FLE
The Patriot Act: Business Balks
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman loves to remind visitors of Sin City's oh-so-discreet tagline: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." But since the New Year's celebrations ringing in 2004, he has had to modify the motto. Fearing a terrorist attack, the FBI descended on casinos, car rental agencies, storage warehouses, and other Las Vegas businesses with sheaves of "national security letters" demanding financial records covering about 1 million revelers. Startled business owners who questioned the action were told they had one choice: cough up their documents or wind up in court. Now, a somber Mayor Goodman acknowledges, what happens in Vegas may end up staying in an FBI computer. "It's Kafkaesque," he says. "The central component to our economy is privacy protection. People are here to have a good time and don't want to worry about the government knowing their business." The FBI carried out its document hunt under the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed hurriedly in the aftermath of September 11. The act allows investigators to demand that businesses turn over sensitive financial records, without specifying the investigation's target or why the files are needed. The outfit receiving a letter is permanently gagged, prohibited by law from ever disclosing that the feds came calling. Indeed, the statute is silent on whether company officials who receive an order can call a lawyer or appeal to a judge -- although the Justice Dept. says it always allows businesses to seek legal recourse, behind closed doors and without the person appealing present. "Businesses want to cooperate in the war on terrorism, but this type of unchecked government power goes a little over the line," says Bob Shepler, director of corporate finance at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). With most provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at yearend, the Administration has been urging Congress to make its temporary police powers permanent. But an odd coalition is trying to scale back the government's reach -- and it may be making headway. On Nov. 9, word came from Capitol Hill that the rising chorus of civil liberties complaints could produce a deal to temper some of the law's more intrusive features. THOUSANDS OF LETTERS. If that happens, corporate interests can notch up part of the victory to savvy lobbying. Concerned about the circumvention of due process guarantees -- and about hefty compliance costs -- a half-dozen prominent business groups have joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to push Congress to narrow the law's scope. What's surprising in today's with-me-or-against-me Washington is that the coalition includes such Bush allies as NAM, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Realtors....
The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said. Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow. Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand. The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies. Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot. The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined....
Congress May Curb Some Patriot Act Powers
Congress is moving to curb some of the police powers it gave the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including imposing new restrictions on the FBI's access to private phone and financial records. A budding House-Senate deal on the expiring USA Patriot Act includes new limits on federal law enforcement powers and rejects the Bush administration's request to grant the FBI authority to get administrative subpoenas for wiretaps and other covert devices without a judge's approval. Even with the changes, however, every part of the law set to expire Dec. 31 would be reauthorized and most of those provisions would become permanent. Under the agreement, for the first time since the act became law, judges would get the authority to reject national security letters giving the government secret access to people's phone and e-mail records, financial data and favorite Internet sites. Holders of such information — such as banks and Internet providers — could challenge the letters in court for the first time, said congressional aides involved in merging separate, earlier-passed House and Senate bills reauthorizing the expiring Patriot Act. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the panel has not begun deliberations. Under the 2001 law, the FBI reportedly has been issuing about 30,000 national security letters annually, a hundred-fold increase since the 1970s, when they first came into existence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act....
FBI may be checking on you, but you have no way to know
These days, Americans suspected of no wrongdoing can suddenly find themselves caught up in FBI surveillance operations. It's as easy as saying "national security letter." Using this little-noticed but potent tool, the FBI can demand, for example, that an Internet provider, bank or phone company turn over records of who you call and e-mail, which websites you visit, how much you spend, where you work, fly and vacation, and much more. No judge has to approve the demand, a common check required on more typical subpoenas. You'd never learn about the secret intrusion, either. It's all classified. The public got a rare and troubling glimpse behind this curtain when The Washington Post reported Sunday that the FBI now issues thousands of National Security Letters a year. Each can seek many records on many people. According to The Post and government documents, the Bush administration has quietly rewritten Justice Department rules so it can keep records indefinitely, even when they prove irrelevant to an investigation. The government can also share the records broadly, enabling the FBI to build what amounts to electronic dossiers on untold numbers of Americans. The report added to a growing bipartisan backlash against several intrusive tools in the USA Patriot Act, which was rushed into law shortly after 9/11 to help combat terrorism. Because the process is largely hidden from the public, Congress and the judiciary, there is no broad assessment of how the tools are applied. But the few cases that have struggled into the light suggest extensive, secret intrusion into the lives of law-abiding people....
Safeguards are in place
The Justice Department cannot secure our nation against terrorist attack unless investigators are equipped with tools that allow them to disrupt plots before they can be carried out. These same tools must protect civil liberties. National Security Letters (NSLs) satisfy both requirements. In national security investigations, the FBI must follow up on every tip and every threat. The American people demand as much. NSLs, which predate the USA Patriot Act, enable the FBI to do so quickly and unobtrusively. An NSL is simply a request for information. It does not authorize the FBI to conduct a search or make a seizure. If the recipient of an NSL declines to produce the requested information, the FBI cannot compel him to do so; only a federal court has that authority. NSLs are subject to two other important limitations. First, the FBI may issue them only to obtain information relevant to an international terrorism or espionage investigation. They are not available in criminal investigations or domestic terrorism investigations. Second, they may be used only to obtain narrow categories of information. For example, the FBI may obtain credit-card billing records to attempt to learn the identity of a terrorist suspect....
Feds' Net-wiretap order set to kick in
On Monday, the clock starts ticking for broadband and Net-phone providers to make it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on users of their networks. According to a final order issued by the Federal Communications Commission in late September, all broadband Internet service providers and many Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, companies will have 18 months--until spring 2007--to ensure their systems have backdoors that allow police to eavesdrop on their customers' communications for investigative purposes. The 59-page order (click for PDF) followed years of pressure from the FBI, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It would broaden the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), an 11-year-old wiretapping law that currently applies only to "telecommunications carriers." The FCC has justified the expansion on the basis of terrorism and homeland security concerns, echoing Bush administration officials who have warned, for example, of the perils of VoIP services in rogue hands. But even as the order kicks in, it remains unclear exactly what classes of providers within those broad categories must comply with the new rules or what exactly they must do to achieve compliance. The FCC said in its original order that it reached "no conclusions" about whether universities, research institutions, and small or rural broadband providers should be subject the requirements. It sought comments on that topic through subsequent FCC notice. The deadline for receiving that initial round of suggestions also happens to be Monday. Meanwhile, preliminary legal challenges to the rules linger. The first one came from the American Council on Education, which has said universities and research institutions deserve to be exempted from the regulations because the changes required are too expensive and would prompt inevitable tuition hikes. A day later, a coalition of groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology and the VoIP company Pulver.com, issued their own one-page notice of appeal. They intend to argue that Congress never intended for CALEA to apply to the Internet and that the FCC has stepped outside its bounds....
Senate Approves Plan to Limit Detainee Access to Courts
The Senate endorsed a plan yesterday that would sharply limit suspected foreign terrorists' access to U.S. courts, an effort to overturn a landmark 2004 Supreme Court ruling that has allowed hundreds of detainees held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions. At the same time, the proposal would give Congress some oversight of the military process set up to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees are terrorists and should continue to be held. The measure would subject those tribunal decisions to limited review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Approval of the plan, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and endorsed 49 to 42 mostly along party lines, marks a partial but significant victory for the Bush administration, which has argued that suspected enemy combatants overseas cannot challenge their confinement in U.S. courts. But the administration has also argued that all matters related to the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists should be left to President Bush. The amendment to a defense authorization bill was endorsed three days after the Supreme Court announced it would rule on the legality of military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay detainees, setting up what could be one of the most important rulings on presidential war powers since World War II. The vote also came amid ongoing debate in Congress over a proposal by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to ban cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of U.S. detainees....
CIA asks Justice Dept. to review prisons report
The CIA has sent a report to the U.S. Justice Department indicating classified information may have been leaked to The Washington Post for its recent story about secret prisons run by the spy agency, according to U.S. officials. The newspaper reported last week that the CIA was holding top suspected al Qaeda terrorists at undisclosed prisons in eastern Europe and other locations. The Justice Department refused to confirm or deny a referral was made. The action by the CIA general counsel was taken immediately after the Washington Post article was published, an official said. It is similar to one taken when covert officer Valerie Plame's name was made public in an article written by a syndicated columnist. By law, when there is the possibility that classified information has been leaked, the CIA is required to inform the Justice Department, which generally launches an investigation into the matter. Earlier Tuesday, Republican congressional leaders asked for an investigation into the matter, and Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi suggested his own GOP colleagues could be to blame for the possible leak. Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, and Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the House speaker, asked the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees to look into the report, saying the disclosure could damage national security....
Now We’re Getting Somewhere: A silver lining in a gun ban
Who wrote the following? "[I]t is possible that once residents gave up their handguns, San Francisco would be seen as an easy hunting ground for criminals who have no intention of giving up their own pistols." Is it the NRA claiming that gun laws disarm law-abiding citizens and not criminals? No. Amazingly enough it was the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the more liberal newspapers in the U.S., in an editorial arguing against Proposition H, the initiative that passed on Tuesday to ban handguns in the city. Yet, despite this reasonableness, the initiative passed with a safe margin, 58 percent of the vote. Perhaps that isn't very surprising in a city where a proposition banning military recruiters at public high schools and colleges got even more support and almost 80 percent voted against parental notification for minors getting abortions. Ultimately, though, the vote didn't mean much of anything. As San Francisco's Mayor, Gavin Newsom, a strong supporter of gun control, said, the ban "clearly will be thrown out [in court]... It's really just a public opinion poll at the end of the day." State law prohibits local jurisdictions from enacting such a ban, and an even weaker law requiring handgun registration that was enacted by the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors in 1982 was thrown out by the California state supreme court. The silver lining was how forcefully many organizations such as the police came out against the gun ban. Besides discussing the increases in murder occurring in Washington, D.C. after it instituted a handgun ban, the officers stated: "When we disarm honest, law-abiding citizens, we contribute to empowering criminals and endangering society-at-large." They directly acknowledged how important it was for people to be able to defend themselves with a handgun when the police couldn't be there....
Fired professor gets gun license, collection back
A fired Westchester Community College instructor waging a free-speech battle against college officials is no danger to them or anyone else and may have a gun license, a judge has ruled in White Plains. Patrick Munroe's gun collection was seized after a pair of arrests on trespassing and harassment charges at the college in early 2004. The county moved to revoke Munroe's pistol license, but Westchester County Judge Barbara Zambelli denied the motion last week and ordered the county to return his guns. "Before this application was filed, he held a pistol license for more than 32 years without incident," Zambelli wrote of Munroe, a former Sleepy Hollow village trustee. "His writings provided to the Court by the County are primarily satirical, and any attempt to characterize them as threats must be based on misinterpretation."....
Tracking phones for traffic reports
Some U.S. states prohibit drivers from talking on hand-held cellphones lest they become distracted, slow down traffic or, worse, cause an accident. Others are finding that cellphones and driving might not make such a bad mix. Several state transportation agencies, including those in Maryland and Virginia, are beginning to test technology that allows them to monitor traffic by tracking cellphone signals and mapping them against road grids. The technology highlights how readily cellphones can become tracking devices for companies or government agencies - a development that troubles privacy advocates. These new traffic systems can monitor several hundred thousand cellphones at once. The phones need only be turned on, not in use. And sophisticated software now makes it possible to discern whether a signal is coming from, say, a moving car or a pedestrian. State officials say the systems will monitor large clusters of phones, not individual phones, and the benefits could be substantial. By providing a constantly updated picture of traffic flow across thousands of miles of highways, they argue, cellphone tracking can help transportation agencies spot congestion and divert drivers by issuing alerts by radio or on electronic road signs....
IBM calls for global identity management solution
The growing need for fast, accurate verification of personal identities has prompted a call from an industry observer for a global agency to set international standards. The realm of identity and access management (IAM) is heating up as nations like the UK and the US increase their use of biometrics and other identifying technology in ID cards, border controls and other areas. Beyond different governments "trying to create a mosaic for what they want as good identity management", wider international cooperation is needed to establish a common language and standards, said Cal Slemp, vice-president and global leader for security and privacy services at IBM Global Services. The common language for exchanging user access information is also known as federated IAM. "Governments have a huge part to play in this, because they have ultimate responsibility for their citizens, and depending on the country, they may have ultimate responsibility for the businesses and e-commerce as well," Slemp said....
Sunday, November 13, 2005
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Public lands
by Larry Gabriel
Some people assume every West River rancher is in favor of cheap grazing on federal lands. They are wrong. What I support is our Constitution.
Many people are deeply impressed by the concept of public lands. For some it is an awesome thing to view several million acres and say, "Wow. I am a part owner of all that."
It works especially well on folks accustomed to real estate measured in city blocks. I have heard of such an effect on a writer who moved to Colorado. I am reminded of it each time people argue about "our lands", "the people's land" or "public lands".
The federal government is the biggest landlord in the nation with about 28 percent of the land. That government had no land at all until two states donated ten square miles of land for a new federal city. Virginia later got part of that back. The rest of us aren't that fortunate.
The United States Constitution gives to Congress the power: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.
The first thing to notice is that federal legislative jurisdiction applies only to lands that Congress buys from a willing seller state.
The second obvious limit is that the land purchased from the state must be needed for forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other buildings.
Why does the central government have 650 million acres for needful buildings when there are no buildings on most of it?
Shouldn't the remnants (areas never deeded to anyone) of the Louisiana Purchase belong collectively to the sovereign states instead of the federal government?
How can Congress have jurisdiction over lands never purchased from any willing seller state as Section 8 prescribes?
You may think these questions are out in left field, but some of the best legal minds available did a study of them for President Eisenhower. They even surveyed the attorneys general for the states about it. They came up with no definitive answer.
So, when a guy from New Jersey comes out here and demands that all the cows be removed from "his federal lands," remember that not everyone agrees with his premise.
People misread the Woody Guthrie song. The side of the no-trespassing sign we see is blank because we are standing on our own land.
This land was made for you and me, as private property owners.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
It’s all in the jingle of the spur
By Julie Carter
Rural dilemmas are usually completely foreign to the majority of the population living urban or suburban lives.
How many soccer moms do you calculate get up before good light, start the dinner makings while she cooks breakfast, turns out the roping steers to pasture, feeds a barn full of stalled horses, and then spends a little time throwing a loop at the practice dummy?
All this before the real world is “at work” so she can begin making phone calls to find someone who can put new rowels in her spurs. Losing one in the arena the day before created a near catastrophe.
Finding a spur maker is not a problem if she is native to the area but transplant her somewhere out of her homeland and it becomes a major project.
This is a predicament the world usually doesn’t spend much time pondering. But to the world of the ropin’ and ridin’ folk, a spur rowel is on a list of critical items. Contrary to what the fancy-dancy cowboy clothing promotion industry would have you perceive, it is not a decoration but a much needed tool.
Magazine stands are full of slick covered advice on how to expeditiously accomplish housework, cooking, shopping and laundry-- all while keeping up on the local and national news in order to be a scintillating conversationalist on all levels.
Even more pages are full of instruction for the wonders of skin care and proper makeup application for the belles of the world to remain beautiful for the men in their life, cowboy or not.
Female health issues garner regular headlines that instruct scheduling mammograms and other assorted tests to insure healthy longevity and even more pages promise a wrinkle free face and teeth that glow whiter than those in Hollywood.
These are all concerns that women worldwide face daily in their lives but the rural girl will find little expert advice on how to quickly locate someone to replace a spur rowel. It is crisis unique to the lifestyle.
Once located, the spur maker will first assume the broken-spur toting woman to be another Tahoe driving, Wrangler wearing wanna-be, the like of which is flooding rural areas of America.
The signature on her spurs will redeem her reputation. Little did even she know that the name stamped in the silver on her spur was one that was legendary to spur makers. She’d known the cowboy to be just one of a fleet of brothers who worked cattle in the Texas panhandle and he was the one that happened to make spurs, bits and buckles.
That moment of name recognition obviously elevated her on the “genuine cowfolk” meter and the spur maker immediately introduced her to his wife, children and all eight of his dogs, each of whom was apprised that this gal owned a pair of Jerry Cates spurs.
This was followed by a litany of rodeo exploits and wild cow chasing stories the spur maker felt obliged to tell to establish his own credibility. The cowgirl just listened as her bona fides had been established by ownership of good spurs.
Cowboy dude designers, including Ralph Lauren, are wasting their time making all that fancy dude stuff to establish the cowboy look. Anybody that wants to be recognized as a genuine cowboy just needs to find themselves a pair of half worn out quality spurs.
© Julie Carter 2005
Public lands
by Larry Gabriel
Some people assume every West River rancher is in favor of cheap grazing on federal lands. They are wrong. What I support is our Constitution.
Many people are deeply impressed by the concept of public lands. For some it is an awesome thing to view several million acres and say, "Wow. I am a part owner of all that."
It works especially well on folks accustomed to real estate measured in city blocks. I have heard of such an effect on a writer who moved to Colorado. I am reminded of it each time people argue about "our lands", "the people's land" or "public lands".
The federal government is the biggest landlord in the nation with about 28 percent of the land. That government had no land at all until two states donated ten square miles of land for a new federal city. Virginia later got part of that back. The rest of us aren't that fortunate.
The United States Constitution gives to Congress the power: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.
The first thing to notice is that federal legislative jurisdiction applies only to lands that Congress buys from a willing seller state.
The second obvious limit is that the land purchased from the state must be needed for forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other buildings.
Why does the central government have 650 million acres for needful buildings when there are no buildings on most of it?
Shouldn't the remnants (areas never deeded to anyone) of the Louisiana Purchase belong collectively to the sovereign states instead of the federal government?
How can Congress have jurisdiction over lands never purchased from any willing seller state as Section 8 prescribes?
You may think these questions are out in left field, but some of the best legal minds available did a study of them for President Eisenhower. They even surveyed the attorneys general for the states about it. They came up with no definitive answer.
So, when a guy from New Jersey comes out here and demands that all the cows be removed from "his federal lands," remember that not everyone agrees with his premise.
People misread the Woody Guthrie song. The side of the no-trespassing sign we see is blank because we are standing on our own land.
This land was made for you and me, as private property owners.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
It’s all in the jingle of the spur
By Julie Carter
Rural dilemmas are usually completely foreign to the majority of the population living urban or suburban lives.
How many soccer moms do you calculate get up before good light, start the dinner makings while she cooks breakfast, turns out the roping steers to pasture, feeds a barn full of stalled horses, and then spends a little time throwing a loop at the practice dummy?
All this before the real world is “at work” so she can begin making phone calls to find someone who can put new rowels in her spurs. Losing one in the arena the day before created a near catastrophe.
Finding a spur maker is not a problem if she is native to the area but transplant her somewhere out of her homeland and it becomes a major project.
This is a predicament the world usually doesn’t spend much time pondering. But to the world of the ropin’ and ridin’ folk, a spur rowel is on a list of critical items. Contrary to what the fancy-dancy cowboy clothing promotion industry would have you perceive, it is not a decoration but a much needed tool.
Magazine stands are full of slick covered advice on how to expeditiously accomplish housework, cooking, shopping and laundry-- all while keeping up on the local and national news in order to be a scintillating conversationalist on all levels.
Even more pages are full of instruction for the wonders of skin care and proper makeup application for the belles of the world to remain beautiful for the men in their life, cowboy or not.
Female health issues garner regular headlines that instruct scheduling mammograms and other assorted tests to insure healthy longevity and even more pages promise a wrinkle free face and teeth that glow whiter than those in Hollywood.
These are all concerns that women worldwide face daily in their lives but the rural girl will find little expert advice on how to quickly locate someone to replace a spur rowel. It is crisis unique to the lifestyle.
Once located, the spur maker will first assume the broken-spur toting woman to be another Tahoe driving, Wrangler wearing wanna-be, the like of which is flooding rural areas of America.
The signature on her spurs will redeem her reputation. Little did even she know that the name stamped in the silver on her spur was one that was legendary to spur makers. She’d known the cowboy to be just one of a fleet of brothers who worked cattle in the Texas panhandle and he was the one that happened to make spurs, bits and buckles.
That moment of name recognition obviously elevated her on the “genuine cowfolk” meter and the spur maker immediately introduced her to his wife, children and all eight of his dogs, each of whom was apprised that this gal owned a pair of Jerry Cates spurs.
This was followed by a litany of rodeo exploits and wild cow chasing stories the spur maker felt obliged to tell to establish his own credibility. The cowgirl just listened as her bona fides had been established by ownership of good spurs.
Cowboy dude designers, including Ralph Lauren, are wasting their time making all that fancy dude stuff to establish the cowboy look. Anybody that wants to be recognized as a genuine cowboy just needs to find themselves a pair of half worn out quality spurs.
© Julie Carter 2005
OPINION/COMMENTARY
The Green of Green Government
The Financial Times recently carried an op-ed by Harvard professor John Quelch that gushed over corporations electing the "green" business model (or at least green rhetoric). This paean to the erstwhile "British Petroleum"—now "BP: Beyond Petroleum"—epitomizes the disconnect between academic idealizing and real-world truths. Quelch writes "not even the mighty Exxon-Mobil with its army of hired-gun lawyers and lobbyists unilaterally achieve everything it needs to maximise shareholder value -- not least the goodwill of a justifiably sceptical public. By contrast, John Browne, BP's quiet leader, has embraced the company's responsibilities to address global warming and invest in alternative energy sources 'beyond petroleum'." This is an embarrassing entry in the competition to bestow an aura of "responsibility" upon capitalists with a green hue even if one ignores for the moment that BP's Washington "army of hired-gun lawyers and lobbyists" is in fact twice as large as ExxonMobil's (33 to 17 according public filings). It seems not to matter to the author that, certainly in BP's case, their rhetorical positioning—"beyond petroleum"—is laughably at odds with their revenue streams. A BP ad on my parking garage boasted, "Solar, natural gas, hydrogen, wind. And oh yes, oil. It's a start." It's also—as BP positions itself to become the largest oil and gas producer in the world—a lot of hogwash....
Religion and the environment
Surely there is much that our Judeo-Christian heritage has to say about people’s relationship to nature. And surely, there is much room for people of faith to take an active role in fulfilling their responsibilities toward the world which God has created. Yet for some time, a growing chorus of voices has been attempting to redefine traditional Judeo-Christian teachings on stewardship, and ultimately, our duties as responsible human beings. These advocates are passionate about the environment. Unfortunately, their passion is often based on a romantic view of nature, a misguided distrust of science and technology, and an intense focus on problems that are highly speculative and largely irrelevant to meeting our obligations to the world’s poor. Out of that October meeting came a vitally important document: The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship. Designed to spark debate on these critical issues of humanity and the environment, it has already been signed by over 1,000 leading clergy, theologians, scholars, and other people of good will and is supported by three scholarly monographs entitled Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition that offer unique Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives on this important issue. Also out of that meeting grew an impressive coalition of like-minded individuals and organizations which recently formed the Interfaith Coalition for Environmental Stewardship (ICES) — a group dedicated to demonstrating widespread support for traditional principles of stewardship....
Pig Pool
There is nothing guaranteed to put your school on the map faster than getting involved in a battle over animal rights. At Nova Southeastern law school it was their annual "Kiss the Pig Charitable Fundraiser" that stirred up animal rights activists. Students place money in jars with the professors names on them. The professor who collects the most money then must "kiss a pig" which is a pot bellied pig normally acquired locally for the event. Instead of defending the five year old event which benefits a local hospital Dean Joe Harbaugh wrote in an e-mail on September 29th that ''I personally observed the animal shivering and moving its head from side to side as it looked [frantically in my judgment] at those gathered all around,'' I didn't realize that Dean Harbaugh had a degree in animal husbandry as well. That's not all though. How about this quote? ''I think if you look at this as an issue of helping sick kids or defending a pig's rights, most people are going to come down on the side of the kids,'' said Professor Phyllis Coleman, faculty advisor for the student animal-defense group. "But there are so many other ways to raise money without having to traumatize a live animal." All this fuss over something that lasts for a few fleeting seconds? After all if I was the professor I would surely want the kiss to be a quick as possible. To placate the pig defenders there will be a jar for those that don't want the pig kissed. I don't see that as getting much support as it takes the fun out of the event....
GREEN REGULATIONS SLOWED WAGE GROWTH
Last year, federal environmental regulations cost small U.S. manufacturers $15,747 per worker -- dwarfing small firms' combined cost of tax compliance ($2,582 per worker), economic regulations ($2,577), and workplace regulations ($1,014). Green regulations may become a major public worry if the economy turns south.
But according to the Independent Institute's Craig S. Marxsen and Carl P. Close, "workers already have plenty of reason for concern because for much of the past 30 years, environmental regulations have slowed the growth of U.S. labor-productivity and workers' weekly earnings."
Marxsen and Close also contend:
* From 1973 to 1995 "real weekly earnings -- what workers took home in inflation-adjusted dollars -- actually decreased."
* From 1974 to 1986 "multifactor productivity -- the efficiency of labor, machinery, and other inputs working together -- had fallen about 11.4 percent short of where it would have been without the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) heavy hand."
* Although productivity growth accelerated in the late 1990s, it mostly touched six economic sectors less affected by environmental regulations.
They conclude by calling for Congress to make the EPA more transparent and to reduce the agency's discretionary authority.
Predictions of eco-catastrophe, Marxsen and Close write, "haven't panned out except in one respect: They fertilized a federal bureaucracy that has imposed huge costs on businesses -- costs that have disproportionately dampened the growth of productivity and workers' earnings. The time has come for policymakers and the public to re-think their commitment to the EPA's costly environmental bureaucracy."
Source: Craig S. Marxsen and Carl P. Close, "Environmental Doom and Economic Slowdown: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," Independent Institute, October 27, 2005; and Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, eds., "Re-thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy," Independent Institute, April 1, 2004.
For Marxsen and Close text:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1595
For Higgs and Close text:
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=58
Follow The Facts And Drill In ANWR
Roll Call, the newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, reported on November 8 that the House $54 billion budget reconciliation measure would probably pass if the provision that permits oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were removed. Moderate Republicans have requested that the ANWR provision be eliminated before the bill goes to the floor. Even if the provision is bounced it may be of little consequence because the Senate’s version includes the oil drilling proposal and it could reappear when the two chambers go to conference. It is time for Congress to stop genuflecting at the altar of fraudulent environmentalism and open ANWR to the oil industry. For too long, too many have capitulated to the phony charges that drilling in ANWR would ruin the region. Exploration will not harm ANWR, it will benefit America and that has been a known fact for decades. In a November 2 speech on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said, “I was in the Interior Department in the Eisenhower Administration and helped create the Arctic Wildlife Range. …Twenty-four years ago during the debate on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, I worked closely with Senator Scoop Jackson and Senator Paul Tsongas to ensure part of the Coastal Plain of this area remained open for oil and gas development.” In 1980, then-Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, D-Washington, wrote, “Crucial to the nation’s ability to achieve energy independence, one-third of our own petroleum reserves are in Alaska along with an even greater proportion of our potential reserves. …preventing the exploration of the Arctic Wildlife Range is an ostrich-like approach that ill serves our nation in this time of energy crisis.” Since then America’s energy situation has become an even bigger cause for concern....
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The Green of Green Government
The Financial Times recently carried an op-ed by Harvard professor John Quelch that gushed over corporations electing the "green" business model (or at least green rhetoric). This paean to the erstwhile "British Petroleum"—now "BP: Beyond Petroleum"—epitomizes the disconnect between academic idealizing and real-world truths. Quelch writes "not even the mighty Exxon-Mobil with its army of hired-gun lawyers and lobbyists unilaterally achieve everything it needs to maximise shareholder value -- not least the goodwill of a justifiably sceptical public. By contrast, John Browne, BP's quiet leader, has embraced the company's responsibilities to address global warming and invest in alternative energy sources 'beyond petroleum'." This is an embarrassing entry in the competition to bestow an aura of "responsibility" upon capitalists with a green hue even if one ignores for the moment that BP's Washington "army of hired-gun lawyers and lobbyists" is in fact twice as large as ExxonMobil's (33 to 17 according public filings). It seems not to matter to the author that, certainly in BP's case, their rhetorical positioning—"beyond petroleum"—is laughably at odds with their revenue streams. A BP ad on my parking garage boasted, "Solar, natural gas, hydrogen, wind. And oh yes, oil. It's a start." It's also—as BP positions itself to become the largest oil and gas producer in the world—a lot of hogwash....
Religion and the environment
Surely there is much that our Judeo-Christian heritage has to say about people’s relationship to nature. And surely, there is much room for people of faith to take an active role in fulfilling their responsibilities toward the world which God has created. Yet for some time, a growing chorus of voices has been attempting to redefine traditional Judeo-Christian teachings on stewardship, and ultimately, our duties as responsible human beings. These advocates are passionate about the environment. Unfortunately, their passion is often based on a romantic view of nature, a misguided distrust of science and technology, and an intense focus on problems that are highly speculative and largely irrelevant to meeting our obligations to the world’s poor. Out of that October meeting came a vitally important document: The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship. Designed to spark debate on these critical issues of humanity and the environment, it has already been signed by over 1,000 leading clergy, theologians, scholars, and other people of good will and is supported by three scholarly monographs entitled Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition that offer unique Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives on this important issue. Also out of that meeting grew an impressive coalition of like-minded individuals and organizations which recently formed the Interfaith Coalition for Environmental Stewardship (ICES) — a group dedicated to demonstrating widespread support for traditional principles of stewardship....
Pig Pool
There is nothing guaranteed to put your school on the map faster than getting involved in a battle over animal rights. At Nova Southeastern law school it was their annual "Kiss the Pig Charitable Fundraiser" that stirred up animal rights activists. Students place money in jars with the professors names on them. The professor who collects the most money then must "kiss a pig" which is a pot bellied pig normally acquired locally for the event. Instead of defending the five year old event which benefits a local hospital Dean Joe Harbaugh wrote in an e-mail on September 29th that ''I personally observed the animal shivering and moving its head from side to side as it looked [frantically in my judgment] at those gathered all around,'' I didn't realize that Dean Harbaugh had a degree in animal husbandry as well. That's not all though. How about this quote? ''I think if you look at this as an issue of helping sick kids or defending a pig's rights, most people are going to come down on the side of the kids,'' said Professor Phyllis Coleman, faculty advisor for the student animal-defense group. "But there are so many other ways to raise money without having to traumatize a live animal." All this fuss over something that lasts for a few fleeting seconds? After all if I was the professor I would surely want the kiss to be a quick as possible. To placate the pig defenders there will be a jar for those that don't want the pig kissed. I don't see that as getting much support as it takes the fun out of the event....
GREEN REGULATIONS SLOWED WAGE GROWTH
Last year, federal environmental regulations cost small U.S. manufacturers $15,747 per worker -- dwarfing small firms' combined cost of tax compliance ($2,582 per worker), economic regulations ($2,577), and workplace regulations ($1,014). Green regulations may become a major public worry if the economy turns south.
But according to the Independent Institute's Craig S. Marxsen and Carl P. Close, "workers already have plenty of reason for concern because for much of the past 30 years, environmental regulations have slowed the growth of U.S. labor-productivity and workers' weekly earnings."
Marxsen and Close also contend:
* From 1973 to 1995 "real weekly earnings -- what workers took home in inflation-adjusted dollars -- actually decreased."
* From 1974 to 1986 "multifactor productivity -- the efficiency of labor, machinery, and other inputs working together -- had fallen about 11.4 percent short of where it would have been without the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) heavy hand."
* Although productivity growth accelerated in the late 1990s, it mostly touched six economic sectors less affected by environmental regulations.
They conclude by calling for Congress to make the EPA more transparent and to reduce the agency's discretionary authority.
Predictions of eco-catastrophe, Marxsen and Close write, "haven't panned out except in one respect: They fertilized a federal bureaucracy that has imposed huge costs on businesses -- costs that have disproportionately dampened the growth of productivity and workers' earnings. The time has come for policymakers and the public to re-think their commitment to the EPA's costly environmental bureaucracy."
Source: Craig S. Marxsen and Carl P. Close, "Environmental Doom and Economic Slowdown: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," Independent Institute, October 27, 2005; and Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close, eds., "Re-thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy," Independent Institute, April 1, 2004.
For Marxsen and Close text:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1595
For Higgs and Close text:
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=58
Follow The Facts And Drill In ANWR
Roll Call, the newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, reported on November 8 that the House $54 billion budget reconciliation measure would probably pass if the provision that permits oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were removed. Moderate Republicans have requested that the ANWR provision be eliminated before the bill goes to the floor. Even if the provision is bounced it may be of little consequence because the Senate’s version includes the oil drilling proposal and it could reappear when the two chambers go to conference. It is time for Congress to stop genuflecting at the altar of fraudulent environmentalism and open ANWR to the oil industry. For too long, too many have capitulated to the phony charges that drilling in ANWR would ruin the region. Exploration will not harm ANWR, it will benefit America and that has been a known fact for decades. In a November 2 speech on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said, “I was in the Interior Department in the Eisenhower Administration and helped create the Arctic Wildlife Range. …Twenty-four years ago during the debate on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, I worked closely with Senator Scoop Jackson and Senator Paul Tsongas to ensure part of the Coastal Plain of this area remained open for oil and gas development.” In 1980, then-Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, D-Washington, wrote, “Crucial to the nation’s ability to achieve energy independence, one-third of our own petroleum reserves are in Alaska along with an even greater proportion of our potential reserves. …preventing the exploration of the Arctic Wildlife Range is an ostrich-like approach that ill serves our nation in this time of energy crisis.” Since then America’s energy situation has become an even bigger cause for concern....
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Friday, November 11, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Ex-wildfire chief accused of setting fires The former commander of an elite wildfire team that battled the largest blaze in Arizona history and aided in recovery efforts at the World Trade Center is accused of starting two fires last year, federal prosecutors said. Van Bateman, 55, was indicted Wednesday for allegedly setting the fires in the Coconino National Forest in 2004. He faces two federal counts of setting timber afire and two counts of arson on public lands. The first charge carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, while arson is punishable by up to 20 years, prosecutors said Thursday. Bateman was a Type I incident commander, the head of a wildfire management crew that is called in for the biggest and most severe wildfires. His four-year term in that position expired in 2004 and he became leader of a slightly lower level team until he was indicted and put on paid leave, according to Forest Service officials....
‘Old Broad’ calls for wilderness Wilderness areas, which are off-limits to motorized vehicles, at some point become inaccessible to people as they age. But that’s all right, according to an official with a group formed to prove that older people could access wilderness areas. Veronica “Ronnie” Egan, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, explained the origins of the group to a crowd attending the fourth annual Wilderness Symposium on Thursday in Rapid City. Egan, of Durango, Colo., said the group formed 16 years ago in response to arguments by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that older people aren’t able to visit wilderness areas because they can’t use vehicles. Egan, 59, said about a dozen “ladies of a certain age” who enjoyed hiking in the Escalante canyons in Utah formed Great Old Broads for Wilderness “to represent older citizens who were, first of all, dedicated to being in wilderness, and secondly, to the concept that even if they got to the point where they couldn’t get there under their own steam, that was OK. We’ve had our chance, as it were, and wilderness is valuable for its own sake and not just for the recreational proclivities of the young, buff elite,” Egan told the crowd of more than 100 people at Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn....
Mountain lion on the prowl in Mount Madonna Park A mountain lion prowling Santa Clara's Mount Madonna County Park has killed 18 deer, descendants of a pair donated by media mogul William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s. Since March, a female mountain lion has bounded over an 8-foot fence at least eight times and into a pen where the white fallow deer call home, according to John Heenan, senior park ranger at Mount Madonna. The deer, native to Persia, were given to Gilroy cattle rancher Henry Miller, who owned property in the park, as a gift from Hearst in 1935. In addition to the 18 killed by the mountain lion, six others have died of natural causes, according to park officials. Only 27 are left in the herd....
PETA PRESIDENT SELLS FOR $43,600 ON EBAY PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk, founder of the world’s largest animal rights organization and author of several books on how to be kind to animals, gave lab chiefs and steakhouse owners a chance to get back at her when she auctioned herself off as personal assistant for a day on eBay. In an auction that ended this morning, Newkirk landed more than 40 bids, and in the end, Sandy Boss and Gary Reamer, a married couple from Encinitas, Calif., paid a whopping $43,600 to hire Newkirk for the day. Newkirk had put her services up for bid on October 31 as a novel way to help fund her campaigners’ travel to protest sites around the globe. The auction resulted in hundreds of raunchy, nasty messages, including ranchers who wanted her to "milk" bull’s semen, exotic animal dealers who thought that she should answer their company telephone, anglers who told her that she’d have to gut their fish all day, and deer hunters and pit bull breeders who were eager to put her next to a gun or an aggressive dog....
WWGA Responds To Editorial Attacks On October 31, the Casper Star Tribune published one of its nameless, faceless editorials that it is famous for wherein it chastised the Wyoming Wool Growers Association for proposing a bill to the Wyoming legislature which would enhance existing statute which provides for a penalty for anyone abandoning sheep on the open range. This proposed bill would increase the potential penalty to any worker who voluntarily walks off and abandons these animals, but would also provide penalties for anyone who entices a worker to do this, as well as penalties to those who knowingly hire anyone who intentionally abandons these animals and leaves them to fend for themselves out on the range in Wyoming. As is typical for the Casper Star Tribune, the editorial had an anti-agriculture, anti-ranching tone and feel to it. What was particularly egregious about this editorial, however, was the fact that the Casper Star did not make any attempt to contact our organization for background information, did not make any attempt (that we are aware of) to contact any rancher or herder who was potentially affected by the bill, and didn’t even bother to send a reporter to the legislative hearing at which the bill was proposed. All basic Journalism 101, but apparently not tenets that the Casper Star believes it should have to follow. In order to set the record straight, and to hopefully rectify the damage inflicted upon our Association and industry by this editorial (which we believe was the underlying and real intent of it), we ask the citizens of Wyoming to consider the following information, which was not provided by the Casper Star....
Poll says Montanans support Buffalo hunt, delisting of wolves Montanans strongly favor the new bison hunt scheduled to start next week, and like the idea of removing the gray wolf from federal protection and opening up the state for more coal mining, results of a new poll shows. The bison hunt, set to make a comeback next week, had the support of 73 percent of the poll's respondents. Only 18 percent opposed the hunt, and 9 percent were undecided. Among men, 80 percent supported the hunt, while 65 percent of women liked the idea. A question asking if the gray wolf should be desisted, a hot topic among ranchers in the state, found that 57 percent said it is time to remove protections for the wolf. Twenty-eight percent opposed delisting the wolf, and 15 percent were undecided. Republicans and people living in rural areas were a little more likely to support delisting the wolf. A large majority, 68 percent, also support the idea of more coal mining in the state, while 19 percent oppose it and 14 percent are undecided. Coal mining had support from across the political spectrum, but Republicans were the most likely to support the idea, the poll found....
Natural wonder sits precariously atop valuable methane Oscar Simpson scrabbles up a sandstone wall 1,000 feet above the forest floor and rests at the top, looking. Below him, nearly 40,000 acres of the Valle Vidal stretch out with mint and olive greens, slivers of rusty reds and cornstalk yellows, dots of chocolaty browns. It's photogenic terrain superior to what any landscape painter could depict, home to thousands of Rocky Mountain elk, Rio Grande cutthroat trout and microscopic fairy shrimp. Simpson, president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, takes a breath, looking across the slice of northern New Mexico framed by some of the state's highest peaks. To him, the eastern section of the 101,000 acres of the Carson known as the Valle Vidal Unit is a treasure that provides once-in-a-lifetime elk hunts, fishing, camping and horseback riding. Others see it as a potential site for coal-bed methane drilling....
NEPA process shouldn’t be allowed to drive cattle off public lands “Businesses, families, and communities cannot fail because the government does not complete paperwork,” says Brenda Richards, a ranch operator from Murphy, Idaho speaking about the procedural requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Representing the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Public Lands Council (PLC), Richards testified today before the House Resources Committee on the problems with NEPA. “It is hard to imagine that the authors of NEPA would have intended to harm personal businesses, lives, and communities,” says Richards. “But the cumbersome consideration of environmental consequences mandated by NEPA leaves public land ranchers on a precipice of uncertainty.” NCBA and PLC have historically worked with agency officials and called for congressional legislation that would prevent interruption of grazing permits while federal agencies struggle to meet environmental documentation obligations required by the grazing permit renewal process....
Column: When a forest goes feral, it's time for volunteers Wallace Stegner once wrote that the worst thing that can happen to a piece of land, short of coming into the hands of an unscrupulous developer, is to be left open to the unmanaged public. His great fear seems to be coming true. With the downsizing of the federal workforce and the increasing mountain of unfunded federal regulations, our public lands are witnessing the kind of neglect that befell the thousands of victims of hurricane Katrina. During a recent Senate hearing, while I was waiting to speak about the declining health of the West's public lands, I heard a Western senator berate a Forest Service staffer for failing to work with ranchers who had grazing leases on federal land. To the official's credit, he reminded the senator that his employees did not choose to spend their days in government offices grinding out federal documents. These natural resource managers, the agency official pointed out, wanted to be out on the land, exercising the stewardship skills they had learned....
Forest Service chief praises bill to speed salvage logging A bill to speed up logging dead timber and planting new trees after storms and wildfires won praise Thursday from the head of the U.S. Forest Service. In fact, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said he wished the bill were already in effect, so the agency could better restore Southern forests damaged by Hurricane Katrina. "It would allow us to move more quickly to respond to the needs on the ground after the hurricane," he said. Even under current law, plans are moving relatively quickly, Bosworth said. Clean-up efforts to repair huge swaths of forests damaged or destroyed in the hurricane are well underway, and an environmental assessment for long-term restoration should be completed within a few weeks. Work on projects to restore Southern pine forests in Mississippi and Louisiana should begin early next year, he said....
Court rules timber sale can proceed A federal appeals court has ruled the U.S. Forest Service can proceed with a controversial timber sale near Gardiner. The Darroch Eagle sale has been in and out of court for almost six years. This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that it can be harvested. The court ruled against three environmental groups trying to halt the project. They are the Gardiner-based Bear Creek Council and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Ecology Center, both based in Missoula. The groups had argued that the harvest of 2.9 million board feet on 195 acres in the Jardine area would harm grizzly bear habitat and that the Forest Service used "arbitrary and capricious" methods in its accounting and its calculations of old growth. They also argued that the timber shouldn't have been sold before the legal case was solved. The Forest Service sold the logs to RY Lumber for $840,000. The court sided with the Forest Service on all counts....
How to un-cut a tree Yes, the Forest Service will talk openly about the mistake it made this summer fighting the Cedar Fire on the Clearwater National Forest. No, it didn’t volunteer the information to the general public; and no, it evidently hasn’t been previously reported by Montana or Idaho media. In early August, lightning sparked a fire about a half-mile inside the wilderness boundary and a couple of miles from Elk Summit Road, which spurs off Idaho’s Highway 12 and climbs about 20 miles before ending at Hoodoo Lake. Wilderness fires are treated differently than most, due to the 1964 Wilderness Act, which declares that designated wilderness, unlike most of the planet, “is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Practically speaking, this means federal agencies need approval for each and every incursion, from deciding whether to suppress a fire to determining which tools can be used to get the job done, says Chris Ryan, who’s charged with overseeing wilderness management in the Northern Region....
Is “wild” too mild? What’s in a name? It’s a tough question if you’re asking anyone familiar with the Kootenai National Forest’s new draft management plan. Bob Castaneda, supervisor of the Kootenai National Forest, decided Oct. 17 to change all Kootenai lands formerly designated as “recommended wilderness” to “wild lands.” The change affects 124,000 acres. According to Castaneda, there is no difference between “recommended wilderness” and “wild lands.” He says recommended wilderness, wild lands and federally recognized wilderness all prohibit use of motorized vehicles, logging, most chainsaw use and other high-impact activities. He says he changed the name to alleviate tension between environmental and multiple-use groups over the phrase “recommended wilderness.” “It’s still a gain for wilderness values,” Castaneda says, noting that the new management plan protects an additional 50,000 acres in the same manner as recommended wilderness. But not everyone thinks the name change is so benign, and the Montana Wilderness Association (MWA) is calling it a sham....
Feds to announce proposal to remove grizzly bears from endangered list Grizzly bears in areas surrounding Yellowstone National Park would be removed from the endangered species list under a proposal to be announced next week, officials said Thursday. The Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on the proposal, but a congressional official and a state government official who were each informed of the announcement confirmed the government's plan. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal has not yet been made public. Mike Volesky, a policy adviser to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said an announcement on grizzly bears was planned, but he did not have details. Federal wildlife officials estimate that more than 600 grizzly bears live in the region surrounding Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Those numbers represent a significant recovery. Only 200 or 250 grizzlies were in that region in 1975, when grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were listed under the Endangered Species Act....
Pitching Legend Hits Home Run on the Grill; Nolan Ryan Offers Line of Signature Steaks With higher prices at the gas pump and in stores, the National Retail Federation is predicting more and more consumers will by-pass the hassle and go online for a chunk of their holiday shopping. "While I don't know much about online shopping I do know a lot about baseball, ranching and great steaks," says baseball legend Nolan Ryan, who not only puts his name on a line of gourmet beef products, but also oversees their production. Beefmaster Cattlemen and the Nolan Ryan's Tender Aged Beef brand are owned by Nolan Ryan and other participating ranchers. Ryan decided the only way he could guarantee beef that was tender and good every time was to start his own brand. "Cattle in the program only come from licensed facilities and adhere to strict production standards," says Ryan. "Our products are minimally processed with no artificial ingredients to ensure a great-tasting and tender steak. Every bite. Every time."....
Ex-wildfire chief accused of setting fires The former commander of an elite wildfire team that battled the largest blaze in Arizona history and aided in recovery efforts at the World Trade Center is accused of starting two fires last year, federal prosecutors said. Van Bateman, 55, was indicted Wednesday for allegedly setting the fires in the Coconino National Forest in 2004. He faces two federal counts of setting timber afire and two counts of arson on public lands. The first charge carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, while arson is punishable by up to 20 years, prosecutors said Thursday. Bateman was a Type I incident commander, the head of a wildfire management crew that is called in for the biggest and most severe wildfires. His four-year term in that position expired in 2004 and he became leader of a slightly lower level team until he was indicted and put on paid leave, according to Forest Service officials....
‘Old Broad’ calls for wilderness Wilderness areas, which are off-limits to motorized vehicles, at some point become inaccessible to people as they age. But that’s all right, according to an official with a group formed to prove that older people could access wilderness areas. Veronica “Ronnie” Egan, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, explained the origins of the group to a crowd attending the fourth annual Wilderness Symposium on Thursday in Rapid City. Egan, of Durango, Colo., said the group formed 16 years ago in response to arguments by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that older people aren’t able to visit wilderness areas because they can’t use vehicles. Egan, 59, said about a dozen “ladies of a certain age” who enjoyed hiking in the Escalante canyons in Utah formed Great Old Broads for Wilderness “to represent older citizens who were, first of all, dedicated to being in wilderness, and secondly, to the concept that even if they got to the point where they couldn’t get there under their own steam, that was OK. We’ve had our chance, as it were, and wilderness is valuable for its own sake and not just for the recreational proclivities of the young, buff elite,” Egan told the crowd of more than 100 people at Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn....
Mountain lion on the prowl in Mount Madonna Park A mountain lion prowling Santa Clara's Mount Madonna County Park has killed 18 deer, descendants of a pair donated by media mogul William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s. Since March, a female mountain lion has bounded over an 8-foot fence at least eight times and into a pen where the white fallow deer call home, according to John Heenan, senior park ranger at Mount Madonna. The deer, native to Persia, were given to Gilroy cattle rancher Henry Miller, who owned property in the park, as a gift from Hearst in 1935. In addition to the 18 killed by the mountain lion, six others have died of natural causes, according to park officials. Only 27 are left in the herd....
PETA PRESIDENT SELLS FOR $43,600 ON EBAY PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk, founder of the world’s largest animal rights organization and author of several books on how to be kind to animals, gave lab chiefs and steakhouse owners a chance to get back at her when she auctioned herself off as personal assistant for a day on eBay. In an auction that ended this morning, Newkirk landed more than 40 bids, and in the end, Sandy Boss and Gary Reamer, a married couple from Encinitas, Calif., paid a whopping $43,600 to hire Newkirk for the day. Newkirk had put her services up for bid on October 31 as a novel way to help fund her campaigners’ travel to protest sites around the globe. The auction resulted in hundreds of raunchy, nasty messages, including ranchers who wanted her to "milk" bull’s semen, exotic animal dealers who thought that she should answer their company telephone, anglers who told her that she’d have to gut their fish all day, and deer hunters and pit bull breeders who were eager to put her next to a gun or an aggressive dog....
WWGA Responds To Editorial Attacks On October 31, the Casper Star Tribune published one of its nameless, faceless editorials that it is famous for wherein it chastised the Wyoming Wool Growers Association for proposing a bill to the Wyoming legislature which would enhance existing statute which provides for a penalty for anyone abandoning sheep on the open range. This proposed bill would increase the potential penalty to any worker who voluntarily walks off and abandons these animals, but would also provide penalties for anyone who entices a worker to do this, as well as penalties to those who knowingly hire anyone who intentionally abandons these animals and leaves them to fend for themselves out on the range in Wyoming. As is typical for the Casper Star Tribune, the editorial had an anti-agriculture, anti-ranching tone and feel to it. What was particularly egregious about this editorial, however, was the fact that the Casper Star did not make any attempt to contact our organization for background information, did not make any attempt (that we are aware of) to contact any rancher or herder who was potentially affected by the bill, and didn’t even bother to send a reporter to the legislative hearing at which the bill was proposed. All basic Journalism 101, but apparently not tenets that the Casper Star believes it should have to follow. In order to set the record straight, and to hopefully rectify the damage inflicted upon our Association and industry by this editorial (which we believe was the underlying and real intent of it), we ask the citizens of Wyoming to consider the following information, which was not provided by the Casper Star....
Poll says Montanans support Buffalo hunt, delisting of wolves Montanans strongly favor the new bison hunt scheduled to start next week, and like the idea of removing the gray wolf from federal protection and opening up the state for more coal mining, results of a new poll shows. The bison hunt, set to make a comeback next week, had the support of 73 percent of the poll's respondents. Only 18 percent opposed the hunt, and 9 percent were undecided. Among men, 80 percent supported the hunt, while 65 percent of women liked the idea. A question asking if the gray wolf should be desisted, a hot topic among ranchers in the state, found that 57 percent said it is time to remove protections for the wolf. Twenty-eight percent opposed delisting the wolf, and 15 percent were undecided. Republicans and people living in rural areas were a little more likely to support delisting the wolf. A large majority, 68 percent, also support the idea of more coal mining in the state, while 19 percent oppose it and 14 percent are undecided. Coal mining had support from across the political spectrum, but Republicans were the most likely to support the idea, the poll found....
Natural wonder sits precariously atop valuable methane Oscar Simpson scrabbles up a sandstone wall 1,000 feet above the forest floor and rests at the top, looking. Below him, nearly 40,000 acres of the Valle Vidal stretch out with mint and olive greens, slivers of rusty reds and cornstalk yellows, dots of chocolaty browns. It's photogenic terrain superior to what any landscape painter could depict, home to thousands of Rocky Mountain elk, Rio Grande cutthroat trout and microscopic fairy shrimp. Simpson, president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, takes a breath, looking across the slice of northern New Mexico framed by some of the state's highest peaks. To him, the eastern section of the 101,000 acres of the Carson known as the Valle Vidal Unit is a treasure that provides once-in-a-lifetime elk hunts, fishing, camping and horseback riding. Others see it as a potential site for coal-bed methane drilling....
NEPA process shouldn’t be allowed to drive cattle off public lands “Businesses, families, and communities cannot fail because the government does not complete paperwork,” says Brenda Richards, a ranch operator from Murphy, Idaho speaking about the procedural requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Representing the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Public Lands Council (PLC), Richards testified today before the House Resources Committee on the problems with NEPA. “It is hard to imagine that the authors of NEPA would have intended to harm personal businesses, lives, and communities,” says Richards. “But the cumbersome consideration of environmental consequences mandated by NEPA leaves public land ranchers on a precipice of uncertainty.” NCBA and PLC have historically worked with agency officials and called for congressional legislation that would prevent interruption of grazing permits while federal agencies struggle to meet environmental documentation obligations required by the grazing permit renewal process....
Column: When a forest goes feral, it's time for volunteers Wallace Stegner once wrote that the worst thing that can happen to a piece of land, short of coming into the hands of an unscrupulous developer, is to be left open to the unmanaged public. His great fear seems to be coming true. With the downsizing of the federal workforce and the increasing mountain of unfunded federal regulations, our public lands are witnessing the kind of neglect that befell the thousands of victims of hurricane Katrina. During a recent Senate hearing, while I was waiting to speak about the declining health of the West's public lands, I heard a Western senator berate a Forest Service staffer for failing to work with ranchers who had grazing leases on federal land. To the official's credit, he reminded the senator that his employees did not choose to spend their days in government offices grinding out federal documents. These natural resource managers, the agency official pointed out, wanted to be out on the land, exercising the stewardship skills they had learned....
Forest Service chief praises bill to speed salvage logging A bill to speed up logging dead timber and planting new trees after storms and wildfires won praise Thursday from the head of the U.S. Forest Service. In fact, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said he wished the bill were already in effect, so the agency could better restore Southern forests damaged by Hurricane Katrina. "It would allow us to move more quickly to respond to the needs on the ground after the hurricane," he said. Even under current law, plans are moving relatively quickly, Bosworth said. Clean-up efforts to repair huge swaths of forests damaged or destroyed in the hurricane are well underway, and an environmental assessment for long-term restoration should be completed within a few weeks. Work on projects to restore Southern pine forests in Mississippi and Louisiana should begin early next year, he said....
Court rules timber sale can proceed A federal appeals court has ruled the U.S. Forest Service can proceed with a controversial timber sale near Gardiner. The Darroch Eagle sale has been in and out of court for almost six years. This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that it can be harvested. The court ruled against three environmental groups trying to halt the project. They are the Gardiner-based Bear Creek Council and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Ecology Center, both based in Missoula. The groups had argued that the harvest of 2.9 million board feet on 195 acres in the Jardine area would harm grizzly bear habitat and that the Forest Service used "arbitrary and capricious" methods in its accounting and its calculations of old growth. They also argued that the timber shouldn't have been sold before the legal case was solved. The Forest Service sold the logs to RY Lumber for $840,000. The court sided with the Forest Service on all counts....
How to un-cut a tree Yes, the Forest Service will talk openly about the mistake it made this summer fighting the Cedar Fire on the Clearwater National Forest. No, it didn’t volunteer the information to the general public; and no, it evidently hasn’t been previously reported by Montana or Idaho media. In early August, lightning sparked a fire about a half-mile inside the wilderness boundary and a couple of miles from Elk Summit Road, which spurs off Idaho’s Highway 12 and climbs about 20 miles before ending at Hoodoo Lake. Wilderness fires are treated differently than most, due to the 1964 Wilderness Act, which declares that designated wilderness, unlike most of the planet, “is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Practically speaking, this means federal agencies need approval for each and every incursion, from deciding whether to suppress a fire to determining which tools can be used to get the job done, says Chris Ryan, who’s charged with overseeing wilderness management in the Northern Region....
Is “wild” too mild? What’s in a name? It’s a tough question if you’re asking anyone familiar with the Kootenai National Forest’s new draft management plan. Bob Castaneda, supervisor of the Kootenai National Forest, decided Oct. 17 to change all Kootenai lands formerly designated as “recommended wilderness” to “wild lands.” The change affects 124,000 acres. According to Castaneda, there is no difference between “recommended wilderness” and “wild lands.” He says recommended wilderness, wild lands and federally recognized wilderness all prohibit use of motorized vehicles, logging, most chainsaw use and other high-impact activities. He says he changed the name to alleviate tension between environmental and multiple-use groups over the phrase “recommended wilderness.” “It’s still a gain for wilderness values,” Castaneda says, noting that the new management plan protects an additional 50,000 acres in the same manner as recommended wilderness. But not everyone thinks the name change is so benign, and the Montana Wilderness Association (MWA) is calling it a sham....
Feds to announce proposal to remove grizzly bears from endangered list Grizzly bears in areas surrounding Yellowstone National Park would be removed from the endangered species list under a proposal to be announced next week, officials said Thursday. The Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment on the proposal, but a congressional official and a state government official who were each informed of the announcement confirmed the government's plan. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal has not yet been made public. Mike Volesky, a policy adviser to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, said an announcement on grizzly bears was planned, but he did not have details. Federal wildlife officials estimate that more than 600 grizzly bears live in the region surrounding Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Those numbers represent a significant recovery. Only 200 or 250 grizzlies were in that region in 1975, when grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were listed under the Endangered Species Act....
Pitching Legend Hits Home Run on the Grill; Nolan Ryan Offers Line of Signature Steaks With higher prices at the gas pump and in stores, the National Retail Federation is predicting more and more consumers will by-pass the hassle and go online for a chunk of their holiday shopping. "While I don't know much about online shopping I do know a lot about baseball, ranching and great steaks," says baseball legend Nolan Ryan, who not only puts his name on a line of gourmet beef products, but also oversees their production. Beefmaster Cattlemen and the Nolan Ryan's Tender Aged Beef brand are owned by Nolan Ryan and other participating ranchers. Ryan decided the only way he could guarantee beef that was tender and good every time was to start his own brand. "Cattle in the program only come from licensed facilities and adhere to strict production standards," says Ryan. "Our products are minimally processed with no artificial ingredients to ensure a great-tasting and tender steak. Every bite. Every time."....
Thursday, November 10, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
At 97, still master of the hunt In the home of Clyde Johns, there are two elk mounted on the wall behind his favorite chair. On the left is one he bagged in 1933, when the season opened for the first time in Grant County. The one on the right he shot 70 years later, in the same area, in 2003. And again this year, for the 89th year he’s been hunting, Johns, 97, has bagged another elk, a 6x6 among the bigger of the animals he has shot in his lifetime. Johns has lived in the area for almost all of his life. His family moved to Grant County and started a homestead when he was three years old, and since he was a child he has been involved with the outdoors in many ways. “When you’ve got a big ranch, you’ve done everything,” Johns said. “And I’ve hunted my whole life. I got my first buck at eight. I also fished off my horse down Fox Creek when I was a kid. I never had to get off the horse the whole six miles down the stream.”....
Still not sorry, mink activist gets 2 years An animal rights activist who remained unrepentant about releasing an estimated 8,000 mink from Midwestern farms in 1997 was sentenced Tuesday in federal court to two years in prison and ordered to complete 360 hours of community service and repay $254,840 to his victims. Peter Young, 27, of Mercer Island, Wash., told Federal Magistrate Stephen Crocker that his biggest regret was, "I wish I could do more." "It was an act of conscience not directly against the farmers but in behalf of the animals," Young said. But to the mink farmers present, Young said, "It was absolute pleasure to have visited your farms ... and I wish I could have put more of you in bankruptcy."....
Judge orders family off Forest Service land A federal judge has issued a preliminary order that a family must vacate U.S. Forest Service land it has occupied since at least 1939. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon ruled on Oct. 28 that Dave Stratton and his 80-year-old mother, Vady Stratton, must leave the property in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. "Our family is devastated. We are very distraught," Dave Stratton told The Montana Standard in Wednesday's edition. "We will comply with the judge's orders, and we are developing a plan for dismantling the historic structures." Forest Service officials are pleased with the ruling, which concludes a dispute that stretches back to the 1990s. The government filed a lawsuit in 2003 to evict the Strattons after they rejected a land swap in which they would purchase another parcel of land for the Forest Service and keep the land they occupied. A member of the Stratton family applied for homestead rights in 1912 or 1913, but the application was denied because the area had been declared U.S. Forest land in 1906, court records show....
Lawsuit seeks to block plans to spray herbicides near Yosemite A coalition of environmental groups has sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans to spray herbicide by helicopter near Yosemite National Park. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Fresno, seeks to block the Forest Service's plans to burn and spray about 4,300 acres in Stanislaus National Forest over ten years. The lawsuit says the agency's reforestation project would destroy important wildlife habitat. The Larson Project aims to plant conifers on national forest land that was damaged in a 1987 fire. But environmentalists say the area has already developed a rich black oak forest with dependent wildlife. "These oak lands are critical if we're going to have this wildlife," said Janet Cobb, president of the California Oak Foundation. "There are more than 300 species of animals and plants that depend on the black oaks there."....
Federal agency defines critical habitat for Canada lynx Habitat critical to the future of the Canada lynx belongs in a category that in some cases could restrict logging or other activities on those lands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday. The agency proposed a critical-habitat designation for parts of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota and Maine, but did so tepidly. Lori Nordstrom, a Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist in Helena, said the agency doubts the effectiveness of the designation, but seeks to implement it to satisfy legal requirements. "That's pretty much been their policy for some time and they include boilerplate language to that effect in virtually every designation," said Michael Senatore of Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, D.C. "We don't agree with it."....
Forest Service Officials: Should wildfires be allowed to burn? Should the U.S. Forest Service be allowed to let certain fires on national forest lands burn without hindrance? That is the question attendees at the recent public meeting here hosted by U.S. Forest Service officials were asked to consider. Forest service officials are proposing the use of a fire tool called Wildland Fire Use as a way to manage naturally occurring fires in public wild lands. During the meeting, officials noted that most fires occurring in wild land environments are started by natural causes such as lightning. Many experts now concur that naturally occurring fires are important for the health of the forest, with a number of species of animals and plants depending on fire for survival. Also noted was that when fires are suppressed, trees, grasses, needles, leaves, brush and other natural fuels often build up. Those fuels do not just disappear, officials said, and eventually a fire erupts. Those fires are often catastrophic because there is so much vegetation burning. Such catastrophic fires can devastate large portions of the land, burning everything from the roots to the tree tops....
11 WESTERN STATES ON TAP FOR ENERGY CORRIDORS Residents in 11 western states will soon know if they'll be coping with more major utility corridors crisscrossing the land. As mandated by the recently-passed Energy Bill, five federal agencies have begun planning energy transmission corridors throughout the West (AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, and WY). The goal of the "West-wide Energy Corridor" project is to accommodate growth, improve reliability, relieve congestion, and otherwise enhance grids for oil, gas, and electricity transmission and distribution, and to accommodate a potential new source, hydrogen (Sept. 28, 2005, Federal Register notice). The two primary federal departments charged with developing corridor plans are Energy and Interior (BLM). Other frontline agencies include Agriculture (Forest Service), Commerce, and Defense. They plan to announce proposed corridor alignments by early spring 2006. A final environmental impact statement is tentatively scheduled for August 2007. The corridor alignments technically affect just federal lands, but also will influence alignments on private lands....
Forest service seeks comment on huckleberry preservation The U.S. Forest Service seeks public comment for its amendment plans for the Huckleberry Patch, a 9,500-acre area it aims to designate a "special interest area." The Huckleberry Patch is a swath of land that straddles the Tiller Ranger District and Prospect Ranger District in Douglas and Jackson counties, part of the Rogue River National Forest. It is an area where American Indians once spent late summer and fall gathering huckleberries for food. Fire repression over the years has allowed conifers to encroach upon the perimeter of meadows where the berries thrive. Land managers want to conduct projects that benefit the huckleberries, such as prescribed burning or thinning near the meadows. The projects would also benefit wildlife such as bear, deer, elk and songbirds that need open areas to thrive....
Some say language hides park entrance fees Some hikers, mountain bikers and other outdoor enthusiasts say the federal government is improperly charging fees for access to thousands of acres of federal forests and public lands across the country. At issue is a law passed late last year that specifically forbids charging entrance fees for the more than 450 million acres managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and the Interior Department's land management and reclamation bureaus. Other fees, called "standard amenity recreation fees," can be charged but only when certain services are present, such as parking, toilets and picnic tables. Kitty Benzar, co-founder of the Colorado-based Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, said federal officials have skirted the intent of the law by avoiding the term "entrance" when charging fees at entrance points to federal land. For example, at the Arapaho National Recreation Area in north-central Colorado, tape on a sign covered the words that said the fee was for "entry to" the area, she said. Substituted were the words "use of."....
Editorial: Ruling vindicates Forest Service For years, environmentalists have been using the courts to challenge federal forest projects, and for years it’s been working like a charm. The reason is simple. When environmentalists accused the Forest Service and other agencies of failing to properly follow complicated laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act, they usually were right. The court had no choice but to agree with them. But that’s changing, and this week’s ruling by a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a forest-thinning project on the Helena National Forest is a case in point. The Forest Service was vindicated, and it was the plaintiffs in the case who were shown to be way out on a shaky legal limb. The case involved the Jimtown Project, designed to prevent high-intensity wildfires in a region north of Canyon Ferry Lake. The Helena Forest published an environmental assessment of the plan in December, 2000. The Native Ecosystem Council filed suit, making a number of legal arguments, most of which centered around the goshawk, a raptor considered a “sensitive” species in the area....
Executives try to strengthen proposed mine's image Executives for a company planning to mine copper and silver beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness are on a Montana road trip, trying to spread a message of environmental responsibility and economic development. Revett Minerals chief executive William Orchow called the trip an "educational tour" saying Wednesday that he found much of the reporting about the proposed Rock Creek mine reflected "the point of view of our opposition." Revett wants to mine copper and silver beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwestern Montana, a project that jeweler Tiffany & Co. criticized in a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post last year. Although mining would be beneath the wilderness, disturbance of the land's surface would be outside wilderness boundaries. Environmental groups' lawsuits, one the subject of a hearing last week in Helena, have sought to block the project....
Freudenthal: Don't toss winter-drilling rules Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal took his opposition to removing restrictions on winter drilling on federal lands to the U.S. Senate. Following his letter last month to Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyoming, on the issue, Freudenthal this week wrote to the senior members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee urging them to keep seasonal wildlife stipulations in place in order to protect the state's wildlife. "Our present approach of imposing winter stipulations and having industry request a variance from these stipulations has protected both game and non-game species while still allowing industry to conduct necessary operations when appropriate and carefully crafted," Freudenthal stated....
Utah Asks Federal Appeals Court to Reject Skull Valley Nuclear Dump Utah asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to overturn a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision approving a nuclear waste storage site in the state's western desert. The six-page petition, filed by lawyers in Washington, D.C., challenges a license authorized but not yet issued by the commission to let a group of nuclear-power utilities stockpile 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Gov. Jon Huntsman directed lawyers to file the petition as part of an effort to block the dump in the courts, in Congress with a plan to designate a Skull Valley wilderness area and with the help of other federal agencies. The papers were filed at the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We're just going to keep fighting as hard as we can until it's dead," Huntsman's general counsel, Mike Lee, said Wednesday....
Agencies propose big land swap The State Land Office and the Bureau of Land Management are proposing what could be the largest, most comprehensive land swap the two agencies have undertaken to consolidate ownership and ease land-use conflicts in the state. About 200,000 acres across the state are involved, affecting livestock-grazing leases, mineral ownership and public access, according to officials. “We are in the beginning stages of looking at a land exchange,” state BLM Director Linda Rundell said in a news release. “We foresee a tremendous cost and workload savings that will make both agencies more efficient in their land-management capabilities and give the public better access to their public lands.” New Mexico’s lands were carved up in the early 1900s, creating a checkerboard of parcels owned by state, federal, tribal and private entities. Both agencies hope to merge parcels so each can manage whole geographic areas instead of small pieces....
House Shelves Alaska Drilling in Budget Fight House Republican leaders were forced to jettison a plan for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska on Wednesday night to save a sweeping spending bill, a concession that came one day after the party suffered significant election loses. In dropping the drilling plan and a second provision, on coastal exploration, the leadership was trying to win over moderates in the party to enhance the chances of winning initial approval on Thursday of more than $50 billion in spending cuts demanded by House conservatives. But the decision is likely to meet objections from the Senate, where senior lawmakers are insisting on the drilling plan, a priority for President Bush. The last-ditch effort by the leadership to avoid an embarrassing legislative defeat was the latest symptom of party unrest arising from instability in the leadership and anxiety about the 2006 elections....
Susie's Letter to Mexico "Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to go to Safeway and push my cart down the aisle without thinking about what's happening at my house at that moment," she says. "Or what I'll find there when I get home. Or who I'll find there." She knows that's hard to grasp. She shrugs at how funny it must sound. But when you realize that cross-border thieves have broken into her home six times in five years--an average of once every 10 months--you begin to understand. This is what the invasion across our border does. It turns ordinary moms into rocking-chair sentries, prepared to do whatever is necessary. Sonny has had to change the way he cowboys, too. When he approaches a pasture, he checks it with binoculars, then scouts the perimeter for signs of danger. He never rides into these mountains on a horse raised on the flats. He wants one that can handle the rocky hills. He tries to save his horse, too, in case he has to make a run for it. He does everything he can to avoid the illegals and their gangster partners. But sometimes, he can't. Sometimes he turns a corner, and there they are. Sonny has a strategy for that....
At 97, still master of the hunt In the home of Clyde Johns, there are two elk mounted on the wall behind his favorite chair. On the left is one he bagged in 1933, when the season opened for the first time in Grant County. The one on the right he shot 70 years later, in the same area, in 2003. And again this year, for the 89th year he’s been hunting, Johns, 97, has bagged another elk, a 6x6 among the bigger of the animals he has shot in his lifetime. Johns has lived in the area for almost all of his life. His family moved to Grant County and started a homestead when he was three years old, and since he was a child he has been involved with the outdoors in many ways. “When you’ve got a big ranch, you’ve done everything,” Johns said. “And I’ve hunted my whole life. I got my first buck at eight. I also fished off my horse down Fox Creek when I was a kid. I never had to get off the horse the whole six miles down the stream.”....
Still not sorry, mink activist gets 2 years An animal rights activist who remained unrepentant about releasing an estimated 8,000 mink from Midwestern farms in 1997 was sentenced Tuesday in federal court to two years in prison and ordered to complete 360 hours of community service and repay $254,840 to his victims. Peter Young, 27, of Mercer Island, Wash., told Federal Magistrate Stephen Crocker that his biggest regret was, "I wish I could do more." "It was an act of conscience not directly against the farmers but in behalf of the animals," Young said. But to the mink farmers present, Young said, "It was absolute pleasure to have visited your farms ... and I wish I could have put more of you in bankruptcy."....
Judge orders family off Forest Service land A federal judge has issued a preliminary order that a family must vacate U.S. Forest Service land it has occupied since at least 1939. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon ruled on Oct. 28 that Dave Stratton and his 80-year-old mother, Vady Stratton, must leave the property in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. "Our family is devastated. We are very distraught," Dave Stratton told The Montana Standard in Wednesday's edition. "We will comply with the judge's orders, and we are developing a plan for dismantling the historic structures." Forest Service officials are pleased with the ruling, which concludes a dispute that stretches back to the 1990s. The government filed a lawsuit in 2003 to evict the Strattons after they rejected a land swap in which they would purchase another parcel of land for the Forest Service and keep the land they occupied. A member of the Stratton family applied for homestead rights in 1912 or 1913, but the application was denied because the area had been declared U.S. Forest land in 1906, court records show....
Lawsuit seeks to block plans to spray herbicides near Yosemite A coalition of environmental groups has sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans to spray herbicide by helicopter near Yosemite National Park. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Fresno, seeks to block the Forest Service's plans to burn and spray about 4,300 acres in Stanislaus National Forest over ten years. The lawsuit says the agency's reforestation project would destroy important wildlife habitat. The Larson Project aims to plant conifers on national forest land that was damaged in a 1987 fire. But environmentalists say the area has already developed a rich black oak forest with dependent wildlife. "These oak lands are critical if we're going to have this wildlife," said Janet Cobb, president of the California Oak Foundation. "There are more than 300 species of animals and plants that depend on the black oaks there."....
Federal agency defines critical habitat for Canada lynx Habitat critical to the future of the Canada lynx belongs in a category that in some cases could restrict logging or other activities on those lands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday. The agency proposed a critical-habitat designation for parts of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota and Maine, but did so tepidly. Lori Nordstrom, a Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist in Helena, said the agency doubts the effectiveness of the designation, but seeks to implement it to satisfy legal requirements. "That's pretty much been their policy for some time and they include boilerplate language to that effect in virtually every designation," said Michael Senatore of Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, D.C. "We don't agree with it."....
Forest Service Officials: Should wildfires be allowed to burn? Should the U.S. Forest Service be allowed to let certain fires on national forest lands burn without hindrance? That is the question attendees at the recent public meeting here hosted by U.S. Forest Service officials were asked to consider. Forest service officials are proposing the use of a fire tool called Wildland Fire Use as a way to manage naturally occurring fires in public wild lands. During the meeting, officials noted that most fires occurring in wild land environments are started by natural causes such as lightning. Many experts now concur that naturally occurring fires are important for the health of the forest, with a number of species of animals and plants depending on fire for survival. Also noted was that when fires are suppressed, trees, grasses, needles, leaves, brush and other natural fuels often build up. Those fuels do not just disappear, officials said, and eventually a fire erupts. Those fires are often catastrophic because there is so much vegetation burning. Such catastrophic fires can devastate large portions of the land, burning everything from the roots to the tree tops....
11 WESTERN STATES ON TAP FOR ENERGY CORRIDORS Residents in 11 western states will soon know if they'll be coping with more major utility corridors crisscrossing the land. As mandated by the recently-passed Energy Bill, five federal agencies have begun planning energy transmission corridors throughout the West (AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, and WY). The goal of the "West-wide Energy Corridor" project is to accommodate growth, improve reliability, relieve congestion, and otherwise enhance grids for oil, gas, and electricity transmission and distribution, and to accommodate a potential new source, hydrogen (Sept. 28, 2005, Federal Register notice). The two primary federal departments charged with developing corridor plans are Energy and Interior (BLM). Other frontline agencies include Agriculture (Forest Service), Commerce, and Defense. They plan to announce proposed corridor alignments by early spring 2006. A final environmental impact statement is tentatively scheduled for August 2007. The corridor alignments technically affect just federal lands, but also will influence alignments on private lands....
Forest service seeks comment on huckleberry preservation The U.S. Forest Service seeks public comment for its amendment plans for the Huckleberry Patch, a 9,500-acre area it aims to designate a "special interest area." The Huckleberry Patch is a swath of land that straddles the Tiller Ranger District and Prospect Ranger District in Douglas and Jackson counties, part of the Rogue River National Forest. It is an area where American Indians once spent late summer and fall gathering huckleberries for food. Fire repression over the years has allowed conifers to encroach upon the perimeter of meadows where the berries thrive. Land managers want to conduct projects that benefit the huckleberries, such as prescribed burning or thinning near the meadows. The projects would also benefit wildlife such as bear, deer, elk and songbirds that need open areas to thrive....
Some say language hides park entrance fees Some hikers, mountain bikers and other outdoor enthusiasts say the federal government is improperly charging fees for access to thousands of acres of federal forests and public lands across the country. At issue is a law passed late last year that specifically forbids charging entrance fees for the more than 450 million acres managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and the Interior Department's land management and reclamation bureaus. Other fees, called "standard amenity recreation fees," can be charged but only when certain services are present, such as parking, toilets and picnic tables. Kitty Benzar, co-founder of the Colorado-based Western Slope No-Fee Coalition, said federal officials have skirted the intent of the law by avoiding the term "entrance" when charging fees at entrance points to federal land. For example, at the Arapaho National Recreation Area in north-central Colorado, tape on a sign covered the words that said the fee was for "entry to" the area, she said. Substituted were the words "use of."....
Editorial: Ruling vindicates Forest Service For years, environmentalists have been using the courts to challenge federal forest projects, and for years it’s been working like a charm. The reason is simple. When environmentalists accused the Forest Service and other agencies of failing to properly follow complicated laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act, they usually were right. The court had no choice but to agree with them. But that’s changing, and this week’s ruling by a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a forest-thinning project on the Helena National Forest is a case in point. The Forest Service was vindicated, and it was the plaintiffs in the case who were shown to be way out on a shaky legal limb. The case involved the Jimtown Project, designed to prevent high-intensity wildfires in a region north of Canyon Ferry Lake. The Helena Forest published an environmental assessment of the plan in December, 2000. The Native Ecosystem Council filed suit, making a number of legal arguments, most of which centered around the goshawk, a raptor considered a “sensitive” species in the area....
Executives try to strengthen proposed mine's image Executives for a company planning to mine copper and silver beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness are on a Montana road trip, trying to spread a message of environmental responsibility and economic development. Revett Minerals chief executive William Orchow called the trip an "educational tour" saying Wednesday that he found much of the reporting about the proposed Rock Creek mine reflected "the point of view of our opposition." Revett wants to mine copper and silver beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwestern Montana, a project that jeweler Tiffany & Co. criticized in a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post last year. Although mining would be beneath the wilderness, disturbance of the land's surface would be outside wilderness boundaries. Environmental groups' lawsuits, one the subject of a hearing last week in Helena, have sought to block the project....
Freudenthal: Don't toss winter-drilling rules Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal took his opposition to removing restrictions on winter drilling on federal lands to the U.S. Senate. Following his letter last month to Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyoming, on the issue, Freudenthal this week wrote to the senior members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee urging them to keep seasonal wildlife stipulations in place in order to protect the state's wildlife. "Our present approach of imposing winter stipulations and having industry request a variance from these stipulations has protected both game and non-game species while still allowing industry to conduct necessary operations when appropriate and carefully crafted," Freudenthal stated....
Utah Asks Federal Appeals Court to Reject Skull Valley Nuclear Dump Utah asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to overturn a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision approving a nuclear waste storage site in the state's western desert. The six-page petition, filed by lawyers in Washington, D.C., challenges a license authorized but not yet issued by the commission to let a group of nuclear-power utilities stockpile 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Gov. Jon Huntsman directed lawyers to file the petition as part of an effort to block the dump in the courts, in Congress with a plan to designate a Skull Valley wilderness area and with the help of other federal agencies. The papers were filed at the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We're just going to keep fighting as hard as we can until it's dead," Huntsman's general counsel, Mike Lee, said Wednesday....
Agencies propose big land swap The State Land Office and the Bureau of Land Management are proposing what could be the largest, most comprehensive land swap the two agencies have undertaken to consolidate ownership and ease land-use conflicts in the state. About 200,000 acres across the state are involved, affecting livestock-grazing leases, mineral ownership and public access, according to officials. “We are in the beginning stages of looking at a land exchange,” state BLM Director Linda Rundell said in a news release. “We foresee a tremendous cost and workload savings that will make both agencies more efficient in their land-management capabilities and give the public better access to their public lands.” New Mexico’s lands were carved up in the early 1900s, creating a checkerboard of parcels owned by state, federal, tribal and private entities. Both agencies hope to merge parcels so each can manage whole geographic areas instead of small pieces....
House Shelves Alaska Drilling in Budget Fight House Republican leaders were forced to jettison a plan for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska on Wednesday night to save a sweeping spending bill, a concession that came one day after the party suffered significant election loses. In dropping the drilling plan and a second provision, on coastal exploration, the leadership was trying to win over moderates in the party to enhance the chances of winning initial approval on Thursday of more than $50 billion in spending cuts demanded by House conservatives. But the decision is likely to meet objections from the Senate, where senior lawmakers are insisting on the drilling plan, a priority for President Bush. The last-ditch effort by the leadership to avoid an embarrassing legislative defeat was the latest symptom of party unrest arising from instability in the leadership and anxiety about the 2006 elections....
Susie's Letter to Mexico "Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to go to Safeway and push my cart down the aisle without thinking about what's happening at my house at that moment," she says. "Or what I'll find there when I get home. Or who I'll find there." She knows that's hard to grasp. She shrugs at how funny it must sound. But when you realize that cross-border thieves have broken into her home six times in five years--an average of once every 10 months--you begin to understand. This is what the invasion across our border does. It turns ordinary moms into rocking-chair sentries, prepared to do whatever is necessary. Sonny has had to change the way he cowboys, too. When he approaches a pasture, he checks it with binoculars, then scouts the perimeter for signs of danger. He never rides into these mountains on a horse raised on the flats. He wants one that can handle the rocky hills. He tries to save his horse, too, in case he has to make a run for it. He does everything he can to avoid the illegals and their gangster partners. But sometimes, he can't. Sometimes he turns a corner, and there they are. Sonny has a strategy for that....
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
GAO
CORRESPONDENCE
Mad Cow Disease: An Evaluation of a Small Feed Testing Program FDA Implemented in 2003 With Recommendations for Making the Program a Better Oversight Tool. GAO-06-157R, October 11.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-157R
TESTIMONIES
1. Army Corps of Engineers: History of the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project, GAO-06-244T, November 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-244T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06244thigh.pdf
CORRESPONDENCE
Mad Cow Disease: An Evaluation of a Small Feed Testing Program FDA Implemented in 2003 With Recommendations for Making the Program a Better Oversight Tool. GAO-06-157R, October 11.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-157R
TESTIMONIES
1. Army Corps of Engineers: History of the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project, GAO-06-244T, November 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-244T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06244thigh.pdf
NEWS ROUNDUP
Mountain lion concerns grow One of the founders of Safari Club International has planted a disturbing thought in the minds of outdoor enthusiasts: Their activities could endanger their lives. "I think that, eventually, mountain lions could make lunch out of people," said Bill Sherman, one of the founders of the SCI and the current Los Angeles chapter president. "People call to say they are watching mountain lions watching kids go to school. The (mountain lions) are out of control." Sherman, a former Arcadia resident, said that with no natural predator left, mountain lions have become emboldened. He believes that as their population increases, they will attack more people. "Mountain lions have to go somewhere," he said. "I think we could have trouble." Sherman's solution? A limited mountain lion hunting season. But he has a big problem: A 30-year ban on hunting lions, created by a statewide initiative that can only be removed through another initiative....
Column: The perils of 'psychic environmentalism' Rep. Brian Baird has now come to understand the special power of environmentalists. No, the Washington state Democrat is not cowering before them. He remains committed to co-sponsoring the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act with Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. But Baird has come face to face with green power. Environmentalists who talked to him knew just what they didn't like about this bill. It waives environmental laws on the federal lands. It keeps the public out of the land-management decisions. It paves the way for roads in "roadless areas." It clears the way for massive clear-cuts and tree plantations on restored lands. There was one problem with the greenies' gripes. Walden and Baird hadn't introduced the bill yet. Make that two problems: The stuff they opposed was not in the unintroduced bill. Baird calls it "psychic environmentalism."....
Column: Endangering the Act For now, Pombo's bill is stalled in the Senate. But his isn't the only Republican challenge to Section 7. In June of 2003, long before the bill's drafting, the Bush administration's Interior Department had already issued new regulations under the ESA that allowed much the same thing. In certain cases, important species-protection decisions have been moved from the government's long-time conservation experts to the very agencies that the ESA was meant to regulate, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service. Pombo's bill, if passed into law, would legislatively enshrine the Interior Department's new rules. But if courts uphold those rules, now under legal challenge, the effect could essentially be the same. While environmental lawyer Eric Glitzenstein calls the new rules "the biggest regulatory change" to the ESA carried out under the Bush administration, he and other environmental advocates point to many other actions and appointments whose goal at heart, they say, is to gut the Act. According to Clark, under Bush the expert agencies have annually listed, on average, less than 10 new species as endangered or threatened; under Clinton the yearly average was 65, under the first President Bush it was 58....
Endangered Species Act in cross hairs Congress is taking steps to rewrite the Endangered Species Act for the first time in its 32-year history to make it more friendly to landowners and builders, a move decried by conservationists and welcomed by developers. Environmentalists view the act as a signature accomplishment that has been vital in protecting the nation's natural heritage, from bald eagles to whooping cranes. But critics of the 1973 legislation have long charged that it shows more concern for the northern spotted owl and snail darter than for workers and property owners. The House passed a bill to significantly rewrite the law in September, and the Senate is expected to adopt at least some of those changes. The House bill would require, for example, that the government pay developers if the act prevents them from building, and it would eliminate the government's ability to designate a creature's "critical habitat" where building is forbidden....
Mineral rights issue remains at Rocky Flats The $7 billion, 10-year closure of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has been declared complete, but questions remain about private mineral rights that must be acquired so it can be turned into a national wildlife refuge. The U.S.
Senate is scheduled to vote this week on a defense authorization bill that includes $10 million to buy some of the mineral rights on the 6,240-acre site, where gravel mining has occurred on the edges for decades. Surrounding communities, however, have urged the federal government to buy all the mineral rights -- even those with a low potential of development. One of the mineral rights owners questioned whether $10 million will be enough to ensure that development doesn't hinder efforts to turn the grassy plains and rolling hills northwest of Denver into a wildlife haven....
The fleeting lives of pronghorns PARCHED GOLD HILLS roll out around the Carrizo Plain, encircling the valley like a giant bowl. From anywhere here, you can see just about anywhere else. This is California antelope country, and a century ago it might have teemed with pronghorns like an American Serengeti. The fastest land animal in North America, pronghorns can sprint over 50 miles per hour. During the Pleistocene, armed with vision comparable to eight-power binoculars, they outpaced some of the most monstrous carnivores the world had ever seen — hulking North American cheetahs, giant hyenas and saber-tooth cats. But though they eluded these prehistoric predators, they couldn't escape the 19th century threats of hunters' bullets and ranchers' barbed wire. But today, these magnificent creatures, these icons of the West that hide in the open, are disappearing from sight. Half a million pronghorns may have roamed California's plains and inland valleys at the time of Spanish conquest. Now there are fewer than 1% as many. About 4,400 remain in Modoc County, and a few hundred in Southern California, including 87 on the Carrizo Plain, just north of the Los Padres National Forest....
Republican wants to help poor gather firewood The Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee on Tuesday proposed waiving fees on collecting firewood in U.S. national forests as a way to help "families cope with the high costs of home heating" this winter. Natural gas household heating costs in the U.S. Midwest will soar by nearly 50 percent this winter while heating oil in the Northeast will rise by 25 percent, according to government estimates. "Rural American families who depend on firewood to heat their homes will be hit just as hard as those who use oil and natural gas," California Rep. Richard Pombo said in a press release. Pombo proposed legislation waiving fees for the U.S. Forest Service's Self Help Firewood Program, which he said charges consumers about $10 to $15 to gather a stack of wood 4 feet long, 4 feet wide and 8 feet high. The waiver would last one year, with a cap of $1,000....
Column: Marking the end of conservation? The American conservationist may be an endangered species, both in numbers and public influence. That's the bleak news suggested by some attendees at the National Conservation Learning Summit, held this weekend at the sprawling woodland campus of the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia. Some estimates indicate that as many as 60 percent of the most senior federal employees are eligible to retire in 2007. Many of those are in conservation and natural resource fields. Over one-half of the senior executives at the Department of the Interior, USDA Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency will retire by 2007. Within that same period, the Department of Interior will lose 61 percent of its program managers, the Forest Service will lose 81 percent of its entomologists and 49 percent of its foresters, and the EPA will lose 45 percent of its toxicologists and around 30 percent of its environmental specialists....
Groups to file suit over decline of fish below Glen Canyon Dam A pair of environmental groups have filed notice that they intend to sue the Bureau of Reclamation and the Fish and Wildlife Service over the decline and extinction of native fish species below Glen Canyon Dam in Grand Canyon National Park. The Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity and Moab-based Living Rivers notified the two federal agencies, and the Department of Interior, on Tuesday, citing what they call violations of the Endangered Species Act. The two groups are leaning heavily on a report released last month by the U.S. Geological Survey, which concluded that efforts since 1991 to restore the Colorado River below the dam to something resembling its original state "have not produced the hoped for restoration and maintenance" of endangered fish species, such as the federally protected humpback chub. In fact, the study says, three of the original eight native fish species - including the roundtail chub, bonytail chub and Colorado pikeminnow - have been eliminated from the Colorado River in Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon, while the humpback chub population has declined between 30 percent and 60 percent....
Groups say U.S. lags in species protection The government has allowed 283 species identified as possibly facing extinction to languish without protection under the Endangered Species Act, a coalition of environmental groups contends in a lawsuit against the Interior Department. Some 24 candidate species have gone extinct waiting for protections in the past 32 years, the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona, Forest Guardians in New Mexico and other advocacy groups allege in the suit filed late Monday in U.S. District Court here. Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist with the Arizona-based group, said the Interior Department hasn't acted as quickly as the law requires in adding wildlife to its endangered species list. The species - ranging from the Dakota skipper butterfly in the northern Great Plains to the Oregon spotted frog - have waited an average of 17 years to be added to the list, the suit says....
Column: Claws and Effects Every damn kid in the U.S., son of cabbie or Catholic, knows and cares about dinosaurs. But few have heard of gomphotheres, which lived here much more recently. In the late summer, this North American elephant -- along with some of its contemporaries, like American camels, cheetahs, lions, and giant tortoises -- crept into the minds of many Americans, as the press reported on a proposal put forth by my colleagues and me to bring large animals back to North America. Our big idea brought an even bigger response from the press, public, and scientific community. It was a wild week of knee-jerking, gasps, and groans -- mixed with some joyful salutations and celebratory fists in the air. Much of the press got it wrong; a few got it so right. Many scientists fired off emails and rebuttals; fewer apparently actually sat down and carefully read the paper before firing....
McCloskey looks to challenge Pombo Former congressman Pete McCloskey is getting closer to taking on Rep. Richard Pombo. In what he called a “revolt of the elders,” the 78-year-old Republican said he would run in a June primary if he can’t find anyone else by the end of the year to take on Pombo, R-Tracy. “Every professional has told us that the only way to beat Pombo is in a primary,” McCloskey said Monday in a meeting with the Tracy Press editorial board. McCloskey, who represented the San Francisco peninsula from 1967 to 1983, said he hasn’t had much luck in months of searching for a young, vibrant Republican challenger for the 11th District’s seven-term incumbent. McCloskey was one of the authors of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, and he is an outspoken opponent of Pombo’s attempts to overhaul the landmark environmental law....
Critics lambaste mining measure as land giveaway Critics including environmentalists and hunters are denouncing a mining proposal tucked in a massive budget bill as a push to sell tens of millions of acres of public land in the West to the highest bidder and gut environmental reviews of oil and gas drilling and other development. The provisions in the bill by the House Resources Committee are aimed at updating the 1872 mining law, long criticized for selling off federal lands in some of the country's most scenic areas for rock-bottom prices: $2.50 to $5 an acre. Opponents say the language of the bill is so loose that anybody with the money can stake a mining claim and buy the land without having to mine it. Representatives of the House Resources Committee and a trade group dismissed as "greatly exaggerated" claims that the measure would open more than 200 million acres of federal land to development. The bill would increase the price of mining lands to $1,000 an acre. Critics, though, contend it would also open much of the federal land in the West to development - such as building ski resorts and mountaintop trophy homes - under the guise of reforming a law dating to the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. Two committees have approved the bill, which could be considered by the full House as early as Thursday....
State and Federal Partnership forms to Restore Great Basin Rangelands The U.S. Geological Survey is among nine organizations that will share a $12.9 million award from the federal government´s Joint Fire Science Program for an interdisciplinary, 5-year research project that will explore ways to improve the health of sagebrush rangelands across the Great Basin in the western United States. The project, known as SageSTEP (Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project), is a collaboration among the U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon State University, University of Idaho, University of Reno-Nevada, Brigham Young University, USDA Forest Service, USDA Agriculture Research Service, and Bureau of Land Management. "Healthy sagebrush rangelands in the Great Basin are rapidly diminishing," said Kate Kitchell, Deputy Director of the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center. "This is due to invasion of cheatgrass (a highly flammable, non-native weed), severe wildfires, and expansion of pinyon and juniper woodlands." The sagebrush steppe, a type of land that features large, dry, open areas with few trees, is one of the most endangered in North America. Scientists say that as much as half of this land type already has been lost in the Great Basin, and the risk of wildfire continues to increase. In August 1999 alone, wildfires burned across approximately 1.7 million acres of the Great Basin, and the Bureau of Land Management estimates that cheatgrass spreads to an additional 4,000 acres each day....
Documentary Explores Environmental Threats to Native American Lands Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, which will screen at the Denver International Film Festival on November 15 and 16 and on Montana Public Television on November 8, offers a compelling, in-depth look at the environmental pressures that Native American reservations across the country are currently facing. In four segments filmed in Montana, Alaska, New Mexico, and Maine, director Roberta Grossman illustrates how Native Americans are fighting incursions on their land. The Bush administration’s policy of exploiting all possible sources of energy in the United States has pitted many tribes against the federal government and energy companies in the most intense legal battles they’ve faced since the last U.S. energy crisis of the 1970’s. Although each of the segments offers a David-versus-Goliath-like tale of an impoverished Indian reservation struggling against some of the wealthiest corporations in the country, Homeland is a hopeful film, in large part because of the charismatic, indefatigable tribal leaders who are heading up the fight....
Groups urge state protection for lynx Too many lynx are being killed by traps set for other animals, and the state should move to protect the rare forest cats, conservationists say. Defenders of Wildlife, a national conservation group, recently brought that concern to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Gene Merriam. The Defenders, along with the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, want the state to take immediate steps to prevent the accidental trapping. The groups aren't saying trappers are targeting lynx and they aren't seeking to ban all trapping of other animals. But they say traps set for other animals are taking lynx and threatening their comeback....
Idaho urging anglers to kill more trout to save kokanee salmon Newcomers are overtaking long-established residents, changing the very way of life at Lake Pend Oreille. No, this isn't a story about out-of-state investors and the real estate market. This is about crashing kokanee salmon populations and how the balance between fish species is being changed in a single human generation. To restore balance, Idaho Fish and Game Department officials say, quick action is needed. "The kokanee population is literally on the very brink of collapse," said Ned Horner, the department's manager of Panhandle fisheries. "We just can't keep going on like this."....
Wyoming aims to manage grizzlies Wyoming wildlife officials are moving forward with plans to take over management of the grizzly bears in the state from the federal government. Both state and federal officials say the grizzly bear population has reached the point that federal protections can be dropped and the state can take over management of bears outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is hearing Monday and today from wildlife managers on the issue of delisting the grizzly bear. The commission is meeting in Gillette. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are scheduled to address the commission on the status of delisting the grizzly bear. Federal rules require Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to have federally approved state management plans in place before they can submit a petition seeking to delist the grizzly bears....
Hillary Clinton joins the pack in calling for greener energy policy Hillary Clinton has joined a growing claque of both Democrats and Republicans swigging from the cup of clean-energy Kool-Aid as they gear up for the 2006 congressional elections. In the past two months, the New York senator has popped up at a major Arctic Refuge rally, a high-profile global-warming conference, and a clean-technology investor symposium to make fervent calls for cleaner, greener energy policy. In a speech delivered two weeks ago to a group of investors gathered at the Cleantech Venture Forum in Washington, D.C., Clinton staked out her ground, outlining a plan "to get America on track for a smarter, more secure, and cleaner energy future." She argued that Katrina and Rita "have exposed the administration's policy for what it is -- using an umbrella to fend off a hurricane," and proposed that Big Oil, now raking in sky-high profits, pay fees that could add up to $20 billion annually for a "Strategic Energy Fund" that would defray soaring home-heating costs and bankroll alternative-energy development. She called for doubling current tax credits for the purchase of hybrids and clean-diesel vehicles, and proposed that the feds stop buying "old-fashioned" cars and trucks by 2010 and start replacing fleets with cleaner, more efficient models....
Arctic Oil Drilling Goes to House Vote For 25 years, environmentalists have staved off drilling in an oil-rich, 1.5-million-acre stretch of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness that shelters birthing caribou as well as musk oxen and millions of migratory birds. But record-high gasoline prices and last year's electoral gains by Republicans may have shifted the political dynamic, and Congress now stands on the verge of opening the region to energy development. On Thursday the Senate voted 51 to 48 to allow drilling in the refuge as part of a massive budget package; this week the House is expected to take up its version, probably with identical wording. The House vote remains too close to call, but proponents say they are within reach of victory....
Why environmentalists should embrace economics: Part two Does this mean private property rights solve everything? Of course not; however, the worst forms of environmental abuse generally occur in areas where property rights and markets are non-existent, or where the market is distorted by perverse subsidies that encourage over-exploitation. Even with enforceable property rights and a solid system of environmental accounting, markets are not perfect and are subject to unintended consequences. Global warming presents a particularly difficult challenge. The atmosphere is the world's preeminent open access resource, and exclusion is impossible. Some of the solutions currently being discussed for long-term climate management are enforceable limits on greenhouse gas emissions through a system of tradable atmospheric pollution permits. While some environmentalists oppose pollution permits on the grounds that they establish a "right to pollute," all industrial activities require some level of greenhouse-gas pollution and tradable permits may provide both the cheapest and most equitable way of achieving targeted reductions (big greenhouse polluters like the U.S. would likely end up buying credits from less-polluting nations)....
Yucca Nuclear Dump's Funding to Be Slashed Lawmakers agreed Monday to cut 2006 spending for Yucca Mountain well below past-year levels and President Bush's budget request, reflecting the faltering prospects for locating the nation's nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert. House and Senate negotiators also ditched a House plan to supplement Yucca Mountain with interim storage sites for nuclear waste, settling instead on spending $50 million to promote the recycling of spent nuclear fuel. In finishing work on a $30.5-billion bill to fund energy and water projects, lawmakers agreed to spend $450 million in 2006 on Yucca Mountain, the planned underground repository for 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. The project's budget was $577 million in each of the last two years, and Bush asked for $650 million for the dump in his 2006 budget request....
Voters reject Sonoma ban on genetically modified crops A proposed ban on planting or cultivating genetically altered crops was rejected by Sonoma County voters Tuesday night. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Measure M lost 56 to 44 percent in one of the county's most expensive ballot fights ever. Supporters and opponents of the proposed 10-year ban spent a combined $850,000. Only three counties in the nation - all in California - currently ban genetically altered crops. Sonoma County joined Humboldt, Butte and San Luis Obispo counties, which also voted down similar biotechnology bans in November 2004....
Rustlers Keeping Busy In Texas And Oklahoma A remnant of the old West remains alive and well - cattle rustling. Larry Gray with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association says rustling has doubled from last year to this year in Oklahoma and Texas. Gray says the association recovered about $4 million in stolen livestock and equipment in 2004 and is on pace to recover $9 million this year. Inspector Joe Rector says he's recovered about $1.2 million in cattle stolen from 15 counties in central Oklahoma this year. Gray says a weak economy has increased thefts and drug users have realized they can make a quick buck off high-priced livestock....
Bulldozers Demolish Gilley's Rodeo Arena Gilley's, the Pasadena landmark made famous by the 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy," was demolished Tuesday morning. Bulldozers made way for a new school at the site where Gilley's Rodeo Arena stood on Watters at Spencer Highway. The Pasadena Independent School District bought the property and plans to build a new middle school on the site. The arena was the last structure left from the old Gilley's nightclub. Most of the rest of the club was destroyed in a fire in 1990.
Mortensen still waiting for his hot streak Dan Mortensen is a lot of things. He's a seven-time world champion, one of the greatest saddle bronc riders of his generation, a good husband, son and brother, a loyal friend, a quality spokesperson for his sport and still approachable to fans. The list is a long one. But patient he is not. This has been a rodeo season of waiting for the Billings cowboy. He's waiting for his ankle to heal completely and is still waiting for that hot streak that every world-class cowboy catches during a year. "I never felt like I got in a groove,'' Mortensen described of his 2005. "I would ride well and think, 'This is it.' Then I'd go screw it up on the next one,'' he added with a laugh. Despite the uneven year, Mortensen still won saddle bronc titles at eight rodeos, including Rapid City, S.D., and Fort Collins, Colo., recently. He is seventh in the PRCA world standings with $92,933 won and has qualified for his 15th National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas....
Cowboy bucks ‘Champ’ lore It’s a photograph that has puzzled one South Dakota family and made another cowboy a legend. In his Rapid City apartment, Darrel Little has what he says is a photograph of his brother Don Little in an eight-second ride on the back of the famed Butler Brothers rodeo saddle bronc named Necktie. Darrel Little, 71, said the photo was taken at a Custer rodeo sometime in the early 1950s while his older brother still followed the rodeo circuit. During that time, as is the custom now, photographers took action shots of bronc riders on the bucking stock. In Little’s tinted black-and-white image, the photographer has captured the horse coming down on its front hooves, and the rider is leaning back with his arm extended away from his body. The rider’s chaps have whipped back from the force of the landing, but his head is still enough that the checkered pattern beneath the straw hat’s brim remains unblurred. “He was going pretty good then. He was in his prime,” Darrel said about his brother. But others contend that the photo is not of the former South Dakota rodeo rider but that of six-time world champion cowboy Casey Tibbs riding Necktie. Edd Hayes, a sculptor from Old Town Spring, Texas, used a photo supplied to him by Tibbs to create the bronze statue “The Champ.” The bronze stands today at the entrance of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo....
A Country Classic With Mass Appeal The COWBOY BOOT has high-stepped its way to the fashion forefront. And those getting corralled? They aren't all Toby Keith devotees. As industry watchers tell it, the allure of the cowboy boot has long transcended its Wild West heritage. “There's this romance behind it,'' says Fred King, of El Paso-based Lucchese Boot Co., which has manufactured the style since 1883. “It's a way for anyone to live that part of America that almost doesn't exist anymore.'' For some shoppers, the fact that celebrities have taken to the boots just adds another layer to the fantasy. Wherever Jessica Simpson and Sienna Miller tread, sartorially speaking, they are happy to follow. “The real cowboys who come in, they buy ropers,'' says Michael Corbett, of Boot Hill Western Store in Woodbridge, Va., referring to a simple work boot that's more functional than fashionable. “But these customers, they're buying these totally crazy fad boots, like really funky bright green with a lizard print.''....
Chuck wagon cook proudly leads cattle drive Tom Perini enjoys his spot on the chuck wagon, out in front of the cattle drive. That's where he'll be today when 100 longhorn steers ramble down Dallas' Main Street. And history says that's where he belongs – out front, not bringing up the rear as some TV Westerns might have you believe. "Back in the old days, the chuck wagon preceded the cattle on the cattle drive," said Mr. Perini, a cowboy cook from Buffalo Gap who has taken his chuck wagon cuisine all the way to the White House. "They'd get going early in the day, and the drovers would try to tell them where to go to find water and wood so they could set up and start their work." The cattle drive represents the traditional opening of Texas Stampede, three days of professional rodeo and concerts at American Airlines Center. The event runs Friday through Sunday....
Russell Auction to add a day More art available during big week in March he jurors selecting pieces for the 2006 C.M. Russell Auction March 16-19 had a little extra work to do on Monday. A new event on the Thursday night of the annual event will feature 75 works of art beyond the 300 or so up for sale in the traditional big nights on Friday and Saturday. Auction organizers Monday also revealed three Russell pieces that will be included. Two illustrated letters, "Hello Bob," from 1910 and "Friend Bob" from 1908 are part of the lineup. Two watercolors, including a small Indian portrait and "Judith Basin Cowboy," round out the Russell's. During the new Thursday night "fixed price" show, potential buyers will drop their names and an "intent to purchase" in a box next to each piece. Three names are drawn from each box, with the first person drawn having the opportunity to buy the lot or pass. Johna Wilcox, 2006 auction chairwoman, said the Thursday event is being added because an increasing number of artists are submitting their work for the show....
DNA Test Could Confirm Billy The Kid Claim Two southeastern New Mexico investigators have obtained DNA from a cowboy who claimed to be Billy the Kid. Before dying in the 1930s, John Miller told friends and a son that he was the legendary Western outlaw. Former Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and Capitan Mayor Steve Sederwall obtained the DNA last May from Miller's remains, which are buried in Prescott, Ariz. They say they will compare it with blood traces taken from a 19th-century bench that is believed to be the one the Kid's body was placed on after he was shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881. The bench was discovered on a Fort Sumner ranch. Should the samples match, Sullivan and Sederwall say they could have a break that upends accepted historical accounts of the Kid's life and death. Over the last century, at least two men surfaced claiming to be Billy the Kid - Miller and Ollie P. "Brushy Bill" Roberts of Hico, Texas....
Mountain lion concerns grow One of the founders of Safari Club International has planted a disturbing thought in the minds of outdoor enthusiasts: Their activities could endanger their lives. "I think that, eventually, mountain lions could make lunch out of people," said Bill Sherman, one of the founders of the SCI and the current Los Angeles chapter president. "People call to say they are watching mountain lions watching kids go to school. The (mountain lions) are out of control." Sherman, a former Arcadia resident, said that with no natural predator left, mountain lions have become emboldened. He believes that as their population increases, they will attack more people. "Mountain lions have to go somewhere," he said. "I think we could have trouble." Sherman's solution? A limited mountain lion hunting season. But he has a big problem: A 30-year ban on hunting lions, created by a statewide initiative that can only be removed through another initiative....
Column: The perils of 'psychic environmentalism' Rep. Brian Baird has now come to understand the special power of environmentalists. No, the Washington state Democrat is not cowering before them. He remains committed to co-sponsoring the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act with Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. But Baird has come face to face with green power. Environmentalists who talked to him knew just what they didn't like about this bill. It waives environmental laws on the federal lands. It keeps the public out of the land-management decisions. It paves the way for roads in "roadless areas." It clears the way for massive clear-cuts and tree plantations on restored lands. There was one problem with the greenies' gripes. Walden and Baird hadn't introduced the bill yet. Make that two problems: The stuff they opposed was not in the unintroduced bill. Baird calls it "psychic environmentalism."....
Column: Endangering the Act For now, Pombo's bill is stalled in the Senate. But his isn't the only Republican challenge to Section 7. In June of 2003, long before the bill's drafting, the Bush administration's Interior Department had already issued new regulations under the ESA that allowed much the same thing. In certain cases, important species-protection decisions have been moved from the government's long-time conservation experts to the very agencies that the ESA was meant to regulate, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service. Pombo's bill, if passed into law, would legislatively enshrine the Interior Department's new rules. But if courts uphold those rules, now under legal challenge, the effect could essentially be the same. While environmental lawyer Eric Glitzenstein calls the new rules "the biggest regulatory change" to the ESA carried out under the Bush administration, he and other environmental advocates point to many other actions and appointments whose goal at heart, they say, is to gut the Act. According to Clark, under Bush the expert agencies have annually listed, on average, less than 10 new species as endangered or threatened; under Clinton the yearly average was 65, under the first President Bush it was 58....
Endangered Species Act in cross hairs Congress is taking steps to rewrite the Endangered Species Act for the first time in its 32-year history to make it more friendly to landowners and builders, a move decried by conservationists and welcomed by developers. Environmentalists view the act as a signature accomplishment that has been vital in protecting the nation's natural heritage, from bald eagles to whooping cranes. But critics of the 1973 legislation have long charged that it shows more concern for the northern spotted owl and snail darter than for workers and property owners. The House passed a bill to significantly rewrite the law in September, and the Senate is expected to adopt at least some of those changes. The House bill would require, for example, that the government pay developers if the act prevents them from building, and it would eliminate the government's ability to designate a creature's "critical habitat" where building is forbidden....
Mineral rights issue remains at Rocky Flats The $7 billion, 10-year closure of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has been declared complete, but questions remain about private mineral rights that must be acquired so it can be turned into a national wildlife refuge. The U.S.
Senate is scheduled to vote this week on a defense authorization bill that includes $10 million to buy some of the mineral rights on the 6,240-acre site, where gravel mining has occurred on the edges for decades. Surrounding communities, however, have urged the federal government to buy all the mineral rights -- even those with a low potential of development. One of the mineral rights owners questioned whether $10 million will be enough to ensure that development doesn't hinder efforts to turn the grassy plains and rolling hills northwest of Denver into a wildlife haven....
The fleeting lives of pronghorns PARCHED GOLD HILLS roll out around the Carrizo Plain, encircling the valley like a giant bowl. From anywhere here, you can see just about anywhere else. This is California antelope country, and a century ago it might have teemed with pronghorns like an American Serengeti. The fastest land animal in North America, pronghorns can sprint over 50 miles per hour. During the Pleistocene, armed with vision comparable to eight-power binoculars, they outpaced some of the most monstrous carnivores the world had ever seen — hulking North American cheetahs, giant hyenas and saber-tooth cats. But though they eluded these prehistoric predators, they couldn't escape the 19th century threats of hunters' bullets and ranchers' barbed wire. But today, these magnificent creatures, these icons of the West that hide in the open, are disappearing from sight. Half a million pronghorns may have roamed California's plains and inland valleys at the time of Spanish conquest. Now there are fewer than 1% as many. About 4,400 remain in Modoc County, and a few hundred in Southern California, including 87 on the Carrizo Plain, just north of the Los Padres National Forest....
Republican wants to help poor gather firewood The Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee on Tuesday proposed waiving fees on collecting firewood in U.S. national forests as a way to help "families cope with the high costs of home heating" this winter. Natural gas household heating costs in the U.S. Midwest will soar by nearly 50 percent this winter while heating oil in the Northeast will rise by 25 percent, according to government estimates. "Rural American families who depend on firewood to heat their homes will be hit just as hard as those who use oil and natural gas," California Rep. Richard Pombo said in a press release. Pombo proposed legislation waiving fees for the U.S. Forest Service's Self Help Firewood Program, which he said charges consumers about $10 to $15 to gather a stack of wood 4 feet long, 4 feet wide and 8 feet high. The waiver would last one year, with a cap of $1,000....
Column: Marking the end of conservation? The American conservationist may be an endangered species, both in numbers and public influence. That's the bleak news suggested by some attendees at the National Conservation Learning Summit, held this weekend at the sprawling woodland campus of the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia. Some estimates indicate that as many as 60 percent of the most senior federal employees are eligible to retire in 2007. Many of those are in conservation and natural resource fields. Over one-half of the senior executives at the Department of the Interior, USDA Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency will retire by 2007. Within that same period, the Department of Interior will lose 61 percent of its program managers, the Forest Service will lose 81 percent of its entomologists and 49 percent of its foresters, and the EPA will lose 45 percent of its toxicologists and around 30 percent of its environmental specialists....
Groups to file suit over decline of fish below Glen Canyon Dam A pair of environmental groups have filed notice that they intend to sue the Bureau of Reclamation and the Fish and Wildlife Service over the decline and extinction of native fish species below Glen Canyon Dam in Grand Canyon National Park. The Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity and Moab-based Living Rivers notified the two federal agencies, and the Department of Interior, on Tuesday, citing what they call violations of the Endangered Species Act. The two groups are leaning heavily on a report released last month by the U.S. Geological Survey, which concluded that efforts since 1991 to restore the Colorado River below the dam to something resembling its original state "have not produced the hoped for restoration and maintenance" of endangered fish species, such as the federally protected humpback chub. In fact, the study says, three of the original eight native fish species - including the roundtail chub, bonytail chub and Colorado pikeminnow - have been eliminated from the Colorado River in Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon, while the humpback chub population has declined between 30 percent and 60 percent....
Groups say U.S. lags in species protection The government has allowed 283 species identified as possibly facing extinction to languish without protection under the Endangered Species Act, a coalition of environmental groups contends in a lawsuit against the Interior Department. Some 24 candidate species have gone extinct waiting for protections in the past 32 years, the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona, Forest Guardians in New Mexico and other advocacy groups allege in the suit filed late Monday in U.S. District Court here. Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist with the Arizona-based group, said the Interior Department hasn't acted as quickly as the law requires in adding wildlife to its endangered species list. The species - ranging from the Dakota skipper butterfly in the northern Great Plains to the Oregon spotted frog - have waited an average of 17 years to be added to the list, the suit says....
Column: Claws and Effects Every damn kid in the U.S., son of cabbie or Catholic, knows and cares about dinosaurs. But few have heard of gomphotheres, which lived here much more recently. In the late summer, this North American elephant -- along with some of its contemporaries, like American camels, cheetahs, lions, and giant tortoises -- crept into the minds of many Americans, as the press reported on a proposal put forth by my colleagues and me to bring large animals back to North America. Our big idea brought an even bigger response from the press, public, and scientific community. It was a wild week of knee-jerking, gasps, and groans -- mixed with some joyful salutations and celebratory fists in the air. Much of the press got it wrong; a few got it so right. Many scientists fired off emails and rebuttals; fewer apparently actually sat down and carefully read the paper before firing....
McCloskey looks to challenge Pombo Former congressman Pete McCloskey is getting closer to taking on Rep. Richard Pombo. In what he called a “revolt of the elders,” the 78-year-old Republican said he would run in a June primary if he can’t find anyone else by the end of the year to take on Pombo, R-Tracy. “Every professional has told us that the only way to beat Pombo is in a primary,” McCloskey said Monday in a meeting with the Tracy Press editorial board. McCloskey, who represented the San Francisco peninsula from 1967 to 1983, said he hasn’t had much luck in months of searching for a young, vibrant Republican challenger for the 11th District’s seven-term incumbent. McCloskey was one of the authors of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, and he is an outspoken opponent of Pombo’s attempts to overhaul the landmark environmental law....
Critics lambaste mining measure as land giveaway Critics including environmentalists and hunters are denouncing a mining proposal tucked in a massive budget bill as a push to sell tens of millions of acres of public land in the West to the highest bidder and gut environmental reviews of oil and gas drilling and other development. The provisions in the bill by the House Resources Committee are aimed at updating the 1872 mining law, long criticized for selling off federal lands in some of the country's most scenic areas for rock-bottom prices: $2.50 to $5 an acre. Opponents say the language of the bill is so loose that anybody with the money can stake a mining claim and buy the land without having to mine it. Representatives of the House Resources Committee and a trade group dismissed as "greatly exaggerated" claims that the measure would open more than 200 million acres of federal land to development. The bill would increase the price of mining lands to $1,000 an acre. Critics, though, contend it would also open much of the federal land in the West to development - such as building ski resorts and mountaintop trophy homes - under the guise of reforming a law dating to the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. Two committees have approved the bill, which could be considered by the full House as early as Thursday....
State and Federal Partnership forms to Restore Great Basin Rangelands The U.S. Geological Survey is among nine organizations that will share a $12.9 million award from the federal government´s Joint Fire Science Program for an interdisciplinary, 5-year research project that will explore ways to improve the health of sagebrush rangelands across the Great Basin in the western United States. The project, known as SageSTEP (Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project), is a collaboration among the U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon State University, University of Idaho, University of Reno-Nevada, Brigham Young University, USDA Forest Service, USDA Agriculture Research Service, and Bureau of Land Management. "Healthy sagebrush rangelands in the Great Basin are rapidly diminishing," said Kate Kitchell, Deputy Director of the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center. "This is due to invasion of cheatgrass (a highly flammable, non-native weed), severe wildfires, and expansion of pinyon and juniper woodlands." The sagebrush steppe, a type of land that features large, dry, open areas with few trees, is one of the most endangered in North America. Scientists say that as much as half of this land type already has been lost in the Great Basin, and the risk of wildfire continues to increase. In August 1999 alone, wildfires burned across approximately 1.7 million acres of the Great Basin, and the Bureau of Land Management estimates that cheatgrass spreads to an additional 4,000 acres each day....
Documentary Explores Environmental Threats to Native American Lands Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, which will screen at the Denver International Film Festival on November 15 and 16 and on Montana Public Television on November 8, offers a compelling, in-depth look at the environmental pressures that Native American reservations across the country are currently facing. In four segments filmed in Montana, Alaska, New Mexico, and Maine, director Roberta Grossman illustrates how Native Americans are fighting incursions on their land. The Bush administration’s policy of exploiting all possible sources of energy in the United States has pitted many tribes against the federal government and energy companies in the most intense legal battles they’ve faced since the last U.S. energy crisis of the 1970’s. Although each of the segments offers a David-versus-Goliath-like tale of an impoverished Indian reservation struggling against some of the wealthiest corporations in the country, Homeland is a hopeful film, in large part because of the charismatic, indefatigable tribal leaders who are heading up the fight....
Groups urge state protection for lynx Too many lynx are being killed by traps set for other animals, and the state should move to protect the rare forest cats, conservationists say. Defenders of Wildlife, a national conservation group, recently brought that concern to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Gene Merriam. The Defenders, along with the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, want the state to take immediate steps to prevent the accidental trapping. The groups aren't saying trappers are targeting lynx and they aren't seeking to ban all trapping of other animals. But they say traps set for other animals are taking lynx and threatening their comeback....
Idaho urging anglers to kill more trout to save kokanee salmon Newcomers are overtaking long-established residents, changing the very way of life at Lake Pend Oreille. No, this isn't a story about out-of-state investors and the real estate market. This is about crashing kokanee salmon populations and how the balance between fish species is being changed in a single human generation. To restore balance, Idaho Fish and Game Department officials say, quick action is needed. "The kokanee population is literally on the very brink of collapse," said Ned Horner, the department's manager of Panhandle fisheries. "We just can't keep going on like this."....
Wyoming aims to manage grizzlies Wyoming wildlife officials are moving forward with plans to take over management of the grizzly bears in the state from the federal government. Both state and federal officials say the grizzly bear population has reached the point that federal protections can be dropped and the state can take over management of bears outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is hearing Monday and today from wildlife managers on the issue of delisting the grizzly bear. The commission is meeting in Gillette. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are scheduled to address the commission on the status of delisting the grizzly bear. Federal rules require Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to have federally approved state management plans in place before they can submit a petition seeking to delist the grizzly bears....
Hillary Clinton joins the pack in calling for greener energy policy Hillary Clinton has joined a growing claque of both Democrats and Republicans swigging from the cup of clean-energy Kool-Aid as they gear up for the 2006 congressional elections. In the past two months, the New York senator has popped up at a major Arctic Refuge rally, a high-profile global-warming conference, and a clean-technology investor symposium to make fervent calls for cleaner, greener energy policy. In a speech delivered two weeks ago to a group of investors gathered at the Cleantech Venture Forum in Washington, D.C., Clinton staked out her ground, outlining a plan "to get America on track for a smarter, more secure, and cleaner energy future." She argued that Katrina and Rita "have exposed the administration's policy for what it is -- using an umbrella to fend off a hurricane," and proposed that Big Oil, now raking in sky-high profits, pay fees that could add up to $20 billion annually for a "Strategic Energy Fund" that would defray soaring home-heating costs and bankroll alternative-energy development. She called for doubling current tax credits for the purchase of hybrids and clean-diesel vehicles, and proposed that the feds stop buying "old-fashioned" cars and trucks by 2010 and start replacing fleets with cleaner, more efficient models....
Arctic Oil Drilling Goes to House Vote For 25 years, environmentalists have staved off drilling in an oil-rich, 1.5-million-acre stretch of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness that shelters birthing caribou as well as musk oxen and millions of migratory birds. But record-high gasoline prices and last year's electoral gains by Republicans may have shifted the political dynamic, and Congress now stands on the verge of opening the region to energy development. On Thursday the Senate voted 51 to 48 to allow drilling in the refuge as part of a massive budget package; this week the House is expected to take up its version, probably with identical wording. The House vote remains too close to call, but proponents say they are within reach of victory....
Why environmentalists should embrace economics: Part two Does this mean private property rights solve everything? Of course not; however, the worst forms of environmental abuse generally occur in areas where property rights and markets are non-existent, or where the market is distorted by perverse subsidies that encourage over-exploitation. Even with enforceable property rights and a solid system of environmental accounting, markets are not perfect and are subject to unintended consequences. Global warming presents a particularly difficult challenge. The atmosphere is the world's preeminent open access resource, and exclusion is impossible. Some of the solutions currently being discussed for long-term climate management are enforceable limits on greenhouse gas emissions through a system of tradable atmospheric pollution permits. While some environmentalists oppose pollution permits on the grounds that they establish a "right to pollute," all industrial activities require some level of greenhouse-gas pollution and tradable permits may provide both the cheapest and most equitable way of achieving targeted reductions (big greenhouse polluters like the U.S. would likely end up buying credits from less-polluting nations)....
Yucca Nuclear Dump's Funding to Be Slashed Lawmakers agreed Monday to cut 2006 spending for Yucca Mountain well below past-year levels and President Bush's budget request, reflecting the faltering prospects for locating the nation's nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert. House and Senate negotiators also ditched a House plan to supplement Yucca Mountain with interim storage sites for nuclear waste, settling instead on spending $50 million to promote the recycling of spent nuclear fuel. In finishing work on a $30.5-billion bill to fund energy and water projects, lawmakers agreed to spend $450 million in 2006 on Yucca Mountain, the planned underground repository for 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. The project's budget was $577 million in each of the last two years, and Bush asked for $650 million for the dump in his 2006 budget request....
Voters reject Sonoma ban on genetically modified crops A proposed ban on planting or cultivating genetically altered crops was rejected by Sonoma County voters Tuesday night. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Measure M lost 56 to 44 percent in one of the county's most expensive ballot fights ever. Supporters and opponents of the proposed 10-year ban spent a combined $850,000. Only three counties in the nation - all in California - currently ban genetically altered crops. Sonoma County joined Humboldt, Butte and San Luis Obispo counties, which also voted down similar biotechnology bans in November 2004....
Rustlers Keeping Busy In Texas And Oklahoma A remnant of the old West remains alive and well - cattle rustling. Larry Gray with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association says rustling has doubled from last year to this year in Oklahoma and Texas. Gray says the association recovered about $4 million in stolen livestock and equipment in 2004 and is on pace to recover $9 million this year. Inspector Joe Rector says he's recovered about $1.2 million in cattle stolen from 15 counties in central Oklahoma this year. Gray says a weak economy has increased thefts and drug users have realized they can make a quick buck off high-priced livestock....
Bulldozers Demolish Gilley's Rodeo Arena Gilley's, the Pasadena landmark made famous by the 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy," was demolished Tuesday morning. Bulldozers made way for a new school at the site where Gilley's Rodeo Arena stood on Watters at Spencer Highway. The Pasadena Independent School District bought the property and plans to build a new middle school on the site. The arena was the last structure left from the old Gilley's nightclub. Most of the rest of the club was destroyed in a fire in 1990.
Mortensen still waiting for his hot streak Dan Mortensen is a lot of things. He's a seven-time world champion, one of the greatest saddle bronc riders of his generation, a good husband, son and brother, a loyal friend, a quality spokesperson for his sport and still approachable to fans. The list is a long one. But patient he is not. This has been a rodeo season of waiting for the Billings cowboy. He's waiting for his ankle to heal completely and is still waiting for that hot streak that every world-class cowboy catches during a year. "I never felt like I got in a groove,'' Mortensen described of his 2005. "I would ride well and think, 'This is it.' Then I'd go screw it up on the next one,'' he added with a laugh. Despite the uneven year, Mortensen still won saddle bronc titles at eight rodeos, including Rapid City, S.D., and Fort Collins, Colo., recently. He is seventh in the PRCA world standings with $92,933 won and has qualified for his 15th National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas....
Cowboy bucks ‘Champ’ lore It’s a photograph that has puzzled one South Dakota family and made another cowboy a legend. In his Rapid City apartment, Darrel Little has what he says is a photograph of his brother Don Little in an eight-second ride on the back of the famed Butler Brothers rodeo saddle bronc named Necktie. Darrel Little, 71, said the photo was taken at a Custer rodeo sometime in the early 1950s while his older brother still followed the rodeo circuit. During that time, as is the custom now, photographers took action shots of bronc riders on the bucking stock. In Little’s tinted black-and-white image, the photographer has captured the horse coming down on its front hooves, and the rider is leaning back with his arm extended away from his body. The rider’s chaps have whipped back from the force of the landing, but his head is still enough that the checkered pattern beneath the straw hat’s brim remains unblurred. “He was going pretty good then. He was in his prime,” Darrel said about his brother. But others contend that the photo is not of the former South Dakota rodeo rider but that of six-time world champion cowboy Casey Tibbs riding Necktie. Edd Hayes, a sculptor from Old Town Spring, Texas, used a photo supplied to him by Tibbs to create the bronze statue “The Champ.” The bronze stands today at the entrance of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo....
A Country Classic With Mass Appeal The COWBOY BOOT has high-stepped its way to the fashion forefront. And those getting corralled? They aren't all Toby Keith devotees. As industry watchers tell it, the allure of the cowboy boot has long transcended its Wild West heritage. “There's this romance behind it,'' says Fred King, of El Paso-based Lucchese Boot Co., which has manufactured the style since 1883. “It's a way for anyone to live that part of America that almost doesn't exist anymore.'' For some shoppers, the fact that celebrities have taken to the boots just adds another layer to the fantasy. Wherever Jessica Simpson and Sienna Miller tread, sartorially speaking, they are happy to follow. “The real cowboys who come in, they buy ropers,'' says Michael Corbett, of Boot Hill Western Store in Woodbridge, Va., referring to a simple work boot that's more functional than fashionable. “But these customers, they're buying these totally crazy fad boots, like really funky bright green with a lizard print.''....
Chuck wagon cook proudly leads cattle drive Tom Perini enjoys his spot on the chuck wagon, out in front of the cattle drive. That's where he'll be today when 100 longhorn steers ramble down Dallas' Main Street. And history says that's where he belongs – out front, not bringing up the rear as some TV Westerns might have you believe. "Back in the old days, the chuck wagon preceded the cattle on the cattle drive," said Mr. Perini, a cowboy cook from Buffalo Gap who has taken his chuck wagon cuisine all the way to the White House. "They'd get going early in the day, and the drovers would try to tell them where to go to find water and wood so they could set up and start their work." The cattle drive represents the traditional opening of Texas Stampede, three days of professional rodeo and concerts at American Airlines Center. The event runs Friday through Sunday....
Russell Auction to add a day More art available during big week in March he jurors selecting pieces for the 2006 C.M. Russell Auction March 16-19 had a little extra work to do on Monday. A new event on the Thursday night of the annual event will feature 75 works of art beyond the 300 or so up for sale in the traditional big nights on Friday and Saturday. Auction organizers Monday also revealed three Russell pieces that will be included. Two illustrated letters, "Hello Bob," from 1910 and "Friend Bob" from 1908 are part of the lineup. Two watercolors, including a small Indian portrait and "Judith Basin Cowboy," round out the Russell's. During the new Thursday night "fixed price" show, potential buyers will drop their names and an "intent to purchase" in a box next to each piece. Three names are drawn from each box, with the first person drawn having the opportunity to buy the lot or pass. Johna Wilcox, 2006 auction chairwoman, said the Thursday event is being added because an increasing number of artists are submitting their work for the show....
DNA Test Could Confirm Billy The Kid Claim Two southeastern New Mexico investigators have obtained DNA from a cowboy who claimed to be Billy the Kid. Before dying in the 1930s, John Miller told friends and a son that he was the legendary Western outlaw. Former Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Sullivan and Capitan Mayor Steve Sederwall obtained the DNA last May from Miller's remains, which are buried in Prescott, Ariz. They say they will compare it with blood traces taken from a 19th-century bench that is believed to be the one the Kid's body was placed on after he was shot by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881. The bench was discovered on a Fort Sumner ranch. Should the samples match, Sullivan and Sederwall say they could have a break that upends accepted historical accounts of the Kid's life and death. Over the last century, at least two men surfaced claiming to be Billy the Kid - Miller and Ollie P. "Brushy Bill" Roberts of Hico, Texas....
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