Conaway Ranch
The Conaway Ranch is a 17,300 acre contiguous parcel located on the west side of the Sacramento River in Yolo County . It has over 15,000 acres of farmable land, the largest gas field in Yolo County , rights to 50,000 acre feet of Sacramento River water and significant groundwater resources. Almost half of the ranch is within the Yolo Bypass and subject to intermittent flooding, and all but some 2,000 acres is within the 100-year flood plain. Currently, the ranch is leased to several farmers who primarily grow rice, alfalfa, tomatoes, and other row crops on the property. The Ranch is famous for its great waterfowl habitat and duck hunting, and for the past fifteen years has maintained the Conaway Wildlife Plan to enhance and maintain the wildlife resources on the Ranch. One year ago, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors announced plans to acquire the Conaway Ranch from a bankrupt subsidiary of PG & E, either through a negotiated price or via eminent domain. Also, a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) was formed to oversee the management of the Ranch they hoped to acquire, which includes: Yolo County , the four cities of Yolo County , U.C. Davis, and the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. In the meantime, the Ranch was sold for the sum of sixty million dollars as part of the bankruptcy estate pursuant to a closed bidding process that was not legally open to the County of Yolo as a public agency. The land was purchased by the Conaway Preservation Group (CPG), a consortium of individuals and entities that include a farm holdings company, a non-profit organization, and local landowners, including developers Steve Gidaro and John Reynan, both of whom were former owners of the Ranch, and do not wish to sell. Shortly after the CPG’s acquisition of the Conaway Ranch, Yolo County initiated the eminent domain proceedings in Yolo County Superior Court to seize the Ranch from its owners for the stated public purpose of preserving agriculture and open space. As a longstanding supporter of private property rights, water rights, and rural agricultural communities, the Family Water Alliance stands opposed to Yolo County ’s use of eminent domain for the purchase of the 17,000 acre Conaway Ranch and its water rights. While FWA agrees that efforts to maintain the status quo of Conaway Ranch is a worthy goal, the use of eminent domain to achieve this end is not only unnecessary, but also in our opinion fiscally irresponsible and an abuse of local governmental power....
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Monday, October 03, 2005
Sunday, October 02, 2005
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
True colors
by Larry Gabriel
Just like the trees they so admire, the "green" movement is finally showing its fall colors.
After thirty years of endless debates and litigation about rare bugs, snails, rodents, birds and fish, we are finally hearing the real bottom line of what they want.
The line was clearly drawn in a recent Casper Tribune story about the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance's success in halting thinning projects on 50,000 acres in the Black Hills last year. They stopped these projects because they believe most areas of the public forests are best left to "natural processes".
Jeremy Nichols of the Alliance had the courage to come right out and say what many have known for twenty years. They want no management on most of our forests.
We have all seen the "zero cut" and "no cows" symbols of the movement, but they display no "zero management" symbol (at least not yet).
Nels Smith, a Wyoming rancher on the Black Hills Advisory Board, showed similar courage in calling the tactics of Biodiversity an abuse of the process that will produce a "biological desert".
Actually we could refuse to manage our forests, but many have warned that one cannot accumulate excess fuel for fifty years and let it burn without creating a black-glass wasteland.
If the federal government is not going to manage its forests, it certainly has no need of a Forest Service. We could give these lands to the National Park Service, abolish the Forest Service, and save billions.
But, what about the premise of Biodiversity's argument? Does "Mother Nature" really know best?
If she does, New Orleans should remain a swamp.
If she does, the homes built in the Mississippi drainage should wash into the Dead Zone of the Gulf of Mexico each spring.
If she does, no crops should be cultivated.
If she does, the horse is an invasive species and does not belong in America.
If she does, we don't need indoor plumbing.
If she does, we don't need houses and should stay outside when it rains.
If she does…never mind.
All of us with "enough sense to come in out of the rain" know the answer.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture.
Camouflage is ‘in” for another season
By Julie Carter
There was a time when garments dyed in splotches of green, brown, tan, and black so as to make the wearer indistinguishable from the surrounding environment were either military issue or seasonal garb for the civilian wildlife hunter.
Since the U.S. military forces became the focus of the mass media through the war on terrorism, camouflage has become a standard clothing choice for the world in general. But in my world at this time and place it is still mostly about hunting.
By the very definition, you are not supposed to be able to see camouflage. The dictionary says it is “concealment by disguise or protective coloring.”
I can see it. I see it everywhere I go and most prevalent at the sporting goods check out line in Wal-Mart. I see it at the filling stations, motels and restaurants in town. It is once again hunting season.
The word “season” would lead you to believe there is a beginning and end to this vision of green garb. There does not seem to be a definable period of time for “hunting season” as those dedicated sportsmen can find something to hunt just about every month of the year.
The fall months bring out the masses of them seeking trophy antelope, deer, elk. They drive into town in big powerful and very expensive vehicles pulling heavily loaded trailers full of all the essentials for a successful hunting camp. This would include at least 17 gigantic coolers filled with plenty of fine camp fare including t-bone steaks and cold beer, a selection of brand new ATV’s and camp trailers that completely take the “camp” out of camping.
While I tend to mock the current state of the sport of hunting, it is not foreign to me and mine. I come from a long line of meat hunters who indeed hunted first for sustenance for the family and then later as a simple sport. I have a son who wore his first camouflage as a toddler. I would pretend I couldn’t see him when we passed and would bump into him. He found no amusement in my entertainment at his expense.
He is now twelve years old and the lure of hunting has only grown with him. He is a stick hunter (archery) as well as rifle and is learning to do a little winter varmint trapping on the side. The highlight for him this fall was the discovery of marketed “scents” to disguise his people smell while sitting in an archery season elk hunt blind. Somehow the idea of wearing “elk urine” scent on his clothing was completely entertaining and delightful to him at an age when anything gross is absolutely hysterical.
Camouflage as a verb is “to conceal, usually through misrepresentation or other artifice.” That perfectly describes me and my magic drawer of makeup. The purpose of my camouflage is for it to conceal those very things one has come to know as camouflage--the green, tan and brown splotches of color. Although for me there is a definite upgrade in my choice of scents.
Color and smell. Most definitely beauty is in the eyes and nose of the hunter.
© Julie Carter 2005
===
True colors
by Larry Gabriel
Just like the trees they so admire, the "green" movement is finally showing its fall colors.
After thirty years of endless debates and litigation about rare bugs, snails, rodents, birds and fish, we are finally hearing the real bottom line of what they want.
The line was clearly drawn in a recent Casper Tribune story about the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance's success in halting thinning projects on 50,000 acres in the Black Hills last year. They stopped these projects because they believe most areas of the public forests are best left to "natural processes".
Jeremy Nichols of the Alliance had the courage to come right out and say what many have known for twenty years. They want no management on most of our forests.
We have all seen the "zero cut" and "no cows" symbols of the movement, but they display no "zero management" symbol (at least not yet).
Nels Smith, a Wyoming rancher on the Black Hills Advisory Board, showed similar courage in calling the tactics of Biodiversity an abuse of the process that will produce a "biological desert".
Actually we could refuse to manage our forests, but many have warned that one cannot accumulate excess fuel for fifty years and let it burn without creating a black-glass wasteland.
If the federal government is not going to manage its forests, it certainly has no need of a Forest Service. We could give these lands to the National Park Service, abolish the Forest Service, and save billions.
But, what about the premise of Biodiversity's argument? Does "Mother Nature" really know best?
If she does, New Orleans should remain a swamp.
If she does, the homes built in the Mississippi drainage should wash into the Dead Zone of the Gulf of Mexico each spring.
If she does, no crops should be cultivated.
If she does, the horse is an invasive species and does not belong in America.
If she does, we don't need indoor plumbing.
If she does, we don't need houses and should stay outside when it rains.
If she does…never mind.
All of us with "enough sense to come in out of the rain" know the answer.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture.
Camouflage is ‘in” for another season
By Julie Carter
There was a time when garments dyed in splotches of green, brown, tan, and black so as to make the wearer indistinguishable from the surrounding environment were either military issue or seasonal garb for the civilian wildlife hunter.
Since the U.S. military forces became the focus of the mass media through the war on terrorism, camouflage has become a standard clothing choice for the world in general. But in my world at this time and place it is still mostly about hunting.
By the very definition, you are not supposed to be able to see camouflage. The dictionary says it is “concealment by disguise or protective coloring.”
I can see it. I see it everywhere I go and most prevalent at the sporting goods check out line in Wal-Mart. I see it at the filling stations, motels and restaurants in town. It is once again hunting season.
The word “season” would lead you to believe there is a beginning and end to this vision of green garb. There does not seem to be a definable period of time for “hunting season” as those dedicated sportsmen can find something to hunt just about every month of the year.
The fall months bring out the masses of them seeking trophy antelope, deer, elk. They drive into town in big powerful and very expensive vehicles pulling heavily loaded trailers full of all the essentials for a successful hunting camp. This would include at least 17 gigantic coolers filled with plenty of fine camp fare including t-bone steaks and cold beer, a selection of brand new ATV’s and camp trailers that completely take the “camp” out of camping.
While I tend to mock the current state of the sport of hunting, it is not foreign to me and mine. I come from a long line of meat hunters who indeed hunted first for sustenance for the family and then later as a simple sport. I have a son who wore his first camouflage as a toddler. I would pretend I couldn’t see him when we passed and would bump into him. He found no amusement in my entertainment at his expense.
He is now twelve years old and the lure of hunting has only grown with him. He is a stick hunter (archery) as well as rifle and is learning to do a little winter varmint trapping on the side. The highlight for him this fall was the discovery of marketed “scents” to disguise his people smell while sitting in an archery season elk hunt blind. Somehow the idea of wearing “elk urine” scent on his clothing was completely entertaining and delightful to him at an age when anything gross is absolutely hysterical.
Camouflage as a verb is “to conceal, usually through misrepresentation or other artifice.” That perfectly describes me and my magic drawer of makeup. The purpose of my camouflage is for it to conceal those very things one has come to know as camouflage--the green, tan and brown splotches of color. Although for me there is a definite upgrade in my choice of scents.
Color and smell. Most definitely beauty is in the eyes and nose of the hunter.
© Julie Carter 2005
===
OPINION/COMMENTARY
More Doom That Wasn’t
Broadcast journalists have been the only ones bidding up gas prices lately. While they foretell a horizon of $4 and $5 gas, consumers on U.S. streets are paying an average of $2.81 – up just 6 cents since hurricane Rita. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News all covered the constant speculation about Gulf refinery damage and subsequent gas price spikes before and after Hurricane Rita’s September 24 impact. CNN used its 24 hours each day to raise fears about higher gas prices with show after show. A Nexis search of CNN transcripts around Rita’s landfall (from September 21 to 25) showed more than 20 mentions of the possibility of $4 or $5 gas from at least 12 different reporters in just five days on that network. “Hurricane Rita is sure to affect you even if you don’t live in the strike zone,” said CNN’s Kelly Wallace on the September 22 “Daybreak.” “How does $5 a gallon for gasoline sound?” Also on CNN September 22: Lou Dobbs: “oil analysts say $5 a gallon for gasoline is certainly not out of the question.” Miles O’Brien: “New predictions say gas could reach five. That’s right, $5 a gallon.” Paula Zahn: “One oil analyst is predicting $4 per gallon gasoline within two weeks, another analyst saying it could go as high as $5 a gallon.” A day earlier, Anderson Cooper warned viewers: “Just like after Katrina, gas prices could climb. But this time, the experts fear, it could be worse. Prices could hit a whopping $5 a gallon.”....
Another Energy Crisis?
But my Canadian friends keep telling me not to worry. Why? Because of the oil sands in Northern Alberta, which, they say, now have proven recoverable reserves of around 175 billion barrels - second only to the Saudis - and may in fact wind up having more reserves than any other spot on earth, especially as the technology to extract it improves. This oil is not pumped from the ground, however. It's mined, and the oil is then extracted from the sands in an enormously expensive process. At $10 a barrel, this extraction process is uneconomical, but at $60 a barrel, it is a highly profitable enterprise. (Break even is around $20 a barrel.) Many of the major oil companies have made multibillion-dollar investments in the oil sands, which are now producing about one million barrels a day, most of that going straight to the United States. Neil Camarta, who heads up Shell Canada's efforts, told me that he expected production to rise to three million barrels a day by 2010. Not having heard much about this before, I was a tad skeptical, so I called T. Boone Pickens, the 77-year-old former raider who knows more about oil markets than just about anyone I know. Mr. Pickens turned out to be quite excited about the oil sands. "That oil is the jewel of North America," he said. He says he thinks that production will never approach the 10 million barrels a day the Saudis currently export - "it's just too expensive to develop" - but that it could eventually get as high as 6 million barrels a day, which would cover more than half of America's oil import needs....
Newsday: Misrepresenting The Endangered Species Act
An editorial in today’s Newsday shows how far apart the right and left are in the Endangered Species Act. It also shows how far proponents are willing to go to distort the issue. Of Richard Pombo’s new bill, it states: One new feature of the bill is downright cynical: It requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond in an unrealistically short time to requests from property owners for rulings on whether a proposed action would harm endangered species. Pombo wanted 90 days, but during the markup of the bill, it became 180. That's still an outrageously short time for an agency without enough resources to meet deadlines now. If the agency doesn’t meet this new deadline, the property owner would be entitled to go ahead with the action. So? Property owners have rights, which the ESA has trampled on for over 30 years. Putting limits on a government agency is not cynical—it’s in the best tradition of individual rights. What’s cynical is violating individuals’ property rights by letting the process drag on and on with no deadline in sight. But wait. It gets worse. Pombo’s bill would also sock the taxpayer by compensating property owners who say they will suffer economically if they abstain from an action that might damage a listed species. A complex appraisal process would decide the amount of compensation, but whatever it is, it will constitute a shameless gift of public money. Well, it’s nice to see that Newsday is finally concerned with the long-suffering taxpayer! We can be sure they reiterate that concern the next time Ted Kennedy proposes more welfare spending. Too bad, though, that they are concerned about the taxpayer expense of something that is a legitimate government function: compensating property owners for the government “taking” of their property....
Improving the Endangered Species Act: Balancing the Needs of Landowners and Endangered Wildlife
The Endangered Species Act was intended to bring endangered species back from the brink, but over 30 years it has helped rescue only 10 of the nearly 1,300 species that have been listed—a success rate of less than one percent.[1] At the same time, the Act has dragged landowners into endless conflicts and litigation. Its vague classifications allow private property to be declared “critical habitats” almost arbitrarily, resulting in many use restrictions and seizures. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 (H.R. 3824), introduced by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Resources, would strengthen incentives for landowners to participate in conservation, to the benefit of endangered species, while clearing up the vague classifications that put private property at risk. According to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), 39 percent of all species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have an “unknown” status, 21 percent are “declining,” and only 6 percent are “improving.” This is unimpressive, and it may even be overstating ESA’s success. Many species that later studies have shown should not have been listed under ESA in the first place have subsequently been moved to “stable” status, falsely suggesting improvement. Data errors account for most of these changes in classification. Historically, such errors have been responsible for the delisting of more species than evidence of reduced survival threats or actual recoveries.[2] After 30 years, there is still a blurred line between “threatened” and “endangered” species. About 38 percent of the species classified as facing a “low” threat are listed as endangered rather than threatened.[3]This is a problem because faulty listings divert limited conservation resources from the species that need them most. Under ESA, species classification is based on the “best available” scientific data, a very vague standard that is responsible for much improper listing. Additionally, the current listing process is far from transparent, making it difficult for some stakeholders to participate. The end result is wasted resources and endless litigation....
Better Living, Sensible Regulation
The United Nations' Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was discussed last week in Vienna. It seeks to internationalize a "precautionary principle" approach essentially similar to the EU's REACH proposal, which is causing great concern in the chemicals industry in Europe. It appears that the US State Department is considering the UN proposal, and there are fears that it might adopt it. We strongly believe that the Bush Administration should continue to take a principled stand against international agreements based upon the precautionary principle, and continue to advocate the current international standard risk-based legislation. We have accordingly written as Members of the European Parliament to the US State Department, urging them to take this approach. On a recent visit to the United States, we were pleased to attend a meeting on Capitol Hill with representatives from the Bush Administration, who expressed firm opposition to the EU's forthcoming REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) Directive. With several elements of REACH contained in it, SAICM is equally burdensome, costly and impractical -- and possibly even a back-door way of introducing the problematic REACH Directive on an international level. The US State Department should already be aware that REACH in itself is complicated and controversial in the European legislative process. We have objected both to the principles that underpin this hazard-based legislation, and to the processes that it involves. As an international agreement, SAICM is equally objectionable and we urge all governments -- our own included -- to withdraw support for it....
Collapse: A Book Review
In Collapse, Jared Diamond asks: how could a society once so successful end up collapsing so utterly? One could ask a similar question about the thesis of Diamond’s latest work. Collapse floods the reader with as many anthropological anecdotes as it omits the deepest insights of economics and vital institutions. And that is a shame. The subtitle “How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” might have been better suited to the text of an institutional economist like the Nobel laureate Douglass North than to Diamond’s collection of post-Pulitzer assertions. According to Diamond, one of the basic ideas behind why societies collapse is resource depletion and so-called “tragedies of the commons.” Resources are overused when a rational person, directed by self-interest, uses some resource in an area before the next guy. If he doesn’t, you can bet the next guy will. The “tragedy” comes when everyone employs the same strategy and a resource is subsequently wiped out. It is therefore shameful that in a 525 page volume, Diamond devotes less than half of a single page to private property rights approaches to resource allocation and conservation issues. The idea is so simple as to be trivial: people have an incentive to protect and conserve resources that they own, because the expectation of future returns (or the preservation of amenities) depends on such conservation. Diamond skims over this fundamental axiom of economics—effectively ignoring an institution that has done more to generate wealth, conserve resources, and organize human society than perhaps any other human construct. Instead, Diamond gives us a “five-point” thesis, a preexisting environmentalist dogma that lies somewhere between sanctimony and paranoia....
Goodbye to anthropogenic global warming
When CO2 levels fall too low, natural processes cause it to be released from the soil -- as seems to be happening now. Researchers from the UK's Cranfield University found that some 13 million tons of carbon are being released from the soil every year, as Reuters recently reported. "Since the carbon appears to be released from soil regardless of how the soil is used, the researchers conclude that the main cause must be climate change itself. Though they could not say where all the missing carbon had gone, much of it may be entering the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, which many scientists say is causing global warming." Scientists from Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry wrote, "These losses thus completely offset the past technological achievements in reducing CO2 emissions, putting the UK's success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a different light." In other words, many Kyoto signatory nations have crippled their industry, spent vast amounts of money and caused rampant unemployment for absolutely nothing. Science -- not junk science based on hysteria and ideology, but real science based on data and reason -- suggests that global warming is driven more by the sun than anything humans have done. A recent study by Swiss and German scientists indicates that the sun is burning hotter than it has at anytime in the past thousand years. "The Sun is in a changed state," stated Dr. Sami Solanki, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. "It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently -- in the last 100 to 150 years." Does that time frame sound vaguely familiar? It's about the same time the Little Ice Age began to end -- the same time that Liberals claim humans began to cause global warming. Isn't it clear that the sun is the real cause? Shouldn't we at least examine this before ruining our economy for nothing? Every experiment must have a control, or a source of data uncorrupted by the experiment itself. There are no humans on Mars, and there's no way we could influence its climate. Yet Mars is also experiencing global warming, which strengthens the hypothesis that Earth's global warming is heliogenic, or sun-based, to the point of positive proof. It's simply not possible that the sun could cause environmental warming on Mars, but that similar warming on Earth is caused by SUVs and capitalism....
Local, State and Federal Gas Taxes Consume 45.9 Cents Per Gallon on Average
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that has followed, consumers are feeling the economic consequences of the disaster. Record gasoline prices are constantly in the headlines, which leaves many asking why prices are so high. While supply and demand are the primary determinants of gasoline prices, a significant portion of the price consumers pay at the pump can be attributed to gasoline taxes. In fact, the federal gas tax alone equals 18.4 cents for every gallon purchased (See Figure 1). In 1932, the federal government imposed the first federal gas tax. It began as a temporary levy with a rate of just 1 cent per gallon. Over the years, the tax burden has increased significantly. The Revenue Act of 1941 made the federal gas tax permanent and increased the rate to 1.5 cents per gallon to help fund the war effort. A decade later in 1951, the tax was increased to 2 cents per gallon to assist in the funding of the Korean War. After President Eisenhower’s idea of an interstate highway system had been instituted, the federal gas tax was raised to 4 cents per gallon in 1959. As recent as 1981, the federal gas tax remained at 4 cents per gallon. Significant tax increases in 1982, 1990 and 1993 increased the federal gas tax by 14.4 cents per gallon, or 360 percent from 1981 levels. In 1919, Oregon became the first state in the nation to place a tax on gasoline and every state has subsequently adopted this form of taxation. This year, according to the Energy Information Administration the average state gas tax is 20.8 cents per gallon. In addition to statewide taxes, often consumers pay local excise taxes on gasoline purchases (see Figure 2). Today, the combined burden of federal, state and local gas taxes costs American drivers an average of 45.9 cents on every gallon purchased. As Figure 2 illustrates, in some states the combined taxes exceed 60 cents for every gallon purchased....
More Doom That Wasn’t
Broadcast journalists have been the only ones bidding up gas prices lately. While they foretell a horizon of $4 and $5 gas, consumers on U.S. streets are paying an average of $2.81 – up just 6 cents since hurricane Rita. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News all covered the constant speculation about Gulf refinery damage and subsequent gas price spikes before and after Hurricane Rita’s September 24 impact. CNN used its 24 hours each day to raise fears about higher gas prices with show after show. A Nexis search of CNN transcripts around Rita’s landfall (from September 21 to 25) showed more than 20 mentions of the possibility of $4 or $5 gas from at least 12 different reporters in just five days on that network. “Hurricane Rita is sure to affect you even if you don’t live in the strike zone,” said CNN’s Kelly Wallace on the September 22 “Daybreak.” “How does $5 a gallon for gasoline sound?” Also on CNN September 22: Lou Dobbs: “oil analysts say $5 a gallon for gasoline is certainly not out of the question.” Miles O’Brien: “New predictions say gas could reach five. That’s right, $5 a gallon.” Paula Zahn: “One oil analyst is predicting $4 per gallon gasoline within two weeks, another analyst saying it could go as high as $5 a gallon.” A day earlier, Anderson Cooper warned viewers: “Just like after Katrina, gas prices could climb. But this time, the experts fear, it could be worse. Prices could hit a whopping $5 a gallon.”....
Another Energy Crisis?
But my Canadian friends keep telling me not to worry. Why? Because of the oil sands in Northern Alberta, which, they say, now have proven recoverable reserves of around 175 billion barrels - second only to the Saudis - and may in fact wind up having more reserves than any other spot on earth, especially as the technology to extract it improves. This oil is not pumped from the ground, however. It's mined, and the oil is then extracted from the sands in an enormously expensive process. At $10 a barrel, this extraction process is uneconomical, but at $60 a barrel, it is a highly profitable enterprise. (Break even is around $20 a barrel.) Many of the major oil companies have made multibillion-dollar investments in the oil sands, which are now producing about one million barrels a day, most of that going straight to the United States. Neil Camarta, who heads up Shell Canada's efforts, told me that he expected production to rise to three million barrels a day by 2010. Not having heard much about this before, I was a tad skeptical, so I called T. Boone Pickens, the 77-year-old former raider who knows more about oil markets than just about anyone I know. Mr. Pickens turned out to be quite excited about the oil sands. "That oil is the jewel of North America," he said. He says he thinks that production will never approach the 10 million barrels a day the Saudis currently export - "it's just too expensive to develop" - but that it could eventually get as high as 6 million barrels a day, which would cover more than half of America's oil import needs....
Newsday: Misrepresenting The Endangered Species Act
An editorial in today’s Newsday shows how far apart the right and left are in the Endangered Species Act. It also shows how far proponents are willing to go to distort the issue. Of Richard Pombo’s new bill, it states: One new feature of the bill is downright cynical: It requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond in an unrealistically short time to requests from property owners for rulings on whether a proposed action would harm endangered species. Pombo wanted 90 days, but during the markup of the bill, it became 180. That's still an outrageously short time for an agency without enough resources to meet deadlines now. If the agency doesn’t meet this new deadline, the property owner would be entitled to go ahead with the action. So? Property owners have rights, which the ESA has trampled on for over 30 years. Putting limits on a government agency is not cynical—it’s in the best tradition of individual rights. What’s cynical is violating individuals’ property rights by letting the process drag on and on with no deadline in sight. But wait. It gets worse. Pombo’s bill would also sock the taxpayer by compensating property owners who say they will suffer economically if they abstain from an action that might damage a listed species. A complex appraisal process would decide the amount of compensation, but whatever it is, it will constitute a shameless gift of public money. Well, it’s nice to see that Newsday is finally concerned with the long-suffering taxpayer! We can be sure they reiterate that concern the next time Ted Kennedy proposes more welfare spending. Too bad, though, that they are concerned about the taxpayer expense of something that is a legitimate government function: compensating property owners for the government “taking” of their property....
Improving the Endangered Species Act: Balancing the Needs of Landowners and Endangered Wildlife
The Endangered Species Act was intended to bring endangered species back from the brink, but over 30 years it has helped rescue only 10 of the nearly 1,300 species that have been listed—a success rate of less than one percent.[1] At the same time, the Act has dragged landowners into endless conflicts and litigation. Its vague classifications allow private property to be declared “critical habitats” almost arbitrarily, resulting in many use restrictions and seizures. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 (H.R. 3824), introduced by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Resources, would strengthen incentives for landowners to participate in conservation, to the benefit of endangered species, while clearing up the vague classifications that put private property at risk. According to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), 39 percent of all species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have an “unknown” status, 21 percent are “declining,” and only 6 percent are “improving.” This is unimpressive, and it may even be overstating ESA’s success. Many species that later studies have shown should not have been listed under ESA in the first place have subsequently been moved to “stable” status, falsely suggesting improvement. Data errors account for most of these changes in classification. Historically, such errors have been responsible for the delisting of more species than evidence of reduced survival threats or actual recoveries.[2] After 30 years, there is still a blurred line between “threatened” and “endangered” species. About 38 percent of the species classified as facing a “low” threat are listed as endangered rather than threatened.[3]This is a problem because faulty listings divert limited conservation resources from the species that need them most. Under ESA, species classification is based on the “best available” scientific data, a very vague standard that is responsible for much improper listing. Additionally, the current listing process is far from transparent, making it difficult for some stakeholders to participate. The end result is wasted resources and endless litigation....
Better Living, Sensible Regulation
The United Nations' Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was discussed last week in Vienna. It seeks to internationalize a "precautionary principle" approach essentially similar to the EU's REACH proposal, which is causing great concern in the chemicals industry in Europe. It appears that the US State Department is considering the UN proposal, and there are fears that it might adopt it. We strongly believe that the Bush Administration should continue to take a principled stand against international agreements based upon the precautionary principle, and continue to advocate the current international standard risk-based legislation. We have accordingly written as Members of the European Parliament to the US State Department, urging them to take this approach. On a recent visit to the United States, we were pleased to attend a meeting on Capitol Hill with representatives from the Bush Administration, who expressed firm opposition to the EU's forthcoming REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) Directive. With several elements of REACH contained in it, SAICM is equally burdensome, costly and impractical -- and possibly even a back-door way of introducing the problematic REACH Directive on an international level. The US State Department should already be aware that REACH in itself is complicated and controversial in the European legislative process. We have objected both to the principles that underpin this hazard-based legislation, and to the processes that it involves. As an international agreement, SAICM is equally objectionable and we urge all governments -- our own included -- to withdraw support for it....
Collapse: A Book Review
In Collapse, Jared Diamond asks: how could a society once so successful end up collapsing so utterly? One could ask a similar question about the thesis of Diamond’s latest work. Collapse floods the reader with as many anthropological anecdotes as it omits the deepest insights of economics and vital institutions. And that is a shame. The subtitle “How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” might have been better suited to the text of an institutional economist like the Nobel laureate Douglass North than to Diamond’s collection of post-Pulitzer assertions. According to Diamond, one of the basic ideas behind why societies collapse is resource depletion and so-called “tragedies of the commons.” Resources are overused when a rational person, directed by self-interest, uses some resource in an area before the next guy. If he doesn’t, you can bet the next guy will. The “tragedy” comes when everyone employs the same strategy and a resource is subsequently wiped out. It is therefore shameful that in a 525 page volume, Diamond devotes less than half of a single page to private property rights approaches to resource allocation and conservation issues. The idea is so simple as to be trivial: people have an incentive to protect and conserve resources that they own, because the expectation of future returns (or the preservation of amenities) depends on such conservation. Diamond skims over this fundamental axiom of economics—effectively ignoring an institution that has done more to generate wealth, conserve resources, and organize human society than perhaps any other human construct. Instead, Diamond gives us a “five-point” thesis, a preexisting environmentalist dogma that lies somewhere between sanctimony and paranoia....
Goodbye to anthropogenic global warming
When CO2 levels fall too low, natural processes cause it to be released from the soil -- as seems to be happening now. Researchers from the UK's Cranfield University found that some 13 million tons of carbon are being released from the soil every year, as Reuters recently reported. "Since the carbon appears to be released from soil regardless of how the soil is used, the researchers conclude that the main cause must be climate change itself. Though they could not say where all the missing carbon had gone, much of it may be entering the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, which many scientists say is causing global warming." Scientists from Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry wrote, "These losses thus completely offset the past technological achievements in reducing CO2 emissions, putting the UK's success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a different light." In other words, many Kyoto signatory nations have crippled their industry, spent vast amounts of money and caused rampant unemployment for absolutely nothing. Science -- not junk science based on hysteria and ideology, but real science based on data and reason -- suggests that global warming is driven more by the sun than anything humans have done. A recent study by Swiss and German scientists indicates that the sun is burning hotter than it has at anytime in the past thousand years. "The Sun is in a changed state," stated Dr. Sami Solanki, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. "It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently -- in the last 100 to 150 years." Does that time frame sound vaguely familiar? It's about the same time the Little Ice Age began to end -- the same time that Liberals claim humans began to cause global warming. Isn't it clear that the sun is the real cause? Shouldn't we at least examine this before ruining our economy for nothing? Every experiment must have a control, or a source of data uncorrupted by the experiment itself. There are no humans on Mars, and there's no way we could influence its climate. Yet Mars is also experiencing global warming, which strengthens the hypothesis that Earth's global warming is heliogenic, or sun-based, to the point of positive proof. It's simply not possible that the sun could cause environmental warming on Mars, but that similar warming on Earth is caused by SUVs and capitalism....
Local, State and Federal Gas Taxes Consume 45.9 Cents Per Gallon on Average
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that has followed, consumers are feeling the economic consequences of the disaster. Record gasoline prices are constantly in the headlines, which leaves many asking why prices are so high. While supply and demand are the primary determinants of gasoline prices, a significant portion of the price consumers pay at the pump can be attributed to gasoline taxes. In fact, the federal gas tax alone equals 18.4 cents for every gallon purchased (See Figure 1). In 1932, the federal government imposed the first federal gas tax. It began as a temporary levy with a rate of just 1 cent per gallon. Over the years, the tax burden has increased significantly. The Revenue Act of 1941 made the federal gas tax permanent and increased the rate to 1.5 cents per gallon to help fund the war effort. A decade later in 1951, the tax was increased to 2 cents per gallon to assist in the funding of the Korean War. After President Eisenhower’s idea of an interstate highway system had been instituted, the federal gas tax was raised to 4 cents per gallon in 1959. As recent as 1981, the federal gas tax remained at 4 cents per gallon. Significant tax increases in 1982, 1990 and 1993 increased the federal gas tax by 14.4 cents per gallon, or 360 percent from 1981 levels. In 1919, Oregon became the first state in the nation to place a tax on gasoline and every state has subsequently adopted this form of taxation. This year, according to the Energy Information Administration the average state gas tax is 20.8 cents per gallon. In addition to statewide taxes, often consumers pay local excise taxes on gasoline purchases (see Figure 2). Today, the combined burden of federal, state and local gas taxes costs American drivers an average of 45.9 cents on every gallon purchased. As Figure 2 illustrates, in some states the combined taxes exceed 60 cents for every gallon purchased....
Friday, September 30, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
House Votes for New Limits on Endangered Species Act By a vote of 229 to 193, the House of Representatives moved Thursday to undo some of the central provisions of the 32-year-old Endangered Species Act and to require that agencies enforcing the law reimburse property owners if the law's impact reduces the value of their land. Environmental groups expressed dismay at the measure, which, if enacted, would represent one of the most far-reaching reversals of environmental policy in more than a decade. Leading House Democrats also said it created an unlimited financial entitlement for landowners. The prospects for Senate passage are cloudy at best; even the bill's sponsor, Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman of the House Resources committee, said he did not expect quick action in the Senate. The vote, which came after the defeat of a rival measure that reworked the law but required enforceable protections for animals and plants in danger of extinction, was the culmination of a 12-year legislative mission by Mr. Pombo. The Bush administration gave its formal support to the measure a few hours before the vote....
Environmental Activists Target Small Property Owners While Calling Fifth Amendment a 'New Entitlement' The environmental community is in an uproar this week over a proposed measure that would reform the Endangered Species Act by including within it modest property rights protections for small landowners. The "Threatened and Endangered Species Reform Act" (TESRA) is being debated now and is expected to face a vote today in the House of Representatives. If green lobbyists and their congressional allies get their way, American property owners will continue to have their rights trampled by the Endangered Species Act, says the National Center for Public Policy Research. "In light of the enormous outcry over the dreadful Kelo v. New London ruling, it's hard to believe that anyone would so vehemently oppose protecting the property rights of American landowners," said Peyton Knight, director of the John P. McGovern MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "Indifference to the suffering of small property owners would be bad enough, but actively seeking to harm them is beyond the pale." Knight refers to the onslaught of anti-property rights rhetoric that has poured out of the environmental community this week as a result of the proposal that landowners should receive compensation when the government takes their property under the Endangered Species Act. Under current law, the ESA takes private property without paying the owner a dime....
Column: Pombo-Cardoza wildlife bill corrects many flaws As a Stanislaus County supervisor, I have witnessed firsthand the shortcomings of the current Endangered Species Act and the pressing need for reform. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005, sponsored by Reps. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, does just that. It will enhance the ESA by shifting the focus of the act away from unproductive litigation back to its original goal -- the actual recovery of species. In 2002, when more than 128,000acres of Stanislaus County was proposed as critical habitat for vernal pool species and plants, we were troubled to learn the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not based its decision on scientific or economic data, but simply on aerial photography. When pressed, the service acknowledged that it did not seek more accurate information and mapping from our county and other local governments because they were rushing to comply with an unrealistic court-imposed deadline. Our problems were further compounded when the service used only boilerplate economic analysis to review the economic impact on our county. When pressed as to why they didn't prepare an analysis that was specific to the proposed designation in our region, the response again noted a need to rush to comply with a court order. Unfortunately, in the haste to meet arbitrary court-imposed deadlines, the service actually designated parking lots and housing subdivisions as critical habitat for fairy shrimp....
Deal preserves land along North Rim Flagstaff environmental group Grand Canyon Trust will begin ranching on the Arizona Strip next year in what they're calling a move to conserve about 880,000 acres of public land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border. The environmentalists say they're saving the land from impacts of more cattle, seeking to graze as few head of cattle as possible and fence off more sensitive areas. "We'll ensure we're managing livestock in an as ecologically responsible way as possible," Grand Canyon Trust ranch director Rick Moore said. "...We think this will be a place to go out and take a real hard look at ranching in an arid environment." The Trust plans to reduce the 2,175 cattle allowed to be rotated around the pastures per year by about 10 percent and hire a rancher out of Wyoming to manage the new North Rim Ranch. "This area has been severely impacted by grazing," Moore said. The ranch has not been worked in recent years while a sale was pending....
Court order stalls Forest Service daily operation Bitterroot National Forest officials had planned to spend Thursday at the Darby Public Library talking about plans for forest management. But a Wednesday court order effectively tied the agency's hands and halted much of what the Forest Service does. Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Dave Bull said the agency will still be cleaning bathrooms, but that's about it. The order handed down from a U.S. District Court in California suspended a variety of projects on national forests because the public did not have the opportunity to comment on them or file appeals. The court found that public notice, comment and appeal provisions are required in all categorical exclusions - actions that were deemed not to have a significant effect on the environment and don't require environmental review. "There is a whole range of administration decisions that we make internally," Bull said. "Anything that did not have public notice, comment and appeal is effected." "The decision could suspend 100 or more projects underway in the Northern Region," regional forester Gail Kembell said in a news release. "Projects conducted by contract, permit or other means - like reducing hazardous fuels, improving wildlife habitat, repairing roads, fixing a toilet and even cutting firewood could be affected." Bull said officials at the national level were still scrambling to see how wide-ranging the order is and pursing legal remedies....
Thinning democracy When the Bitterroot National Forest decided to finally release the final Environmental Impact Statement for its preferred alternative on the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction project last Thursday, it was an invite-only affair. If you weren’t one of the lucky members of the community, the “credentialed press,” the Ravalli County Commissioners or the State Senate, you were likely to be escorted from the public building by armed (and armored) Forest Service law enforcement officers. That’s what happened to Bitterroot Valley residents and avowed conservationists Stewart Brandborg, Larry Campbell and Jim Miller. The three members of Friends of the Bitterroot (FOB), a local conservation group, say they have no history of criminal or violent behavior, yet their presence at the meeting was apparently deemed dangerous by Bitterroot Forest Supervisor Dave Bull, who later told the press that the men were removed by armed guards because the agency wanted to provide a “safe environment.” “The only violence inflicted here is that of the Forest Service against public participatory process guaranteed in the United States Constitution,” says Brandborg, 80, whose father was the Bitterroot forest supervisor from 1935 to 1955....
Agencies claim success in bison plan Federal and state agencies claim success in carrying out a five-year-old plan for managing bison that leave Yellowstone National Park, even though the plan still is in the first of its three phases. The assessment released Thursday determined the five agencies are not ready for the next step because five of the 14 objectives in the bison management plan have not been met. The unmet goals include inoculating bison against the disease brucellosis by administering vaccine using means such as darts fired from rifles. Steps to meet the various remaining objectives have been initiated, said Yellowstone spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews. The agencies said they have been successful in meeting the management plan's main goals, which include keeping bison and livestock apart, and preventing the potential spread of brucellosis to cattle from bison that enter Montana in search of forage....
Judge lets cougar hunt stand On Saturday, the mountain lions of the Black Hills will need their eagle-sharp eyesight, all their cagey, elusive instincts, and their ability to remain invisible as South Dakota's first-ever mountain lion hunting season gets under way. A judge's ruling late Thursday, after an all-day court hearing, clears the way for hunting to begin Saturday as scheduled. Circuit Judge Max Gors said the Mountain Lion Foundation and other opponents who had sued to stop the season failed to show that hunting will cause irreparable harm to the Black Hills lion population. The opponents argued that there was insufficient data to justify a lion season - warning that hunting could result in extinction of the big cats in South Dakota. As the largest - and often most misunderstood - predator in the state, the Black Hills mountain lion will now go from stalker to stalked. The season, which was approved earlier this year, has created more controversy than excitement in the state. Wednesday, the Mountain Lion Foundation, a national conservation agency, filed its lawsuit to stop the season before it began....
It's Always Fair Game for Wild Pigs Her quarry in these golden Mendocino hills was Sus scrofa, a squat, muscular wild boar with coarse dark hair, hairy ears, a thick armor-like hide and skewers for tusks, which is now overrunning the countryside to become the latest plague of California. Along with states like Texas, Florida and Hawaii, California has become a prime habitat for pigs, so much so that the state Department of Fish and Game has begun offering advanced wild boar hunting clinics to encourage people like Mrs. Straub, a 29-year-old executive secretary from Santa Rosa, to hunt pigs. The pigs are a nonnative hybrid species that can run up to 25 miles an hour and whose meat is prized by cooks - Mrs. Straub and her husband, Randy, among them. They flourish in all but two counties of the state, and their moonlit sashaying in search of grubs and acorns along Highway 1 near Carmel has become so treacherous to motorists that the state Department of Transportation put up "Pig Xing" signs last year. In a sense, Mrs. Straub and her pork-loving brethren are ground troops in an escalating war between man and beast. Although culinary politics here lean more toward organic broccoli than firearms, wild pigs are regarded as fair game by state fish and game officials, who have declared a 365-day open season on pigs, with no bag limit. Wild pigs, prolific breeders, can double their population every four months, causing environmental havoc. The fish and game department puts the population at 100,000 to 250,000 statewide....
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is Taking Aim at Wetlands After decades of slowing down, the loss of United States wetlands that are home to migratory birds and endangered species may start climbing again, following decisions by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to open up 11,000-15,000 acres of wetlands in 15 states since 2004 in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision narrowing Clean Water Act protections, according to an analysis conducted by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). Nearly five years ago, the Rehnquist-led Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Clean Water Act did not protect so-called "isolated" wetlands that provide critical habitat for migratory birds. The 15 states with the most wetlands exempted by the Corps' aggressive implementation of that decision since 2004 are: Nebraska (2,970-3,139 acres); North Dakota (2,134-2,474 acres); Florida (1,699-1,884 acres); Illinois (643-1,332 acres); Texas (642-887 acres); Georgia (539-1,104 acres); South Dakota (479-704 acres); Colorado (469-872 acres); Wisconsin (434-641 acres); Indiana (407-645 acres); Ohio (259-325 acres); California (215-344 acres); Minnesota (169-356 acres); Iowa (150-274 acres); and New York (140-205 acres)....
Congress Looking At Renewed Coastal Drilling A move is already underway to open up California’s coast to oil exploration. In the past, a large majority of Californians has strongly opposed any more oil and gas drilling off of our coast, but some members of Congress are hoping current events will cause people to take another look. “We’re looking at prices going up significantly during the winter months,” says Jeff Smith of PG&E. “The estimates right now are forty to fifty percent higher.” Some say the solution is renewed offshore drilling for California. New congressional legislation would end the longtime ban on energy development along the coast. The bill passed the House Resources Committee with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Opponents say it's a sham....
Column: Bush appointee’s assault on parks has deep roots Ten years ago this October, my fax machine rattled and hummed. It coughed out a couple of sheets of “minutes” transcribed from what had been an unpublicized closed meeting in West Yellowstone. Few people knew it had occurred. Details were passed on by an anonymous source with the hope they would be divulged in a newspaper column I was writing. Readers soon learned about the infamous “brainstorming session” that involved members of various Greater Yellowstone area chambers of commerce arrayed under the nebulous banner of the Yellowstone Gateway Alliance. The Gateway Alliance was led by Paul Hoffman, who in recent weeks as a Bush administration political appointee has come under fire again for orchestrating another brainstorming session, this time at the U.S. Interior Department. Hoffman, who once was a congressional aide to Dick Cheney, today serves as a deputy assistant Interior secretary. Beyond public scrutiny, he has been quietly rewriting the government manual that guides management principles in our national parks....
Woman fights to keep cabin in park bounds An 83-year-old woman moved a step closer to keeping her summer home inside Rocky Mountain National Park Wednesday when a U.S. Senate committee approved a deal that would provide her with a lifetime lease on the cabin. The National Park Service wanted to evict Betty Dick when her lease expired July 16, but after the intervention of two U. S. senators and a congressman, a compromise appears near. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved a bill that essentially extends Dick's lease, allowing her to rent the cabin and eight surrounding acres for $300 a year for the rest of her life. Under her previous lease, Dick got the cabin and 23 acres for $300 a year. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said the Park Service faces 186 similar disputes in 29 locations. He said he plans to introduce legislation setting up a process to settle them without resorting to "private legislation" like the bill resolving the Colorado case....
Alaska proves a prime hiding spot for man accused of abuse With a land mass constituting one-fifth of the continental United States, there are simply too many places to hide in Alaska. And that's the vexing part for Alaska State Troopers, who are scouring the vast Alaska wilderness and its sparsely populated communities for the man known as Papa Pilgrim, the patriarch of a self-styled pioneering family accused of sexually abusing one of his 15 children. But in Alaska, it can take a long time to ferret someone out of the wilderness, even if they want to be found. So it's worse when the person is Robert Allen Hale — Papa Pilgrim's real name — an experienced outdoorsman who apparently doesn't want to be found....
Herd killed to stem bovine TB The slaughter of a cattle herd this week in northwestern Minnesota is part of an ongoing effort to contain an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis, officials said. Eighteen Minnesota herds are under quarantine and will be tested for possible TB infection. Terry Bolding, veterinarian for the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, said it's still not clear where the TB originated. It may have come from cattle in another state, or it may have been spread to cattle by whitetail deer. He said it's possible for people to get the disease, but unlikely. They would have to drink unpasteurized milk from an infected cow or get sneezed on by an infected animal. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources plans to test about 500 deer killed by hunters this fall. Bolding said that if the disease is in deer, it will be much harder to control....
Cowboy up? Fort Worth hollers "heck yeah" Steve Murrin is the informal mayor of "the stockyards," a small area of "Wild West" saloons, steakhouses, honky-tonks and clothing stores that blossomed in the middle of a poor neighborhood. The Fort Worth Stockyards used to be the heart of a vibrant cattle industry within the city limits. Then, says Murrin, it became skid row. Now it's a tourist attraction - men wearing various authentic 19th-century cowboy costumes, for example, drive longhorn cattle down the brick streets twice every day - but it's also the home of Billy Bob's Texas and the White Elephant Saloon, a storied and superb live-music venue. The Cowtown Coliseum - an ornate Spanish-style building that holds rodeos on weekends - dominates a stretch of the Stockyards area....
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House Votes for New Limits on Endangered Species Act By a vote of 229 to 193, the House of Representatives moved Thursday to undo some of the central provisions of the 32-year-old Endangered Species Act and to require that agencies enforcing the law reimburse property owners if the law's impact reduces the value of their land. Environmental groups expressed dismay at the measure, which, if enacted, would represent one of the most far-reaching reversals of environmental policy in more than a decade. Leading House Democrats also said it created an unlimited financial entitlement for landowners. The prospects for Senate passage are cloudy at best; even the bill's sponsor, Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman of the House Resources committee, said he did not expect quick action in the Senate. The vote, which came after the defeat of a rival measure that reworked the law but required enforceable protections for animals and plants in danger of extinction, was the culmination of a 12-year legislative mission by Mr. Pombo. The Bush administration gave its formal support to the measure a few hours before the vote....
Environmental Activists Target Small Property Owners While Calling Fifth Amendment a 'New Entitlement' The environmental community is in an uproar this week over a proposed measure that would reform the Endangered Species Act by including within it modest property rights protections for small landowners. The "Threatened and Endangered Species Reform Act" (TESRA) is being debated now and is expected to face a vote today in the House of Representatives. If green lobbyists and their congressional allies get their way, American property owners will continue to have their rights trampled by the Endangered Species Act, says the National Center for Public Policy Research. "In light of the enormous outcry over the dreadful Kelo v. New London ruling, it's hard to believe that anyone would so vehemently oppose protecting the property rights of American landowners," said Peyton Knight, director of the John P. McGovern MD Center for Environmental and Regulatory Affairs of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "Indifference to the suffering of small property owners would be bad enough, but actively seeking to harm them is beyond the pale." Knight refers to the onslaught of anti-property rights rhetoric that has poured out of the environmental community this week as a result of the proposal that landowners should receive compensation when the government takes their property under the Endangered Species Act. Under current law, the ESA takes private property without paying the owner a dime....
Column: Pombo-Cardoza wildlife bill corrects many flaws As a Stanislaus County supervisor, I have witnessed firsthand the shortcomings of the current Endangered Species Act and the pressing need for reform. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005, sponsored by Reps. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, does just that. It will enhance the ESA by shifting the focus of the act away from unproductive litigation back to its original goal -- the actual recovery of species. In 2002, when more than 128,000acres of Stanislaus County was proposed as critical habitat for vernal pool species and plants, we were troubled to learn the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not based its decision on scientific or economic data, but simply on aerial photography. When pressed, the service acknowledged that it did not seek more accurate information and mapping from our county and other local governments because they were rushing to comply with an unrealistic court-imposed deadline. Our problems were further compounded when the service used only boilerplate economic analysis to review the economic impact on our county. When pressed as to why they didn't prepare an analysis that was specific to the proposed designation in our region, the response again noted a need to rush to comply with a court order. Unfortunately, in the haste to meet arbitrary court-imposed deadlines, the service actually designated parking lots and housing subdivisions as critical habitat for fairy shrimp....
Deal preserves land along North Rim Flagstaff environmental group Grand Canyon Trust will begin ranching on the Arizona Strip next year in what they're calling a move to conserve about 880,000 acres of public land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border. The environmentalists say they're saving the land from impacts of more cattle, seeking to graze as few head of cattle as possible and fence off more sensitive areas. "We'll ensure we're managing livestock in an as ecologically responsible way as possible," Grand Canyon Trust ranch director Rick Moore said. "...We think this will be a place to go out and take a real hard look at ranching in an arid environment." The Trust plans to reduce the 2,175 cattle allowed to be rotated around the pastures per year by about 10 percent and hire a rancher out of Wyoming to manage the new North Rim Ranch. "This area has been severely impacted by grazing," Moore said. The ranch has not been worked in recent years while a sale was pending....
Court order stalls Forest Service daily operation Bitterroot National Forest officials had planned to spend Thursday at the Darby Public Library talking about plans for forest management. But a Wednesday court order effectively tied the agency's hands and halted much of what the Forest Service does. Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Dave Bull said the agency will still be cleaning bathrooms, but that's about it. The order handed down from a U.S. District Court in California suspended a variety of projects on national forests because the public did not have the opportunity to comment on them or file appeals. The court found that public notice, comment and appeal provisions are required in all categorical exclusions - actions that were deemed not to have a significant effect on the environment and don't require environmental review. "There is a whole range of administration decisions that we make internally," Bull said. "Anything that did not have public notice, comment and appeal is effected." "The decision could suspend 100 or more projects underway in the Northern Region," regional forester Gail Kembell said in a news release. "Projects conducted by contract, permit or other means - like reducing hazardous fuels, improving wildlife habitat, repairing roads, fixing a toilet and even cutting firewood could be affected." Bull said officials at the national level were still scrambling to see how wide-ranging the order is and pursing legal remedies....
Thinning democracy When the Bitterroot National Forest decided to finally release the final Environmental Impact Statement for its preferred alternative on the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction project last Thursday, it was an invite-only affair. If you weren’t one of the lucky members of the community, the “credentialed press,” the Ravalli County Commissioners or the State Senate, you were likely to be escorted from the public building by armed (and armored) Forest Service law enforcement officers. That’s what happened to Bitterroot Valley residents and avowed conservationists Stewart Brandborg, Larry Campbell and Jim Miller. The three members of Friends of the Bitterroot (FOB), a local conservation group, say they have no history of criminal or violent behavior, yet their presence at the meeting was apparently deemed dangerous by Bitterroot Forest Supervisor Dave Bull, who later told the press that the men were removed by armed guards because the agency wanted to provide a “safe environment.” “The only violence inflicted here is that of the Forest Service against public participatory process guaranteed in the United States Constitution,” says Brandborg, 80, whose father was the Bitterroot forest supervisor from 1935 to 1955....
Agencies claim success in bison plan Federal and state agencies claim success in carrying out a five-year-old plan for managing bison that leave Yellowstone National Park, even though the plan still is in the first of its three phases. The assessment released Thursday determined the five agencies are not ready for the next step because five of the 14 objectives in the bison management plan have not been met. The unmet goals include inoculating bison against the disease brucellosis by administering vaccine using means such as darts fired from rifles. Steps to meet the various remaining objectives have been initiated, said Yellowstone spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews. The agencies said they have been successful in meeting the management plan's main goals, which include keeping bison and livestock apart, and preventing the potential spread of brucellosis to cattle from bison that enter Montana in search of forage....
Judge lets cougar hunt stand On Saturday, the mountain lions of the Black Hills will need their eagle-sharp eyesight, all their cagey, elusive instincts, and their ability to remain invisible as South Dakota's first-ever mountain lion hunting season gets under way. A judge's ruling late Thursday, after an all-day court hearing, clears the way for hunting to begin Saturday as scheduled. Circuit Judge Max Gors said the Mountain Lion Foundation and other opponents who had sued to stop the season failed to show that hunting will cause irreparable harm to the Black Hills lion population. The opponents argued that there was insufficient data to justify a lion season - warning that hunting could result in extinction of the big cats in South Dakota. As the largest - and often most misunderstood - predator in the state, the Black Hills mountain lion will now go from stalker to stalked. The season, which was approved earlier this year, has created more controversy than excitement in the state. Wednesday, the Mountain Lion Foundation, a national conservation agency, filed its lawsuit to stop the season before it began....
It's Always Fair Game for Wild Pigs Her quarry in these golden Mendocino hills was Sus scrofa, a squat, muscular wild boar with coarse dark hair, hairy ears, a thick armor-like hide and skewers for tusks, which is now overrunning the countryside to become the latest plague of California. Along with states like Texas, Florida and Hawaii, California has become a prime habitat for pigs, so much so that the state Department of Fish and Game has begun offering advanced wild boar hunting clinics to encourage people like Mrs. Straub, a 29-year-old executive secretary from Santa Rosa, to hunt pigs. The pigs are a nonnative hybrid species that can run up to 25 miles an hour and whose meat is prized by cooks - Mrs. Straub and her husband, Randy, among them. They flourish in all but two counties of the state, and their moonlit sashaying in search of grubs and acorns along Highway 1 near Carmel has become so treacherous to motorists that the state Department of Transportation put up "Pig Xing" signs last year. In a sense, Mrs. Straub and her pork-loving brethren are ground troops in an escalating war between man and beast. Although culinary politics here lean more toward organic broccoli than firearms, wild pigs are regarded as fair game by state fish and game officials, who have declared a 365-day open season on pigs, with no bag limit. Wild pigs, prolific breeders, can double their population every four months, causing environmental havoc. The fish and game department puts the population at 100,000 to 250,000 statewide....
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is Taking Aim at Wetlands After decades of slowing down, the loss of United States wetlands that are home to migratory birds and endangered species may start climbing again, following decisions by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to open up 11,000-15,000 acres of wetlands in 15 states since 2004 in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision narrowing Clean Water Act protections, according to an analysis conducted by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). Nearly five years ago, the Rehnquist-led Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Clean Water Act did not protect so-called "isolated" wetlands that provide critical habitat for migratory birds. The 15 states with the most wetlands exempted by the Corps' aggressive implementation of that decision since 2004 are: Nebraska (2,970-3,139 acres); North Dakota (2,134-2,474 acres); Florida (1,699-1,884 acres); Illinois (643-1,332 acres); Texas (642-887 acres); Georgia (539-1,104 acres); South Dakota (479-704 acres); Colorado (469-872 acres); Wisconsin (434-641 acres); Indiana (407-645 acres); Ohio (259-325 acres); California (215-344 acres); Minnesota (169-356 acres); Iowa (150-274 acres); and New York (140-205 acres)....
Congress Looking At Renewed Coastal Drilling A move is already underway to open up California’s coast to oil exploration. In the past, a large majority of Californians has strongly opposed any more oil and gas drilling off of our coast, but some members of Congress are hoping current events will cause people to take another look. “We’re looking at prices going up significantly during the winter months,” says Jeff Smith of PG&E. “The estimates right now are forty to fifty percent higher.” Some say the solution is renewed offshore drilling for California. New congressional legislation would end the longtime ban on energy development along the coast. The bill passed the House Resources Committee with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Opponents say it's a sham....
Column: Bush appointee’s assault on parks has deep roots Ten years ago this October, my fax machine rattled and hummed. It coughed out a couple of sheets of “minutes” transcribed from what had been an unpublicized closed meeting in West Yellowstone. Few people knew it had occurred. Details were passed on by an anonymous source with the hope they would be divulged in a newspaper column I was writing. Readers soon learned about the infamous “brainstorming session” that involved members of various Greater Yellowstone area chambers of commerce arrayed under the nebulous banner of the Yellowstone Gateway Alliance. The Gateway Alliance was led by Paul Hoffman, who in recent weeks as a Bush administration political appointee has come under fire again for orchestrating another brainstorming session, this time at the U.S. Interior Department. Hoffman, who once was a congressional aide to Dick Cheney, today serves as a deputy assistant Interior secretary. Beyond public scrutiny, he has been quietly rewriting the government manual that guides management principles in our national parks....
Woman fights to keep cabin in park bounds An 83-year-old woman moved a step closer to keeping her summer home inside Rocky Mountain National Park Wednesday when a U.S. Senate committee approved a deal that would provide her with a lifetime lease on the cabin. The National Park Service wanted to evict Betty Dick when her lease expired July 16, but after the intervention of two U. S. senators and a congressman, a compromise appears near. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved a bill that essentially extends Dick's lease, allowing her to rent the cabin and eight surrounding acres for $300 a year for the rest of her life. Under her previous lease, Dick got the cabin and 23 acres for $300 a year. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said the Park Service faces 186 similar disputes in 29 locations. He said he plans to introduce legislation setting up a process to settle them without resorting to "private legislation" like the bill resolving the Colorado case....
Alaska proves a prime hiding spot for man accused of abuse With a land mass constituting one-fifth of the continental United States, there are simply too many places to hide in Alaska. And that's the vexing part for Alaska State Troopers, who are scouring the vast Alaska wilderness and its sparsely populated communities for the man known as Papa Pilgrim, the patriarch of a self-styled pioneering family accused of sexually abusing one of his 15 children. But in Alaska, it can take a long time to ferret someone out of the wilderness, even if they want to be found. So it's worse when the person is Robert Allen Hale — Papa Pilgrim's real name — an experienced outdoorsman who apparently doesn't want to be found....
Herd killed to stem bovine TB The slaughter of a cattle herd this week in northwestern Minnesota is part of an ongoing effort to contain an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis, officials said. Eighteen Minnesota herds are under quarantine and will be tested for possible TB infection. Terry Bolding, veterinarian for the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, said it's still not clear where the TB originated. It may have come from cattle in another state, or it may have been spread to cattle by whitetail deer. He said it's possible for people to get the disease, but unlikely. They would have to drink unpasteurized milk from an infected cow or get sneezed on by an infected animal. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources plans to test about 500 deer killed by hunters this fall. Bolding said that if the disease is in deer, it will be much harder to control....
Cowboy up? Fort Worth hollers "heck yeah" Steve Murrin is the informal mayor of "the stockyards," a small area of "Wild West" saloons, steakhouses, honky-tonks and clothing stores that blossomed in the middle of a poor neighborhood. The Fort Worth Stockyards used to be the heart of a vibrant cattle industry within the city limits. Then, says Murrin, it became skid row. Now it's a tourist attraction - men wearing various authentic 19th-century cowboy costumes, for example, drive longhorn cattle down the brick streets twice every day - but it's also the home of Billy Bob's Texas and the White Elephant Saloon, a storied and superb live-music venue. The Cowtown Coliseum - an ornate Spanish-style building that holds rodeos on weekends - dominates a stretch of the Stockyards area....
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Thursday, September 29, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Testimony Supports More Cattle Grazing on Public Lands Dr. Richard L. Knight, Colorado State University Professor of Wildlife Conservation, testified today before the Senate’s Energy & Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. A noted wildlife biologist, Knight called ranching “the oldest sustainable use of Western lands” and said “more than any other justification, the timeless traditions of ranching legitimizes its existence and continuation.” Chairman Larry Craig (R-Idaho) called the hearing to review the grazing programs of the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, including proposed changes to grazing regulations, and the status of grazing permit renewals, monitoring programs and allotment restocking plans. Knight’s testimony focused on scientific evidence supporting ranching’s benefits to biodiversity and chastised politically-motivated attempts to end public lands grazing. “The reciprocal demonization of ranchers and environmentalists – the so-called ‘rangeland conflict’ – has dominated public debate for too long. It has not contributed to on-the-ground solutions,” says Knight. “It has divided people who might otherwise be united by common goals: the conservation of magnificent open spaces, scarce water resources, and imperiled wildlife. If it continues, both sides will lose what they purport to defend.”....
Historic kane and two mile ranches bought by the grand canyon trust and the conservation fund The Grand Canyon Trust (GCT) and The Conservation Fund (TCF) announced today that they have finalized the landmark $4.5 million conservation purchase of the Kane and Two Mile ranches from the Kane Ranch Land Stewardship and Cattle Company. The ranches, consisting of approximately 1000 acres of private land and associated water rights, and 850,000 acres of grazing leases on public lands managed by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Arizona State Land Department, stretch from the Grand Canyon’s north rim to the Utah border and connect three national monuments, two national recreation areas and eight wilderness areas. The Trust and The Conservation Fund have created North Rim Ranch LLC as the official holding company to own and operate the ranches. “The purchase of the Kane and Two Mile Ranches demonstrates one of the most important and innovative public-private conservation efforts of our time. Thanks to the leadership, vision and support of our partners, we will be able to do our part to make sure that this spectacular landscape and vital wildlife habitat will be preserved for future generations,” said Mike Ford, Nevada and Southwest Director of The Conservation Fund, which led the fundraising effort. “BLM looks forward to partnering with Grand Canyon Trust and The Conservation Fund to continue the multiple-use management of the public lands on the Kane and Two Mile ranches,” said Rob Roudabush, acting BLM Arizona Strip District Manager....
House set to act on overhaul of Endangered Species Act The nation's most prominent and contentious environmental law, the 1973 Endangered Species Act, could be in line for a major overhaul that would limit habitat protections while giving new rights to property owners. Legislation by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo would eliminate "critical habitat" for plants and animals where development is limited; would allow political appointees to make some scientific determinations; and would require the federal government to compensate property owners whose development plans are blocked to protect species. The fast-moving bill was approved by the Resources Committee last week and was set for a House vote Thursday. Pombo, a conservative rancher from California's Central Valley, has been aiming for more than a decade to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, arguing it forces landowners to bear unreasonable burdens to protect plants and animals, leads to costly lawsuits and isn't successful enough in recovering species....
Environmental Groups Applaud Efforts to Secure Strong Endangered Species Act In an attempt to thwart efforts by Congressman Pombo to weaken the Endangered Species Act, Congressmen Miller (D-CA), Boehlert (R-NY), Dingell (D-MI), Gilchrest (R-MD), Dicks (D-WA), Saxton (R-NJ), Tauscher (D-CA), and Kirk (R-IL) have introduced a bi-partisan amendment that would eliminate Rep. Pombo's damaging provisions and preserve the intent of the act to recover threatened and endangered plants and animals. The amendment is supported by a wide array of conservation organizations, including the Izaak Walton League of America, Trout Unlimited, the American Bird Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, The Ocean Conservancy, and the The Wilderness Society, in addition to Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, and the World Wildlife Fund. "This bi-partisan amendment is a responsible alternative to Congressman Pombo's irresponsible bill," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "We applaud these members' efforts to secure a stronger and more effective Endangered Species Act." The legislation not only addresses the current problems in Congressman Pombo's bill, but also improves the current law....
Bush administration scales back conservation program Changes are in store for a conservation program that pays farmers to take fragile land out of production, the Bush administration said Wednesday. An estimated 35 million acres of farmland are idled each year at a cost of nearly $2 billion through the Conservation Reserve Program, the Agriculture Department's biggest farm conservation effort. The department on Wednesday announced that only farmers and ranchers who own the most environmentally sensitive land would get new 10- to 15-year contracts, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. Other farmers and ranchers who have gotten such contracts in the past will be offered only contract extensions of two to five years. "We'll offer re-enrollments for those contracts that provide the highest level of environmental benefits, and extensions for the vast majority of other contracts," Johanns said. Contracts will expire on an estimated 26 million acres from 2007 through 2009. Officials expect many farmers and ranchers will drop out because they don't want short-term contracts....
Feds answer governor's roadless questions A federal official told Gov. Dave Freudenthal this week he expects the state and the federal agency to come to an agreement on roadless areas should Wyoming choose to petition for a certain fate. U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Mark Rey told Freudenthal in a letter dated Monday that a national committee will review state-submitted petitions for roadless areas, but stopped short of saying what that committee will look for. "We foresee that each petition will be unique and specific to the management, resources, and other circumstances for inventoried roadless areas in that State; therefore, each petition will be evaluated on its own merits rather than against specific criteria beyond those already provided in the rule," Rey wrote. And, in answer to Freudenthal's questions submitted to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns in July, Rey said there is no standard to which petitions will be held. "We expect that the final decision will be one in which the Governor and the Secretary of Agriculture will be in agreement," Rey said....
Group pledges funds for ranchers An environmental group has offered to help pay ranchers for livestock killed by wolves if Rocky Mountain National Park decides to reintroduce the predators to reduce its overabundant elk population. Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife has paid more than $500,000 to ranchers in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico for confirmed losses to wolves and bears. The group also has spent $470,000 on projects to keep wolves away from livestock. It pledges similar support in Colorado. "No matter how and when wolves come to Colorado, we will commit these funds," said Jonathan Proctor, who heads the group's Denver office. "We hope to save wolves by preventing conflicts in the first place," he said. Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Vaughan Baker said the group's offer would be taken into account when a decision is made....
Prairie dog poisoning postponed Appeals filed by opposing sides over a new U.S. Forest Service plan to control prairie dogs will delay prairie-dog poisoning for at least 60 days on federal grasslands in South Dakota and Nebraska. The poisoning could have begun next week but now will be delayed at least until late November, Forest Service officials say. The Nebraska National Forest, which administers the Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre national grasslands in South Dakota and Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska, on Aug. 3 issued an amendment to its forest management plan that would have allowed prairie-dog poisoning to begin shortly after Saturday, Oct. 1. The control plan is aimed at preventing prairie dogs on federal grasslands from encroaching onto adjoining private land. But seven conservation groups appealed the amendment, contending it would kill too many prairie dogs. On the other end of the argument, six counties and six grazing groups in South Dakota and Nebraska filed an appeal Monday, contending that the amendment would not kill enough prairie dogs....
Land swap plan raises concerns A proposed three-way land exchange that could significantly alter public holdings near two Wyoming communities has many Platte County residents deeply concerned, although people in the Big Horn Basin were expected to show strong support. Although the exchange has not yet been formally proposed, Western Land Group of Colorado, hired by Wheatland-area Notch Peak Ranch owner Pat Broe to facilitate the transfer, held public open houses this week in Wheatland and Lovell to gauge public opinion. The deal would take away some Forest Service lands from users in southeast Wyoming, while opening new areas to public use in the Big Horns. As it stands, Broe would trade off about 2,979 acres of scenic land at Devil's Canyon near Lovell to the Bureau of Land Management. In return, the U.S. Forest Service would give Broe about 4,597 acres adjoining his ranch in the Laramie Mountains, and the BLM would turn over about 483 acres in the same area. The Forest Service would acquire from Broe three separate parcels in southeast Wyoming totaling 804 acres. In all, 3,783 private acres would go to the Forest Service and BLM. Federal lands which would become private total 5,080 acres. After appraisals, Broe has agreed to pay a dollar value on any discrepancy in the exchange to the federal government....
No protected status for amphibian Colorado's boreal toad was removed as a candidate for the federal endangered-species list Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That could be good news for ski-slope developers - and maybe even for the toad itself. An exotic fungus that is hammering the warty, high-elevation amphibian made it a candidate for endangered-species protection in 1995. One of the mountain toad's habitats was right on the Breckenridge hillside the Vail Resorts Development Co. wanted for its Peak 7 expansion. To win approval for the project, the developer agreed to deed 56 acres of sensitive wetlands to the town, build new toad habitat when it builds a new base area and fund a toad study. "Would we have agreed to build new toad habitat or fund the study if it was not a candidate for listing?" said Alex Iskenderian, Vail's vice president of development. "No. Significant moneys were involved." Several state road projects have added costly toad underpasses....
U.S. Bans Beluga Caviar Imports to Protect Sturgeon The U.S., which imports three-fifths of the world's beluga caviar, will ban shipments of the eggs from the Caspian Sea region to protect falling sturgeon stocks. Legal trade in caviar is worth about $100 million a year, with black market trade worth as much as five times that amount, says CITES, the Geneva-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which lists sturgeon as threatened, rather than near extinction. Stocks of the fish have declined as much as 30 percent since mid-2004, according to a study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Sept. 16. The Bush administration in March gave nations around the Caspian Sea -- Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Russia -- six months to furnish the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with a coordinated management plan to address over-fishing and poaching of sturgeon or face a halt to trade....
Editorial: Endangering species ALTHOUGH THE South was victimized by two devastating hurricanes this year, it was also the site of a heartening natural event: the discovery that the rare ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct after all. There will be fewer such hair's-breadth escapes from extinction, though, if Congress passes pending legislation that would gut the Endangered Species Act. The law has been a bulwark of environmental protection since it was enacted in 1973 with unanimous approval from the Senate and just five opposing votes in the House. Without it, the grizzly bear, the American alligator, the Florida panther, the bald eagle, and the peregrine falcon would likely no longer exist in the lower 48 states. To increase the lamentably short roster of saved species, Congress should be working to strengthen the law, not weaken it. Legislation in the House, which could be acted on as soon as today, strikes at the existing law's core by greatly limiting the designation of critical habitat land. Under the bill, that designation would go only to areas that are necessary to save a species from imminent extinction but not to areas needed for its long-time recovery, a goal of the current law. Congressman Martin Meehan of Lowell, a critic of the bill, believes that the change would create small, isolated habitat ''islands" that could not lead to species survival....
BLM will go forward with horse contraception The Department of Interior ruled Wednesday that birth control may be used on the Pryor Mountain herd of wild horses in Montana and Wyoming. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management put off plans to inject 20 mares with contraceptives after two wild horse advocacy groups petitioned to block the program earlier this month. The department's board of appeals ruled that there is not sufficient evidence to show that the action should be blocked. The fertility control effort in the Pryor Mountain herd is overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which uses the contraceptive PZP, porcine zona pellucida, to control the number of wild horses. The herd, which ranges on the Wyoming-Montana state line south of Billings, has about 165 horses. The BLM has said its target population, based on the size and quality of the existing rangeland, is between 45 and 142 horses....
Drillers want year-round access For the second winter in a row, federal land managers have approved a short-term exemption for a small-scale "demonstration" of winter drilling in critical big game winter range in the Pinedale Anticline. The day after that Sept. 15 approval, a trio of natural gas developers jointly submitted another proposal, this time asking that seasonal stipulations be removed altogether and year-round drilling become the industry standard in the winter ranges. Anschutz Pinedale Corp., Shell Exploration & Production Co. and Ultra Resources say a year-round drilling scenario "will shorten the development time period in all areas affected by seasonal restrictions by up to 50 percent lessening habitat and wildlife disturbances overall," according to the proposal. Bureau of Land Management officials are moving quickly to process calls to remove seasonal restrictions in critical big game wintering ranges in the area, citing the many benefits of a year-round drilling program. The general idea is to allow the construction phase to happen without delay so the production and reclamation phases can begin sooner....
Ski area gets BLM pass Colorado's most extreme venue for skiing received long-sought approval Wednesday to let skiers venture out on its daunting slopes without guides. The remote Silverton Mountain ski area, whose easiest run is equivalent to the most difficult at most resorts, previously had held only a short-term permit to take 80 skiers a day out in guided groups. After three years of review, the Bureau of Land Management agreed to let Silverton lease 1,300 acres of terrain for the next 40 years, with up to 475 skiers a day allowed to take to the ultra-steep runs. "It's pretty big news," said Silverton Mountain owner Aaron Brill, who several years ago pored over topographical maps to find a site for the type of ski area he wanted to create. Now headed into its fifth season, the area will provide guided-only skiing options this winter because of the preparation involved in getting the area ready for unguided skiing, Brill said. Unguided skiing likely will begin in April after the most extreme avalanche danger has passed....
BLM raising fees at Sand Mountain User fees for off-road vehicles at Sand Mountain will double beginning Saturday in a move the Bureau of Land Management says is needed to maintain the recreation site and protect a rare butterfly. "The BLM is not driven by specific profit margin objectives as are private sector businesses, but it must attempt to recover costs for which funding is no longer available through appropriated funding sources," said Don Hicks, BLM field manager in Carson City. "We want to continue providing a clean and enjoyable recreation experience at Sand Mountain." Under the new rates, annual passes will jump from $45 to $90. Weekly passes will cost $40, up from $20....
Diminishing water supply threatens E. Washington farmers Without water, the Columbia Basin region would look like the sagebrush-covered desert it was before farmers and irrigators transformed it into some of the top-producing farmland in the United States. Thanks to water, 119 crops are grown in the Columbia Basin. In fact, Grant, Franklin and Adams counties are the first-, second- and fifth-largest potato-producing counties in the U.S. But this region's future is endangered because of its diminishing water supply. Much of the region relies on the vast Odessa sub-area aquifer for its water. But more water is being withdrawn from the aquifer than is being recharged. Wells in the sub-area are drying up or seeing a significant reduction in output due to the aquifer's dropping water table — as much as 400 feet since the 1960s. In fact, some wells are 2,000 feet deep. Farmers and people in area communities can't afford to continue drilling deeper for water because it's so expensive....
Portable sawmill offers unique on-site service Buying rough sawn lumber and beams at wholesale pricing, while enjoying excellent customer service, used to be a dream for local homeowners, ranchers and woodworkers. Thanks to Timberline Custom Saw-milling, it is now a dream come true. Since April, owners Mike and Barb Miller have offered lumber and beams for builders and private parties for use in homebuilding, barns, corrals, decks, fencing and crafts — all at the customer’s own site. Timberline’s way of doing business is the opposite of traditional sawmilling, where customers must trans-port their own logs to a stationary mill and later return to pick up the sawn lumber. “The portable sawmill is unique in that it can be transported to the log site and the logs are milled to the customer’s specifications on the spot,” said Mike Miller. This saves time, effort and expense — savings that are passed on to the customer....
Farm Freeloaders in Foreign-Aid Food Fight What's the WTO got against food aid? The organization has another word for sending developing countries free stuff: dumping. If that sounds a touch cynical, consider the circumstances under which the food aid program was developed in 1954. The U.S. was simultaneously experiencing a spike in agricultural production—notably wheat—and eager to solicit the goodwill of newly emerging states. Letting taxpayers buy and ship surplus carbohydrates evidently seemed like a good idea. Fifty years later, according to Oxfam, food aid still rises with surplus production and falls when supply is tight. When a bumper crop threatens to destabilize prices, the feds sweep in to buy and give away. Having trouble hawking California raisins? Soybean oil? Corn? Wheat? Rice? There's an African village with your name on it. The importance of food aid as an export outlet is nowhere near what it once was, but the business of disaster aid has given other industries an interest in maintaining the status quo. According to a July report by the Minnesota-based Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP), it's the shipping industry—not agribusiness—that has emerged as the lobbying behemoth behind food aid. The U.S. requires that 75 percent of procurement, processing, bagging and shipping be handled by U.S. firms. Fully a third of the money taxpayers spend sending free food (typically bought at 11 percent over market price) goes straight to shipping costs....
Empire Ranch where the real West was filmed The Old Tucson site was built as the set for "Arizona" starring Jean Arthur and William Holden in 1939. It just stayed in what is now Pima County's Tucson Mountain Park and grew as more films and TV shows were shot there. It came into its own in the 1960s when a man who's name is permanently linked with it took it over - Bob Shelton. Bob brought in the big guns. Space prohibits naming all the classics shot there over that great 30 years, but start with the classic John Wayne/Howard Hawks trilogy - "Rio Bravo" (1959), "El Dorado" (1966) and "Rio Lobo" (1970). But that wasn't the first time Hawks and Wayne were here. "Red River" (1948) was shot on the Empire Ranch, a bit further away and a lot closer to the real West. Started in 1876 on 160 acres bought by Walter Vail and Herbert Hislop, it grew to over 1 million acres at one point.
The discovery of silver helped and it was acquired by the Boice family in 1928 who sold it to Gulf American in 1969 but ranched it until 1975 when Anamax Mining bought it for its water and leased it to rancher John Donaldson. The Donaldsons still graze it, but the BLM acquired the ranch buildings and 42,000 acres in 1988. In 2000 it was designated the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. Every Year the Empire Ranch Foundation has a Round-up, Western Art Show, and sale from the very buildings were John Wayne, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru and Montgomery Clift filmed "Red River" and where well before that, the Vails fought off real Apaches and others to build the biggest ranch in the Southwest....
Matagorda Heritage Day planned for Oct.8 Matagorda County residents can celebrate the history of one of Texas’s oldest towns on Oct. 8 at the annual Matagorda Heritage Day. The event that began over 40 years ago will include a parade, carnival, karaoke contest, barbecue, fish fry and beer garden. The Art League of Bay City will be sponsoring an art show and there will be the annual Charles Siringo look-a-like contest. Siringo was a cowboy turned author who was employed by famed rancher Shanghai Pierce and other Matagorda area ranchers during the 1800s. The contest is open to ages 16 and above and the entry fee is $25....
Cowboys help kids explore new frontiers in reading Floral City Elementary School students recently had a rootin', tootin' kickoff for this year's Accelerated Reader program. During the event, featuring real cowboys, students were encouraged to keep in mind this year's theme: To Explore New Frontiers - Read. Accelerated Reader, commonly known as AR, promotes reading on an individual level. When a student reads a book, he or she then takes a comprehension test on a computer and the child is awarded points. Points are rewarded in a variety of ways throughout participating schools. At Floral City, Accelerated Reader was highlighted in the school's outdoor pavilion with presentations by longtime local rancher Valentine Rooks and high school rodeo performer Dakota Shipp. Rooks, dressed in Wranglers, boots and cowboy hat, described the life of a rancher and demonstrated how to crack a whip. He told the children about early Florida Crackers and how they earned the name with their whips. He said his mama knew when to get dinner out when she heard the cracking whips getting close to home....
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Testimony Supports More Cattle Grazing on Public Lands Dr. Richard L. Knight, Colorado State University Professor of Wildlife Conservation, testified today before the Senate’s Energy & Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. A noted wildlife biologist, Knight called ranching “the oldest sustainable use of Western lands” and said “more than any other justification, the timeless traditions of ranching legitimizes its existence and continuation.” Chairman Larry Craig (R-Idaho) called the hearing to review the grazing programs of the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, including proposed changes to grazing regulations, and the status of grazing permit renewals, monitoring programs and allotment restocking plans. Knight’s testimony focused on scientific evidence supporting ranching’s benefits to biodiversity and chastised politically-motivated attempts to end public lands grazing. “The reciprocal demonization of ranchers and environmentalists – the so-called ‘rangeland conflict’ – has dominated public debate for too long. It has not contributed to on-the-ground solutions,” says Knight. “It has divided people who might otherwise be united by common goals: the conservation of magnificent open spaces, scarce water resources, and imperiled wildlife. If it continues, both sides will lose what they purport to defend.”....
Historic kane and two mile ranches bought by the grand canyon trust and the conservation fund The Grand Canyon Trust (GCT) and The Conservation Fund (TCF) announced today that they have finalized the landmark $4.5 million conservation purchase of the Kane and Two Mile ranches from the Kane Ranch Land Stewardship and Cattle Company. The ranches, consisting of approximately 1000 acres of private land and associated water rights, and 850,000 acres of grazing leases on public lands managed by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Arizona State Land Department, stretch from the Grand Canyon’s north rim to the Utah border and connect three national monuments, two national recreation areas and eight wilderness areas. The Trust and The Conservation Fund have created North Rim Ranch LLC as the official holding company to own and operate the ranches. “The purchase of the Kane and Two Mile Ranches demonstrates one of the most important and innovative public-private conservation efforts of our time. Thanks to the leadership, vision and support of our partners, we will be able to do our part to make sure that this spectacular landscape and vital wildlife habitat will be preserved for future generations,” said Mike Ford, Nevada and Southwest Director of The Conservation Fund, which led the fundraising effort. “BLM looks forward to partnering with Grand Canyon Trust and The Conservation Fund to continue the multiple-use management of the public lands on the Kane and Two Mile ranches,” said Rob Roudabush, acting BLM Arizona Strip District Manager....
House set to act on overhaul of Endangered Species Act The nation's most prominent and contentious environmental law, the 1973 Endangered Species Act, could be in line for a major overhaul that would limit habitat protections while giving new rights to property owners. Legislation by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo would eliminate "critical habitat" for plants and animals where development is limited; would allow political appointees to make some scientific determinations; and would require the federal government to compensate property owners whose development plans are blocked to protect species. The fast-moving bill was approved by the Resources Committee last week and was set for a House vote Thursday. Pombo, a conservative rancher from California's Central Valley, has been aiming for more than a decade to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, arguing it forces landowners to bear unreasonable burdens to protect plants and animals, leads to costly lawsuits and isn't successful enough in recovering species....
Environmental Groups Applaud Efforts to Secure Strong Endangered Species Act In an attempt to thwart efforts by Congressman Pombo to weaken the Endangered Species Act, Congressmen Miller (D-CA), Boehlert (R-NY), Dingell (D-MI), Gilchrest (R-MD), Dicks (D-WA), Saxton (R-NJ), Tauscher (D-CA), and Kirk (R-IL) have introduced a bi-partisan amendment that would eliminate Rep. Pombo's damaging provisions and preserve the intent of the act to recover threatened and endangered plants and animals. The amendment is supported by a wide array of conservation organizations, including the Izaak Walton League of America, Trout Unlimited, the American Bird Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, The Ocean Conservancy, and the The Wilderness Society, in addition to Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, and the World Wildlife Fund. "This bi-partisan amendment is a responsible alternative to Congressman Pombo's irresponsible bill," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "We applaud these members' efforts to secure a stronger and more effective Endangered Species Act." The legislation not only addresses the current problems in Congressman Pombo's bill, but also improves the current law....
Bush administration scales back conservation program Changes are in store for a conservation program that pays farmers to take fragile land out of production, the Bush administration said Wednesday. An estimated 35 million acres of farmland are idled each year at a cost of nearly $2 billion through the Conservation Reserve Program, the Agriculture Department's biggest farm conservation effort. The department on Wednesday announced that only farmers and ranchers who own the most environmentally sensitive land would get new 10- to 15-year contracts, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. Other farmers and ranchers who have gotten such contracts in the past will be offered only contract extensions of two to five years. "We'll offer re-enrollments for those contracts that provide the highest level of environmental benefits, and extensions for the vast majority of other contracts," Johanns said. Contracts will expire on an estimated 26 million acres from 2007 through 2009. Officials expect many farmers and ranchers will drop out because they don't want short-term contracts....
Feds answer governor's roadless questions A federal official told Gov. Dave Freudenthal this week he expects the state and the federal agency to come to an agreement on roadless areas should Wyoming choose to petition for a certain fate. U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Mark Rey told Freudenthal in a letter dated Monday that a national committee will review state-submitted petitions for roadless areas, but stopped short of saying what that committee will look for. "We foresee that each petition will be unique and specific to the management, resources, and other circumstances for inventoried roadless areas in that State; therefore, each petition will be evaluated on its own merits rather than against specific criteria beyond those already provided in the rule," Rey wrote. And, in answer to Freudenthal's questions submitted to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns in July, Rey said there is no standard to which petitions will be held. "We expect that the final decision will be one in which the Governor and the Secretary of Agriculture will be in agreement," Rey said....
Group pledges funds for ranchers An environmental group has offered to help pay ranchers for livestock killed by wolves if Rocky Mountain National Park decides to reintroduce the predators to reduce its overabundant elk population. Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife has paid more than $500,000 to ranchers in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico for confirmed losses to wolves and bears. The group also has spent $470,000 on projects to keep wolves away from livestock. It pledges similar support in Colorado. "No matter how and when wolves come to Colorado, we will commit these funds," said Jonathan Proctor, who heads the group's Denver office. "We hope to save wolves by preventing conflicts in the first place," he said. Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Vaughan Baker said the group's offer would be taken into account when a decision is made....
Prairie dog poisoning postponed Appeals filed by opposing sides over a new U.S. Forest Service plan to control prairie dogs will delay prairie-dog poisoning for at least 60 days on federal grasslands in South Dakota and Nebraska. The poisoning could have begun next week but now will be delayed at least until late November, Forest Service officials say. The Nebraska National Forest, which administers the Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre national grasslands in South Dakota and Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska, on Aug. 3 issued an amendment to its forest management plan that would have allowed prairie-dog poisoning to begin shortly after Saturday, Oct. 1. The control plan is aimed at preventing prairie dogs on federal grasslands from encroaching onto adjoining private land. But seven conservation groups appealed the amendment, contending it would kill too many prairie dogs. On the other end of the argument, six counties and six grazing groups in South Dakota and Nebraska filed an appeal Monday, contending that the amendment would not kill enough prairie dogs....
Land swap plan raises concerns A proposed three-way land exchange that could significantly alter public holdings near two Wyoming communities has many Platte County residents deeply concerned, although people in the Big Horn Basin were expected to show strong support. Although the exchange has not yet been formally proposed, Western Land Group of Colorado, hired by Wheatland-area Notch Peak Ranch owner Pat Broe to facilitate the transfer, held public open houses this week in Wheatland and Lovell to gauge public opinion. The deal would take away some Forest Service lands from users in southeast Wyoming, while opening new areas to public use in the Big Horns. As it stands, Broe would trade off about 2,979 acres of scenic land at Devil's Canyon near Lovell to the Bureau of Land Management. In return, the U.S. Forest Service would give Broe about 4,597 acres adjoining his ranch in the Laramie Mountains, and the BLM would turn over about 483 acres in the same area. The Forest Service would acquire from Broe three separate parcels in southeast Wyoming totaling 804 acres. In all, 3,783 private acres would go to the Forest Service and BLM. Federal lands which would become private total 5,080 acres. After appraisals, Broe has agreed to pay a dollar value on any discrepancy in the exchange to the federal government....
No protected status for amphibian Colorado's boreal toad was removed as a candidate for the federal endangered-species list Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That could be good news for ski-slope developers - and maybe even for the toad itself. An exotic fungus that is hammering the warty, high-elevation amphibian made it a candidate for endangered-species protection in 1995. One of the mountain toad's habitats was right on the Breckenridge hillside the Vail Resorts Development Co. wanted for its Peak 7 expansion. To win approval for the project, the developer agreed to deed 56 acres of sensitive wetlands to the town, build new toad habitat when it builds a new base area and fund a toad study. "Would we have agreed to build new toad habitat or fund the study if it was not a candidate for listing?" said Alex Iskenderian, Vail's vice president of development. "No. Significant moneys were involved." Several state road projects have added costly toad underpasses....
U.S. Bans Beluga Caviar Imports to Protect Sturgeon The U.S., which imports three-fifths of the world's beluga caviar, will ban shipments of the eggs from the Caspian Sea region to protect falling sturgeon stocks. Legal trade in caviar is worth about $100 million a year, with black market trade worth as much as five times that amount, says CITES, the Geneva-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which lists sturgeon as threatened, rather than near extinction. Stocks of the fish have declined as much as 30 percent since mid-2004, according to a study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Sept. 16. The Bush administration in March gave nations around the Caspian Sea -- Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Russia -- six months to furnish the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with a coordinated management plan to address over-fishing and poaching of sturgeon or face a halt to trade....
Editorial: Endangering species ALTHOUGH THE South was victimized by two devastating hurricanes this year, it was also the site of a heartening natural event: the discovery that the rare ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct after all. There will be fewer such hair's-breadth escapes from extinction, though, if Congress passes pending legislation that would gut the Endangered Species Act. The law has been a bulwark of environmental protection since it was enacted in 1973 with unanimous approval from the Senate and just five opposing votes in the House. Without it, the grizzly bear, the American alligator, the Florida panther, the bald eagle, and the peregrine falcon would likely no longer exist in the lower 48 states. To increase the lamentably short roster of saved species, Congress should be working to strengthen the law, not weaken it. Legislation in the House, which could be acted on as soon as today, strikes at the existing law's core by greatly limiting the designation of critical habitat land. Under the bill, that designation would go only to areas that are necessary to save a species from imminent extinction but not to areas needed for its long-time recovery, a goal of the current law. Congressman Martin Meehan of Lowell, a critic of the bill, believes that the change would create small, isolated habitat ''islands" that could not lead to species survival....
BLM will go forward with horse contraception The Department of Interior ruled Wednesday that birth control may be used on the Pryor Mountain herd of wild horses in Montana and Wyoming. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management put off plans to inject 20 mares with contraceptives after two wild horse advocacy groups petitioned to block the program earlier this month. The department's board of appeals ruled that there is not sufficient evidence to show that the action should be blocked. The fertility control effort in the Pryor Mountain herd is overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which uses the contraceptive PZP, porcine zona pellucida, to control the number of wild horses. The herd, which ranges on the Wyoming-Montana state line south of Billings, has about 165 horses. The BLM has said its target population, based on the size and quality of the existing rangeland, is between 45 and 142 horses....
Drillers want year-round access For the second winter in a row, federal land managers have approved a short-term exemption for a small-scale "demonstration" of winter drilling in critical big game winter range in the Pinedale Anticline. The day after that Sept. 15 approval, a trio of natural gas developers jointly submitted another proposal, this time asking that seasonal stipulations be removed altogether and year-round drilling become the industry standard in the winter ranges. Anschutz Pinedale Corp., Shell Exploration & Production Co. and Ultra Resources say a year-round drilling scenario "will shorten the development time period in all areas affected by seasonal restrictions by up to 50 percent lessening habitat and wildlife disturbances overall," according to the proposal. Bureau of Land Management officials are moving quickly to process calls to remove seasonal restrictions in critical big game wintering ranges in the area, citing the many benefits of a year-round drilling program. The general idea is to allow the construction phase to happen without delay so the production and reclamation phases can begin sooner....
Ski area gets BLM pass Colorado's most extreme venue for skiing received long-sought approval Wednesday to let skiers venture out on its daunting slopes without guides. The remote Silverton Mountain ski area, whose easiest run is equivalent to the most difficult at most resorts, previously had held only a short-term permit to take 80 skiers a day out in guided groups. After three years of review, the Bureau of Land Management agreed to let Silverton lease 1,300 acres of terrain for the next 40 years, with up to 475 skiers a day allowed to take to the ultra-steep runs. "It's pretty big news," said Silverton Mountain owner Aaron Brill, who several years ago pored over topographical maps to find a site for the type of ski area he wanted to create. Now headed into its fifth season, the area will provide guided-only skiing options this winter because of the preparation involved in getting the area ready for unguided skiing, Brill said. Unguided skiing likely will begin in April after the most extreme avalanche danger has passed....
BLM raising fees at Sand Mountain User fees for off-road vehicles at Sand Mountain will double beginning Saturday in a move the Bureau of Land Management says is needed to maintain the recreation site and protect a rare butterfly. "The BLM is not driven by specific profit margin objectives as are private sector businesses, but it must attempt to recover costs for which funding is no longer available through appropriated funding sources," said Don Hicks, BLM field manager in Carson City. "We want to continue providing a clean and enjoyable recreation experience at Sand Mountain." Under the new rates, annual passes will jump from $45 to $90. Weekly passes will cost $40, up from $20....
Diminishing water supply threatens E. Washington farmers Without water, the Columbia Basin region would look like the sagebrush-covered desert it was before farmers and irrigators transformed it into some of the top-producing farmland in the United States. Thanks to water, 119 crops are grown in the Columbia Basin. In fact, Grant, Franklin and Adams counties are the first-, second- and fifth-largest potato-producing counties in the U.S. But this region's future is endangered because of its diminishing water supply. Much of the region relies on the vast Odessa sub-area aquifer for its water. But more water is being withdrawn from the aquifer than is being recharged. Wells in the sub-area are drying up or seeing a significant reduction in output due to the aquifer's dropping water table — as much as 400 feet since the 1960s. In fact, some wells are 2,000 feet deep. Farmers and people in area communities can't afford to continue drilling deeper for water because it's so expensive....
Portable sawmill offers unique on-site service Buying rough sawn lumber and beams at wholesale pricing, while enjoying excellent customer service, used to be a dream for local homeowners, ranchers and woodworkers. Thanks to Timberline Custom Saw-milling, it is now a dream come true. Since April, owners Mike and Barb Miller have offered lumber and beams for builders and private parties for use in homebuilding, barns, corrals, decks, fencing and crafts — all at the customer’s own site. Timberline’s way of doing business is the opposite of traditional sawmilling, where customers must trans-port their own logs to a stationary mill and later return to pick up the sawn lumber. “The portable sawmill is unique in that it can be transported to the log site and the logs are milled to the customer’s specifications on the spot,” said Mike Miller. This saves time, effort and expense — savings that are passed on to the customer....
Farm Freeloaders in Foreign-Aid Food Fight What's the WTO got against food aid? The organization has another word for sending developing countries free stuff: dumping. If that sounds a touch cynical, consider the circumstances under which the food aid program was developed in 1954. The U.S. was simultaneously experiencing a spike in agricultural production—notably wheat—and eager to solicit the goodwill of newly emerging states. Letting taxpayers buy and ship surplus carbohydrates evidently seemed like a good idea. Fifty years later, according to Oxfam, food aid still rises with surplus production and falls when supply is tight. When a bumper crop threatens to destabilize prices, the feds sweep in to buy and give away. Having trouble hawking California raisins? Soybean oil? Corn? Wheat? Rice? There's an African village with your name on it. The importance of food aid as an export outlet is nowhere near what it once was, but the business of disaster aid has given other industries an interest in maintaining the status quo. According to a July report by the Minnesota-based Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP), it's the shipping industry—not agribusiness—that has emerged as the lobbying behemoth behind food aid. The U.S. requires that 75 percent of procurement, processing, bagging and shipping be handled by U.S. firms. Fully a third of the money taxpayers spend sending free food (typically bought at 11 percent over market price) goes straight to shipping costs....
Empire Ranch where the real West was filmed The Old Tucson site was built as the set for "Arizona" starring Jean Arthur and William Holden in 1939. It just stayed in what is now Pima County's Tucson Mountain Park and grew as more films and TV shows were shot there. It came into its own in the 1960s when a man who's name is permanently linked with it took it over - Bob Shelton. Bob brought in the big guns. Space prohibits naming all the classics shot there over that great 30 years, but start with the classic John Wayne/Howard Hawks trilogy - "Rio Bravo" (1959), "El Dorado" (1966) and "Rio Lobo" (1970). But that wasn't the first time Hawks and Wayne were here. "Red River" (1948) was shot on the Empire Ranch, a bit further away and a lot closer to the real West. Started in 1876 on 160 acres bought by Walter Vail and Herbert Hislop, it grew to over 1 million acres at one point.
The discovery of silver helped and it was acquired by the Boice family in 1928 who sold it to Gulf American in 1969 but ranched it until 1975 when Anamax Mining bought it for its water and leased it to rancher John Donaldson. The Donaldsons still graze it, but the BLM acquired the ranch buildings and 42,000 acres in 1988. In 2000 it was designated the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. Every Year the Empire Ranch Foundation has a Round-up, Western Art Show, and sale from the very buildings were John Wayne, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru and Montgomery Clift filmed "Red River" and where well before that, the Vails fought off real Apaches and others to build the biggest ranch in the Southwest....
Matagorda Heritage Day planned for Oct.8 Matagorda County residents can celebrate the history of one of Texas’s oldest towns on Oct. 8 at the annual Matagorda Heritage Day. The event that began over 40 years ago will include a parade, carnival, karaoke contest, barbecue, fish fry and beer garden. The Art League of Bay City will be sponsoring an art show and there will be the annual Charles Siringo look-a-like contest. Siringo was a cowboy turned author who was employed by famed rancher Shanghai Pierce and other Matagorda area ranchers during the 1800s. The contest is open to ages 16 and above and the entry fee is $25....
Cowboys help kids explore new frontiers in reading Floral City Elementary School students recently had a rootin', tootin' kickoff for this year's Accelerated Reader program. During the event, featuring real cowboys, students were encouraged to keep in mind this year's theme: To Explore New Frontiers - Read. Accelerated Reader, commonly known as AR, promotes reading on an individual level. When a student reads a book, he or she then takes a comprehension test on a computer and the child is awarded points. Points are rewarded in a variety of ways throughout participating schools. At Floral City, Accelerated Reader was highlighted in the school's outdoor pavilion with presentations by longtime local rancher Valentine Rooks and high school rodeo performer Dakota Shipp. Rooks, dressed in Wranglers, boots and cowboy hat, described the life of a rancher and demonstrated how to crack a whip. He told the children about early Florida Crackers and how they earned the name with their whips. He said his mama knew when to get dinner out when she heard the cracking whips getting close to home....
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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina
It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly. Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped. 'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?' Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan....
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It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly. Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped. 'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?' Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan....
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Verne's monster of the deep caught on camera
A GIANT squid, the elusive behemoth of the deep that inspired Jules Verne, has been observed alive for the first time, scientists reported yesterday. The creature, which is as long as a London bus from tentacle tip to tail, has been filmed by Japanese researchers using a baited underwater camera, shedding new light on the lifestyle of one of nature’s most enigmatic living wonders. The first observed specimen measured about 26ft (8m) in total, with 16ft tentacles. Even so, it was something of a titch by the standards of the species as a whole, with the largest yet washed ashore, in New Zealand — at 59ft — more than twice as big. The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, has been known since the 16th century from dead specimens washed up on beaches or snared by fishermen’s nets, and from the occasional fleeting sighting when it has neared the surface. But it had never before been seen in its natural deep-water environment. Its size, fearsome tentacles and beak have captured the imaginations of sailors and writers, for whom it has become an emblem of the terrors of the deep. In Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus was attacked by a “squid of colossal dimensions” that almost destroyed the vessel....
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A GIANT squid, the elusive behemoth of the deep that inspired Jules Verne, has been observed alive for the first time, scientists reported yesterday. The creature, which is as long as a London bus from tentacle tip to tail, has been filmed by Japanese researchers using a baited underwater camera, shedding new light on the lifestyle of one of nature’s most enigmatic living wonders. The first observed specimen measured about 26ft (8m) in total, with 16ft tentacles. Even so, it was something of a titch by the standards of the species as a whole, with the largest yet washed ashore, in New Zealand — at 59ft — more than twice as big. The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, has been known since the 16th century from dead specimens washed up on beaches or snared by fishermen’s nets, and from the occasional fleeting sighting when it has neared the surface. But it had never before been seen in its natural deep-water environment. Its size, fearsome tentacles and beak have captured the imaginations of sailors and writers, for whom it has become an emblem of the terrors of the deep. In Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus was attacked by a “squid of colossal dimensions” that almost destroyed the vessel....
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NEWS ROUNDUP
Schwarzenegger Fires Flood Control Panel Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday fired all six members of the state Reclamation Board, an agency that oversees flood control along California's two biggest rivers and had recently become more aggressive about slowing development on flood plains. The Republican governor replaced the members — who serve indefinite terms at the governor's pleasure — with seven of his own appointees, most with ties to agriculture and the engineering profession. One board seat had been vacant since spring. Five of the fired members had been appointed by Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and one had first been appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, then reappointed by Davis....
Protesters tell Pombo: Hands off Species Act A group of environmentalists, farmers, and fishermen gathered in Stockton Monday to protest legislation by Rep. Richard Pombo that it says tears holes in the federal safety net for wildlife living on the brink of extinction. The group, following a brief news conference, hand-delivered to Pombo's Stockton office the signatures of 3,000 Californians objecting to Pombo's revised version of the Endangered Species Act. Former Rep. Pete McCloskey -- a Republican like Pombo -- co-authored the original 1973 law and stood nearby when President Nixon signed it into law. McClosky said he's so angry about Pombo's bill, he is tempted to leave retirement, move from his home in Yolo County and oppose the former Tracy city councilman in the next congressional election....
Editorial: Does protecting endangered species cost too much? While it is noble that great measures have been taken to protect the desert tortoise and mohave ground squirrel, one has to wonder how these animals have been placed at such a high priority that we must now spend millions of dollars to protect them. Because environmental activists say the burrowing tortoise is threatened by cattle, people and mines, millions of dollars are spent to save the turtles at the expense of ranchers and highway drivers. There are nearly 4 million acres of California desert which has been set aside as critical habitat for the desert tortoise. It appears the desert tortoise is so sacred, those willing to protect them will do so by killing anything that doesn't have a shell on it....
Farm Bureau Calls for House to Pass Improved ESA To improve and strengthen what has worked in the original Endangered Species Act, the American Farm Bureau Federation is calling on the House to pass H.R. 3824, the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act. In a letter sent Monday to House members, AFBF President Bob Stallman explained how more than 75 percent of ESA-listed species inhabit private lands, and, therefore, cooperation with private landowners, many of them farmers and ranchers, is essential for species to recover. “H.R. 3824 provides for voluntary species recovery agreements that allow private landowners the flexibility to take actions that benefit species recovery, producing a ‘win-win’ situation for species and landowners alike,” Stallman noted. He further noted that landowners deserve more involvement in consultations about how to save species....
Grizzlies make inroads in Idaho Cattle ranchers Larry and Deanna Orme have been charged by a grizzly and already have lost eight calves to bears this year. Blair and Velma Calaway, also ranchers, had a bear ransack their cabin near Yellowstone's southwest boundary. The ranchers have learned to tolerate grizzlies. Whether other Idahoans do will play a critical role in determining whether the bears continue to thrive. "I view that as an evolutionary process in Idaho," Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, told the Idaho Statesman. "The average person who works, lives or plays in bear habitat has changed the way they act." The grizzly grows to 600 pounds, can run faster than a horse, and occasionally eats people. There was about one human injury per year from grizzly bears in the backcountry in Yellowstone from 1970 through 1997...
Forest Service official upholds timber harvest appeal A Forest Service official has overturned a proposed timber harvest in the Kootenai National Forest because it did not adequately address potential effects on grizzly bears. In June, Bob Castaneda, Kootenai Forest supervisor, approved the North East Yaak timber sale in the Cabinet Ranger District. His decision authorized logging 13.5 million board feet of timber on about 1,860 acres in the Three Rivers Ranger District. It also cleared the way for harvesting in old growth on 116 acres and thinning another 286 acres, plus six temporary roads. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Ecology Center appealed the decision to the Forest Service's regional headquarters in Missoula. On Monday, Lynn Roberts, Forest Service appeal deciding officer, ruled that the environmental impact statement did not adequately address effects of the project on grizzly bears....
Biologists count fewer grizzlies with cubs Bear biologists, trying to gauge the health of grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park, saw fewer females with cubs in 2005 than in any year since 1997. But they cautioned Tuesday that the dip isn't necessarily an indication that the Yellowstone population, which the federal government hopes to remove from the endangered species list soon, is declining. More likely other factors affected how many females with cubs were observed this year, including a "bumper crop" of cubs in recent years that left many females unable to breed, and persistent snow at some feeding sites that kept away bears that otherwise would have been counted, the biologists said....
Wilderness designation for Dominguez Canyon debated Federal wilderness designation for the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Study Area could bring too many tourists and damage its fragile desert ecology, a rancher with grazing rights in the area warned the Delta County Board of Commissioners on Monday. “We were there for years and didn’t have any problems until there was this wilderness (study area) designation,” said Oscar Massey, who has been wintering cattle in the Dominguez Canyon area for more than three decades. Ponds that he built there to water cattle have also benefitted wildlife, Massey said. “There’s quite a population that uses that water, elk and deer,” he said. He counted a herd of 1,400 elk last winter in the area, Massey said. “You put that ‘W’ on a map,” and tourists will flock to see the newly designated wilderness, he said....
International Wilderness Conference To Convene in Alaska How can human beings coexist with the wilderness, sustaining themselves and the lands they inhabit? That is a critical question in many parts of the world and the focus of an international meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, September 30 to October 6. More than 1,100 delegates from 55 nations will be in Anchorage for the 8thWorld Wilderness Congress (8WWC), a meeting described as the world’s longest-running public environmental forum. The meeting’s theme is “Wilderness, Wildlands and People: A Partnership for the Future,” with sessions devoted to addressing “the practicalities of realizing benefits to human communities from protecting and sustaining wilderness, wildlands and wildlife,” said Vance Martin, president of the WILD Foundation, a principal organizer of the congress. “I’m hoping we can learn from that,” said Liz Close of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), “and bring people in this country closer to their wilderness and make sure that people understand the benefits that are derived from this land.”....
Column: Our Parks in Peril Is Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA), the chairman of the House Resources Committee, joking? Did he really circulate a razed-earth anti-parks bill as a rather mean-spirited joke, or was he for real? It’s a little hard to tell with him, but the national parks sections are certainly laughable. If Pombo’s bill was a joke, it was an elaborate one, paid for with federal dollars: • Section 6302 requires the National Park Service (NPS) to raise $10 million by selling advertising in official maps and guidebooks, as well as placing billboards on buses, trams and vans. The Interior Department would also be required to sell commercial sponsorship of visitor and education centers, museums trails, theaters and other facilities. Thus the “Exxon/Mobil Visitors Center” or other such designations. (If the place was already named after an individual, it would get a reprieve); • Section 6306 requires NPS to sell for private use any park that receives less than 10,000 visitors per day. Most of the 15 parks that meet that designation are in Alaska, and all are national treasures. The parks that would go on the block for poor performance include 23 percent of total park system acreage....
Editorial: Storms emphasize faults in energy bill It seems like only yesterday — but it was Aug. 8 — that Congress, after years of dithering, finally got around to passing a major energy bill. It was a low-octane flop, in our opinion, larded with too many corporate welfare handouts and subsidies for pie-in-the-sky energy panaceas, while skimping on the regulatory reforms required to move the country toward more domestic production and self-sufficiency. But that was before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita laid bare the fragility of the nation’s energy infrastructure and led to price spikes that got the public’s attention. Whatever gets the public angry also draws the attention of politicians, so two new energy bills are being considered by Congress that will go back and fill gaps left by the earlier effort. The August bill adroitly sidestepped the controversial issue of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and outer continental shelf to drilling, for instance. But one new bill would open ANWR to drilling and give states the power to overrule federal offshore drilling bans. Apparently, backers of the new measures are betting that Americans had a change of attitude after gasoline prices jumped to more than $3 per gallon and experts began predicting a 70 percent jump in natural gas prices for some parts of the country this winter. Many Americans still may care about alleged threats to caribou herds and potentially ruined views from beachfront highrises — but not if such aesthetic abstractions begin taking a big enough bite out of their pocketbooks....
Interior Secretary Says U.S. Will Push Search for Energy Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said Tuesday that after the two destructive gulf hurricanes that battered the nation's energy heartland, the Bush administration would intensify its push to expand energy development on public lands including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the nation's coastal waters. "The vulnerability of having all the energy supplies and refining and processing capacity in one geographic area reinforces the idea that we need diversity of supply," Ms. Norton said in an interview. Citing government reports on the increasing demand for petroleum and natural gas and the sustained high prices that tend to result, she said, "The hurricanes have brought more attention to the fundamental issue." While Ms. Norton took no position on a Congressional proposal to end a 25-year moratorium on oil leases on the outer continental shelf and to eliminate internal departmental appeals of administration decisions to lease public lands, she did not reject its approach....
Republicans take aim at energy restrictions Hoping to ride the wave of concern resulting from Gulf Coast hurricanes, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin and other congressional Republicans are trying again to loosen some restrictions on oil and gas development. The proposals didn't make it in the recently approved energy bill, but supporters say Hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- which hit some energy suppliers on the Gulf Coast -- show the need to eliminate some environmental restrictions if the domestic energy supply is rattled. The bill, set for committee review this week with a possible House vote as early as next week, calls in part for an end to seasonal stipulations -- such as big game winter closures -- for industry in times deemed by the president as a "significant adverse effect on the supply of domestic energy resources." The measure, pushed by House Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and supported by Cubin, also would suspend legal challenges to energy lease decisions, and would force private landowners to comply with industry when subsurface minerals were at stake....
Feds wary about proposed Utah land swap The Interior Department has reservations about a Utah land exchange along the Colorado River, expressing little interest in nearly a quarter of the land it would get in the deal and treading carefully on the sensitive issue of how lands would be appraised. But Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Chad Calvert said in testimony to the House Resources subcommittee Tuesday that he hopes the concerns can be worked out. And a state official said he thinks the land exchange remains on track. The state is seeking to transfer 45,000 acres along the Colorado River to the Bureau of Land Management. Much of it is environmentally sensitive, including parcels near Arches National Park, a portion of the renowned Slickrock bike trail, the Corona natural arch and lands inside a wilderness study area. In exchange, the state would get about 40,000 federal acres with oil and gas or other development potential....
Gathering horses If they could do it again, the 30 mustangs rounded up in Sandwash Basin on Tuesday morning probably wouldn't follow the "Judas" horse into the trap. But as it stands, the helicopter hovering above and the domestic horse trained to lead wild horses into the trap proved effective enough to draw the wild horses into the holding pen. Bureau of Land Management officials hope to have 200 mustangs rounded up in the Sandwash area by the end of the week. If the crews from Cattoor Livestock Roundup hit their goal, the mustang population in the area northwest of Maybell will be down from about 360 horses to about 160. BLM will auction 50 of the 200 horses this weekend at Sandwash corrals. The remainder will be sent to the BLM's wild horse adoption facility in Cañon City....
Nevada files opposition to Yucca rail corridor land restrictions The federal Energy Department hasn't laid the proper groundwork to justify restricting public land use along a proposed railroad corridor to Yucca Mountain, Nevada argues in a statement opposing the plan. "It's poor planning and the wrong agency is in charge," Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Tuesday of the Energy Department plan to build a railroad to haul radioactive waste across the state. Loux filed a seven-page letter Friday opposing the Energy Department proposal to withdraw 308,600 acres from public use across parts of Lincoln, Nye and Esmeralda counties. Public comments end Wednesday. "Apart from causing impacts and disruption to existing land users, the proposed action has the potential to negatively affect the environment, grazing allotments, mining and energy development activities, property values, the economy, important cultural resources and more," the state said....
New religious group advocates environmentalism Three University professors have joined a newly-formed alliance created to oppose a proposed Congressional bill that would change the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Noah Alliance, a partnership of Jews and evangelical Christians, issued concurrent statements by the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life opposing the bill. Signatories include rabbis, a Nobel laureate and 30 prominent Jewish scientists, as well as ecology and evolutionary biology professors David Wilcove, Daniel Rubenstein and Simon Levin. Wilcove, who is affiliated with the Wilson School, said he hopes the religious slant of the Alliance will "appeal to people who are primarily motivated by their religious faith to consider what their religion may say about obligations to protect species on Earth."....
Thousands of head of cattle dead or imperiled Hurricane Rita hit the heart of Louisiana beef cattle country, drowning thousands of head, dispersing others 10 to 15 miles inland and leaving those surviving with brackish water and no forage, state officials said Tuesday. "We’re in a pretty serious crisis right now," said Paul Coreil, director of the state’s extension service. His agents are helping the Louisiana Agriculture Department and the Louisiana Cattlemen’s Association coordinate emergency deliveries of fresh water, baled hay and fencing material to the marshy, low-lying coastal parishes of southwest Louisiana. Ranchers enlisted neighbors and anyone who had a pickup, horse or airboat to coax cattle out of the water and to higher land, he said. Extension agent Andrew Granger in Vermilion said cows were run out of the water and onto state Highway 82 where a temporary cattle pen held the livestock until they could be trucked to safety. The region has upwards of 200,000 cattle, mainly part of Brahman-cross cow-calf operations....
Tanker crash leaves lengthy cleanup Hazardous materials teams are still cleaning up an oil spill west of Platteville following a fatal accident Sunday in which a semitrailer plowed into a small herd of cattle on Colo. Highway 66. The Colorado State Patrol, meanwhile, confirmed Monday that officials are not seeking charges against the owner of the farm from which the cows escaped. According to the state patrol, the owner of the cows cannot be cited criminally because Colorado is legally an “open range state.” “Livestock — horses, sheep or cattle — have the permission to roam on state property, including highways,” Colorado State Trooper Don Moseman said. “There’s no law requiring farmers to fence in livestock.” “We’re a Western, rural state,” Moseman said. “We can’t control deer or elk either, but there are a lot more wild animal accidents than ranch animal accidents.”....
Montage captures a piece of Texas history It is a symbol of early American life that most Texans have had the opportunity to see. Some roll freely with the wind, some, worn and broken, stand still - a reminder of how life once was on the Texas countryside. They are windmills and Hunt County photographer Rick Vanderpool has captured their essence in his newest photographic montage titled, “Who has seen the wind?” Vanderpool, of Commerce, became known for his montage of the word Texas. “Looking for Texas” was the first of several montages Vanderpool has created. His windmill montage is his sixth Texas-inspired project. “Who has seen the wind?” contains about 100 pictures of windmills from across the United States....
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Schwarzenegger Fires Flood Control Panel Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday fired all six members of the state Reclamation Board, an agency that oversees flood control along California's two biggest rivers and had recently become more aggressive about slowing development on flood plains. The Republican governor replaced the members — who serve indefinite terms at the governor's pleasure — with seven of his own appointees, most with ties to agriculture and the engineering profession. One board seat had been vacant since spring. Five of the fired members had been appointed by Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and one had first been appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, then reappointed by Davis....
Protesters tell Pombo: Hands off Species Act A group of environmentalists, farmers, and fishermen gathered in Stockton Monday to protest legislation by Rep. Richard Pombo that it says tears holes in the federal safety net for wildlife living on the brink of extinction. The group, following a brief news conference, hand-delivered to Pombo's Stockton office the signatures of 3,000 Californians objecting to Pombo's revised version of the Endangered Species Act. Former Rep. Pete McCloskey -- a Republican like Pombo -- co-authored the original 1973 law and stood nearby when President Nixon signed it into law. McClosky said he's so angry about Pombo's bill, he is tempted to leave retirement, move from his home in Yolo County and oppose the former Tracy city councilman in the next congressional election....
Editorial: Does protecting endangered species cost too much? While it is noble that great measures have been taken to protect the desert tortoise and mohave ground squirrel, one has to wonder how these animals have been placed at such a high priority that we must now spend millions of dollars to protect them. Because environmental activists say the burrowing tortoise is threatened by cattle, people and mines, millions of dollars are spent to save the turtles at the expense of ranchers and highway drivers. There are nearly 4 million acres of California desert which has been set aside as critical habitat for the desert tortoise. It appears the desert tortoise is so sacred, those willing to protect them will do so by killing anything that doesn't have a shell on it....
Farm Bureau Calls for House to Pass Improved ESA To improve and strengthen what has worked in the original Endangered Species Act, the American Farm Bureau Federation is calling on the House to pass H.R. 3824, the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act. In a letter sent Monday to House members, AFBF President Bob Stallman explained how more than 75 percent of ESA-listed species inhabit private lands, and, therefore, cooperation with private landowners, many of them farmers and ranchers, is essential for species to recover. “H.R. 3824 provides for voluntary species recovery agreements that allow private landowners the flexibility to take actions that benefit species recovery, producing a ‘win-win’ situation for species and landowners alike,” Stallman noted. He further noted that landowners deserve more involvement in consultations about how to save species....
Grizzlies make inroads in Idaho Cattle ranchers Larry and Deanna Orme have been charged by a grizzly and already have lost eight calves to bears this year. Blair and Velma Calaway, also ranchers, had a bear ransack their cabin near Yellowstone's southwest boundary. The ranchers have learned to tolerate grizzlies. Whether other Idahoans do will play a critical role in determining whether the bears continue to thrive. "I view that as an evolutionary process in Idaho," Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, told the Idaho Statesman. "The average person who works, lives or plays in bear habitat has changed the way they act." The grizzly grows to 600 pounds, can run faster than a horse, and occasionally eats people. There was about one human injury per year from grizzly bears in the backcountry in Yellowstone from 1970 through 1997...
Forest Service official upholds timber harvest appeal A Forest Service official has overturned a proposed timber harvest in the Kootenai National Forest because it did not adequately address potential effects on grizzly bears. In June, Bob Castaneda, Kootenai Forest supervisor, approved the North East Yaak timber sale in the Cabinet Ranger District. His decision authorized logging 13.5 million board feet of timber on about 1,860 acres in the Three Rivers Ranger District. It also cleared the way for harvesting in old growth on 116 acres and thinning another 286 acres, plus six temporary roads. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Ecology Center appealed the decision to the Forest Service's regional headquarters in Missoula. On Monday, Lynn Roberts, Forest Service appeal deciding officer, ruled that the environmental impact statement did not adequately address effects of the project on grizzly bears....
Biologists count fewer grizzlies with cubs Bear biologists, trying to gauge the health of grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park, saw fewer females with cubs in 2005 than in any year since 1997. But they cautioned Tuesday that the dip isn't necessarily an indication that the Yellowstone population, which the federal government hopes to remove from the endangered species list soon, is declining. More likely other factors affected how many females with cubs were observed this year, including a "bumper crop" of cubs in recent years that left many females unable to breed, and persistent snow at some feeding sites that kept away bears that otherwise would have been counted, the biologists said....
Wilderness designation for Dominguez Canyon debated Federal wilderness designation for the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Study Area could bring too many tourists and damage its fragile desert ecology, a rancher with grazing rights in the area warned the Delta County Board of Commissioners on Monday. “We were there for years and didn’t have any problems until there was this wilderness (study area) designation,” said Oscar Massey, who has been wintering cattle in the Dominguez Canyon area for more than three decades. Ponds that he built there to water cattle have also benefitted wildlife, Massey said. “There’s quite a population that uses that water, elk and deer,” he said. He counted a herd of 1,400 elk last winter in the area, Massey said. “You put that ‘W’ on a map,” and tourists will flock to see the newly designated wilderness, he said....
International Wilderness Conference To Convene in Alaska How can human beings coexist with the wilderness, sustaining themselves and the lands they inhabit? That is a critical question in many parts of the world and the focus of an international meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, September 30 to October 6. More than 1,100 delegates from 55 nations will be in Anchorage for the 8thWorld Wilderness Congress (8WWC), a meeting described as the world’s longest-running public environmental forum. The meeting’s theme is “Wilderness, Wildlands and People: A Partnership for the Future,” with sessions devoted to addressing “the practicalities of realizing benefits to human communities from protecting and sustaining wilderness, wildlands and wildlife,” said Vance Martin, president of the WILD Foundation, a principal organizer of the congress. “I’m hoping we can learn from that,” said Liz Close of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), “and bring people in this country closer to their wilderness and make sure that people understand the benefits that are derived from this land.”....
Column: Our Parks in Peril Is Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA), the chairman of the House Resources Committee, joking? Did he really circulate a razed-earth anti-parks bill as a rather mean-spirited joke, or was he for real? It’s a little hard to tell with him, but the national parks sections are certainly laughable. If Pombo’s bill was a joke, it was an elaborate one, paid for with federal dollars: • Section 6302 requires the National Park Service (NPS) to raise $10 million by selling advertising in official maps and guidebooks, as well as placing billboards on buses, trams and vans. The Interior Department would also be required to sell commercial sponsorship of visitor and education centers, museums trails, theaters and other facilities. Thus the “Exxon/Mobil Visitors Center” or other such designations. (If the place was already named after an individual, it would get a reprieve); • Section 6306 requires NPS to sell for private use any park that receives less than 10,000 visitors per day. Most of the 15 parks that meet that designation are in Alaska, and all are national treasures. The parks that would go on the block for poor performance include 23 percent of total park system acreage....
Editorial: Storms emphasize faults in energy bill It seems like only yesterday — but it was Aug. 8 — that Congress, after years of dithering, finally got around to passing a major energy bill. It was a low-octane flop, in our opinion, larded with too many corporate welfare handouts and subsidies for pie-in-the-sky energy panaceas, while skimping on the regulatory reforms required to move the country toward more domestic production and self-sufficiency. But that was before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita laid bare the fragility of the nation’s energy infrastructure and led to price spikes that got the public’s attention. Whatever gets the public angry also draws the attention of politicians, so two new energy bills are being considered by Congress that will go back and fill gaps left by the earlier effort. The August bill adroitly sidestepped the controversial issue of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and outer continental shelf to drilling, for instance. But one new bill would open ANWR to drilling and give states the power to overrule federal offshore drilling bans. Apparently, backers of the new measures are betting that Americans had a change of attitude after gasoline prices jumped to more than $3 per gallon and experts began predicting a 70 percent jump in natural gas prices for some parts of the country this winter. Many Americans still may care about alleged threats to caribou herds and potentially ruined views from beachfront highrises — but not if such aesthetic abstractions begin taking a big enough bite out of their pocketbooks....
Interior Secretary Says U.S. Will Push Search for Energy Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said Tuesday that after the two destructive gulf hurricanes that battered the nation's energy heartland, the Bush administration would intensify its push to expand energy development on public lands including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the nation's coastal waters. "The vulnerability of having all the energy supplies and refining and processing capacity in one geographic area reinforces the idea that we need diversity of supply," Ms. Norton said in an interview. Citing government reports on the increasing demand for petroleum and natural gas and the sustained high prices that tend to result, she said, "The hurricanes have brought more attention to the fundamental issue." While Ms. Norton took no position on a Congressional proposal to end a 25-year moratorium on oil leases on the outer continental shelf and to eliminate internal departmental appeals of administration decisions to lease public lands, she did not reject its approach....
Republicans take aim at energy restrictions Hoping to ride the wave of concern resulting from Gulf Coast hurricanes, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin and other congressional Republicans are trying again to loosen some restrictions on oil and gas development. The proposals didn't make it in the recently approved energy bill, but supporters say Hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- which hit some energy suppliers on the Gulf Coast -- show the need to eliminate some environmental restrictions if the domestic energy supply is rattled. The bill, set for committee review this week with a possible House vote as early as next week, calls in part for an end to seasonal stipulations -- such as big game winter closures -- for industry in times deemed by the president as a "significant adverse effect on the supply of domestic energy resources." The measure, pushed by House Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., and supported by Cubin, also would suspend legal challenges to energy lease decisions, and would force private landowners to comply with industry when subsurface minerals were at stake....
Feds wary about proposed Utah land swap The Interior Department has reservations about a Utah land exchange along the Colorado River, expressing little interest in nearly a quarter of the land it would get in the deal and treading carefully on the sensitive issue of how lands would be appraised. But Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Chad Calvert said in testimony to the House Resources subcommittee Tuesday that he hopes the concerns can be worked out. And a state official said he thinks the land exchange remains on track. The state is seeking to transfer 45,000 acres along the Colorado River to the Bureau of Land Management. Much of it is environmentally sensitive, including parcels near Arches National Park, a portion of the renowned Slickrock bike trail, the Corona natural arch and lands inside a wilderness study area. In exchange, the state would get about 40,000 federal acres with oil and gas or other development potential....
Gathering horses If they could do it again, the 30 mustangs rounded up in Sandwash Basin on Tuesday morning probably wouldn't follow the "Judas" horse into the trap. But as it stands, the helicopter hovering above and the domestic horse trained to lead wild horses into the trap proved effective enough to draw the wild horses into the holding pen. Bureau of Land Management officials hope to have 200 mustangs rounded up in the Sandwash area by the end of the week. If the crews from Cattoor Livestock Roundup hit their goal, the mustang population in the area northwest of Maybell will be down from about 360 horses to about 160. BLM will auction 50 of the 200 horses this weekend at Sandwash corrals. The remainder will be sent to the BLM's wild horse adoption facility in Cañon City....
Nevada files opposition to Yucca rail corridor land restrictions The federal Energy Department hasn't laid the proper groundwork to justify restricting public land use along a proposed railroad corridor to Yucca Mountain, Nevada argues in a statement opposing the plan. "It's poor planning and the wrong agency is in charge," Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Tuesday of the Energy Department plan to build a railroad to haul radioactive waste across the state. Loux filed a seven-page letter Friday opposing the Energy Department proposal to withdraw 308,600 acres from public use across parts of Lincoln, Nye and Esmeralda counties. Public comments end Wednesday. "Apart from causing impacts and disruption to existing land users, the proposed action has the potential to negatively affect the environment, grazing allotments, mining and energy development activities, property values, the economy, important cultural resources and more," the state said....
New religious group advocates environmentalism Three University professors have joined a newly-formed alliance created to oppose a proposed Congressional bill that would change the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Noah Alliance, a partnership of Jews and evangelical Christians, issued concurrent statements by the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists and the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life opposing the bill. Signatories include rabbis, a Nobel laureate and 30 prominent Jewish scientists, as well as ecology and evolutionary biology professors David Wilcove, Daniel Rubenstein and Simon Levin. Wilcove, who is affiliated with the Wilson School, said he hopes the religious slant of the Alliance will "appeal to people who are primarily motivated by their religious faith to consider what their religion may say about obligations to protect species on Earth."....
Thousands of head of cattle dead or imperiled Hurricane Rita hit the heart of Louisiana beef cattle country, drowning thousands of head, dispersing others 10 to 15 miles inland and leaving those surviving with brackish water and no forage, state officials said Tuesday. "We’re in a pretty serious crisis right now," said Paul Coreil, director of the state’s extension service. His agents are helping the Louisiana Agriculture Department and the Louisiana Cattlemen’s Association coordinate emergency deliveries of fresh water, baled hay and fencing material to the marshy, low-lying coastal parishes of southwest Louisiana. Ranchers enlisted neighbors and anyone who had a pickup, horse or airboat to coax cattle out of the water and to higher land, he said. Extension agent Andrew Granger in Vermilion said cows were run out of the water and onto state Highway 82 where a temporary cattle pen held the livestock until they could be trucked to safety. The region has upwards of 200,000 cattle, mainly part of Brahman-cross cow-calf operations....
Tanker crash leaves lengthy cleanup Hazardous materials teams are still cleaning up an oil spill west of Platteville following a fatal accident Sunday in which a semitrailer plowed into a small herd of cattle on Colo. Highway 66. The Colorado State Patrol, meanwhile, confirmed Monday that officials are not seeking charges against the owner of the farm from which the cows escaped. According to the state patrol, the owner of the cows cannot be cited criminally because Colorado is legally an “open range state.” “Livestock — horses, sheep or cattle — have the permission to roam on state property, including highways,” Colorado State Trooper Don Moseman said. “There’s no law requiring farmers to fence in livestock.” “We’re a Western, rural state,” Moseman said. “We can’t control deer or elk either, but there are a lot more wild animal accidents than ranch animal accidents.”....
Montage captures a piece of Texas history It is a symbol of early American life that most Texans have had the opportunity to see. Some roll freely with the wind, some, worn and broken, stand still - a reminder of how life once was on the Texas countryside. They are windmills and Hunt County photographer Rick Vanderpool has captured their essence in his newest photographic montage titled, “Who has seen the wind?” Vanderpool, of Commerce, became known for his montage of the word Texas. “Looking for Texas” was the first of several montages Vanderpool has created. His windmill montage is his sixth Texas-inspired project. “Who has seen the wind?” contains about 100 pictures of windmills from across the United States....
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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Durango lawyer wins forest ruling A Durango lawyer has successfully overturned the part of the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Initiative that barred appeals by the public on small forest projects. Matt Kenna, representing the Western Environmental Law Center, had asked that the U.S. Forest Service be held in contempt for not enforcing a July order that applies to all forests nationwide. The judge declined to hold the Forest Service in contempt this time, but said he could in the future. On Friday the agency agreed to follow the July ruling. Kenna had argued the Healthy Forests Initiative violated the 1992 Appeals Reform Act, which allows the public to comment on and appeal all Forest Service projects. "The Forest Service is committed to fully and immediately complying with the judge's order," said Jim Maxwell, press officer for the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service. The Washington, D.C., office is drafting instructions that could be ready by today to specify which projects must allow public comment, Maxwell said. The judge said emergency acts dealing with wildfires or hurricanes are exempt, but he offered little guidance about what other projects might not require public appeal....
Bill aims to waive energy rules Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have Republicans in Congress again calling for relaxing environmental restrictions on energy development on public lands in the West. They say those restrictions get in the way of oil and gas companies providing energy to the public. So House Resources Committee chairman Richard Pombo on Monday proposed legislation eliminating many rules that energy companies have complained about. Pombo's legislation, scheduled for a committee vote Wednesday, is part of a multipronged GOP effort to cut back environmental regulation in the wake of the storms. Pombo's bill would allow the Interior Department to waive limitations on drilling - such as those protecting wildlife in winter - in the event of a "significant disruption" in supply. Not all the exemptions would require an emergency. The bill would approve the use of private workers paid by the gas industry to process permits for drilling on public lands and would bar appeals of drilling decisions by the BLM....
Family patriarch indicted on sexual assault charges A man who lived with his wife and 15 children inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park - and engaged in a widely publicized feud with the park service - has been charged with numerous counts of sexual assault and incest. Alaska State Troopers searched Monday for Robert A. Hale, 64, who goes by the name Papa Pilgrim. "He could be anywhere," said agency spokesman Greg Wilkinson. Hale was indicted Thursday by a state grand jury on 30 felony counts, including 10 counts of sexual assault, one count of kidnapping, eight counts of incest, eight counts of coercion and three counts of assault. The indictment lists just one victim....
Judge won't stop killing of Calif. pigs Thousands of wild pigs on Santa Cruz Island can be destroyed, a federal judge ruled Monday, but a businessman pledged to continue his fight to save the animals. The National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co-own the island, say the pigs must go because they're damaging archaeological sites and threatening native species like the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox. The pigs are descended from animals that ranchers brought to the island in the 1850s. Rick Feldman, a Santa Barbara businessman suing to stop the killings, said he would appeal federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian's decision to reject a preliminary injunction....
Editorial: Creatures cannot survive without habitat According to the chairman of the House Resources Committee, it's not the eagles, owls, minnows and lizards that stand in the way of development, profits and the paving of North America. No, indeed. It's just all those troublesome forests, rivers, prairies and deserts that the little critters insist on living in that stand in the way of the new Manifest Destiny. Thus the chairman, California Republican Richard Pombo, has crafted a major rewrite of the 32-year-old cornerstone of American environmentalism, the Endangered Species Act. It purports to call upon the federal government to come up with "species recovery plans" for identified flora and fauna while making it much, much easier for developers to have their way with the lands that those very species live on, under and above. Good politician that he is, Pombo makes his bill, already rammed through his committee and referred to the full House, sound like a workable compromise, the kind that might lead to the rescue of more endangered species without all those nasty and expensive lawsuits. The only problem is, it cannot work....
Editorial: 'No regulation without compensation' The law, now 30 years old, is badly in need of updating, though it won't happen without a fight, given the leverage the act gives green extremists bent on trampling private-property rights, dictating land-use policies and obstructing energy development. Even talking about reform can open one to accusations of being indifferent to the wanton slaughter of eagles, whales, bunnies and butterflies. But in spite of such risks, a few intrepid politicians are stepping forward to rein in the rogue law. And they will need all the support they can get. There are three or four changes we think are critical to an updated Endangered Species Act, starting with a strengthening of the science behind it. As people in Colorado learned the hard way, after the rodent formerly known as the Preble's meadow jumping mouse was exposed as a fraud, federal officials sometimes act to protect a species with only a vague idea about its true identity or status. About a third of the animals removed from the endangered species list over the years were on the list because of flawed science. Given the law's incredible power to impact property values, dictate development trends, limit access to public lands and hamper the economy, Americans deserve assurances that the law's regulate-first, worry-about-the-science-later approach is reversed. It's time to start compensating people when Endangered Species Act protections adversely impact their property values. Regulators and environmentalists hate this idea and are reluctant to relinquish their license to regulate at will, with little regard to how their actions are impacting people's lives. Paying compensation would not only be the fair and constitutional thing to do, since the Fifth Amendment requires that citizens be paid when government's actions deprive them of the full use of their property, but it would also underscore the fact that regulations come with a price tag, which someone must pay....
Feds cut back habitat for snowy plover The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday announced that West Coast beach-front critical habitat for the threatened western snowy plover will be cut back by nearly 40 percent, continuing a Bush administration policy of reducing habitat protections for threatened and endangered species to reduce economic losses. The bulk of the cutbacks came from beaches in California on Monterey Bay, Morro Bay and the San Diego Bay island city of Coronado, where a report had estimated that protecting nesting areas from development and human contact would cost nearly $200 million over the next 20 years due primarily to limiting recreation. "The economic analyses are playing an increasingly significant role in determinations of critical habitat," said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Al Donner in Sacramento, Calif. "That's triggered by court decisions that have directed us to do more rigorous economic reviews of proposed critical habitat and their impacts."....
Area under habitat conservation plans could soar Timber companies, developers, local governments and others are seeking federal permission to nearly triple the 37 million acres that fall under the nation's controversial and underfunded habitat conservation program. Of the 433 pending plans listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, most are in the West and South, where development and timber-cutting most frequently collide with endangered species, records obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer show. In the Pacific Northwest, more than two dozen habitat plans are officially under review, according to Fish and Wildlife records released under the Freedom of Information Act. One of the largest is a 9.1 million-acre deal in Washington that would shield much of the state's private timber industry from prosecution for harming salmon, steelhead, bull trout and 47 other kinds of fish. Approval of the 50-year "Forests and Fish" deal is expected later this year....
Author sets out to discover the real Timothy Treadwell The short, heartless version of the story was simply: "The Doofus Dies." At least, that's how some Alaskans saw it, says Nick Jans, the Juneau-based author of a new book, "The Grizzly Maze," about Timothy Treadwell's fatal obsession with Alaska's huge coastal brown bears. Two years ago, he might not have argued, knowing only the earliest details of how a big grizzly had just killed Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, in a bear-haunted thicket of Katmai National Park. Treadwell, it was thought, had only himself to blame, having invited such danger by fashioning himself as a "bear whisperer" who could walk within a few feet of a lounging Katmai brown bear, turn his back and calmly smile into his camcorder. He gave the bears names like Booble and Mr. Chocolate. Sometimes he touched them with his hand....
Ranchers try to save livestock from flood Cattlemen on boats, barges and horseback Monday tried to save what's left of their herds after floods unleashed by Hurricane Rita in coastal parishes from Lafourche to Cameron. Their counterparts in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes - two areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina less than a month before – watched as Rita swept away cattle that survived the first storm. Ranchers across coastal Louisiana badly need trucks, hay and a place to house the surviving rescued cattle, said Bob Felknor, director of Louisiana Cattlemen's Association....
Lawyers fight over exhuming millionaire's body Lawyers are scheduled to argue Thursday before the Texas Supreme Court whether to exhume the body of rancher John G. Kenedy Jr. for DNA tests to determine if the supposedly sterile millionaire fathered a daughter with a maid. At issue is an inheritance estimated between $500 million and $1 billion - including a 400,000-acre, oil-rich ranch near Kingsville - left to two charities. In the lawsuit, Dr. Ray Fernandez and his mother Ann Fernandez claim Kenedy had at least one out-of-wedlock child with Maria Rowland Goates, Ann's mother. Judge Guy Herman had ordered Kenedy's remains exhumed after preliminary genetic testing appeared to support the Fernandezes' claim. But lawyers for the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation and the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust appealed, saying Kenedy's estate was legally settled years ago....
Synthetic saddlery Like most every Wyoming rancher, Tom Harrower has an interest in saddles. The difference between Harrower and other ranchers is his particular interest in plastic saddles. That's right, plastic saddles. A native of Kemmerer, Harrower manages the family ranching operations. A 1965 graduate of Western College of Auctioneering in Billings, Mont., he has rubbed shoulders with thousands of buyers and sellers. Over the past 40 years he began developing an appreciation for unusual horse-related items. That interest evolved from his ranching background and hands-on experience with saddle horses, draft horses, buggy horses and several pairs of oxen. Along the way Harrower became seriously interested in plastic saddles and equipment made in Lusk and in Scottsbluff, Neb. For the past four years, he has researched, documented and compiled the history of the All Western Plastic Co....
The Vaquero way The presiding spirits of this rodeo, known as the Carmel Valley Ranchers' Days, are the brothers Bill and Tom Dorrance, inventors of what is often called natural horsemanship. The Dorrances are legendary in this part of the world. Bill, who died in 1999, and Tom, who died in 2003, left a legacy that has helped transform the relationship between people and horses. While popular culture has given due attention to "horse-whispering" — thanks mostly to the Robert Redford movie — the Dorrances' story is a California story, little known outside horse circles. BILL and Tom Dorrance grew up in eastern Oregon. Born in 1906, Bill was older by four years. They came from a family of ranchers and were surrounded by horses and cattle all their lives. In the 1930s they settled in California, where they found themselves exposed to the vaquero tradition — a way of working with horses that brings into play not just horsemanship but roping and rawhide braiding. The Dorrances came to value the vaquero approach, which is as much a philosophy as a methodology. "Listen to the horse," Tom would famously say. "Try to find out what the horse is trying to tell you." On the ranch, the brothers needed quiet horses that were cooperative and capable of acting as partners in the endless work of finding, moving, herding, separating and tending to cows, calves and bulls....
It's All Trew: You can't get some things off some people's minds We often quote my father, J. T. Trew, who used to say, "I'll go anywhere you want to take me just so we get back home by dark-thirty." When we suggested flying somewhere, Mother was ready to climb on board but Dad would say, "Y'all go on and enjoy yourselves. I don't plan on getting any higher off the ground than the stirrups on a tall horse." Bill Moore, a longtime friend from the Clarendon/Goodnight area, was a good cowman, fun to be around and a good conversationalist, that is if you were willing to talk about cows. Start with any subject from politics, war, weather, pretty ladies or the price of eggs in China and by the third sentence Bill would be back on cows. We tried every gambit we could think of to keep the conversation on other subjects, all to no avail. When with Bill, we talked cows....
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Durango lawyer wins forest ruling A Durango lawyer has successfully overturned the part of the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Initiative that barred appeals by the public on small forest projects. Matt Kenna, representing the Western Environmental Law Center, had asked that the U.S. Forest Service be held in contempt for not enforcing a July order that applies to all forests nationwide. The judge declined to hold the Forest Service in contempt this time, but said he could in the future. On Friday the agency agreed to follow the July ruling. Kenna had argued the Healthy Forests Initiative violated the 1992 Appeals Reform Act, which allows the public to comment on and appeal all Forest Service projects. "The Forest Service is committed to fully and immediately complying with the judge's order," said Jim Maxwell, press officer for the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service. The Washington, D.C., office is drafting instructions that could be ready by today to specify which projects must allow public comment, Maxwell said. The judge said emergency acts dealing with wildfires or hurricanes are exempt, but he offered little guidance about what other projects might not require public appeal....
Bill aims to waive energy rules Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have Republicans in Congress again calling for relaxing environmental restrictions on energy development on public lands in the West. They say those restrictions get in the way of oil and gas companies providing energy to the public. So House Resources Committee chairman Richard Pombo on Monday proposed legislation eliminating many rules that energy companies have complained about. Pombo's legislation, scheduled for a committee vote Wednesday, is part of a multipronged GOP effort to cut back environmental regulation in the wake of the storms. Pombo's bill would allow the Interior Department to waive limitations on drilling - such as those protecting wildlife in winter - in the event of a "significant disruption" in supply. Not all the exemptions would require an emergency. The bill would approve the use of private workers paid by the gas industry to process permits for drilling on public lands and would bar appeals of drilling decisions by the BLM....
Family patriarch indicted on sexual assault charges A man who lived with his wife and 15 children inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park - and engaged in a widely publicized feud with the park service - has been charged with numerous counts of sexual assault and incest. Alaska State Troopers searched Monday for Robert A. Hale, 64, who goes by the name Papa Pilgrim. "He could be anywhere," said agency spokesman Greg Wilkinson. Hale was indicted Thursday by a state grand jury on 30 felony counts, including 10 counts of sexual assault, one count of kidnapping, eight counts of incest, eight counts of coercion and three counts of assault. The indictment lists just one victim....
Judge won't stop killing of Calif. pigs Thousands of wild pigs on Santa Cruz Island can be destroyed, a federal judge ruled Monday, but a businessman pledged to continue his fight to save the animals. The National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which co-own the island, say the pigs must go because they're damaging archaeological sites and threatening native species like the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox. The pigs are descended from animals that ranchers brought to the island in the 1850s. Rick Feldman, a Santa Barbara businessman suing to stop the killings, said he would appeal federal Judge Dickran Tevrizian's decision to reject a preliminary injunction....
Editorial: Creatures cannot survive without habitat According to the chairman of the House Resources Committee, it's not the eagles, owls, minnows and lizards that stand in the way of development, profits and the paving of North America. No, indeed. It's just all those troublesome forests, rivers, prairies and deserts that the little critters insist on living in that stand in the way of the new Manifest Destiny. Thus the chairman, California Republican Richard Pombo, has crafted a major rewrite of the 32-year-old cornerstone of American environmentalism, the Endangered Species Act. It purports to call upon the federal government to come up with "species recovery plans" for identified flora and fauna while making it much, much easier for developers to have their way with the lands that those very species live on, under and above. Good politician that he is, Pombo makes his bill, already rammed through his committee and referred to the full House, sound like a workable compromise, the kind that might lead to the rescue of more endangered species without all those nasty and expensive lawsuits. The only problem is, it cannot work....
Editorial: 'No regulation without compensation' The law, now 30 years old, is badly in need of updating, though it won't happen without a fight, given the leverage the act gives green extremists bent on trampling private-property rights, dictating land-use policies and obstructing energy development. Even talking about reform can open one to accusations of being indifferent to the wanton slaughter of eagles, whales, bunnies and butterflies. But in spite of such risks, a few intrepid politicians are stepping forward to rein in the rogue law. And they will need all the support they can get. There are three or four changes we think are critical to an updated Endangered Species Act, starting with a strengthening of the science behind it. As people in Colorado learned the hard way, after the rodent formerly known as the Preble's meadow jumping mouse was exposed as a fraud, federal officials sometimes act to protect a species with only a vague idea about its true identity or status. About a third of the animals removed from the endangered species list over the years were on the list because of flawed science. Given the law's incredible power to impact property values, dictate development trends, limit access to public lands and hamper the economy, Americans deserve assurances that the law's regulate-first, worry-about-the-science-later approach is reversed. It's time to start compensating people when Endangered Species Act protections adversely impact their property values. Regulators and environmentalists hate this idea and are reluctant to relinquish their license to regulate at will, with little regard to how their actions are impacting people's lives. Paying compensation would not only be the fair and constitutional thing to do, since the Fifth Amendment requires that citizens be paid when government's actions deprive them of the full use of their property, but it would also underscore the fact that regulations come with a price tag, which someone must pay....
Feds cut back habitat for snowy plover The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday announced that West Coast beach-front critical habitat for the threatened western snowy plover will be cut back by nearly 40 percent, continuing a Bush administration policy of reducing habitat protections for threatened and endangered species to reduce economic losses. The bulk of the cutbacks came from beaches in California on Monterey Bay, Morro Bay and the San Diego Bay island city of Coronado, where a report had estimated that protecting nesting areas from development and human contact would cost nearly $200 million over the next 20 years due primarily to limiting recreation. "The economic analyses are playing an increasingly significant role in determinations of critical habitat," said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Al Donner in Sacramento, Calif. "That's triggered by court decisions that have directed us to do more rigorous economic reviews of proposed critical habitat and their impacts."....
Area under habitat conservation plans could soar Timber companies, developers, local governments and others are seeking federal permission to nearly triple the 37 million acres that fall under the nation's controversial and underfunded habitat conservation program. Of the 433 pending plans listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, most are in the West and South, where development and timber-cutting most frequently collide with endangered species, records obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer show. In the Pacific Northwest, more than two dozen habitat plans are officially under review, according to Fish and Wildlife records released under the Freedom of Information Act. One of the largest is a 9.1 million-acre deal in Washington that would shield much of the state's private timber industry from prosecution for harming salmon, steelhead, bull trout and 47 other kinds of fish. Approval of the 50-year "Forests and Fish" deal is expected later this year....
Author sets out to discover the real Timothy Treadwell The short, heartless version of the story was simply: "The Doofus Dies." At least, that's how some Alaskans saw it, says Nick Jans, the Juneau-based author of a new book, "The Grizzly Maze," about Timothy Treadwell's fatal obsession with Alaska's huge coastal brown bears. Two years ago, he might not have argued, knowing only the earliest details of how a big grizzly had just killed Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, in a bear-haunted thicket of Katmai National Park. Treadwell, it was thought, had only himself to blame, having invited such danger by fashioning himself as a "bear whisperer" who could walk within a few feet of a lounging Katmai brown bear, turn his back and calmly smile into his camcorder. He gave the bears names like Booble and Mr. Chocolate. Sometimes he touched them with his hand....
Ranchers try to save livestock from flood Cattlemen on boats, barges and horseback Monday tried to save what's left of their herds after floods unleashed by Hurricane Rita in coastal parishes from Lafourche to Cameron. Their counterparts in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes - two areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina less than a month before – watched as Rita swept away cattle that survived the first storm. Ranchers across coastal Louisiana badly need trucks, hay and a place to house the surviving rescued cattle, said Bob Felknor, director of Louisiana Cattlemen's Association....
Lawyers fight over exhuming millionaire's body Lawyers are scheduled to argue Thursday before the Texas Supreme Court whether to exhume the body of rancher John G. Kenedy Jr. for DNA tests to determine if the supposedly sterile millionaire fathered a daughter with a maid. At issue is an inheritance estimated between $500 million and $1 billion - including a 400,000-acre, oil-rich ranch near Kingsville - left to two charities. In the lawsuit, Dr. Ray Fernandez and his mother Ann Fernandez claim Kenedy had at least one out-of-wedlock child with Maria Rowland Goates, Ann's mother. Judge Guy Herman had ordered Kenedy's remains exhumed after preliminary genetic testing appeared to support the Fernandezes' claim. But lawyers for the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation and the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust appealed, saying Kenedy's estate was legally settled years ago....
Synthetic saddlery Like most every Wyoming rancher, Tom Harrower has an interest in saddles. The difference between Harrower and other ranchers is his particular interest in plastic saddles. That's right, plastic saddles. A native of Kemmerer, Harrower manages the family ranching operations. A 1965 graduate of Western College of Auctioneering in Billings, Mont., he has rubbed shoulders with thousands of buyers and sellers. Over the past 40 years he began developing an appreciation for unusual horse-related items. That interest evolved from his ranching background and hands-on experience with saddle horses, draft horses, buggy horses and several pairs of oxen. Along the way Harrower became seriously interested in plastic saddles and equipment made in Lusk and in Scottsbluff, Neb. For the past four years, he has researched, documented and compiled the history of the All Western Plastic Co....
The Vaquero way The presiding spirits of this rodeo, known as the Carmel Valley Ranchers' Days, are the brothers Bill and Tom Dorrance, inventors of what is often called natural horsemanship. The Dorrances are legendary in this part of the world. Bill, who died in 1999, and Tom, who died in 2003, left a legacy that has helped transform the relationship between people and horses. While popular culture has given due attention to "horse-whispering" — thanks mostly to the Robert Redford movie — the Dorrances' story is a California story, little known outside horse circles. BILL and Tom Dorrance grew up in eastern Oregon. Born in 1906, Bill was older by four years. They came from a family of ranchers and were surrounded by horses and cattle all their lives. In the 1930s they settled in California, where they found themselves exposed to the vaquero tradition — a way of working with horses that brings into play not just horsemanship but roping and rawhide braiding. The Dorrances came to value the vaquero approach, which is as much a philosophy as a methodology. "Listen to the horse," Tom would famously say. "Try to find out what the horse is trying to tell you." On the ranch, the brothers needed quiet horses that were cooperative and capable of acting as partners in the endless work of finding, moving, herding, separating and tending to cows, calves and bulls....
It's All Trew: You can't get some things off some people's minds We often quote my father, J. T. Trew, who used to say, "I'll go anywhere you want to take me just so we get back home by dark-thirty." When we suggested flying somewhere, Mother was ready to climb on board but Dad would say, "Y'all go on and enjoy yourselves. I don't plan on getting any higher off the ground than the stirrups on a tall horse." Bill Moore, a longtime friend from the Clarendon/Goodnight area, was a good cowman, fun to be around and a good conversationalist, that is if you were willing to talk about cows. Start with any subject from politics, war, weather, pretty ladies or the price of eggs in China and by the third sentence Bill would be back on cows. We tried every gambit we could think of to keep the conversation on other subjects, all to no avail. When with Bill, we talked cows....
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