Burst oil pipeline causes 'catastrophe' in Alaska
A burst pipeline in Alaska's North Slope has caused the Arctic region's worst oil spill, spreading more than 250,000 gallons of crude oil over an area used by caribou herds and prompting environmentalists again to question the Bush administration's drive for more oil exploration there. The leak was first spotted by a British Petroleum worker 11 days ago, and was reported to have been plugged a few days later. Initial hopes expressed by BP that the spill was limited to a few tens of thousands of gallons proved to be over-optimistic. Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation has steadily increased its estimate of the size of the spill, the latest estimate putting it at around 265,000 gallons. The leak, whose cause is unknown, occurred in a remote part of the most sparsely populated state in the United States, and it remains to be seen what damage, if any, it has done to ecosystems. It does, however, give grist to groups who have challenged Washington's assertion that oil can be prospected and shipped while leaving only the gentlest of "footprints" on the landscape....
Monday, March 13, 2006
MAD COW DISEASE
Statement by USDA Chief Veterinary Officer John Clifford (DVM) Regarding Positive BSE Test Results
“We received a positive result on a Western blot confirmatory test conducted at the USDA laboratories in Ames , Iowa , on samples from an animal that had tested “inconclusive” on a rapid screening test performed on Friday, March 10. “The samples were taken from a non-ambulatory animal on a farm in Alabama . A local private veterinarian euthanized and sampled the animal and sent the samples for further testing, which was conducted at one of our contract diagnostic laboratories at the University of Georgia . The animal was buried on the farm and it did not enter the animal or human food chains. “We are now working with Alabama animal health officials to conduct an epidemiological investigation to gather any further information we can on the herd of origin of this animal. The animal had only resided on the most recent farm in Alabama for less than a year. “We will be working to locate animals from this cow’s birth cohort (animals born in the same herd within one year of the affected animal) and any offspring. We will also work with Food and Drug Administration officials to determine any feed history that may be relevant to the investigation. Experience worldwide has shown us that it is highly unusual to find BSE in more than one animal in a herd or in an affected animal’s offspring. Nevertheless, all animals of interest will be tested for BSE. “Under USDA testing protocols, surveillance samples are sent to contract laboratories for screening tests. If the sample is found to be inconclusive on the screening test, it is then shipped to our National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames , Iowa , for an additional rapid test and two confirmatory tests: the immunohistochemistry (IHC) test, which is conducted by APHIS scientists, and the Western blot test, which is conducted by scientists with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. USDA considers an animal positive for BSE if either of the two confirmatory tests returns a positive result. “In this instance, the inconclusive result from the contract lab in Georgia was confirmed through a second rapid test at NVSL. Now, the Western blot test has returned a positive result, and that is sufficient for us to confirm this animal to be positive for BSE, which is why we are making this announcement today. The IHC results are still pending and we will release those results as soon as they are available, which we expect to be later this week. “I want to emphasize that human and animal health in the United States are protected by a system of interlocking safeguards, and that we remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef. Again, this animal did not enter the human food or animal feed chains. “While epidemiological work to determine the animal’s precise age is just getting underway and is ongoing, the attending veterinarian has indicated that, based on dentition, it was an older animal, quite possibly upwards of 10 years of age. This would indicate that this animal would have been born prior to the implementation of the Food and Drug Administration’s 1997 feed ban. Older animals are more likely to have been exposed to contaminated feed circulating before the FDA’s 1997 ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding practices, which scientific research has indicated is the most likely route for BSE transmission. “By any measure, the incidence of BSE in this country is extremely low. Our enhanced surveillance program was designed as a one-time snapshot to provide information about the level of prevalence of BSE in the United States . We have conducted surveillance in the United States since 1990 and following the initial positive in December 2003, we developed an enhanced surveillance program. Since June 2004, all sectors of the cattle industry have cooperated in this program by submitting samples from more than 650,000 animals from the highest risk populations and more than 20,000 from clinically normal, older animals, as part our enhanced BSE surveillance program. To date, including the animal in today’s announcement, only two of these highest risk animals have tested positive for the disease as part of the enhanced surveillance program. “As we approach the conclusion of our enhanced surveillance program, let me offer a few thoughts regarding surveillance going forward. I can assure you that we will continue to base our maintenance surveillance testing on international guidelines. Though the nature and extent of maintenance surveillance has not yet been finalized, the incidence of BSE in this country remains extremely low and our interlocking safeguards are working to protect both human and animal health and we remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef. “As we move forward with the epidemiological investigation that has been initiated today into this case of BSE, we will continue to be very transparent in sharing information with the public and with our trading partners around the world."
US confirms 3rd case of mad cow in 27 months
A beef cow from a herd in Alabama has tested positive for mad cow disease, U.S. officials said on Monday, confirming the third case of the disease in 27 months. The U.S. Agriculture Department said the 10-year-old animal, which had tested "inconclusive" for mad cow disease during the weekend, showed a positive result when subjected to a more advanced test. The latest discovery came at a time when U.S. officials were trying to convince Japan to reopen its market to U.S. beef after a shipment of veal violated meat export rules by containing spinal material. Japan suspended beef trade on January 20. South Korea said earlier on Monday it could cancel a planned opening of its market in April to U.S. beef if a new U.S. case was found. Seoul has banned U.S. beef since the first U.S. case in December 2003. Agriculture Department Chief Veterinarian John Clifford announced the positive test results during a telephone news conference. He said the new case was confirmed through the Western Blot test, which was added to USDA's battery of tests last year....
Finding of mad cow in U.S. hits Tyson shares
News that another case of mad cow disease has been found in the United States pressured shares of the country's largest beef processor on Monday. Following the afternoon report, shares of Tyson Foods (TSN) dropped 4.3% to close at $13.07. In a written statement, Tyson said "we remain confident in the safety of our beef products because of the kind of cattle we buy and the precautionary measures we take" and that it does not expect "today's finding to change consumer demand for beef." The company buys young beef animals, "usually less than 30 months old, which are not in the BSE risk group," it added. "We also make sure materials from beef cattle that can potentially carry BSE, such as the brain and spinal cord, are removed and do not enter the food supply." Clifford also said that the U.S. beef supply remains safe....
Meat Company Shares Sink on Mad Cow News
Shares of beef-dependent companies including Tyson Foods Inc. and McDonald's Corp. traded lower Monday after the Agriculture Department confirmed that a cow in Alabama has tested positive for mad cow disease. Shares of meat producer Smithfield Foods Inc. gave up 5 cents, to $28.07 on the NYSE. In the restaurant industry, hamburger giant McDonald's shares fell 33 cents to close at $34.32, while Wendy's International Inc.'s stock fell 54 cents to $62.08. YUM Brands Inc., owner of Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, fell 33 cents to $48.45. Stephens Inc. analyst Farha Aslam, however, said in a client note on Tyson that "beef demand has proven very resilient" in the face of past mad cow headlines and doesn't believe Tyson's U.S. sales will suffer. Aslam said mad cow is currently "less worrisome than bird flu."....
CME Cattle Review: Mixed; Seen Down Tue On Positive BSE Test
Chicago Mercantile Exchange live cattle futures prices settled mixed Monday on news the U.S. Department of Agriculture was testing a cow brain sample for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease. But, after the close, the USDA announced a positive test for the cow, which spent the past year on a farm in Alabama. As a result, lower prices for CME cattle futures are expected Tuesday morning. Most active April live cattle futures have already fallen 1,233 points from their Jan. 10 top to Friday's low, for a 13% decline. "Unless this animal's herd mates also test positive for the disease, I don't see any sustained impact," said Dan Vaught, analyst and economist with AG Edwards and Sons. "American consumers have become immunized to this type of story." But, although there is often a seasonal bounce in early spring cattle prices, as weather warms for grilling, Vaught and others warned of an expected summer increase in slaughter-ready live cattle supplies. "I'm already bearish because of the supply and demand fundamentals," said Tres Knippa, a live cattle pit broker with many cattle feedlot customers. "This positive result could exacerbate an expected early summer supply glut." The news comes at a difficult time for the nation's cattle producers. Poultry protein price competition has increased due to diminished U.S. chicken exports in the wake of worldwide bird flu fears....
Industry leaders: Mad cow finding shows U.S. system works
Cattle industry leaders say the discovery of a new case of mad cow disease in this country points to the success of the United State's testing and surveillance program. They also say that consumers -- both in this country and abroad -- can remain confident in the safety of U-S beef. A cow in Alabama tested positive for mad cow disease. Officials with the U-S Department of Agriculture say the animal did NOT enter the human food or animal feed chains. This is the third case of mad cow disease in the U-S since December 2003. Authorities are still investigating the origin of the animal involved in the latest case. Jim Magagna, of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, says that now, there isn't the sense of panic and fear that surrounded the disease early on. He says there is -- quote -- "pretty good evidence we don't have a widespread problem in this country."
Hong Kong halts Swift Beef imports
Hong Kong health authorities have slapped a suspension on all imports from a Colorado-based beef processor after discovering the firm had shipped meat products to the territory containing skeletal bones. Imports from the Swift Beef Company were suspended with "immediate effect," according to the airport office of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, citing a spot inspection of product from the company carried out Friday. "The decision was made following discovery of beef imports with bones from that plant during inspections," a department spokesman said in a statement. Hong Kong permits only boneless beef from cattle less than 30 months old, with the animal's brain, spinal cord and other parts with a high risk of mad cow disease removed. Hong Kong banned all beef U.S. beef imports Dec. 24, 2003, after mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was detected in a cow in Washington State. The ban was partially lifted Dec. 29 after a protocol was agreed that set out the packing requirements and handling requirements. "We will contact the relevant authorities for more information concerning the beef imports in question," the spokesman said. The U.S. meat processing plant that made the ineligible shipment to Hong Kong is certified by the U.S. Agriculture Department as eligible for overseas shipment, including Hong Kong and Japan....
Japan to seek more U.S. explanation on beef checks
Japan's vice farm minister said on Monday his ministry would seek further explanations from the United States about its beef inspection system after Hong Kong suspended U.S. beef imports. Japan wants to know why beef shipped to Hong Kong from a plant of U.S. beef company Swift & Co. contained banned cattle parts, Vice Agriculture Minister Mamoru Ishihara said. "It was very disappointing," Ishihara said when asked by reporters about the U.S. violation of its beef trade agreement with Hong Kong, which came nearly two months after Japan detected a similar violation in its inspection of a shipment of U.S. veal. Ishihara said that the latest violation may answer Japanese questions about whether the ineligible U.S. shipment to Japan was an isolated case or a systematical problem....
Statement by USDA Chief Veterinary Officer John Clifford (DVM) Regarding Positive BSE Test Results
“We received a positive result on a Western blot confirmatory test conducted at the USDA laboratories in Ames , Iowa , on samples from an animal that had tested “inconclusive” on a rapid screening test performed on Friday, March 10. “The samples were taken from a non-ambulatory animal on a farm in Alabama . A local private veterinarian euthanized and sampled the animal and sent the samples for further testing, which was conducted at one of our contract diagnostic laboratories at the University of Georgia . The animal was buried on the farm and it did not enter the animal or human food chains. “We are now working with Alabama animal health officials to conduct an epidemiological investigation to gather any further information we can on the herd of origin of this animal. The animal had only resided on the most recent farm in Alabama for less than a year. “We will be working to locate animals from this cow’s birth cohort (animals born in the same herd within one year of the affected animal) and any offspring. We will also work with Food and Drug Administration officials to determine any feed history that may be relevant to the investigation. Experience worldwide has shown us that it is highly unusual to find BSE in more than one animal in a herd or in an affected animal’s offspring. Nevertheless, all animals of interest will be tested for BSE. “Under USDA testing protocols, surveillance samples are sent to contract laboratories for screening tests. If the sample is found to be inconclusive on the screening test, it is then shipped to our National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames , Iowa , for an additional rapid test and two confirmatory tests: the immunohistochemistry (IHC) test, which is conducted by APHIS scientists, and the Western blot test, which is conducted by scientists with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. USDA considers an animal positive for BSE if either of the two confirmatory tests returns a positive result. “In this instance, the inconclusive result from the contract lab in Georgia was confirmed through a second rapid test at NVSL. Now, the Western blot test has returned a positive result, and that is sufficient for us to confirm this animal to be positive for BSE, which is why we are making this announcement today. The IHC results are still pending and we will release those results as soon as they are available, which we expect to be later this week. “I want to emphasize that human and animal health in the United States are protected by a system of interlocking safeguards, and that we remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef. Again, this animal did not enter the human food or animal feed chains. “While epidemiological work to determine the animal’s precise age is just getting underway and is ongoing, the attending veterinarian has indicated that, based on dentition, it was an older animal, quite possibly upwards of 10 years of age. This would indicate that this animal would have been born prior to the implementation of the Food and Drug Administration’s 1997 feed ban. Older animals are more likely to have been exposed to contaminated feed circulating before the FDA’s 1997 ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding practices, which scientific research has indicated is the most likely route for BSE transmission. “By any measure, the incidence of BSE in this country is extremely low. Our enhanced surveillance program was designed as a one-time snapshot to provide information about the level of prevalence of BSE in the United States . We have conducted surveillance in the United States since 1990 and following the initial positive in December 2003, we developed an enhanced surveillance program. Since June 2004, all sectors of the cattle industry have cooperated in this program by submitting samples from more than 650,000 animals from the highest risk populations and more than 20,000 from clinically normal, older animals, as part our enhanced BSE surveillance program. To date, including the animal in today’s announcement, only two of these highest risk animals have tested positive for the disease as part of the enhanced surveillance program. “As we approach the conclusion of our enhanced surveillance program, let me offer a few thoughts regarding surveillance going forward. I can assure you that we will continue to base our maintenance surveillance testing on international guidelines. Though the nature and extent of maintenance surveillance has not yet been finalized, the incidence of BSE in this country remains extremely low and our interlocking safeguards are working to protect both human and animal health and we remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef. “As we move forward with the epidemiological investigation that has been initiated today into this case of BSE, we will continue to be very transparent in sharing information with the public and with our trading partners around the world."
US confirms 3rd case of mad cow in 27 months
A beef cow from a herd in Alabama has tested positive for mad cow disease, U.S. officials said on Monday, confirming the third case of the disease in 27 months. The U.S. Agriculture Department said the 10-year-old animal, which had tested "inconclusive" for mad cow disease during the weekend, showed a positive result when subjected to a more advanced test. The latest discovery came at a time when U.S. officials were trying to convince Japan to reopen its market to U.S. beef after a shipment of veal violated meat export rules by containing spinal material. Japan suspended beef trade on January 20. South Korea said earlier on Monday it could cancel a planned opening of its market in April to U.S. beef if a new U.S. case was found. Seoul has banned U.S. beef since the first U.S. case in December 2003. Agriculture Department Chief Veterinarian John Clifford announced the positive test results during a telephone news conference. He said the new case was confirmed through the Western Blot test, which was added to USDA's battery of tests last year....
Finding of mad cow in U.S. hits Tyson shares
News that another case of mad cow disease has been found in the United States pressured shares of the country's largest beef processor on Monday. Following the afternoon report, shares of Tyson Foods (TSN) dropped 4.3% to close at $13.07. In a written statement, Tyson said "we remain confident in the safety of our beef products because of the kind of cattle we buy and the precautionary measures we take" and that it does not expect "today's finding to change consumer demand for beef." The company buys young beef animals, "usually less than 30 months old, which are not in the BSE risk group," it added. "We also make sure materials from beef cattle that can potentially carry BSE, such as the brain and spinal cord, are removed and do not enter the food supply." Clifford also said that the U.S. beef supply remains safe....
Meat Company Shares Sink on Mad Cow News
Shares of beef-dependent companies including Tyson Foods Inc. and McDonald's Corp. traded lower Monday after the Agriculture Department confirmed that a cow in Alabama has tested positive for mad cow disease. Shares of meat producer Smithfield Foods Inc. gave up 5 cents, to $28.07 on the NYSE. In the restaurant industry, hamburger giant McDonald's shares fell 33 cents to close at $34.32, while Wendy's International Inc.'s stock fell 54 cents to $62.08. YUM Brands Inc., owner of Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, fell 33 cents to $48.45. Stephens Inc. analyst Farha Aslam, however, said in a client note on Tyson that "beef demand has proven very resilient" in the face of past mad cow headlines and doesn't believe Tyson's U.S. sales will suffer. Aslam said mad cow is currently "less worrisome than bird flu."....
CME Cattle Review: Mixed; Seen Down Tue On Positive BSE Test
Chicago Mercantile Exchange live cattle futures prices settled mixed Monday on news the U.S. Department of Agriculture was testing a cow brain sample for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad-cow disease. But, after the close, the USDA announced a positive test for the cow, which spent the past year on a farm in Alabama. As a result, lower prices for CME cattle futures are expected Tuesday morning. Most active April live cattle futures have already fallen 1,233 points from their Jan. 10 top to Friday's low, for a 13% decline. "Unless this animal's herd mates also test positive for the disease, I don't see any sustained impact," said Dan Vaught, analyst and economist with AG Edwards and Sons. "American consumers have become immunized to this type of story." But, although there is often a seasonal bounce in early spring cattle prices, as weather warms for grilling, Vaught and others warned of an expected summer increase in slaughter-ready live cattle supplies. "I'm already bearish because of the supply and demand fundamentals," said Tres Knippa, a live cattle pit broker with many cattle feedlot customers. "This positive result could exacerbate an expected early summer supply glut." The news comes at a difficult time for the nation's cattle producers. Poultry protein price competition has increased due to diminished U.S. chicken exports in the wake of worldwide bird flu fears....
Industry leaders: Mad cow finding shows U.S. system works
Cattle industry leaders say the discovery of a new case of mad cow disease in this country points to the success of the United State's testing and surveillance program. They also say that consumers -- both in this country and abroad -- can remain confident in the safety of U-S beef. A cow in Alabama tested positive for mad cow disease. Officials with the U-S Department of Agriculture say the animal did NOT enter the human food or animal feed chains. This is the third case of mad cow disease in the U-S since December 2003. Authorities are still investigating the origin of the animal involved in the latest case. Jim Magagna, of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, says that now, there isn't the sense of panic and fear that surrounded the disease early on. He says there is -- quote -- "pretty good evidence we don't have a widespread problem in this country."
Hong Kong halts Swift Beef imports
Hong Kong health authorities have slapped a suspension on all imports from a Colorado-based beef processor after discovering the firm had shipped meat products to the territory containing skeletal bones. Imports from the Swift Beef Company were suspended with "immediate effect," according to the airport office of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, citing a spot inspection of product from the company carried out Friday. "The decision was made following discovery of beef imports with bones from that plant during inspections," a department spokesman said in a statement. Hong Kong permits only boneless beef from cattle less than 30 months old, with the animal's brain, spinal cord and other parts with a high risk of mad cow disease removed. Hong Kong banned all beef U.S. beef imports Dec. 24, 2003, after mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was detected in a cow in Washington State. The ban was partially lifted Dec. 29 after a protocol was agreed that set out the packing requirements and handling requirements. "We will contact the relevant authorities for more information concerning the beef imports in question," the spokesman said. The U.S. meat processing plant that made the ineligible shipment to Hong Kong is certified by the U.S. Agriculture Department as eligible for overseas shipment, including Hong Kong and Japan....
Japan to seek more U.S. explanation on beef checks
Japan's vice farm minister said on Monday his ministry would seek further explanations from the United States about its beef inspection system after Hong Kong suspended U.S. beef imports. Japan wants to know why beef shipped to Hong Kong from a plant of U.S. beef company Swift & Co. contained banned cattle parts, Vice Agriculture Minister Mamoru Ishihara said. "It was very disappointing," Ishihara said when asked by reporters about the U.S. violation of its beef trade agreement with Hong Kong, which came nearly two months after Japan detected a similar violation in its inspection of a shipment of U.S. veal. Ishihara said that the latest violation may answer Japanese questions about whether the ineligible U.S. shipment to Japan was an isolated case or a systematical problem....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Bush to look West when replacing Interior's Norton President Bush will abide by tradition and name a Westerner to replace Interior Secretary Gale Norton, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said. And the White House will look for a successor whose views mirror those of the pro-development Norton, Card said. "We will be looking West," Card told The Denver Post. "She came to the job with a real appreciation of Western lands. ... We will be looking for people who have the same appreciation." Under Norton, there has been a 22 percent increase in coal production on U.S. public lands and a 17 percent increase in natural-gas production. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, part of her agency, went from a backlog of oil and gas permits to producing them faster than companies can drill them. She also made federal lands friendlier to loggers, snowmobilers and off- roaders....
Interior's Norton had big impact on West Perhaps no one person has done more in the past five years to alter the landscape of the rural West than Gale Norton, who resigned Friday as Interior secretary. She opened the Rocky Mountains and much of the North Slope of Alaska to oil and gas development. She all but banned new protected wilderness areas on the federal land under her control. And she urged the Bureau of Land Management to seek more logging on 2.5 million acres in Western Oregon. Norton, who leaves office at month's end, personally oversaw a messy water war in Oregon's Klamath River basin in 2002 that eventually resulted in irrigation for farmers while more than 60,000 fish died. The river is still in such ill health that chinook fishing may be shut down along vast stretches of the West Coast....
Why Interior is such a difficult agency to lead Geographically speaking, no member of the Bush administration has had more impact on or responsibility for the United States than Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Secretary Norton, who announced her resignation Friday, oversaw more than 500 million acres of national parks and wilderness, water reclamation projects, most energy development, Indian tribal issues, endangered-species protection, and tracts of arid Western rangeland where cattle roam and the deer and the antelope play. The position is a challenging one that often embroils its occupants in controversy - and is likely to continue to do so. Typically run by a native Westerner, the Interior Department in recent years has swung between an emphasis on environmental protection and a philosophy of developing public lands - called "wise use" or "market-based environmentalism." To his critics, James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's lightning-rod Interior secretary, represented the latter approach at its most extreme. During the Clinton years, Bruce Babbitt - former head of the pro-environment League of Conservation Voters - fought to close old mines and dams, tried to charge users more for cattle grazing and mineral mining, and expanded national monuments and protections for other federal landscape. Ms. Norton's five-year tenure, moving Interior back to a more development-oriented agenda, gets mixed reviews....
Mystery animal killing sheep in McCone, Garfield counties Ranchers in McCone and Garfield counties, as well as federal wildlife officials, are hunting a wolf or wolf hybrid that has killed 35 sheep and wounded 70 others since late December. The attacks started near Circle more than 250 miles from the nearest known wolf territory. Five sheep were killed and 15 wounded, some of which died later. The next attack happened Jan. 10 and ended with 21 grown ewes dead and 40 injured. In both cases, agents with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services looked at tracks and other evidence and determined domestic dogs were responsible. On Jan. 12, four more sheep were killed and six injured, said Carolyn Sime, wolf program coordinator for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Word of the attacks spread, and ranchers began looking for a killer dog. On Feb. 6, Jeff Skyberg, a private trapper in Circle, got a call from a rancher who said he'd spotted large dog tracks in some fresh snow. Skyberg, who works for a local predator control district funded by ranchers, got in a small plane and followed the tracks. "When I got to the end of the tracks, it wasn't a dog," he said. He described what looked like a wolf: a big gray animal with a straight tail. Dog or hybrid tails often curl....
Zoo's wolves are Southwestern visitors Minnesota Zoo keeper Jackie Fallon has spent much of her career working desperately to save the "ghosts of the Southwest," the rarest and most endangered wolves in North America. Mexican gray wolves were wiped out in the United States by the middle of the 20th century, but the subspecies found a sliver of hope in the late 1970s after a trapper working for the government captured five wolves alive in Mexico. For more than a decade, Fallon has been part of a two-nation effort to breed those captive wolves and return their descendants to the wild, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Apple Valley zoo in 1994 to help. One of the zoo's former wolves is now at a holding facility awaiting release into the Blue Mountain Range in Arizona. "That's what I've always strived for, every day, for all of these years," Fallon said. In the meantime, Fallon cares for four male Mexican wolves, the smallest and most genetically distinct type of gray wolf....
Love of Land, Hate for Developers Unite Agriculturalists and Environmentalists From the time they could sit in a saddle, Cary and Layne Lightsey have enjoyed riding around the family's 6,500-acre cattle ranch near Lake Wales in wonder at its natural beauty. These days the brothers, also partners in Lightsey Cattle Co., take a special pleasure in their rides knowing they've found a way to preserve the beauty of the land for generations to come. "Our happiness comes from the land and work and the traditional lifestyle. We're preserving what makes us happy," said Cary Lightsey, a sixth-generation rancher. The Lightseys have sold the development rights to 60 percent of their 16,000acre ranch properties in Polk, Highlands and Osceola in five separate deals during the past 14 years to state and federal government conservation programs, which will keep the land in its natural state in perpetuity. Although they and future Lightsey generations will maintain physical possession of the land and can continue using it for agricultural purposes, they cannot sell the land to real estate developers for homes, stores or office buildings. Any future owners outside the family also will have to maintain the land as is....
Column: State errs on private hunting decision The recent decision by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission to limit the general big game hunting season to five weeks is a thinly veiled effort to force more public hunting on private property. Unfortunately, limiting the season to just five weeks and not allowing early and late season hunts is unlikely to improve wildlife management and will almost certainly hurt hunters in the long run. Opening access to private property is a recurring theme for Gov. Schweitzer's administration, one that should leave landowners shaking in their cowboy boots or their wing-tips. The governor recently blamed fences, especially those built by out-of-staters, for keeping out hunters and anglers. He said that "these fences aren't fencing Angus bulls in, they are fencing Montanans out." The new rules clearly go beyond the out-of-state owners so disdained by the governor to include Montana citizens who do own Angus bulls....
Kansas is increasing efforts to get control of its wild hog population A dozen men, a half-dozen trucks and a helicopter moved across Kansas as a team last week, shooting wild hogs from the air in spots where the pigs were loathed. Shortly after listening to a landowner lament damage to fences, crops and gamebird nests Wednesday, the aircraft flushed eight hogs from thick cedars. Soon, the entire herd was dead. Sam Graham of the Kansas Animal Health Department was even happier than the rancher. His department is concerned feral swine could hold diseases that could affect livestock and humans, so the hunt gives them hogs to test. Tom Halstead, U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife services state director, said the project was funded by the state health department, with cooperation from his agency. Not native to the U.S., and only found in Kansas within the last 15 years, wild hogs are getting a lot of attention this year....
Barriers at border go up as debate on effects goes on While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle. This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally. But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades. In a 2004 report by the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, congressional staff reported seeing photos of a special truck that could park perpendicular to the barrier on the Mexican side, unfold a set of rails over the barrier and unfold another set of rails behind it. "Other vehicles could then drive up the back of the modified truck, across its top and down its front, over the vehicle barrier and into the United States," the report said. To build the barriers, workers may need to widen roads, build new ones and sink wells to supply water for making concrete. Despite those impacts, biologists, land managers and environmentalists generally favor the barriers because they don't impede wildlife and can prevent even greater damage by vehicles....
Suit aims to stall Alaska oil development Environmental groups are suing the Interior Department to block expanded oil and gas exploration in an ecologically sensitive area of Alaska's North Slope. The 18-page lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Juneau focuses on the government's decision in January to allow drillers to lease previously closed acreage in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Bush administration's decision opens up 389,000 acres for leasing, giving drillers a chance to find and produce an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the tundra north and east of Teshekpuk Lake. The plaintiffs contend the Bureau of Land Management, an Interior agency, violated the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws in failing to properly analyze the potential impacts of oil and gas activity in a region that is a magnet for thousands of migratory geese. They contend the agency paid inadequate attention to the potential for industrial sprawl that could chop up an Arctic haven for animals of great importance to subsistence hunters....
Editorial: Oil and gas leasing moving too quickly Colorado resources will help meet the nation's energy needs, but oil and gas development should respect other public values such as clean air, clean water and wildlife. There is a risk that the frenetic pace of oil and gas activity in the West is running roughshod over other public goals. And the leases now being granted could dictate the fate of our public lands and national forests for decades. The Bush administration long has pushed for expanded drilling on federal lands, even in ecologically sensitive areas. As a result, if a future Congress wants to someday protect those areas, it may be too late. Mineral leases are property rights, so once oil and gas companies obtain them they have all but guaranteed their ability to move in drill rigs, usually within a 10-year window. Oil companies also must apply for drilling permits, but that approval is very likely. Ironically, energy outfits already have more federal land under lease than they can drill in the foreseeable future. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's 2004 data show that energy companies have leased 35 million acres of public lands, but only about a third, or 11.6 million acres, are producing any oil or gas. Energy companies have more than 4,300 leases on federal lands in Colorado, but in 2004 sought permission to drill on just 378. The backlog of untapped leases means that oil and gas companies have locked in their right to drill on public lands well beyond this administration. The companies say there's so much drilling taking place that they can't get enough rigs - they're even bringing in rigs from China....
Evangelicals, Scientists, Environmentalists Fight for Endangered Species Act As the Senate prepares to take up revisions to the Endangered Species Act this month, evangelicals, scientists, environmentalists, and environmental-evangelical-scientists launched a nationwide effort to raise awareness among their supporters about the threat to the landmark law and to urge policymakers to preserve scientific protections in the act. The Noah Alliance, an interfaith group of Evangelical Christian, Protestant and Jews, began running about $200,000 of advertisements on hundreds of radio, print and television media since Mar. 8. Organizers hope the ads, which will run through Mar. 13, will serve to alert people of faith to the potential dismantling of the Endangered Species Act – legislation they call “America’s modern-day ark to save God’s creatures.” “As Evangelical Christians in our time, we see a most profound threat to God's creation in the destruction of endangered species and their God-given habitat,” said Calvin DeWitt, environmental professor at the University of Wisconsin and president of the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists. “We want the public to see the risk we face if Congress weakens the Endangered Species Act.” The Academy, which includes nearly 70 Evangelical scholars from Baptist, Pentecostal, Reformed, and other churches and from 35 Christian colleges and universities in 19 states, is one of several faith-based groups that formed Noah’s Alliance last year specifically to bring a religious voice in the movement to protect endangered species....
Raging Texas Wildfires Blamed for 7 Deaths Massive wildfires raced across the Texas Panhandle and South Plains early Monday, burning more than half a million acres, leaving at least seven people dead and injuring at least seven more. Four of the victims were killed in a chain-reaction crash on Interstate 40 east of Groom as smoke obscured the road. Three others died in fires near Borger, northeast of Amarillo. "This is probably one of the biggest fire days in Texas history," said Warren Bielenberg, a spokesman for the Texas Forest Service. The fires scorched more than 663,000 acres - about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island - far eclipsing the deadly wildfires that prompted Gov. Rick Perry to declare a statewide drought disaster in January. The earlier blaze charred more than 455,000 acres, destroyed more than 340 homes and killed three people in Texas....
200 ordered to flee N.M. grass fire A 70,000-acre grass fire burned Sunday near homes and farms in two southeastern New Mexico communities, prompting evacuation orders for up to 200 people and injuring one man. The fire burned the post office in McDonald and several other buildings, officials said. A state road was closed and residents in McDonald and Prairie View were told to leave their homes. A man who suffered burns while trying to put out the fire was taken to a Lubbock, Texas, hospital where he was in stable condition, Lovington Fire Department Capt. Robert Morris said. About a dozen fire departments fought the blaze and dug fire lines to protect homes and buildings as winds gusted to 60 mph, Morris said....
Cattlemen's philosophies deepen split There is a split down the middle of the U.S. cattle industry that runs deep, although it can be difficult for city and town folks to fathom. On one side are R-CALF USA and state affiliates such as the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association. On the other side are the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and state affiliates such as the South Dakota Cattlemen's Association. They disagree sharply on issues such as foreign trade agreements, country-of-origin labeling, mandatory animal identification and opening the U.S. border to Canadian cattle after that country's mad cow disease problem. It's hard to tell the difference between these groups simply by appearances. They all typically wear cowboy hats and boots. They all make their living from cattle. The two sides are so sharply split that they don't even agree on why they are split....
Most recent rift between cattle groups began in the 1990s The growing rift in the cattle and beef industry began coming to a head in 1999, although various livestock associations have been battling each other since the turn of the 20th century. R-CALF was formed out of frustration with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association on the part of some of its members. Among them was Leo McDonnell, a Columbus, Mont., rancher who chafed when the group, in his view, wasn't battling hard enough on behalf of independent ranchers. McDonnell, along with Herman Schumacher, a sale-barn operator from Herreid, and Kathleen Kelley of Meeker, Colo., founded the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund in 1998. McDonnell became its president. The group became a membership organization in 1999. The Stockgrowers were becoming split, with some favoring what they saw as the more progressive philosophy of the NCBA and others complaining that the NCBA was favoring the feeders and big meatpacking companies over the interests of independent ranchers....
Mixing saddles and spas Once considered the "dude ranch capital of the world," Tucson sometimes seems to have traded in its boots and spurs for multivitamin facials and golf carts. But now, it's mixing them. Two of Tucson's three surviving guest ranches are offering services such as tai chi and yoga classes, hot rock massages, full-service manicures and fitness centers. The third, the Lazy K Bar Guest Ranch in Marana, doesn't have a spa, but it is joining the others in offering new programs such as cowgirl camps and Nature Conservancy programs to attract new demographic groups. "We're doing better than we have in the last number of years by adjusting our focus on getting different types of people to the ranch," Lazy K Sales Manager Mikki Gries said....
Payson's oldest cowboy still has swagger at 90 Charlie Henderson is the oldest cowboy in Payson -- although he'd probably never admit it. He's much too classy for that sort of bravado, even for an old rancher. But that doesn't stop his friends from crowing the news. Back when Highway 260 was still a dusty drag heading east, Duke Wilbanks worked cattle with Henderson on nearby Little Green Valley Ranch. "He made one of the best ranches in Arizona," Wilbanks said. "He had a lot of common sense and took care of the land better than the Forest Service." And at 90, Henderson's still got that cowboy swagger. His dusty, black-felt cowboy hat, curling at the edges, sits low on his head, obscuring his cornflower blue eyes. He wears a flannel shirt and faded Levi's, threadbare in the knee....
San Juan Capistrano: Living History in Spanish West Mission San Juan Capistrano, is one in a chain of 21 settlements founded by the Spanish missionaries during the middle 1700s. On November 1, 1776, Father Junipero Serra founded the San Juan Capistrano Mission, in what is now Orange County. San Juan Capistrano is best known for where the swallows once migrated each March after wintering 7,000 miles away in Goya, Argentina. However, before the swallows' annual return was first recorded at the San Juan Capistrano Mission, the grounds had fallen to opportunists, government turnovers, and to violent Pacific storms. Serra built a self-contained adobe fort in the 1770s in what had been a valley of several hundred Juaneno Indians. They used local materials to construct the San Juan Capistrano Mission on a knoll, north of where two salmon-plump rivers merged. In 1794, forty adobe homes were built, housing Mission workers and ranch hands, along Los Rios Street --the oldest residential street in California. In 1797 construction began on a stone church designed to hold hundreds of parishioners. The massive structure took nine years to complete and towered above the valley floor....
Bush to look West when replacing Interior's Norton President Bush will abide by tradition and name a Westerner to replace Interior Secretary Gale Norton, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said. And the White House will look for a successor whose views mirror those of the pro-development Norton, Card said. "We will be looking West," Card told The Denver Post. "She came to the job with a real appreciation of Western lands. ... We will be looking for people who have the same appreciation." Under Norton, there has been a 22 percent increase in coal production on U.S. public lands and a 17 percent increase in natural-gas production. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, part of her agency, went from a backlog of oil and gas permits to producing them faster than companies can drill them. She also made federal lands friendlier to loggers, snowmobilers and off- roaders....
Interior's Norton had big impact on West Perhaps no one person has done more in the past five years to alter the landscape of the rural West than Gale Norton, who resigned Friday as Interior secretary. She opened the Rocky Mountains and much of the North Slope of Alaska to oil and gas development. She all but banned new protected wilderness areas on the federal land under her control. And she urged the Bureau of Land Management to seek more logging on 2.5 million acres in Western Oregon. Norton, who leaves office at month's end, personally oversaw a messy water war in Oregon's Klamath River basin in 2002 that eventually resulted in irrigation for farmers while more than 60,000 fish died. The river is still in such ill health that chinook fishing may be shut down along vast stretches of the West Coast....
Why Interior is such a difficult agency to lead Geographically speaking, no member of the Bush administration has had more impact on or responsibility for the United States than Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Secretary Norton, who announced her resignation Friday, oversaw more than 500 million acres of national parks and wilderness, water reclamation projects, most energy development, Indian tribal issues, endangered-species protection, and tracts of arid Western rangeland where cattle roam and the deer and the antelope play. The position is a challenging one that often embroils its occupants in controversy - and is likely to continue to do so. Typically run by a native Westerner, the Interior Department in recent years has swung between an emphasis on environmental protection and a philosophy of developing public lands - called "wise use" or "market-based environmentalism." To his critics, James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's lightning-rod Interior secretary, represented the latter approach at its most extreme. During the Clinton years, Bruce Babbitt - former head of the pro-environment League of Conservation Voters - fought to close old mines and dams, tried to charge users more for cattle grazing and mineral mining, and expanded national monuments and protections for other federal landscape. Ms. Norton's five-year tenure, moving Interior back to a more development-oriented agenda, gets mixed reviews....
Mystery animal killing sheep in McCone, Garfield counties Ranchers in McCone and Garfield counties, as well as federal wildlife officials, are hunting a wolf or wolf hybrid that has killed 35 sheep and wounded 70 others since late December. The attacks started near Circle more than 250 miles from the nearest known wolf territory. Five sheep were killed and 15 wounded, some of which died later. The next attack happened Jan. 10 and ended with 21 grown ewes dead and 40 injured. In both cases, agents with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services looked at tracks and other evidence and determined domestic dogs were responsible. On Jan. 12, four more sheep were killed and six injured, said Carolyn Sime, wolf program coordinator for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Word of the attacks spread, and ranchers began looking for a killer dog. On Feb. 6, Jeff Skyberg, a private trapper in Circle, got a call from a rancher who said he'd spotted large dog tracks in some fresh snow. Skyberg, who works for a local predator control district funded by ranchers, got in a small plane and followed the tracks. "When I got to the end of the tracks, it wasn't a dog," he said. He described what looked like a wolf: a big gray animal with a straight tail. Dog or hybrid tails often curl....
Zoo's wolves are Southwestern visitors Minnesota Zoo keeper Jackie Fallon has spent much of her career working desperately to save the "ghosts of the Southwest," the rarest and most endangered wolves in North America. Mexican gray wolves were wiped out in the United States by the middle of the 20th century, but the subspecies found a sliver of hope in the late 1970s after a trapper working for the government captured five wolves alive in Mexico. For more than a decade, Fallon has been part of a two-nation effort to breed those captive wolves and return their descendants to the wild, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Apple Valley zoo in 1994 to help. One of the zoo's former wolves is now at a holding facility awaiting release into the Blue Mountain Range in Arizona. "That's what I've always strived for, every day, for all of these years," Fallon said. In the meantime, Fallon cares for four male Mexican wolves, the smallest and most genetically distinct type of gray wolf....
Love of Land, Hate for Developers Unite Agriculturalists and Environmentalists From the time they could sit in a saddle, Cary and Layne Lightsey have enjoyed riding around the family's 6,500-acre cattle ranch near Lake Wales in wonder at its natural beauty. These days the brothers, also partners in Lightsey Cattle Co., take a special pleasure in their rides knowing they've found a way to preserve the beauty of the land for generations to come. "Our happiness comes from the land and work and the traditional lifestyle. We're preserving what makes us happy," said Cary Lightsey, a sixth-generation rancher. The Lightseys have sold the development rights to 60 percent of their 16,000acre ranch properties in Polk, Highlands and Osceola in five separate deals during the past 14 years to state and federal government conservation programs, which will keep the land in its natural state in perpetuity. Although they and future Lightsey generations will maintain physical possession of the land and can continue using it for agricultural purposes, they cannot sell the land to real estate developers for homes, stores or office buildings. Any future owners outside the family also will have to maintain the land as is....
Column: State errs on private hunting decision The recent decision by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission to limit the general big game hunting season to five weeks is a thinly veiled effort to force more public hunting on private property. Unfortunately, limiting the season to just five weeks and not allowing early and late season hunts is unlikely to improve wildlife management and will almost certainly hurt hunters in the long run. Opening access to private property is a recurring theme for Gov. Schweitzer's administration, one that should leave landowners shaking in their cowboy boots or their wing-tips. The governor recently blamed fences, especially those built by out-of-staters, for keeping out hunters and anglers. He said that "these fences aren't fencing Angus bulls in, they are fencing Montanans out." The new rules clearly go beyond the out-of-state owners so disdained by the governor to include Montana citizens who do own Angus bulls....
Kansas is increasing efforts to get control of its wild hog population A dozen men, a half-dozen trucks and a helicopter moved across Kansas as a team last week, shooting wild hogs from the air in spots where the pigs were loathed. Shortly after listening to a landowner lament damage to fences, crops and gamebird nests Wednesday, the aircraft flushed eight hogs from thick cedars. Soon, the entire herd was dead. Sam Graham of the Kansas Animal Health Department was even happier than the rancher. His department is concerned feral swine could hold diseases that could affect livestock and humans, so the hunt gives them hogs to test. Tom Halstead, U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife services state director, said the project was funded by the state health department, with cooperation from his agency. Not native to the U.S., and only found in Kansas within the last 15 years, wild hogs are getting a lot of attention this year....
Barriers at border go up as debate on effects goes on While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle. This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally. But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades. In a 2004 report by the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, congressional staff reported seeing photos of a special truck that could park perpendicular to the barrier on the Mexican side, unfold a set of rails over the barrier and unfold another set of rails behind it. "Other vehicles could then drive up the back of the modified truck, across its top and down its front, over the vehicle barrier and into the United States," the report said. To build the barriers, workers may need to widen roads, build new ones and sink wells to supply water for making concrete. Despite those impacts, biologists, land managers and environmentalists generally favor the barriers because they don't impede wildlife and can prevent even greater damage by vehicles....
Suit aims to stall Alaska oil development Environmental groups are suing the Interior Department to block expanded oil and gas exploration in an ecologically sensitive area of Alaska's North Slope. The 18-page lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Juneau focuses on the government's decision in January to allow drillers to lease previously closed acreage in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Bush administration's decision opens up 389,000 acres for leasing, giving drillers a chance to find and produce an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the tundra north and east of Teshekpuk Lake. The plaintiffs contend the Bureau of Land Management, an Interior agency, violated the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws in failing to properly analyze the potential impacts of oil and gas activity in a region that is a magnet for thousands of migratory geese. They contend the agency paid inadequate attention to the potential for industrial sprawl that could chop up an Arctic haven for animals of great importance to subsistence hunters....
Editorial: Oil and gas leasing moving too quickly Colorado resources will help meet the nation's energy needs, but oil and gas development should respect other public values such as clean air, clean water and wildlife. There is a risk that the frenetic pace of oil and gas activity in the West is running roughshod over other public goals. And the leases now being granted could dictate the fate of our public lands and national forests for decades. The Bush administration long has pushed for expanded drilling on federal lands, even in ecologically sensitive areas. As a result, if a future Congress wants to someday protect those areas, it may be too late. Mineral leases are property rights, so once oil and gas companies obtain them they have all but guaranteed their ability to move in drill rigs, usually within a 10-year window. Oil companies also must apply for drilling permits, but that approval is very likely. Ironically, energy outfits already have more federal land under lease than they can drill in the foreseeable future. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's 2004 data show that energy companies have leased 35 million acres of public lands, but only about a third, or 11.6 million acres, are producing any oil or gas. Energy companies have more than 4,300 leases on federal lands in Colorado, but in 2004 sought permission to drill on just 378. The backlog of untapped leases means that oil and gas companies have locked in their right to drill on public lands well beyond this administration. The companies say there's so much drilling taking place that they can't get enough rigs - they're even bringing in rigs from China....
Evangelicals, Scientists, Environmentalists Fight for Endangered Species Act As the Senate prepares to take up revisions to the Endangered Species Act this month, evangelicals, scientists, environmentalists, and environmental-evangelical-scientists launched a nationwide effort to raise awareness among their supporters about the threat to the landmark law and to urge policymakers to preserve scientific protections in the act. The Noah Alliance, an interfaith group of Evangelical Christian, Protestant and Jews, began running about $200,000 of advertisements on hundreds of radio, print and television media since Mar. 8. Organizers hope the ads, which will run through Mar. 13, will serve to alert people of faith to the potential dismantling of the Endangered Species Act – legislation they call “America’s modern-day ark to save God’s creatures.” “As Evangelical Christians in our time, we see a most profound threat to God's creation in the destruction of endangered species and their God-given habitat,” said Calvin DeWitt, environmental professor at the University of Wisconsin and president of the Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists. “We want the public to see the risk we face if Congress weakens the Endangered Species Act.” The Academy, which includes nearly 70 Evangelical scholars from Baptist, Pentecostal, Reformed, and other churches and from 35 Christian colleges and universities in 19 states, is one of several faith-based groups that formed Noah’s Alliance last year specifically to bring a religious voice in the movement to protect endangered species....
Raging Texas Wildfires Blamed for 7 Deaths Massive wildfires raced across the Texas Panhandle and South Plains early Monday, burning more than half a million acres, leaving at least seven people dead and injuring at least seven more. Four of the victims were killed in a chain-reaction crash on Interstate 40 east of Groom as smoke obscured the road. Three others died in fires near Borger, northeast of Amarillo. "This is probably one of the biggest fire days in Texas history," said Warren Bielenberg, a spokesman for the Texas Forest Service. The fires scorched more than 663,000 acres - about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island - far eclipsing the deadly wildfires that prompted Gov. Rick Perry to declare a statewide drought disaster in January. The earlier blaze charred more than 455,000 acres, destroyed more than 340 homes and killed three people in Texas....
200 ordered to flee N.M. grass fire A 70,000-acre grass fire burned Sunday near homes and farms in two southeastern New Mexico communities, prompting evacuation orders for up to 200 people and injuring one man. The fire burned the post office in McDonald and several other buildings, officials said. A state road was closed and residents in McDonald and Prairie View were told to leave their homes. A man who suffered burns while trying to put out the fire was taken to a Lubbock, Texas, hospital where he was in stable condition, Lovington Fire Department Capt. Robert Morris said. About a dozen fire departments fought the blaze and dug fire lines to protect homes and buildings as winds gusted to 60 mph, Morris said....
Cattlemen's philosophies deepen split There is a split down the middle of the U.S. cattle industry that runs deep, although it can be difficult for city and town folks to fathom. On one side are R-CALF USA and state affiliates such as the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association. On the other side are the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and state affiliates such as the South Dakota Cattlemen's Association. They disagree sharply on issues such as foreign trade agreements, country-of-origin labeling, mandatory animal identification and opening the U.S. border to Canadian cattle after that country's mad cow disease problem. It's hard to tell the difference between these groups simply by appearances. They all typically wear cowboy hats and boots. They all make their living from cattle. The two sides are so sharply split that they don't even agree on why they are split....
Most recent rift between cattle groups began in the 1990s The growing rift in the cattle and beef industry began coming to a head in 1999, although various livestock associations have been battling each other since the turn of the 20th century. R-CALF was formed out of frustration with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association on the part of some of its members. Among them was Leo McDonnell, a Columbus, Mont., rancher who chafed when the group, in his view, wasn't battling hard enough on behalf of independent ranchers. McDonnell, along with Herman Schumacher, a sale-barn operator from Herreid, and Kathleen Kelley of Meeker, Colo., founded the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund in 1998. McDonnell became its president. The group became a membership organization in 1999. The Stockgrowers were becoming split, with some favoring what they saw as the more progressive philosophy of the NCBA and others complaining that the NCBA was favoring the feeders and big meatpacking companies over the interests of independent ranchers....
Mixing saddles and spas Once considered the "dude ranch capital of the world," Tucson sometimes seems to have traded in its boots and spurs for multivitamin facials and golf carts. But now, it's mixing them. Two of Tucson's three surviving guest ranches are offering services such as tai chi and yoga classes, hot rock massages, full-service manicures and fitness centers. The third, the Lazy K Bar Guest Ranch in Marana, doesn't have a spa, but it is joining the others in offering new programs such as cowgirl camps and Nature Conservancy programs to attract new demographic groups. "We're doing better than we have in the last number of years by adjusting our focus on getting different types of people to the ranch," Lazy K Sales Manager Mikki Gries said....
Payson's oldest cowboy still has swagger at 90 Charlie Henderson is the oldest cowboy in Payson -- although he'd probably never admit it. He's much too classy for that sort of bravado, even for an old rancher. But that doesn't stop his friends from crowing the news. Back when Highway 260 was still a dusty drag heading east, Duke Wilbanks worked cattle with Henderson on nearby Little Green Valley Ranch. "He made one of the best ranches in Arizona," Wilbanks said. "He had a lot of common sense and took care of the land better than the Forest Service." And at 90, Henderson's still got that cowboy swagger. His dusty, black-felt cowboy hat, curling at the edges, sits low on his head, obscuring his cornflower blue eyes. He wears a flannel shirt and faded Levi's, threadbare in the knee....
San Juan Capistrano: Living History in Spanish West Mission San Juan Capistrano, is one in a chain of 21 settlements founded by the Spanish missionaries during the middle 1700s. On November 1, 1776, Father Junipero Serra founded the San Juan Capistrano Mission, in what is now Orange County. San Juan Capistrano is best known for where the swallows once migrated each March after wintering 7,000 miles away in Goya, Argentina. However, before the swallows' annual return was first recorded at the San Juan Capistrano Mission, the grounds had fallen to opportunists, government turnovers, and to violent Pacific storms. Serra built a self-contained adobe fort in the 1770s in what had been a valley of several hundred Juaneno Indians. They used local materials to construct the San Juan Capistrano Mission on a knoll, north of where two salmon-plump rivers merged. In 1794, forty adobe homes were built, housing Mission workers and ranch hands, along Los Rios Street --the oldest residential street in California. In 1797 construction began on a stone church designed to hold hundreds of parishioners. The massive structure took nine years to complete and towered above the valley floor....
Sunday, March 12, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
Savvy words are a foreign language
By Julie Carter
Language ranks among the most visible, audible, extensive, and useful cultural evidence that human societies create. I think it is one of the most important parts of any culture.
Anyone looking into ranch life, cowboys, “westernisms,” history and culture of the American West will find a cultural language all its own. Yankees don’t always understand it or even recognize it as a real language.
I know that my personal dialect is that of a direct plain-spoken westerner. I use words that others don’t recognize as words and I leave out words (that) others would place in the thought process I’m expressing. See parenthesis. They might call it correct grammar. I call it unnecessary.
While I possess in the recesses of my upbringing a full vocabulary of range vernacular, some very skilled mentors managed to round off the edges of my speech. As a young girl my mother came west from the civilized world bringing with her a civilized vocabulary. I was also blessed with teachers that were able to teach me to hold my own in polite company when it came to conversation.
I’m not embarrassed that I often have to look up the meaning of words used casually and easily by my coworkers. Given the opportunity I could give them a few they would have to look up, not because they are unlearned but because it’s a foreign language to them. And they wouldn’t find them in ordinary dictionaries.
In “cowboy,” jingle isn’t a bell sound or a song. It is a verb that means to gather the horses. Hooley-ann isn’t a country girl but a type of loop thrown to catch a horse. Hoolihan is something completely different and would they know where to look for the dew-claws? Could they label which horse was the crow hopper, crawfisher or the blind bucker?
The early cowboy was generally not highly educated but he never lacked for expression. The sharp directness of his speech seemed novel and strange to conventional people but no one could accuse him of being boring. His ability to turn a picturesque phrase was as refreshing as it was unexpected and often showed his keen sense of humor.
His figures of speech are descriptive and clearly accurate. Trying to accomplish the impossible is “like tryin’ to scratch your ear with your elbow.” When expressing his idea of prominence he might say it “stuck out like a new saloon in a church district.”
Pretty is “prettier than a spotted dog under a red wagon,” and ugly is expressed in colorful descriptions like “so narrow between the eyes he could look through a keyhole with both eyes.”
Today’s cowboy is quite often very educated, but you will find the “book learnin’” never takes away his ability to employ his words in a way that suits him. He will arrange them in a manner that best expresses his idea and is completely unrestricted by tradition.
That cowboy slang, twang and verbal saunter is often worn like the camouflage of a chameleon. From behind it the cowboy will sometimes attempt to beguile the listener and lull them into false sense of superiority. That dumb ole boy trick has made many a cowboy a whole lot of money. Their theory is to not tamper with the natural ignorance of a greenhorn.
Whatever their dialect, phraseology, and vernacular, the cowboy did and still does have a way of expressing a big thought in a few words. “Success is the size of the hole a man leaves after he dies.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
© Julie Carter 2006
Savvy words are a foreign language
By Julie Carter
Language ranks among the most visible, audible, extensive, and useful cultural evidence that human societies create. I think it is one of the most important parts of any culture.
Anyone looking into ranch life, cowboys, “westernisms,” history and culture of the American West will find a cultural language all its own. Yankees don’t always understand it or even recognize it as a real language.
I know that my personal dialect is that of a direct plain-spoken westerner. I use words that others don’t recognize as words and I leave out words (that) others would place in the thought process I’m expressing. See parenthesis. They might call it correct grammar. I call it unnecessary.
While I possess in the recesses of my upbringing a full vocabulary of range vernacular, some very skilled mentors managed to round off the edges of my speech. As a young girl my mother came west from the civilized world bringing with her a civilized vocabulary. I was also blessed with teachers that were able to teach me to hold my own in polite company when it came to conversation.
I’m not embarrassed that I often have to look up the meaning of words used casually and easily by my coworkers. Given the opportunity I could give them a few they would have to look up, not because they are unlearned but because it’s a foreign language to them. And they wouldn’t find them in ordinary dictionaries.
In “cowboy,” jingle isn’t a bell sound or a song. It is a verb that means to gather the horses. Hooley-ann isn’t a country girl but a type of loop thrown to catch a horse. Hoolihan is something completely different and would they know where to look for the dew-claws? Could they label which horse was the crow hopper, crawfisher or the blind bucker?
The early cowboy was generally not highly educated but he never lacked for expression. The sharp directness of his speech seemed novel and strange to conventional people but no one could accuse him of being boring. His ability to turn a picturesque phrase was as refreshing as it was unexpected and often showed his keen sense of humor.
His figures of speech are descriptive and clearly accurate. Trying to accomplish the impossible is “like tryin’ to scratch your ear with your elbow.” When expressing his idea of prominence he might say it “stuck out like a new saloon in a church district.”
Pretty is “prettier than a spotted dog under a red wagon,” and ugly is expressed in colorful descriptions like “so narrow between the eyes he could look through a keyhole with both eyes.”
Today’s cowboy is quite often very educated, but you will find the “book learnin’” never takes away his ability to employ his words in a way that suits him. He will arrange them in a manner that best expresses his idea and is completely unrestricted by tradition.
That cowboy slang, twang and verbal saunter is often worn like the camouflage of a chameleon. From behind it the cowboy will sometimes attempt to beguile the listener and lull them into false sense of superiority. That dumb ole boy trick has made many a cowboy a whole lot of money. Their theory is to not tamper with the natural ignorance of a greenhorn.
Whatever their dialect, phraseology, and vernacular, the cowboy did and still does have a way of expressing a big thought in a few words. “Success is the size of the hole a man leaves after he dies.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
© Julie Carter 2006
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Joint Letter to House and Senate Leadership on Opening ANWR to Energy Exploration
The undersigned organizations are dismayed that an obstructionist bloc in the first session of the 109th Congress was able to thwart the will of majorities in both the House and the Senate to enact legislation to open a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas exploration. We urge you to move budget reconciliation legislation (and any other vehicle that can overcome the procedural obstacles that will no doubt be used again to try to block the majority in both chambers) as soon as possible to accomplish this important goal and pledge that we will strongly support your efforts. We believe that there are several important reasons to open ANWR. First, contrary to claims by environmental pressure groups that the oil and gas ANWR potentially contains are only a few “drops in the bucket” and that oil companies are not interested in exploring ANWR’s coastal plain, the U. S. Geological Survey’s mean estimate of economically recoverable oil and gas reserves under the coastal plain of ANWR is 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil. Such an amount would increase proven U. S. crude oil reserves by 50% and is equivalent to approximately a quarter century of current imports from Saudi Arabia, one of our top foreign suppliers. The USGS estimate was based on assuming oil priced at $30 a barrel; assuming $60 a barrel would give a much higher estimate of economically recoverable reserves. Second, environmental pressure groups contradict themselves by arguing that opening ANWR would be nothing but a payoff to “Big Oil”. If it contains little oil, then it isn’t much of a payoff. If it does contain billions of barrels of oil, then oil companies will bid for the right to explore. It is estimated that the winners will initially pay several billion dollars for exploration contracts....
SKI OPERATOR ASKS TO JOIN IN OPPOSING ENVIRO LAWSUIT
A ski operator that has provided helicopter skiing in Teton County, Wyoming, for decades moved today to intervene in a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups challenging a U.S. Forest Service permit issued to the operator. High Mountain Heli-Skiing filed its motion with the Idaho federal district court asking that it be permitted to become involved in the lawsuit as a party defendant, that is, in support of the Forest Service’s decision. High Mountain maintains that the lawsuit by the environmental groups asserting that the Forest Service permit interferes with wilderness study areas is without merit and that the decision by the Forest Service complied full with federal law and regulations. High Mountain believes that the case may not be heard properly in Idaho. “This lawsuit was filed in Idaho and not in one of the only two locations in which it could have been filed legally because the environmental groups sought a more favorable forum for their groundless complaint, that is, a state that falls within the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents High Mountain. “We are confident this case will be removed as the Forest Service requests and, after a full hearing on the merits, our client will prevail and continue to operate.” High Mountain Heli-Skiing began in the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee National Forests in 1974, providing heli-skiing under a Special Use Permit since 1977 in a 70-square-mile area. Previously, High Mountain operated in a larger area but, with passage of the 1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act, terrain in the Jedediah Smith Wilderness and the Gros Ventre Wilderness was removed from the permit area, reducing that area by a third. Today, 61 percent of High Mountain’s permit is in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area....
New FBI Smoking Guns Point To PETA
In December the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made a big public splash by unveiling documents obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under a Freedom of Information Act request. At the time, the ACLU released only a few dozen pages from its FBI treasure trove, selected to bolster its case that the federal government was spying on groups including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) despite what it called "a lack of evidence" that PETA was "engaging in or supporting violent action." But during the past few weeks, the ACLU's website has been quietly updated to include more than 200 additional pages of the FBI's files on PETA. And this new material indicates a solid connection between PETA and the animal-rights movement's violent underbelly. The complete set of pages, finally available on the ACLU's website (look for a link titled "Full set of PETA documents"), includes some disclosures that PETA will not be happy about -- and which indicate that the FBI knows exactly what it's doing. If you don't relish the thought of wading through 227 pages of heavily redacted FBI files, we've collected the most interesting material on our AnimalScam.com website. Click here to read the FBI's conclusions that (among other things) PETA recruits interns from overseas for "the sole purpose of committing criminal acts."....
Environmental Justice?
Did you know that a court can mandate a human to give an apology to an animal after a conviction of endangered species "harrassment?" ecoEnquirer: A peaceful Sunday of fishing turned sour for Josh Williams recently. The problems started when Mr. Williams hooked a nice smallmouth bass, and a bald eagle took notice. While the eagle swooped in, attempting to catch the bass in its talons, Mr. Williams was observed by a Fish and Wildlife Service officer trying to scare the eagle away by throwing stones at it. The FWS officer testified in U.S. District Court of South Dakota that Mr. Williams had clearly violated one of the Endangered Species Act's prohibited activities that specifically makes it illegal to "...harass....an endangered or threatened species without a permit from the Secretary of the Department of the Interior." The judge agreed, finding the man guilty of a misdemeanor violation of the Act. The judge was lenient in sentencing, however, requiring only that the man apologize to the eagle. Mr. Williams expressed remorse, stating that the eagle would be welcome to help him fish anytime it wanted to. The eagle had no comment....
UPDATE: The last story is a hoax. Read the comments for further info.
Joint Letter to House and Senate Leadership on Opening ANWR to Energy Exploration
The undersigned organizations are dismayed that an obstructionist bloc in the first session of the 109th Congress was able to thwart the will of majorities in both the House and the Senate to enact legislation to open a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas exploration. We urge you to move budget reconciliation legislation (and any other vehicle that can overcome the procedural obstacles that will no doubt be used again to try to block the majority in both chambers) as soon as possible to accomplish this important goal and pledge that we will strongly support your efforts. We believe that there are several important reasons to open ANWR. First, contrary to claims by environmental pressure groups that the oil and gas ANWR potentially contains are only a few “drops in the bucket” and that oil companies are not interested in exploring ANWR’s coastal plain, the U. S. Geological Survey’s mean estimate of economically recoverable oil and gas reserves under the coastal plain of ANWR is 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil. Such an amount would increase proven U. S. crude oil reserves by 50% and is equivalent to approximately a quarter century of current imports from Saudi Arabia, one of our top foreign suppliers. The USGS estimate was based on assuming oil priced at $30 a barrel; assuming $60 a barrel would give a much higher estimate of economically recoverable reserves. Second, environmental pressure groups contradict themselves by arguing that opening ANWR would be nothing but a payoff to “Big Oil”. If it contains little oil, then it isn’t much of a payoff. If it does contain billions of barrels of oil, then oil companies will bid for the right to explore. It is estimated that the winners will initially pay several billion dollars for exploration contracts....
SKI OPERATOR ASKS TO JOIN IN OPPOSING ENVIRO LAWSUIT
A ski operator that has provided helicopter skiing in Teton County, Wyoming, for decades moved today to intervene in a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups challenging a U.S. Forest Service permit issued to the operator. High Mountain Heli-Skiing filed its motion with the Idaho federal district court asking that it be permitted to become involved in the lawsuit as a party defendant, that is, in support of the Forest Service’s decision. High Mountain maintains that the lawsuit by the environmental groups asserting that the Forest Service permit interferes with wilderness study areas is without merit and that the decision by the Forest Service complied full with federal law and regulations. High Mountain believes that the case may not be heard properly in Idaho. “This lawsuit was filed in Idaho and not in one of the only two locations in which it could have been filed legally because the environmental groups sought a more favorable forum for their groundless complaint, that is, a state that falls within the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents High Mountain. “We are confident this case will be removed as the Forest Service requests and, after a full hearing on the merits, our client will prevail and continue to operate.” High Mountain Heli-Skiing began in the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee National Forests in 1974, providing heli-skiing under a Special Use Permit since 1977 in a 70-square-mile area. Previously, High Mountain operated in a larger area but, with passage of the 1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act, terrain in the Jedediah Smith Wilderness and the Gros Ventre Wilderness was removed from the permit area, reducing that area by a third. Today, 61 percent of High Mountain’s permit is in the Palisades Wilderness Study Area....
New FBI Smoking Guns Point To PETA
In December the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made a big public splash by unveiling documents obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under a Freedom of Information Act request. At the time, the ACLU released only a few dozen pages from its FBI treasure trove, selected to bolster its case that the federal government was spying on groups including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) despite what it called "a lack of evidence" that PETA was "engaging in or supporting violent action." But during the past few weeks, the ACLU's website has been quietly updated to include more than 200 additional pages of the FBI's files on PETA. And this new material indicates a solid connection between PETA and the animal-rights movement's violent underbelly. The complete set of pages, finally available on the ACLU's website (look for a link titled "Full set of PETA documents"), includes some disclosures that PETA will not be happy about -- and which indicate that the FBI knows exactly what it's doing. If you don't relish the thought of wading through 227 pages of heavily redacted FBI files, we've collected the most interesting material on our AnimalScam.com website. Click here to read the FBI's conclusions that (among other things) PETA recruits interns from overseas for "the sole purpose of committing criminal acts."....
Environmental Justice?
Did you know that a court can mandate a human to give an apology to an animal after a conviction of endangered species "harrassment?" ecoEnquirer: A peaceful Sunday of fishing turned sour for Josh Williams recently. The problems started when Mr. Williams hooked a nice smallmouth bass, and a bald eagle took notice. While the eagle swooped in, attempting to catch the bass in its talons, Mr. Williams was observed by a Fish and Wildlife Service officer trying to scare the eagle away by throwing stones at it. The FWS officer testified in U.S. District Court of South Dakota that Mr. Williams had clearly violated one of the Endangered Species Act's prohibited activities that specifically makes it illegal to "...harass....an endangered or threatened species without a permit from the Secretary of the Department of the Interior." The judge agreed, finding the man guilty of a misdemeanor violation of the Act. The judge was lenient in sentencing, however, requiring only that the man apologize to the eagle. Mr. Williams expressed remorse, stating that the eagle would be welcome to help him fish anytime it wanted to. The eagle had no comment....
UPDATE: The last story is a hoax. Read the comments for further info.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
MAD COW DISEASE
Statement by Chief Veterinary Medical Officer John Clifford Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Regarding Inconclusive BSE Test Results, March 11, 2006
"Last night we received an inconclusive test result on a rapid BSE test from an animal sampled as part our enhanced BSE surveillance program.
"USDA is conducting further tests at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, using an immunohistochemistry test. In addition, USDA's Agricultural Research Service, will also conduct a Western blot test. The results of those tests will be released as soon as they have all been completed, within the next four to seven days.
"This inconclusive result does not mean we have found a new case of BSE. Inconclusive results are a normal component of most screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so they will detect any sample that could possibly be positive. In addition, this animal did not enter the human food chain nor the animal feed chain.
"I want to emphasize that human and animal health in the United States are protected by a system of interlocking safeguards and that we remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef. The most important of these safeguards is the ban on specified risk materials from the food supply and the Food and Drug Administration's feed ban. And by any measure, the incidence of BSE in this country is extremely low. Our enhanced surveillance program is designed to provide information about the level of prevalence of BSE in the United States, while these interlocking safeguards continue to protect our food supply.
"We are extremely gratified that since June 2004, all sectors of the cattle industry have cooperated in this program by submitting samples from more than 640,000 animals from the highest risk populations and more than 20,000 from clinically normal, older animals, as part our enhanced BSE surveillance program. To date, only one of these highest risk animals has tested positive for the disease as part of the surveillance program."
Statement by Chief Veterinary Medical Officer John Clifford Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Regarding Inconclusive BSE Test Results, March 11, 2006
"Last night we received an inconclusive test result on a rapid BSE test from an animal sampled as part our enhanced BSE surveillance program.
"USDA is conducting further tests at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, using an immunohistochemistry test. In addition, USDA's Agricultural Research Service, will also conduct a Western blot test. The results of those tests will be released as soon as they have all been completed, within the next four to seven days.
"This inconclusive result does not mean we have found a new case of BSE. Inconclusive results are a normal component of most screening tests, which are designed to be extremely sensitive so they will detect any sample that could possibly be positive. In addition, this animal did not enter the human food chain nor the animal feed chain.
"I want to emphasize that human and animal health in the United States are protected by a system of interlocking safeguards and that we remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef. The most important of these safeguards is the ban on specified risk materials from the food supply and the Food and Drug Administration's feed ban. And by any measure, the incidence of BSE in this country is extremely low. Our enhanced surveillance program is designed to provide information about the level of prevalence of BSE in the United States, while these interlocking safeguards continue to protect our food supply.
"We are extremely gratified that since June 2004, all sectors of the cattle industry have cooperated in this program by submitting samples from more than 640,000 animals from the highest risk populations and more than 20,000 from clinically normal, older animals, as part our enhanced BSE surveillance program. To date, only one of these highest risk animals has tested positive for the disease as part of the surveillance program."
Friday, March 10, 2006
FLE
Border agents accused of taking bribes
Two U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to prosecute immigrant smugglers were arrested for allegedly releasing border-crossers in exchange for $300,000 in cash bribes. Mario Alvarez, 44, and Samuel McClaren, 43, released the illegal immigrants to a smuggling ring that operates in El Centro, about 120 miles east of San Diego, according to a federal complaint filed in January and unsealed Thursday. The smugglers then allegedly took the migrants to Los Angeles. The agents "who are supposed to represent the very best, epitomize the very worst," said Daniel Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of the FBI in San Diego. Both men, of Imperial, were charged with conspiracy, bribery, making false statements, migrant smuggling and filing false tax returns....
Two border patrol agents guilty in shooting
The two Border Patrol agents who shot an admitted drug smuggler in the buttocks last year near Fabens were found guilty Wednesday of several counts of assault, weapons crimes, tampering and deprivation of civil rights and face a minimum of 10 years in prison. The verdict, reached after two weeks of trial and two days of deliberation, was met with shock and tears by the families of agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. Compean and Ramos were found guilty of assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, a civil rights charge and obstruction of justice. The jury acquitted them of assault with intent to commit murder. Compean and Ramos' boss, Robert W. Gilbert, the chief patrol agent for the El Paso sector of the Border Patrol, issued a written statement Wednesday saying the agents "choose to violate the trust of the citizens they swore to protect."....
Border Patrol may be ordered to hire 12K
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved ordering the Border Patrol to hire 12,000 new agents in the next two years, more than doubling the current force. Border Patrol officials and experts say that number exceeds what the agency can handle in terms of training and the panel didn't include any money to fund the new hires. Yesterday lawmakers pushed ahead with immigration reform plans, hoping to finish work by the March 27 deadline imposed by GOP leaders. Along with more agents, they propose replacing old fences along the border with 25 miles of new barricades in the desert west of Naco. They put off action on contentious issues such as whether to make illegal presence in the United States a federal crime. Adding 12,000 agents in two years would require significant appropriations from Congress. "Is this a sincere effort, or is this just political posturing?" asked T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for 10,500 agents. "I'm afraid that it falls into the latter category."....
Four Current and Former U.S. Soldiers Agree to Plead Guilty to Participating in Bribery and Extortion Conspiracy
Four additional current and former U.S. soldiers have agreed to plead guilty to participating in a widespread bribery and extortion conspiracy which operated from January 2002 through March 2004, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today. The charges arise from Operation Lively Green, an undercover investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that began in December 2001. Forty seven have already pleaded guilty in this ongoing prosecution and will be sentenced in June 2006. In documents filed today in federal court in Tucson, Ariz., the defendants agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to enrich themselves by obtaining cash bribes from persons they believed to be narcotics traffickers who were in fact Special Agents of the FBI in return for the defendants using their official positions to assist, protect and participate in the activities of an illegal narcotics trafficking organization engaged in the business of transporting and distributing cocaine from Arizona to other locations in the southwestern United States. In order to protect the shipments of cocaine, the defendants wore official uniforms; and carried official forms of identification; used official vehicles; and used their color of authority where necessary to prevent police stops, searches and seizures of the narcotics as they drove the cocaine shipments on highways that passed through checkpoints manned by the U.S. Border Patrol, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and Nevada law enforcement officers. All of the defendants escorted at least one shipment of cocaine from locations such as Nogales, Ariz. and Tucson, Ariz. to destinations which included Phoenix, Ariz. and Las Vegas, Nev....
Mandatory Guard-on-border bill is vetoed
There won't be any National Guard troops in Southern Arizona — at least not yet. As vowed, Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a $10 million appropriation for the Guard because it ordered her to put the troops on the border. In a five-paragraph letter to legislators, she cited a state constitutional provision that makes her commander-in-chief of the Guard. "The Legislature has no constitutional or other authority to control when or how the Guard is deployed," she said. But Napolitano insisted she's still interested in putting troops in Southern Arizona and promised that if lawmakers send her a bill with the funds — but without the mandate — she would sign it and begin deployment. That option may already be in progress. On Thursday the House gave preliminary approval to another bill to appropriate funds to deploy Guard troops in Southern Arizona for "border security functions." The new bill has none of the language the governor found offensive. Napolitano has already signed an executive order posting troops in Southern Arizona, conditioned on getting some money....
Justice Dept. Report Cites F.B.I. Violations
The Federal Bureau of Investigation found apparent violations of its own wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering procedures more than 100 times in the last two years, and problems appear to have grown more frequent in some crucial respects, a Justice Department report released Wednesday said. While some of these instances were considered technical glitches, the report, from the department's inspector general, characterized others as "significant," including wiretaps that were much broader in scope than approved by a court and others that were allowed to continue for weeks or sometimes months longer than was authorized. In one instance, the F.B.I. received the full content of 181 telephone calls as part of an intelligence investigation, instead of merely the billing and toll records as authorized, the report found. In a handful of cases, it said, the bureau conducted physical searches that had not been properly authorized. The inspector general's findings come at a time of fierce Congressional debate over the program of wiretapping without warrants that the National Security Agency has conducted. That program, approved by President Bush, is separate from the F.B.I. wiretaps reviewed in the report, and the inspector general's office concluded that it did not have the jurisdiction to review the legality or operations of the N.S.A. effort. But, the report disclosed, the Justice Department has opened reviews into two other controversial counterterrorism tactics that the department has widely employed since the Sept. 11 attacks. In one, the inspector general has begun looking into the F.B.I.'s use of administrative subpoenas, known as national security letters, to demand records and documents without warrants in terror investigations. Some critics maintain that the bureau has abused its subpoena powers to demand records in thousands of cases....
Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters
The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report. Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Roger W. Rogalski’s letter came in reply to a memo from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who had demanded answers about the process of identifying domestic protesters as suspicious and removing their names when they are wrongly listed. “The recent review of the TALON Reporting System ... identified a small number of reports that did not meet the TALON reporting criteria. Those reports dealt with domestic anti-military protests or demonstrations potentially impacting DoD facilities or personnel,” Rogalski wrote on Wednesday. “While the information was of value to military commanders, it should not have been retained in the Cornerstone database.” In 2003, the Defense Department directed a little-known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established TALON at that time. The original NBC News report, from December, focused on a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a 10-month period. One such incident was a small group of activists meeting in a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools. In his Wednesday letter, Rogalski said such anomalies in the TALON database had been removed. “They did not pertain to potential foreign terrorist activity and thus should never have been entered into the Cornerstone database. These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given,” Rogalski wrote....
Patriot Act E-Mail Searches Apply to Non-Terrorists, Judges Say
Two federal judges in Florida have upheld the authority of individual courts to use the Patriot Act to order searches anywhere in the country for e-mails and computer data in all types of criminal investigations, overruling a magistrate who found that Congress limited such expanded jurisdiction to cases involving terrorism. The disagreement among the jurists about the scope of their powers simmered for more than two years before coming to light in an opinion unsealed earlier this month. The resolution, which underscored the government's broad legal authority to intercept electronic communications, comes as debate is raging over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program and the duties of Internet providers to protect personal data. A magistrate judge in Orlando, James Glazebrook, first questioned the so-called nationwide-search provision in 2003, after investigators in a child pornography probe asked him to issue a search warrant requiring a "legitimate" California-based Web site to identify all users who accessed certain "password-protected" photos posted on the site. The Web provider was not named in public court records. Magistrate Glazebrook said that in passing the Patriot Act, formally known as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, Congress made clear its focus was on terrorism. He said there was nothing in the language Congress adopted in the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that suggested the nationwide-search provision should apply to garden variety federal cases. "The statutory language is clear and unambiguous in limiting district court authority to issue out-of-district warrants to investigations of terrorism, and that language controls this court's interpretation. The government has shown no legislative intent to the contrary," the magistrate wrote. He also noted that many of the examples given during legislative debate involved terrorism. The then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, described the nationwide-search language as applying in terrorism cases, the court noted. Magistrate Glazebrook denied the search warrant, but it was recently disclosed that the government appealed to a federal judge, G. Kendall Sharp, who granted it without explanation. The scenario played out again late last year, after prosecutors presented Magistrate Glazebrook with an application for a search warrant directed to a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Web portal, Yahoo....
US rights groups ask courts to end domestic spying
Civil liberties groups on Thursday asked federal courts to halt the Bush administration's controversial program of domestic eavesdropping, saying it violated the privacy and free speech rights of U.S. citizens. The requests for court-ordered injunctions filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Detroit and by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York were an extension of legal challenges the two groups had filed in January. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in January against the National Security Agency on behalf of scholars, attorneys, journalists and nonprofit groups that regularly communicate by phone and e-mail with people in the Middle East. Separately, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has provided legal aid to people detained or interrogated in Washington's declared war on terrorism, filed a parallel suit in a federal court in New York challenging the wiretapping program. A CCR lawyer said on Thursday that U.S. officials had already disclosed enough to prove to a federal judge that the NSA wiretapping involving U.S. citizens was unconstitutional. "We can file this aggressive motion because we have proof that the spying program is illegal," said CCR staff lawyer Shayana Kadidal. "The bottom line is the defendants have incriminated themselves -- President Bush admitted that he authorized and oversaw an illegal and unconstitutional program."....
G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants
The plan by Senate Republicans to step up oversight of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program would also give legislative sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant, legal experts said on Wednesday. Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program. The Republican proposal appeared likely to win approval from the full Senate, despite Democratic opposition and some remaining questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The Republican proposal would give Congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Mr. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of Congressional leaders. The N.S.A. would be permitted to intercept the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States if there was "probable cause to believe that one party to the communication is a member, affiliate, or working in support of a terrorist group or organization," according to a written summary of the proposal issued by its Republican sponsors. The finding of probable cause would not be reviewed by any court. But after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new Congressional oversight subcommittees why he could not seek a warrant. The administration would be required to provide "full access" to information about the eavesdropping, including "operational details," to the new Senate and House subcommittees, the summary said. Each subcommittee would consist of four Republicans and three Democrats from the Intelligence Committees....
GOP deal on NSA eavesdropping would keep Americans in dark
A Republican deal is in the works to provide congressional cover for the administration's warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. It is a classic example of the blind leading the blind. Negotiated by a cadre of Senate Republicans and Vice President Dick Cheney, the deal would allow the National Security Agency's electronic eavesdropping to continue, even though the public and most members of Congress have no idea what the NSA is actually doing. That's outrageous when the agency may be invading the privacy and violating the fundamental rights of Americans on a grand scale. The Senate Intelligence Committee's Republican majority rejected Democrats' call for a thorough investigation of the wiretapping authorized in secret by President George W. Bush. The handful of senators who have been briefed on the program may know what the NSA is up to, but the rest of Congress and the public have been left in the dark. You'd think elected officials would insist on knowing how many Americans have had their calls and e-mails intercepted and why. How about asking at what point, in what appears to be a data-mining operation, do people begin listening in place of computers? What and who triggers the switch? What about the breadth of the eavesdropping web? If your conversation with someone overseas is monitored, what about your subsequent calls to people inside this country? Will the NSA listen to those too? Will it tap calls made later by the people you talked to? At what point, if ever, would officials go to court for a warrant? At what point, if ever, would you know you've been tapped? What's so different about this program that oversight should be limited to seven senators instead of, at the very least, the entire 15- member intelligence committee which oversees all other sensitive intelligence operations? And finally, is it effective?....
NSA Eavesdropping and the Fourth Amendment
The political minuet being performed in recent weeks between angry members of Congress and the Bush Administration over the domestic spying program has done little if anything to assuage those of us concerned about the ongoing illegality of the program. President Bush’s order permitting the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans without any judicial approval or warrant shows just how prescient our Framers were in placing controls on the executive. In this instance, the legal controls were present – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process that allows for secret judicial authorization to conduct the sort of electronic eavesdropping being conducted by NSA – but they were circumvented. The civil liberties dimensions of the NSA program have taken a legal back seat to the constitutional and statutory authority issues in these debates. Still, in the unlikely event that legal authority for the NSA program can be found, this domestic spying violates the Fourth Amendment. Administration lawyers concede that, in general, individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone calls, and that probable cause and a warrant are necessary under the Fourth Amendment to authorize electronic surveillance of those communications. The extent to which national security and foreign intelligence collection might be exempt from the general rule and thus subject to the lesser Fourth Amendment requirement of reasonableness has been considered carefully if not exhaustively by Congress and the judiciary. Thirty-four years ago the Supreme Court first confronted the tensions between unmonitored executive surveillance and individual freedoms in the national security setting. United States v. United States District Court (known as the Keith decision, after the Judge who first decided it)....
Watchdog: What Ever Happened to the Civil Liberties Board?
For more than a year, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been the most invisible office in the White House. Created by Congress in December 2004 as a result of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the board has never hired a staff or even held a meeting. Next week, NEWSWEEK has learned, that is due to finally change when the board's five members are slated to be sworn in at the White House and convene their first session. Board members tell NEWSWEEK the panel intends to immediately tackle contentious issues like the president's domestic wiretapping program, the Patriot Act and Pentagon data mining. But critics are furious the process has taken this long—and question whether the White House intends to treat the panel as anything more than window dressing. The delay is "outrageous, considering how long its been since the bill [creating the board] was passed," said Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission. "The administration was never interested in this." Renewed concerns about the White House's commitment came just a few weeks ago when President Bush's new budget was released—with no listing for money for the civil liberties board. Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, denied to NEWSWEEK the White House was trying to kill the panel by starving it of funds. "It will be fully funded," he said, explaining that the board wasn't in the budget this year because officials decided not to itemize funding levels for particular offices within the White House. When a reporter pointed out that funding for other White House offices such as the National Security Council were listed in the budget, Conant said: "I have no xplanation."....
Border agents accused of taking bribes
Two U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to prosecute immigrant smugglers were arrested for allegedly releasing border-crossers in exchange for $300,000 in cash bribes. Mario Alvarez, 44, and Samuel McClaren, 43, released the illegal immigrants to a smuggling ring that operates in El Centro, about 120 miles east of San Diego, according to a federal complaint filed in January and unsealed Thursday. The smugglers then allegedly took the migrants to Los Angeles. The agents "who are supposed to represent the very best, epitomize the very worst," said Daniel Dzwilewski, special agent in charge of the FBI in San Diego. Both men, of Imperial, were charged with conspiracy, bribery, making false statements, migrant smuggling and filing false tax returns....
Two border patrol agents guilty in shooting
The two Border Patrol agents who shot an admitted drug smuggler in the buttocks last year near Fabens were found guilty Wednesday of several counts of assault, weapons crimes, tampering and deprivation of civil rights and face a minimum of 10 years in prison. The verdict, reached after two weeks of trial and two days of deliberation, was met with shock and tears by the families of agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. Compean and Ramos were found guilty of assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, a civil rights charge and obstruction of justice. The jury acquitted them of assault with intent to commit murder. Compean and Ramos' boss, Robert W. Gilbert, the chief patrol agent for the El Paso sector of the Border Patrol, issued a written statement Wednesday saying the agents "choose to violate the trust of the citizens they swore to protect."....
Border Patrol may be ordered to hire 12K
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved ordering the Border Patrol to hire 12,000 new agents in the next two years, more than doubling the current force. Border Patrol officials and experts say that number exceeds what the agency can handle in terms of training and the panel didn't include any money to fund the new hires. Yesterday lawmakers pushed ahead with immigration reform plans, hoping to finish work by the March 27 deadline imposed by GOP leaders. Along with more agents, they propose replacing old fences along the border with 25 miles of new barricades in the desert west of Naco. They put off action on contentious issues such as whether to make illegal presence in the United States a federal crime. Adding 12,000 agents in two years would require significant appropriations from Congress. "Is this a sincere effort, or is this just political posturing?" asked T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for 10,500 agents. "I'm afraid that it falls into the latter category."....
Four Current and Former U.S. Soldiers Agree to Plead Guilty to Participating in Bribery and Extortion Conspiracy
Four additional current and former U.S. soldiers have agreed to plead guilty to participating in a widespread bribery and extortion conspiracy which operated from January 2002 through March 2004, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today. The charges arise from Operation Lively Green, an undercover investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that began in December 2001. Forty seven have already pleaded guilty in this ongoing prosecution and will be sentenced in June 2006. In documents filed today in federal court in Tucson, Ariz., the defendants agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to enrich themselves by obtaining cash bribes from persons they believed to be narcotics traffickers who were in fact Special Agents of the FBI in return for the defendants using their official positions to assist, protect and participate in the activities of an illegal narcotics trafficking organization engaged in the business of transporting and distributing cocaine from Arizona to other locations in the southwestern United States. In order to protect the shipments of cocaine, the defendants wore official uniforms; and carried official forms of identification; used official vehicles; and used their color of authority where necessary to prevent police stops, searches and seizures of the narcotics as they drove the cocaine shipments on highways that passed through checkpoints manned by the U.S. Border Patrol, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and Nevada law enforcement officers. All of the defendants escorted at least one shipment of cocaine from locations such as Nogales, Ariz. and Tucson, Ariz. to destinations which included Phoenix, Ariz. and Las Vegas, Nev....
Mandatory Guard-on-border bill is vetoed
There won't be any National Guard troops in Southern Arizona — at least not yet. As vowed, Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a $10 million appropriation for the Guard because it ordered her to put the troops on the border. In a five-paragraph letter to legislators, she cited a state constitutional provision that makes her commander-in-chief of the Guard. "The Legislature has no constitutional or other authority to control when or how the Guard is deployed," she said. But Napolitano insisted she's still interested in putting troops in Southern Arizona and promised that if lawmakers send her a bill with the funds — but without the mandate — she would sign it and begin deployment. That option may already be in progress. On Thursday the House gave preliminary approval to another bill to appropriate funds to deploy Guard troops in Southern Arizona for "border security functions." The new bill has none of the language the governor found offensive. Napolitano has already signed an executive order posting troops in Southern Arizona, conditioned on getting some money....
Justice Dept. Report Cites F.B.I. Violations
The Federal Bureau of Investigation found apparent violations of its own wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering procedures more than 100 times in the last two years, and problems appear to have grown more frequent in some crucial respects, a Justice Department report released Wednesday said. While some of these instances were considered technical glitches, the report, from the department's inspector general, characterized others as "significant," including wiretaps that were much broader in scope than approved by a court and others that were allowed to continue for weeks or sometimes months longer than was authorized. In one instance, the F.B.I. received the full content of 181 telephone calls as part of an intelligence investigation, instead of merely the billing and toll records as authorized, the report found. In a handful of cases, it said, the bureau conducted physical searches that had not been properly authorized. The inspector general's findings come at a time of fierce Congressional debate over the program of wiretapping without warrants that the National Security Agency has conducted. That program, approved by President Bush, is separate from the F.B.I. wiretaps reviewed in the report, and the inspector general's office concluded that it did not have the jurisdiction to review the legality or operations of the N.S.A. effort. But, the report disclosed, the Justice Department has opened reviews into two other controversial counterterrorism tactics that the department has widely employed since the Sept. 11 attacks. In one, the inspector general has begun looking into the F.B.I.'s use of administrative subpoenas, known as national security letters, to demand records and documents without warrants in terror investigations. Some critics maintain that the bureau has abused its subpoena powers to demand records in thousands of cases....
Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters
The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report. Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Roger W. Rogalski’s letter came in reply to a memo from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who had demanded answers about the process of identifying domestic protesters as suspicious and removing their names when they are wrongly listed. “The recent review of the TALON Reporting System ... identified a small number of reports that did not meet the TALON reporting criteria. Those reports dealt with domestic anti-military protests or demonstrations potentially impacting DoD facilities or personnel,” Rogalski wrote on Wednesday. “While the information was of value to military commanders, it should not have been retained in the Cornerstone database.” In 2003, the Defense Department directed a little-known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established TALON at that time. The original NBC News report, from December, focused on a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a 10-month period. One such incident was a small group of activists meeting in a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools. In his Wednesday letter, Rogalski said such anomalies in the TALON database had been removed. “They did not pertain to potential foreign terrorist activity and thus should never have been entered into the Cornerstone database. These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given,” Rogalski wrote....
Patriot Act E-Mail Searches Apply to Non-Terrorists, Judges Say
Two federal judges in Florida have upheld the authority of individual courts to use the Patriot Act to order searches anywhere in the country for e-mails and computer data in all types of criminal investigations, overruling a magistrate who found that Congress limited such expanded jurisdiction to cases involving terrorism. The disagreement among the jurists about the scope of their powers simmered for more than two years before coming to light in an opinion unsealed earlier this month. The resolution, which underscored the government's broad legal authority to intercept electronic communications, comes as debate is raging over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program and the duties of Internet providers to protect personal data. A magistrate judge in Orlando, James Glazebrook, first questioned the so-called nationwide-search provision in 2003, after investigators in a child pornography probe asked him to issue a search warrant requiring a "legitimate" California-based Web site to identify all users who accessed certain "password-protected" photos posted on the site. The Web provider was not named in public court records. Magistrate Glazebrook said that in passing the Patriot Act, formally known as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, Congress made clear its focus was on terrorism. He said there was nothing in the language Congress adopted in the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that suggested the nationwide-search provision should apply to garden variety federal cases. "The statutory language is clear and unambiguous in limiting district court authority to issue out-of-district warrants to investigations of terrorism, and that language controls this court's interpretation. The government has shown no legislative intent to the contrary," the magistrate wrote. He also noted that many of the examples given during legislative debate involved terrorism. The then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, described the nationwide-search language as applying in terrorism cases, the court noted. Magistrate Glazebrook denied the search warrant, but it was recently disclosed that the government appealed to a federal judge, G. Kendall Sharp, who granted it without explanation. The scenario played out again late last year, after prosecutors presented Magistrate Glazebrook with an application for a search warrant directed to a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Web portal, Yahoo....
US rights groups ask courts to end domestic spying
Civil liberties groups on Thursday asked federal courts to halt the Bush administration's controversial program of domestic eavesdropping, saying it violated the privacy and free speech rights of U.S. citizens. The requests for court-ordered injunctions filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Detroit and by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York were an extension of legal challenges the two groups had filed in January. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in January against the National Security Agency on behalf of scholars, attorneys, journalists and nonprofit groups that regularly communicate by phone and e-mail with people in the Middle East. Separately, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has provided legal aid to people detained or interrogated in Washington's declared war on terrorism, filed a parallel suit in a federal court in New York challenging the wiretapping program. A CCR lawyer said on Thursday that U.S. officials had already disclosed enough to prove to a federal judge that the NSA wiretapping involving U.S. citizens was unconstitutional. "We can file this aggressive motion because we have proof that the spying program is illegal," said CCR staff lawyer Shayana Kadidal. "The bottom line is the defendants have incriminated themselves -- President Bush admitted that he authorized and oversaw an illegal and unconstitutional program."....
G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants
The plan by Senate Republicans to step up oversight of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program would also give legislative sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant, legal experts said on Wednesday. Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program. The Republican proposal appeared likely to win approval from the full Senate, despite Democratic opposition and some remaining questions from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The Republican proposal would give Congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Mr. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of Congressional leaders. The N.S.A. would be permitted to intercept the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States if there was "probable cause to believe that one party to the communication is a member, affiliate, or working in support of a terrorist group or organization," according to a written summary of the proposal issued by its Republican sponsors. The finding of probable cause would not be reviewed by any court. But after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new Congressional oversight subcommittees why he could not seek a warrant. The administration would be required to provide "full access" to information about the eavesdropping, including "operational details," to the new Senate and House subcommittees, the summary said. Each subcommittee would consist of four Republicans and three Democrats from the Intelligence Committees....
GOP deal on NSA eavesdropping would keep Americans in dark
A Republican deal is in the works to provide congressional cover for the administration's warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. It is a classic example of the blind leading the blind. Negotiated by a cadre of Senate Republicans and Vice President Dick Cheney, the deal would allow the National Security Agency's electronic eavesdropping to continue, even though the public and most members of Congress have no idea what the NSA is actually doing. That's outrageous when the agency may be invading the privacy and violating the fundamental rights of Americans on a grand scale. The Senate Intelligence Committee's Republican majority rejected Democrats' call for a thorough investigation of the wiretapping authorized in secret by President George W. Bush. The handful of senators who have been briefed on the program may know what the NSA is up to, but the rest of Congress and the public have been left in the dark. You'd think elected officials would insist on knowing how many Americans have had their calls and e-mails intercepted and why. How about asking at what point, in what appears to be a data-mining operation, do people begin listening in place of computers? What and who triggers the switch? What about the breadth of the eavesdropping web? If your conversation with someone overseas is monitored, what about your subsequent calls to people inside this country? Will the NSA listen to those too? Will it tap calls made later by the people you talked to? At what point, if ever, would officials go to court for a warrant? At what point, if ever, would you know you've been tapped? What's so different about this program that oversight should be limited to seven senators instead of, at the very least, the entire 15- member intelligence committee which oversees all other sensitive intelligence operations? And finally, is it effective?....
NSA Eavesdropping and the Fourth Amendment
The political minuet being performed in recent weeks between angry members of Congress and the Bush Administration over the domestic spying program has done little if anything to assuage those of us concerned about the ongoing illegality of the program. President Bush’s order permitting the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans without any judicial approval or warrant shows just how prescient our Framers were in placing controls on the executive. In this instance, the legal controls were present – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process that allows for secret judicial authorization to conduct the sort of electronic eavesdropping being conducted by NSA – but they were circumvented. The civil liberties dimensions of the NSA program have taken a legal back seat to the constitutional and statutory authority issues in these debates. Still, in the unlikely event that legal authority for the NSA program can be found, this domestic spying violates the Fourth Amendment. Administration lawyers concede that, in general, individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone calls, and that probable cause and a warrant are necessary under the Fourth Amendment to authorize electronic surveillance of those communications. The extent to which national security and foreign intelligence collection might be exempt from the general rule and thus subject to the lesser Fourth Amendment requirement of reasonableness has been considered carefully if not exhaustively by Congress and the judiciary. Thirty-four years ago the Supreme Court first confronted the tensions between unmonitored executive surveillance and individual freedoms in the national security setting. United States v. United States District Court (known as the Keith decision, after the Judge who first decided it)....
Watchdog: What Ever Happened to the Civil Liberties Board?
For more than a year, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been the most invisible office in the White House. Created by Congress in December 2004 as a result of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the board has never hired a staff or even held a meeting. Next week, NEWSWEEK has learned, that is due to finally change when the board's five members are slated to be sworn in at the White House and convene their first session. Board members tell NEWSWEEK the panel intends to immediately tackle contentious issues like the president's domestic wiretapping program, the Patriot Act and Pentagon data mining. But critics are furious the process has taken this long—and question whether the White House intends to treat the panel as anything more than window dressing. The delay is "outrageous, considering how long its been since the bill [creating the board] was passed," said Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission. "The administration was never interested in this." Renewed concerns about the White House's commitment came just a few weeks ago when President Bush's new budget was released—with no listing for money for the civil liberties board. Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, denied to NEWSWEEK the White House was trying to kill the panel by starving it of funds. "It will be fully funded," he said, explaining that the board wasn't in the budget this year because officials decided not to itemize funding levels for particular offices within the White House. When a reporter pointed out that funding for other White House offices such as the National Security Council were listed in the budget, Conant said: "I have no xplanation."....
High property taxes driving a new revolt
In Orford, N.H., a tin-roofed hunting cabin worth $10,000 was recently assessed at $200,000, just for its mountain view. Taxes on the cabin and its outhouse skyrocketed. Around Lake Tahoe, along the California-Nevada border, property taxes have shot up 135 percent in the past four years. Residents of Beaufort, S.C., pay $17 million more in property taxes today than in 2000. Welcome to the flip side of the real estate boom. Years of rising home values have boosted property taxes steadily. Now, homeowners across the United States are fighting back. "Real estate growth and real estate boom seem to be happening all over the country and [property-tax revolt] is an inevitable consequence," says Roger Sherman, a property tax expert in Boise, Idaho. This year, legislative proposals, citizen initiatives, and lawsuits are on the agenda in at least 20 states. These new efforts reflect both residents' distrust of how their property tax dollars are being spent and concerns that rising assessments are driving working-class people out of popular towns and cities. South Carolina last week passed a law that caps the increase in property assessments at 3 percent per year. Many Georgia lawmakers are backing a measure to put a similar cap in the state constitution. The bill's sponsor, first-term state Rep. Edward Lindsey (R) from Atlanta, argues that it's unfair to hit homeowners with a big tax boost years before they sell their home and profit from its increased value. "Not even the IRS is so bold as to tax people on unrealized gain," says Mr. Lindsey. "These are essentially backdoor tax increases that give government no incentive to be efficient or responsive."....
In Orford, N.H., a tin-roofed hunting cabin worth $10,000 was recently assessed at $200,000, just for its mountain view. Taxes on the cabin and its outhouse skyrocketed. Around Lake Tahoe, along the California-Nevada border, property taxes have shot up 135 percent in the past four years. Residents of Beaufort, S.C., pay $17 million more in property taxes today than in 2000. Welcome to the flip side of the real estate boom. Years of rising home values have boosted property taxes steadily. Now, homeowners across the United States are fighting back. "Real estate growth and real estate boom seem to be happening all over the country and [property-tax revolt] is an inevitable consequence," says Roger Sherman, a property tax expert in Boise, Idaho. This year, legislative proposals, citizen initiatives, and lawsuits are on the agenda in at least 20 states. These new efforts reflect both residents' distrust of how their property tax dollars are being spent and concerns that rising assessments are driving working-class people out of popular towns and cities. South Carolina last week passed a law that caps the increase in property assessments at 3 percent per year. Many Georgia lawmakers are backing a measure to put a similar cap in the state constitution. The bill's sponsor, first-term state Rep. Edward Lindsey (R) from Atlanta, argues that it's unfair to hit homeowners with a big tax boost years before they sell their home and profit from its increased value. "Not even the IRS is so bold as to tax people on unrealized gain," says Mr. Lindsey. "These are essentially backdoor tax increases that give government no incentive to be efficient or responsive."....
U.S. Interior Secretary Norton Resigns; Served 5 Yrs
U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, whose agency oversees one out of every five acres of land in the nation, will resign at the end of the month after serving five years in the Bush administration. Norton, who helped champion drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, faced criticism for efforts to give oil, mining and timber companies greater access to federal lands. Congress is investigating her agency to see whether it is collecting all the royalties oil and gas companies should be paying for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. ``There will never be a perfect time to leave,'' Norton said in the letter, dated March 9. ``There is always more work to do,'' she told Bush. ``My leaving now gives you the opportunity to appoint a new secretary to accomplish the goals you set for the rest of your administration.'' Norton, who was sworn in on Jan. 31, 2001, is the first woman to serve as interior secretary. The department manages 504 million acres of federal lands, operates the National Park Service and oversees relations with 562 American Indian tribes through its Bureau of Indian Affairs....
U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, whose agency oversees one out of every five acres of land in the nation, will resign at the end of the month after serving five years in the Bush administration. Norton, who helped champion drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, faced criticism for efforts to give oil, mining and timber companies greater access to federal lands. Congress is investigating her agency to see whether it is collecting all the royalties oil and gas companies should be paying for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. ``There will never be a perfect time to leave,'' Norton said in the letter, dated March 9. ``There is always more work to do,'' she told Bush. ``My leaving now gives you the opportunity to appoint a new secretary to accomplish the goals you set for the rest of your administration.'' Norton, who was sworn in on Jan. 31, 2001, is the first woman to serve as interior secretary. The department manages 504 million acres of federal lands, operates the National Park Service and oversees relations with 562 American Indian tribes through its Bureau of Indian Affairs....
NEWS ROUNDUP
Conservationists back ranchers in gate dispute Northern Utah farmers and ranchers, angered by Box Elder County's prosecution of one of their own for locking a gate on a road through a family ranch, have joined forces with conservation groups. Two dozen ranchers, together with the Ogden Sierra Club, Bear River Watershed Council and Bridgerland Audubon Society, are calling the charges 'coercion' to get residents to relinquish private property. They also blast Cache and Box Elder counties, as well as the Forest Service, for failing to stop off-road vehicle users from trespassing on private land. Box Elder County Attorney Amy Hugie last month charged 38-year-old Bret cq Selman, a prominent Tremonton rancher who with his parents runs a 7,000-acre ranch southeast of Mantua, with five class B misdemeanors - four counts for placing a gate on the road and one count of obstructing traffic. Shaun Peck, Selman's Logan attorney, said his client admits locking the gate. 'It's a question of whether he has a right to lock it," Peck said. "We maintain he did.' The Selmans contend that the rough dirt road in question is a private 'livestock driveway' that has always been posted as 'No Trespassing' or as private property. The gate across the road traditionally has been closed but not locked....
Court questions wolf Lawsuits If the line of questioning by a three-judge panel is any indication, the State of Wyoming’s appeal of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s rejection of its state wolf management plan is doomed, as is the appeal filed concurrently by the Wyoming Wolf Coalition. Oral arguments in the appeals were heard by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Salt Lake City on Monday. A federal judge in Wyoming had rejected the lawsuits, but his decision was appealed to the higher court. The state’s case focuses on FWS’s January 2004 letter to the state rejecting the wolf management plan and insisting that the plan eliminate “predator” status for wolves before it would be accepted. The wolf coalition’s case also argued over the rejection of the wolf management plan but also claimed that FWS’ insistence that wolves must be protected throughout Wyoming represents a major modification to wolf management that must be subject to an environmental impact statement pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act. The panel keyed in on the 2004 letter by FWS, indicating that the letter was not “final agency action” for which judicial review is appropriate....
Gray Wolf Numbers in Northern Rockies Up The number of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies has surpassed 1,000, a decade after wolves were reintroduced in and around Yellowstone National Park, a report released Thursday shows. "I'm eating crow," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena. "I never thought we'd get that high." The report, from state and federal wildlife agencies responsible for wolf management in the three-state region, shows population growth in Montana and Idaho. But it shows an overall decline in Wyoming, where wolf numbers in Yellowstone National Park fell sharply _ mainly because so many pups died. Officials suspect disease as the culprit behind the deaths. Outside the park, the wolf population in Wyoming grew by about 33 percent between 2004 and 2005, the report concluded. Estimates for the end of 2005 put the Northern Rockies wolf population at 1,020, with 512 wolves in Idaho, 256 in Montana and 252 in Wyoming. Estimates also put the number of breeding pairs in the states at 71, far above the minimum 30 that help define the wolves as a recovered species. A breeding pair consists of an adult male and female with at least two pups until year's end....
Ranch owner supported by hundreds Marie Wissler was overwhelmed by the show of support from her neighbors, hundreds of whom attended a meeting Wednesday to discuss helping her stave off any attempt to force her to sell part of her ranch. Lewis-Palmer School District 38 is looking for a site for a new high school, and Superintendent Dave Dilley has said the Wissler Ranch is the only parcel that could meet all its needs. The district wants to buy about 60 acres of the 814-acre ranch, and officials have said condemnation is an option if the family is unwilling to sell. Many of the more than 200 people at the meeting had never met the 87-year-old Wissler but said they admire her determination to keep the land that’s been in her family for four generations and want to help her hold onto it. Wissler, a widow who has lived on the ranch for 60 years, has said she isn’t interested in selling. Neighbors braved slick roads and snow to attend the meeting at Creekside Middle School and prepare for the school board’s March 16 meeting....
Law will keep highest peaks open Lawsuits and liability weren’t much on Jim Gehres’ mind 40 years ago when he finished climbing all 54 of Colorado’s highest mountains the first time around. After Gov. Bill Owns signed a bill Wednesday to keep the big peaks accessible and free of legal hassles, the 73-year-old Gehres won’t have to worry if he goes climbing again — and he said he might. The new law will allow owners to permit people to cross their land and mining claims without being sued for any accidents that might occur. Trails on a half-dozen of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks cross private or leased land, presenting an obstacle for peak-baggers — climbers who set out to reach the top of all the “Fourteeners.” The bill requires the U.S. Forest Service and climbing groups to put up signs warning of dangerous abandoned mines, mark the trails and educate the public about private property rights. Access became an issue when some owners posted “no trespassing” signs for fear of being sued if a hiker fell into an old mine shaft or was injured some other way....
Scientists resist species act reform As a Senate committee prepares to take up revisions to the Endangered Species Act, nearly 6,000 biologists from around the country signed a letter Wednesday urging senators to preserve scientific protections in the landmark law. The House passed an Endangered Species Act rewrite last year that horrified many scientists and environmentalists. One environmental lobbyist said the bill amounted to a "death warrant for treasured American wildlife." They are lobbying the Senate now, in hopes its Environment and Public Works Committee will take a more moderate stance. "Unfortunately, recent legislative proposals would critically weaken" the law's scientific foundation, said the letter organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The 5,738 signers included six National Medal of Science recipients....
Can a nonprofit force the US government to change its policy on global warming? Elkhorn coral and polar bears appear to have little in common, but they share the same lawyers. In an effort to force the US government to reduce carbon emissions, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has petitioned to have the creatures added to the federal endangered species list. Since the Endangered Species Act requires the US to protect the habitat of any listed species, and the sea ice and oceans where polar bears and coral make their homes are threatened by global warming, adding the two to the list would, theoretically, force the retooling of all federal policy contributing to climate change. CBD hopes its strategy will gain a foothold for global warming science in a hostile political environment. But skeptics say the likelihood of increasing fuel economy standards, ditching the Clear Skies Initiative, abandoning Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling for good, repealing the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and sharply controlling fossil fuels production—all to save an animal that lives underwater and looks like a rock—would appear to have a polar bear's chance in hell....
Column: The Absurdity We Call "Public Involvement" In early January, I suggested Idaho had not made a smooth move when it launched a controversial wolf-killing plan before the ink had dried on the documents transferring management from the feds to the state wildlife agency. To me, this seemed like getting off on the wrong foot and could discourage or delay transfer of state control in other states and for other species—or even create enough political backlash to prompt the feds to re-take control of wolf management in Idaho. But the toothpaste was already out of the tube, and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (DFG) charged ahead with the next step, soliciting comments from the public. That’s the subject of this column, the embarrassing craziness we commonly but incorrectly refer to as “public involvement.” In thirty years of working for and with agencies and writing about citizen-initiated conservation efforts, I have yet to see a proposal yanked or substantially altered due to the results of “public involvement.” I have, however, seen many examples of agencies coming up with their plan, going through the motions of soliciting public comment, and then going ahead when they feel they’ve met legal requirements. With cosmetic adjustments at best, the “draft” plan morphs into the final plan, regardless of how lopsided the public comments. This sends a strong message that most agencies consider “public involvement” little more than an annoying delay....
State vet threatens quarantines Threatening to quarantine a ranch because elk and cattle commingle is a “draconian” use of the powers of the state veterinarian, according to the Green River Cattlemen’s Association and the Jackson Hole Cattle and Horse Association. The two organizations passed resolutions that acknowledged the intensive brucellosis surveillance program in place in the state’s livestock herds but called for the Wyoming Livestock Board to “cease and desist” the practice of quarantining cattle when commingling with elk occurs and there is no evidence of brucellosis in a cattle herd. Brucellosis is an bacterial-based disease that can cause abortion outbreaks in cattle, elk and bison. Most cattle in Wyoming are vaccinated against the disease....
Argentina's Kirchner Gambles Big With Beef Ban Shocker Argentine President Nestor Kirchner made one of the most extreme policy decisions of his three-year presidency Wednesday: he banned beef exports for six months. Just as striking as the measure itself, which prompted a chorus of condemnation from industry leaders, is the unilateral way in which Kirchner apparently arrived at it. Throughout the day, amid rumors that new beef restrictions would be announced to curtail rising prices in the domestic market, staff in the Agriculture Secretariat said they knew nothing of any such plans. There were no meetings underway at the Secretariat, they said, and the Agriculture Secretary himself, Miguel Campos, was visiting an industry trade fair in Santa Fe province. Toward the end of the day, Economy Minister Felisa Miceli, who was accompanying Campos and Vice President Daniel Scioli at the same trade fair, ruled out an export ban in comments to the state news agency, Telam. But three hours later, after flying back to Buenos Aires for a rushed meeting with the president, Miceli was hosting a press conference, where she made a dramatic about-face. The government, she said, was "worried about the purchasing power of our workers and our families," and so was imposing a 180-day export ban to bring "the internal supply and the internal demand (for beef) into equilibrium."....
Conservationists back ranchers in gate dispute Northern Utah farmers and ranchers, angered by Box Elder County's prosecution of one of their own for locking a gate on a road through a family ranch, have joined forces with conservation groups. Two dozen ranchers, together with the Ogden Sierra Club, Bear River Watershed Council and Bridgerland Audubon Society, are calling the charges 'coercion' to get residents to relinquish private property. They also blast Cache and Box Elder counties, as well as the Forest Service, for failing to stop off-road vehicle users from trespassing on private land. Box Elder County Attorney Amy Hugie last month charged 38-year-old Bret cq Selman, a prominent Tremonton rancher who with his parents runs a 7,000-acre ranch southeast of Mantua, with five class B misdemeanors - four counts for placing a gate on the road and one count of obstructing traffic. Shaun Peck, Selman's Logan attorney, said his client admits locking the gate. 'It's a question of whether he has a right to lock it," Peck said. "We maintain he did.' The Selmans contend that the rough dirt road in question is a private 'livestock driveway' that has always been posted as 'No Trespassing' or as private property. The gate across the road traditionally has been closed but not locked....
Court questions wolf Lawsuits If the line of questioning by a three-judge panel is any indication, the State of Wyoming’s appeal of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s rejection of its state wolf management plan is doomed, as is the appeal filed concurrently by the Wyoming Wolf Coalition. Oral arguments in the appeals were heard by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Salt Lake City on Monday. A federal judge in Wyoming had rejected the lawsuits, but his decision was appealed to the higher court. The state’s case focuses on FWS’s January 2004 letter to the state rejecting the wolf management plan and insisting that the plan eliminate “predator” status for wolves before it would be accepted. The wolf coalition’s case also argued over the rejection of the wolf management plan but also claimed that FWS’ insistence that wolves must be protected throughout Wyoming represents a major modification to wolf management that must be subject to an environmental impact statement pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act. The panel keyed in on the 2004 letter by FWS, indicating that the letter was not “final agency action” for which judicial review is appropriate....
Gray Wolf Numbers in Northern Rockies Up The number of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies has surpassed 1,000, a decade after wolves were reintroduced in and around Yellowstone National Park, a report released Thursday shows. "I'm eating crow," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena. "I never thought we'd get that high." The report, from state and federal wildlife agencies responsible for wolf management in the three-state region, shows population growth in Montana and Idaho. But it shows an overall decline in Wyoming, where wolf numbers in Yellowstone National Park fell sharply _ mainly because so many pups died. Officials suspect disease as the culprit behind the deaths. Outside the park, the wolf population in Wyoming grew by about 33 percent between 2004 and 2005, the report concluded. Estimates for the end of 2005 put the Northern Rockies wolf population at 1,020, with 512 wolves in Idaho, 256 in Montana and 252 in Wyoming. Estimates also put the number of breeding pairs in the states at 71, far above the minimum 30 that help define the wolves as a recovered species. A breeding pair consists of an adult male and female with at least two pups until year's end....
Ranch owner supported by hundreds Marie Wissler was overwhelmed by the show of support from her neighbors, hundreds of whom attended a meeting Wednesday to discuss helping her stave off any attempt to force her to sell part of her ranch. Lewis-Palmer School District 38 is looking for a site for a new high school, and Superintendent Dave Dilley has said the Wissler Ranch is the only parcel that could meet all its needs. The district wants to buy about 60 acres of the 814-acre ranch, and officials have said condemnation is an option if the family is unwilling to sell. Many of the more than 200 people at the meeting had never met the 87-year-old Wissler but said they admire her determination to keep the land that’s been in her family for four generations and want to help her hold onto it. Wissler, a widow who has lived on the ranch for 60 years, has said she isn’t interested in selling. Neighbors braved slick roads and snow to attend the meeting at Creekside Middle School and prepare for the school board’s March 16 meeting....
Law will keep highest peaks open Lawsuits and liability weren’t much on Jim Gehres’ mind 40 years ago when he finished climbing all 54 of Colorado’s highest mountains the first time around. After Gov. Bill Owns signed a bill Wednesday to keep the big peaks accessible and free of legal hassles, the 73-year-old Gehres won’t have to worry if he goes climbing again — and he said he might. The new law will allow owners to permit people to cross their land and mining claims without being sued for any accidents that might occur. Trails on a half-dozen of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks cross private or leased land, presenting an obstacle for peak-baggers — climbers who set out to reach the top of all the “Fourteeners.” The bill requires the U.S. Forest Service and climbing groups to put up signs warning of dangerous abandoned mines, mark the trails and educate the public about private property rights. Access became an issue when some owners posted “no trespassing” signs for fear of being sued if a hiker fell into an old mine shaft or was injured some other way....
Scientists resist species act reform As a Senate committee prepares to take up revisions to the Endangered Species Act, nearly 6,000 biologists from around the country signed a letter Wednesday urging senators to preserve scientific protections in the landmark law. The House passed an Endangered Species Act rewrite last year that horrified many scientists and environmentalists. One environmental lobbyist said the bill amounted to a "death warrant for treasured American wildlife." They are lobbying the Senate now, in hopes its Environment and Public Works Committee will take a more moderate stance. "Unfortunately, recent legislative proposals would critically weaken" the law's scientific foundation, said the letter organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The 5,738 signers included six National Medal of Science recipients....
Can a nonprofit force the US government to change its policy on global warming? Elkhorn coral and polar bears appear to have little in common, but they share the same lawyers. In an effort to force the US government to reduce carbon emissions, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has petitioned to have the creatures added to the federal endangered species list. Since the Endangered Species Act requires the US to protect the habitat of any listed species, and the sea ice and oceans where polar bears and coral make their homes are threatened by global warming, adding the two to the list would, theoretically, force the retooling of all federal policy contributing to climate change. CBD hopes its strategy will gain a foothold for global warming science in a hostile political environment. But skeptics say the likelihood of increasing fuel economy standards, ditching the Clear Skies Initiative, abandoning Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling for good, repealing the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and sharply controlling fossil fuels production—all to save an animal that lives underwater and looks like a rock—would appear to have a polar bear's chance in hell....
Column: The Absurdity We Call "Public Involvement" In early January, I suggested Idaho had not made a smooth move when it launched a controversial wolf-killing plan before the ink had dried on the documents transferring management from the feds to the state wildlife agency. To me, this seemed like getting off on the wrong foot and could discourage or delay transfer of state control in other states and for other species—or even create enough political backlash to prompt the feds to re-take control of wolf management in Idaho. But the toothpaste was already out of the tube, and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (DFG) charged ahead with the next step, soliciting comments from the public. That’s the subject of this column, the embarrassing craziness we commonly but incorrectly refer to as “public involvement.” In thirty years of working for and with agencies and writing about citizen-initiated conservation efforts, I have yet to see a proposal yanked or substantially altered due to the results of “public involvement.” I have, however, seen many examples of agencies coming up with their plan, going through the motions of soliciting public comment, and then going ahead when they feel they’ve met legal requirements. With cosmetic adjustments at best, the “draft” plan morphs into the final plan, regardless of how lopsided the public comments. This sends a strong message that most agencies consider “public involvement” little more than an annoying delay....
State vet threatens quarantines Threatening to quarantine a ranch because elk and cattle commingle is a “draconian” use of the powers of the state veterinarian, according to the Green River Cattlemen’s Association and the Jackson Hole Cattle and Horse Association. The two organizations passed resolutions that acknowledged the intensive brucellosis surveillance program in place in the state’s livestock herds but called for the Wyoming Livestock Board to “cease and desist” the practice of quarantining cattle when commingling with elk occurs and there is no evidence of brucellosis in a cattle herd. Brucellosis is an bacterial-based disease that can cause abortion outbreaks in cattle, elk and bison. Most cattle in Wyoming are vaccinated against the disease....
Argentina's Kirchner Gambles Big With Beef Ban Shocker Argentine President Nestor Kirchner made one of the most extreme policy decisions of his three-year presidency Wednesday: he banned beef exports for six months. Just as striking as the measure itself, which prompted a chorus of condemnation from industry leaders, is the unilateral way in which Kirchner apparently arrived at it. Throughout the day, amid rumors that new beef restrictions would be announced to curtail rising prices in the domestic market, staff in the Agriculture Secretariat said they knew nothing of any such plans. There were no meetings underway at the Secretariat, they said, and the Agriculture Secretary himself, Miguel Campos, was visiting an industry trade fair in Santa Fe province. Toward the end of the day, Economy Minister Felisa Miceli, who was accompanying Campos and Vice President Daniel Scioli at the same trade fair, ruled out an export ban in comments to the state news agency, Telam. But three hours later, after flying back to Buenos Aires for a rushed meeting with the president, Miceli was hosting a press conference, where she made a dramatic about-face. The government, she said, was "worried about the purchasing power of our workers and our families," and so was imposing a 180-day export ban to bring "the internal supply and the internal demand (for beef) into equilibrium."....
Thursday, March 09, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Town gets more than money in energy boom This once-quiet cattle town has so much wealth that all fifth-graders get laptops. Teachers here are the highest paid in the state. The unemployment rate is so low that the Subway shop offers $10 an hour to new workers. In the past three years, the county built hockey and riding arenas, a senior center and an addition to the courthouse. Two medical clinics are in the design stage. The source of the wealth that has made Pinedale a modern-day boomtown lies not far outside town, where what was mostly empty sagebrush plains is now home to more than 1,000 natural gas wells. Thousands more are on the way. Pinedale's transformation from ranching and recreation into an energy center is a story as old as the West, where boom-and-bust economies have been a familiar pattern for generations — from the California gold rush in the mid-1800s to Denver's energy industry recession in the 1980s. Similar gas booms are happening elsewhere in the West, including Wyoming's Powder River basin, western Colorado and the San Juan basin bordering New Mexico and Colorado. This town, population about 1,600, also is a cautionary tale about what happens when the government invites full-throttle energy production on the region's vast federal land....
Copper battle brewing in rural Arizona In the valley below a ring of blue-black mountains in southeastern Arizona, a group of townspeople gathered on a recent Sunday after church to stop a copper-mining giant. They sat shoulder to shoulder on wooden benches in a crowded meeting hall, asking one another in hushed voices: "Did you get a letter?" Dozens of certified letters arrived at the small Dragoon post office in mid-January, sent by foreign mining giants BHP Billiton and General Minerals Corp. The companies wrote that they had filed claims on some of the residents' land and reserved the right to enter property beginning last month. With copper surging to record prices on the world market, some analysts say more rural areas across the West can expect to see similar notices. Using a near-century-old law, mining companies are legally allowed to check if some rural residents are sitting on a gold mine. Major mining interests are snatching up many square miles of mineral rights at a time, although mostly for exploration of public lands - not private....
Drilling may hit rare ferrets' turf The prospect of northwestern Colorado's rampant oil and gas drilling moving into the territory of North America's most endangered mammal has rattled wildlife biologists who have worked for five years to reintroduce black-footed ferrets to the state. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, despite a recommendation from its field office to defer a decision, has nominated for oil and gas leasing a large portion of a 20,000-acre area east of Rangely where 189 black- footed ferrets have been released since 2001. Biologists with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who learned of the plan Tuesday voiced strong concern that it could jeopardize the reintroduction program just months after biologists had the first indication of success. A juvenile ferret born in the wild was spotted in the area last fall during a middle-of-the-night survey. It was the first indication that the elusive animals were mating and reproducing in Colorado. "We've spent a lot of effort and time to see something like drilling thrown in the middle of it," said Rick Krueger, a wildlife biologist with the federal wildlife agency. "It is a big concern."....
Nearly 9,000 new gas wells may be coming to Red Desert Two drilling projects proposed in the Red Desert near Wamsutter could result in nearly 9,000 new gas wells over the next four decades. The wells would be drilled on a million acres of public and private land. The federal government is planning an environmental study on the Creston/Blue Gap II natural gas project proposed by Devon Energy and the Continental Divide/Wamsutter II gas project proposed by BP America. The combined projects around Wamsutter call for up to 8,950 new gas wells, including 100 to 500 coal-bed methane wells, over the next 30 to 40 years. Last year, Devon and other leaseholders proposed drilling and developing up to 1,250 wells, while BP America and other operators proposed up to 7,700 wells. Mary Wilson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land management, said the BLM decided to combine the projects and do one environmental study. Energy industry representatives praised the drilling plans Monday....
Oregon: New frontier for energy? It may not be time to rush off to the oil patch yet, but Oregon is seeing its own version of an oil and gas boom. Industry requests have prompted the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, keeper of the government's mineral wealth, to offer 224,516 acres in Eastern Oregon for oil and gas exploration at an auction today. It's a land area equal to about a quarter of the Mount Hood National Forest and the largest amount put up for sale in Oregon in many years. The auction, at which bids will start at $2 an acre, comes as energy companies that have largely ignored Oregon look more closely for precious underground reserves. It also comes amid surging energy development in the West and a drive by the Bush administration to cultivate domestic energy reserves....
BLM relaxes drilling deadlines Bureau of Land Management officials in Colorado have begun giving companies more time to drill under their drilling permits, drawing questions from some environmentalists. Companies that hadn't been able to drill before their leases on federal land expired typically lost their leases. BLM officials in Colorado recently changed their rules to stop the clock for companies that can't find rigs to drill. Some environmentalists say it's inconsistent for the agency to request an extra $27 million from Congress to speed up the processing of permits when drillers can't use all the permits they already have. "The industry is awash in federal drilling permits," said Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society. "They have so many, they don't know what to do with them." BLM officials say most extensions are requested by smaller companies. "Rig availability is a bigger issue for them," said Duane Spencer, who heads the BLM's fluid minerals division in Colorado....
Supreme Court hears arguments over right to clean environment If the state's constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment is to have any meaning, Montanans need to be able to sue companies and fellow citizens over perceived violations, attorneys argued Wednesday before the Montana Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in three lawsuits seeking damages for pollution. The court's decision could set a precedent on the power citizens have under the Montana Constitution's clean and healthful environment provision. "The answers to these questions will constitute a legacy of this sitting court," Cliff Edwards, a lawyer representing ranchers against a mining company, told justices. Attorneys for the landowners said citizens need to have the right to sue under the constitutional provision to make sure their rights are protected. They contend state regulators don't always get the environmental enforcement job done. Industry lawyers have been joined by trade groups, a big group of Republican lawmakers, and others in attempt to fight the lawsuits. They argued that only the Legislature can decide how the environment should be protected, and it has set up the Department of Environmental Quality to be the enforcer. The core of the debate focuses on whether the constitutional right is "self-executing," or whether the Legislature must pass laws to enforce the right and provide remedies for violations....
Column: `Hook and bullet' clubs shooting themselves in the foot n an alliance of odd bedfellows, hunting and angling clubs are joining forces with their natural enemies, environmental groups, in a bid to preserve their happy hunting grounds across the United States. Both groups are lining up behind a Clinton-era plan to create 60 million acres of "roadless" areas in national forests, as this 6-year-old battle shifts to the states. And unless typical Americans stand up and demand the continuation of the multiple use rules that long guided national forest policy, they may soon find their access to public lands severely limited, as these areas become the exclusive playgrounds of ecological or recreational elitists who aren't willing to share. This debate is only nominally about roads: it's actually about who will have access to 60 million acres (or about a third) of national forests, and whether these lands will continue to be managed for multiple uses, balancing ecological, aesthetic and economic goals. That's why this battle has implications for all Americans. I don't do much hunting or fishing, but I don't mind sharing the national forests with those who do. I have a live-and-let-live attitude, believing that there's plenty of room for everybody. But watching hook and bullet clubs joining forces with gang green to support a roadless rule designed to severely limit the people's access to "public" lands has me seeing these clubs in a different light. It seems some hunters and anglers have become just another myopic special interest, which sees the roadless plan as an opportunity to turn federal forests into private game preserves....
PFS chief says foes can't stop nuclear waste A Nuclear Regulatory Commission license in hand, Private Fuel Storage's chairman said Wednesday that the consortium of utilities is moving forward with its plans for a high-level nuclear waste disposal site in Utah's Skull Valley — and he doesn't think opponents can stop it. "Yes, there is hope for our future," John Parkyn said, holding up the license at an NRC conference in Maryland, drawing applause from the crowd. In other developments: • The state of Utah this week filed an updated challenge to the PFS proposal in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. It challenges the NRC's license, issued to PFS last month. • And Time magazine is reporting that PFS would pay the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians up to $100 million over 40 years for the right to operate its proposed repository on the band's reservation. However, neither Skull Valley Band chairman Leon Bear nor PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin would confirm the figure to the Deseret Morning News. In Maryland, Parkyn told the NRC conference he is seeking additional utilities with nuclear plants interested in moving waste to the PFS site, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. And he downplayed any chances Utah's congressional delegation, governor and other opponents have at stopping PFS's plans....
Column: How to save the hunter,fisherman, and trapper Put as succinctly as possible, the threat to hunting, fishing, and trapping is hostility to these pursuits from a small, but active, part of the population organized into well-financed organizations. These organizations are scattered throughout not only the United States, but also all the other "Western" or "First World" nations, as well. They represent mainly affluent, urban factions who are personally unaffected in any way by the anti-everything-rural (hunting, fishing, trapping, ranching, logging, etc.), and anti-gun agendas that they unflinchingly impose on others. These organizations have been both ruthless and successful in influencing and staffing, not only the U.S. federal bureaucracy and lobbying U.S. politicians for power and funding, they have also controlled the explosive growth of United Nations' control of plants and animals, and the U.N. bureaucracy that fuels that growth. These organizations, and their surrogates, have spawned a perpetual monsoon of ballot initiatives, laws, treaties, conventions, regulations, land restrictions, property takings, permits, and closures, based on every sort of bizarre claim, from "invasive" and "native" species definitions, to imaginary "ecosystem benefits," and the "need" for X, Y, and Z to remain protected forever. Ultimately, all of these things constrict, and slowly eliminate, hunting, fishing, and trapping, by eliminating tools (guns, traps, and lead, for instance); species (rainbow and brown trout, pheasants, Great Lakes salmon, etc.); managed populations (elk, moose, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, etc.); area use and access, both public and private, where fishing, hunting, and trapping take place; and indoctrinating the public and the young, in particular, with a steady stream of lies and half-truths, that go unrefuted....
Bones of dinosaur found north of Billings may be new species Chances are, no one's ever seen a mug quite like Ralph's. Uncovered last summer, the long-necked, giant dinosaur with a walnut-size brain appears to be a new species, according to Malta paleontologist Nate Murphy, who led the dig at the foot of the Little Snowy Mountains. The discovery may reveal crucial information about the history of the once-dominant plant-eating giants known as sauropods. The latest find seems to provide a previously undocumented link between two similar types of dinosaurs. "We're bridging a gap here," said Murphy, the curator of paleontology for the Judith River Dinosaur Institute in Malta. Murphy and his team recovered the complete neck, skull, teeth and other bones from the 20-ton dinosaur believed to have roamed the flood plains of ancient Montana 150 million years ago....
Historic 'mail trail' ride to be re-enacted One of the great sagas of the Wild West -- the 52-mile ride along the "mail trail" that ran from Camp Verde to Payson -- will come to life again this fall. At its Thursday evening meeting, the Payson Town Council will consider matching a $3,000 donation from the Camp Verde Town Council to support an annual re-enactment of the historic ride. The mail trail's history reaches back to 1884 when the small frontier settlement of Union Park received its first Post Office. That made it necessary to extend mail service 50 miles east from Camp Verde to the community that would henceforth be known as Payson -- named after the senator who appointed the town's first postmaster. A route was established through formidable terrain with mail stops in the communities of Rutherford, Strawberry and Pine en route to Payson. From 1884 to 1914, a total of 60 riders delivered the mail six days a week over the rugged trail that started at Sutler's Store in Camp Verde. Unlike the pony express, which involved multiple riders relaying the mail along a route, just one rider was used to complete the 104-mile round trip over the first mail trail. "The pony express was altogether a different thing," said Parrish, a longtime horse rancher and member of the Camp Verde Cavalry, the group that is spearheading the effort to re-open the trail. "Each of the riders who rode our trail was under contract. One guy would take the mail from here to Payson, lay over, and then come back," he said. "There was no relay involved." A rider was in the saddle from 11 to 18 hours at a time, changing horses twice in each direction. One change took place at the Diamond S Ranch in the vicinity of Clear Creek today, and the other took place in Pine....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Cunning and practice gelds the stallion "Macho Surgery" There's a practice in a practice of a vet who works on horses/That embodies the machismo of their kind./I was taught this ancient practice, castrating horses standing,/Meaning, both he and I were standing at the time./To cognize the difficulty, the mule-headedness required/To complete this task of surgery and cunning/One must grasp its deeper meaning. It's been favorably compared/To changing fan belts with the engine running/Or standing on a bar stool taking bets from one and all/You can stick your head up through the ceiling fan/And never touch a single blade, or spill a drop of beer....
Town gets more than money in energy boom This once-quiet cattle town has so much wealth that all fifth-graders get laptops. Teachers here are the highest paid in the state. The unemployment rate is so low that the Subway shop offers $10 an hour to new workers. In the past three years, the county built hockey and riding arenas, a senior center and an addition to the courthouse. Two medical clinics are in the design stage. The source of the wealth that has made Pinedale a modern-day boomtown lies not far outside town, where what was mostly empty sagebrush plains is now home to more than 1,000 natural gas wells. Thousands more are on the way. Pinedale's transformation from ranching and recreation into an energy center is a story as old as the West, where boom-and-bust economies have been a familiar pattern for generations — from the California gold rush in the mid-1800s to Denver's energy industry recession in the 1980s. Similar gas booms are happening elsewhere in the West, including Wyoming's Powder River basin, western Colorado and the San Juan basin bordering New Mexico and Colorado. This town, population about 1,600, also is a cautionary tale about what happens when the government invites full-throttle energy production on the region's vast federal land....
Copper battle brewing in rural Arizona In the valley below a ring of blue-black mountains in southeastern Arizona, a group of townspeople gathered on a recent Sunday after church to stop a copper-mining giant. They sat shoulder to shoulder on wooden benches in a crowded meeting hall, asking one another in hushed voices: "Did you get a letter?" Dozens of certified letters arrived at the small Dragoon post office in mid-January, sent by foreign mining giants BHP Billiton and General Minerals Corp. The companies wrote that they had filed claims on some of the residents' land and reserved the right to enter property beginning last month. With copper surging to record prices on the world market, some analysts say more rural areas across the West can expect to see similar notices. Using a near-century-old law, mining companies are legally allowed to check if some rural residents are sitting on a gold mine. Major mining interests are snatching up many square miles of mineral rights at a time, although mostly for exploration of public lands - not private....
Drilling may hit rare ferrets' turf The prospect of northwestern Colorado's rampant oil and gas drilling moving into the territory of North America's most endangered mammal has rattled wildlife biologists who have worked for five years to reintroduce black-footed ferrets to the state. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, despite a recommendation from its field office to defer a decision, has nominated for oil and gas leasing a large portion of a 20,000-acre area east of Rangely where 189 black- footed ferrets have been released since 2001. Biologists with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who learned of the plan Tuesday voiced strong concern that it could jeopardize the reintroduction program just months after biologists had the first indication of success. A juvenile ferret born in the wild was spotted in the area last fall during a middle-of-the-night survey. It was the first indication that the elusive animals were mating and reproducing in Colorado. "We've spent a lot of effort and time to see something like drilling thrown in the middle of it," said Rick Krueger, a wildlife biologist with the federal wildlife agency. "It is a big concern."....
Nearly 9,000 new gas wells may be coming to Red Desert Two drilling projects proposed in the Red Desert near Wamsutter could result in nearly 9,000 new gas wells over the next four decades. The wells would be drilled on a million acres of public and private land. The federal government is planning an environmental study on the Creston/Blue Gap II natural gas project proposed by Devon Energy and the Continental Divide/Wamsutter II gas project proposed by BP America. The combined projects around Wamsutter call for up to 8,950 new gas wells, including 100 to 500 coal-bed methane wells, over the next 30 to 40 years. Last year, Devon and other leaseholders proposed drilling and developing up to 1,250 wells, while BP America and other operators proposed up to 7,700 wells. Mary Wilson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land management, said the BLM decided to combine the projects and do one environmental study. Energy industry representatives praised the drilling plans Monday....
Oregon: New frontier for energy? It may not be time to rush off to the oil patch yet, but Oregon is seeing its own version of an oil and gas boom. Industry requests have prompted the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, keeper of the government's mineral wealth, to offer 224,516 acres in Eastern Oregon for oil and gas exploration at an auction today. It's a land area equal to about a quarter of the Mount Hood National Forest and the largest amount put up for sale in Oregon in many years. The auction, at which bids will start at $2 an acre, comes as energy companies that have largely ignored Oregon look more closely for precious underground reserves. It also comes amid surging energy development in the West and a drive by the Bush administration to cultivate domestic energy reserves....
BLM relaxes drilling deadlines Bureau of Land Management officials in Colorado have begun giving companies more time to drill under their drilling permits, drawing questions from some environmentalists. Companies that hadn't been able to drill before their leases on federal land expired typically lost their leases. BLM officials in Colorado recently changed their rules to stop the clock for companies that can't find rigs to drill. Some environmentalists say it's inconsistent for the agency to request an extra $27 million from Congress to speed up the processing of permits when drillers can't use all the permits they already have. "The industry is awash in federal drilling permits," said Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society. "They have so many, they don't know what to do with them." BLM officials say most extensions are requested by smaller companies. "Rig availability is a bigger issue for them," said Duane Spencer, who heads the BLM's fluid minerals division in Colorado....
Supreme Court hears arguments over right to clean environment If the state's constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment is to have any meaning, Montanans need to be able to sue companies and fellow citizens over perceived violations, attorneys argued Wednesday before the Montana Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in three lawsuits seeking damages for pollution. The court's decision could set a precedent on the power citizens have under the Montana Constitution's clean and healthful environment provision. "The answers to these questions will constitute a legacy of this sitting court," Cliff Edwards, a lawyer representing ranchers against a mining company, told justices. Attorneys for the landowners said citizens need to have the right to sue under the constitutional provision to make sure their rights are protected. They contend state regulators don't always get the environmental enforcement job done. Industry lawyers have been joined by trade groups, a big group of Republican lawmakers, and others in attempt to fight the lawsuits. They argued that only the Legislature can decide how the environment should be protected, and it has set up the Department of Environmental Quality to be the enforcer. The core of the debate focuses on whether the constitutional right is "self-executing," or whether the Legislature must pass laws to enforce the right and provide remedies for violations....
Column: `Hook and bullet' clubs shooting themselves in the foot n an alliance of odd bedfellows, hunting and angling clubs are joining forces with their natural enemies, environmental groups, in a bid to preserve their happy hunting grounds across the United States. Both groups are lining up behind a Clinton-era plan to create 60 million acres of "roadless" areas in national forests, as this 6-year-old battle shifts to the states. And unless typical Americans stand up and demand the continuation of the multiple use rules that long guided national forest policy, they may soon find their access to public lands severely limited, as these areas become the exclusive playgrounds of ecological or recreational elitists who aren't willing to share. This debate is only nominally about roads: it's actually about who will have access to 60 million acres (or about a third) of national forests, and whether these lands will continue to be managed for multiple uses, balancing ecological, aesthetic and economic goals. That's why this battle has implications for all Americans. I don't do much hunting or fishing, but I don't mind sharing the national forests with those who do. I have a live-and-let-live attitude, believing that there's plenty of room for everybody. But watching hook and bullet clubs joining forces with gang green to support a roadless rule designed to severely limit the people's access to "public" lands has me seeing these clubs in a different light. It seems some hunters and anglers have become just another myopic special interest, which sees the roadless plan as an opportunity to turn federal forests into private game preserves....
PFS chief says foes can't stop nuclear waste A Nuclear Regulatory Commission license in hand, Private Fuel Storage's chairman said Wednesday that the consortium of utilities is moving forward with its plans for a high-level nuclear waste disposal site in Utah's Skull Valley — and he doesn't think opponents can stop it. "Yes, there is hope for our future," John Parkyn said, holding up the license at an NRC conference in Maryland, drawing applause from the crowd. In other developments: • The state of Utah this week filed an updated challenge to the PFS proposal in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. It challenges the NRC's license, issued to PFS last month. • And Time magazine is reporting that PFS would pay the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians up to $100 million over 40 years for the right to operate its proposed repository on the band's reservation. However, neither Skull Valley Band chairman Leon Bear nor PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin would confirm the figure to the Deseret Morning News. In Maryland, Parkyn told the NRC conference he is seeking additional utilities with nuclear plants interested in moving waste to the PFS site, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. And he downplayed any chances Utah's congressional delegation, governor and other opponents have at stopping PFS's plans....
Column: How to save the hunter,fisherman, and trapper Put as succinctly as possible, the threat to hunting, fishing, and trapping is hostility to these pursuits from a small, but active, part of the population organized into well-financed organizations. These organizations are scattered throughout not only the United States, but also all the other "Western" or "First World" nations, as well. They represent mainly affluent, urban factions who are personally unaffected in any way by the anti-everything-rural (hunting, fishing, trapping, ranching, logging, etc.), and anti-gun agendas that they unflinchingly impose on others. These organizations have been both ruthless and successful in influencing and staffing, not only the U.S. federal bureaucracy and lobbying U.S. politicians for power and funding, they have also controlled the explosive growth of United Nations' control of plants and animals, and the U.N. bureaucracy that fuels that growth. These organizations, and their surrogates, have spawned a perpetual monsoon of ballot initiatives, laws, treaties, conventions, regulations, land restrictions, property takings, permits, and closures, based on every sort of bizarre claim, from "invasive" and "native" species definitions, to imaginary "ecosystem benefits," and the "need" for X, Y, and Z to remain protected forever. Ultimately, all of these things constrict, and slowly eliminate, hunting, fishing, and trapping, by eliminating tools (guns, traps, and lead, for instance); species (rainbow and brown trout, pheasants, Great Lakes salmon, etc.); managed populations (elk, moose, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, etc.); area use and access, both public and private, where fishing, hunting, and trapping take place; and indoctrinating the public and the young, in particular, with a steady stream of lies and half-truths, that go unrefuted....
Bones of dinosaur found north of Billings may be new species Chances are, no one's ever seen a mug quite like Ralph's. Uncovered last summer, the long-necked, giant dinosaur with a walnut-size brain appears to be a new species, according to Malta paleontologist Nate Murphy, who led the dig at the foot of the Little Snowy Mountains. The discovery may reveal crucial information about the history of the once-dominant plant-eating giants known as sauropods. The latest find seems to provide a previously undocumented link between two similar types of dinosaurs. "We're bridging a gap here," said Murphy, the curator of paleontology for the Judith River Dinosaur Institute in Malta. Murphy and his team recovered the complete neck, skull, teeth and other bones from the 20-ton dinosaur believed to have roamed the flood plains of ancient Montana 150 million years ago....
Historic 'mail trail' ride to be re-enacted One of the great sagas of the Wild West -- the 52-mile ride along the "mail trail" that ran from Camp Verde to Payson -- will come to life again this fall. At its Thursday evening meeting, the Payson Town Council will consider matching a $3,000 donation from the Camp Verde Town Council to support an annual re-enactment of the historic ride. The mail trail's history reaches back to 1884 when the small frontier settlement of Union Park received its first Post Office. That made it necessary to extend mail service 50 miles east from Camp Verde to the community that would henceforth be known as Payson -- named after the senator who appointed the town's first postmaster. A route was established through formidable terrain with mail stops in the communities of Rutherford, Strawberry and Pine en route to Payson. From 1884 to 1914, a total of 60 riders delivered the mail six days a week over the rugged trail that started at Sutler's Store in Camp Verde. Unlike the pony express, which involved multiple riders relaying the mail along a route, just one rider was used to complete the 104-mile round trip over the first mail trail. "The pony express was altogether a different thing," said Parrish, a longtime horse rancher and member of the Camp Verde Cavalry, the group that is spearheading the effort to re-open the trail. "Each of the riders who rode our trail was under contract. One guy would take the mail from here to Payson, lay over, and then come back," he said. "There was no relay involved." A rider was in the saddle from 11 to 18 hours at a time, changing horses twice in each direction. One change took place at the Diamond S Ranch in the vicinity of Clear Creek today, and the other took place in Pine....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Cunning and practice gelds the stallion "Macho Surgery" There's a practice in a practice of a vet who works on horses/That embodies the machismo of their kind./I was taught this ancient practice, castrating horses standing,/Meaning, both he and I were standing at the time./To cognize the difficulty, the mule-headedness required/To complete this task of surgery and cunning/One must grasp its deeper meaning. It's been favorably compared/To changing fan belts with the engine running/Or standing on a bar stool taking bets from one and all/You can stick your head up through the ceiling fan/And never touch a single blade, or spill a drop of beer....
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