FARM SUBSIDY ISSUES
Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm
Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years. Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice. Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post. Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709...The checks to Matthews and other landowners were intended 10 years ago as a first step toward eventually eliminating costly, decades-old farm subsidies. Instead, the payments have grown into an even larger subsidy that benefits millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as farmers. Most of the money goes to real farmers who grow crops on their land, but they are under no obligation to grow the crop being subsidized. They can switch to a different crop or raise cattle or even grow a stand of timber -- and still get the government payments. The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards. The payments now account for nearly half of the nation's expanding agricultural subsidy system, a complex web that has little basis in fairness or efficiency. What began in the 1930s as a limited safety net for working farmers has swollen into a far-flung infrastructure of entitlements that has cost $172 billion over the past decade. In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare....
Cultivating Waste
HEART SURGEON Jimmy Frank Howell owns a piece of land that hasn't produced crops in years. The federal government has paid him $490,709 in rice subsidies since 1996. Michael T. Sullivan's family, corn farmers, sold most of their crop last year above a government-set minimum price. He got $292,054 in federal agricultural payments anyway. We've known for a long time that America's bloated food subsidy programs rile foreign governments, complicate trade talks, distort agricultural prices and disproportionately benefit large agribusinesses. As if that weren't enough, the results of a nine-month Post investigation published last week vividly detail the scandalous waste of America's vast farm subsidy system. Many American farmers have learned to speculate on foodstuff markets, successfully timing the sale of their crops to coincide with high prices. Yet under the misleadingly named loan deficiency payment (LDP) scheme the Michael Sullivans of the world can claim federal money as long as the market price dips below a government-set minimum price after they harvest their crop. Intended to benefit farmers hitting hard times, the LDP program handed out $3.8 billion more last year than it needed to guarantee its minimum price. Other federal agricultural subsidies go to individuals who don't even farm. Under a program Congress designed to phase out government subsidies by untying payments from the cultivation of particular crops, Mr. Howell reaps federal dollars from his land as long as he doesn't grow the crops. These "direct payments" to landowners who don't grow any crop have cost the federal government $1.3 billion since 2000. Another thick layer of irony in all of this is that these programs aren't poorly managed. They operate just as Congress passed them....
Cook vs. Combest Debates?
Environmental Working Group (EWG) President Ken Cook today challenged one the nation's most ardent and articulate defenders of status quo farm subsidy programs to a nationwide series of policy debates about the programs, former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX). Cook is the originator of EWG's heavily visited Farm Subsidy Database, which has been searched over 54 million times since November 2004. The Web site has drawn the ire of program defenders and bolstered reform efforts. EWG has used the database to make the case for shifting taxpayer money away from status quo programs, which primarily reward cotton and grain farmers. Cook instead favors shifting taxpayer resources to conservation programs that are open to all farmers and ranchers, regardless of size, in return for their help avoiding pollution of waterways, preserving wildlife habitat and for keeping land out of the hands of developers. Farm Journal Editor and past National Press Club President Sonja Hillgren has agreed to moderate the first debate in Washington, DC this fall. Cook suggested further debates be held across the nation before farm and ranch audiences, including Combest's home state of Texas. The debates would be moderated by distinguished agricultural journalists and policy experts. Read the letter to Combest here.
Monday, July 10, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rainbow Gathering in Colorado lacks one color: green When we tell folks that we have become the unwitting hosts for the Rainbow Family's annual gathering, the first response is "the who?" As it turns out, some 20,000 Rainbows have gathered in Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in the Routt National Forest. Their Web site, welcomehome.org, styles them "the largest non-organization of non-members in the world." My husband and I, local ranchers, are hosts because this year's get-together has taken over our sheep-grazing permit. Rainbow spokesman Bodhi, from New York City, said he chose the area because, "We need a fresh water source, one main meadow that is 100 acres or larger and about 5-to-10 square miles of hippie land." Bodhi added, "We need another large meadow to accommodate thousands of vehicles." Now, for years, we have been told that our sheep and cows are not to "lounge" in the riparian areas when they water. How can it be, we asked the Forest Service, that many thousands of people can come in, camp on a riparian area for weeks and weeks, and not worry about resource damage? That is but one of the rubs....
Costs, impact tallied at end of Rainbows As the exodus of neo-hippies has begun from the Rainbow Family gathering in the woods north of Steamboat Springs, local officials are beginning to see the impacts of 15,000 renegade campers. At the encampment, a spider web of new trails wanders everywhere through the sagebrush, trees have been stripped of their lower branches, fire pits dot the terrain and barren earth marks high-traffic areas and campsites. And in town, officials are tallying the financial costs of providing services and stepped-up law enforcement. The Yampa Valley Medical Center will have provided more than $100,000 in medical care that probably won't be repaid. The Routt County Humane Society scrambled to vaccinate dozens of dogs after an outbreak of the deadly parvovirus, and officials fear there could be as many as 200 pets abandoned. And the Forest Service, which spent nearly $800,000 just for its incident-management team, will be left with the task of rehabilitating the land....
Rainbows leave paths of damage in forest Now that the Rainbow Family is wrapping up its annual return to nature, the U.S. Forest Service is examining what it will take to return their campsite to its natural state. Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said aerial photography of the countercultural campers' 4-square-mile settlement in the Hahns Peak/Bears Ears Ranger District of Routt National Forest revealed "40 to 50 miles" of newly improvised trails requiring restoration in the visitors' wake. "It's shocking," Ottaviano said. "Now there's just this enormous trail system" in a previously pristine area. At its peak, the Rainbow gathering, which officially ran July 1 through Friday, drew an estimated 15,000 free spirits from across the country. The attendance figure, released by the Forest Service, is based in part on the estimated 3,100 cars, plus numerous vans and buses parked at the campers' settlement....
Federal Government Kills Another Endangered Mexican Gray Wolf Government agents killed the female of the Nantac Pack of Mexican gray wolves yesterday, several weeks after shooting her mate. The two wolves were survivors of past predator control actions and had been re-released into the Gila National Forest in New Mexico in late April 2006. In early May, this pair scavenged on a bull that perished from disease, and the wolves subsequently killed four cows. The male wolf, which was born in the wild, was shot June 18, and the female was shot yesterday. She was a particularly valuable wolf genetically, one of the few wolves in the wild with DNA from all three of the Mexican wolf lineages that stem from just a few founding animals. “This was an unnecessary killing,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, New Mexico. “If the Fish and Wildlife Service had followed scientists’ recommendations to keep wolves from scavenging on carcasses of cows and horses that they did not kill, the Nantac Pack would still be roaming the hills of the Gila together today.”....
Wilderness bill built on consensus An unusual alliance of off-road vehicle enthusiasts, environmentalists and local officials in the Eastern Sierra has crafted a deal to set aside more than 40,000 acres of wilderness near Yosemite National Park, which lawmakers are calling a model of how to build consensus to protect public lands. The plan would permanently protect an area of the High Sierra one-third larger than San Francisco that is popular with hikers, equestrians and anglers for its jagged 11,000-foot peaks, alpine lakes, lush meadows and conifer forests. The area covers 11 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile scenic path stretching from Canada to Mexico. In return for giving up access to the new wilderness, snowmobile riders would get an 11,000-acre winter-use snowmobile recreation area centered on Leavitt Bowl near the Sonora Pass. The deal is in a bill by Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, a Republican from Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), which is expected to get its first House hearing this month. The sponsors, including California's two Democratic senators, believe it could be approved by Congress later this year.... Researchers wonder what's killing bighorn Something is killing Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon, and for the first time biologists in the three Northwest states that border the rugged chasm have started capturing sick lambs to figure out the cause. Researchers at Washington State University are examining tissue taken from the lambs. Their findings could have ramifications for wild sheep throughout North America. "That would be a huge step forward," said Frances Cassirer, a wildlife research biologist with Idaho Fish and Game. "At least then we'd be dealing with a known enemy. It's a problem for bighorn sheep almost everywhere they occur." Biologists say about 2 million bighorns once inhabited the West, but they disappeared over most of their range in the 1800s and early 1900s due to disease and unregulated hunting. Reintroductions and added protection in the last 50 years have boosted bighorn numbers to about 50,000. But sweeping epidemics of a mystery illness wipe out thousands of Rocky Mountain bighorns, California bighorns, Sierra Nevada bighorns, and desert bighorns, thwarting attempts by wildlife biologists to fill empty habitat....
Drilling debate hinges on how water, wildlife affected Citing seven points of contention discussed in detail over 47 pages, Gov. Bill Richardson's consistency review questioned the wisdom and worth of the Bureau of Land Management's resource management plan for the Otero Mesa area. "I have found numerous inconsistencies with state laws, rules, policies, programs, and plans," he wrote, "particularly those that relate to protecting the Chihuahuan Desert and New Mexico's ground water." Richardson charged the plan with a "cavalier attitude" about ground water issues because the agency admits it hasn't found or studied all aquifers in the planning area and some aquifers may be vulnerable to contamination. He also claimed the plan violates the New Mexico Wildlife Conservation Act and the New Mexico Game Management Plans by inadequately protecting habitat for the northern aplomado falcon, pronghorn antelope, desert bighorn sheep, and the black-tailed prairie dog most of which are rare and some of which are endangered. Richardson called for designating Otero Mesa a national conservation area, and offered an alternative plan that would close 310,554 acres of the planning area to any drilling and prohibit surface occupancy on another 333,200 acres....
Sportsmen want range protected A group of hunters and anglers is proposing to form a coalition of outdoors enthusiasts to work with landowners, government officials and the oil and gas industry to hold up drilling in the Wyoming Range. "We can have both world-class wildlife and an economically viable mineral industry," Bob Wharff, executive director of Wyoming Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, said in a release. But Wharff said leasing and any drilling on Forest Service land in the Wyoming Range should be halted until there is assurance there will be no further decline in big-game numbers. He said the coalition would "identify, monitor, and address factors which affect wildlife and ... seek effective means of mitigation or best management practices which minimize the impacts to Wyoming's wildlife."....
Pressure builds to hire — and keep — oil rig inspectors in the field Beset with unfilled positions for much of the past year, the Bureau of Land Management is working to catch up on drill-rig inspections across Colorado. Environmental organizations, however, say they fear the agency can’t keep pace with the fast-growing ranks of drill rigs in the region, even though it is now nearly at full staff. The pressure on the agency would increase even more if Congress requires the BLM to process drill-permit applications within 10 days, industry critics said. To be sure, statewide inspections are behind schedule, said Jaime Gardner, a spokeswoman for the BLM state office in Lakewood. “But taking into account that we had five open positions, most of which have been filled, we’re hoping to definitely meet and possibly exceed our inspection target,” she said. To date, more than half of at least 1,000 targeted inspections have been completed, Gardner said. The agency is required to inspect its high-priority wells once a year and all other active wells once every three years....
Suit filed over grizzly habitat Helicopters hauling logs out of North Idaho's grizzly bear country threaten the bears almost as much as using logging trucks, according to a lawsuit filed this week in federal court by environmentalists seeking to block a large logging project north of Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The Boundary Creek timber sale was scheduled to begin later this month in a remote canyon near the Canadian border. The area is considered some of the best remaining habitat in the Selkirk Mountains for one of the nation's most imperiled populations of grizzlies. The U.S. Forest Service had hoped to minimize impacts to the bears by using helicopters rather than trucks to haul logs off most of the 1,242-acre project. Most of the timber sale is slated to take place in federally designated core grizzly bear habitat, according to the lawsuit. Motorized use is restricted in these areas in an attempt to protect bears, said Liz Sedler, a Sandpoint resident and member of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington. If helicopters are allowed to buzz bear habitat for the next three years, the bears will likely flee to other parts of the forest, including places with roads or homes....
Issue of fire crew liability is raised Firefighter Kenneth Jordan's ambition once was to lead one of the nation's elite teams of specialized wildfire and disaster incident managers. The challenge and responsibility seemed appealing. Not anymore. Not since a wildfire in Idaho three years ago left two firefighters dead -- and their fire commander facing potential federal charges for their deaths. These days, Jordan is thinking more about retirement. "For an incident commander to have to look after everybody on a fire is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous theory," he said. Jordan, like many firefighters, does not lack confidence in his abilities. Still, he worries about being held criminally liable if a member of the California Hotshot crew he supervises is killed. The Cramer fire in Idaho made that fear very real. And firefighter advocates warn that concerns about civil or criminal liability could keep firefighters from seeking or accepting promotions at a time when the federal government is struggling to fill fire crews. The issue of liability also has raised concerns among firefighters about whether the state and federal agencies they work for would stand behind them if people die or houses burn on their watch....
Forest Service to reopen Mount St. Helens to climbers Climbing to the summit of Mount St. Helens will resume on July 21 -- about 22 months after seismic and volcanic activity closed the peak. Climbers will be asked to stick hard hats and ash masks in their packs for protection in case the peak erupts. Climbing to the crater rim was closed in September of 2004 when earthquake activity perked up and the mountain began a dome-building eruption the next month that continues today. By now, seismic activity has decreased to the point where U.S. Forest Service officials think climbing is safe....
U.S. plans roundup of horses near Las Vegas All but a few dozen wild horses roaming public lands surrounding Las Vegas will be rounded up in January under a federal plan horse advocates are calling a proposal to "zero out" wild horse herds in the area. The Bureau of Land Management's latest proposed roundup would remove 250 wild horses and 570 burros from the Spring Mountains, plus 60 animals from areas west of Lake Mead about 30 miles from Las Vegas. "It's very disheartening when you look at the numbers they want to take off," Laurie Howard, vice president of Wild Horses 4 Ever, said Friday. "It really comes down to does America in general, and especially Nevada, want those horses and burros or not?" BLM officials say the roundup is necessary to preserve other wildlife in the mountainous desert landscape....
Nonprofit Buys Local Ranch An international organization that strives to protect open space and coastal waters recently purchased a significant plot of land teaming with roaming elk. The Nature Conservancy bought the 2,899-acre San Antonio Valley ranch on the north end of Henry Coe State Park at a price of $5.2 million. The nonprofit organization, which has headquarters in San Francisco and Monterey, stepped in after discovering that the ranch's owner had unsuccessfully attempted to sell his land to the California Department of Fish and Game. The state department wasn't able to purchase the land immediately so the Nature Conservancy, which as a nonprofit reserves the power to overstep many legal barriers, bought the ranch with cash from a grant provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and a grant and loan from the Conserving California Landscapes Initiative. "We're a nonprofit so we work as a (intermediary) and it gives us an opportunity to lock the property up and help them on their time frame," said Lloyd Wagstaff, Mount Hamilton project director for the Nature Conservancy....
Dude ranches fade off into the sunset Amid decades of change in Arch Wagner's life, Montana's Boulder River Ranch was the constant. Thirty years ago, Wagner, then a radiologist in Virginia, spotted the ranch's ad in the back of a fishing magazine. He visited for a week, then returned nearly every summer, teaching his children to fish on the river that runs through the ranch, sprinkling his late wife's ashes there and riding horses with his grandchildren through its 600 acres. Last summer, he didn't go back. Thanks to rising land prices, the family that owned the ranch since 1918 sold to a group of investors that included news-caster Tom Brokaw, and the property stopped taking guests. "Three generations of us went there," said Wagner. For a century of summers, American travelers have headed to Western ranches, saddled up their horses and galloped away from the tedium of modern life. Now, the future of dude ranching is being threatened by rising land prices and the reach of development. Some ranches are being sold off to a new generation of wealthy investors seeking private retreats, while others are attracting neighbors with names like McDonald's and Starbucks. At the same time, dude ranches that stay in business are racing to catch up with travelers' changing tastes, which increasingly tend toward massages and shopping. At the heart of this is a fact: Many dude ranches rest on land that is now far more valuable than the business on top....
For dry cowpunchers, a standing eight count Jim Goodrich is, in a word, desperate. He's a rancher. He's used to being, well, concerned. Or worried. Or just dispatching a hard stare into an unforgiving sky. But being desperate is another thing. There's not a drop of cowboy romance in it. It's a late June day here at Winter Livestock Auction, and Goodrich is selling off some of his cattle. You don't sell in the early summer. If you sell your cattle this time of year, you are, by definition, desperate. You can read it in Goodrich's lined face, in the worried look from his wife, Doris, in the long silences from their teenage boys. "The worry factor?" he asks, standing with his family in the auction lobby. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say it's about a 9.5." It's not just cattle he's selling. Selling his cattle, Goodrich explains, is like selling the factory. And in selling the factory, he just may be selling away his future and the only thing he knows....
Cow 54, where are you? Mark Kittrell leaned against the pipe railing of a walkway overlooking the sale ring in the George County Sale Barn. Kittrell, 38, was watching the weekly cattle sale. The cattle business is one that the Stateline resident knows well. It is changing and he hopes to be able to change with it. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns recently announced a United States Department of Agriculture plan outlining timetables and benchmarks for establishing a national animal identification system. The plan includes integrating private and state animal tracking data bases, allowing USDA to track the nation's nine billion cows, hogs, sheep, goats and chickens from the farm to the grocery store. It is this change that worries Kittrell. "I am concerned about the older farmers and ranchers. I have heard a number of them say that when they are forced to do this, they will sell out. That means I will lose part of my market."....
Comstock Annual Youth Rodeo continues a 43-year tradition The Comstock Rodeo Club’s 43rd Annual Youth Rodeo, Saturday, drew an appreciative crowd of family, friends and supporters of arena skills, including horsemanship and stock handling, all in an atmosphere of tradition and ranch living camaraderie. No money prizes, just buckles for event and category winners, and “high fives,” shouts of “Good job!” and ribbons for all participants. Under high clouds, the Comstock arena was ringed Saturday morning by trailers, improvised shade shelters, and pickup trucks, augmented for safety by Val Verde Regional Medical Center Emergency Medical Service Chief Jack Howley, and a fire suppression crew from Val Verde County Volunteer Fire Department. In the 4-H barn, the club members offered a feast of brisket, beans, potato salad, hominy, chocolate cake and iced tea, as participants and spectators drifted in and out as action continued in the arena....
Holdups and shootouts On or about July 1, 1896, a couple of cowboys rode into Quemado looking for the town marshal. After finding him, and anyone else who would listen, the two excited men told their story. As they were riding along the cattle trail through the Datil Mountains, they heard some gun shots near Mangas Mountain. In the distance, they saw some men in a shootout with a lone rider. When the smoke cleared, one of the men and his horse were dead on the ground. They thought the ambushed man looked like local rancher Frank Williams. Such shootings were not uncommon. Several cattle rustling rings were operating in the area, along with notorious outlaws, making desolate Western Socorro County a dangerous and deadly place to be during the late 1800s. The brutal killing of Fred Williams was quickly reported in the Socorro Chieftain and other area newspapers. Riding south out of Quemado to investigate the murder, the marshal, whose name is unknown, found the scene described by the two cowboys. The dead horse was riddled with bullets and the blood-soaked saddle was definitely that of Frank Williams. However, there was no body. Apparently, Williams had survived the shootout and was wandering through the mountains looking for help....
Rainbow Gathering in Colorado lacks one color: green When we tell folks that we have become the unwitting hosts for the Rainbow Family's annual gathering, the first response is "the who?" As it turns out, some 20,000 Rainbows have gathered in Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in the Routt National Forest. Their Web site, welcomehome.org, styles them "the largest non-organization of non-members in the world." My husband and I, local ranchers, are hosts because this year's get-together has taken over our sheep-grazing permit. Rainbow spokesman Bodhi, from New York City, said he chose the area because, "We need a fresh water source, one main meadow that is 100 acres or larger and about 5-to-10 square miles of hippie land." Bodhi added, "We need another large meadow to accommodate thousands of vehicles." Now, for years, we have been told that our sheep and cows are not to "lounge" in the riparian areas when they water. How can it be, we asked the Forest Service, that many thousands of people can come in, camp on a riparian area for weeks and weeks, and not worry about resource damage? That is but one of the rubs....
Costs, impact tallied at end of Rainbows As the exodus of neo-hippies has begun from the Rainbow Family gathering in the woods north of Steamboat Springs, local officials are beginning to see the impacts of 15,000 renegade campers. At the encampment, a spider web of new trails wanders everywhere through the sagebrush, trees have been stripped of their lower branches, fire pits dot the terrain and barren earth marks high-traffic areas and campsites. And in town, officials are tallying the financial costs of providing services and stepped-up law enforcement. The Yampa Valley Medical Center will have provided more than $100,000 in medical care that probably won't be repaid. The Routt County Humane Society scrambled to vaccinate dozens of dogs after an outbreak of the deadly parvovirus, and officials fear there could be as many as 200 pets abandoned. And the Forest Service, which spent nearly $800,000 just for its incident-management team, will be left with the task of rehabilitating the land....
Rainbows leave paths of damage in forest Now that the Rainbow Family is wrapping up its annual return to nature, the U.S. Forest Service is examining what it will take to return their campsite to its natural state. Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano said aerial photography of the countercultural campers' 4-square-mile settlement in the Hahns Peak/Bears Ears Ranger District of Routt National Forest revealed "40 to 50 miles" of newly improvised trails requiring restoration in the visitors' wake. "It's shocking," Ottaviano said. "Now there's just this enormous trail system" in a previously pristine area. At its peak, the Rainbow gathering, which officially ran July 1 through Friday, drew an estimated 15,000 free spirits from across the country. The attendance figure, released by the Forest Service, is based in part on the estimated 3,100 cars, plus numerous vans and buses parked at the campers' settlement....
Federal Government Kills Another Endangered Mexican Gray Wolf Government agents killed the female of the Nantac Pack of Mexican gray wolves yesterday, several weeks after shooting her mate. The two wolves were survivors of past predator control actions and had been re-released into the Gila National Forest in New Mexico in late April 2006. In early May, this pair scavenged on a bull that perished from disease, and the wolves subsequently killed four cows. The male wolf, which was born in the wild, was shot June 18, and the female was shot yesterday. She was a particularly valuable wolf genetically, one of the few wolves in the wild with DNA from all three of the Mexican wolf lineages that stem from just a few founding animals. “This was an unnecessary killing,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, New Mexico. “If the Fish and Wildlife Service had followed scientists’ recommendations to keep wolves from scavenging on carcasses of cows and horses that they did not kill, the Nantac Pack would still be roaming the hills of the Gila together today.”....
Wilderness bill built on consensus An unusual alliance of off-road vehicle enthusiasts, environmentalists and local officials in the Eastern Sierra has crafted a deal to set aside more than 40,000 acres of wilderness near Yosemite National Park, which lawmakers are calling a model of how to build consensus to protect public lands. The plan would permanently protect an area of the High Sierra one-third larger than San Francisco that is popular with hikers, equestrians and anglers for its jagged 11,000-foot peaks, alpine lakes, lush meadows and conifer forests. The area covers 11 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile scenic path stretching from Canada to Mexico. In return for giving up access to the new wilderness, snowmobile riders would get an 11,000-acre winter-use snowmobile recreation area centered on Leavitt Bowl near the Sonora Pass. The deal is in a bill by Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, a Republican from Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), which is expected to get its first House hearing this month. The sponsors, including California's two Democratic senators, believe it could be approved by Congress later this year.... Researchers wonder what's killing bighorn Something is killing Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon, and for the first time biologists in the three Northwest states that border the rugged chasm have started capturing sick lambs to figure out the cause. Researchers at Washington State University are examining tissue taken from the lambs. Their findings could have ramifications for wild sheep throughout North America. "That would be a huge step forward," said Frances Cassirer, a wildlife research biologist with Idaho Fish and Game. "At least then we'd be dealing with a known enemy. It's a problem for bighorn sheep almost everywhere they occur." Biologists say about 2 million bighorns once inhabited the West, but they disappeared over most of their range in the 1800s and early 1900s due to disease and unregulated hunting. Reintroductions and added protection in the last 50 years have boosted bighorn numbers to about 50,000. But sweeping epidemics of a mystery illness wipe out thousands of Rocky Mountain bighorns, California bighorns, Sierra Nevada bighorns, and desert bighorns, thwarting attempts by wildlife biologists to fill empty habitat....
Drilling debate hinges on how water, wildlife affected Citing seven points of contention discussed in detail over 47 pages, Gov. Bill Richardson's consistency review questioned the wisdom and worth of the Bureau of Land Management's resource management plan for the Otero Mesa area. "I have found numerous inconsistencies with state laws, rules, policies, programs, and plans," he wrote, "particularly those that relate to protecting the Chihuahuan Desert and New Mexico's ground water." Richardson charged the plan with a "cavalier attitude" about ground water issues because the agency admits it hasn't found or studied all aquifers in the planning area and some aquifers may be vulnerable to contamination. He also claimed the plan violates the New Mexico Wildlife Conservation Act and the New Mexico Game Management Plans by inadequately protecting habitat for the northern aplomado falcon, pronghorn antelope, desert bighorn sheep, and the black-tailed prairie dog most of which are rare and some of which are endangered. Richardson called for designating Otero Mesa a national conservation area, and offered an alternative plan that would close 310,554 acres of the planning area to any drilling and prohibit surface occupancy on another 333,200 acres....
Sportsmen want range protected A group of hunters and anglers is proposing to form a coalition of outdoors enthusiasts to work with landowners, government officials and the oil and gas industry to hold up drilling in the Wyoming Range. "We can have both world-class wildlife and an economically viable mineral industry," Bob Wharff, executive director of Wyoming Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, said in a release. But Wharff said leasing and any drilling on Forest Service land in the Wyoming Range should be halted until there is assurance there will be no further decline in big-game numbers. He said the coalition would "identify, monitor, and address factors which affect wildlife and ... seek effective means of mitigation or best management practices which minimize the impacts to Wyoming's wildlife."....
Pressure builds to hire — and keep — oil rig inspectors in the field Beset with unfilled positions for much of the past year, the Bureau of Land Management is working to catch up on drill-rig inspections across Colorado. Environmental organizations, however, say they fear the agency can’t keep pace with the fast-growing ranks of drill rigs in the region, even though it is now nearly at full staff. The pressure on the agency would increase even more if Congress requires the BLM to process drill-permit applications within 10 days, industry critics said. To be sure, statewide inspections are behind schedule, said Jaime Gardner, a spokeswoman for the BLM state office in Lakewood. “But taking into account that we had five open positions, most of which have been filled, we’re hoping to definitely meet and possibly exceed our inspection target,” she said. To date, more than half of at least 1,000 targeted inspections have been completed, Gardner said. The agency is required to inspect its high-priority wells once a year and all other active wells once every three years....
Suit filed over grizzly habitat Helicopters hauling logs out of North Idaho's grizzly bear country threaten the bears almost as much as using logging trucks, according to a lawsuit filed this week in federal court by environmentalists seeking to block a large logging project north of Bonners Ferry, Idaho. The Boundary Creek timber sale was scheduled to begin later this month in a remote canyon near the Canadian border. The area is considered some of the best remaining habitat in the Selkirk Mountains for one of the nation's most imperiled populations of grizzlies. The U.S. Forest Service had hoped to minimize impacts to the bears by using helicopters rather than trucks to haul logs off most of the 1,242-acre project. Most of the timber sale is slated to take place in federally designated core grizzly bear habitat, according to the lawsuit. Motorized use is restricted in these areas in an attempt to protect bears, said Liz Sedler, a Sandpoint resident and member of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington. If helicopters are allowed to buzz bear habitat for the next three years, the bears will likely flee to other parts of the forest, including places with roads or homes....
Issue of fire crew liability is raised Firefighter Kenneth Jordan's ambition once was to lead one of the nation's elite teams of specialized wildfire and disaster incident managers. The challenge and responsibility seemed appealing. Not anymore. Not since a wildfire in Idaho three years ago left two firefighters dead -- and their fire commander facing potential federal charges for their deaths. These days, Jordan is thinking more about retirement. "For an incident commander to have to look after everybody on a fire is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous theory," he said. Jordan, like many firefighters, does not lack confidence in his abilities. Still, he worries about being held criminally liable if a member of the California Hotshot crew he supervises is killed. The Cramer fire in Idaho made that fear very real. And firefighter advocates warn that concerns about civil or criminal liability could keep firefighters from seeking or accepting promotions at a time when the federal government is struggling to fill fire crews. The issue of liability also has raised concerns among firefighters about whether the state and federal agencies they work for would stand behind them if people die or houses burn on their watch....
Forest Service to reopen Mount St. Helens to climbers Climbing to the summit of Mount St. Helens will resume on July 21 -- about 22 months after seismic and volcanic activity closed the peak. Climbers will be asked to stick hard hats and ash masks in their packs for protection in case the peak erupts. Climbing to the crater rim was closed in September of 2004 when earthquake activity perked up and the mountain began a dome-building eruption the next month that continues today. By now, seismic activity has decreased to the point where U.S. Forest Service officials think climbing is safe....
U.S. plans roundup of horses near Las Vegas All but a few dozen wild horses roaming public lands surrounding Las Vegas will be rounded up in January under a federal plan horse advocates are calling a proposal to "zero out" wild horse herds in the area. The Bureau of Land Management's latest proposed roundup would remove 250 wild horses and 570 burros from the Spring Mountains, plus 60 animals from areas west of Lake Mead about 30 miles from Las Vegas. "It's very disheartening when you look at the numbers they want to take off," Laurie Howard, vice president of Wild Horses 4 Ever, said Friday. "It really comes down to does America in general, and especially Nevada, want those horses and burros or not?" BLM officials say the roundup is necessary to preserve other wildlife in the mountainous desert landscape....
Nonprofit Buys Local Ranch An international organization that strives to protect open space and coastal waters recently purchased a significant plot of land teaming with roaming elk. The Nature Conservancy bought the 2,899-acre San Antonio Valley ranch on the north end of Henry Coe State Park at a price of $5.2 million. The nonprofit organization, which has headquarters in San Francisco and Monterey, stepped in after discovering that the ranch's owner had unsuccessfully attempted to sell his land to the California Department of Fish and Game. The state department wasn't able to purchase the land immediately so the Nature Conservancy, which as a nonprofit reserves the power to overstep many legal barriers, bought the ranch with cash from a grant provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and a grant and loan from the Conserving California Landscapes Initiative. "We're a nonprofit so we work as a (intermediary) and it gives us an opportunity to lock the property up and help them on their time frame," said Lloyd Wagstaff, Mount Hamilton project director for the Nature Conservancy....
Dude ranches fade off into the sunset Amid decades of change in Arch Wagner's life, Montana's Boulder River Ranch was the constant. Thirty years ago, Wagner, then a radiologist in Virginia, spotted the ranch's ad in the back of a fishing magazine. He visited for a week, then returned nearly every summer, teaching his children to fish on the river that runs through the ranch, sprinkling his late wife's ashes there and riding horses with his grandchildren through its 600 acres. Last summer, he didn't go back. Thanks to rising land prices, the family that owned the ranch since 1918 sold to a group of investors that included news-caster Tom Brokaw, and the property stopped taking guests. "Three generations of us went there," said Wagner. For a century of summers, American travelers have headed to Western ranches, saddled up their horses and galloped away from the tedium of modern life. Now, the future of dude ranching is being threatened by rising land prices and the reach of development. Some ranches are being sold off to a new generation of wealthy investors seeking private retreats, while others are attracting neighbors with names like McDonald's and Starbucks. At the same time, dude ranches that stay in business are racing to catch up with travelers' changing tastes, which increasingly tend toward massages and shopping. At the heart of this is a fact: Many dude ranches rest on land that is now far more valuable than the business on top....
For dry cowpunchers, a standing eight count Jim Goodrich is, in a word, desperate. He's a rancher. He's used to being, well, concerned. Or worried. Or just dispatching a hard stare into an unforgiving sky. But being desperate is another thing. There's not a drop of cowboy romance in it. It's a late June day here at Winter Livestock Auction, and Goodrich is selling off some of his cattle. You don't sell in the early summer. If you sell your cattle this time of year, you are, by definition, desperate. You can read it in Goodrich's lined face, in the worried look from his wife, Doris, in the long silences from their teenage boys. "The worry factor?" he asks, standing with his family in the auction lobby. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say it's about a 9.5." It's not just cattle he's selling. Selling his cattle, Goodrich explains, is like selling the factory. And in selling the factory, he just may be selling away his future and the only thing he knows....
Cow 54, where are you? Mark Kittrell leaned against the pipe railing of a walkway overlooking the sale ring in the George County Sale Barn. Kittrell, 38, was watching the weekly cattle sale. The cattle business is one that the Stateline resident knows well. It is changing and he hopes to be able to change with it. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns recently announced a United States Department of Agriculture plan outlining timetables and benchmarks for establishing a national animal identification system. The plan includes integrating private and state animal tracking data bases, allowing USDA to track the nation's nine billion cows, hogs, sheep, goats and chickens from the farm to the grocery store. It is this change that worries Kittrell. "I am concerned about the older farmers and ranchers. I have heard a number of them say that when they are forced to do this, they will sell out. That means I will lose part of my market."....
Comstock Annual Youth Rodeo continues a 43-year tradition The Comstock Rodeo Club’s 43rd Annual Youth Rodeo, Saturday, drew an appreciative crowd of family, friends and supporters of arena skills, including horsemanship and stock handling, all in an atmosphere of tradition and ranch living camaraderie. No money prizes, just buckles for event and category winners, and “high fives,” shouts of “Good job!” and ribbons for all participants. Under high clouds, the Comstock arena was ringed Saturday morning by trailers, improvised shade shelters, and pickup trucks, augmented for safety by Val Verde Regional Medical Center Emergency Medical Service Chief Jack Howley, and a fire suppression crew from Val Verde County Volunteer Fire Department. In the 4-H barn, the club members offered a feast of brisket, beans, potato salad, hominy, chocolate cake and iced tea, as participants and spectators drifted in and out as action continued in the arena....
Holdups and shootouts On or about July 1, 1896, a couple of cowboys rode into Quemado looking for the town marshal. After finding him, and anyone else who would listen, the two excited men told their story. As they were riding along the cattle trail through the Datil Mountains, they heard some gun shots near Mangas Mountain. In the distance, they saw some men in a shootout with a lone rider. When the smoke cleared, one of the men and his horse were dead on the ground. They thought the ambushed man looked like local rancher Frank Williams. Such shootings were not uncommon. Several cattle rustling rings were operating in the area, along with notorious outlaws, making desolate Western Socorro County a dangerous and deadly place to be during the late 1800s. The brutal killing of Fred Williams was quickly reported in the Socorro Chieftain and other area newspapers. Riding south out of Quemado to investigate the murder, the marshal, whose name is unknown, found the scene described by the two cowboys. The dead horse was riddled with bullets and the blood-soaked saddle was definitely that of Frank Williams. However, there was no body. Apparently, Williams had survived the shootout and was wandering through the mountains looking for help....
Sunday, July 09, 2006
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
EPA sues the feds
by Larry Gabriel
In an abrupt change of policy, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that from now on it will enforce pollution laws against federal agencies first.
"It is only fair that the federal government get its own house in order before it imposes expensive mitigation measures on the rest of America," a spokesperson said.
As its first order of business under the new policy, EPA will require the United States Department of Agriculture's Forest Service to stop dumping an estimated nine billion tons of pollutants into the air and water of America by burning several million acres of federal lands each year.
"The Forest Service is not fooling anyone. Their own environmental analysis shows they utilize only about 10 percent (nature removes another 10 percent) of the wood produced each year on federal lands in a climate that has only about 18 inches of annual rainfall. We know the other 80 percent of annual growth is planned for discharge into the air and water by combustion. It has to burn and everyone knows it, but they refuse to get a permit for those discharges," an unidentified source in the EPA explained.
Forest Service officials admitted that for many years they have flown through the smoke of wildfires in America in a large aircraft with sophisticated electronic equipment measuring emissions of things like carbon monoxide, mercury and other toxic pollutants. However, they insist that such things are not really "pollutants" under the law unless the Forest Service lights the fire.
"If lightning, a careless camper or an arsonist starts the fire, the release is not a discharge of a pollutant even if at times it is the largest single source of summertime air pollution in North America," a spokesperson said.
A Forest Service spokesperson added, "Well, we can only do what Congress says to do with these lands in laws they write. It is not our fault."
Congressional sources claimed the Forest Service simply has field management problems and for that reason cannot get its work done. "It is really unfair of the Forest Service to blame Congress for their mess," the source said.
The same source hinted that EPA might be due for a change in leadership because "it appears the agency is getting out of hand."
EPA officials did not appreciate the thinly veiled threat from Congressional sources. "Congress is responsible for all federal lands and how they are managed. If they can't figure out how to properly manage the land, they should give it to the States," a source said.
A public opinion survey revealed that 75% of Americans support the federal government's control of 30% of the land in America and think Congress is doing a "better" job of managing it.
The truth is, I made this story up (at least most of it), but maybe someone had such thoughts without saying them.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Don’t get too friendly with your local EMT’s
By Julie Carter
America’s finest – our local law enforcement and emergency respondents. And the best thing for anyone is to never ever need any of them.
Every now and then we all find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not hard to do and it isn’t until it is too late that we realize that is just what happened.
Such was my Saturday before the 4th of July. I was, as I usually am at that time of year, in the rodeo arena taking photos of some cowboy event. This one happened to be the Youth Ranch Rodeo – kids on fast running horses.
In the midst of one of the events I proceeded to get myself run into by a very fast running horse. It wasn’t a pretty sight – me flying, camera flying, and sunglasses airborne. It is amazing the thoughts that can go through your mind during the split seconds of wreck like that.
Beyond the “he is going to hit me” and the “this is going to hurt” is the “oh no, my camera!” Although my camera, a baby at only 6 months old, is better insured than I am, it also is a critical part of my job and certainly vital on this holiday weekend.
Before the dust had settled, I rolled over from the sprawled side-back position I had landed and somewhat un-spryly scrambled to my feet.
Every effort was made to appear perfectly healthy to the emergency medical technicians hanging on the fence like vultures waiting for their first piece of meat or someone to stop breathing. Hey, it is their job.
Here is the danger. I know these fine, highly qualified heroes. They are my friends as well as my heroes. But there isn’t a one of them I want giving me mouth to mouth while I’m awake and know about it. And when they wanted to check my leg? Well, I just told them they would have to shoot me with a gun first to get me to take my britches off.
The moral of this story is – don’t make friends with the people who can save your life because you might not let them do it when it really is necessary.
Reaching for any parts that might be in the dirt before they were trampled by concerned bystanders, I hobbled to the fence, bruised and “contused,” but headed for better days –in about a week.
The best part came the next day. Back in the arena with the kids on running horses, a fair board member presented me with a 10-foot piece of crime scene tape – the yellow plastic ribbon that has in bold print “Do Not Cross This Line” repeated the length of it.
It was tied around my neck like a necktie and became part of my wardrobe for the day. It seemed to work. I didn’t get run over again and not because there weren’t a few attempts.
To my heroes in the big box truck with the flashing lights: Thank you for being who you are and doing what you do. You honor me with your friendship.
With God’s help, may I always remain the embedded reporter on the scene, not the “in bed” reporter from the scene.
© Julie Carter 2006
EPA sues the feds
by Larry Gabriel
In an abrupt change of policy, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that from now on it will enforce pollution laws against federal agencies first.
"It is only fair that the federal government get its own house in order before it imposes expensive mitigation measures on the rest of America," a spokesperson said.
As its first order of business under the new policy, EPA will require the United States Department of Agriculture's Forest Service to stop dumping an estimated nine billion tons of pollutants into the air and water of America by burning several million acres of federal lands each year.
"The Forest Service is not fooling anyone. Their own environmental analysis shows they utilize only about 10 percent (nature removes another 10 percent) of the wood produced each year on federal lands in a climate that has only about 18 inches of annual rainfall. We know the other 80 percent of annual growth is planned for discharge into the air and water by combustion. It has to burn and everyone knows it, but they refuse to get a permit for those discharges," an unidentified source in the EPA explained.
Forest Service officials admitted that for many years they have flown through the smoke of wildfires in America in a large aircraft with sophisticated electronic equipment measuring emissions of things like carbon monoxide, mercury and other toxic pollutants. However, they insist that such things are not really "pollutants" under the law unless the Forest Service lights the fire.
"If lightning, a careless camper or an arsonist starts the fire, the release is not a discharge of a pollutant even if at times it is the largest single source of summertime air pollution in North America," a spokesperson said.
A Forest Service spokesperson added, "Well, we can only do what Congress says to do with these lands in laws they write. It is not our fault."
Congressional sources claimed the Forest Service simply has field management problems and for that reason cannot get its work done. "It is really unfair of the Forest Service to blame Congress for their mess," the source said.
The same source hinted that EPA might be due for a change in leadership because "it appears the agency is getting out of hand."
EPA officials did not appreciate the thinly veiled threat from Congressional sources. "Congress is responsible for all federal lands and how they are managed. If they can't figure out how to properly manage the land, they should give it to the States," a source said.
A public opinion survey revealed that 75% of Americans support the federal government's control of 30% of the land in America and think Congress is doing a "better" job of managing it.
The truth is, I made this story up (at least most of it), but maybe someone had such thoughts without saying them.
Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture
Don’t get too friendly with your local EMT’s
By Julie Carter
America’s finest – our local law enforcement and emergency respondents. And the best thing for anyone is to never ever need any of them.
Every now and then we all find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not hard to do and it isn’t until it is too late that we realize that is just what happened.
Such was my Saturday before the 4th of July. I was, as I usually am at that time of year, in the rodeo arena taking photos of some cowboy event. This one happened to be the Youth Ranch Rodeo – kids on fast running horses.
In the midst of one of the events I proceeded to get myself run into by a very fast running horse. It wasn’t a pretty sight – me flying, camera flying, and sunglasses airborne. It is amazing the thoughts that can go through your mind during the split seconds of wreck like that.
Beyond the “he is going to hit me” and the “this is going to hurt” is the “oh no, my camera!” Although my camera, a baby at only 6 months old, is better insured than I am, it also is a critical part of my job and certainly vital on this holiday weekend.
Before the dust had settled, I rolled over from the sprawled side-back position I had landed and somewhat un-spryly scrambled to my feet.
Every effort was made to appear perfectly healthy to the emergency medical technicians hanging on the fence like vultures waiting for their first piece of meat or someone to stop breathing. Hey, it is their job.
Here is the danger. I know these fine, highly qualified heroes. They are my friends as well as my heroes. But there isn’t a one of them I want giving me mouth to mouth while I’m awake and know about it. And when they wanted to check my leg? Well, I just told them they would have to shoot me with a gun first to get me to take my britches off.
The moral of this story is – don’t make friends with the people who can save your life because you might not let them do it when it really is necessary.
Reaching for any parts that might be in the dirt before they were trampled by concerned bystanders, I hobbled to the fence, bruised and “contused,” but headed for better days –in about a week.
The best part came the next day. Back in the arena with the kids on running horses, a fair board member presented me with a 10-foot piece of crime scene tape – the yellow plastic ribbon that has in bold print “Do Not Cross This Line” repeated the length of it.
It was tied around my neck like a necktie and became part of my wardrobe for the day. It seemed to work. I didn’t get run over again and not because there weren’t a few attempts.
To my heroes in the big box truck with the flashing lights: Thank you for being who you are and doing what you do. You honor me with your friendship.
With God’s help, may I always remain the embedded reporter on the scene, not the “in bed” reporter from the scene.
© Julie Carter 2006
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Taking a Molecule to Court
The Supreme Court, by agreeing to hear a case on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must take steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, will finally judge on the alleged threat of global warming. The stakes are huge. Should the Court find in favor of the plaintiffs, it would put the EPA in control of the U.S. economy for the foreseeable future. The modern global economy is powered by hydrocarbons—oil, natural gas and coal. Burning these fuels releases the energy we need to light our homes, heat and cool our offices, and get us from place to place. But the process also releases a byproduct called carbon dioxide (CO2). We have known for well over a century that, all other things being equal, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will warm the atmosphere as it absorbs energy up to a certain point. In recent years, with the atmosphere warming since the 1970s, scientists have connected the warming trend to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is the phenomenon of global warming. The case arose when a group of activist state attorneys general (AGs) petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to make rules to control emissions of carbon dioxide. When the agency determined that it had no power to do so, the AGs and several environmental pressure groups sued, claiming, "The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to take certain actions when it determines that a pollutant may 'cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.'" The Supreme Court's agreeing to hear the case underscores its importance to the American economy. Regulation would directly affect 70 percent of the electricity sector and 98 percent of the transportation sector—with repercussions throughout the entire economy as those sectors are forced to raise costs to comply with new regulations. Had the Court not agreed to hear the case, the plaintiffs would surely seek out other judicial avenues to force the EPA to regulate. By agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court has at least signaled that there will be an end to the uncertainty soon. Businesses around the U.S. will be grateful for that....
Courting Regulatory Disaster - or Clarity
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case being brought by a dozen states, several major cities, and environmental groups who want carbon dioxide, widely believed to be contributing to the current global warming trend, to be designated as a pollutant. The plaintiffs are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision in 2003 that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant that would come under the regulatory portions of the Clean Air Act. That decision has been upheld by two lower court rulings. Central to the argument that CO2 be regarded as a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act is that it "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." This will be difficult to prove scientifically, since we have no way of proving that current global warmth is due to carbon dioxide emissions. While some theoretical modeling research that has suggested that all of the current global warmth could be explained by the extra CO2 we have produced, there is an element of circularity inherent in this type of science. The computer models built to predict climate fluctuations were based upon knowledge of what the answer was to begin with. Natural climate fluctuations (such as a small change in cloudiness) can also cause temperature changes, but since we don't understand what causes them, we can't model them. But even if the 1 deg. F warming in the last 100 years can be convincingly demonstrated to be due to humans, it will be just as difficult to prove harm to human health and welfare. This is why the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs last year. Proving harm from global warming is confounded by natural climate fluctuations that are so large that the global warming signal becomes lost in the noise. Note that the 1 degree of warming in the last century is much less than what humans routinely endure as part of normal weather variations and the progression of the seasons. And throughout human history, warm has always, on balance, been better than cold....
Fishermen’s Attorney Comments on Ninth Circuit Ruling in Chinook Salmon Case
Today a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld federal regulations that drastically curtailed salmon fishing off the Pacific Coast because of low projected returns of salmon that will spawn naturally in the Klamath River. The court rejected a challenge brought by coastal fishermen and fishing business owners who argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service was wrong not to count all hatchery salmon in determining the salmon population. Russ Brooks, managing attorney for Pacific Legal Foundation’s Northwest Center, represents the fishermen who brought the challenge. In response to today’s ruling, he had this comment: “The Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act requires federal regulators to manage all members of a species the same. Hatchery chinook are not only biologically identical to those that will spawn naturally, but many hatchery chinook do return to spawn naturally. So the Fisheries Service is wrong when it doesn’t count all hatchery chinook as part of the returning chinook population. The Service is deliberately lowballing the number of chinook that will return to the Klamath River. If all hatchery chinook were counted as part of the population, the Service would realize there is no need to drastically reduce salmon fishing. “Because the three-judge panel did not recognize the legal requirement that regulators must count all chinook, this decision is ripe for appeal—first to the full Ninth Circuit for rehearing, and, possibly, to the United States Supreme Court.” The case is Oregon Trollers v. Gutierrez. For a copy of the decision click here....
The Extremism Behind The Soundbite
Claiming a shift in consumer demand, Whole Foods Market decided last week to sell only pre-killed lobster meat, around the same time that The Miami Herald ran a story covering developments in "free-range" veal farming. These stories are significant because both developments were met with applause from some national animal-rights groups. What kind of "animal liberation" groups praise business decisions that still result in people eating meat, you ask? Ones that are only telling you half the story. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had this to say about the lobster decision: "PETA applauds Whole Foods for joining Safeway in making the kind decision to spare lobsters -- complex animals who feel pain and can live to be 100 years old -- from living in filthy, cramped tanks." (Of course, PETA's claims about lobsters and pain are dubious.) Meanwhile, Farm Sanctuary praised a free-range veal farmer as innovating on the cutting edge of "a mini revolution in farming in general to raise animals more humanely." (Likewise with the "humane" claim here, which veterinary scientists dispute.) The fact of the matter is that every "reform" demanded by animal-rights activists is aimed at the goal of taking meat off our plates forever, no matter how nicely they praise each baby step. When the Center for Consumer Freedom debated Farm Sanctuary president Gene Bauston on the BBC in 2004, he had literally nothing to say when asked to describe what "humane" livestock agriculture would look like. PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk, was much less bashful at the "Animal Rights 2002" convention: "There is no hidden agenda. If anybody wonders about -- what's this with all these reforms -- you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation."....
Al Gore and the global warming scare
People are naturally prone to worry about dangers that are invisible: radioactivity, for one spectacular example. The media know this, and are forever trumpeting the discovery of new perils to scare us with. Hardly a week passes without someone announcing that some familiar food or other useful substance has just been discovered to cause cancer (though usually only when administered in huge doses to mice). Dangers associated with weather are special favorites because they are usually so difficult to cope with. In recent decades, we have been treated to alarmist reports about impending disasters to be caused by nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole. But the Big Daddy of all such scare stories is "global warming." Al Gore, who had a dangerous brush with the presidency in 2000, has long been associated with this particular fright syndrome, and I have no doubt that he is perfectly sincere in believing that global warming is a real danger. But recently he has stepped forth with a brand new campaign to sell the American people on the peril. It is spearheaded by a documentary film entitled "An Inconvenient Truth," in which Gore himself presents what he chooses to regard as overwhelming evidence of the reality of the danger. Given his political history, it is perfectly fair to wonder if this maneuver isn't simply, or primarily, a device to promote his own candidacy for the presidency in 2008. But, whether it is or not, it is also a powerful blast in the propaganda war over the issue of global warming -- and must be treated as such. Gore begins by insisting that the scientific argument over the truth of the matter is over; climate scientists, he asserts, are virtually unanimous in endorsing it. Among the thousands of predictions on the subject, moreover, he invariably opts for the worst-case scenarios. The increase in the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused, to an important extent, by human "pollution," and this is the cause of a dangerous increase in the planet's surface temperature. That, in turn, is causing glaciers, and the great ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica, to melt. This will inevitably result in the disastrous flooding of coastal areas all over the globe, and all sorts of ecological upsets (e.g. the extinction of the polar bear). The trouble is that all of the statements in the last paragraph above are subject to challenge, and in several cases, are almost certainly false. Among the many systematic attacks being waged against the spurious case for global warming, one of the deadliest and most effective is a weekly report available on the Internet, called "The Week That Was" (TWTW). The author is the formidable S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Each week, Singer summarizes or reprints the most recent studies debunking global warming, with generous references to still more information. In TWTW for June 17, he demolishes Gore's contentions, one by one....
A rationalist crusader does the math on global warming
Bjorn Lomborg is a political scientist by training, but the charismatic, golden-haired Dane is offering me a history lesson. Two hundred years ago, he explains, sitting forward in his chair in this newspaper's Manhattan offices, the left was an "incredibly rational movement." It believed in "encyclopedias," in hard facts, and in the idea that mastery of these basics would help "make a better society." Since then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; they've become more dreamy." This is a problem in his view, and so this "self-avowed slight lefty" is determined to nudge the whole world back toward "rationalism." Bjorn Lomborg busted--and that is the only word for it--onto the world scene in 2001 with the publication of his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." A one-time Greenpeace enthusiast, he'd originally planned to disprove those who said the environment was getting better. He failed. And to his credit, his book said so, supplying a damning critique of today's environmental pessimism. Carefully researched, it offered endless statistics--from official sources such as the U.N.--showing that from biodiversity to global warming, there simply were no apocalypses in the offing. "Our history shows that we solve more problems than we create," he tells me. For his efforts, Mr. Lomborg was labeled a heretic by environmental groups--whose fundraising depends on scaring the jeepers out of the public--and became more hated by these alarmists than even (if possible) President Bush. Yet the experience left Mr. Lomborg with a taste for challenging conventional wisdom. In 2004, he invited eight of the world's top economists--including four Nobel Laureates--to Copenhagen, where they were asked to evaluate the world's problems, think of the costs and efficiencies attached to solving each, and then produce a prioritized list of those most deserving of money. The well-publicized results (and let it be said here that Mr. Lomborg is no slouch when it comes to promoting himself and his work) were stunning. While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom....
Mr. Green Genes
Long time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin has come out in favor of a biotechnology technique. Should beleaguered biotechnologists break out the champagne and start celebrating? Not hardly. Earlier this week, Rifkin wrote an op/ed in the Washington Post in which he declared his support for marker assisted selection (MAS) for use in plant breeding. So far, so good. MAS is a molecular technique in which researchers identify sections of DNA in a plant or animal located near a gene or genes that confer specific valuable traits. In plants, such traits might increase their resistance to drought or disease, or they might boost their productivity. Once a trait has been identified, researchers can trace it as they crossbreed the plants containing it with commercial varieties. Thus MAS makes it far easier for plant breeders to identify which of the crossbred plants carry the trait. That means that breeders don't have to plant the seedlings and then wait for them to grow up in the field before identifying which ones carry the sought-after new trait. MAS can cut the time to develop new commercial crop varieties in half. Rifkin points to all of these advantages, but then declares that MAS has "made gene splicing and transgenic crops obsolete and a serious impediment to scientific progress." Whoa. Could that be true? Plant geneticists and breeders don't agree. According to Alan McHughen, a plant biotechnologist at the University of California, Riverside, "The problem for Rifkin: MAS is not, as he suggests, an alternative to gene splicing (recombinant DNA or rDNA), but an adjunct. Both are powerful and useful tools that can be used together." McHughen offers a real life example of how MAS and gene-splicing have been used to introduce disease resistance in rice....
Kelo on Kelo: I'll keep my illusions
A YEAR AGO last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that my home can be taken by the government and handed over to another private party for its private use. The only requirements are that the city must have some plan in place that says another owner can create more jobs and pay more taxes than I do. There went my property rights -- and yours, too. Hardly a day goes by as I work in my garden or have a cup of coffee in my kitchen, both of which overlook the Thames River and Long Island Sound, that I don't ask myself, "If I had to do it all over again, would I?" Even on my worst days, and there are many, my answer is the same: "Absolutely yes." It was in February 1998 that I first heard that Pfizer Inc. was coming to New London. I remember thinking that this was going to be trouble for us in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, right next door to where the company was coming. Little did I know just how prophetic that thought was. I immediately phoned Lloyd Beachy, the mayor then, who said he shared my concern and would take the side of the homeowners. He suggested that I call a local activist to see what I could do to defend my home. Since that day, Lloyd and thousands of other people have become my sounding boards, my comrades in arms, and my best friends. Over 500 came to New London from as far away as Kentucky and Texas for a rally last July 5 to protest the notorious Supreme Court decision that carries my name. Without their support and that of the Institute for Justice, my fight would have been over years ago. Where do I stand at this point? I think what I have thought from the very beginning: This is my home, and no one has the right to take it from me, especially for the vague concept of "economic development." I tell you honestly, and from my heart, that nothing will cause me to change my goals or my values. Mark Twain wrote, "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." My illusion has been, and will continue to be, that my home is mine....
Lobsters v. Whole Foods
SOON the Supreme Court may be forced to consider a thorny question it has hidden from for too long: Does the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment protect shellfish? Okay, perhaps not "soon." The issue hasn't gone to appeal. And, it's not--yet--technically the subject of any state or federal litigation. But last month the Bobo supermarket chain Whole Foods announced that it would no longer be selling live lobsters or soft shell crabs from in-store tanks. They concluded that the practice was inhumane. The company's press release was quick to point out that it would still be retailing frozen lobster and crab products (products--as in flesh.) Whole Foods based its decision partly on the dubious conclusion of a 2005 European Union report that found lobsters feel pain and learn. The rest of the equation was their finding (noticing, really) that when sold live, lobsters--natural loners among decapod crustaceans--can be transported and stored one on top of another in cramped tanks for up to six months before final purchase. Earlier this year Whole Foods' Northeast and Atlanta stores briefly installed "condos" in their lobster tanks: short sections of PVC pipe that the lobsters could snuggle up inside of in privacy. But it wasn't a comprehensively humane solution. Dropping live sales, the company switched to a vendor that dispatches the creatures right off the boat, in just seconds, with a pressurized metal tube. Amy Schaefer, a Whole Foods spokesperson, summed up the corporate thinking: "Lobsters are going to be caught and going to be eaten . . . [what we're] trying to do is create a supply chain that treats the animals with respect and minimizes unnecessary pain." This is essentially the same reasoning the Supreme Court has used in interpreting the Eighth Amendment: Capital punishment is not by itself cruel and unusual (and, presuming the synonym, inhumane), but you can do it in certain ways that make it so, and those ways are verboten. Whole Foods, by reasoning that implicitly says lobsters have a right (just like U.S. citizens!) to be treated humanely in this particular way, is extending a parallel, abstract protection against the cruel and unusual to maritime invertebrates....
Taking a Molecule to Court
The Supreme Court, by agreeing to hear a case on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must take steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, will finally judge on the alleged threat of global warming. The stakes are huge. Should the Court find in favor of the plaintiffs, it would put the EPA in control of the U.S. economy for the foreseeable future. The modern global economy is powered by hydrocarbons—oil, natural gas and coal. Burning these fuels releases the energy we need to light our homes, heat and cool our offices, and get us from place to place. But the process also releases a byproduct called carbon dioxide (CO2). We have known for well over a century that, all other things being equal, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will warm the atmosphere as it absorbs energy up to a certain point. In recent years, with the atmosphere warming since the 1970s, scientists have connected the warming trend to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is the phenomenon of global warming. The case arose when a group of activist state attorneys general (AGs) petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to make rules to control emissions of carbon dioxide. When the agency determined that it had no power to do so, the AGs and several environmental pressure groups sued, claiming, "The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to take certain actions when it determines that a pollutant may 'cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.'" The Supreme Court's agreeing to hear the case underscores its importance to the American economy. Regulation would directly affect 70 percent of the electricity sector and 98 percent of the transportation sector—with repercussions throughout the entire economy as those sectors are forced to raise costs to comply with new regulations. Had the Court not agreed to hear the case, the plaintiffs would surely seek out other judicial avenues to force the EPA to regulate. By agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court has at least signaled that there will be an end to the uncertainty soon. Businesses around the U.S. will be grateful for that....
Courting Regulatory Disaster - or Clarity
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case being brought by a dozen states, several major cities, and environmental groups who want carbon dioxide, widely believed to be contributing to the current global warming trend, to be designated as a pollutant. The plaintiffs are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision in 2003 that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant that would come under the regulatory portions of the Clean Air Act. That decision has been upheld by two lower court rulings. Central to the argument that CO2 be regarded as a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act is that it "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." This will be difficult to prove scientifically, since we have no way of proving that current global warmth is due to carbon dioxide emissions. While some theoretical modeling research that has suggested that all of the current global warmth could be explained by the extra CO2 we have produced, there is an element of circularity inherent in this type of science. The computer models built to predict climate fluctuations were based upon knowledge of what the answer was to begin with. Natural climate fluctuations (such as a small change in cloudiness) can also cause temperature changes, but since we don't understand what causes them, we can't model them. But even if the 1 deg. F warming in the last 100 years can be convincingly demonstrated to be due to humans, it will be just as difficult to prove harm to human health and welfare. This is why the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs last year. Proving harm from global warming is confounded by natural climate fluctuations that are so large that the global warming signal becomes lost in the noise. Note that the 1 degree of warming in the last century is much less than what humans routinely endure as part of normal weather variations and the progression of the seasons. And throughout human history, warm has always, on balance, been better than cold....
Fishermen’s Attorney Comments on Ninth Circuit Ruling in Chinook Salmon Case
Today a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld federal regulations that drastically curtailed salmon fishing off the Pacific Coast because of low projected returns of salmon that will spawn naturally in the Klamath River. The court rejected a challenge brought by coastal fishermen and fishing business owners who argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service was wrong not to count all hatchery salmon in determining the salmon population. Russ Brooks, managing attorney for Pacific Legal Foundation’s Northwest Center, represents the fishermen who brought the challenge. In response to today’s ruling, he had this comment: “The Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act requires federal regulators to manage all members of a species the same. Hatchery chinook are not only biologically identical to those that will spawn naturally, but many hatchery chinook do return to spawn naturally. So the Fisheries Service is wrong when it doesn’t count all hatchery chinook as part of the returning chinook population. The Service is deliberately lowballing the number of chinook that will return to the Klamath River. If all hatchery chinook were counted as part of the population, the Service would realize there is no need to drastically reduce salmon fishing. “Because the three-judge panel did not recognize the legal requirement that regulators must count all chinook, this decision is ripe for appeal—first to the full Ninth Circuit for rehearing, and, possibly, to the United States Supreme Court.” The case is Oregon Trollers v. Gutierrez. For a copy of the decision click here....
The Extremism Behind The Soundbite
Claiming a shift in consumer demand, Whole Foods Market decided last week to sell only pre-killed lobster meat, around the same time that The Miami Herald ran a story covering developments in "free-range" veal farming. These stories are significant because both developments were met with applause from some national animal-rights groups. What kind of "animal liberation" groups praise business decisions that still result in people eating meat, you ask? Ones that are only telling you half the story. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had this to say about the lobster decision: "PETA applauds Whole Foods for joining Safeway in making the kind decision to spare lobsters -- complex animals who feel pain and can live to be 100 years old -- from living in filthy, cramped tanks." (Of course, PETA's claims about lobsters and pain are dubious.) Meanwhile, Farm Sanctuary praised a free-range veal farmer as innovating on the cutting edge of "a mini revolution in farming in general to raise animals more humanely." (Likewise with the "humane" claim here, which veterinary scientists dispute.) The fact of the matter is that every "reform" demanded by animal-rights activists is aimed at the goal of taking meat off our plates forever, no matter how nicely they praise each baby step. When the Center for Consumer Freedom debated Farm Sanctuary president Gene Bauston on the BBC in 2004, he had literally nothing to say when asked to describe what "humane" livestock agriculture would look like. PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk, was much less bashful at the "Animal Rights 2002" convention: "There is no hidden agenda. If anybody wonders about -- what's this with all these reforms -- you can hear us clearly. Our goal is total animal liberation."....
Al Gore and the global warming scare
People are naturally prone to worry about dangers that are invisible: radioactivity, for one spectacular example. The media know this, and are forever trumpeting the discovery of new perils to scare us with. Hardly a week passes without someone announcing that some familiar food or other useful substance has just been discovered to cause cancer (though usually only when administered in huge doses to mice). Dangers associated with weather are special favorites because they are usually so difficult to cope with. In recent decades, we have been treated to alarmist reports about impending disasters to be caused by nuclear winter, acid rain and the ozone hole. But the Big Daddy of all such scare stories is "global warming." Al Gore, who had a dangerous brush with the presidency in 2000, has long been associated with this particular fright syndrome, and I have no doubt that he is perfectly sincere in believing that global warming is a real danger. But recently he has stepped forth with a brand new campaign to sell the American people on the peril. It is spearheaded by a documentary film entitled "An Inconvenient Truth," in which Gore himself presents what he chooses to regard as overwhelming evidence of the reality of the danger. Given his political history, it is perfectly fair to wonder if this maneuver isn't simply, or primarily, a device to promote his own candidacy for the presidency in 2008. But, whether it is or not, it is also a powerful blast in the propaganda war over the issue of global warming -- and must be treated as such. Gore begins by insisting that the scientific argument over the truth of the matter is over; climate scientists, he asserts, are virtually unanimous in endorsing it. Among the thousands of predictions on the subject, moreover, he invariably opts for the worst-case scenarios. The increase in the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused, to an important extent, by human "pollution," and this is the cause of a dangerous increase in the planet's surface temperature. That, in turn, is causing glaciers, and the great ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica, to melt. This will inevitably result in the disastrous flooding of coastal areas all over the globe, and all sorts of ecological upsets (e.g. the extinction of the polar bear). The trouble is that all of the statements in the last paragraph above are subject to challenge, and in several cases, are almost certainly false. Among the many systematic attacks being waged against the spurious case for global warming, one of the deadliest and most effective is a weekly report available on the Internet, called "The Week That Was" (TWTW). The author is the formidable S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Each week, Singer summarizes or reprints the most recent studies debunking global warming, with generous references to still more information. In TWTW for June 17, he demolishes Gore's contentions, one by one....
A rationalist crusader does the math on global warming
Bjorn Lomborg is a political scientist by training, but the charismatic, golden-haired Dane is offering me a history lesson. Two hundred years ago, he explains, sitting forward in his chair in this newspaper's Manhattan offices, the left was an "incredibly rational movement." It believed in "encyclopedias," in hard facts, and in the idea that mastery of these basics would help "make a better society." Since then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; they've become more dreamy." This is a problem in his view, and so this "self-avowed slight lefty" is determined to nudge the whole world back toward "rationalism." Bjorn Lomborg busted--and that is the only word for it--onto the world scene in 2001 with the publication of his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." A one-time Greenpeace enthusiast, he'd originally planned to disprove those who said the environment was getting better. He failed. And to his credit, his book said so, supplying a damning critique of today's environmental pessimism. Carefully researched, it offered endless statistics--from official sources such as the U.N.--showing that from biodiversity to global warming, there simply were no apocalypses in the offing. "Our history shows that we solve more problems than we create," he tells me. For his efforts, Mr. Lomborg was labeled a heretic by environmental groups--whose fundraising depends on scaring the jeepers out of the public--and became more hated by these alarmists than even (if possible) President Bush. Yet the experience left Mr. Lomborg with a taste for challenging conventional wisdom. In 2004, he invited eight of the world's top economists--including four Nobel Laureates--to Copenhagen, where they were asked to evaluate the world's problems, think of the costs and efficiencies attached to solving each, and then produce a prioritized list of those most deserving of money. The well-publicized results (and let it be said here that Mr. Lomborg is no slouch when it comes to promoting himself and his work) were stunning. While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom....
Mr. Green Genes
Long time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin has come out in favor of a biotechnology technique. Should beleaguered biotechnologists break out the champagne and start celebrating? Not hardly. Earlier this week, Rifkin wrote an op/ed in the Washington Post in which he declared his support for marker assisted selection (MAS) for use in plant breeding. So far, so good. MAS is a molecular technique in which researchers identify sections of DNA in a plant or animal located near a gene or genes that confer specific valuable traits. In plants, such traits might increase their resistance to drought or disease, or they might boost their productivity. Once a trait has been identified, researchers can trace it as they crossbreed the plants containing it with commercial varieties. Thus MAS makes it far easier for plant breeders to identify which of the crossbred plants carry the trait. That means that breeders don't have to plant the seedlings and then wait for them to grow up in the field before identifying which ones carry the sought-after new trait. MAS can cut the time to develop new commercial crop varieties in half. Rifkin points to all of these advantages, but then declares that MAS has "made gene splicing and transgenic crops obsolete and a serious impediment to scientific progress." Whoa. Could that be true? Plant geneticists and breeders don't agree. According to Alan McHughen, a plant biotechnologist at the University of California, Riverside, "The problem for Rifkin: MAS is not, as he suggests, an alternative to gene splicing (recombinant DNA or rDNA), but an adjunct. Both are powerful and useful tools that can be used together." McHughen offers a real life example of how MAS and gene-splicing have been used to introduce disease resistance in rice....
Kelo on Kelo: I'll keep my illusions
A YEAR AGO last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that my home can be taken by the government and handed over to another private party for its private use. The only requirements are that the city must have some plan in place that says another owner can create more jobs and pay more taxes than I do. There went my property rights -- and yours, too. Hardly a day goes by as I work in my garden or have a cup of coffee in my kitchen, both of which overlook the Thames River and Long Island Sound, that I don't ask myself, "If I had to do it all over again, would I?" Even on my worst days, and there are many, my answer is the same: "Absolutely yes." It was in February 1998 that I first heard that Pfizer Inc. was coming to New London. I remember thinking that this was going to be trouble for us in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, right next door to where the company was coming. Little did I know just how prophetic that thought was. I immediately phoned Lloyd Beachy, the mayor then, who said he shared my concern and would take the side of the homeowners. He suggested that I call a local activist to see what I could do to defend my home. Since that day, Lloyd and thousands of other people have become my sounding boards, my comrades in arms, and my best friends. Over 500 came to New London from as far away as Kentucky and Texas for a rally last July 5 to protest the notorious Supreme Court decision that carries my name. Without their support and that of the Institute for Justice, my fight would have been over years ago. Where do I stand at this point? I think what I have thought from the very beginning: This is my home, and no one has the right to take it from me, especially for the vague concept of "economic development." I tell you honestly, and from my heart, that nothing will cause me to change my goals or my values. Mark Twain wrote, "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." My illusion has been, and will continue to be, that my home is mine....
Lobsters v. Whole Foods
SOON the Supreme Court may be forced to consider a thorny question it has hidden from for too long: Does the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment protect shellfish? Okay, perhaps not "soon." The issue hasn't gone to appeal. And, it's not--yet--technically the subject of any state or federal litigation. But last month the Bobo supermarket chain Whole Foods announced that it would no longer be selling live lobsters or soft shell crabs from in-store tanks. They concluded that the practice was inhumane. The company's press release was quick to point out that it would still be retailing frozen lobster and crab products (products--as in flesh.) Whole Foods based its decision partly on the dubious conclusion of a 2005 European Union report that found lobsters feel pain and learn. The rest of the equation was their finding (noticing, really) that when sold live, lobsters--natural loners among decapod crustaceans--can be transported and stored one on top of another in cramped tanks for up to six months before final purchase. Earlier this year Whole Foods' Northeast and Atlanta stores briefly installed "condos" in their lobster tanks: short sections of PVC pipe that the lobsters could snuggle up inside of in privacy. But it wasn't a comprehensively humane solution. Dropping live sales, the company switched to a vendor that dispatches the creatures right off the boat, in just seconds, with a pressurized metal tube. Amy Schaefer, a Whole Foods spokesperson, summed up the corporate thinking: "Lobsters are going to be caught and going to be eaten . . . [what we're] trying to do is create a supply chain that treats the animals with respect and minimizes unnecessary pain." This is essentially the same reasoning the Supreme Court has used in interpreting the Eighth Amendment: Capital punishment is not by itself cruel and unusual (and, presuming the synonym, inhumane), but you can do it in certain ways that make it so, and those ways are verboten. Whole Foods, by reasoning that implicitly says lobsters have a right (just like U.S. citizens!) to be treated humanely in this particular way, is extending a parallel, abstract protection against the cruel and unusual to maritime invertebrates....
FLE
FBI Disrupts New York City Tunnel Plot Authorities have disrupted planning by foreign terrorists for an attack on New York City tunnels, two law enforcement officials said Friday. FBI agents monitoring Internet chat rooms used by extremists learned in recent months of the plot to strike a blow at the city's economy by destroying vital transportation networks, one official said. Lebanese authorities, acting on a U.S. request, have arrested one of the alleged plotters, identified as Amir Andalousli, the other official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "This is one instance where intelligence was on top of its game and discovered the plot when it was just in the talking phase." The planning for the tunnel attacks was first reported by the New York Daily News in its Friday editions, the first anniversary of the attacks on the London transportation system that killed 52 people. The planning was not far along, one U.S. official said, but authorities "take aspirations of that sort seriously." "At this time we have no indication of any imminent threat to the New York transportation system, or anywhere else in the U.S.," Richard Kolko, Washington-based FBI special agent, said in a statement to Associated Press Radio....
FBI plans new Net-tapping push The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned. FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. The draft bill would place the FBI's Net-surveillance push on solid legal footing. At the moment, it's ensnared in a legal challenge from universities and some technology companies that claim the Federal Communications Commission's broadband surveillance directives exceed what Congress has authorized. The FBI claims that expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is necessary to thwart criminals and terrorists who have turned to technologies like voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. "The complexity and variety of communications technologies have dramatically increased in recent years, and the lawful intercept capabilities of the federal, state and local law enforcement community have been under continual stress, and in many cases have decreased or become impossible," according to a summary accompanying the draft bill. Complicating the political outlook for the legislation is an ongoing debate over allegedly illegal surveillance by the National Security Administration--punctuated by several lawsuits challenging it on constitutional grounds and an unrelated proposal to force Internet service providers to record what Americans are doing online. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of last Friday's meeting, said the FBI viewed its CALEA expansion as a top congressional priority for 2007....
Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages. ``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.'' The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists. ``The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause `exceptionally grave harm to national security' and would violate both civil and criminal statutes,'' AT&T spokesman Dave Pacholczyk said in an e-mail. U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller and NSA spokesman Don Weber declined to comment....
With only a letter, FBI can gather private data When the FBI office in New Haven, Conn., received an e-mail in February 2005 that looked like a terrorist threat, agents followed a familiar routine. They asked the service provider, a group of Connecticut public libraries, for the real name, street address and Internet logs of the sender. They had no search warrant, grand jury subpoena or court order. Instead, a local FBI official hand-delivered a National Security Letter — one of more than 9,000 sent to finance, telephone and Internet companies last year — that described the records needed. Under a federal law expanded by the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act of 2001, the written request was all the authority the FBI needed. The Patriot Act also barred the librarians from disclosing the request to anyone. The librarians refused to hand over the information. Instead, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging the secret letters as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. The e-mailed threat proved to be a hoax. Yet the lawsuit it sparked, only the second legal challenge to National Security Letters in their 20-year history, provides a rare public glimpse of the vast amount of banking, credit, telephone and Internet records that anti-terrorism or counterintelligence investigators can have simply by asking. National Security Letters are the key to the trove of personal data. When the law authorizing them was passed by Congress in 1986, the letters could be authorized only by a high-ranking FBI official in pursuit of an "agent of a foreign power." The Patriot Act, passed six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, expanded the letters' reach. Now they can be issued if a local FBI official merely certifies that the information sought is "relevant" to an international terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation. "People have no idea how much of what they probably consider their private information is readily available to government," says Susan Brenner, a University of Dayton law professor who advises the U.S. Secret Service on technology and privacy. The letters, she says, raise the question: "How do we balance law enforcement's needs with what's left of privacy in an age where technology permeates everything?" According to Michael Woods, chief of the FBI's national security law unit from 1999 to 2002, National Security Letters can be used to retrieve: •Internet and telephone data, including names, addresses, log-on times, toll records, e-mail addresses and service providers. •Financial records, including bank accounts and money transfers, provided the FBI says they are needed to "protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." •Credit information, such as an individual's banks, loan companies, mortgage holders or other financial institutions. •Consumer, financial and foreign travel records held by "any commercial entity," if the investigation's target is an executive branch employee with a security clearance. Only FBI agents can obtain phone, computer and financial records. Other federal agencies that gather intelligence on international terrorism can get consumer credit reports and credit agency data. They include the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Transportation Security Administration....
Consultant Breached FBI's Computers A government consultant, using computer programs easily found on the Internet, managed to crack the FBI's classified computer system and gain the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. The break-ins, which occurred four times in 2004, gave the consultant access to records in the Witness Protection Program and details on counterespionage activity, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. As a direct result, the bureau said it was forced to temporarily shut down its network and commit thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars to ensure no sensitive information was lost or misused. The government does not allege that the consultant, Joseph Thomas Colon, intended to harm national security. But prosecutors said Colon's "curiosity hacks" nonetheless exposed sensitive information. Colon, 28, an employee of BAE Systems who was assigned to the FBI field office in Springfield, Ill., said in court filings that he used the passwords and other information to bypass bureaucratic obstacles and better help the FBI install its new computer system. And he said agents in the Springfield office approved his actions. The incident is only the latest in a long string of foul-ups, delays and embarrassments that have plagued the FBI as it tries to update its computer systems to better share tips and information. Its computer technology is frequently identified as one of the key obstacles to the bureau's attempt to sharpen its focus on intelligence and terrorism....
Senators want NSA to share its secrets A U.S. Senate panel wants the National Security Agency to distribute its data more widely. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is pushing the super-secret NSA to further open its databases of raw signals intelligence to a wider audience within the intelligence community. But the effort comes at a time when Congress, courts and the privacy community are closely scrutinizing the legality of the agency's surveillance activities, National Journal's Technology Daily reported Thursday. The committee ordered the NSA and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to arrive at an agreement by the end of August to extend access to NSA's databases to more DIA analysts. "If the (memorandum of agreement) is not finished by this deadline, the committee will seek stronger measures in conference with the House on the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007 to ensure timely completion," according to comments filed in a report with the committee's late May approval of the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill. Panel Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in the report that the committee was concerned that the intelligence community was not sharing enough raw information throughout its branches. The agreement on terms of access to the NSA databases should serve as a model for the terms of access to NSA and DIA databases for the wider intelligence community, said the committee report....
Bush Is Pressed on Reporting Domestic Surveillance In a sharply worded letter, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee has told President Bush that the administration is angering lawmakers, and possibly violating the law, by giving Congress too little information about domestic surveillance programs. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) has been a staunch defender of the administration's anti-terrorism tactics. But seven weeks ago, he wrote to Bush to report that he had heard of "alleged Intelligence Community activities" not outlined to committee members in classified briefings. "If these allegations are true," he wrote, "they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee." Hoekstra's four-page letter of May 18 was posted yesterday on the New York Times' Web site. His staff confirmed the letter's authenticity but said it was meant to remain private. Spokesman Jamal D. Ware said Hoekstra "has raised these concerns, and they are being addressed. He will continue to push for full disclosure so the committee can conduct vigorous oversight." The letter is significant because few congressional Republicans have complained publicly about Bush's surveillance programs, which include warrantless wiretaps of some Americans' international phone calls and e-mails as well as the massive collection of telephone records involving U.S. homes and businesses. Heretofore, the sharpest GOP concerns have been raised by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Pa.). On May 26, Specter voted against Michael V. Hayden's confirmation as CIA director to protest what he called "the administration's policy of not informing the Congress . . . in a way which enables the Congress and the Judiciary Committee to do our constitutional job on oversight." In his letter, Hoekstra complained of unspecified alleged surveillance operations that had not become public at the time and that, perhaps, remain undisclosed. It was written five weeks before newspapers divulged that the administration has been secretly tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. It was unclear yesterday whether Hoekstra and other top-ranking lawmakers had been briefed on that program by the date of the letter....
Tax dollars to fund study on restricting public data The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of sensitive data available to the press and public through freedom-of-information requests. Beginning this month, St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio will analyze recent state laws that place previously available information, such as site plans of power plants, beyond the reach of public inquiries. Jeffrey Addicott, a professor at the law school, said he will use that research to produce a national "model statute" that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that potentially dangerous information "stays out of the hands of the bad guys." "There's the public's right to know, but how much?" said Addicott, a former legal adviser in the Army's Special Forces. "There's a strong feeling that the law needs to balance that with the need to protect the well-being of the nation. ... There's too much stuff that's easy to get that shouldn't be," he said. The federal Freedom of Information Act, which became law 40 years ago this week, has long been a source of tension between the government and the public and news media. Critics say the research plan overstates the need for secrecy and is likely to give state and federal governments too much discretion to withhold material. "Restricting information (for) security and efficiency and comfort level, that's the good story," says Paul McMasters, a specialist in public information law at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va. "The bad story is that it can also be a great instrument of control. ... To automatically believe that the less known the better is really not rational." Congress added the grant to this year's Defense Department budget....
ACLU sues Secret Service and police over 2004 anti-Bush protest The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the U.S. Secret Service and state and local police protecting President Bush during a 2004 campaign appearance discriminated against anti-Bush protesters when they moved to clear the streets outside an inn where the president was eating dinner. The class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court contends that police acting on orders from the Secret Service used unreasonable force to move some 200 people peacefully protesting against the war in Iraq in the historic Gold Rush town of Jacksonville while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain standing on sidewalks. "Our primary motive is to prevent this kind of activity from happening again in the future," said David Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon ACLU. "Discrimination is taking place across the country that is part of the Secret Service keeping away protesters from the president and vice president. It has escalated dramatically in the past five years." Fidanque and attorney Ralph Temple said they knew of 16 similar instances in 12 other states and at least three other lawsuits have been filed....
Big Government Brings Big Brother to California Big Brother came to the rally in Walnut Creek, Calif., where Congressman George Miller spoke against the war in Iraq. Big Brother was also at the seal demonstration outside the Canadian consulate in San Francisco, and at a women’s demonstration in Santa Barbara, according to reports obtained by the Los Angeles Times, and statements from the State Attorney General, who condemned the practice. The reports were prepared for California's State Office of Homeland Security, which is a 53-person office in the California Governor’s Office created since 9/11 and funded mostly with federal money to protect us against terrorism. What the office did was hire a private firm to provide daily information. The reports were then shared with the whole Homeland Security Partnership, which includes the Highway Patrol and the Attorney General. Remember when Republicans stood for small government? Big government needs something to do. If it doesn’t have anything else to do, it will go to George Miller rallies. The danger posed by big government in this area is not simply excess spending but excess intervention of the worst sort -- intervention on the life and liberty of people, of those who are swept up by the terrorism hysteria in overbroad prosecutions, of which there have been a number, and the chilling and outright abuse of civil liberties, of which this is an obvious case. Of course, most of us don’t go to seal rallies, or even George Miller rallies, so why should we care? The mistakes that are being made in overbroad prosecutions and undue surveillance don’t happen to us. So why should you worry? First, because it defines what kind of country we are, whether we are indeed a free country, for ourselves, and in the eyes of the world. Second, because tomorrow they may come for you; because today it may be seals and George Miller, but if you don’t stop what is wrong, it may be too late when it does reach you. Third, because it’s wasting resources that should be spent elsewhere, as on disaster preparedness, here in a state that regularly faces earthquakes, fires, mudslides, etc....
Report Finds Gun Crime Dropping As Sales Climb Gun crimes, suicides and firearms-related accidents declined last year at the same time that firearm and ammunition sales climbed, according to data from the US Treasury Department released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). While this revelation tends to debunk long-standing claims by gun control proponents that more guns in circulation leads to more crime, gun rights organizations contend that this bolsters their contention that armed citizens deter criminals. NSSF Public Relations Director Steve Wagner told Gun Week that approximately 4.7 million new firearms were sold in America last year, including those manufactured domestically and imported. The greatest increase was in retail handgun sales, which were up 3%. Long gun sales were up 1.8%. Ammunition sales were up 3.5%. Wagner specified that these figures represent dollars generated, not actual volume of firearms and ammunition sold. However, the bottom line is that there are millions more firearms in circulation, which some gun control advocates have been arguing for years would result in more death and crime. Said Wagner: “The point of that release was just to help the media understand that the guys at the Violence Policy Center and Brady Center are selling a lie when they continue to tell people that more guns equals more bad news.”....
On big beat, rangers carry semiautomatic rifles Lisa Schutzberger pulled one on a wanted felon holed up at a campsite in Oregon. She slung another over her shoulder before confronting a mob of unruly paint-ballers in Idaho. Now, as one of only two rangers in charge of maintaining law and order on the 4.3 million acres in the Bureau of Land Management's Twin Falls district, Schutzberger said she is glad the BLM issues her a weapon – a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle. The agency began outfitting rangers with the semiautomatic rifles a few years ago. Rangers, the agency said, are no different than police officers; they just patrol a much larger beat. At her last job along Oregon's Rogue River, Schutzberger drew a BLM-issued handgun on a felon with an outstanding warrant. "I got him to the ground, handcuffed him and took him into custody," she told the Twin Falls Times-News. In several encounters with paint-ballers in the sprawling southern Idaho desert, Schutzberger wears the rifle. "I sling it over my shoulder," she said. "It's just like suiting up. It's saying, 'don't shoot me with your paintball.' " Some in southern Idaho, however, have begun questioning why bureau rangers need the AR-15 rifles after Schutzberger's gun went missing in May. James Larsen, 22, was accused by Twin Falls police of slipping into a ranger station with two friends and taking Schutzberger's weapon from a parked vehicle....
FBI Disrupts New York City Tunnel Plot Authorities have disrupted planning by foreign terrorists for an attack on New York City tunnels, two law enforcement officials said Friday. FBI agents monitoring Internet chat rooms used by extremists learned in recent months of the plot to strike a blow at the city's economy by destroying vital transportation networks, one official said. Lebanese authorities, acting on a U.S. request, have arrested one of the alleged plotters, identified as Amir Andalousli, the other official said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "This is one instance where intelligence was on top of its game and discovered the plot when it was just in the talking phase." The planning for the tunnel attacks was first reported by the New York Daily News in its Friday editions, the first anniversary of the attacks on the London transportation system that killed 52 people. The planning was not far along, one U.S. official said, but authorities "take aspirations of that sort seriously." "At this time we have no indication of any imminent threat to the New York transportation system, or anywhere else in the U.S.," Richard Kolko, Washington-based FBI special agent, said in a statement to Associated Press Radio....
FBI plans new Net-tapping push The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned. FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. The draft bill would place the FBI's Net-surveillance push on solid legal footing. At the moment, it's ensnared in a legal challenge from universities and some technology companies that claim the Federal Communications Commission's broadband surveillance directives exceed what Congress has authorized. The FBI claims that expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is necessary to thwart criminals and terrorists who have turned to technologies like voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. "The complexity and variety of communications technologies have dramatically increased in recent years, and the lawful intercept capabilities of the federal, state and local law enforcement community have been under continual stress, and in many cases have decreased or become impossible," according to a summary accompanying the draft bill. Complicating the political outlook for the legislation is an ongoing debate over allegedly illegal surveillance by the National Security Administration--punctuated by several lawsuits challenging it on constitutional grounds and an unrelated proposal to force Internet service providers to record what Americans are doing online. One source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of last Friday's meeting, said the FBI viewed its CALEA expansion as a top congressional priority for 2007....
Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages. ``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.'' The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists. ``The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T's participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause `exceptionally grave harm to national security' and would violate both civil and criminal statutes,'' AT&T spokesman Dave Pacholczyk said in an e-mail. U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller and NSA spokesman Don Weber declined to comment....
With only a letter, FBI can gather private data When the FBI office in New Haven, Conn., received an e-mail in February 2005 that looked like a terrorist threat, agents followed a familiar routine. They asked the service provider, a group of Connecticut public libraries, for the real name, street address and Internet logs of the sender. They had no search warrant, grand jury subpoena or court order. Instead, a local FBI official hand-delivered a National Security Letter — one of more than 9,000 sent to finance, telephone and Internet companies last year — that described the records needed. Under a federal law expanded by the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act of 2001, the written request was all the authority the FBI needed. The Patriot Act also barred the librarians from disclosing the request to anyone. The librarians refused to hand over the information. Instead, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging the secret letters as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. The e-mailed threat proved to be a hoax. Yet the lawsuit it sparked, only the second legal challenge to National Security Letters in their 20-year history, provides a rare public glimpse of the vast amount of banking, credit, telephone and Internet records that anti-terrorism or counterintelligence investigators can have simply by asking. National Security Letters are the key to the trove of personal data. When the law authorizing them was passed by Congress in 1986, the letters could be authorized only by a high-ranking FBI official in pursuit of an "agent of a foreign power." The Patriot Act, passed six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, expanded the letters' reach. Now they can be issued if a local FBI official merely certifies that the information sought is "relevant" to an international terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation. "People have no idea how much of what they probably consider their private information is readily available to government," says Susan Brenner, a University of Dayton law professor who advises the U.S. Secret Service on technology and privacy. The letters, she says, raise the question: "How do we balance law enforcement's needs with what's left of privacy in an age where technology permeates everything?" According to Michael Woods, chief of the FBI's national security law unit from 1999 to 2002, National Security Letters can be used to retrieve: •Internet and telephone data, including names, addresses, log-on times, toll records, e-mail addresses and service providers. •Financial records, including bank accounts and money transfers, provided the FBI says they are needed to "protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." •Credit information, such as an individual's banks, loan companies, mortgage holders or other financial institutions. •Consumer, financial and foreign travel records held by "any commercial entity," if the investigation's target is an executive branch employee with a security clearance. Only FBI agents can obtain phone, computer and financial records. Other federal agencies that gather intelligence on international terrorism can get consumer credit reports and credit agency data. They include the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Transportation Security Administration....
Consultant Breached FBI's Computers A government consultant, using computer programs easily found on the Internet, managed to crack the FBI's classified computer system and gain the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. The break-ins, which occurred four times in 2004, gave the consultant access to records in the Witness Protection Program and details on counterespionage activity, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. As a direct result, the bureau said it was forced to temporarily shut down its network and commit thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars to ensure no sensitive information was lost or misused. The government does not allege that the consultant, Joseph Thomas Colon, intended to harm national security. But prosecutors said Colon's "curiosity hacks" nonetheless exposed sensitive information. Colon, 28, an employee of BAE Systems who was assigned to the FBI field office in Springfield, Ill., said in court filings that he used the passwords and other information to bypass bureaucratic obstacles and better help the FBI install its new computer system. And he said agents in the Springfield office approved his actions. The incident is only the latest in a long string of foul-ups, delays and embarrassments that have plagued the FBI as it tries to update its computer systems to better share tips and information. Its computer technology is frequently identified as one of the key obstacles to the bureau's attempt to sharpen its focus on intelligence and terrorism....
Senators want NSA to share its secrets A U.S. Senate panel wants the National Security Agency to distribute its data more widely. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is pushing the super-secret NSA to further open its databases of raw signals intelligence to a wider audience within the intelligence community. But the effort comes at a time when Congress, courts and the privacy community are closely scrutinizing the legality of the agency's surveillance activities, National Journal's Technology Daily reported Thursday. The committee ordered the NSA and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to arrive at an agreement by the end of August to extend access to NSA's databases to more DIA analysts. "If the (memorandum of agreement) is not finished by this deadline, the committee will seek stronger measures in conference with the House on the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007 to ensure timely completion," according to comments filed in a report with the committee's late May approval of the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill. Panel Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in the report that the committee was concerned that the intelligence community was not sharing enough raw information throughout its branches. The agreement on terms of access to the NSA databases should serve as a model for the terms of access to NSA and DIA databases for the wider intelligence community, said the committee report....
Bush Is Pressed on Reporting Domestic Surveillance In a sharply worded letter, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee has told President Bush that the administration is angering lawmakers, and possibly violating the law, by giving Congress too little information about domestic surveillance programs. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) has been a staunch defender of the administration's anti-terrorism tactics. But seven weeks ago, he wrote to Bush to report that he had heard of "alleged Intelligence Community activities" not outlined to committee members in classified briefings. "If these allegations are true," he wrote, "they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee." Hoekstra's four-page letter of May 18 was posted yesterday on the New York Times' Web site. His staff confirmed the letter's authenticity but said it was meant to remain private. Spokesman Jamal D. Ware said Hoekstra "has raised these concerns, and they are being addressed. He will continue to push for full disclosure so the committee can conduct vigorous oversight." The letter is significant because few congressional Republicans have complained publicly about Bush's surveillance programs, which include warrantless wiretaps of some Americans' international phone calls and e-mails as well as the massive collection of telephone records involving U.S. homes and businesses. Heretofore, the sharpest GOP concerns have been raised by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Pa.). On May 26, Specter voted against Michael V. Hayden's confirmation as CIA director to protest what he called "the administration's policy of not informing the Congress . . . in a way which enables the Congress and the Judiciary Committee to do our constitutional job on oversight." In his letter, Hoekstra complained of unspecified alleged surveillance operations that had not become public at the time and that, perhaps, remain undisclosed. It was written five weeks before newspapers divulged that the administration has been secretly tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. It was unclear yesterday whether Hoekstra and other top-ranking lawmakers had been briefed on that program by the date of the letter....
Tax dollars to fund study on restricting public data The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of sensitive data available to the press and public through freedom-of-information requests. Beginning this month, St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio will analyze recent state laws that place previously available information, such as site plans of power plants, beyond the reach of public inquiries. Jeffrey Addicott, a professor at the law school, said he will use that research to produce a national "model statute" that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that potentially dangerous information "stays out of the hands of the bad guys." "There's the public's right to know, but how much?" said Addicott, a former legal adviser in the Army's Special Forces. "There's a strong feeling that the law needs to balance that with the need to protect the well-being of the nation. ... There's too much stuff that's easy to get that shouldn't be," he said. The federal Freedom of Information Act, which became law 40 years ago this week, has long been a source of tension between the government and the public and news media. Critics say the research plan overstates the need for secrecy and is likely to give state and federal governments too much discretion to withhold material. "Restricting information (for) security and efficiency and comfort level, that's the good story," says Paul McMasters, a specialist in public information law at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va. "The bad story is that it can also be a great instrument of control. ... To automatically believe that the less known the better is really not rational." Congress added the grant to this year's Defense Department budget....
ACLU sues Secret Service and police over 2004 anti-Bush protest The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the U.S. Secret Service and state and local police protecting President Bush during a 2004 campaign appearance discriminated against anti-Bush protesters when they moved to clear the streets outside an inn where the president was eating dinner. The class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court contends that police acting on orders from the Secret Service used unreasonable force to move some 200 people peacefully protesting against the war in Iraq in the historic Gold Rush town of Jacksonville while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain standing on sidewalks. "Our primary motive is to prevent this kind of activity from happening again in the future," said David Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon ACLU. "Discrimination is taking place across the country that is part of the Secret Service keeping away protesters from the president and vice president. It has escalated dramatically in the past five years." Fidanque and attorney Ralph Temple said they knew of 16 similar instances in 12 other states and at least three other lawsuits have been filed....
Big Government Brings Big Brother to California Big Brother came to the rally in Walnut Creek, Calif., where Congressman George Miller spoke against the war in Iraq. Big Brother was also at the seal demonstration outside the Canadian consulate in San Francisco, and at a women’s demonstration in Santa Barbara, according to reports obtained by the Los Angeles Times, and statements from the State Attorney General, who condemned the practice. The reports were prepared for California's State Office of Homeland Security, which is a 53-person office in the California Governor’s Office created since 9/11 and funded mostly with federal money to protect us against terrorism. What the office did was hire a private firm to provide daily information. The reports were then shared with the whole Homeland Security Partnership, which includes the Highway Patrol and the Attorney General. Remember when Republicans stood for small government? Big government needs something to do. If it doesn’t have anything else to do, it will go to George Miller rallies. The danger posed by big government in this area is not simply excess spending but excess intervention of the worst sort -- intervention on the life and liberty of people, of those who are swept up by the terrorism hysteria in overbroad prosecutions, of which there have been a number, and the chilling and outright abuse of civil liberties, of which this is an obvious case. Of course, most of us don’t go to seal rallies, or even George Miller rallies, so why should we care? The mistakes that are being made in overbroad prosecutions and undue surveillance don’t happen to us. So why should you worry? First, because it defines what kind of country we are, whether we are indeed a free country, for ourselves, and in the eyes of the world. Second, because tomorrow they may come for you; because today it may be seals and George Miller, but if you don’t stop what is wrong, it may be too late when it does reach you. Third, because it’s wasting resources that should be spent elsewhere, as on disaster preparedness, here in a state that regularly faces earthquakes, fires, mudslides, etc....
Report Finds Gun Crime Dropping As Sales Climb Gun crimes, suicides and firearms-related accidents declined last year at the same time that firearm and ammunition sales climbed, according to data from the US Treasury Department released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). While this revelation tends to debunk long-standing claims by gun control proponents that more guns in circulation leads to more crime, gun rights organizations contend that this bolsters their contention that armed citizens deter criminals. NSSF Public Relations Director Steve Wagner told Gun Week that approximately 4.7 million new firearms were sold in America last year, including those manufactured domestically and imported. The greatest increase was in retail handgun sales, which were up 3%. Long gun sales were up 1.8%. Ammunition sales were up 3.5%. Wagner specified that these figures represent dollars generated, not actual volume of firearms and ammunition sold. However, the bottom line is that there are millions more firearms in circulation, which some gun control advocates have been arguing for years would result in more death and crime. Said Wagner: “The point of that release was just to help the media understand that the guys at the Violence Policy Center and Brady Center are selling a lie when they continue to tell people that more guns equals more bad news.”....
On big beat, rangers carry semiautomatic rifles Lisa Schutzberger pulled one on a wanted felon holed up at a campsite in Oregon. She slung another over her shoulder before confronting a mob of unruly paint-ballers in Idaho. Now, as one of only two rangers in charge of maintaining law and order on the 4.3 million acres in the Bureau of Land Management's Twin Falls district, Schutzberger said she is glad the BLM issues her a weapon – a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle. The agency began outfitting rangers with the semiautomatic rifles a few years ago. Rangers, the agency said, are no different than police officers; they just patrol a much larger beat. At her last job along Oregon's Rogue River, Schutzberger drew a BLM-issued handgun on a felon with an outstanding warrant. "I got him to the ground, handcuffed him and took him into custody," she told the Twin Falls Times-News. In several encounters with paint-ballers in the sprawling southern Idaho desert, Schutzberger wears the rifle. "I sling it over my shoulder," she said. "It's just like suiting up. It's saying, 'don't shoot me with your paintball.' " Some in southern Idaho, however, have begun questioning why bureau rangers need the AR-15 rifles after Schutzberger's gun went missing in May. James Larsen, 22, was accused by Twin Falls police of slipping into a ranger station with two friends and taking Schutzberger's weapon from a parked vehicle....
Friday, July 07, 2006
NEWS ROUNDUP
Basin water rights disputed Utah officials have accelerated their timetable to reach an agreement with Nevada over the sharing of groundwater resources under the border the two states share in the Great Basin. Residents of Utah's west desert, and some environmentalists, are wondering why. "They said they weren't in any hurry to get this done; now they seem to be in a terrific hurry," Trout Creek rancher Ken Hill said this week.he apparent impetus for the shift: pressure from Southern Nevada Water Authority officials, who are seeking to build a 200-mile pipeline from the Snake and Spring valleys near Great Basin National Park that would send 25,000 acre-feet of water annually to Las Vegas. Utah water rights officials are now targeting September for completing at least the framework of an agreement. "I wouldn't go so far as to say we'll sign an agreement [by September], but it's obvious that [southern Nevada] hasn't been comfortable with our timeline," Boyd Clayton, an assistant engineer with the state's Division of Water Rights, said Thursday. "They would like us to move faster and have indicated that." Who's applying the leverage? Environmental groups and others detect the hand of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. They say the Senate Democratic leader, whose son Rory is a member of the SNWA board, has been playing political hardball with Utah officials to get the deal done.....
Habitat projects a top priority for elk foundation In an effort to preserve and improve wildlife habitat across the state, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is helping to fund 22 projects in Wyoming this year, awarding $227,000 in grants. Working with ranchers, state agencies and other partners, the foundation is assisting with prescribed burns, water development projects, weed control efforts and other programs that may seem small but end up making a big difference. "The projects are important for a variety of species, not just elk," said Jerry Altermatt, a Wyoming Game and Fish biologist working with the foundation on habitat conservation....
Property rights advocates turn in signatures for initiative Initiative 933 supporters, many wearing cowboy hats and boots, gathered on the steps of the state Capitol Thursday cheering as a John Deere tractor hauled in their load of 40 boxes of petitions holding more than 315,000 signatures to submit to the secretary of state. The initiative requires local government to pay any landowner who has been "harmed," economically or otherwise, by any kind of regulation passed since 1996 that has limited what they can do on their land. In effect, it would negate the last decade of environmental protection and growth management rules passed in Washington. The Washington Farm Bureau, the measure's main proponent, hailed the strong support as a sign that Washington voters need relief from restrictive government regulations on private property. Washington Farm Bureau President Steve Appel, said property rights are a critical issue for farmers and ranchers in Washington who have seen the use and the value of their property damaged by government regulations. Appel said the I-933 gives voters the chance to tell government that it needs to understand the impact that laws and regulations have on private property and provide compensation when laws and regulations harm property values....
West Texas landowner initiatives advance Literally thousands of West Texas farmers and ranchers have been meeting in community centers, churches, abandoned gymnasiums, and other gathering places in several counties. The sessions involve Q&A sessions with county officials, legal counsel, and WTWEC advisors, as West Texans explore the pros and cons of wind energy development. From the Concho Valley to the Red River to the Texas Panhandle and all points in between, West Texas ranchers, farmers, and county leaders are organizing, marketing, and building wind energy projects. This intensity and depth of action is in stark contrast to other areas of the U.S. and even South Texas, where wind projects continue to face stiff in my back yard opposition. In fact, in many West Texas areas, the battle cry is often “Put them in my front yard "Please.”....
Company out to dig up more water Farmers who rely on North Poudre Irrigation Co. water for their fields might end up with the water they expected to receive for the growing season after all. The North Poudre board of directors decided Wednesday to look into borrowing water from local municipalities and water districts to cover a projected shortfall of 5,000 to 6,000 acre feet of water farmers were told would be available for their crops. If the water is available, it would be moved into the irrigation company’s system of reservoirs and canals for use this year with the understanding that it would be paid back next year, board members said....
Fence researcher deters hungry wildlife with woven wire Roy Fenster may have fencing in his blood, but he has also left his blood in fences. "I had eight stitches from a barbed wire fence once," said the Montana State University graduate student with plenty of shock and ahhhh memories. "I have been shocked a lot of times, but never electrocuted," he joked. Fenster used to build electric, barbed wire, smooth wire and woven wire fences while working for farmers in Nebraska. He then went on to build 4,800 feet more as part of his master's degree research at MSU. He wanted to find the best way to modify fences to keep deer and elk out of pastures and crops. "If ranchers could keep elk out of critical pasture, ranchers wouldn't be so opposed to elk," said Jim Knight, Fenster's advisor and an MSU Extension Wildlife Specialist. "They would be more tolerant of elk." Fenster started his project in 2004 by finding four Montana ranches with livestock and large numbers of elk or deer....
Looters still ravaging ancient Arizona An Arizona State Land Department investigator and an Arizona State University archaeologist looked intently out the windows of the small aircraft as it circled a desert wash above ancient gravesites. Soon, the two men saw the telltale signs: makeshift roads, heavy equipment, a series of linear cuts. "Look at all those holes; they weren't there before," archaeologist Keith Kintigh said. "That's where they're digging." Experts fear looting of ancient Native American burial sites in Arizona is on the rise, though Land Department investigator Brad Geeck said there are no hard statistics to track those trends. "Every year, the calls seem to increase." The rewards, experts say, outweigh the risks. A single intact pot can bring as much as $75,000. Desecrating human remains to get to the pot is a misdemeanor, with a fine of less than $500....
Foes imaginary, real at Piñon site Army Maj. Milford Beagle stood in a mock forward operating base and looked over a map that pinpointed the locations of three enemy forces operating in the vast war zone: Muhammed's Army, QJBR and Muqfada's Militia. Outside his camp, troops wearing 40 pounds of gear in near 100-degree heat searched for insurgents on 236,300 acres of the austere, arid landscape of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, 150 miles southeast of Fort Carson. In Beagle's eyes, the desert training ground - roughly the same size as Rocky Mountain National Park - was the perfect place to get 3,500 troops from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team ready last month for a fall deployment to Iraq. With an additional 10,000 troops moving to Fort Carson in the next two years, officials want to expand Piñon Canyon by more than 400,000 acres - making it the Army's largest training site. That plan has run into a buzz saw of opposition from a group of about 500 farmers and ranchers. The Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition says the Army has not articulated the need for so much property and has not been forthright about its plans. "If I wanted to deal with you on some land that you had, we would enter into an open and honest discussion. ... But there's none of that open discussion, it's just not there," said coalition leader Lon Robertson....So if we are really looking at future plans to pull troops out of Iraq, why do we need more land to train more troops? I thought the emphasis was on training Iraqi troops, not ours.
Climate change making ominous mark on Midwest Snow sometimes piled so high in the 1960s and 1970s that Gladstone, Mo., postman Bob Drayer couldn't pull his truck up to mailboxes. In the early 1980s, Mary Beth Kirkham crunched across campus on ice cleats at Kansas State University, where she teaches in the Department of Agronomy. "I've given away my ice cleats; we don't have those cold winters anymore," Kirkham said. Although skeptics say our changing weather is just part of a natural cycle, many scientists say winter's diminished fury here is the most visible piece of evidence in the Midwest of global warming. But there are other signs as well. Wildlife and plants native to the South, such as the armadillo and the southern magnolia, now are thriving here. Flowers bloom two weeks earlier than usual, bird migration timetables are out of whack, and heat and drought have dropped many lake and river levels below normal for several years. "This is a much, much bigger issue" than what most people understand, said Ronald P. Neilson, an internationally recognized bioclimatologist at the USDA Forest Service in Oregon. "Haste is important."....
Global warming triggers fatal wildfires in Western US The never-ending warning signals that refer to the increased level of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere (which produces the famous “green-house effect”) are now having a new “buddy”: the wildfires. Scientists found after an intensive study that wildfires in the US have become more dangerous in the last 35 years. The main reason for this is the rise in temperatures, especially in the western part of the US. The global warming was found to be even more important than the forest management programs (which means the use of wood from forests for different industrial activities or the eradication of entire forested areas for agricultural purposes). One of the most important conclusions that the team of scientists came up with is that temperatures in the West for a period between 1987 and 2003 were not less than 1.5 degrees higher than the temperatures registered in the previous 17 years (1970-1987). The scientists discovered that, in fact, the seasonal temperatures were the warmest since record-keeping started in 1895. They were measured for the summer and spring period. A climate researcher, Anthony Westerling, who led the research while at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, said that "It all fits together. The [fire] seasons do start earlier and run longer. It is consistent with a changing climate."....
Rainbow Family number peaks at 15,000 An estimated 15,000 people showed up at the peak of the Rainbow Family's gathering in the mountains of northern Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday. The agency said officers had written a total of 584 citations, including 298 for camping without a permit and 181 for drug-related violations. Officials refused to grant the loosely organized, nationwide band a permit, citing fire danger. The weeklong gathering officially started Saturday. The Forest Service said it is gathering data for a rehabilitation plan for the estimated 4-square-mile area of the Routt National Forest where the group is camping. Officials said their concerns include compacted or eroded soil, water pollution and stream bank damage, abandoned dogs and vehicles and trails worn into the forest....
Bill would limit comment on logging Fuel-reduction logging and controlled-burn Forest Service projects on at least 1.2 million public acres would be exempt from the public comment and appeals process under a provision included in a spending bill that a key Senate committee recently approved. Forest Service officials say the measure would reduce the cost and time for high-priority projects but environmentalists cried foul, saying it would cut the public out of decisions affecting public lands. The measure would allow the Forest Service to exempt from the comment and appeals process controlled-burn projects of up to 4,500 acres and fuel-reduction logging projects of up to 1,000 acres. The provision, authored by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., would effectively overturn a court ruling that requires such projects to be subject to public comment. The congressional action comes as the matter remains under litigation, with arguments made in a federal appeals court last month....
Judge won't halt forest thinning A federal judge here has denied a request by two environmental groups to block a project to thin a heavily forested area in the Bitterroot Valley. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, in a decision dated last Friday, declined to issue a preliminary injunction for the project. He said the WildWest Institute and the Friends of the Bitterroot were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the U.S. Forest Service violated procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act. Matthew Koehler, the WildWest Institute's executive director, said Wednesday his group was reviewing its options, which may include an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We were disappointed," Koehler said of Molloy's ruling. The case involved the contentious Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project, Montana's first hazardous materials reduction project under the Bush administration's Healthy Forests initiative....
Wild Horses in the Wild - Targets of Ruthless Exploiters I am disturbed by the distortions of truth put out by enemies of wild horses in the American West. Extreme prejudice distorts their view of the life of horses in the wild. Instead, with closed minds, they disregard the many positive aspects of the natural, free life of horses. They should read my book, "Wild Horses: Living Symbols of Freedom" to get a fairer picture and stop listening to the bar room philosophies of public land exploiters who are blinded to the true ecological value of wild horses by their own possessive interests. Some aspects of wild horse behavior may seen harsh, yet they prove to be wise in the long run. For example, when a stallion prevents its male progeny from re-entering his band, he prevents inbreeding. The bachelors soon accept this rejection and go off to form their own bands, when sufficient habitat is available. The problem today is that people with vested interests in the livestock and game hunting industries are concocting all sorts of lies and distortions to denigrate wild horses in the wild....
Million-dollar moth: State spends $1m annually for 137-year-old mistake Etienne Leopold Trouvelot was apparently inquisitive, talented and well-regarded in his day. But he is not well-regarded in our day. Because of his mistake 137 years ago, Washington state expends $1 million annually in a war without end against gypsy moths. "We spend more right now to detect and eradicate gypsy moths than any other insect," state Department of Agriculture spokesman John Lundberg said Wednesday. As moths, gypsy moths are only interested in reproducing. But as caterpillars in the spring, they eat forest canopies, litter parks with droppings and give humans rashes. In the Northeast United States, leaf-eating gypsy moths can't be stopped. Officials can only hope to contain them. Trouvelot accidentally released European gypsy moths in 1869 from his home in Medford, Mass. Trouvelot understood the hazards non-native species pose to ecosystems and alerted city officials. The news of moths on the loose didn't incite action, however. "They kind of blew him off," Lundberg said. "They said, 'We have caterpillars around here all the time.' " Trouvelot had gone back to France by the time gypsy moths stripped Medford's trees bare a decade later....
Salamander ruling disputed Five environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government Thursday, challenging its decision not to extend Endangered Species Act protection to a pair of north state amphibians. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in April that it would not list either the Siskiyou Mountain or Scott Bar salamanders as endangered or threatened species, saying California and the U.S. Forest Service already have protections in place. But those protections could disappear, the environmental groups contend. "They substantially relied on protections that are on the chopping block and are in the process of being eliminated," said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups in the lawsuit. The state is in the process of removing the Siskiyou Mountain salamander from its threatened species list. Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is rewriting its "survey and manage" rules, which require influences on animals such as the salamanders to be taken into account before a timber sale goes through....
Ceremony needs space: Public asked to respect voluntary closure in forest An American Indian coming-of-age ceremony that hasn't been practiced in its entirety since the 1920s will usher a girl into womanhood starting Saturday. But planning the age-old rite in the 21st century has come with growing pains of its own, said Caleen Sisk-Franco, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu. "Isn't it ironic that it's the Fourth of July, 2006, and we're still begging around for our rights," Sisk-Franco said this week. "We're still not there yet." The ceremony site -- once the tribe's traditional area -- is now managed by the U.S. Forest Service and a campsite concessionaire. As a popular piece of public land, the 120-member tribe can't use it as freely as it once did. As a result, the tribe says, the government has failed to honor its religious rights. Shasta-Trinity National Forest officials last week asked that the public respect a voluntary closure from Saturday to Tuesday, from McCloud Bridge to about one mile south. District Ranger Kristi Cottini said that because the area is public land, it cannot be completely blocked off....
DDT: The Bald Eagle Lie While the AP acknowledged the fact that bald eagle populations “were considered a nuisance and routinely shot by hunters, farmers and fishermen” – spurring a 1940 federal law protecting bald eagles – the AP underplayed the significance of hunting and human encroachment and erroneously blamed DDT for the eagles’ near demise. As early as 1921, the journal Ecology reported that bald eagles were threatened with extinction – 22 years before DDT production even began. According to a report in the National Museum Bulletin, the bald eagle reportedly had vanished from New England by 1937 – 10 years before widespread use of the pesticide. But by 1960 – 20 years after the Bald Eagle Protection Act and at the peak of DDT use – the Audubon Society reported counting 25 percent more eagles than in its pre-1941 census. U.S. Forest Service studies reported an increase in nesting bald eagle productivity from 51 in 1964 to 107 in 1970, according to the 1970 Annual Report on Bald Eagle Status. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attributed bald eagle population reductions to a “widespread loss of suitable habitat,” but noted that “illegal shooting continues to be the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature bald eagles,” according to a 1978 report in the Endangered Species Tech Bulletin. A 1984 National Wildlife Federation publication listed hunting, power line electrocution, collisions in flight and poisoning from eating ducks containing lead shot as the leading causes of eagle deaths....
Recent fires on Gila cost millions to fight Fires in recent weeks on the Gila National Forest of southwestern New Mexico have cost millions of dollars to fight, according to Forest Service officials. They say two fires detected on June 2nd and June 19th cost about $11.5 million together. The cost to fight two other fires that became known as the Reserve Complex was put at $6.3 million. Forest Service spokeswoman Loretta Benavidez says firefighters and support personnel who fought blazes in the Gila for the past month came from 36 states. They say more than 2,200 people were involved in the suppression efforts. Wildfires in the Gila this year have charred more than 83,000 acres.
Poison plan appealed Two conservation groups are appealing the Flathead National Forest’s decision to authorize the poisoning of 21 lakes in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Jewel Basin Hiking Area. In an appeal filed last month, Wilderness Watch and Friends of the Wild Swan allege that the Forest Service’s approval of the South Fork Flathead Watershed Westslope Cutthroat Trout Conservation Program violates provisions of the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act. The plan authorizes the state Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) to use poisons and motorized equipment to remove hybrid cutthroat trout from mountain lakes, and then restock those historically fishless lakes with genetically pure populations of Westslope cutthroat trout. The groups also claim the Forest Service’s authorization to use helicopters, aircraft, outboard motors, pumps and mixers in Jewel Basin and the Bob violates the agency’s own forest plan, which does not allow motorized equipment in plan-identified grizzly bear “core areas” while bears are out of their dens....
Border Fight Focuses on Water, Not Immigration For more than 100 years, as their names imply, Calexico and its much larger sister city, Mexicali, south of the border, have embraced each other with a bonhomie born of mutual need and satisfaction in the infernal desert. The pedestrian gate into Mexico clangs ceaselessly as Mexicans lug back bulging bags from Wal-Mart and 99 Cent Stores in Calexico. The line into the United States slogs along, steady but slower, through an air-conditioned foyer as men and women trudge off to work and, during the school year, children wear the universal face that greets the coming day. Now, the ties that bind Calexico and Mexicali are being tested as a 20-year dispute over the rights to water leaking into Mexico from a canal on the American side is reaching a peak. Though the raging debate over illegal immigration in the United States has not upset border relations here, some say the fight over water could affect the number of Mexicans who try to cross here illegally. To slake the ever-growing thirst of San Diego, 100 miles to the west, the United States has a plan to replace a 23-mile segment of the earthen All-American Canal, which the federal government owns and the Colorado River feeds, with a concrete-lined parallel trough. The $225 million project would send more water to San Diego, by cutting off billions of leaked gallons — enough for 112,000 households a year — that have helped irrigate Mexican farms since the 1940's.....
Enlarged livestock district is petition's aim Greensprings landowners have banded together to place 4,400 acres in the Cascade Mountains off-limits to grazing cattle. "We have no property rights when it comes to cows and cowboys," said Leon Kincaid, who owns two parcels totaling 32 acres that he says have suffered thousands of dollars in damage over the past 21 years from cattle. Kincaid and other property owners, including the Green Springs Inn, are part of a petition sent to Jackson County that would enlarge the existing Greensprings Livestock District. A livestock district, according to Oregon law, places the burden on cattle ranchers to keep their animals out of the designated land. More than 100 affected properties along Highway 66 now fall under open-range law, which places the burden on landowners to keep cattle out....
USDA won't send mad cow experts for Canada probe The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday it will not send any experts to take part in Canada's investigation of its latest case of mad cow disease, saying it was confident in Canada's food safety measures. Canada confirmed the case on Tuesday, in an older crossbreed beef cow. It was the country's sixth native-born case of the disease since 2003. Canada said the cow was born "well before" the 1997 ban on use of cattle protein in cattle feed, one of the major safeguards in North America against spread of the disease. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency invited USDA to take part in the investigation of the new case. "Based on our confidence of the food safety measures in place in Canada and our previous audits of the system, we have determined that it is not necessary to send any U.S. experts to participate in this epidemiological investigation at this time," said USDA chief veterinarian John Clifford in a statement. Clifford said "we do not expect that this latest case would cause any disruption in our trade in beef or beef products from Canada."....
Canada cows complicate US, Seoul beef trade South Korea has told the Bush administration it will not resume beef trade until U.S. slaughterhouses segregate Canadian beef products, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. South Korea closed its borders to U.S. beef in December 2003 after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was reported. The United States has since brought into effect a number of food preparation safeguards but South Korean government officials are concerned about the effects of mingling U.S. and Canadian beef. Canada, which confirmed its sixth home-grown case of mad cow disease on Tuesday, ships cattle and beef from animals under 30 months old into the United States. It has seen twice as many cases of mad cow as the United States, which has a much larger herd. "The Korean audit team found problems in U.S. slaughter procedures, such as the (lack of) segregation of Canadian beef," the source said. "Seoul is discussing and waiting for the U.S. to take measures on that issue. Any time the issue is solved (it will) start importing U.S. beef." No-one from the U.S. Agriculture Department was immediately available for comment....
High Tech Cow Tracking A Utah company hopes its new technology will change the face of the country's meat supply forever. One hundred million head of cattle make up the sources of America's beef. It's "what's for dinner" but Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth disease, E. coli and antibiotics all should be concerns for consumers. Using wireless technology, North Salt Lake company Tek-Vet tags bovine with a remote box that simply sees if a cow has a fever or if they're too cold. "The cowboys are watching the cows and they go check them all the time. This also acts as a validation, when they think might be sick they can go check on them here." Tek-Vet CTO Richard Keene says the rancher, cowboy or farmer tracks via the Internet each individual cow in their herd. "If we plan to export, we are going to have to have a system like this." So what does this mean to you as the consumer? How about cows not pumped full of antibiotics? And the ability to check out where your New York Strip came from. "You'll be able to buy that piece of meat and go online and put in that animal identifier and find out the entire history of that animal."....
Getting an education Sue and I, along with quite a few of our friends the same age, are beginning to experience a new sensation. We're grandparents. This situation actually began several years ago. It has been wonderful, don't get me wrong. Lately, though, the whole grandparent thing has taken an odd turn. As proud grandparents we looked forward to the first time the kids rolled over, took their first step and uttered their first word. Pretty normal stuff. The first step rapidly evolved into chasing them everywhere, and not being able to keep up with them. It's talking with them, however, that has turned the most interesting. Random babbling has become sentences. Sentences became questions. Eventually, grandparents and grandkids began to have conversations. This is when things began to get a little weird....
On The Edge of Common Sense: 'Da Vinci Code' taken literally, although author indicates he made it up "President Kennedy's assassination was a government cover up," pronounces conspiracy theorists. "I made it up,' shouts Oliver Stone. "I can actually speak Wookie,"proclaims a dedicated Star Wars fan. "I made it up!" shouts George Lucas. "The Da Vinci Code, a saga that plays at the heart of western religion," opines one reviewer. "I made it up," shouts Dan Brown. Although I congratulate Mr. Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, for writing such an appealing book, I am stunned that so many ignore him and take it seriously. Reporters and commentators pose questions with the gravity normally reserved for the North Korean nuclear threat or a coal mine cave in. "Is it possible the Apostle John was really a woman? "Is it true Constantine invented the genuflect?" "Did Da Vinci really paint the face on the barroom floor?" "Who left the tip at the Last Supper?"....
Basin water rights disputed Utah officials have accelerated their timetable to reach an agreement with Nevada over the sharing of groundwater resources under the border the two states share in the Great Basin. Residents of Utah's west desert, and some environmentalists, are wondering why. "They said they weren't in any hurry to get this done; now they seem to be in a terrific hurry," Trout Creek rancher Ken Hill said this week.he apparent impetus for the shift: pressure from Southern Nevada Water Authority officials, who are seeking to build a 200-mile pipeline from the Snake and Spring valleys near Great Basin National Park that would send 25,000 acre-feet of water annually to Las Vegas. Utah water rights officials are now targeting September for completing at least the framework of an agreement. "I wouldn't go so far as to say we'll sign an agreement [by September], but it's obvious that [southern Nevada] hasn't been comfortable with our timeline," Boyd Clayton, an assistant engineer with the state's Division of Water Rights, said Thursday. "They would like us to move faster and have indicated that." Who's applying the leverage? Environmental groups and others detect the hand of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. They say the Senate Democratic leader, whose son Rory is a member of the SNWA board, has been playing political hardball with Utah officials to get the deal done.....
Habitat projects a top priority for elk foundation In an effort to preserve and improve wildlife habitat across the state, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is helping to fund 22 projects in Wyoming this year, awarding $227,000 in grants. Working with ranchers, state agencies and other partners, the foundation is assisting with prescribed burns, water development projects, weed control efforts and other programs that may seem small but end up making a big difference. "The projects are important for a variety of species, not just elk," said Jerry Altermatt, a Wyoming Game and Fish biologist working with the foundation on habitat conservation....
Property rights advocates turn in signatures for initiative Initiative 933 supporters, many wearing cowboy hats and boots, gathered on the steps of the state Capitol Thursday cheering as a John Deere tractor hauled in their load of 40 boxes of petitions holding more than 315,000 signatures to submit to the secretary of state. The initiative requires local government to pay any landowner who has been "harmed," economically or otherwise, by any kind of regulation passed since 1996 that has limited what they can do on their land. In effect, it would negate the last decade of environmental protection and growth management rules passed in Washington. The Washington Farm Bureau, the measure's main proponent, hailed the strong support as a sign that Washington voters need relief from restrictive government regulations on private property. Washington Farm Bureau President Steve Appel, said property rights are a critical issue for farmers and ranchers in Washington who have seen the use and the value of their property damaged by government regulations. Appel said the I-933 gives voters the chance to tell government that it needs to understand the impact that laws and regulations have on private property and provide compensation when laws and regulations harm property values....
West Texas landowner initiatives advance Literally thousands of West Texas farmers and ranchers have been meeting in community centers, churches, abandoned gymnasiums, and other gathering places in several counties. The sessions involve Q&A sessions with county officials, legal counsel, and WTWEC advisors, as West Texans explore the pros and cons of wind energy development. From the Concho Valley to the Red River to the Texas Panhandle and all points in between, West Texas ranchers, farmers, and county leaders are organizing, marketing, and building wind energy projects. This intensity and depth of action is in stark contrast to other areas of the U.S. and even South Texas, where wind projects continue to face stiff in my back yard opposition. In fact, in many West Texas areas, the battle cry is often “Put them in my front yard "Please.”....
Company out to dig up more water Farmers who rely on North Poudre Irrigation Co. water for their fields might end up with the water they expected to receive for the growing season after all. The North Poudre board of directors decided Wednesday to look into borrowing water from local municipalities and water districts to cover a projected shortfall of 5,000 to 6,000 acre feet of water farmers were told would be available for their crops. If the water is available, it would be moved into the irrigation company’s system of reservoirs and canals for use this year with the understanding that it would be paid back next year, board members said....
Fence researcher deters hungry wildlife with woven wire Roy Fenster may have fencing in his blood, but he has also left his blood in fences. "I had eight stitches from a barbed wire fence once," said the Montana State University graduate student with plenty of shock and ahhhh memories. "I have been shocked a lot of times, but never electrocuted," he joked. Fenster used to build electric, barbed wire, smooth wire and woven wire fences while working for farmers in Nebraska. He then went on to build 4,800 feet more as part of his master's degree research at MSU. He wanted to find the best way to modify fences to keep deer and elk out of pastures and crops. "If ranchers could keep elk out of critical pasture, ranchers wouldn't be so opposed to elk," said Jim Knight, Fenster's advisor and an MSU Extension Wildlife Specialist. "They would be more tolerant of elk." Fenster started his project in 2004 by finding four Montana ranches with livestock and large numbers of elk or deer....
Looters still ravaging ancient Arizona An Arizona State Land Department investigator and an Arizona State University archaeologist looked intently out the windows of the small aircraft as it circled a desert wash above ancient gravesites. Soon, the two men saw the telltale signs: makeshift roads, heavy equipment, a series of linear cuts. "Look at all those holes; they weren't there before," archaeologist Keith Kintigh said. "That's where they're digging." Experts fear looting of ancient Native American burial sites in Arizona is on the rise, though Land Department investigator Brad Geeck said there are no hard statistics to track those trends. "Every year, the calls seem to increase." The rewards, experts say, outweigh the risks. A single intact pot can bring as much as $75,000. Desecrating human remains to get to the pot is a misdemeanor, with a fine of less than $500....
Foes imaginary, real at Piñon site Army Maj. Milford Beagle stood in a mock forward operating base and looked over a map that pinpointed the locations of three enemy forces operating in the vast war zone: Muhammed's Army, QJBR and Muqfada's Militia. Outside his camp, troops wearing 40 pounds of gear in near 100-degree heat searched for insurgents on 236,300 acres of the austere, arid landscape of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, 150 miles southeast of Fort Carson. In Beagle's eyes, the desert training ground - roughly the same size as Rocky Mountain National Park - was the perfect place to get 3,500 troops from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team ready last month for a fall deployment to Iraq. With an additional 10,000 troops moving to Fort Carson in the next two years, officials want to expand Piñon Canyon by more than 400,000 acres - making it the Army's largest training site. That plan has run into a buzz saw of opposition from a group of about 500 farmers and ranchers. The Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition says the Army has not articulated the need for so much property and has not been forthright about its plans. "If I wanted to deal with you on some land that you had, we would enter into an open and honest discussion. ... But there's none of that open discussion, it's just not there," said coalition leader Lon Robertson....So if we are really looking at future plans to pull troops out of Iraq, why do we need more land to train more troops? I thought the emphasis was on training Iraqi troops, not ours.
Climate change making ominous mark on Midwest Snow sometimes piled so high in the 1960s and 1970s that Gladstone, Mo., postman Bob Drayer couldn't pull his truck up to mailboxes. In the early 1980s, Mary Beth Kirkham crunched across campus on ice cleats at Kansas State University, where she teaches in the Department of Agronomy. "I've given away my ice cleats; we don't have those cold winters anymore," Kirkham said. Although skeptics say our changing weather is just part of a natural cycle, many scientists say winter's diminished fury here is the most visible piece of evidence in the Midwest of global warming. But there are other signs as well. Wildlife and plants native to the South, such as the armadillo and the southern magnolia, now are thriving here. Flowers bloom two weeks earlier than usual, bird migration timetables are out of whack, and heat and drought have dropped many lake and river levels below normal for several years. "This is a much, much bigger issue" than what most people understand, said Ronald P. Neilson, an internationally recognized bioclimatologist at the USDA Forest Service in Oregon. "Haste is important."....
Global warming triggers fatal wildfires in Western US The never-ending warning signals that refer to the increased level of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere (which produces the famous “green-house effect”) are now having a new “buddy”: the wildfires. Scientists found after an intensive study that wildfires in the US have become more dangerous in the last 35 years. The main reason for this is the rise in temperatures, especially in the western part of the US. The global warming was found to be even more important than the forest management programs (which means the use of wood from forests for different industrial activities or the eradication of entire forested areas for agricultural purposes). One of the most important conclusions that the team of scientists came up with is that temperatures in the West for a period between 1987 and 2003 were not less than 1.5 degrees higher than the temperatures registered in the previous 17 years (1970-1987). The scientists discovered that, in fact, the seasonal temperatures were the warmest since record-keeping started in 1895. They were measured for the summer and spring period. A climate researcher, Anthony Westerling, who led the research while at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, said that "It all fits together. The [fire] seasons do start earlier and run longer. It is consistent with a changing climate."....
Rainbow Family number peaks at 15,000 An estimated 15,000 people showed up at the peak of the Rainbow Family's gathering in the mountains of northern Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday. The agency said officers had written a total of 584 citations, including 298 for camping without a permit and 181 for drug-related violations. Officials refused to grant the loosely organized, nationwide band a permit, citing fire danger. The weeklong gathering officially started Saturday. The Forest Service said it is gathering data for a rehabilitation plan for the estimated 4-square-mile area of the Routt National Forest where the group is camping. Officials said their concerns include compacted or eroded soil, water pollution and stream bank damage, abandoned dogs and vehicles and trails worn into the forest....
Bill would limit comment on logging Fuel-reduction logging and controlled-burn Forest Service projects on at least 1.2 million public acres would be exempt from the public comment and appeals process under a provision included in a spending bill that a key Senate committee recently approved. Forest Service officials say the measure would reduce the cost and time for high-priority projects but environmentalists cried foul, saying it would cut the public out of decisions affecting public lands. The measure would allow the Forest Service to exempt from the comment and appeals process controlled-burn projects of up to 4,500 acres and fuel-reduction logging projects of up to 1,000 acres. The provision, authored by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., would effectively overturn a court ruling that requires such projects to be subject to public comment. The congressional action comes as the matter remains under litigation, with arguments made in a federal appeals court last month....
Judge won't halt forest thinning A federal judge here has denied a request by two environmental groups to block a project to thin a heavily forested area in the Bitterroot Valley. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, in a decision dated last Friday, declined to issue a preliminary injunction for the project. He said the WildWest Institute and the Friends of the Bitterroot were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the U.S. Forest Service violated procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act. Matthew Koehler, the WildWest Institute's executive director, said Wednesday his group was reviewing its options, which may include an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We were disappointed," Koehler said of Molloy's ruling. The case involved the contentious Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction Project, Montana's first hazardous materials reduction project under the Bush administration's Healthy Forests initiative....
Wild Horses in the Wild - Targets of Ruthless Exploiters I am disturbed by the distortions of truth put out by enemies of wild horses in the American West. Extreme prejudice distorts their view of the life of horses in the wild. Instead, with closed minds, they disregard the many positive aspects of the natural, free life of horses. They should read my book, "Wild Horses: Living Symbols of Freedom" to get a fairer picture and stop listening to the bar room philosophies of public land exploiters who are blinded to the true ecological value of wild horses by their own possessive interests. Some aspects of wild horse behavior may seen harsh, yet they prove to be wise in the long run. For example, when a stallion prevents its male progeny from re-entering his band, he prevents inbreeding. The bachelors soon accept this rejection and go off to form their own bands, when sufficient habitat is available. The problem today is that people with vested interests in the livestock and game hunting industries are concocting all sorts of lies and distortions to denigrate wild horses in the wild....
Million-dollar moth: State spends $1m annually for 137-year-old mistake Etienne Leopold Trouvelot was apparently inquisitive, talented and well-regarded in his day. But he is not well-regarded in our day. Because of his mistake 137 years ago, Washington state expends $1 million annually in a war without end against gypsy moths. "We spend more right now to detect and eradicate gypsy moths than any other insect," state Department of Agriculture spokesman John Lundberg said Wednesday. As moths, gypsy moths are only interested in reproducing. But as caterpillars in the spring, they eat forest canopies, litter parks with droppings and give humans rashes. In the Northeast United States, leaf-eating gypsy moths can't be stopped. Officials can only hope to contain them. Trouvelot accidentally released European gypsy moths in 1869 from his home in Medford, Mass. Trouvelot understood the hazards non-native species pose to ecosystems and alerted city officials. The news of moths on the loose didn't incite action, however. "They kind of blew him off," Lundberg said. "They said, 'We have caterpillars around here all the time.' " Trouvelot had gone back to France by the time gypsy moths stripped Medford's trees bare a decade later....
Salamander ruling disputed Five environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government Thursday, challenging its decision not to extend Endangered Species Act protection to a pair of north state amphibians. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in April that it would not list either the Siskiyou Mountain or Scott Bar salamanders as endangered or threatened species, saying California and the U.S. Forest Service already have protections in place. But those protections could disappear, the environmental groups contend. "They substantially relied on protections that are on the chopping block and are in the process of being eliminated," said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups in the lawsuit. The state is in the process of removing the Siskiyou Mountain salamander from its threatened species list. Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is rewriting its "survey and manage" rules, which require influences on animals such as the salamanders to be taken into account before a timber sale goes through....
Ceremony needs space: Public asked to respect voluntary closure in forest An American Indian coming-of-age ceremony that hasn't been practiced in its entirety since the 1920s will usher a girl into womanhood starting Saturday. But planning the age-old rite in the 21st century has come with growing pains of its own, said Caleen Sisk-Franco, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu. "Isn't it ironic that it's the Fourth of July, 2006, and we're still begging around for our rights," Sisk-Franco said this week. "We're still not there yet." The ceremony site -- once the tribe's traditional area -- is now managed by the U.S. Forest Service and a campsite concessionaire. As a popular piece of public land, the 120-member tribe can't use it as freely as it once did. As a result, the tribe says, the government has failed to honor its religious rights. Shasta-Trinity National Forest officials last week asked that the public respect a voluntary closure from Saturday to Tuesday, from McCloud Bridge to about one mile south. District Ranger Kristi Cottini said that because the area is public land, it cannot be completely blocked off....
DDT: The Bald Eagle Lie While the AP acknowledged the fact that bald eagle populations “were considered a nuisance and routinely shot by hunters, farmers and fishermen” – spurring a 1940 federal law protecting bald eagles – the AP underplayed the significance of hunting and human encroachment and erroneously blamed DDT for the eagles’ near demise. As early as 1921, the journal Ecology reported that bald eagles were threatened with extinction – 22 years before DDT production even began. According to a report in the National Museum Bulletin, the bald eagle reportedly had vanished from New England by 1937 – 10 years before widespread use of the pesticide. But by 1960 – 20 years after the Bald Eagle Protection Act and at the peak of DDT use – the Audubon Society reported counting 25 percent more eagles than in its pre-1941 census. U.S. Forest Service studies reported an increase in nesting bald eagle productivity from 51 in 1964 to 107 in 1970, according to the 1970 Annual Report on Bald Eagle Status. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attributed bald eagle population reductions to a “widespread loss of suitable habitat,” but noted that “illegal shooting continues to be the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature bald eagles,” according to a 1978 report in the Endangered Species Tech Bulletin. A 1984 National Wildlife Federation publication listed hunting, power line electrocution, collisions in flight and poisoning from eating ducks containing lead shot as the leading causes of eagle deaths....
Recent fires on Gila cost millions to fight Fires in recent weeks on the Gila National Forest of southwestern New Mexico have cost millions of dollars to fight, according to Forest Service officials. They say two fires detected on June 2nd and June 19th cost about $11.5 million together. The cost to fight two other fires that became known as the Reserve Complex was put at $6.3 million. Forest Service spokeswoman Loretta Benavidez says firefighters and support personnel who fought blazes in the Gila for the past month came from 36 states. They say more than 2,200 people were involved in the suppression efforts. Wildfires in the Gila this year have charred more than 83,000 acres.
Poison plan appealed Two conservation groups are appealing the Flathead National Forest’s decision to authorize the poisoning of 21 lakes in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Jewel Basin Hiking Area. In an appeal filed last month, Wilderness Watch and Friends of the Wild Swan allege that the Forest Service’s approval of the South Fork Flathead Watershed Westslope Cutthroat Trout Conservation Program violates provisions of the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act. The plan authorizes the state Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) to use poisons and motorized equipment to remove hybrid cutthroat trout from mountain lakes, and then restock those historically fishless lakes with genetically pure populations of Westslope cutthroat trout. The groups also claim the Forest Service’s authorization to use helicopters, aircraft, outboard motors, pumps and mixers in Jewel Basin and the Bob violates the agency’s own forest plan, which does not allow motorized equipment in plan-identified grizzly bear “core areas” while bears are out of their dens....
Border Fight Focuses on Water, Not Immigration For more than 100 years, as their names imply, Calexico and its much larger sister city, Mexicali, south of the border, have embraced each other with a bonhomie born of mutual need and satisfaction in the infernal desert. The pedestrian gate into Mexico clangs ceaselessly as Mexicans lug back bulging bags from Wal-Mart and 99 Cent Stores in Calexico. The line into the United States slogs along, steady but slower, through an air-conditioned foyer as men and women trudge off to work and, during the school year, children wear the universal face that greets the coming day. Now, the ties that bind Calexico and Mexicali are being tested as a 20-year dispute over the rights to water leaking into Mexico from a canal on the American side is reaching a peak. Though the raging debate over illegal immigration in the United States has not upset border relations here, some say the fight over water could affect the number of Mexicans who try to cross here illegally. To slake the ever-growing thirst of San Diego, 100 miles to the west, the United States has a plan to replace a 23-mile segment of the earthen All-American Canal, which the federal government owns and the Colorado River feeds, with a concrete-lined parallel trough. The $225 million project would send more water to San Diego, by cutting off billions of leaked gallons — enough for 112,000 households a year — that have helped irrigate Mexican farms since the 1940's.....
Enlarged livestock district is petition's aim Greensprings landowners have banded together to place 4,400 acres in the Cascade Mountains off-limits to grazing cattle. "We have no property rights when it comes to cows and cowboys," said Leon Kincaid, who owns two parcels totaling 32 acres that he says have suffered thousands of dollars in damage over the past 21 years from cattle. Kincaid and other property owners, including the Green Springs Inn, are part of a petition sent to Jackson County that would enlarge the existing Greensprings Livestock District. A livestock district, according to Oregon law, places the burden on cattle ranchers to keep their animals out of the designated land. More than 100 affected properties along Highway 66 now fall under open-range law, which places the burden on landowners to keep cattle out....
USDA won't send mad cow experts for Canada probe The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday it will not send any experts to take part in Canada's investigation of its latest case of mad cow disease, saying it was confident in Canada's food safety measures. Canada confirmed the case on Tuesday, in an older crossbreed beef cow. It was the country's sixth native-born case of the disease since 2003. Canada said the cow was born "well before" the 1997 ban on use of cattle protein in cattle feed, one of the major safeguards in North America against spread of the disease. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency invited USDA to take part in the investigation of the new case. "Based on our confidence of the food safety measures in place in Canada and our previous audits of the system, we have determined that it is not necessary to send any U.S. experts to participate in this epidemiological investigation at this time," said USDA chief veterinarian John Clifford in a statement. Clifford said "we do not expect that this latest case would cause any disruption in our trade in beef or beef products from Canada."....
Canada cows complicate US, Seoul beef trade South Korea has told the Bush administration it will not resume beef trade until U.S. slaughterhouses segregate Canadian beef products, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. South Korea closed its borders to U.S. beef in December 2003 after the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was reported. The United States has since brought into effect a number of food preparation safeguards but South Korean government officials are concerned about the effects of mingling U.S. and Canadian beef. Canada, which confirmed its sixth home-grown case of mad cow disease on Tuesday, ships cattle and beef from animals under 30 months old into the United States. It has seen twice as many cases of mad cow as the United States, which has a much larger herd. "The Korean audit team found problems in U.S. slaughter procedures, such as the (lack of) segregation of Canadian beef," the source said. "Seoul is discussing and waiting for the U.S. to take measures on that issue. Any time the issue is solved (it will) start importing U.S. beef." No-one from the U.S. Agriculture Department was immediately available for comment....
High Tech Cow Tracking A Utah company hopes its new technology will change the face of the country's meat supply forever. One hundred million head of cattle make up the sources of America's beef. It's "what's for dinner" but Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth disease, E. coli and antibiotics all should be concerns for consumers. Using wireless technology, North Salt Lake company Tek-Vet tags bovine with a remote box that simply sees if a cow has a fever or if they're too cold. "The cowboys are watching the cows and they go check them all the time. This also acts as a validation, when they think might be sick they can go check on them here." Tek-Vet CTO Richard Keene says the rancher, cowboy or farmer tracks via the Internet each individual cow in their herd. "If we plan to export, we are going to have to have a system like this." So what does this mean to you as the consumer? How about cows not pumped full of antibiotics? And the ability to check out where your New York Strip came from. "You'll be able to buy that piece of meat and go online and put in that animal identifier and find out the entire history of that animal."....
Getting an education Sue and I, along with quite a few of our friends the same age, are beginning to experience a new sensation. We're grandparents. This situation actually began several years ago. It has been wonderful, don't get me wrong. Lately, though, the whole grandparent thing has taken an odd turn. As proud grandparents we looked forward to the first time the kids rolled over, took their first step and uttered their first word. Pretty normal stuff. The first step rapidly evolved into chasing them everywhere, and not being able to keep up with them. It's talking with them, however, that has turned the most interesting. Random babbling has become sentences. Sentences became questions. Eventually, grandparents and grandkids began to have conversations. This is when things began to get a little weird....
On The Edge of Common Sense: 'Da Vinci Code' taken literally, although author indicates he made it up "President Kennedy's assassination was a government cover up," pronounces conspiracy theorists. "I made it up,' shouts Oliver Stone. "I can actually speak Wookie,"proclaims a dedicated Star Wars fan. "I made it up!" shouts George Lucas. "The Da Vinci Code, a saga that plays at the heart of western religion," opines one reviewer. "I made it up," shouts Dan Brown. Although I congratulate Mr. Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, for writing such an appealing book, I am stunned that so many ignore him and take it seriously. Reporters and commentators pose questions with the gravity normally reserved for the North Korean nuclear threat or a coal mine cave in. "Is it possible the Apostle John was really a woman? "Is it true Constantine invented the genuflect?" "Did Da Vinci really paint the face on the barroom floor?" "Who left the tip at the Last Supper?"....
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