newest nature preserve....
Trollers lose lawsuit but plan to appeal A judge ruled Thursday that salmon trollers in Oregon and California are stuck with the season they have. The Pacific Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit against the federal government in June in U.S. District Court on behalf of the Oregon Trollers Association, Siuslaw Fishermen's Association, and various other organizations, businesses and individuals. The lawsuit claimed the National Marine Fisheries Service violated federal law when managers gutted the salmon season, leaving trollers no opportunity to fish in June, July and August. Their argument centered around three issues: that record numbers of salmon are returning to West Coast rivers and managers ignored that fact; that managers didn't consider hatchery salmon along with wild populations; and that they disregarded the economic and safety impacts of the regulations. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. Coffin disagreed on all counts, completely denying the trollers any relief....
Company plans big drilling project A 184,000-acre area in southern Carbon and Sweetwater counties could become another battleground in the ongoing tussle between industry and environmentalists. The Bureau of Land Management has begun preparing an environmental impact statement on a proposal by Devon Energy Corp. to drill up to 1,250 natural gas wells about 40 miles southwest of Rawlins, the agency said last week. The wells would be drilled over 30 to 40 years from an estimated 1,000 well pads, according to the BLM. They are among a total of close to 9,000 new wells contemplated by the agency in its draft management plan for the Rawlins/Great Divide resource area....
Seismic exploration raises concerns The Bureau of Land Management has approved a seismic exploration project in northern Sweetwater County, raising concern from conservation groups about the level of study on these types of projects. The Pacific Creek three-dimensional geophysical project, which will use "thumper trucks" and helicopters to examine the energy potential of the area, was approved Friday. The BLM approved the project without a full environmental study, calling it a "finding of no significant impact." Darlene Horsey with the BLM Rock Springs field office said the agency determined there would be no "extreme disturbance or impact to the surface." "With the type of vibration trucks that are going to be used and the path they are going to be staying on," the impacts will not be significant, she said. And, the trucks will have single runs over the ground, not double, and will be in straight lines which won't have visual impacts....
Point May Be Oldest Idaho Human Artifact The discovery of a carved obsidian spear point indicates that the earliest humans in what is now Idaho apparently spent time in the area's mountains as well as its canyons. The spear point, believed to be 11,000 years old, was found last year just west of the Idaho-Montana border in the Beaverhead Mountains southeast of Salmon. If proved to be that age, it would be the oldest example of humans in that area, said Lane Allgood, a spokesman for North Wind, a company hired to help the Bureau of Land Management to investigate the cultural resources of the area. Denise Stark, an environmental planner and archaeological technician with North Wind, found the point just below the ridge line of the Continental Divide. Following protocol, she left it on the mountain, and North Wind retrieved it a year later only after analysis and authorization by the BLM....
Scientists study how to clean salty water Scientists from Sandia National Laboratories have started a study to investigate how to best clean salty water to make drinking water. Working with the Bureau of Reclamation and other groups they are hoping to find new ways to improve the water situation in the West. Scientists are trying to lower the costs of reverse osmosis. The costs already have declined from $14 per thousand gallons 15 years ago to about $2 per thousand gallons today. One promising idea is to create a new type of filter that mimics human cells. Such a membrane could selectively filter harmful particles from water while keeping healthy minerals intact. Human cells are about 1,000 times more effective than reverse osmosis filters in pumping water out of saline solution....
Sierra Club Gets Behind the Wheel This weekend, automaker and frequent foil of environmentalists Ford took the unlikely step of debuting an SUV at the Sierra Club's National Environmental Convention and Expo. The 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid offers 50 percent better fuel economy in the city than its gasoline-only counterpart (an increase from 22 to 33 miles per gallon) while enhancing highway mileage from 26 to 29 mpg. The Mariner can run at up to 25 miles per hour without relying on the gasoline engine. Ford also used lighter materials in the chassis and wheels to increase the fuel economy, according to Niel Golightly, director of sustainable business strategies at Ford Motor. The first of the $29,840 Mariner hybrids will be delivered to dealers on Oct. 3, Golightly said. More than 800 were pre-sold online, and Ford plans to make 2,000 for this shortened model year and 4,000 during the next model year....
Gore: Bush to Blame for Katrina Former Vice President Al Gore urged Americans on Friday to hold the Bush administration accountable for failing to adequately prepare for and respond to Hurricane Katrina. "When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic flood waters five days after a hurricane struck, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe, but to hold ... the leaders of our nation accountable," Gore told environmentalists at the Sierra Club's national convention. Gore had been scheduled to give a speech to state insurance commissioners in New Orleans this weekend about the likelihood that global warming will spawn increasingly deadly hurricanes. He decided to take his speech to San Francisco after that conference was canceled. "The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis, it is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences," Gore said....
Officials say levees worse than thought The massive levee system protecting New Orleans has sustained heavy damage well beyond the five breaches that are widely known to have caused flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday. Miles of levees that protected the eastern flank of the region, which borders Lake Borgne, washed away in the storm surge from Katrina, which swept inland and caused deep flooding in St. Bernard Parish and the 9th Ward of New Orleans. Army Corps officials disclosed the destruction of the city's eastern levee system in a detailed helicopter tour of the region Monday....
Mouse Zedong? The communist heirs of Mao Zedong and the capitalist successors of Walt Disney will share the stage in Hong Kong today with a near $1,8-billion monument to globalisation: China's first Disneyland. The meeting of the world's biggest communist party and the planet's best-known entertainment corporation would have been unthinkable to their founders. Walt Disney was a fervent anti-communist; Mao launched deadly purges of rightists and blocked Hollywood films. Disney has had to make only modest concessions to local customs. A feng shui master ensured that Mickey's magical kingdom satisfied traditional views of harmony with nature....
Gallagher Livestock closing after nearly 50 years in bovine business When the last cow leaves Gallagher Livestock auction yard this week, nearly 50 years of Fallon agricultural heritage will come to a close. Wednesday will be the last auction at Gallagher's, which is closing its doors forever following sale of the property, owner Tim Gallagher said. He said he only saw the initials of the buying party, and didn't know what the property would be used for in the future. "It was just time," he said. "I had a good offer on the property." Development has been encroaching on the auction yard for years, surrounding the property with houses, commercial and industrial properties. When the operation was started in the 1950s by his father, Tom, most of the adjacent land was alfalfa fields, Gallagher said....
'The granddaddy of dog trials' Sheepdogs and their handlers from around the United States and the world gathered in Meeker this weekend. Each were hoping to take top honors at gathering, herding and separating the skittish critters that once were an important part of the Western Slope economy. The winner this year was a dog named Pleat, owned by Scott Glenn from New Dayton, Alberta, Canada, followed in second place by Ethel, another Canadian, owned by Amanda Milliken of Kingston, Ontario, and an Easterner, Sly, owned by Tom Wilson of Gordonsville, Va., in third. The Meeker Classic Sheepdog Championship Trials, a five-day annual event in its 19th consecutive year, offered a total of $20,000 in prize money, from the $5,000 that went to the top dog down to $200 to 20th place. Additional special awards added to the cash total of the winners....
It's All Trew: Second income not such a new thing after all Getting by in hard times often required working at odd jobs to make ends meet. My father drove a school bus and played for dances on Saturday nights in addition to farming. A neighbor always took to preaching when his farm income dropped. During the New Deal era of President Roosevelt, many people built Works Projects Administration toilets and laid sewer lines to bring in additional income. Those fortunate enough to live near cedar growth, occurring usually in canyons or river breaks, took ax and saw in hand and cut cedar posts and stays for sale to the public. Hundreds of wagonloads and truckloads of cedar posts were delivered throughout the West for fencing the Great Plains. Palo Duro Canyon and the Canadian River breaks were favorite places for the post cutters of the time trying to make a few dollars on the side....
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Monday, September 12, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Seizing livestock A property-rights group is claiming victory in the latest conflict between ranchers and federal land managers over livestock impoundments on Nevada's public lands. But so far, the feds have shown no sign of admitting defeat. The combative ranchers are welcoming a grand jury report and a new state law that orders federal land managers, for the first time, to obtain a court order before seized cattle changes hands. "The days of paramilitary cattle confiscations are over, I hope," said Ramona Morrison of the Nevada Live Stock Association, a states' rights group that largely disputes federal control of public lands. "I think everybody got their nose bloodied sufficiently and they won't want to do it again," she said. "The end result is BLM isn't confiscating cattle anymore." But the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 48 million acres in Nevada, continues to reiterate its authority under federal regulations to seize cattle administratively -- without a court order or any other judicial review -- after notice and warning requirements are exhausted. The BLM said its lawyers are reviewing the new state law....
Two Types of Sheep, One Woolly Dispute Where the timber ends and granite stands against the clouds, four Sierra Nevada bighorn rams freeze for an instant — noses facing the wind, horns curling from their heads, haunches taut. Then, silently, they vanish among the jagged crags and canyons between Yosemite and Mono Lake. About 15 miles to the north, domestic sheep rancher Fred Fulstone gamely hauls his legs up a steep hillside of bitterbrush and sage. Then, spelling his lungs, the 85-year-old stockman watches somberly as government workers fasten tracking collars to five ewes. The devices are supposed to prevent his sheep from straying off undetected and infecting bighorns with pneumonia. Since the 19th century, the bighorns and Sierra sheepmen have been symbols of the wild and free-ranging Western frontier. But today they are at odds, their fate intertwined in a costly, highly politicized battle over grazing rights on public lands. Fulstone's fight has become a focal point for bighorn-domestic sheep conflicts that sheep industry associations say could affect grazing of 125,000 animals in California, Nevada, Arizona and South Dakota....
State lauds ruling on access to old roads State officials are calling a ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals a victory for the rights of the public to access old road rights of way that cut through federal land in three counties. But one environmental group says the ruling will only throw things into confusion and lead to yet more lawsuits. In a ruling issued Thursday evening, the Denver-based Court of Appeals rejected the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's criteria for defining a road that a lower federal district judge used in her decision. Instead, three appellate judges, including former University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, chose the state's criteria, which makes it easier to designate road rights of way and could open up areas of federal land to public access. Among the BLM's criteria, a qualifying road must be established by "mechanical" construction. The state's criteria allows a right of way for roads that have been in continuous use for 10 years prior to 1976. "This case has been in litigation since 1996, when Kane, Garfield and San Juan counties were accused of trespass for performing maintenance on roads they asserted as their rights of way," said Assistant Utah Attorney General Ralph Finlayson. Calling the appellate ruling a major victory for counties and the state, Finlayson said many people who live in the Salt Lake area take easy access to places for granted. Finlayson said people who live near federal land rely on roads to access their cattle, their farms and each other. "These people absolutely need these roads for their livelihood and for their recreation," he said....
Rancher sent to prison A 69-year-old rancher and rodeo producer was sentenced to five months in federal prison for hiding wastewater leaks that contaminated soil. Michael Eugene Cervi of Roggen also was sentenced Friday to five months of home detention, a $30,000 fine and 50 hours of community service, which he must spend speaking to ranching and rodeo groups about his crime. He previously had pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. Cervi owns several ranches and two companies that provide horses and livestock for rodeos nationwide, as well as a business called Envirocycle, according to court documents. Envirocycle had a state permit to inject wastewater from oil drilling into a deep underground aquifer through a commercial injection well near La Salle, in Weld County. The well was found to be leaking contaminated fluids in March 2001, court documents said....
Mantua ranch owners sell development rights to conservation group for $3.72 million Owners of a Mantua ranch have united with conservationists to preserve some of the last remaining Columbian sharp-tailed grouse habitat in the state. The species has lost 96 percent of its Utah habitat, but thrives in the tall grass and sagebrush covering the 6,700-acre Selman Ranch near Mantua. The bird is listed as a "sensitive species" in need of conservation, as are the Northern goshawks and Bonneville cutthroat trout that inhabit the ranch's fields and streams, said Bill James, habitat section chief of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Nonprofit preservation group The Nature Conservancy plans to purchase the land's development rights for $3.72 million, said Amanda Smith, director of government relations for the organization's Utah chapter....
BLM wants to remove most horses near Muddy Gap Federal wild horse managers plan to remove most of the wild horse population near Whiskey Mountain west and southwest of Muddy Gap this fall. Roy Packer, range management specialist at the Lander Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management, said the roundup operation would be similar to one completed last year in the Antelope Hills area of the Red Desert. John Etchepare, director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, said management of wild horse herds is simply a matter of protecting the resources of the state. He said the wild horse population got away from the BLM for a variety of reasons, at a time when a multiyear drought was hammering the rangeland. Early in Gov. Dave Freudenthal's administration, the state sued the BLM, resulting in a mandate to reduce wild horse numbers....
Washoe Tribe asks Congress for Lake Tahoe shoreline access Two years ago, the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California was ecstatic when President Bush signed legislation preserving 24 acres of prime federal land for it on Lake Tahoe’s east shore. Now, the tribe wants help from Congress after making a discovery: The bill did not provide the shoreline access it had sought at Skunk Harbor north of upscale Glenbrook. Tribal leaders support legislation by Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign that would shift the boundary and provide about 300 feet of sandy beach. The bill would not increase the amount of the tribe’s land....
Seismic tests nixed for hunting Federal forest officials agreed to suspend seismic exploration for natural gas during hunting season in part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in southwestern Wyoming after environmental groups complained that seismic exploration had negative effects on game. In a letter Friday, Catherine L. Beatty, appeal reviewing officer for the U.S. Forest Service's Intermountain Region, told the National Wildlife Federation she would grant the organization's request for a stay of a previous Forest Service decision to allow seismic testing. Seismic exploration is to end today. "We're happy to see activity stopped as of Sept. 11," said Dave Gowdey, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, whose organization was one of many that appealed the Forest Service's decision to allow seismic exploration....
Logging is back on BLM lands Saws may again be buzzing on federal land set aside for northern spotted owls. As the result of an early August settlement of a lawsuit brought by timber interests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing to revise its land use plans for western Oregon where the owls live. Because the spotted owl perches in pines on BLM land managed by the Klamath Falls office, it too will revamp its plan. "There potentially could be a big shift back," said Don Hoffheins, environmental coordinator in the Klamath Falls office. Before the current plan, crafted under President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, went into effect in 1995, 1.2 billion board-feet of timber was taken from the forests. "It basically shut down logging completely in the 1990s," said Jon Raby, manager of the BLM's Klamath Falls office....
NRC ruling won't end fight over nuclear waste Utah officials say they are disappointed but not surprised that the Nuclear Regulation Commission ruled Friday to let a consortium of nuclear power utilities store nuclear waste on Goshute Tribal lands in Tooele County. "I think we gave up on the NRC a long time ago," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "We could see where they were headed." The timing of the ruling was more surprising. The NRC was set to rule Friday on the last in a long line of appeals by the state, this one over the issue of military over-flights by fighters using the Utah Test and Training Range. The NRC denied that appeal, as expected, but then, in a 3-1 vote, ordered its staff to go ahead and issue Private Fuel Storage a license to store up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in above-ground casks. "Our decision today concludes this protracted adjudication, which has generated more than 40 published board decisions and more than 30 published commission decisions," the commission wrote in its ruling. "The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff's separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that PFS's proposed (storage facility) can be constructed and operated safety."....
Levees Failed Nature Refuge Just as They Did Humans Of all the uneasy compromises New Orleans has presented nature, none was more generous than the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest urban wildernesses in the United States. But though this land east of the city was set aside in the 1980's as a 23,000-acre preserve, an offering to the wild in a place that also defied it, the marsh was enclosed by the same levees that guarded New Orleans, and so it was also vulnerable when they failed. Its ecosystem thrives on fresh water from rainfall, not on the brackish water of Lake Pontchartrain, which came pouring in. "It'll take years to recover," Dan Parker of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service said sadly on Friday, as he surveyed marsh grasses burned brown by salt. The green palmettos and other plants were doomed, he said. The water, the color of root beer, smelled of sewage and petroleum. Mr. Parker said that since the storm, he had not seen any of the wild hogs that used to roam the marsh. Yet he had also not seen one dead bird. Indeed, as leggy, starch-white egrets with a ruthless elegance stalked crawfish and as alligators vanished at the approach of Mr. Parker's airboat, the damage to Bayou Sauvage was far less obvious than the destruction to the human communities beside it....
Cricket watchers say caves may need expanded buffer After staying cooped up in a dark cave all day, crickets are willing to travel far and wide for a good meal. Cave crickets that share living quarters north of San Antonio with more than a dozen other creatures that have landed on the nation's endangered species list — spiders, beetles, psuedoscorpions and daddy long-legs — go twice as far as thought looking for food, according to a new study. And that, the scientist who tracked them says, could require that even more land be set aside to protect those endangered species. A team of researchers led by Steven Taylor, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that the little brown-and-white hoppers travel up to 350 feet from the cave entrance in their nightly search for food....
Column: Bushies Plan to Destroy our National Parks The Bush administration continues its subversive agenda to destroy life as we’ve known it. Although not quite as bad as directing Hurricane Kartrina to kill black people in New Orleans, an official in the National Park Service plots to destroy our national parks, according to New York Times editorial editors. Worse, they say, he wants to promote horrendous secular sins allowing the sale of “religious merchandise” and purging reference to evolution in our parks. Gasp! Just how far will these people go to destroy our history and way of life? Times editors recently uncovered a “secret draft revision” of Park Service policy “circulating within the Interior Department.” Which begs the question: what could be secret about a draft policy spread around in a public land agency? Anyway, this vile person, one Paul Hoffman a deputy assistant secretary, has no credibility with the editors. Mr. Hoffman ran a chamber of commerce office in Cody, Wyoming, he was a congressional aide to the feared and reviled Dick Cheney, and he’s not your basic Parkie; he’s had “no park service experience.” Goodness, how dare anyone suggest public land policy who hasn’t been a sidekick of Smoky Bear, or Ranger Rick? So, how does Mr. Hoffman propose to destroy our national parks? Well, he wants to open the parks for greater use and enjoyment by more people, and he would like to have more commercial services available to them; further, Hoffman’s secret rules would allow state and local officials more say in park management decisions. How out of touch can one be?....
USDA mandates tick inspections for Cameron County livestock Citing a recent spike in the number of fever tick cases in Cameron County, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture has mandated tick inspections for every head of cattle and every horse, mule and donkey in the county. The U.S. Department of Agriculture successfully eradicated disease-causing fever ticks from the United States in the 1930s. The tick, belonging to the genus Boophilus, is a scourge to ranchers because it is known to carry the babesiosis disease, which causes fever and death in infected animals. Unfortunately for Cameron County cattle and horse ranchers, Mexico never eradi-cated the fever tick. A permanent quarantine zone has been drawn up by USDA that extends up to U.S. Highway 281 in Cameron County and runs roughly 2 miles from the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico border, provides a buffer zone between the two nations where fever ticks still make it across the border on stray and smuggled cattle and horses and free-roaming wildlife such as deer....
When Roy, Trigger and Dale ruled the West Treasure is where you find it. Who would have thought that a thick book bristling with facts and written in the monotone, dry-as-dust style of a corporate annual report could turn out to be a delight? Of course, it helps that the subject matter is Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, entertainers themselves treasured by probably a majority of Americans over 50 and likely by a considerable number under that age, too. Even the most jaded of us can manage a smile at the happy reminiscence of decent, honorable Roy biffing -- but never, ever killing -- the bad guys with the assistance of loyal, plucky Dale. "King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West" contains almost everything the most ardent Roy and Dale fan might want to know about their professional careers. If it is not in the narrative history in the first one-fifth of the book, it is certainly in the minutely detailed filmography, discography, etc., that make up the remaining four-fifths. The numerous photos are a treat in themselves. (The cover price is rather steep, but the publisher promises a paperback edition will follow.) What readers won't find is much about the duo's personal lives, beyond the skeletal facts -- no examination of the dynamics, tensions and pressures in their domestic existence. Still, the facts alone have an allure....
Dodge City hosts celebration of 50th anniversary of Gunsmoke There were many Old West cowtowns in Kansas, but it was Gunsmoke with Marshal Dillon, Miss Kitty and all the assorted characters that made Dodge City the cowtown known around the world. This weekend, faithful fans flocked here to pay homage to Gunsmoke on the 50th anniversary of the start of its 20-year run on television. It lives on in reruns, so Matt Dillon never rides off into the sunset and Doc Adams still shuffles into the Long Branch to quaff a brew. "When we learned that nobody was doing anything for the 50th anniversary, we said 'That's crazy.' We said we're not going to let this pass," said Jim Johnson, president of the Dodge City Trail of Fame, which spearheaded the celebration. Set in frontier Dodge City of the late 1800s, Gunsmoke made people aware of the town's real Old West history, which included the likes of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Ranchito motto: Nada es facil - nothing is easy Bow yer neck and keep goin'. That has been the name of the game in farming and ranching since Noah planted the first row of corn. I've watched hard workin' folks push through, around, over and by obstacles, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, third down and ten. Get knocked down - git back up. Little things like runnin' out of staples two hours from the hardware store, or big things like floods, hurricanes, blizzards and Parkinson's disease. We all enjoy seeing fellow humans win the lotto, survive a wreck unscathed, or make a good bronc ride. But it is our resilience, our quiet courage, our persistence in the face of adversity that gets children raised, wars won, and lets good guys finish first now and then....
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Seizing livestock A property-rights group is claiming victory in the latest conflict between ranchers and federal land managers over livestock impoundments on Nevada's public lands. But so far, the feds have shown no sign of admitting defeat. The combative ranchers are welcoming a grand jury report and a new state law that orders federal land managers, for the first time, to obtain a court order before seized cattle changes hands. "The days of paramilitary cattle confiscations are over, I hope," said Ramona Morrison of the Nevada Live Stock Association, a states' rights group that largely disputes federal control of public lands. "I think everybody got their nose bloodied sufficiently and they won't want to do it again," she said. "The end result is BLM isn't confiscating cattle anymore." But the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 48 million acres in Nevada, continues to reiterate its authority under federal regulations to seize cattle administratively -- without a court order or any other judicial review -- after notice and warning requirements are exhausted. The BLM said its lawyers are reviewing the new state law....
Two Types of Sheep, One Woolly Dispute Where the timber ends and granite stands against the clouds, four Sierra Nevada bighorn rams freeze for an instant — noses facing the wind, horns curling from their heads, haunches taut. Then, silently, they vanish among the jagged crags and canyons between Yosemite and Mono Lake. About 15 miles to the north, domestic sheep rancher Fred Fulstone gamely hauls his legs up a steep hillside of bitterbrush and sage. Then, spelling his lungs, the 85-year-old stockman watches somberly as government workers fasten tracking collars to five ewes. The devices are supposed to prevent his sheep from straying off undetected and infecting bighorns with pneumonia. Since the 19th century, the bighorns and Sierra sheepmen have been symbols of the wild and free-ranging Western frontier. But today they are at odds, their fate intertwined in a costly, highly politicized battle over grazing rights on public lands. Fulstone's fight has become a focal point for bighorn-domestic sheep conflicts that sheep industry associations say could affect grazing of 125,000 animals in California, Nevada, Arizona and South Dakota....
State lauds ruling on access to old roads State officials are calling a ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals a victory for the rights of the public to access old road rights of way that cut through federal land in three counties. But one environmental group says the ruling will only throw things into confusion and lead to yet more lawsuits. In a ruling issued Thursday evening, the Denver-based Court of Appeals rejected the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's criteria for defining a road that a lower federal district judge used in her decision. Instead, three appellate judges, including former University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, chose the state's criteria, which makes it easier to designate road rights of way and could open up areas of federal land to public access. Among the BLM's criteria, a qualifying road must be established by "mechanical" construction. The state's criteria allows a right of way for roads that have been in continuous use for 10 years prior to 1976. "This case has been in litigation since 1996, when Kane, Garfield and San Juan counties were accused of trespass for performing maintenance on roads they asserted as their rights of way," said Assistant Utah Attorney General Ralph Finlayson. Calling the appellate ruling a major victory for counties and the state, Finlayson said many people who live in the Salt Lake area take easy access to places for granted. Finlayson said people who live near federal land rely on roads to access their cattle, their farms and each other. "These people absolutely need these roads for their livelihood and for their recreation," he said....
Rancher sent to prison A 69-year-old rancher and rodeo producer was sentenced to five months in federal prison for hiding wastewater leaks that contaminated soil. Michael Eugene Cervi of Roggen also was sentenced Friday to five months of home detention, a $30,000 fine and 50 hours of community service, which he must spend speaking to ranching and rodeo groups about his crime. He previously had pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. Cervi owns several ranches and two companies that provide horses and livestock for rodeos nationwide, as well as a business called Envirocycle, according to court documents. Envirocycle had a state permit to inject wastewater from oil drilling into a deep underground aquifer through a commercial injection well near La Salle, in Weld County. The well was found to be leaking contaminated fluids in March 2001, court documents said....
Mantua ranch owners sell development rights to conservation group for $3.72 million Owners of a Mantua ranch have united with conservationists to preserve some of the last remaining Columbian sharp-tailed grouse habitat in the state. The species has lost 96 percent of its Utah habitat, but thrives in the tall grass and sagebrush covering the 6,700-acre Selman Ranch near Mantua. The bird is listed as a "sensitive species" in need of conservation, as are the Northern goshawks and Bonneville cutthroat trout that inhabit the ranch's fields and streams, said Bill James, habitat section chief of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Nonprofit preservation group The Nature Conservancy plans to purchase the land's development rights for $3.72 million, said Amanda Smith, director of government relations for the organization's Utah chapter....
BLM wants to remove most horses near Muddy Gap Federal wild horse managers plan to remove most of the wild horse population near Whiskey Mountain west and southwest of Muddy Gap this fall. Roy Packer, range management specialist at the Lander Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management, said the roundup operation would be similar to one completed last year in the Antelope Hills area of the Red Desert. John Etchepare, director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, said management of wild horse herds is simply a matter of protecting the resources of the state. He said the wild horse population got away from the BLM for a variety of reasons, at a time when a multiyear drought was hammering the rangeland. Early in Gov. Dave Freudenthal's administration, the state sued the BLM, resulting in a mandate to reduce wild horse numbers....
Washoe Tribe asks Congress for Lake Tahoe shoreline access Two years ago, the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California was ecstatic when President Bush signed legislation preserving 24 acres of prime federal land for it on Lake Tahoe’s east shore. Now, the tribe wants help from Congress after making a discovery: The bill did not provide the shoreline access it had sought at Skunk Harbor north of upscale Glenbrook. Tribal leaders support legislation by Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign that would shift the boundary and provide about 300 feet of sandy beach. The bill would not increase the amount of the tribe’s land....
Seismic tests nixed for hunting Federal forest officials agreed to suspend seismic exploration for natural gas during hunting season in part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in southwestern Wyoming after environmental groups complained that seismic exploration had negative effects on game. In a letter Friday, Catherine L. Beatty, appeal reviewing officer for the U.S. Forest Service's Intermountain Region, told the National Wildlife Federation she would grant the organization's request for a stay of a previous Forest Service decision to allow seismic testing. Seismic exploration is to end today. "We're happy to see activity stopped as of Sept. 11," said Dave Gowdey, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, whose organization was one of many that appealed the Forest Service's decision to allow seismic exploration....
Logging is back on BLM lands Saws may again be buzzing on federal land set aside for northern spotted owls. As the result of an early August settlement of a lawsuit brought by timber interests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing to revise its land use plans for western Oregon where the owls live. Because the spotted owl perches in pines on BLM land managed by the Klamath Falls office, it too will revamp its plan. "There potentially could be a big shift back," said Don Hoffheins, environmental coordinator in the Klamath Falls office. Before the current plan, crafted under President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, went into effect in 1995, 1.2 billion board-feet of timber was taken from the forests. "It basically shut down logging completely in the 1990s," said Jon Raby, manager of the BLM's Klamath Falls office....
NRC ruling won't end fight over nuclear waste Utah officials say they are disappointed but not surprised that the Nuclear Regulation Commission ruled Friday to let a consortium of nuclear power utilities store nuclear waste on Goshute Tribal lands in Tooele County. "I think we gave up on the NRC a long time ago," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "We could see where they were headed." The timing of the ruling was more surprising. The NRC was set to rule Friday on the last in a long line of appeals by the state, this one over the issue of military over-flights by fighters using the Utah Test and Training Range. The NRC denied that appeal, as expected, but then, in a 3-1 vote, ordered its staff to go ahead and issue Private Fuel Storage a license to store up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in above-ground casks. "Our decision today concludes this protracted adjudication, which has generated more than 40 published board decisions and more than 30 published commission decisions," the commission wrote in its ruling. "The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff's separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that PFS's proposed (storage facility) can be constructed and operated safety."....
Levees Failed Nature Refuge Just as They Did Humans Of all the uneasy compromises New Orleans has presented nature, none was more generous than the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest urban wildernesses in the United States. But though this land east of the city was set aside in the 1980's as a 23,000-acre preserve, an offering to the wild in a place that also defied it, the marsh was enclosed by the same levees that guarded New Orleans, and so it was also vulnerable when they failed. Its ecosystem thrives on fresh water from rainfall, not on the brackish water of Lake Pontchartrain, which came pouring in. "It'll take years to recover," Dan Parker of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service said sadly on Friday, as he surveyed marsh grasses burned brown by salt. The green palmettos and other plants were doomed, he said. The water, the color of root beer, smelled of sewage and petroleum. Mr. Parker said that since the storm, he had not seen any of the wild hogs that used to roam the marsh. Yet he had also not seen one dead bird. Indeed, as leggy, starch-white egrets with a ruthless elegance stalked crawfish and as alligators vanished at the approach of Mr. Parker's airboat, the damage to Bayou Sauvage was far less obvious than the destruction to the human communities beside it....
Cricket watchers say caves may need expanded buffer After staying cooped up in a dark cave all day, crickets are willing to travel far and wide for a good meal. Cave crickets that share living quarters north of San Antonio with more than a dozen other creatures that have landed on the nation's endangered species list — spiders, beetles, psuedoscorpions and daddy long-legs — go twice as far as thought looking for food, according to a new study. And that, the scientist who tracked them says, could require that even more land be set aside to protect those endangered species. A team of researchers led by Steven Taylor, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that the little brown-and-white hoppers travel up to 350 feet from the cave entrance in their nightly search for food....
Column: Bushies Plan to Destroy our National Parks The Bush administration continues its subversive agenda to destroy life as we’ve known it. Although not quite as bad as directing Hurricane Kartrina to kill black people in New Orleans, an official in the National Park Service plots to destroy our national parks, according to New York Times editorial editors. Worse, they say, he wants to promote horrendous secular sins allowing the sale of “religious merchandise” and purging reference to evolution in our parks. Gasp! Just how far will these people go to destroy our history and way of life? Times editors recently uncovered a “secret draft revision” of Park Service policy “circulating within the Interior Department.” Which begs the question: what could be secret about a draft policy spread around in a public land agency? Anyway, this vile person, one Paul Hoffman a deputy assistant secretary, has no credibility with the editors. Mr. Hoffman ran a chamber of commerce office in Cody, Wyoming, he was a congressional aide to the feared and reviled Dick Cheney, and he’s not your basic Parkie; he’s had “no park service experience.” Goodness, how dare anyone suggest public land policy who hasn’t been a sidekick of Smoky Bear, or Ranger Rick? So, how does Mr. Hoffman propose to destroy our national parks? Well, he wants to open the parks for greater use and enjoyment by more people, and he would like to have more commercial services available to them; further, Hoffman’s secret rules would allow state and local officials more say in park management decisions. How out of touch can one be?....
USDA mandates tick inspections for Cameron County livestock Citing a recent spike in the number of fever tick cases in Cameron County, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture has mandated tick inspections for every head of cattle and every horse, mule and donkey in the county. The U.S. Department of Agriculture successfully eradicated disease-causing fever ticks from the United States in the 1930s. The tick, belonging to the genus Boophilus, is a scourge to ranchers because it is known to carry the babesiosis disease, which causes fever and death in infected animals. Unfortunately for Cameron County cattle and horse ranchers, Mexico never eradi-cated the fever tick. A permanent quarantine zone has been drawn up by USDA that extends up to U.S. Highway 281 in Cameron County and runs roughly 2 miles from the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico border, provides a buffer zone between the two nations where fever ticks still make it across the border on stray and smuggled cattle and horses and free-roaming wildlife such as deer....
When Roy, Trigger and Dale ruled the West Treasure is where you find it. Who would have thought that a thick book bristling with facts and written in the monotone, dry-as-dust style of a corporate annual report could turn out to be a delight? Of course, it helps that the subject matter is Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, entertainers themselves treasured by probably a majority of Americans over 50 and likely by a considerable number under that age, too. Even the most jaded of us can manage a smile at the happy reminiscence of decent, honorable Roy biffing -- but never, ever killing -- the bad guys with the assistance of loyal, plucky Dale. "King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West" contains almost everything the most ardent Roy and Dale fan might want to know about their professional careers. If it is not in the narrative history in the first one-fifth of the book, it is certainly in the minutely detailed filmography, discography, etc., that make up the remaining four-fifths. The numerous photos are a treat in themselves. (The cover price is rather steep, but the publisher promises a paperback edition will follow.) What readers won't find is much about the duo's personal lives, beyond the skeletal facts -- no examination of the dynamics, tensions and pressures in their domestic existence. Still, the facts alone have an allure....
Dodge City hosts celebration of 50th anniversary of Gunsmoke There were many Old West cowtowns in Kansas, but it was Gunsmoke with Marshal Dillon, Miss Kitty and all the assorted characters that made Dodge City the cowtown known around the world. This weekend, faithful fans flocked here to pay homage to Gunsmoke on the 50th anniversary of the start of its 20-year run on television. It lives on in reruns, so Matt Dillon never rides off into the sunset and Doc Adams still shuffles into the Long Branch to quaff a brew. "When we learned that nobody was doing anything for the 50th anniversary, we said 'That's crazy.' We said we're not going to let this pass," said Jim Johnson, president of the Dodge City Trail of Fame, which spearheaded the celebration. Set in frontier Dodge City of the late 1800s, Gunsmoke made people aware of the town's real Old West history, which included the likes of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Ranchito motto: Nada es facil - nothing is easy Bow yer neck and keep goin'. That has been the name of the game in farming and ranching since Noah planted the first row of corn. I've watched hard workin' folks push through, around, over and by obstacles, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, third down and ten. Get knocked down - git back up. Little things like runnin' out of staples two hours from the hardware store, or big things like floods, hurricanes, blizzards and Parkinson's disease. We all enjoy seeing fellow humans win the lotto, survive a wreck unscathed, or make a good bronc ride. But it is our resilience, our quiet courage, our persistence in the face of adversity that gets children raised, wars won, and lets good guys finish first now and then....
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Sunday, September 11, 2005
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Cowboys—packaged pride in what they do
By Julie Carter
Extreme weather is and always has been a noted feature offered up by the Texas panhandle.
There are more stories about the “extremes” of hot and cold in that area than there are cattle in the feedlots. It is not uncommon to have someone tell you about their kin that moved to Amarillo, Texas from Fairbanks, Alaska and promptly moved back to Fairbanks after declaring it was “too damn cold” in Amarillo.
Blizzards, both sand and snow are a common occurrence and you just about have to be from there to like it there. But the close proximity to feed and cattle keep the feed yards in business and the cowboys employed.
Men from the smaller backyard cattle growing region of the southeast will come in with a woods colt, an old saddle, and pointed-toe boots common to that region. With an excited attitude, they perceive this feedlot cowboy job to be an adventure.
The climate and severe working conditions of the feed yards can disillusion them in a hurry. They are able to go back home to a job and often do; resuming previously thought mundane careers of driving lumber or cattle trucks. Upon their return they will be able to talk about their time working in the big country and how cold and hard it was.
The homegrown panhandle ranch cowboys will have handmade tall top boots with several rows of stitching, under slung heels and round toes to prevent stirrup hang ups. They will bring handmade western working saddles which are traditional style double rigged and have a breast collar. Their saddles will wear anywhere from one to a dozen piggin’ strings (small ropes) hanging from them as well as hobbles and medicine bags.
Their custom spurs will have hinged buttons and their spur and headstall buckles will be rust colored with silver brands or initials. The spurs will sometimes bear cutting, roping or other type of special rowels reflecting the cowboy’s particular interest. Some will sport the pizza cutter rowels and jingle bobs that are usually to make noise to aggravate everybody else.
Panhandle punchers will, almost to a man, always wear black well worn hats. These make a statement as well as any words in the English language verbalized could by saying “I’m here now, move it on over.” For the most part, that is not brag-- just fact.
Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado cowboys all have variations in their style depending on the regions. The northern boys will have leggings for chaps instead of the short chinks worn by many from the hotter desert regions. New Mexico seems to favor the higher topped boots and other garb that lets them blend across the borders in any direction.
Then there are few idiosyncrasies in cowboy gear that each generation hopes will pass without becoming history. One of those currently is the “taco hat” which is a straw cowboy hat with an extremely wide brim folded up to resemble a taco shell. The style appeared to originate in the panhandle but has begun migrating west. Recently I heard it called the ‘No Mirror” hat, meaning if that cowboy had a mirror and saw how ridiculous he looked, he would take it off and stomp on it.
While the Texas panhandle cowboys will lay claim to be the punchiest bunch of punchers ever, the title will always be challenged by cowboys from everywhere. If a cowboy isn’t anything else, he is a walking talking package of pride in what he does-- no matter where he does it.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© Julie Carter 2005
Whose neighbor are you?
by Larry Gabriel
One of the best things about life in rural South Dakota is having great neighbors.
We hear about it in the news once in a while when farmers unite to harvest the crops or ranchers gather to work the cattle of a neighbor who is unable to do it. Those of us who live here know without a doubt that if some tragedy strikes our family, our neighbors will be there for us in droves (without any asking).
It's a heritage. We think little about it. We just do it. I wonder what would happen if we applied our good neighbor tradition to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
How many of our little towns have empty houses? More than few, I suspect.
If the owners of those houses were to donate the value of its use to a local church and a local church were to sponsor a hurricane refugee family, I suspect that being a good neighbor during this tragedy would benefit everyone.
The landlord could at least get a tax deduction if not rents. The small town would grow. The school would gain students. The church might gain members or at least supporters. But most importantly the rural community would grow.
When we promote rural development, we often try to entice some company to come to the community and create a job base on which the community will grow.
There is an alternative method. We could "build" the community to attract the company. We could encourage newcomers at every opportunity by doing nothing more than practicing on them our old tradition of being a good neighbor.
In some cases, we might find that hospitality works even better than traditional development plans.
Jobs are no problem when you are talking about a few newcomers at a time. Any three leaders of any community in this state can meet with a refugee family for an hour and come up with one or more jobs for them, if they put their minds to it.
I really can't think of any downside to doing such a thing. The potential benefits to our communities, our towns and our small schools make it worth doing as a good business decision.
Whether you are moralistic or not, if you live in rural America, you know from experience it always pays to be a good neighbor.
We have invited some of the victims here for temporary shelter, but a shelter is not a home in a community.
It takes a family to make a house into a home and good neighbors to make a place into a community.
Let's invite them to stay with us. It's the neighborly thing to do.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture.
I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner.
===
Cowboys—packaged pride in what they do
By Julie Carter
Extreme weather is and always has been a noted feature offered up by the Texas panhandle.
There are more stories about the “extremes” of hot and cold in that area than there are cattle in the feedlots. It is not uncommon to have someone tell you about their kin that moved to Amarillo, Texas from Fairbanks, Alaska and promptly moved back to Fairbanks after declaring it was “too damn cold” in Amarillo.
Blizzards, both sand and snow are a common occurrence and you just about have to be from there to like it there. But the close proximity to feed and cattle keep the feed yards in business and the cowboys employed.
Men from the smaller backyard cattle growing region of the southeast will come in with a woods colt, an old saddle, and pointed-toe boots common to that region. With an excited attitude, they perceive this feedlot cowboy job to be an adventure.
The climate and severe working conditions of the feed yards can disillusion them in a hurry. They are able to go back home to a job and often do; resuming previously thought mundane careers of driving lumber or cattle trucks. Upon their return they will be able to talk about their time working in the big country and how cold and hard it was.
The homegrown panhandle ranch cowboys will have handmade tall top boots with several rows of stitching, under slung heels and round toes to prevent stirrup hang ups. They will bring handmade western working saddles which are traditional style double rigged and have a breast collar. Their saddles will wear anywhere from one to a dozen piggin’ strings (small ropes) hanging from them as well as hobbles and medicine bags.
Their custom spurs will have hinged buttons and their spur and headstall buckles will be rust colored with silver brands or initials. The spurs will sometimes bear cutting, roping or other type of special rowels reflecting the cowboy’s particular interest. Some will sport the pizza cutter rowels and jingle bobs that are usually to make noise to aggravate everybody else.
Panhandle punchers will, almost to a man, always wear black well worn hats. These make a statement as well as any words in the English language verbalized could by saying “I’m here now, move it on over.” For the most part, that is not brag-- just fact.
Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado cowboys all have variations in their style depending on the regions. The northern boys will have leggings for chaps instead of the short chinks worn by many from the hotter desert regions. New Mexico seems to favor the higher topped boots and other garb that lets them blend across the borders in any direction.
Then there are few idiosyncrasies in cowboy gear that each generation hopes will pass without becoming history. One of those currently is the “taco hat” which is a straw cowboy hat with an extremely wide brim folded up to resemble a taco shell. The style appeared to originate in the panhandle but has begun migrating west. Recently I heard it called the ‘No Mirror” hat, meaning if that cowboy had a mirror and saw how ridiculous he looked, he would take it off and stomp on it.
While the Texas panhandle cowboys will lay claim to be the punchiest bunch of punchers ever, the title will always be challenged by cowboys from everywhere. If a cowboy isn’t anything else, he is a walking talking package of pride in what he does-- no matter where he does it.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net
© Julie Carter 2005
Whose neighbor are you?
by Larry Gabriel
One of the best things about life in rural South Dakota is having great neighbors.
We hear about it in the news once in a while when farmers unite to harvest the crops or ranchers gather to work the cattle of a neighbor who is unable to do it. Those of us who live here know without a doubt that if some tragedy strikes our family, our neighbors will be there for us in droves (without any asking).
It's a heritage. We think little about it. We just do it. I wonder what would happen if we applied our good neighbor tradition to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
How many of our little towns have empty houses? More than few, I suspect.
If the owners of those houses were to donate the value of its use to a local church and a local church were to sponsor a hurricane refugee family, I suspect that being a good neighbor during this tragedy would benefit everyone.
The landlord could at least get a tax deduction if not rents. The small town would grow. The school would gain students. The church might gain members or at least supporters. But most importantly the rural community would grow.
When we promote rural development, we often try to entice some company to come to the community and create a job base on which the community will grow.
There is an alternative method. We could "build" the community to attract the company. We could encourage newcomers at every opportunity by doing nothing more than practicing on them our old tradition of being a good neighbor.
In some cases, we might find that hospitality works even better than traditional development plans.
Jobs are no problem when you are talking about a few newcomers at a time. Any three leaders of any community in this state can meet with a refugee family for an hour and come up with one or more jobs for them, if they put their minds to it.
I really can't think of any downside to doing such a thing. The potential benefits to our communities, our towns and our small schools make it worth doing as a good business decision.
Whether you are moralistic or not, if you live in rural America, you know from experience it always pays to be a good neighbor.
We have invited some of the victims here for temporary shelter, but a shelter is not a home in a community.
It takes a family to make a house into a home and good neighbors to make a place into a community.
Let's invite them to stay with us. It's the neighborly thing to do.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture.
I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner.
===
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Greens vs. Levees
With all that has happened in the state, it’s understandable that the Louisiana chapter of the Sierra Club may not have updated its website. But when its members get around to it, they may want to change the wording of one item in particular. The site brags that the group is “working to keep the Atchafalaya Basin,” which adjoins the Mississippi River not far from New Orleans, “wet and wild.” These words may seem especially inappropriate after the breaking of the levee that caused the tragic events in New Orleans last week. But “wet and wild” has a larger significance in light of those events, and so does the group using the phrase. The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees. The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because “a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all.” But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at “the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands.” The lawsuit stated, “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley.” In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations. The lawsuit was settled in 1997 with the Corps agreeing to hold off on some work while doing an additional two-year environmental impact study. Whether this delay directly affected the levees that broke in New Orleans is difficult to ascertain. But it is just one illustration of a destructive river-management philosophy that took hold in the ‘90s, influenced the Clinton administration, and had serious policy consequences. Put simply, it’s impossible to understand the delays in building levees without being aware of the opposition of the environmental groups to dams, levees, and anything that interfered with the “natural” river flow. The group American Rivers, which leads coalitions of eco-groups on river policy, has for years actually called its campaign, “Rivers Unplugged.” Over the past few years, levees came to occupy the same status for environmental groups as roads in forests — an artificial barrier to nature. They frequently campaigned against levees being built and shored up on the nation’s rivers, including on the Mississippi....
Turning Science Into Hot Air
With America's eyes fixed on Hurricane Katrina's destructive force, we naturally look for an explanation or a cause. Eyes in times past would have roved upward to the heavens; now they fix themselves firmly on science, eager to hear explanations of a link between global warming and impressive natural disasters. There are many out there ready to indulge this notion and use a terrible calamity to further their own political ends. They glibly contend hurricanes are exactly the sort of result we can expect if we keep contributing to global warming and that New Orleans has reaped the fruit of our irresponsibility. Yet there is much evidence this is all just hot air. The alarmists notably fail to cite the cyclical nature of hurricane behavior. From the late 1920s to the 1960s there was high hurricane activity. If global warming is to blame for more hurricanes now, what caused the last cycle? As leading hurricane scientist William Gray argues, North Atlantic surface temperatures vary naturally. They were cool from the 1970s to the 1990s, but warm during the last period of intense hurricane activity from the late '20s to the 1960s. He says, "Instead of seeing a long-term trend up or down, we do see a quasicyclic multidecade regime that alternates between active and quiet phases for major Atlantic hurricanes on the scale of 25-40 years each." The global warming-hurricane theory is flawed; Mr. Emanuel and others have tracked the buildup of a natural cycle, not discovered a linear trend. It is apparent the intuitive ideas forwarded by the likes of Mr. Emanuel inevitably result from classic "cherry picking" science. Given that patterns in hurricanes seem driven by 20-40 year cycles, to draw solid conclusions from a period that began in the 1970s and neglect prior natural patterns is a bit like staying up from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and finding there is a trend the Earth is getting brighter....
Gang Green: CRC lists the worst environmental groups
1 Rainforest Action Network The Rainforest Action Network’s current targets include Ford Motor Company and Wells Fargo. In its Jumpstart Ford campaign, RAN makes ridiculous demands of asking Ford to increase its fuel economy to 50 mpg by 2010 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2020. Thus far, Ford has tried to appease RAN by meeting with the to “better understand their perspective” (page 10 of the Corporate Citizenship Report). Problem is, RAN understands one thing: capitulation to its demands.
2 Greenpeace Fund Greenpeace’s current campaign is called “Project Thin Ice 2005.” The campaign involves the Greenpeace ship Artic Sunrise to scare people into believing that “Global Warming is real.” The ship is currently touring the ice sheet in Greenland, no doubt looking for lots of “scientific evidence.” “Ten per cent of the world’s fresh water is locked up in the Greenland ice cap, and if global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels continues unchecked, the entire ice sheet is in danger of melting.” The Greenpeace website warns. “Should that come to pass, then sea level around the world will increase by 23 feet (7 meters), inundating low lying cities in the U.S., the entire nation of Bangladesh, and many Pacific island nations.” However, as Patrick Michaels of the CATO Institute points out, that scenario is based on junk science....
Hurricanes Aren’t Caused by Global Warming but Political Hot Air Is
At the 27th annual National Hurricane Conference University of Colorado atmospheric scientist, Dr. William Gray, explained that nature is responsible for hurricane cycles, not humans. Periodically changing ocean circulation patterns, he explained, led to the cycle of increasing hurricane activity that the world is currently experiencing. 2004’s above average hurricane season was part of a completely natural and normal cycle that scientists have monitored for more than 100 years. In fact, for about the past 25 years there has been a relative lull in hurricane activity in the U.S. We have recently begun to emerge from that cycle into a more active cycle of hurricane activity like those from the 1930s through 1950s. Indeed, according to the National Hurricane Center, category 3,4 and 5 hurricane numbers peaked in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s with an average of 9 per decade. In the 1940’s alone, 23 hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland, 8 were category-3 or stronger storms. By contrast, since the 1980s when environmentalists first began to argue that humans were causing catastrophic climate change, the number of category 3 or higher hurricanes have averaged 5 per decade. Recently, a paper by six noted tropical cyclone experts, Hurricanes and Global Warming, in the the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, made three main points. First, that no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes. Second, the scientific consensus is that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small and within the context of observed natural variability. And third, the politics of linking hurricanes to global warming threatens to undermine support for legitimate climate research and could result in ineffective hurricane policies....
Strategic reserves -- no strategy
Hurricane Katrina slashed U.S. oil production by 1.4 million barrels a day -- the global equivalent of suddenly losing two-thirds of all oil produced by Iraq or Kuwait. "President George W. Bush has responded quickly to Hurricane Katrina," said a Bloomberg report, "suggesting that Hurricane Ivan last year taught him a lesson about opening up the reserve." Energy Secretary Bodman announced he had "approved a request for a loan of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" and "continues to review other requests as they come in.'' That announcement should have been made by the president at least a week before the hurricane actually hit. He should have said, "The United States stands ready to replace all oil production loss resulting from the hurricane for as long as necessary." If that had happened, oil would now be at least $10 a barrel cheaper than it is. Since 1991, however, it has always been safe for traders to bet against the SPR being used in such a serious way. The new SPR loans did arrive a few days sooner than the expensive11-day lag following Hurricane Ivan. But a loan is just a loan. To loan oil from the SPR (rather than sell it) does not add a drop to world oil supply over the medium term. On the contrary, it ultimately reduces world oil supply because those who borrow oil have to return more than they borrowed, as interest....
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Greens vs. Levees
With all that has happened in the state, it’s understandable that the Louisiana chapter of the Sierra Club may not have updated its website. But when its members get around to it, they may want to change the wording of one item in particular. The site brags that the group is “working to keep the Atchafalaya Basin,” which adjoins the Mississippi River not far from New Orleans, “wet and wild.” These words may seem especially inappropriate after the breaking of the levee that caused the tragic events in New Orleans last week. But “wet and wild” has a larger significance in light of those events, and so does the group using the phrase. The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees. The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because “a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all.” But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at “the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands.” The lawsuit stated, “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley.” In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations. The lawsuit was settled in 1997 with the Corps agreeing to hold off on some work while doing an additional two-year environmental impact study. Whether this delay directly affected the levees that broke in New Orleans is difficult to ascertain. But it is just one illustration of a destructive river-management philosophy that took hold in the ‘90s, influenced the Clinton administration, and had serious policy consequences. Put simply, it’s impossible to understand the delays in building levees without being aware of the opposition of the environmental groups to dams, levees, and anything that interfered with the “natural” river flow. The group American Rivers, which leads coalitions of eco-groups on river policy, has for years actually called its campaign, “Rivers Unplugged.” Over the past few years, levees came to occupy the same status for environmental groups as roads in forests — an artificial barrier to nature. They frequently campaigned against levees being built and shored up on the nation’s rivers, including on the Mississippi....
Turning Science Into Hot Air
With America's eyes fixed on Hurricane Katrina's destructive force, we naturally look for an explanation or a cause. Eyes in times past would have roved upward to the heavens; now they fix themselves firmly on science, eager to hear explanations of a link between global warming and impressive natural disasters. There are many out there ready to indulge this notion and use a terrible calamity to further their own political ends. They glibly contend hurricanes are exactly the sort of result we can expect if we keep contributing to global warming and that New Orleans has reaped the fruit of our irresponsibility. Yet there is much evidence this is all just hot air. The alarmists notably fail to cite the cyclical nature of hurricane behavior. From the late 1920s to the 1960s there was high hurricane activity. If global warming is to blame for more hurricanes now, what caused the last cycle? As leading hurricane scientist William Gray argues, North Atlantic surface temperatures vary naturally. They were cool from the 1970s to the 1990s, but warm during the last period of intense hurricane activity from the late '20s to the 1960s. He says, "Instead of seeing a long-term trend up or down, we do see a quasicyclic multidecade regime that alternates between active and quiet phases for major Atlantic hurricanes on the scale of 25-40 years each." The global warming-hurricane theory is flawed; Mr. Emanuel and others have tracked the buildup of a natural cycle, not discovered a linear trend. It is apparent the intuitive ideas forwarded by the likes of Mr. Emanuel inevitably result from classic "cherry picking" science. Given that patterns in hurricanes seem driven by 20-40 year cycles, to draw solid conclusions from a period that began in the 1970s and neglect prior natural patterns is a bit like staying up from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and finding there is a trend the Earth is getting brighter....
Gang Green: CRC lists the worst environmental groups
1 Rainforest Action Network The Rainforest Action Network’s current targets include Ford Motor Company and Wells Fargo. In its Jumpstart Ford campaign, RAN makes ridiculous demands of asking Ford to increase its fuel economy to 50 mpg by 2010 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2020. Thus far, Ford has tried to appease RAN by meeting with the to “better understand their perspective” (page 10 of the Corporate Citizenship Report). Problem is, RAN understands one thing: capitulation to its demands.
2 Greenpeace Fund Greenpeace’s current campaign is called “Project Thin Ice 2005.” The campaign involves the Greenpeace ship Artic Sunrise to scare people into believing that “Global Warming is real.” The ship is currently touring the ice sheet in Greenland, no doubt looking for lots of “scientific evidence.” “Ten per cent of the world’s fresh water is locked up in the Greenland ice cap, and if global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels continues unchecked, the entire ice sheet is in danger of melting.” The Greenpeace website warns. “Should that come to pass, then sea level around the world will increase by 23 feet (7 meters), inundating low lying cities in the U.S., the entire nation of Bangladesh, and many Pacific island nations.” However, as Patrick Michaels of the CATO Institute points out, that scenario is based on junk science....
Hurricanes Aren’t Caused by Global Warming but Political Hot Air Is
At the 27th annual National Hurricane Conference University of Colorado atmospheric scientist, Dr. William Gray, explained that nature is responsible for hurricane cycles, not humans. Periodically changing ocean circulation patterns, he explained, led to the cycle of increasing hurricane activity that the world is currently experiencing. 2004’s above average hurricane season was part of a completely natural and normal cycle that scientists have monitored for more than 100 years. In fact, for about the past 25 years there has been a relative lull in hurricane activity in the U.S. We have recently begun to emerge from that cycle into a more active cycle of hurricane activity like those from the 1930s through 1950s. Indeed, according to the National Hurricane Center, category 3,4 and 5 hurricane numbers peaked in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s with an average of 9 per decade. In the 1940’s alone, 23 hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland, 8 were category-3 or stronger storms. By contrast, since the 1980s when environmentalists first began to argue that humans were causing catastrophic climate change, the number of category 3 or higher hurricanes have averaged 5 per decade. Recently, a paper by six noted tropical cyclone experts, Hurricanes and Global Warming, in the the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, made three main points. First, that no connection has been established between greenhouse gas emissions and the observed behavior of hurricanes. Second, the scientific consensus is that any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small and within the context of observed natural variability. And third, the politics of linking hurricanes to global warming threatens to undermine support for legitimate climate research and could result in ineffective hurricane policies....
Strategic reserves -- no strategy
Hurricane Katrina slashed U.S. oil production by 1.4 million barrels a day -- the global equivalent of suddenly losing two-thirds of all oil produced by Iraq or Kuwait. "President George W. Bush has responded quickly to Hurricane Katrina," said a Bloomberg report, "suggesting that Hurricane Ivan last year taught him a lesson about opening up the reserve." Energy Secretary Bodman announced he had "approved a request for a loan of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" and "continues to review other requests as they come in.'' That announcement should have been made by the president at least a week before the hurricane actually hit. He should have said, "The United States stands ready to replace all oil production loss resulting from the hurricane for as long as necessary." If that had happened, oil would now be at least $10 a barrel cheaper than it is. Since 1991, however, it has always been safe for traders to bet against the SPR being used in such a serious way. The new SPR loans did arrive a few days sooner than the expensive11-day lag following Hurricane Ivan. But a loan is just a loan. To loan oil from the SPR (rather than sell it) does not add a drop to world oil supply over the medium term. On the contrary, it ultimately reduces world oil supply because those who borrow oil have to return more than they borrowed, as interest....
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Friday, September 09, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Survivor of Glacier grizzly attack describes his experience Johan Otter said he could feel the grizzly bite his head and tear off his scalp — but his greatest concern was for his 18-year-old daughter. The 44-year-old Escondido, Calif., physical therapist had been hiking with his daughter, Jenna, last month in Glacier National Park in Montana when he was attacked by a grizzly bear trying to protect her cubs. Otter understood that impulse. "Don't get to my daughter. Just stay with me,'' he recalls thinking during the Aug. 25 attack. And indeed Jenna suffered just a bite on the heel, along with a shoulder injury and some facial lacerations. By the time Otter arrived at Harborview Medical Center here about 10 hours later, his scalp was gone and his skull exposed. Among the injuries from his five-minute-long attack: five fractured vertebrae, three broken ribs, a fractured eye socket, five major bites throughout his body, and a broken nose, doctors said....
Montana approves bison hunt Montana's wildlife commission gave final approval Thursday to a plan that will allow hunters to kill up to 50 bison that leave Yellowstone National Park and enter Montana. It will be the first such hunt of bison in Montana in 15 years. The state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission approved hunting over a three-month period, beginning Nov. 15, and agreed to require that hunters undergo a training course to prepare them for killing one of the animals and possible encounters with protesters and the media, among other things. Two commissioners deemed the requirement offensive or unnecessary - Victor Workman of Whitefish called it "unreasonable, uncalled for and unwarranted" - but others saw it as key to ensuring the long-term viability of the controversial hunt. "I want this hunt to be a success," chairman Steve Doherty said, adding that the mandatory orientation should not only increase the likelihood of that but also show respect both for the bison and the state's hunting tradition....
Forest Service Plan Would Speed Drilling The U.S. Forest Service will propose regulations to shorten the environmental reviews of small oil-drilling projects in national grasslands, an Agriculture Department official said Friday. The proposal would affect grasslands covering about 4 million acres in a dozen states in the Great Plains and West. Oil exploration is off limits in some areas of the national grasslands, but where drilling is allowed, a required environmental assessment takes a minimum of six months. North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven complained some of the reviews were taking three times that long, delaying projects that could help the economy. Mark Rey, a USDA undersecretary, outlined a proposal Friday to allow some small projects to undergo two-month reviews instead....
Forest Service will review grazing policy book, official says A handbook detailing U.S. Forest Service policies for allowing cattle grazing on national grasslands will be reviewed cover to cover, rather than singling out two new chapters to which ranchers objected, a top official said. The chapters were recently changed to say that ranchers who lease grazing property in national grasslands shouldn't get grazing permits that come with the land. The changes were suspended after they prompted widespread complaints. Mark Rey, a U.S. Agriculture Department undersecretary, said Friday the entire book will be open to public comment for 60 days. Rey said the comment period is likely to begin next week. "It will not surprise you to know that sometimes the government screws things up. It may, however, be refreshing to hear somebody in government say that," Rey said at a news conference with Gov. John Hoeven on Friday....
Pot growers engage hunters in shootout Bear hunters and at least three Mexican nationals overseeing a marijuana garden exchanged gunfire after the hunters accidentally stumbled upon the illegal pot fields. Undercover Gila County Narcotics Task Force agents, who asked not to be identified, said the incident began about noon Friday, Sept. 2 with a 911 call from the hunters. In interviews with the Queen Creek hunters, agents learned the four were scouting for bear southwest of Payson on the Cross F Ranch. "One of (the hunters) was in Deer Creek canyon and came across some clothes, and plants that appeared to be marijuana," the GCNTF agent said. "Minutes later, he found himself face-to-face with one of the suspected growers he has identified as a Mexican national."....
Cougar is culprit in horse's death When a man found his 1,200-pound Arabian horse dead in a Jackson County field last week, he thought it had been shot. There were two punctures in its neck like a vampire bite and gashes that looked like knife wounds. County animal control officer Machele Dunlap showed up and did a careful examination of the horse. No bullets were inside it, and she realized that only one wild animal in Michigan could have done that kind of damage. "It was a cougar," Dunlap said of the wild cat that weighs 100-200 pounds and is also called a mountain lion or puma. "We've had a number of people call in to report cougar sightings, and I have to admit that we were skeptical, because whenever we'd go out to investigate, we couldn't find anything. But there's really no question on this one." Pat Rusz, the research biologist for the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy in Bath, said a necropsy on the horse and a clear track proved it was killed by a cougar....
Wolf advocates pressing for animals' return Wolf advocates say they are not willing to wait 100 years for the animals to return to Colorado on their own and will begin pushing the state to find a way to bring them back. They want the state Division of Wildlife to develop a wolf recovery plan similar to the one the division embarked on six years ago with the Canada lynx. The state's Wolf Management Working Group - made up of ranchers, environmentalists, sportsmen, biologists and government officials - is equipped to shape a wolf plan representing all sides of the issue, say supporters of reintroduction. Rob Edward, of Sinapu, a Boulder-based group that advocates reintroduction of wolves, and a member of the state working group, said the panel provides an ideal forum to address the conflicting views on the wolf - a romantic symbol of the West's wildness to some and a scourge to livestock to others. The group agreed in January that wolves would be tolerated in Colorado if they naturally wander in from adjacent states - as long as they don't kill livestock or cause major trouble....
Mining plans worry bull trout watchers The farther north Canadian coal mining proposals reach - that is, the more distant they become from the Montana border - the more Clint Muhlfeld worries. "We know that our bull trout use the upper portion of the watershed," Muhlfeld said. "It's critical habitat, and the higher these proposals reach into those headwaters, the greater the impact on a fish that's already on the brink of extinction." Muhlfeld is a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks; south of the border, his job is to protect and recover endangered bull trout. But north of the border, where many of those bull trout spawn and rear and migrate seasonally, the waterways they call home flow over deposits of gold, coal, oil and gas, rich resources British Columbia's government is keen to develop....
Allard spearheads effort to revamp Endangered Species Act Efforts made in western Colorado to preserve endangered species could be used as a model to revamp the Endangered Species Act. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., is one of three senators, including Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mike Crapo of Idaho, who have formed a working group studying the act and how it might be improved. Allard said he is looking at cooperative efforts to rescue four endangered fish species from the Colorado River, as well as private and public work to help the greater sage grouse, as prototypes for other recovery efforts, such as the one for the Gunnison sage grouse. Part of the goal is to emphasize recovery over mere conservation of species deemed to be threatened or endangered, Allard said in a telephone interview Friday....
Editorial: Endangered Species: A law that works There can be no slacking. America must continue saving endangered and threatened species. Despite the claims of Republican congressional leaders, the Bush administration and property rights activists, the country has no need to modernize the Endangered Species Act. Likewise, there's absolutely no need to streamline the law, simplify it or drastically revise it. To be sure, none of those ideas are completely lacking in merit. But they aren't valid starting points for any revisions to the act. The one requirement is to maintain an effective deterrent to those in business, industry and government who plunder the environment. In the Northwest, that means, among other things, salmon protection, saving old-growth trees and keeping the orca population of Puget Sound viable. As President Bush likes to say in many contexts, it is important to set clear expectations. In this country, we don't kill off species. Period....
Water users back ESA reform Draft legislation to reform the Endangered Species Act is getting strong support from Idaho’s leading water group. ESA reform is badly needed and could come up for a vote in Congress this month, said Norm Semanko, executive director of the Idaho Water Users Association. The ESA’s poor record alone is an indication that it needs to be changed, said Semanko, who is running for a seat in Congress next year as a Republican from Idaho’s 1st Congressional District. The Idaho Cattle Association is also behind the latest attempt to amend the ESA. “Idaho ranchers understand the need to reform the ESA as they struggle with requests for new listings, and as they fight to protect their private property from wolves – a predator that was ‘reintroduced’ to the region and has reproduced in great numbers since that time,” ICA executive director Lloyd Knight said in a recent newsletter....
BLM rethinks forestry plan for Northwest Forest activists and timber companies are excited about a Bureau of Land Management initiative that may - or may not - spur logging in Southwest Oregon. The BLM may drop 1.6 million acres of reserves from 2.6 million acres of forest land as part of a re-evaluation of its land management plans sparked by the settlement of a timber industry lawsuit. The settlement requires the BLM to find at least one way it can allow harvesting on all the land under its control and still meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, BLM spokesman Alan Hoffmeister said. The new plan will take BLM land out from under the Northwest Forest Plan, the document that laid out how forests should be managed - cut and preserved - in the range of the endangered spotted owl, which spans Western Washington, Western Oregon and Northern California. The process creates the potential for protests and counter-protests of a fury unseen since the establishment of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994....
Resort exonerated in avalanche death Results of a U.S. Forest Service-led investigation released Friday exonerated the Arapahoe Basin Ski area in the first avalanche death in 30 years within the boundaries of a ski area and called for more research into so-called wet slab avalanches. The ski area ``fulfilled the spirit and intent'' of their snow safety plan and their special use permit, said Doug Abromeit, director of the Forest Service's National Avalance Center and a member of the team that investigted the death of David Conway, 53, of Boulder. The team's report described how warm weather led to the 150-foot-wide and 1,362-feet long slide on a 25-to 30-degree expert slope 11,700 feet high....
BIO Statement on NYSE Response to Animal Rights Extremists The Hon. James C. Greenwood, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), released the following statement regarding the recent decision to postpone the listing of Life Sciences Research (Huntingdon Life Science) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): "I am dismayed that biomedical research has taken a backseat to the pressure tactics of animal rights extremists. Ethical animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century -- for both human and animal health. This research is invaluable in the development of life-extending treatments for people, as wells as cats, dogs, farm animals, wildlife and endangered species. "The ability to conduct humane and responsible animal-based research must be preserved to help conquer disease, alleviate suffering, and improve the quality of life. Biotechnology companies have depended on this research to develop more than 200 drugs and vaccines approved by FDA, helping 325 million people worldwide and preventing incalculable human suffering....
Column: California's Congressional Pests Often I find merit in the quip that we are, indeed, a two-party system -- the Stupid One (Republican) and the Evil One (Democratic). Recently, however, the overwhelmingly Democratic California congressional delegation seems to be poaching on the Republicans' turf. The issue is a somewhat arcane one: the use of human volunteers to test certain pesticides before they are introduced to the marketplace. Government regulators and public health experts around the globe, along with myriad scientific bodies, support the qualified use of human clinical studies in the approval process for pesticides. However, several scientifically challenged members of California's congressional delegation have intervened to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from considering these tests in its evaluation process -- even if the results have already been obtained. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Hilda Solis (D-CA) crafted an amendment to the EPA's appropriations bill that seeks a one-year moratorium on EPA's use of data from human studies. During Senate consideration of the bill, Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), who represents common-sense farmers and ranchers, sponsored a conflicting amendment that would have mandated EPA to review all human studies under consideration to be certain they had been conducted safely and ethically. During the conference committee on the appropriations bill, a compromise was reached that would prohibit EPA from proceeding with human studies until the agency produces a final regulation on this issue....
Katrina fuels global warming storm Hurricane Katrina has spurred debate about global warming worldwide with some environmentalists sniping at President George W. Bush for pulling out of the main U.N. plan for braking climate change. Experts agree it is impossible to say any one storm is caused by rising temperatures. Numbers of tropical cyclones like hurricanes worldwide are stable at about 90 a year although recent U.S. research shows they may be becoming more intense. Still, the European Commission, the World Bank, some environmentalists, Australia's Greens and even Sweden's king said the disaster, feared to have killed thousands of people in the United States, could be a portent of worse to come. "As climate change is happening, we know that the frequency of these disasters will increase as well as the scope," European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich said....
Fremont elk rancher forced to slaughter herd Fremont County elk rancher Ron Walker watched his nine-year-old business fade away. The US Department of Agriculture is slaughtering over 300 of Walker's elk. That's because last year an elk born at his breeding ranch near Penrose, tested postive for chronic wasting disease-- a fatal neurological disease found in deer and elk. The only way to test other animals for the disease... is to kill them first. But Jim Miller, policy director for Colorado's AG department, says the USDA must destory the domestic herd in case any of them have it. Walker points out that chronic wasting disease has been around for years and no one knows how it spreads. It appears to have little, if any, effect on the elk population of Colorado. In fact, the Division of Wildlife is reportedly trying to reduce the statewide elk population by 25-thousand animals. Walker says, "So killing all my elk does nothing to save wildlife. if it did i would agree with that." Regardless, Walker's herd will be sedated and then euthanized....
Writing a new breed of novel Sheep rancher Heather Sharfeddin not only raises a rare breed of sheep, she may have just achieved a literary first – a new genre of novel. Heather is a talented writer. Her first novel is to be released by Bridge Works Publishing Co. of Bridgehampton, N.Y., on Oct. 1 and will sell for $21.95. The title? Ah, once a sheep rancher always a sheep rancher. She branded her novel “Blackbelly,” the name of the rare breed of sheep she and her husband, Salem, raise on their ranch in Sherwood, Ore. Actually, the action in the novel occurs not in Oregon, but in a fictional town in Idaho called Sweetwater. “I spent a large part of my childhood on the Salmon River in Idaho,” she said. “Sweetwater is a town of my imagination, but I don’t have to stop and think about the precise sound of thunder in the hills, the smell of alfalfa hay or the taste of well water. Those elements of Idaho are imprinted in me and come out in the writing without much deliberate thought.” The plot involves Chas McPherson, a loner Blackbelly sheep rancher, in this rural Idaho town who is accused of burning out a neighboring Muslim family after 9/11. From the first accusation to the surprising ending, Heather holds her reader on a tight tether of suspense. Why do I think she’s achieved a literary first? Neither her agent nor her publisher could exactly peg the genre for this book. Heather didn’t like the suggestions they came up with, so she picked her own genre – Contemporary Western....
True cowboy poet The true poet is a person who is compelled to write poetry regardless of commercial prospects, skittishness of talent or contradiction of cosmic logic. Baxter Black is a true poet. He wrote poetry long before anybody knew he did such a thing, and he will write it long after everyone else has had just about enough. In addition, Baxter Black is a true cowboy poet. The cowboy poet seems too romantic a notion to be true: the cattle driver composing sonnets by campfire. But Black, a large-animal veterinarian who long ago left behind active practice for the uncertainties of show biz, realized when he first read his pastoral poems to farmers and cattlemen that these stoical men craved such encapsulations of their experience....
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Survivor of Glacier grizzly attack describes his experience Johan Otter said he could feel the grizzly bite his head and tear off his scalp — but his greatest concern was for his 18-year-old daughter. The 44-year-old Escondido, Calif., physical therapist had been hiking with his daughter, Jenna, last month in Glacier National Park in Montana when he was attacked by a grizzly bear trying to protect her cubs. Otter understood that impulse. "Don't get to my daughter. Just stay with me,'' he recalls thinking during the Aug. 25 attack. And indeed Jenna suffered just a bite on the heel, along with a shoulder injury and some facial lacerations. By the time Otter arrived at Harborview Medical Center here about 10 hours later, his scalp was gone and his skull exposed. Among the injuries from his five-minute-long attack: five fractured vertebrae, three broken ribs, a fractured eye socket, five major bites throughout his body, and a broken nose, doctors said....
Montana approves bison hunt Montana's wildlife commission gave final approval Thursday to a plan that will allow hunters to kill up to 50 bison that leave Yellowstone National Park and enter Montana. It will be the first such hunt of bison in Montana in 15 years. The state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission approved hunting over a three-month period, beginning Nov. 15, and agreed to require that hunters undergo a training course to prepare them for killing one of the animals and possible encounters with protesters and the media, among other things. Two commissioners deemed the requirement offensive or unnecessary - Victor Workman of Whitefish called it "unreasonable, uncalled for and unwarranted" - but others saw it as key to ensuring the long-term viability of the controversial hunt. "I want this hunt to be a success," chairman Steve Doherty said, adding that the mandatory orientation should not only increase the likelihood of that but also show respect both for the bison and the state's hunting tradition....
Forest Service Plan Would Speed Drilling The U.S. Forest Service will propose regulations to shorten the environmental reviews of small oil-drilling projects in national grasslands, an Agriculture Department official said Friday. The proposal would affect grasslands covering about 4 million acres in a dozen states in the Great Plains and West. Oil exploration is off limits in some areas of the national grasslands, but where drilling is allowed, a required environmental assessment takes a minimum of six months. North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven complained some of the reviews were taking three times that long, delaying projects that could help the economy. Mark Rey, a USDA undersecretary, outlined a proposal Friday to allow some small projects to undergo two-month reviews instead....
Forest Service will review grazing policy book, official says A handbook detailing U.S. Forest Service policies for allowing cattle grazing on national grasslands will be reviewed cover to cover, rather than singling out two new chapters to which ranchers objected, a top official said. The chapters were recently changed to say that ranchers who lease grazing property in national grasslands shouldn't get grazing permits that come with the land. The changes were suspended after they prompted widespread complaints. Mark Rey, a U.S. Agriculture Department undersecretary, said Friday the entire book will be open to public comment for 60 days. Rey said the comment period is likely to begin next week. "It will not surprise you to know that sometimes the government screws things up. It may, however, be refreshing to hear somebody in government say that," Rey said at a news conference with Gov. John Hoeven on Friday....
Pot growers engage hunters in shootout Bear hunters and at least three Mexican nationals overseeing a marijuana garden exchanged gunfire after the hunters accidentally stumbled upon the illegal pot fields. Undercover Gila County Narcotics Task Force agents, who asked not to be identified, said the incident began about noon Friday, Sept. 2 with a 911 call from the hunters. In interviews with the Queen Creek hunters, agents learned the four were scouting for bear southwest of Payson on the Cross F Ranch. "One of (the hunters) was in Deer Creek canyon and came across some clothes, and plants that appeared to be marijuana," the GCNTF agent said. "Minutes later, he found himself face-to-face with one of the suspected growers he has identified as a Mexican national."....
Cougar is culprit in horse's death When a man found his 1,200-pound Arabian horse dead in a Jackson County field last week, he thought it had been shot. There were two punctures in its neck like a vampire bite and gashes that looked like knife wounds. County animal control officer Machele Dunlap showed up and did a careful examination of the horse. No bullets were inside it, and she realized that only one wild animal in Michigan could have done that kind of damage. "It was a cougar," Dunlap said of the wild cat that weighs 100-200 pounds and is also called a mountain lion or puma. "We've had a number of people call in to report cougar sightings, and I have to admit that we were skeptical, because whenever we'd go out to investigate, we couldn't find anything. But there's really no question on this one." Pat Rusz, the research biologist for the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy in Bath, said a necropsy on the horse and a clear track proved it was killed by a cougar....
Wolf advocates pressing for animals' return Wolf advocates say they are not willing to wait 100 years for the animals to return to Colorado on their own and will begin pushing the state to find a way to bring them back. They want the state Division of Wildlife to develop a wolf recovery plan similar to the one the division embarked on six years ago with the Canada lynx. The state's Wolf Management Working Group - made up of ranchers, environmentalists, sportsmen, biologists and government officials - is equipped to shape a wolf plan representing all sides of the issue, say supporters of reintroduction. Rob Edward, of Sinapu, a Boulder-based group that advocates reintroduction of wolves, and a member of the state working group, said the panel provides an ideal forum to address the conflicting views on the wolf - a romantic symbol of the West's wildness to some and a scourge to livestock to others. The group agreed in January that wolves would be tolerated in Colorado if they naturally wander in from adjacent states - as long as they don't kill livestock or cause major trouble....
Mining plans worry bull trout watchers The farther north Canadian coal mining proposals reach - that is, the more distant they become from the Montana border - the more Clint Muhlfeld worries. "We know that our bull trout use the upper portion of the watershed," Muhlfeld said. "It's critical habitat, and the higher these proposals reach into those headwaters, the greater the impact on a fish that's already on the brink of extinction." Muhlfeld is a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks; south of the border, his job is to protect and recover endangered bull trout. But north of the border, where many of those bull trout spawn and rear and migrate seasonally, the waterways they call home flow over deposits of gold, coal, oil and gas, rich resources British Columbia's government is keen to develop....
Allard spearheads effort to revamp Endangered Species Act Efforts made in western Colorado to preserve endangered species could be used as a model to revamp the Endangered Species Act. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., is one of three senators, including Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mike Crapo of Idaho, who have formed a working group studying the act and how it might be improved. Allard said he is looking at cooperative efforts to rescue four endangered fish species from the Colorado River, as well as private and public work to help the greater sage grouse, as prototypes for other recovery efforts, such as the one for the Gunnison sage grouse. Part of the goal is to emphasize recovery over mere conservation of species deemed to be threatened or endangered, Allard said in a telephone interview Friday....
Editorial: Endangered Species: A law that works There can be no slacking. America must continue saving endangered and threatened species. Despite the claims of Republican congressional leaders, the Bush administration and property rights activists, the country has no need to modernize the Endangered Species Act. Likewise, there's absolutely no need to streamline the law, simplify it or drastically revise it. To be sure, none of those ideas are completely lacking in merit. But they aren't valid starting points for any revisions to the act. The one requirement is to maintain an effective deterrent to those in business, industry and government who plunder the environment. In the Northwest, that means, among other things, salmon protection, saving old-growth trees and keeping the orca population of Puget Sound viable. As President Bush likes to say in many contexts, it is important to set clear expectations. In this country, we don't kill off species. Period....
Water users back ESA reform Draft legislation to reform the Endangered Species Act is getting strong support from Idaho’s leading water group. ESA reform is badly needed and could come up for a vote in Congress this month, said Norm Semanko, executive director of the Idaho Water Users Association. The ESA’s poor record alone is an indication that it needs to be changed, said Semanko, who is running for a seat in Congress next year as a Republican from Idaho’s 1st Congressional District. The Idaho Cattle Association is also behind the latest attempt to amend the ESA. “Idaho ranchers understand the need to reform the ESA as they struggle with requests for new listings, and as they fight to protect their private property from wolves – a predator that was ‘reintroduced’ to the region and has reproduced in great numbers since that time,” ICA executive director Lloyd Knight said in a recent newsletter....
BLM rethinks forestry plan for Northwest Forest activists and timber companies are excited about a Bureau of Land Management initiative that may - or may not - spur logging in Southwest Oregon. The BLM may drop 1.6 million acres of reserves from 2.6 million acres of forest land as part of a re-evaluation of its land management plans sparked by the settlement of a timber industry lawsuit. The settlement requires the BLM to find at least one way it can allow harvesting on all the land under its control and still meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, BLM spokesman Alan Hoffmeister said. The new plan will take BLM land out from under the Northwest Forest Plan, the document that laid out how forests should be managed - cut and preserved - in the range of the endangered spotted owl, which spans Western Washington, Western Oregon and Northern California. The process creates the potential for protests and counter-protests of a fury unseen since the establishment of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994....
Resort exonerated in avalanche death Results of a U.S. Forest Service-led investigation released Friday exonerated the Arapahoe Basin Ski area in the first avalanche death in 30 years within the boundaries of a ski area and called for more research into so-called wet slab avalanches. The ski area ``fulfilled the spirit and intent'' of their snow safety plan and their special use permit, said Doug Abromeit, director of the Forest Service's National Avalance Center and a member of the team that investigted the death of David Conway, 53, of Boulder. The team's report described how warm weather led to the 150-foot-wide and 1,362-feet long slide on a 25-to 30-degree expert slope 11,700 feet high....
BIO Statement on NYSE Response to Animal Rights Extremists The Hon. James C. Greenwood, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), released the following statement regarding the recent decision to postpone the listing of Life Sciences Research (Huntingdon Life Science) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): "I am dismayed that biomedical research has taken a backseat to the pressure tactics of animal rights extremists. Ethical animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century -- for both human and animal health. This research is invaluable in the development of life-extending treatments for people, as wells as cats, dogs, farm animals, wildlife and endangered species. "The ability to conduct humane and responsible animal-based research must be preserved to help conquer disease, alleviate suffering, and improve the quality of life. Biotechnology companies have depended on this research to develop more than 200 drugs and vaccines approved by FDA, helping 325 million people worldwide and preventing incalculable human suffering....
Column: California's Congressional Pests Often I find merit in the quip that we are, indeed, a two-party system -- the Stupid One (Republican) and the Evil One (Democratic). Recently, however, the overwhelmingly Democratic California congressional delegation seems to be poaching on the Republicans' turf. The issue is a somewhat arcane one: the use of human volunteers to test certain pesticides before they are introduced to the marketplace. Government regulators and public health experts around the globe, along with myriad scientific bodies, support the qualified use of human clinical studies in the approval process for pesticides. However, several scientifically challenged members of California's congressional delegation have intervened to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from considering these tests in its evaluation process -- even if the results have already been obtained. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Hilda Solis (D-CA) crafted an amendment to the EPA's appropriations bill that seeks a one-year moratorium on EPA's use of data from human studies. During Senate consideration of the bill, Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), who represents common-sense farmers and ranchers, sponsored a conflicting amendment that would have mandated EPA to review all human studies under consideration to be certain they had been conducted safely and ethically. During the conference committee on the appropriations bill, a compromise was reached that would prohibit EPA from proceeding with human studies until the agency produces a final regulation on this issue....
Katrina fuels global warming storm Hurricane Katrina has spurred debate about global warming worldwide with some environmentalists sniping at President George W. Bush for pulling out of the main U.N. plan for braking climate change. Experts agree it is impossible to say any one storm is caused by rising temperatures. Numbers of tropical cyclones like hurricanes worldwide are stable at about 90 a year although recent U.S. research shows they may be becoming more intense. Still, the European Commission, the World Bank, some environmentalists, Australia's Greens and even Sweden's king said the disaster, feared to have killed thousands of people in the United States, could be a portent of worse to come. "As climate change is happening, we know that the frequency of these disasters will increase as well as the scope," European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich said....
Fremont elk rancher forced to slaughter herd Fremont County elk rancher Ron Walker watched his nine-year-old business fade away. The US Department of Agriculture is slaughtering over 300 of Walker's elk. That's because last year an elk born at his breeding ranch near Penrose, tested postive for chronic wasting disease-- a fatal neurological disease found in deer and elk. The only way to test other animals for the disease... is to kill them first. But Jim Miller, policy director for Colorado's AG department, says the USDA must destory the domestic herd in case any of them have it. Walker points out that chronic wasting disease has been around for years and no one knows how it spreads. It appears to have little, if any, effect on the elk population of Colorado. In fact, the Division of Wildlife is reportedly trying to reduce the statewide elk population by 25-thousand animals. Walker says, "So killing all my elk does nothing to save wildlife. if it did i would agree with that." Regardless, Walker's herd will be sedated and then euthanized....
Writing a new breed of novel Sheep rancher Heather Sharfeddin not only raises a rare breed of sheep, she may have just achieved a literary first – a new genre of novel. Heather is a talented writer. Her first novel is to be released by Bridge Works Publishing Co. of Bridgehampton, N.Y., on Oct. 1 and will sell for $21.95. The title? Ah, once a sheep rancher always a sheep rancher. She branded her novel “Blackbelly,” the name of the rare breed of sheep she and her husband, Salem, raise on their ranch in Sherwood, Ore. Actually, the action in the novel occurs not in Oregon, but in a fictional town in Idaho called Sweetwater. “I spent a large part of my childhood on the Salmon River in Idaho,” she said. “Sweetwater is a town of my imagination, but I don’t have to stop and think about the precise sound of thunder in the hills, the smell of alfalfa hay or the taste of well water. Those elements of Idaho are imprinted in me and come out in the writing without much deliberate thought.” The plot involves Chas McPherson, a loner Blackbelly sheep rancher, in this rural Idaho town who is accused of burning out a neighboring Muslim family after 9/11. From the first accusation to the surprising ending, Heather holds her reader on a tight tether of suspense. Why do I think she’s achieved a literary first? Neither her agent nor her publisher could exactly peg the genre for this book. Heather didn’t like the suggestions they came up with, so she picked her own genre – Contemporary Western....
True cowboy poet The true poet is a person who is compelled to write poetry regardless of commercial prospects, skittishness of talent or contradiction of cosmic logic. Baxter Black is a true poet. He wrote poetry long before anybody knew he did such a thing, and he will write it long after everyone else has had just about enough. In addition, Baxter Black is a true cowboy poet. The cowboy poet seems too romantic a notion to be true: the cattle driver composing sonnets by campfire. But Black, a large-animal veterinarian who long ago left behind active practice for the uncertainties of show biz, realized when he first read his pastoral poems to farmers and cattlemen that these stoical men craved such encapsulations of their experience....
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GAO TESTIMONY
Invasive Species: Progress and Challenges in Preventing Their Introduction into U.S. Water via the Ballast Water in Ships, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, House Committee on Government Reform, in Fair Haven, Michigan. GAO-05-1026T, September 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-1026T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d051026thigh.pdf
Invasive Species: Progress and Challenges in Preventing Their Introduction into U.S. Water via the Ballast Water in Ships, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, House Committee on Government Reform, in Fair Haven, Michigan. GAO-05-1026T, September 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-1026T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d051026thigh.pdf
FLE
New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes
Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here. No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said. But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons. Nearly two weeks after the floods began, New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers. While armed looters roamed unchecked last week, the city is now calm. No arrests were made on Wednesday night or this morning, and the police received only 10 calls for service, a police spokesman said....
Go here for a video of the New Orleans police looting a Walmart Store.
How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes?
Forty-six-year-old Joyce Cordoba stood behind the deli counter while working at a Wal-Mart in Albuquerque, N.M. Suddenly, her ex-husband – against whom Ms. Cordoba had a restraining order – showed up, jumped over the deli counter, and began stabbing Ms. Cordoba. Due Moore, a 72-year-old Wal-Mart customer, witnessed the violent attack. Moore, legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon, pulled out his gun, and shot and killed the ex-husband. Ms. Cordoba survived the brutal attack and is recovering from her wounds. This raises a question. How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes? UCLA professor emeritus James Q. Wilson, a respected expert on crime, police practices and guns, says, "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something beyond a hundred thousand uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as 2-and-a-half or 3 million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right number is, it's not a trivial number." Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, using his own commissioned phone surveys and number extrapolation, estimates that 2.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes each year. He further found that of those who had used guns defensively, one in six believed someone would have been dead if they had not resorted to their defensive use of firearms. That corresponds to approximately 400,000 of Kleck's estimated 2.5 million defensive gun uses. The Department of Justice's own National Institute of Justice study titled "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," estimated that 1.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes every year. Although the government's figure estimated a million fewer people defensively using guns, the NIJ called their figure "directly comparable" to Kleck's, noting that "it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error."....
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New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes
Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here. No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said. But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons. Nearly two weeks after the floods began, New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers. While armed looters roamed unchecked last week, the city is now calm. No arrests were made on Wednesday night or this morning, and the police received only 10 calls for service, a police spokesman said....
Go here for a video of the New Orleans police looting a Walmart Store.
How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes?
Forty-six-year-old Joyce Cordoba stood behind the deli counter while working at a Wal-Mart in Albuquerque, N.M. Suddenly, her ex-husband – against whom Ms. Cordoba had a restraining order – showed up, jumped over the deli counter, and began stabbing Ms. Cordoba. Due Moore, a 72-year-old Wal-Mart customer, witnessed the violent attack. Moore, legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon, pulled out his gun, and shot and killed the ex-husband. Ms. Cordoba survived the brutal attack and is recovering from her wounds. This raises a question. How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes? UCLA professor emeritus James Q. Wilson, a respected expert on crime, police practices and guns, says, "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something beyond a hundred thousand uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as 2-and-a-half or 3 million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right number is, it's not a trivial number." Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, using his own commissioned phone surveys and number extrapolation, estimates that 2.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes each year. He further found that of those who had used guns defensively, one in six believed someone would have been dead if they had not resorted to their defensive use of firearms. That corresponds to approximately 400,000 of Kleck's estimated 2.5 million defensive gun uses. The Department of Justice's own National Institute of Justice study titled "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," estimated that 1.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes every year. Although the government's figure estimated a million fewer people defensively using guns, the NIJ called their figure "directly comparable" to Kleck's, noting that "it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error."....
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Thursday, September 08, 2005
Bird's Advocates Challenge Corps
A group of environmentalists is trying to block construction of two federal water projects in Arkansas, arguing they could damage the habitat of the highly endangered ivory-billed woodpecker. The controversy highlights how this year's rediscovery of the distinctive bird could complicate federal initiatives in the area. For years many federal officials and wildlife experts believed the woodpecker was extinct; now they are faced with the question of how to cope with its existence on land used by farmers, shippers and area residents. After an initial wave of celebration, conservation groups -- which say that the only reason the woodpecker survived this long is because the federal government abandoned a navigation project along Arkansas' Cache River in the 1970s -- say administration officials are risking driving the bird to extinction once again. Today the National Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation are filing a lawsuit in federal district court in Little Rock, challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' plans to spend $319 million to take water from the White River and give it to farmers. The Environmental Defense Fund, another advocacy group, plans to issue a policy report soon blasting a nearby Corps transportation project on the White River....
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A group of environmentalists is trying to block construction of two federal water projects in Arkansas, arguing they could damage the habitat of the highly endangered ivory-billed woodpecker. The controversy highlights how this year's rediscovery of the distinctive bird could complicate federal initiatives in the area. For years many federal officials and wildlife experts believed the woodpecker was extinct; now they are faced with the question of how to cope with its existence on land used by farmers, shippers and area residents. After an initial wave of celebration, conservation groups -- which say that the only reason the woodpecker survived this long is because the federal government abandoned a navigation project along Arkansas' Cache River in the 1970s -- say administration officials are risking driving the bird to extinction once again. Today the National Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation are filing a lawsuit in federal district court in Little Rock, challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' plans to spend $319 million to take water from the White River and give it to farmers. The Environmental Defense Fund, another advocacy group, plans to issue a policy report soon blasting a nearby Corps transportation project on the White River....
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Alarm Growing on Storm's Cost for Agriculture
Two weeks from the beginning of harvest season, there is a mounting sense of alarm over a potential financial blow to American farming. Farmers in the breadbasket states rely on barges to carry their corn, soybeans and wheat down the Mississippi River, but cannot be certain that the Port of New Orleans, a crucial link to export markets that was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, will reopen anytime soon. In the gulf states, the storm left farmers reeling from numerous other problems, including a lack of electricity to restore chicken and dairy plants to service, and a shortage of diesel fuel needed for trucks to save dying cattle stranded on the breached levees. For all of them, it is a race against time. Farmers in some states in the Midwest had already endured the worst drought in almost 20 years. The storm, moreover, flattened sugar cane and rice fields in the South. And farmers nationwide must pay more for fuel to bring the harvest in and transport crops, lowering the profit they will earn when they sell them. Now Hurricane Katrina is adding to the pain by threatening to curtail exports. In all, the hurricane will cause an estimated $2 billion in damage to farmers nationwide, according to an early analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation. The estimate includes $1 billion in direct losses, as well as $500 million in higher fuel and energy prices. Midwestern farmers are threatened by additional losses. Farmers are clearing out stored corn and soybeans to prepare for this year's harvest, which they normally begin exporting at the end of September. But the hurricane caused substantial damage to waterways and grain-handling facilities, and hundreds of barges have been backing up on the Mississippi River with no place to go....
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Two weeks from the beginning of harvest season, there is a mounting sense of alarm over a potential financial blow to American farming. Farmers in the breadbasket states rely on barges to carry their corn, soybeans and wheat down the Mississippi River, but cannot be certain that the Port of New Orleans, a crucial link to export markets that was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, will reopen anytime soon. In the gulf states, the storm left farmers reeling from numerous other problems, including a lack of electricity to restore chicken and dairy plants to service, and a shortage of diesel fuel needed for trucks to save dying cattle stranded on the breached levees. For all of them, it is a race against time. Farmers in some states in the Midwest had already endured the worst drought in almost 20 years. The storm, moreover, flattened sugar cane and rice fields in the South. And farmers nationwide must pay more for fuel to bring the harvest in and transport crops, lowering the profit they will earn when they sell them. Now Hurricane Katrina is adding to the pain by threatening to curtail exports. In all, the hurricane will cause an estimated $2 billion in damage to farmers nationwide, according to an early analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation. The estimate includes $1 billion in direct losses, as well as $500 million in higher fuel and energy prices. Midwestern farmers are threatened by additional losses. Farmers are clearing out stored corn and soybeans to prepare for this year's harvest, which they normally begin exporting at the end of September. But the hurricane caused substantial damage to waterways and grain-handling facilities, and hundreds of barges have been backing up on the Mississippi River with no place to go....
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Mauling victims recovering, names revealed The female victim of a bear mauling in Glacier National Park has now been released from the hospital and her father is now listed in satisfactory condition. Also, both of their names have been revealed. Johan and Jenna Otter were attacked by a grizzly sow with cubs on Aug. 25 while hiking the Grinnell Glacier Trail. They apparently ran into the sow at close range, where they were repeatedly bitten and scratched, and then tumbled 30 to 50 feet down a cliff. Mr. Otter's co-workers made him a big get-well card and were sending it to the hospital. Mr. Otter was severely injured in the incident, he had multiple bear and claw bites as the bear tore off his scalp. He also may have broken his neck, according to Jim and Kathy Knapp. Jim and Kathy were first on the scene of the bear mauling....
Cattlemen ask hunters to shoot fewer grouse A cattlemen's group has ruffled the feathers of Montana's hunting community by "strongly" recommending that landowners, livestock producers and hunters reduce hunting pressure on sage grouse during this fall's season. "It is a direct contradiction to allow liberal hunting of a species at the same time that court cases are being filed to add that species to the endangered species list," Bill Donald, a Melville rancher and president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, said in a press release. But the executive director of a state hunting coalition disagreed. "Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks data and other reports and research projects do not indicate that hunting is the real problem," Craig Sharpe, executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation said in an e-mail. "For decades, prime sage grouse sagebrush habitat has been burned, plowed, sprayed and grazed. � Moreover, it appears the Montana Stockgrowers want us to eliminate hunting so they can maintain their grazing leases. This is a backward approach."....
Column: Green hotheads exploit hurricane tragedy “The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name was global warming.” So wrote environmental activist Ross Gelbspan in a Boston Globe op-ed that one commentator aptly described as “almost giddy.” The green group Friends of the Earth linked Katrina to global warming, as did Germany’s Green Party Environment Minister. Bobby Kennedy Jr. blamed Katrina on Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour for “derailing the Kyoto Protocol [on global warming] and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad promise to regulate carbon dioxide.” Time for an ice-water bath, hotheads. If you’d bothered to consult the scientists (remember them?) you’d find they’ve extensively studied the issue and found no evidence that global warming – assuming it’s actually occurring – is causing either an increase in frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Thus the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which believes global warming is both real and man-made, stated in its last assessment (2001) that “Changes in tropical and extra-tropical storm intensity and frequency are dominated by [variations within and between decades], with no significant trends over the twentieth century evident.” So, too, states the Tropical Meteorological Project at Colorado State University....
Federal government kills more than 2.7 million wildlife in '04 Even as some federal agencies spend millions to protect wildlife, another federal agency spends millions to kill wildlife in record numbers, according to agency reports released today by two environmental groups, Sinapu and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The number of “nuisance” wildlife destroyed by the federal government rose to more than 2.7 million animals in 2004, an increase of more than a million from 2003. According to the most recent figures, 2004 was a record year for officially sanctioned destruction of wildlife at taxpayer expense and the first time annual federal wildlife kill numbers exceeded two million. Birds constituted the overwhelming majority of animals exterminated, with starlings registering the greatest single species death total at 2.3 million....
Agreement resuscitates mine cleanup project A stream gurgles from a pair of pipes leading from an old mine entrance, blasted shut years ago. The brown-orange deposit on the rocks hints at the contamination the otherwise clear water carries. Miners once extracted gold, silver and lead at the Pacific Mine in American Fork Canyon. The mine and mill buildings are long gone. Some eroded concrete foundations still stand, and old sunburned wooden structures where milled ore once was loaded into wagons have survived. Piles of contaminated mine waste also remain. Though most mining in the American Fork Canyon stopped 80 years ago, the water running from the Pacific Mine still carries lead at levels 10 times higher than the federal Clean Water Act standard -- contamination that once ran into the American Fork River. Now a first-of-its-kind agreement between the federal Environmental Protection Agency and Trout Unlimited, a national conservation group, may allow contaminants to be cleaned up at the Pacific Mine, which is on property now owned by Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort....
Cannon involved in land dispute A U.S. congressman has gotten involved in a land dispute between Mapleton and one of its well-known residents. U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, has called landowner Dr. Wendell Gibby and Mapleton Mayor Dean Allan to encourage them to take their dispute to mediation, instead of court. Gibby filed a 10-count federal civil rights lawsuit July 28 against Mapleton City and several officials. Cannon, who lives in Mapleton, also offered to help set up mediation, his chief of staff Joe Hunter said. The lawsuit is the latest in a string of lawsuits involving Gibby, the city and 120 acres of property Gibby owns -- of which the city wants a few acres. City officials say a historic trail runs through the property that residents have always used, but Gibby maintains the only trail on his fenced property was created a few years ago by a utility company for private use. The city is trying to condemn the property on which the trail sits. But Gibby said he'll sell all or none of the land, since running a trail down the middle of it will reduce the market value. The civil rights lawsuit includes charges of false arrest and malicious prosecution, and alleges the defendants have harassed Gibby and encouraged others to vandalize the property....
GOP criticizes Kulongoski's forest policy The state Republican Party attacked Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski's challenge of a Bush administration decision to permit commercial uses — including road building and logging — in national forest areas that have been off-limits to development. Oregon joined California and New Mexico in filing a federal lawsuit on Aug. 30 against the U.S. Forest Service's repeal of former President Clinton's so-called roadless rule banning development on 58 million acres of national forests, mostly in the West. A Bush administration policy gives governors 18 months to petition the agency to keep their states' forests protected or to open the undeveloped areas to roads and development. Oregon GOP Chairman Vance Day said Wednesday that Kulongoski's decision to sue ``is not only selfish and politically motivated, it's devastating to our rural communities and the thousands of Oregonians whose livelihood depends'' on the timber industry. He said Republicans support Bush's policy of giving governors the chance to participate in managing national forests. Kulongoski has said the policy creates more work for the states without giving them a meaningful role in implementing any recommendations....
Demand for firewood surging as northern US braces for costly winter Demand for firewood is surging as the northern United States — alarmed by rising heating oil prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — braces for what could be the costliest winter on record. “Business is non-stop,” said Mark Killinger, a burly 46-year-old firewood seller, pressing a foot on a freshly cut trunk of oak selling at record high prices this week. “Normally it’s quiet this time of year, at least until the first frost. But this year it’s very different,” he said outside his 5-year-old family business in rural Maine. “People are really concerned about the cost of heating oil.” He was selling firewood for as much as $225 a cord — a stack roughly the size of a passenger car. That is up about 25 percent from last month, but fuel oil would cost about $500 for a comparable amount of heat. As Katrina relief efforts accelerate on the Gulf coast, the storm’s effects are reverberating as far away as the states on Canada’s border, where high fuel prices whipped up by Katrina threaten to deliver the costliest winter in memory....
Rhizotron sets MTU apart The U.S. Forest Service is building a 75-foot underground research tunnel known as the Rhizotron, which will be used for research on roots and carbon sequestration. The Rhizotron is extremely unique, with only one other known tunnel like it in existence in the United States. Located next to the MTU forestry building, the tunnel will be accessible to many people, including students. On one side of the Rhizotron, the natural environment has been preserved and will jut up against the tunnel. The other side, the “disturbed” side, will be subjected to different plants and species in the hopes of examining how they co-exist. The tunnel allows for a “non-destructive visual study” according to Friend. The main goal of the tunnel and its overall purpose is to research more about carbon sequestration and how to implement it, in such a way as to slow the process of global warming. The objective is to discover which species favors sequestration. Carbon sequestration is of a major global interest at the moment due to mounting problems with global warming and the Rhizotron will assist MTU in researching this. It is also one of the main factors behind the whole concept of the Rhizotron. Carbon sequestration is the process of removing carbon dioxide from the air by having trees and other vegetation trap the carbon dioxide, and then letting the soil absorb it....
Pinelands bog gets infusion of funds A federal agency said yesterday that it would spend $5.4 million to permanently protect and maintain core wetlands at the Franklin Parker Preserve in the Pine Barrens. That would make it the largest wetlands reserve project in the Northeast for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The New Jersey Conservation Foundation owns the 9,400-acre preserve, formerly part of the DeMarco cranberry operation, where 440 different plants have been catalogued, including 30 rare, threatened or endangered species. The foundation bought the land from the DeMarco family for $11.6 million in 2004 in what was the largest private conservation deal in state history. Of the federal money announced yesterday, $4.4 million will be paid to the foundation to establish a deed restriction guaranteeing that 2,200 acres in the preserve will never be farmed. The foundation, in turn, will use the money to pay off the balance that it owes on the property. The remaining $1 million will go toward restoring bogs to wetlands and forest. About half the easement land includes former cranberry bogs and blueberry fields....
Officials: Silverton seizure about safety San Juan County's first attempt to take a resident's land has echoes of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that set off protests by property-rights advocates and elected officials nationwide. Aspen businessman Jim Jackson says the county's seizure of his land will primarily benefit the private Silverton Mountain Ski Area. The Supreme Court ruled in June that New London, Conn., could seize people's homes to make way for a private development, which city leaders said would be good for the economy. But San Juan County officials say they are taking the land for avalanche control - not to aid the promising new ski area just outside Silverton that is boosting the town's historically depressed winter economy....
BLM asks Utah about its road claims The Bureau of Land Management has asked the state for more information on Utah's claims to six rural roads and requested it answer questions raised by environmental groups over the disputed paths. In a letter to the state, the BLM requested additional evidence that the state's claims to roads in Daggett, Beaver, Iron and Millard counties fit the criteria of roads that the federal government can transfer to the state. Assistant Utah Attorney General Roger Fairbanks said the state is working to dig up the additional information and plans to submit as much as possible by the Friday deadline. "We think the information we have given the BLM is adequate," Fairbanks said. "That being said, we will cooperate the best we can to get additional information to the BLM to the extent that its available.”....
Government Cowboys Spend Days Trailing Texas Ticks This federal employee works along a treacherous stretch of high Rio Grande riverbank known as No Man's Land. His work uniform: leather chaps, sturdy Wranglers, high-top bullhide boots and silver spurs. His tools: a .357-caliber revolver, a lariat, a machete, a walkie-talkie, and his beloved brown-and-white appaloosa, Payaso. His mission: to hunt down ticks. Meet Fred Garza, government cowboy--one of a small force of hardy men whose mission for almost 70 years has been to keep the dreaded Texas cattle fever tick confined to 900 miles of winding riverfront along the Mexican border. He is a tick, or river, rider, a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who has managed to marry his cowboying skills and love of desolate open range with benefits and a federal pension....
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Mauling victims recovering, names revealed The female victim of a bear mauling in Glacier National Park has now been released from the hospital and her father is now listed in satisfactory condition. Also, both of their names have been revealed. Johan and Jenna Otter were attacked by a grizzly sow with cubs on Aug. 25 while hiking the Grinnell Glacier Trail. They apparently ran into the sow at close range, where they were repeatedly bitten and scratched, and then tumbled 30 to 50 feet down a cliff. Mr. Otter's co-workers made him a big get-well card and were sending it to the hospital. Mr. Otter was severely injured in the incident, he had multiple bear and claw bites as the bear tore off his scalp. He also may have broken his neck, according to Jim and Kathy Knapp. Jim and Kathy were first on the scene of the bear mauling....
Cattlemen ask hunters to shoot fewer grouse A cattlemen's group has ruffled the feathers of Montana's hunting community by "strongly" recommending that landowners, livestock producers and hunters reduce hunting pressure on sage grouse during this fall's season. "It is a direct contradiction to allow liberal hunting of a species at the same time that court cases are being filed to add that species to the endangered species list," Bill Donald, a Melville rancher and president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, said in a press release. But the executive director of a state hunting coalition disagreed. "Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks data and other reports and research projects do not indicate that hunting is the real problem," Craig Sharpe, executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation said in an e-mail. "For decades, prime sage grouse sagebrush habitat has been burned, plowed, sprayed and grazed. � Moreover, it appears the Montana Stockgrowers want us to eliminate hunting so they can maintain their grazing leases. This is a backward approach."....
Column: Green hotheads exploit hurricane tragedy “The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name was global warming.” So wrote environmental activist Ross Gelbspan in a Boston Globe op-ed that one commentator aptly described as “almost giddy.” The green group Friends of the Earth linked Katrina to global warming, as did Germany’s Green Party Environment Minister. Bobby Kennedy Jr. blamed Katrina on Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour for “derailing the Kyoto Protocol [on global warming] and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad promise to regulate carbon dioxide.” Time for an ice-water bath, hotheads. If you’d bothered to consult the scientists (remember them?) you’d find they’ve extensively studied the issue and found no evidence that global warming – assuming it’s actually occurring – is causing either an increase in frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Thus the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which believes global warming is both real and man-made, stated in its last assessment (2001) that “Changes in tropical and extra-tropical storm intensity and frequency are dominated by [variations within and between decades], with no significant trends over the twentieth century evident.” So, too, states the Tropical Meteorological Project at Colorado State University....
Federal government kills more than 2.7 million wildlife in '04 Even as some federal agencies spend millions to protect wildlife, another federal agency spends millions to kill wildlife in record numbers, according to agency reports released today by two environmental groups, Sinapu and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The number of “nuisance” wildlife destroyed by the federal government rose to more than 2.7 million animals in 2004, an increase of more than a million from 2003. According to the most recent figures, 2004 was a record year for officially sanctioned destruction of wildlife at taxpayer expense and the first time annual federal wildlife kill numbers exceeded two million. Birds constituted the overwhelming majority of animals exterminated, with starlings registering the greatest single species death total at 2.3 million....
Agreement resuscitates mine cleanup project A stream gurgles from a pair of pipes leading from an old mine entrance, blasted shut years ago. The brown-orange deposit on the rocks hints at the contamination the otherwise clear water carries. Miners once extracted gold, silver and lead at the Pacific Mine in American Fork Canyon. The mine and mill buildings are long gone. Some eroded concrete foundations still stand, and old sunburned wooden structures where milled ore once was loaded into wagons have survived. Piles of contaminated mine waste also remain. Though most mining in the American Fork Canyon stopped 80 years ago, the water running from the Pacific Mine still carries lead at levels 10 times higher than the federal Clean Water Act standard -- contamination that once ran into the American Fork River. Now a first-of-its-kind agreement between the federal Environmental Protection Agency and Trout Unlimited, a national conservation group, may allow contaminants to be cleaned up at the Pacific Mine, which is on property now owned by Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort....
Cannon involved in land dispute A U.S. congressman has gotten involved in a land dispute between Mapleton and one of its well-known residents. U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, has called landowner Dr. Wendell Gibby and Mapleton Mayor Dean Allan to encourage them to take their dispute to mediation, instead of court. Gibby filed a 10-count federal civil rights lawsuit July 28 against Mapleton City and several officials. Cannon, who lives in Mapleton, also offered to help set up mediation, his chief of staff Joe Hunter said. The lawsuit is the latest in a string of lawsuits involving Gibby, the city and 120 acres of property Gibby owns -- of which the city wants a few acres. City officials say a historic trail runs through the property that residents have always used, but Gibby maintains the only trail on his fenced property was created a few years ago by a utility company for private use. The city is trying to condemn the property on which the trail sits. But Gibby said he'll sell all or none of the land, since running a trail down the middle of it will reduce the market value. The civil rights lawsuit includes charges of false arrest and malicious prosecution, and alleges the defendants have harassed Gibby and encouraged others to vandalize the property....
GOP criticizes Kulongoski's forest policy The state Republican Party attacked Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski's challenge of a Bush administration decision to permit commercial uses — including road building and logging — in national forest areas that have been off-limits to development. Oregon joined California and New Mexico in filing a federal lawsuit on Aug. 30 against the U.S. Forest Service's repeal of former President Clinton's so-called roadless rule banning development on 58 million acres of national forests, mostly in the West. A Bush administration policy gives governors 18 months to petition the agency to keep their states' forests protected or to open the undeveloped areas to roads and development. Oregon GOP Chairman Vance Day said Wednesday that Kulongoski's decision to sue ``is not only selfish and politically motivated, it's devastating to our rural communities and the thousands of Oregonians whose livelihood depends'' on the timber industry. He said Republicans support Bush's policy of giving governors the chance to participate in managing national forests. Kulongoski has said the policy creates more work for the states without giving them a meaningful role in implementing any recommendations....
Demand for firewood surging as northern US braces for costly winter Demand for firewood is surging as the northern United States — alarmed by rising heating oil prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — braces for what could be the costliest winter on record. “Business is non-stop,” said Mark Killinger, a burly 46-year-old firewood seller, pressing a foot on a freshly cut trunk of oak selling at record high prices this week. “Normally it’s quiet this time of year, at least until the first frost. But this year it’s very different,” he said outside his 5-year-old family business in rural Maine. “People are really concerned about the cost of heating oil.” He was selling firewood for as much as $225 a cord — a stack roughly the size of a passenger car. That is up about 25 percent from last month, but fuel oil would cost about $500 for a comparable amount of heat. As Katrina relief efforts accelerate on the Gulf coast, the storm’s effects are reverberating as far away as the states on Canada’s border, where high fuel prices whipped up by Katrina threaten to deliver the costliest winter in memory....
Rhizotron sets MTU apart The U.S. Forest Service is building a 75-foot underground research tunnel known as the Rhizotron, which will be used for research on roots and carbon sequestration. The Rhizotron is extremely unique, with only one other known tunnel like it in existence in the United States. Located next to the MTU forestry building, the tunnel will be accessible to many people, including students. On one side of the Rhizotron, the natural environment has been preserved and will jut up against the tunnel. The other side, the “disturbed” side, will be subjected to different plants and species in the hopes of examining how they co-exist. The tunnel allows for a “non-destructive visual study” according to Friend. The main goal of the tunnel and its overall purpose is to research more about carbon sequestration and how to implement it, in such a way as to slow the process of global warming. The objective is to discover which species favors sequestration. Carbon sequestration is of a major global interest at the moment due to mounting problems with global warming and the Rhizotron will assist MTU in researching this. It is also one of the main factors behind the whole concept of the Rhizotron. Carbon sequestration is the process of removing carbon dioxide from the air by having trees and other vegetation trap the carbon dioxide, and then letting the soil absorb it....
Pinelands bog gets infusion of funds A federal agency said yesterday that it would spend $5.4 million to permanently protect and maintain core wetlands at the Franklin Parker Preserve in the Pine Barrens. That would make it the largest wetlands reserve project in the Northeast for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The New Jersey Conservation Foundation owns the 9,400-acre preserve, formerly part of the DeMarco cranberry operation, where 440 different plants have been catalogued, including 30 rare, threatened or endangered species. The foundation bought the land from the DeMarco family for $11.6 million in 2004 in what was the largest private conservation deal in state history. Of the federal money announced yesterday, $4.4 million will be paid to the foundation to establish a deed restriction guaranteeing that 2,200 acres in the preserve will never be farmed. The foundation, in turn, will use the money to pay off the balance that it owes on the property. The remaining $1 million will go toward restoring bogs to wetlands and forest. About half the easement land includes former cranberry bogs and blueberry fields....
Officials: Silverton seizure about safety San Juan County's first attempt to take a resident's land has echoes of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that set off protests by property-rights advocates and elected officials nationwide. Aspen businessman Jim Jackson says the county's seizure of his land will primarily benefit the private Silverton Mountain Ski Area. The Supreme Court ruled in June that New London, Conn., could seize people's homes to make way for a private development, which city leaders said would be good for the economy. But San Juan County officials say they are taking the land for avalanche control - not to aid the promising new ski area just outside Silverton that is boosting the town's historically depressed winter economy....
BLM asks Utah about its road claims The Bureau of Land Management has asked the state for more information on Utah's claims to six rural roads and requested it answer questions raised by environmental groups over the disputed paths. In a letter to the state, the BLM requested additional evidence that the state's claims to roads in Daggett, Beaver, Iron and Millard counties fit the criteria of roads that the federal government can transfer to the state. Assistant Utah Attorney General Roger Fairbanks said the state is working to dig up the additional information and plans to submit as much as possible by the Friday deadline. "We think the information we have given the BLM is adequate," Fairbanks said. "That being said, we will cooperate the best we can to get additional information to the BLM to the extent that its available.”....
Government Cowboys Spend Days Trailing Texas Ticks This federal employee works along a treacherous stretch of high Rio Grande riverbank known as No Man's Land. His work uniform: leather chaps, sturdy Wranglers, high-top bullhide boots and silver spurs. His tools: a .357-caliber revolver, a lariat, a machete, a walkie-talkie, and his beloved brown-and-white appaloosa, Payaso. His mission: to hunt down ticks. Meet Fred Garza, government cowboy--one of a small force of hardy men whose mission for almost 70 years has been to keep the dreaded Texas cattle fever tick confined to 900 miles of winding riverfront along the Mexican border. He is a tick, or river, rider, a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who has managed to marry his cowboying skills and love of desolate open range with benefits and a federal pension....
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Wednesday, September 07, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Estimates put wolf numbers up in Rockies The number of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies has increased to more than 900 since last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated Tuesday. According to the agency's mid-year estimate, 912 wolves now roam the three-state region, compared to 835 in December, said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife's wolf recovery coordinator in Helena, Mont. The agency attributed the increase primarily to Idaho's growing wolf population. The number of wolves in Montana is up from 2004 but below 2003, and it is down in Wyoming due to illness and competition for food and territory in Yellowstone National Park, officials said. Gray wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies a decade ago, and in 2002 met the government's recovery targets. Wyoming has not submitted a management plan deemed acceptable by the federal agency, a necessary step before gray wolves could lose federal protection....
Wolf numbers stabilizing in Montana; dropping in and around Yellowstone Wolf numbers in Montana appear to be stablizing, a new report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says. And wolf numbers in Yellowstone National Park appear to have dropped substantially, according to the top wolf manager there. Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for FWS, last week released a late-summer count of wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. He stressed that all the numbers are estimates and will change by the time official counts are compiled at the end of the year. He estimated there are 166 wolves in Montana, as of the end of August. Wolf numbers are down by about 40 animals in Wyoming, Bangs said, partly because of the drop in Yellowstone, which is mostly in that state. In Idaho, numbers continue to grow. Bangs said he estimates there are 500 to 550 wolves there, up from 422 last winter. The continued growth there "suprises several of us," he said, but central Idaho, with its vast swaths of wilderness and other federal land, and huge ungulate herds, provides the best wolf habitat....
National parks grapple with surge of illegal off-road vehicles The Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida is crisscrossed with so many illegal swamp-buggy ruts - more than 23,000 miles of them - that park officials in August began limiting off-road vehicles to 400 miles of trails in order to protect the Florida panther and the preserve. In Yosemite National Park, off-road vehicles are involved in "numerous" violations, according to a staffer's memo. And each day of a long summer weekend like Labor Day, as many as 2,200 motorized vehicles hit the beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina. "Not one of those is there legally," says Don Barger, southeastern regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, a watchdog group. In all, unauthorized off-road vehicles are buzzing through nearly one-third of America's national parks, according to a recently released internal National Park Service (NPS) survey. In one-fifth of the parks, they have damaged natural environments that by law must be preserved for future generations....
2005 fire season marked by big range fires Wildfire experts have come across a seeming contradiction this summer: While the number of acres charred across the West is almost double the 10-year average, the blazes haven't been as big or devastating as those in past years. Experts say that's due to the unusual moisture patterns in the region earlier this year, which favored big grass fires on the open range. Timber in the mountains got more moisture than usual well into the summer, keeping forest fires small. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, over 7.8 million acres - more than 11,000 square miles - have burned in the U.S. since May. About half of that was in Alaska, where large fires often are not fought aggressively if they pose no threat to people or structures. With the 2005 wildfire season two-thirds over, the number of fires is down - about 46,000 compared to the 10-year average of 63,000 - and the number of firefighters suppressing the blazes has been lower than in recent years. Yet the total acreage burned is nearly double the 4 million acres that burned on average through late August over the past decade. Analysts say the primary reason for the higher-than-average fire acreage this year is huge range fires that burned in the Southwest and Great Basin, where a wet winter allowed fine grasses and vegetation to flourish....
Lemmings, mussels and mites among Idaho species on the decline, report says The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has drawn up a list of the dozens of creatures native to the state that are threatened with extinction due to human disturbance and vanishing habitat. But chances are most people haven't heard of the northern bog lemming, western pearlshell mussel, Pacific lamprey, cave obligate mite or the dozens of other imperiled insects, birds, fish, mollusks and wildlife species included in the new report. The "Idaho Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy" attempts to identify every native species of living thing that is struggling to survive, and goes beyond the usual suspects of grizzly bear, caribou and bull trout....
Teen to be tried as adult for killing eagle A Muskegon judge has sided with the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office and ruled that a 17-year-old suspect in the April 2004 shooting and hatchet mutilation of two bald eagles will be tried as an adult. After a contested court hearing that stretched over three sessions on three different days, Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti on Friday ordered Kyle Howell of 1276 Poulson to face adult prosecution for animal cruelty/killing an animal, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, and one count of killing an endangered species animal, a 90-day misdemeanor. Marietti, who also acts as a Family Court judge, decided to "designate" Howell to be tried as an adult in juvenile court, a procedure allowed under Michigan law for certain crimes allegedly committed by juveniles. Howell was 16 at the time of the offense....
Park leader's memo fuels debate When Paul Hoffman was executive director of the Cody Chamber of Commerce, he worked closely with state tourism official Gene Bryan, now Hoffman's successor at the chamber. Bryan "watched from a distance" as Hoffman regularly butted heads with National Park Service officials over ending snowmobile use within Yellowstone National Park, reintroducing wolves into the park and whether a gold mine should operate near the nation's oldest national park. "Paul is not a rookie when it comes to controversial issues," Bryan said. Today, Hoffman is deputy assistant secretary of the Interior with authority over the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. He's also at the heart of a firestorm of controversy over future management of the National Park Service. Hoffman drafted a 194-page rewrite of the Park Service's 2001 management policy manual this summer. His changes would downplay preservation, instead emphasizing public enjoyment and commercial exploitation of park resources....
Feds present plan for Tombstone to maintain its historic status Tombstone, the so-called "town too tough to die," is in a battle to defend its National Historic Landmark status. But as federal authorities weight whether to yank the designation, their message is clear: It's OK to cash in on Wild West myths, but don't lie about history. Last year, the National Park Service put Tombstone on notice, warning the landmark status was in jeopardy because of fake facades, anachronistic colors and bogus dates painted on newer buildings. On Sunday, after three days of public input, walking tours and design sessions, a team of consultants and government officials revealed a plan to save the landmark label. State Historic Preservation Officer James Garrison stressed that the recommendations are just a starting point and that the government isn't about to fine people whose buildings aren't historically accurate. Tombstone's threatened status will be revisited in two years, but the National Park Service won't necessarily remove the landmark label then....
Katrina renews debate over drilling off Florida's coast The stunning spike in gasoline prices prompted Senators on Tuesday to revive efforts to drill for oil and natural gas off of Florida's Gulf coast. Less than two months ago, Republican and Democratic politicians from Florida fended off drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico with arguments that unsightly oil rigs and the potential for spills could hurt the state's tourist-based economy and environment. But members of the Senate Energy Committee made it clear Tuesday that gasoline price hikes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are angering their constituents and putting the idea of drilling near Florida back on the table. A provision for drilling likely will be proposed as part of a massive federal budget bill that will come to a vote this month....
Editorial: BP and the county For all these benefits, who bears the burdens? It is the surface owner, often with a small acreage, who is forced to coexist with the heavy equipment and commotion that goes with drilling a gas well, and then with the sights and sounds from industrial components that clash with the cottonwoods, junipers, alfalfa and grasses that make the mesa tops and valleys and ridges so appealing: a well access road, visible pipeline rights of way, a pump jack and small metal buildings, perhaps large steel tanks, and the likely possibility that in the years ahead the well bore will have to be freshened. Even for surface owners who receive royalties, the imposition is great. BP's offer to increase only slightly the size of an existing well pad in order to include a second well, one bored at an angle to tap an adjacent gas reserve, to share existing pipelines for gas and waste water transmission, and pay a definite road damage fee to the county, in exchange for broad county drilling approval, is an intriguing offer. Using an existing well site and pipelines is almost always much less intrusive for surface owners, and the industry has known for some time how to drill directionally. An agreement would reduce the number of contentious issues, for both the surface owner and the county. The offer, which comes with the sure-to-be-approved request to the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to double the number of coal-bed methane wells from one per 160 acres to two, is a step in the right direction. But, it can go further....
River spells life for small town California grows 80 percent of the nation's eating oranges. Much of that fruit -- about 15 million 75-pound boxes -- passes through this town's nine plants. When the wind hits you right in Orange Cove, the tangy smell of fresh citrus is so strong you can almost taste it. But while the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada frame the sky, there's little natural water here, explains Harvey Bailey, who works 1,100 acres of oranges and lemons with his brother Lee Bailey. His fruit trees -- like Orange Cove's 9,255 residents -- are sustained by water diverted from the San Joaquin River, 50 miles to the north. ''Without it, we'd just dry up, the farms, the town, everything,'' said Bailey, whose family initially worked 200 acres of groves around a well in the early 1900s....
COLORADO RIVER ISSUES: Water chief draws line at meeting The seven Western states that share Colorado River water continue to make progress toward sweeping new rules on how the river should be operated during desperate shortages. But Nevada's top water official is not above a little saber rattling, just in case. During a conference in San Diego last week, Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy had this message for a conference of water managers: Nevada is ready for war should talks break down and the seven basin states wind up in court. Specifically, Mulroy said she wanted other Colorado River users to know that Nevada will fight for its right to divert water from the Virgin River for use in the Las Vegas Valley. The upper river basin states of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico have argued that Nevada should not be allowed to use water from a Colorado River tributary such as the Virgin without deducting that amount from its annual Colorado River allocation....
Farmers to offer new eco-label Shoppers attracted to organic fruits and vegetables but repelled by their bank account-busting prices may soon have an alternative. That’s the hope of environmentalists, farmers and public officials pushing to certify, label and market produce grown according to a set of agricultural standards labeled as sustainable. Certified growers must meet requirements regarding soil management, water quality, wildlife protection and labor practices, as well as pesticide use. Supporters say the produce labeled as “sustainable” will be more affordable than organic fruits and vegetables. “We’re trying to get to those consumers in the middle,” said Cheryl Brickey, executive director of Protected Harvest, a Maryland-based nonprofit that certifies produce as being grown according to the practices. Brickey said too many Americans can’t afford to pay top dollar for organic produce: “We’re trying to break that barrier.”....
It's All Trew: Dirt-moving methods improve through years Few readers under 60 years of age will understand this statement: “We installed a tin horn in our bar ditch.” A tin horn is a corrugated, galvanized metal culvert installed alongside roadways to let floodwater pass through. I know this fact, but I don’t have a clue as to why a crooked gambler appearing in many western stories is called a tinhorn. Any ideas? The slang term bar ditch supposedly comes from barrow ditch when hand labor and wheelbarrows were used to haul dirt dug from a ditch and dumped into the roadbed to raise it above the surrounding terrain. Another version states dirt borrowed from a ditch and placed on the roadbed gave birth to the term bar ditch....
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Estimates put wolf numbers up in Rockies The number of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies has increased to more than 900 since last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated Tuesday. According to the agency's mid-year estimate, 912 wolves now roam the three-state region, compared to 835 in December, said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife's wolf recovery coordinator in Helena, Mont. The agency attributed the increase primarily to Idaho's growing wolf population. The number of wolves in Montana is up from 2004 but below 2003, and it is down in Wyoming due to illness and competition for food and territory in Yellowstone National Park, officials said. Gray wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies a decade ago, and in 2002 met the government's recovery targets. Wyoming has not submitted a management plan deemed acceptable by the federal agency, a necessary step before gray wolves could lose federal protection....
Wolf numbers stabilizing in Montana; dropping in and around Yellowstone Wolf numbers in Montana appear to be stablizing, a new report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says. And wolf numbers in Yellowstone National Park appear to have dropped substantially, according to the top wolf manager there. Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for FWS, last week released a late-summer count of wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. He stressed that all the numbers are estimates and will change by the time official counts are compiled at the end of the year. He estimated there are 166 wolves in Montana, as of the end of August. Wolf numbers are down by about 40 animals in Wyoming, Bangs said, partly because of the drop in Yellowstone, which is mostly in that state. In Idaho, numbers continue to grow. Bangs said he estimates there are 500 to 550 wolves there, up from 422 last winter. The continued growth there "suprises several of us," he said, but central Idaho, with its vast swaths of wilderness and other federal land, and huge ungulate herds, provides the best wolf habitat....
National parks grapple with surge of illegal off-road vehicles The Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida is crisscrossed with so many illegal swamp-buggy ruts - more than 23,000 miles of them - that park officials in August began limiting off-road vehicles to 400 miles of trails in order to protect the Florida panther and the preserve. In Yosemite National Park, off-road vehicles are involved in "numerous" violations, according to a staffer's memo. And each day of a long summer weekend like Labor Day, as many as 2,200 motorized vehicles hit the beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina. "Not one of those is there legally," says Don Barger, southeastern regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, a watchdog group. In all, unauthorized off-road vehicles are buzzing through nearly one-third of America's national parks, according to a recently released internal National Park Service (NPS) survey. In one-fifth of the parks, they have damaged natural environments that by law must be preserved for future generations....
2005 fire season marked by big range fires Wildfire experts have come across a seeming contradiction this summer: While the number of acres charred across the West is almost double the 10-year average, the blazes haven't been as big or devastating as those in past years. Experts say that's due to the unusual moisture patterns in the region earlier this year, which favored big grass fires on the open range. Timber in the mountains got more moisture than usual well into the summer, keeping forest fires small. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, over 7.8 million acres - more than 11,000 square miles - have burned in the U.S. since May. About half of that was in Alaska, where large fires often are not fought aggressively if they pose no threat to people or structures. With the 2005 wildfire season two-thirds over, the number of fires is down - about 46,000 compared to the 10-year average of 63,000 - and the number of firefighters suppressing the blazes has been lower than in recent years. Yet the total acreage burned is nearly double the 4 million acres that burned on average through late August over the past decade. Analysts say the primary reason for the higher-than-average fire acreage this year is huge range fires that burned in the Southwest and Great Basin, where a wet winter allowed fine grasses and vegetation to flourish....
Lemmings, mussels and mites among Idaho species on the decline, report says The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has drawn up a list of the dozens of creatures native to the state that are threatened with extinction due to human disturbance and vanishing habitat. But chances are most people haven't heard of the northern bog lemming, western pearlshell mussel, Pacific lamprey, cave obligate mite or the dozens of other imperiled insects, birds, fish, mollusks and wildlife species included in the new report. The "Idaho Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy" attempts to identify every native species of living thing that is struggling to survive, and goes beyond the usual suspects of grizzly bear, caribou and bull trout....
Teen to be tried as adult for killing eagle A Muskegon judge has sided with the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office and ruled that a 17-year-old suspect in the April 2004 shooting and hatchet mutilation of two bald eagles will be tried as an adult. After a contested court hearing that stretched over three sessions on three different days, Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti on Friday ordered Kyle Howell of 1276 Poulson to face adult prosecution for animal cruelty/killing an animal, a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, and one count of killing an endangered species animal, a 90-day misdemeanor. Marietti, who also acts as a Family Court judge, decided to "designate" Howell to be tried as an adult in juvenile court, a procedure allowed under Michigan law for certain crimes allegedly committed by juveniles. Howell was 16 at the time of the offense....
Park leader's memo fuels debate When Paul Hoffman was executive director of the Cody Chamber of Commerce, he worked closely with state tourism official Gene Bryan, now Hoffman's successor at the chamber. Bryan "watched from a distance" as Hoffman regularly butted heads with National Park Service officials over ending snowmobile use within Yellowstone National Park, reintroducing wolves into the park and whether a gold mine should operate near the nation's oldest national park. "Paul is not a rookie when it comes to controversial issues," Bryan said. Today, Hoffman is deputy assistant secretary of the Interior with authority over the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. He's also at the heart of a firestorm of controversy over future management of the National Park Service. Hoffman drafted a 194-page rewrite of the Park Service's 2001 management policy manual this summer. His changes would downplay preservation, instead emphasizing public enjoyment and commercial exploitation of park resources....
Feds present plan for Tombstone to maintain its historic status Tombstone, the so-called "town too tough to die," is in a battle to defend its National Historic Landmark status. But as federal authorities weight whether to yank the designation, their message is clear: It's OK to cash in on Wild West myths, but don't lie about history. Last year, the National Park Service put Tombstone on notice, warning the landmark status was in jeopardy because of fake facades, anachronistic colors and bogus dates painted on newer buildings. On Sunday, after three days of public input, walking tours and design sessions, a team of consultants and government officials revealed a plan to save the landmark label. State Historic Preservation Officer James Garrison stressed that the recommendations are just a starting point and that the government isn't about to fine people whose buildings aren't historically accurate. Tombstone's threatened status will be revisited in two years, but the National Park Service won't necessarily remove the landmark label then....
Katrina renews debate over drilling off Florida's coast The stunning spike in gasoline prices prompted Senators on Tuesday to revive efforts to drill for oil and natural gas off of Florida's Gulf coast. Less than two months ago, Republican and Democratic politicians from Florida fended off drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico with arguments that unsightly oil rigs and the potential for spills could hurt the state's tourist-based economy and environment. But members of the Senate Energy Committee made it clear Tuesday that gasoline price hikes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are angering their constituents and putting the idea of drilling near Florida back on the table. A provision for drilling likely will be proposed as part of a massive federal budget bill that will come to a vote this month....
Editorial: BP and the county For all these benefits, who bears the burdens? It is the surface owner, often with a small acreage, who is forced to coexist with the heavy equipment and commotion that goes with drilling a gas well, and then with the sights and sounds from industrial components that clash with the cottonwoods, junipers, alfalfa and grasses that make the mesa tops and valleys and ridges so appealing: a well access road, visible pipeline rights of way, a pump jack and small metal buildings, perhaps large steel tanks, and the likely possibility that in the years ahead the well bore will have to be freshened. Even for surface owners who receive royalties, the imposition is great. BP's offer to increase only slightly the size of an existing well pad in order to include a second well, one bored at an angle to tap an adjacent gas reserve, to share existing pipelines for gas and waste water transmission, and pay a definite road damage fee to the county, in exchange for broad county drilling approval, is an intriguing offer. Using an existing well site and pipelines is almost always much less intrusive for surface owners, and the industry has known for some time how to drill directionally. An agreement would reduce the number of contentious issues, for both the surface owner and the county. The offer, which comes with the sure-to-be-approved request to the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to double the number of coal-bed methane wells from one per 160 acres to two, is a step in the right direction. But, it can go further....
River spells life for small town California grows 80 percent of the nation's eating oranges. Much of that fruit -- about 15 million 75-pound boxes -- passes through this town's nine plants. When the wind hits you right in Orange Cove, the tangy smell of fresh citrus is so strong you can almost taste it. But while the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada frame the sky, there's little natural water here, explains Harvey Bailey, who works 1,100 acres of oranges and lemons with his brother Lee Bailey. His fruit trees -- like Orange Cove's 9,255 residents -- are sustained by water diverted from the San Joaquin River, 50 miles to the north. ''Without it, we'd just dry up, the farms, the town, everything,'' said Bailey, whose family initially worked 200 acres of groves around a well in the early 1900s....
COLORADO RIVER ISSUES: Water chief draws line at meeting The seven Western states that share Colorado River water continue to make progress toward sweeping new rules on how the river should be operated during desperate shortages. But Nevada's top water official is not above a little saber rattling, just in case. During a conference in San Diego last week, Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy had this message for a conference of water managers: Nevada is ready for war should talks break down and the seven basin states wind up in court. Specifically, Mulroy said she wanted other Colorado River users to know that Nevada will fight for its right to divert water from the Virgin River for use in the Las Vegas Valley. The upper river basin states of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico have argued that Nevada should not be allowed to use water from a Colorado River tributary such as the Virgin without deducting that amount from its annual Colorado River allocation....
Farmers to offer new eco-label Shoppers attracted to organic fruits and vegetables but repelled by their bank account-busting prices may soon have an alternative. That’s the hope of environmentalists, farmers and public officials pushing to certify, label and market produce grown according to a set of agricultural standards labeled as sustainable. Certified growers must meet requirements regarding soil management, water quality, wildlife protection and labor practices, as well as pesticide use. Supporters say the produce labeled as “sustainable” will be more affordable than organic fruits and vegetables. “We’re trying to get to those consumers in the middle,” said Cheryl Brickey, executive director of Protected Harvest, a Maryland-based nonprofit that certifies produce as being grown according to the practices. Brickey said too many Americans can’t afford to pay top dollar for organic produce: “We’re trying to break that barrier.”....
It's All Trew: Dirt-moving methods improve through years Few readers under 60 years of age will understand this statement: “We installed a tin horn in our bar ditch.” A tin horn is a corrugated, galvanized metal culvert installed alongside roadways to let floodwater pass through. I know this fact, but I don’t have a clue as to why a crooked gambler appearing in many western stories is called a tinhorn. Any ideas? The slang term bar ditch supposedly comes from barrow ditch when hand labor and wheelbarrows were used to haul dirt dug from a ditch and dumped into the roadbed to raise it above the surrounding terrain. Another version states dirt borrowed from a ditch and placed on the roadbed gave birth to the term bar ditch....
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