Administration Forest Plan Assailed Millions of acres of the country's largest national forest would be open for logging and other development under a Bush administration forest management plan released yesterday, a move critics said will hurt wildlife and destroy pristine lands. Under the plan, about 2.4 million acres of roadless areas within Alaska's 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest could be used for logging and building roads, critics said. They described the plan, and similar efforts in Idaho and Colorado, as an attempt by the Bush administration to help the timber industry by circumventing federal court rulings protecting roadless areas. The dispute is the latest skirmish in a years-long battle between environmentalists and the Bush administration over the Clinton-era "roadless rule," which put nearly a third of the national forests -- about 60 million acres -- off-limits to most development....
Plan allows for sheep killing Trying to keep the management of bighorn sheep and domestic sheep out of federal courts, an Idaho plan to prevent the two species from mingling calls for the killing of both bighorns and domestic sheep that enter "sheep free" zones. The Idaho Bighorn/Domestic Sheep Working Group met this week at the state Department of Agriculture to discuss its interim policy for the management of bighorn sheep and domestic sheep. That interim plan, which officials said is likely to change little before being given to Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter on Feb. 15, could be implemented this spring ahead of domestic sheep being turned out onto grazing allotments on federal land. The interim plan calls for buffer zones to be set up between domestic sheep and bighorn sheep, although it is unclear where or even how many of the zones would be created, or how they would be formed. The goal of the plan is to create areas for bighorn sheep and areas for domestic sheep, doing so in a way that allows bighorn populations to remain viable while also keeping domestic sheep operations in business....
Utah resident makes living hunting coyotes Newell Fredrickson doesn't enjoy killing coyotes. It's just something he does to earn a living. In 40 years with Wildlife Services--the branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture charged with removing problem predators--Fredrickson has trapped and shot all sorts of animals, crashed in helicopters half a dozen times, roped eagles and seen a lot of country. But the large majority of his job these days focuses on one thing: killing coyotes. Folks with Wildlife Services (formerly Animal Damage Control) tend to tiptoe when discussing their work. The Utah Wildlife Services Web page states that "Utah WS is uniquely positioned to assist livestock producers, industries and our cooperating agency partners with wildlife damage issues. Professional wildlife biologists and trained technicians provide direct assistance (their emphasis) when wildlife damage requires special skills." Fredrickson, on the other hand, doesn't trade in euphemisms. "That old coyote supported me for 40 years and let me be as free as a bird on the wing," Fredrickson says. "He's my brother, but that don't mean I won't kill him." Which is not to say that he does it for fun or, as some people imagine, that he guns down every coyote he sees: "I ain't going out there to see how many I can kill." The Hyrum resident targets offending animals in specific areas, answering calls from ranchers and sheepherders after they lose livestock to suspected wild predators. And he knows that his solutions, final as they may be for the targets, are a temporary fix at best, since coyotes reproduce rapidly....
Wolves breed their way out of protection This is the year that the new wolves of the Old West step out of the protection of the Endangered Species List and into the crosshairs of those who wish they had not been reintroduced to Yellowstone and Idaho, but I wouldn't sound the funeral dirge just yet. Ten years ago, gray wolves were captured in Canada and flown south, sneaked into the park in horse trailers, then acclimated and released into the wild to make more wolves. The Fish and Wildlife managers who planned the reintroduction said that in the most optimistic circumstances there would be 300 wolves by now. They forgot to tell the wolves. The canines happily replicated themselves to the point that there are more than 1,300 wolves now living in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and some say those wolves have been wandering off into Washington, Oregon, Nevada and even California, maybe. If the wolves just hung out on street corners or pool halls, that would be one thing, but in order to keep on breeding the way they have, wolves need to eat. Bears might sup on berries and grubs. Not wolves. They're meat eaters - big meat eaters....
Proposed law may restrict hunting Members of Colorado's House Agricul-ture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee this month will hear the outlining details of proposed legislation, which may have a significant impact on the future of hunting in the state, if approved. Colorado State Represen-tative Debbie Stafford (D-40) has introduced House Bill 08-1096, which may, under the initial language of the draft, ban all hunting within confined areas. HB-1096 "Prohibits a person from offering another person the opportunity to hunt, wound, or take any mammal that is intentionally confined, tied, staked, caged or otherwise re-strained from engaging in normal movement." Specifically, proposed HB-1096 would amend Article 6 of Title 33, by making it unlawful for a person to hunt, or provide hunting opportunities of any animals considered confined, regardless of the size of the enclosure. Stafford's proposed legislation has already come under severe fire from the National Rifle Association (NRA,) as well as the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA.) Together the associations say the language of Staf-ford's bill is vague, and its far-reaching wording could seriously jeopardize the future of hunting in Colorado. "Every piece of fenced property would be off-limits to hunting behind enclosures in Colorado," the associations worry. "As written, it could preclude a farmer or rancher who fences his or her property from allowing anyone, including family and friends, to hunt; regardless of the size of the property," warn the associations....
In Search Of Wild Horses New Mexico’s high desert is an unforgiving land, one of climatic extremes, sparse water and dry forage. But to the bands of wild horses lurking within the juniper, sagebrush and pines, it’s a place of freedom and peace. Active ImageAs dawn breaks over the hills of the Jicarilla Wild Horse Territory in northwestern New Mexico, a bay stallion stands alert on the horizon while his band of mares contently graze below. But when triggered by a mere rustling of a branch or crunch of a fallen leaf, the stallion abruptly leaves his post to guide the fleeing herd through a labyrinth of dense brush. Framed by a hazy, gray-green panorama, this scene represents the West’s strength, spirit and boundless freedom. Located 40 miles east of Bloomfield, the Jicarilla Wild Horse Territory consists of 76,000 acres within the Carson National Forest, bordering the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. The land was one of 303 areas set aside for the horses in 1971 with the passing of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. Today, 186 designated wild-horse territories remain, and, according to the latest Bureau of Land Management census, approximately 25,689 wild horses and 2,874 burros roam these lands....
Wolves raise emotions is western Montana A new federal rule being issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service is going to make it easier for ranchers to kill wolves that threaten pets and livestock. The ruling hits especially close to home for ranchers who are trying to protect their cattle from wolves, as well as those who are trying to protect wolves. However, the rule may also affect those who take their pets into the back country. Wolves elicit emotion like no other predator, and when their prey changes from an elk to the family dog, that's when emotions really explode. Rancher John Myers has some first hand experience. "They killed Yukon, our black lab within 25 yards of the house." Wildlife officials eventually wiped out an entire wolf pack because the wolves also killed two steers and three calves on neighboring Sula ranches. "Down outside Hamilton, they're losing dogs, cats, llamas and really rattling the horses." One wrinkle of the regulation has to do with pets, and not just those that are around the ranch house. The rule also protects Rover when you take them into the back country." Those who look out for wolves, including Suzanne Ahsa Stone with Defenders of Wildlife say the new rule is a step backward....
Grazing's future still up in the air The long-anticipated cattle grazing impact studies on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument were released Thursday afternoon, but the roughly 500-page document contains no recommendation about the future of grazing within the monument. "We're not in the decision-making process," explained Paul Hosten, the monument ecologist and scientist heading up the study group. The studies will help U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials determine whether livestock grazing is consistent with the 2000 presidential proclamation creating the monument, he said. A decision on the grazing issue is expected later this year. The studies have cost an estimated $1.2 million, officials said. The 52,940-acre monument in the mountains east of Ashland with Soda Mountain as its centerpiece was created because of what scientists described as one of the most biologically diverse places on the continent. The proclamation directed the BLM to study the impacts of livestock on the "objects of biological interest in the monument with specific attention to sustaining the natural ecosystem dynamics." Should grazing be found incompatible with that goal, then the grazing allotments within the monument shall be retired, it stated....
Idaho wolf spotted in northeast Oregon A gray wolf from Idaho was spotted from the air Wednesday by wildlife biologists on a flight over the western fringes of northeast Oregon's Eagle Cap Wilderness. The radio-collared female was the fifth -- but only the second living -- wolf identified in Oregon in eight years. The sighting validates beliefs that wolves have been migrating into the state from Idaho, Russ Morgan, wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in La Grande, said Thursday in announcing the sighting. The animal is a 2- to 3-year-old female that biologists are calling B-300. She probably weighed 80 pounds to 90 pounds and has been wearing a radio collar since Idaho biologists captured her northeast of Boise in August 2006, Morgan said. The wolf was spotted in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest between Medical Springs and Wallowa near the boundary of the Eagle Cap Wilderness. Ranchers reported seeing her near the town of Wallowa several days earlier....
How public wildlife became something for sale Wildlife management in North America has been based on more than a century of inclusion between the hunting public and landowners. But that has been changing over the past 30 years in Montana. The so-called North American model of wildlife management began with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1842 that declared that fish and wildlife are owned by the states and their people as a public trust. It also got a big boost from Theodore Roosevelt during his presidency, when he began protecting land and conserving wildlife, said Jim Posewitz, founder of the Helena-based Orion, The Hunter's Institute. "The model has seven basic principles," Posewitz said. "Wildlife is a public resource. Wildlife was recovered by eliminating the markets for wildlife. Wildlife can only be allocated by law. Wildlife can only be killed for a legitimate purpose. Wildlife is considered an international resource. Science is the proper tool for the discharge of wildlife policy. And the crown jewel of the seven is the democracy of hunting. Nobody gets privilege. We're all equal. We all conserve, and we all share."....
The battle for access Deer, elk and antelope are undeniably owned by all of us. Public lands are owned by all of us, too. And private agricultural lands are undeniably owned by farmers and ranchers. Those are the facts. Somewhere in between lie the management and harvest of that public wildlife, tangled in a mess of access issues and fights among the stakeholders in who gets to hunt what, when and where. The problem of access and hunting is an old, old story. Our European forebears knew better than to even try to shoot the king's deer. When they came to America, they reveled in the freedom of its wildlife bounty.With that bounty available again, some say that we're heading back to the days of the king's deer as more and more people seek to control access to wildlife, privatize it and profit from it. The public is being squeezed out, they say. The sport is being turned into a pastime reserved for the privileged few. In Montana, the stakeholders in the access battle are outfitters, landowners and the average resident hunter. Friction among them has been growing for at least the past 30 years, and with each passing hunting season, it seems to get worse. Why is the access battle blowing up into a firestorm right now?....
Ranchers say they're being squeezed out Ranchers operating around the Bighorn National Forest say ongoing drought, tougher environmental oversight, disputed monitoring techniques and growing legal challenges are making it increasingly difficult to effectively use their federal grazing allotments. U.S. Forest Service managers say they are working to support grazing in the Bighorn National Forest, but must balance it against a host of other appropriate public land uses. Dozens of ranchers met with Forest Service managers this week for the first of what is likely to be a series of discussions aimed at improving relations between the two sides. There are 91 permit holders operating on grazing allotments in the Bighorn National Forest, said Bernie Bornong, a Forest Service resource specialist....
Groups object to wolf rule The number of wolves killed as a result of a new federal rule could number in the dozens, state and federal officials say. But critics contend officials in Wyoming and Idaho -- spurred on by anti-wolf livestock interests -- are gearing up to kill hundreds of the animals. Those critics say that could knock down the animal's population in the region by more than half, undermining a decade-long restoration effort that has cost more than $24 million. "There's just no biological justification for killing that many wolves," said Suzanne Stone with Defenders of Wildlife. "It's politically driven." The rule announced Thursday was crafted to meet the demands of Wyoming lawmakers, who made it a condition of their acceptance of a federal plan to lift endangered species protection from wolves. Officials from the state said they wanted to have a way to deal with wolves if delisting is blocked in court. The rule would empower state wildlife agents to kill packs of wolves if they can prove the animals are having a "major impact" on big game herds such as elk, deer or moose. It also would allow hunting guides and others to kill wolves caught harassing dogs or stock animals on public land....
Too much? Senators indicated Thursday that they will pass a less-sweeping reform of 1872 hardrock mining law than the House did late last year, imposing royalties on new mines but perhaps not on existing ones. At a hearing on the issue, senators generally agreed to put in place a royalty on future mines, to create a fund to clean up abandoned hardrock mines and to replace the outmoded patenting system with a more modern practice. But they expressed more reluctance than their House counterparts to impose a royalty on mines already operating. The House-passed bill would charge an 8 percent royalty on the gross revenue from new mineral production and a 4 percent royalty on existing operations. That includes gold, silver, copper, uranium and more. The royalty would be used for cleanup of abandoned mines. Under the 1872 law, federal land can be sold for $2.50 or $5 an acre. Congress for more than a decade has annually approved a moratorium on such sales, and the House bill would permanently end them. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, objected to some of the increased environmental regulations in the House bill. He said that because other national environmental laws already apply, the new rules are "solutions in search of a problem." But some Democrats and environmental groups want to keep a House-passed provision that gives the Interior secretary the power to veto a mining operation if it would cause undue degradation of the environment....
BLM follows Nev. cattle seizure with horse impoundment at McDermitt Federal agents who seized more than 100 cattle from Nevada ranchers accused of trespassing on public rangeland this week have confiscated 200 horses from an American Indian and his son they say were grazing the animals without a permit near the Nevada-Oregon line. The Bureau of Land Management's roundup of the privately owned horses near a reservation at McDermitt, Nevada, yesterday followed Monday's impoundment of 107 cattle near Winnemucca, Nevada. Larry Crutcher was cited by the BLM along with his father, Leonard. Agency officials say the Crutchers ignored warnings for years that their horses were trespassing on federal land....
Don't List the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act The Department of the Interior (DOI), in response to litigation from environmental groups, is considering whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). For the first time in the history of the ESA, the threat of global warming would be the reason for listing a well-known species. Given the ESA's sweeping powers, such a move would raise energy prices by putting an end to promising new oil and natural gas production in Alaska. Even more troubling, listing the polar bear could be used as a back door to implement global warming policy nationwide by restricting energy production and use throughout the U.S. This would obviously harm the economy and—considering the ESA's poor track record—could also harm the polar bears as well. The President should tell the DOI not to take this highly problematic step....
Suspected “eco-terrorist” on trial Nearly seven years after an arson caused about $1.5 million in damages to UW’s Center for Urban Horticulture, Briana Waters, 32, will be facing trial on Feb. 11 for her alleged participation in the attack. Federal prosecutors said Waters was a part of the five-person Earth Liberation Front (ELF) team that set fire to professor Toby Bradshaw’s office on May 21, 2001, according to a Jan. 21 article from The Seattle Times (“Arson suspect facing trial”). “Ms. Waters naturally has very little recollection of exactly what she was doing in the early morning hours of May 21, 2001,” said her attorneys Robert Bloom and Neil Fox, in a statement to the Times. “She is, however, certain that one thing she did not do is participate in the arson at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture.” Waters’ trial will be the first of the 18 men and women accused of being involved in the series of attacks that caused tens of millions of dollars in damages to institutions they believe to be threats to the environment and animals. Bradshaw’s research on genetically modifying poplar trees was seen as an “ecological nightmare” for the biodiversity of native forests, according to an ELF news release....
Forest Service, OSHA reach agreement on Esperanza Fire report The U.S. Forest Service has reached a settlement with federal investigators over a report outlining violations of safety standards that led to the deaths of five firefighters during the Esperanza blaze, a spokesman for the fire service said. The settlement, which was announced Friday, comes after negotiations between the Forest Service and officials with the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA released a tentative report in July that criticized the crew of Engine 57 and the forest service for committing six serious violations during the October 2006 fire. Serious violations are those that created a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could happen and employers knew or should have known about the danger. An OSHA spokesman said previously that the federal agency sometimes amends its findings after negotiations or an appeal hearing. Under the settlement, two of the six violations were withdrawn and the four others were amended, said Jason Kirchner, public affairs specialist for the Pacific Southwest Region of the Forest Service....
Swaths of Tongass opening for logging More than 3 million acres in Alaska's Tongass National Forest is being opened to logging, mining and road building under a new Bush administration decision that supporters say will revive Alaska's timber industry but environmentalists fear will devastate the forest. The Tongass is the largest remnant of the rich coastal rain forest that once stretched from northern California through modern-day Seattle and on to south-central Alaska. The Bush administration on Friday released a revised management plan for the southeast Alaska forest, the largest in the country at nearly 17 million acres. The plan would leave about 3.4 million acres open to logging and other development, including about 2.4 million acres that are now remote and roadless. About 663,000 acres are in areas considered most valuable for timber production....
Access facts hard to run down At the heart of some Montana residents’ discontent with hunting outfitters is the perception that they are responsible for resident hunters’ loss of access to private lands. In addition, outfitters are sometimes vilified for keeping the public from accessing public lands that are landlocked or difficult to access, giving the outfitters and their clients exclusive use of public property and wildlife. Mac Minard, executive director of Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, blamed the media for the public’s negative perception of outfitters. “It is far more popular to bash the outfitting industry and nonresident sportsmen and blame them for all that is wrong with the sporting tradition in Montana,” Minard wrote in an e-mail. Trying to sort out the numbers and replace rhetoric with facts is difficult. Some numbers simply aren’t available, and others don’t tell the whole story....
Utah guv stakes a claim on roads Employing a 2-year-old state law for the first time, the Governor's Office is claiming ownership of roads that cross federal lands as a way to keep them open to off-highway recreation and oil and gas drilling. The maneuver, which relies on a bill sponsored by Kanab Republican Rep. Mike Noel that passed during the 2003 and 2006 legislative sessions, could be a tidy way to skirt federal law. Or it could set up yet another expensive series of courtroom fights and ratchet up the New West's already intractable civil war over wilderness and access to some of Utah's most beautiful wildlands. The state law allows counties to record the roads on their master land documents. Federal agencies, organizations and other members of the public have 60 days to protest the action in state court. If no one protests, the county assumes ownership of the right of way. In its first action under the 2006 Noel bill, the state's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office has sent a list of 60 Class B roads to Box Elder County for recording, and will do the same with 23 more counties by mid-summer, said coordinator John Harja....
Calif. Farmers Want to Sell Water With water becoming increasingly precious in California, a rising number of farmers figure they can make more money by selling their water than by actually growing something. Because farmers get their water at subsidized rates, some of them see financial opportunity this year in selling their allotments to Los Angeles and other desperately thirsty cities across Southern California, as well as to other farms. "It just makes dollars and sense right now," said Bruce Rolen, a third-generation farmer who grows rice, wheat and other crops in Northern California's lush Sacramento Valley. Instead of sowing in April, Rolen plans to let 100 of his 250 acres of white rice lie fallow and sell his irrigation water on the open market, where it could fetch up to three times the normal price. What effect these deals will have on produce prices remains to be seen, because the negotiations are still going on and it is not yet clear how many acres will be taken out of production. Environmental restrictions, booming demand for water, and persistent drought along the Colorado River have combined to create one of the worst water shortages in California in the past decade, and prices are shooting up in response....
Ban only hurts horses it tries to protect No one likes to contemplate the idea that Flicka will someday end up on the menu in a Paris restaurant, and the success of the ban is certainly seen by many as a step forward in our treatment of animals. Only agriculture groups argued against the ban, and celebrities like Bo Derek and groups like the Humane Society easily defeated them. But repealing the right to turn horses into steaks was easy: It’s more difficult to repeal the law of unintended consequences. Neither the animal rights groups nor the various legislatures have provided funding to take care of horses whose owners can no longer provide for them. Horses eat a lot, and need veterinary care, and clean water, and a place to live. The ability to sell horses to the slaughterhouses was the most efficient, and yes, the most humane way to handle horses whose owners wouldn’t or couldn’t take care of them. Public animal rescue facilities are full, and horses without caring owners have been sentenced to a long, slow, painful death. Three years ago, a fully-grown horse sent to slaughter was worth around $600. Even though only 1 percent of horses were sent to slaughterhouses each year, the ability to market horses in this manner put a floor under horse prices. Now the same horse will net around $30. It costs about $70 per year to vaccinate horses against West Nile and to treat for parasites. It takes about $200 a year for feed to maintain a horse, and that assumes plenty of grass is available. The ban on horse slaughter has guaranteed that more horses will be mistreated and will be abandoned. “We have cases where they have been turned loose in parks,” said Dave Howell of the American Horse Council. “They’ve been turned loose in coal mine areas, they’ve been turned loose on private property.”....
Yaketty yak? Ranchers listening in new way Sitting in the sun munching on a yak burger, Bob Hasse sees the future in a stocky bovine with a thick wooly coat, a gentle disposition and an independent streak. "This is an idiot-proof cattle breed," he says of the yaks he is showing at the National Western Stock Show. "They are definitely the breed of the future in the beef business." Hasse, 58, bought his first yak after moving to a ranch on the Western Slope 10 years ago. He wanted an animal that required little care and could thrive in country where coyotes, mountain lions and bears all have a taste for beef. "A yak will confront its enemy. It wants to be in charge," he said. Yaks are smarter by far than their cousin cattle. Some of those visiting the row of penned yaks gave another reason for enjoying the beasts. "They're adorable," said Tyra Finch, 12, of Parker....
A steak and a smile Occasionally, there comes an idea that everyone can grab a hold of. One that farmers and ranchers can get behind, regardless of where they live or their political leanings. All American Beef Battalion is one of those missions. AABB aims to show support for American soldiers by putting steaks on their plates and smiles on their faces. AABB is the brain child of long-time cattleman and Vietnam war veteran, Bill Broadie. About a year and a half ago, Broadie was tired of hearing all of the bad news about the war and the American soldiers fighting in it. He wondered what he could do. He turned to what he knew--beef--and the good people in the beef industry. All American Beef Battalion was born. Broadie's original idea was to provide a steak to all soldiers in the combat zone. And not just any old steak. AABB wants the steak to be one they will remember, long after the steak knife has been put away. As their goals took shape, Broadie's idea was expanded to include deployment and homecoming steak feeds for soldiers and their families, as well as helping military families in need. AABB hopes to provide "beef debit cards" that will allow those families to buy beef with donated funds....
A Dying Breed GERSHOM MUGIRA COMES from a long line of cattle-keepers. His people, the Bahima, are thought to have migrated into the hilly grasslands of western Uganda more than a thousand years ago, alongside a hardy breed of longhorns known as the Ankole. For centuries, man and beast subsisted there in a tight symbiotic embrace. Mugira’s nomadic ancestors wandered in search of fresh pasture for their cattle, which in turn provided them with milk. It is only within the last few generations that most Bahima have accepted the concept of private property. Mugira’s family lives on a 500-acre ranch, and one sunny day in November, the wiry 26-year-old showed me around, explaining, with some sadness but more pragmatism, why the Ankole breed that sustained his forebears for so many generations is now being driven to extinction. As we walked down the sloped valley path that led to a watering hole, we found a few cows lolling beneath a flat-topped acacia. They looked like the kind of cattle you might encounter in Wisconsin: plump and hornless creatures with dappled black-and-white coats. Mugira, a high-school graduate, was wearing a pair of fashionably baggy jeans and spiffy white sneakers. To a modern African like himself, he said, the most desirable cattle were the American type: the Holsteins. In recent decades, global trade, sophisticated marketing, artificial insemination and the demands of agricultural economics have transformed the Holstein into the world’s predominant dairy breed. Indigenous animals like East Africa’s sinewy Ankole, the product of centuries of selection for traits adapted to harsh conditions, are struggling to compete with foreign imports bred for maximal production....
Stock dog does cowboy's job Much of a dog's score comes from how well each one listens to its handler's commands. Jim Gilligan, one of the five judges, said the dogs know many commands such as right, left, stop or walk up. They respond both to the handler saying the command or whistling. A tone of voice tells the dog to speed up or slow down, and dogs also recognize commands by how loud or soft the handler says them. "It's amazing what the dogs will pick up on," Gilligan said. One third of each dog's score is based on strength. Judges look at whether the dog displays enough power to stop or turn the cattle when challenged. One third of the score comes from obedience, where judges look at how well the dog obeys commands and tries to help its handler accomplish a goal. And one third of the score comes from control. Judges determine how well the dog balances the cattle to the handler and how effectively it keeps the cattle together. They also see if the dog can think for itself and is not overly dependent on the handler....
Rancher turned writer Earl Ray Forehand considers himself a rancher. From the boots on his feet to the cowboy hat without which he won't leave the house, it's a persona that's deeply ingrained. And he's got the black Angus calves out back to prove it. But now Forehand has revealed an alter ego: that of newly published author. A couple of weeks ago, several boxes of freshly printed and bound books arrived at the Forehand home on Cherry Lane, just north of Carlsbad. Inside was the first printing of "The River Calls," a historical novel that tells how Forehand's ancestors converged on Eddy County and helped build the little town of Eddy that would one day become Carlsbad. The book opens just after the fall of the Alamo, when Tennessee farmer Martin Forehand decided to leave his worn out farmland for the reputedly rich land available in Texas. At about the same time, an Indiana man named Levi Lockhart signed up to fight in the Texas war of independence from Mexico. By the time the Civil War rolled around, the two families were still in Texas, but on different sides of the conflict. Rich Forehand hauled cotton to Mexico for the Confederacy, while Joe Lockhart, as a Union soldier, tried to stop the traffic....
Self-rediscovery arises in the West Salt Lake City author Jana Richman began writing her debut novel, The Last Cowgirl, about four years ago. But she's been carrying the book around her entire life. The novel, published this month by William Morrow, was inspired by two pivotal events in Richman's childhood. The first happened when she was about 10 and her father bought a small, run-down ranch near Rush Valley, in Utah's west desert. From then on, Richman grudgingly spent her summers hauling hay and working cattle - experiences, she later realized, that fed her love of the arid West. The second occurred two years later in 1968, when malfunctioning Army jets from Dugway Proving Ground reportedly released nerve gas over a west-desert valley, killing some 6,000 sheep. Richman was amazed to discover that because the Army was the largest employer in the area, residents didn't complain or even discuss the incident publicly. This love-hate relationship between Westerners and the federal government is a key theme of The Last Cowgirl, a bittersweet and redemptive story about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her past....
Cowboy poets bound for Alpine's annual festival Cowboy poetry lets cowboys tell their story without spangled myth or Hollywood treatment. Tales told in verse about barbed wire, horses and campfire cooking mingle with tributes to friendship, wide-open spaces and philosophies of life that developed during days and nights of solitary work. It's an oral tradition of the American West. More than 40 cowboy poets, storytellers and singers will mosey to Sul Ross State University in Alpine from Feb. 29 through March 2 for the 21st annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the country's second-oldest such festival. Over two days, tales will be shared in themed sessions, which are called "recitations," in Sul Ross classrooms, conference rooms and auditoriums adorned for the event with mock cowboy camps and hand-painted backdrops depicting West Texas vistas. At the Alpine gathering, classic cowboy poetry shares the bill with contemporary poetry about modern ranch and cowboy life. Cowboy music and nonrhyming storytelling about cowboys and Western life also are included....

$27,000 or best offer
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

By Julie Carter

Cowboys are born with a trading gene. Usually this involves swapping horses, livestock, trailers, saddles or pocketknives.

Horse-trading requires a special language. If both parties in a trade are cowboys, the buyer is already in "beware" mode. However, for those who were not born down dirt roads, here is an example of a few choice phrases of trading vernacular used mostly in print advertisements.

"Very alert 12-year-old gelding, foundation stock, strong, heavy-muscled, will watch a cow. Friendly nature, quiet in the arena. Must see to appreciate. $27,000 or best offer."

The literal translation is:

* Alert - he will spook if a bug within five miles moves. Nothing is going to sneak up on him.

* Twelve years old is about the age where horses can no longer be positively aged by their teeth. He could be 34.

* Foundation-bred means he looks exactly like a mustang and was adopted from the BLM in their effort to preserve the world before the wild horses eat it up.

* Strong means your best antique, foot-long, 40-pound Mexican bit won't hold him.

* Will watch a cow means he will watch the cow go right by.

* Friendly nature - he will pick your gloves out of your back pocket as well as gnaw on everything in the barn and everybody else's saddle if tied next to another horse.

* Quiet in the arena - he won't wake up before the cattle get through the stripping chute at the end of the run.

* Quiet in the box - he will sit there until next Friday if you don't liberally apply the spurs when you nod for your steer.

* Must see - the seller is hoping to get you to their pen, lock the gate and not let you out until you buy something.

* The price - that's always a starting place. Actually, the guy would be happy to see $800 and that horse's backside out his gate.

The trading world has three basic components: sellers, buyers and tire kickers. The variety of descriptive phrases applied to horses would enchant any clever wordsmith.

"Not the prettiest head you ever saw, but it's full of cow sense." That means his head looks like a pump jack, is exactly the same length as his back and it would give most horses whiplash to hold it up.

"This is an after-dinner horse." A compliment, to mean that he is a smooth trotting horse who won't jiggle your dinner. It also likely means that he can trot all day in the shade of one tree.

"He has a smooth little cowboy lope that you'll love." This is supposed to infer that he can cover the miles smoothly. Nobody mentioned that it takes the first five miles to get him worked up to this cowboy lope and only 15 steps for him to fall back to that teeth-jarring trot.

"This is a horse who will let you do all the thinking." A good bit of this required thinking will also involve your spurs.

"All that chrome really dresses him up." This horse has enough white that the Quarter Horse Association referred the owner to the paint horse association, and he has white hooves, which will require that he have shoes every day of his useful life.

A buyer might comment that the horse "looks a mite lively." To which the seller will reply, "He's just fun-loving. Don't take that little bucking streak too seriously."

When faced with tire kickers or reluctant buyers, the sellers will sometimes offer incentives.

· Horses are just like bananas. They get cheaper by the bunch.

· Better buy him today, I'm just like an old cow, get up in a different mood every day.

· "He's an easy keeper, and we've had him turned out for about six months resting him. He may be a little fresh." Which really means this fat, fresh horse hasn't been touched in the six months it took for the seller to get his leg cast off after the last time this horse bucked him off.

· "This horse can be ridden by little kids." This invariably refers to the little kid who was raised at the head of the creek and whose normal working attire includes a turkey feather in his hat and his britches tucked in his high top boots.

When all the insults and highflying rhetoric are over, generally both the buyer and seller will be secretly happy. Both will be heard down at the feed store in a day or two describing exactly how they got the better of the trade.

Trading is an art and nobody does it better than the cowboys.

Visit Julie’s website at www.julie-carter.com

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Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona. U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they're simply not believed. Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves. Less affluent or resourceful U.S. citizens who are detained must try to maneuver on their own through a complicated system....
Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems. The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies -- including ones they have not previously monitored. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems. As part of that effort, the Department of Homeland Security will work to protect the systems and the Pentagon will devise strategies for counterattacks against the intruders. The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems -- traditionally overseas. The prospect of aiming that power at domestic networks is raising concerns, just as the NSA's role in the government's warrantless domestic-surveillance program has been controversial....
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe AN investigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed. The official is said to have tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of nuclear secrets. The firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was a front for Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent. Her public outing two years later in 2003 by White House officials became a cause célèbre. The claims that a State Department official blew the investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language translator in the FBI’s Washington field office. Edmonds had been employed to translate hundreds of hours of intercepted recordings made during a six-year FBI inquiry into the nuclear smuggling ring. Brewster Jennings was one of a number of covert enterprises set up to infiltrate the nuclear ring. It is is believed to have been based in Boston and consisted of little more than a name, a telephone number and a post office box address. Plame listed the company as her employer on her 1999 tax forms and used its name when she made a $1,000 contribution to Al Gore’s presidential primary campaign. The FBI was also running an inquiry into the nuclear network. When Edmonds joined the agency after the 9/11 attacks she was given the job of reviewing the evidence....
Senate rejects more oversight of phone spying The Senate granted at least a temporary victory to the White House on Thursday, turning back an attempt to increase court oversight of the government's surveillance of phone calls and e-mails that involve people inside the United States. The 60-36 vote to reject increased powers for the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court came as senators worked against a Feb. 1 deadline to extend the law governing how U.S. intelligence agencies carry out electronic eavesdropping. Further action on the legislation was delayed until Monday, pushing Congress closer to the deadline, and leaving unresolved the most contentious issue in the bill: whether to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government conduct warrantless surveillance. The Bush administration is insisting that any new law protect from potentially crippling civil lawsuits those telecom companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks....
Feds target immigrants far from border Detective Nick McLendon, on stakeout duty along a dark stretch of eastbound Interstate 20, noticed a red Chevy Suburban with heavily tinted windows and no light over its rear Texas license plate. The missing light gave him all the excuse he needed to pull the SUV over. Packed into the Suburban, he discovered, were 14 illegal immigrants, two suspected smugglers, and a spiral notebook on the front seat, listing the passengers and their destinations in Spanish — "Arterio Ramires to Nuy Yersey; David Luna to Nueba York; Marcelina and Jasmin to Carolina del Norte; Jose Aguilar to Alabama; Josefina Ortega to Chicago; Gustavo Ribera to Florida." The arrests — some 800 miles from the Mexican border — represented a new and dramatic shift in U.S. immigration enforcement strategy. Federal agents, with help from local law officers like McLendon, a Pearl detective, have begun intercepting illegal immigrants and smugglers along stretches of highway deep in the U.S. interior, where those who have slipped into the country usually have little chance of getting caught. "They think they're pretty much home free once they get up here," said Bill Botts, the assistant chief patrol agent in charge of the Border Patrol's Gulfport, Miss., station. But Operation Uniforce, as the two-week crackdown begun Jan. 13 is called, "is pretty much a shocker for the smuggling organizations." More than 300 immigrants and suspected smugglers had been arrested as of Tuesday, more than a week into the operation....

Killer dolphins baffle marine experts New evidence has been compiled by marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more disturbingly, on its own kind. Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals - but has left animal experts baffled as to the motive. Another mystery is that the animal 'murders' have only been reported in two parts of the world - along Scotland's East Coast and in America off the beaches of Virginia, where even more alarmingly, the victims were scores of the dolphins' own young. The first clues to solving the riddle came in 1997 when, by coincidence, marine biologists in Virginia were finding young, dead dolphins with horrific internal injuries at the same time as young porpoises were washing up on Scotland's north-east coast with identical causes of death. The body count was growing in both locations. The two groups of biologists pooled information and, at first, it was believed the mammals had died through 'blast trauma'. In American cases, this was supposedly from exercises by the US Navy, and in Scotland from air guns used by oil rig technicians to detect undersea caverns. This theory was dismissed after further examination of the mammals' bodies revealed the injuries - broken ribs, imploding lungs, damaged livers and massive internal bleeding - could only have come from prolonged, focused attacks....
Lauer ‘On the Prowl for Victims’ in Environmental Crusade Be careful where you shop for groceries, for behind every canned soup display may be lurking "Today" show host Matt Lauer, ready to corner you on camera and demand to know whether you're using plastic, paper, or "environmentally-friendly" canvas bags. That's what Lauer did for a January 25 segment to wrap up the four-day "Today Goes Green" series, which showed the hosts carpooling to work (once), changing one light bulb in one of their homes, and canceling unwanted catalog subscriptions online. But for the grand finale, Lauer got in the face of the American grocery shopper in a segment filmed in a New York City Food Emporium. He pestered shoppers with tidbits about the environmental destruction caused by plastic and paper grocery bags. "I'm on the prowl for victims, converts in our growing movement," Lauer said shamelessly, as if bothering people while they're shopping is cute. "Do you have any idea how many plastic bags you accumulate in the average month?" he asked one unsuspecting female shopper....
‘Today’ Hosts’ Carpool Stunt Shows Dark Side of Carpooling Playing off the popularity of its "Ends of the Earth" jet-setting extravaganza in November, the "Today" show on January 22 kicked off a four-day series called "Today Goes Green" to encourage viewers to be more environmentally friendly. In a segment supposedly meant to encourage carpooling, Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry and Al Roker submitted to the degradation and humiliation that is a carpool - even if it is chauffeured. Vieira later admitted they carpooled only once, and Lauer never seemed too happy about it. And unfortunately for environmental types (and Lauer), the crew would have to carpool every work day for more than eight years to offset the estimated carbon footprint left by November's "Ends of the Earth" series, when hosts jetted to the far reaches of the earth to show the alleged effects of global warming. That series pumped an estimated 25 tons of carbon into the atmosphere....

Alaska Oil Drilling Delay Could Cost $3 Trillion, Lawmaker Says The top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee said legislation to delay the sale of land in Alaska for oil and gas exploration would hinder the U.S. economy. In a letter to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) late Tuesday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) said he was "disappointed" by Markey's efforts to block oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and more recently in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease 193 along the Chukchi Sea. According to the letter, "OCS lease sale 193 is estimated to contain 15 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, for a combined total of 27.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. ANWR is estimated to hold another 10.4 billion barrels of oil, for a total of 38.2 billion barrels of oil. "This would almost double the total United States proven reserves of oil," it states. "Lease Sale 193 and ANWR represent nearly $3 trillion to the U.S. economy, if we choose to develop them." Young also noted in the letter that people in Markey's home state of Massachusetts have been hit hard by rising energy prices, noting that former Rep. Joe Kennedy has been working with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to get oil from Citgo to help heat homes in the United States. "ANWR and Lease Sale 193 contain 36,000 times as much energy as Citgo, Hugo Chavez and our former colleague are providing for the poor and displaced in America," he said....
National parks robbed of heritage Looting of fossils and archaeological artifacts from national parks - such as Native American pottery and Civil War relics - is increasing as demand for such items rises on the Internet and the world market, National Park Service officials say. Over the past decade, an average of 340 "significant" looting incidents have been reported annually at the 391 national parks, monuments, historic sites and battlefields - probably less than 25% of the actual number of thefts, says park service staff Ranger Greg Lawler. "The trends are up," he says. It's "a chronic problem that we simply have not even been able to get a grasp on," says Mark Gorman, chief ranger at South Dakota's Badlands National Park. Park service investigators search websites, and the FBI helps track looted items, some of which are sold to collectors in Europe and Asia. Prices are rising for some items, including Native American pottery and garments, says Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, manager of the FBI art theft program. The most coveted items can cost "in the tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars," she says. Thieves caught last year at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park sold a Confederate belt buckle for $3,300 and buttons for $200 each. The park service has 1,500 law enforcement rangers and 400 seasonal law enforcement rangers - one for about every 56,000 acres. "We really don't have enough manpower," Lawler says....Annual appropriations will start soon, so we will see the annual cry for more LEO's.
E.P.A. Chief Defends His Decision on California Defending his refusal to let California set limits on the greenhouse gas emissions of automobiles, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency insisted before a Senate committee Thursday that climate change posed no “compelling and extraordinary” risk to the state. Describing such change as “not unique to” and “not exclusive to California,” the agency’s administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, called it “a global problem requiring a global solution or, at least at a minimum, a national solution.” But internal agency documents cited by members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works listed climate change effects specific to California, including wildfires and species loss. Fifteen states have signed on to follow California’s lead in regulating automobile emissions, and the governors of three of them — Maryland, Pennsylvania and Vermont — testified before the committee Thursday that attacking the problem was essential for their residents and the world as a whole....
First BLM cattle seizures for trespassing Nevada since 2002 Federal agents seized more than 100 cattle and jailed a 66-year-old woman who owns some of them in the first U.S. criminal or civil enforcement action in five years against Nevada ranchers accused of trespassing livestock on public land. Bureau of Land Management rangers began impounding the cattle across a 10-mile stretch of the high desert rangeland of north central Nevada near Winnemucca on Monday. They said Inger Casey and Larry "Dudley" Hiibel had been grazing cattle on BLM land without a permit for more than three years and failed to comply with federal court orders this fall demanding they keep them off U.S. land. Long at odds with the BLM, the two ranchers -- and fellow advocates of state and private property rights -- maintain the U.S. government has no legal jurisdiction over rangeland in Nevada, although federal courts have ruled otherwise. "They are arresting people for doing nothing but trying to drive their cattle," Hiibel told The Associated Press. On Thursday, he was working with his daughter and brother in a snowstorm to try to move some of his remaining cattle off BLM land and onto a neighbor's field. "I'm behind about 150 cows in a blizzard with icicles on my whiskers," Hiibel said from near the Pershing-Humboldt county line about 165 miles northeast of Reno. "We're trying to get them out of the way of the BLM as a temporary thing. They didn't get them all." Casey, whose family has ranched there for 30 years, spent Monday night in the Washoe County jail in Reno on charges she assaulted rangers rounding up the cattle. Casey went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert McQuaid on Tuesday on the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office alleging she "knowingly did forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate and interfere" with BLM law officers.....She's lucky David Iglesias isn't the U.S. Attorney in Nevada. He kept NM rancher Kit Laney from being released on his own recognizance.
Park Service Deceiving World About Threats to Park Bison In 1995, the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, declared Yellowstone National Park as a World Heritage Site in Danger due to threats to park bison, water quality, cutthroat trout, inadequacy of park roads, overuse by tourists, and from mining activities beyond park borders. In 2003, Yellowstone was removed from the in “Danger” list because of “considerable efforts” made by the National Park Service to address the threats. Though the Committee felt the park was no longer in “danger,” it asked the National Park Service to provide progress reports on the original threats. Last month, the Yellowstone National Park released a draft of its fourth progress report. In it, the National Park Service trumpets the success of its 2000 Interagency Bison Management Plan describing it as a “carefully crafted consensus-based plan” that “has now been successfully implemented for seven years.” The National Park Service explains that the plan is “incremental” and that it “becomes more wildlife-friendly … with each incremental success achieved.” Such claims are not just inaccurate, they are blatantly deceptive intended only to placate the Committee while avoiding the truth. The Interagency Bison Management Plan has been an abject failure resulting in the unnecessary killing of nearly 2,100 bison since its inception. The bison are needlessly hazed and harassed, shot, and captured and slaughtered because approximately half of the herd have been exposed to Brucella abortus – the bacterium the causes brucellosis. To prevent the transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle, bison who approach or cross Yellowstone’s northern and western boundaries are targeted for removal....Surely we should let the U. N. set management guidelines for our natural resources and surely a few bison are more important than the livestock industry in an entire state, don'tcha think?
Subsidies and High Crop Prices The boom in agricultural commodity prices has been good for many farmers and companies providing farm products. But other groups—including food producers and consumers—are feeling the negative effects of the boom in the form of higher prices. What especially irks some of them is their belief that these prices are not simply the inevitable product of the marketplace but rather the unintended consequence of several U.S. government policies. Even some farmers are unhappy. As grain prices rise, so does the price of livestock feed. As a result, beef, pork, poultry, and dairy farmers are incurring record-high feed costs. according to Cal Dooley, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, about 40 percent of the cost of producing pork, for example, comes from feeding the livestock. That hits consumers, too: A May 2007 study by Iowa State University economists found that "the direct effect of higher feed costs is that U.S. food prices would increase by a minimum of 1.1 percent over baseline level." What's causing grocery bills to rise? Some blame policies that have made it especially profitable for farmers to divert their crops into corn for the production of ethanol. "The ethanol industry is hogging more and more of the corn supply, and that is squeezing ranchers and dairy farmers," says Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. The federal government gives preferential treatment to domestic, corn-based ethanol in the form of a 54-cent-per-gallon tax on imported ethanol, which largely affects Brazilian producers of ethanol from sugar cane. That tax comes on top of a 51-cent exemption from the federal excise tax on gasoline that goes to fuel mixed with ethanol. These subsidies raise the demand for domestic ethanol. That drives up the price of not only the corn used to produce the ethanol but also of wheat and soybeans, which farmers plant less of because they switch to corn. That, in turn, translates into a scarcer supply—and higher prices....Yes but what does the U.N. think? Thank goodness bison don't eat corn.
What Is the Real Deal With Biofuels? If you haven’t heard, biofuels are apparently the next big thing. And corn is the king of court. Given that the conversion to biofuels from oil has been going on for so many years without success, it would probably be better called the court jester. Can corn be used to create a fuel? Yes. Can that fuel be burned in automobiles, just like fossil fuels? Yes. Would the raw material for that fuel be considered as a "renewable" resource? Sure. Would the use of fuel from corn replace oil as a fuel in the US market? No. (More accurately, "Hell no!" Details below.)[...]Pimental has updated his calculations and published them as well. According to his 2005 paper, "Ethanol Production Using Corn…" we find: Energy outputs from ethanol produced using corn, switchgrass, and wood biomass were each less than the respective fossil energy inputs. The same was true for producing biodiesel using soybeans and sunflower, however, the energy cost for producing soybean biodiesel was only slightly negative compared with ethanol production. Findings in terms of energy outputs compared with the energy inputs were: * Ethanol production using corn grain required 29% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. * Ethanol production using switchgrass required 50% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. * Ethanol production using wood biomass required 57% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. * Biodiesel production using soybean required 27% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced (Note, the energy yield from soy oil per hectare is far lower than the ethanol yield from corn). * Biodiesel production using sunflower required 118% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced....This guy better hide, from the U.N., from Bush, and from Congress. I mean, a 51-cent tax exemption for a fuel that uses more energy to produce than it produces in it's final form? Surely our illustrious leaders wouldn't implement such a dumb policy, would they?
Colo. Advocates Sue to Halt Gas Drilling Environmentalists are suing the federal government to prevent drilling on what they say is the last untouched area of the San Juan Basin in southwest Colorado. The lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday alleges new gas drilling in the foothills of the steep and rugged San Juan Mountains would cause landslides, water and air pollution and drive away wildlife in the area known as the HD Mountains. Named in the lawsuit are the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which gave two companies, Petrox Energy Corp. and Elm Ridge Resources Inc., the go-ahead in April to drill for coal-bed methane in the mountains. Environmentalists say there are plenty of gas wells already in the San Juan basin. Mark Pearson, executive director of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, said there are about 25,000 gas-producing wells between Farmington, N.M., and Durango, and another 12,000 pending....
Clones on the range Eating, like sex, is both an act and an idea. It satisfies a physical need but also an emotional urge (think comfort food). That explains the furor unleashed last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It ruled that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is as safe to eat as that from conventionally bred animals. Scientific evidence suggests that's the right decision. But the immediate outcry was deafening. Food advocacy groups decried the decision. Within hours, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had called on producers to keep products from cloned animals, but not their offspring, off the market — at least for now. Human beings have been intervening to shape the production of crops and animals for the last 3,000 years. Cloning is just the latest method. Ranchers and dairy farmers long have used artificial insemination in breeding their animals. Today, they routinely use in vitro fertilization and embryo-transfer technology to breed more productive or hardier cows. But the 1997 birth of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, raised both ethical and food-safety concerns. The ethical issues remain a source of contention, but the safety questions seem to have been adequately addressed by scientists in both the United States and Europe. Not only is there no difference between products from cloned and uncloned animals, researchers here and in Europe have said, but it also is not scientifically possible to tell them apart. That raises the possibility (some have said the probability) that the offspring of clones already have entered the food chain somewhere....

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Mexico nabs suspect in killing of border agent Mexican authorities said Wednesday they have arrested a man for the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was run over by a suspected smuggler's vehicle. Agent Luis Aguilar, 32, was placing spike strips in the path of two vehicles believed to have illegally entered the United States from Mexico on Saturday when one of the vehicles struck and killed him, authorities in Arizona said. Mexican federal and state police arrested Jesus Navarro Montes on Tuesday in the northern state of Sonora for the killing, according to a joint statement distributed Wednesday by Mexico's federal Attorney General's office and Public Safety Department. Authorities believe Navarro left Mexicali in Baja California and was headed for the U.S. in a Hummer carrying drugs on Saturday, the statement said....
Judge rejects Patriot Act challenge A federal judge rejected a former sailor's claim Thursday that the government illegally intercepted phone calls and obtained e-mails it is using against him in a terrorism-support case. Hassan Abu-Jihaad's attorneys had claimed elements of the USA Patriot Act used to obtain the evidence were unconstitutional, and cited a ruling by a federal judge in Oregon striking down key portions of the law. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kravitz, however, said he disagreed with that ruling, and noted that other courts have found that the law does not infringe on constitutional rights. The 31-year-old Phoenix man's attorneys argued that the Patriot Act allows authorities to conduct searches and electronic surveillance under relaxed standards and secret procedures even if the primary purpose is to gather evidence of domestic criminal activity. Kravitz, however, wrote that the balance the Patriot Act strikes "between an individual's important interest in privacy and the government's legitimate need to obtain foreign intelligence information remains reasonable and one that complies with the Fourth Amendment," which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Kravitz said the law remains focused on foreign intelligence gathering, but defines a foreign power to include groups engaged in international terrorism. He said the law still has numerous safeguards, including the need for an independent judicial officer to approve surveillance....
Woman falsely convicted in drug case tries to rebuild life A woman wrongly convicted by the federal government with help from a drug informant who lied served 16 months in prison before she was released with no home to return to and a 3-year-old daughter who didn't recognize her. Defense attorneys say a street-smart but dishonest informant and a federal agent working without oversight manipulated the system to convict Geneva France and dozens of others. ``They stole the truth,'' France said. ``I don't think I'll ever trust people again. It's too hard. I don't know how a human being with a heart could stand up there and lie about another person. They stole part of my life.'' France, 25, was convicted of being a drug courier — a conviction that prosecutors now acknowledge was built on lies. A judge released her in May. Her case was part of an extensive operation to stem the flow of drugs in Mansfield. Federal prosecutors in Cleveland charged her and 25 others from Mansfield in 2005, based on the work of informant Jerrell Bray and Drug Enforcement Administration agent Lee Lucas. Twenty-one people were convicted. U.S. Attorney Greg White has admitted that there are major problems with the case. Federal prosecutors were expected to ask a judge Tuesday or Wednesday to throw out the convictions of 15 men imprisoned in the same tainted investigation, including the case against a man serving 30 years in prison....

Drought Could Force Nuke-Plant Shutdowns Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate. Utility officials say such shutdowns probably wouldn't result in blackouts. But they could lead to shockingly higher electric bills for millions of Southerners, because the region's utilities may be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other energy companies. Already, there has been one brief, drought-related shutdown, at a reactor in Alabama over the summer. An Associated Press analysis of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors found that 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought. All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants' turbines....

EPA expected to lose Calif emissions suit: documents The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency figured it would lose a lawsuit filed by California if the agency turned down the state's request to toughen vehicle emissions standards to fight global warming, according to documents released on Wednesday. The suit the documents envisioned was filed on January 2, after the agency rejected a petition by California seeking a waiver from federal law to impose more stringent standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles. Fifteen other states were poised to follow California's lead, if the waiver had been approved. In EPA briefing documents released by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the agency listed the likely impact of granting or denying a waiver. The documents accurately predicted what would happen next if the EPA rejected the waiver: The agency would face an "almost certain lawsuit by California." The EPA also said it was "likely to lose (the) suit." The federal appeals court in San Francisco has yet to issue a ruling....

Global Warming Teach-In Coming to Campuses Nationwide On Jan. 31, the environmental advocacy group Focus the Nation will hold a teach-in on more than 1,000 college campuses nationwide to discuss solutions for global warming. The event is based on the premise that scientific debate about the existence of global warming is "over." Many critics, however, say the teach-in is an attempt to end debate and advance "draconian" public policies. In an interview with Cybercast News Service, Alex Tinker, public relations director for Focus the Nation, said the idea behind the teach-in model is inclusion: It "engages students across all disciplines on a campus, not just the usual suspects who would come to a special environmentally oriented event, so that you can actually reach an audience big enough to reach that critical mass to get real legislation passed in Washington." The teach-in, as defined by Focus the Nation's Web site, "is a day when an entire school turns its attention to a single issue -- when faculty, students, and staff put aside business as usual, and focus the full weight of campus engagement on one topic."....

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The Federal Government’s Brief in the D.C. Gun Ban Case: A Glass That Is More Than Half Full Although some thoughtful lovers of liberty have lamented the half-empty aspects of the U.S. Solicitor General's recently-filed brief in the D.C. gun ban case (District of Columbia v. Heller), the portion that is full is legally far more significant in securing Second Amendment rights in the arena that counts most: the Supreme Court. On careful analysis, the brief's departures from sound principle are internally inconsistent and otherwise not particularly effective. Americans should recognize the importance of the government's concessions to individual liberty and ignore its predictable, bureaucratic attempt to defend existing federal laws. That is what the High Court is most likely to do. It is no minor event when the national government clearly and forcefully admits to the highest court in the land that Americans enjoy a constitutional right that has been hotly debated for years, especially when that constitutional right is a limit on the government's own power. That is what the Department of Justice's chief litigator did in a brief filed last week in the Supreme Court case testing the constitutionality of the Washington, D.C., gun ban....
Justice for gun owners Martin Luther King Jr. put it best: "A right delayed is a right denied." The lesson appears to have been lost on the Department of Justice and Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in the amicus curiae brief submitted recently for the government in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which challenges the city's 31-year-old handgun ban, a horrible gun law that has had its day in court and lost. In a transparent exercise of political pandering, Clement and his colleagues named on the brief have strenuously, and correctly, argued that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right, yet they insist that every restrictive gun law currently on the books should stand. They want this case sent back to the lower courts for further consideration. Translation: Legal sleight of hand is being used to make the Second Amendment a right "in name only." And Clement appears to suggest that the longer the Supreme Court can put off deciding whether a restrictive gun law violates that important civil right, the better. It is gratifying that the government properly holds the Second Amendment to be protective of an individual right, but that gratification is greatly diminished by the argument that this case requires further review. That would be a great injustice, and as King once noted, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." By Clement's logic, the high court should have ruled that women have abortion rights, but they would be forever waiting to exercise those rights while their cases would be remanded back down the legal chain for further consideration. By Clement's logic, segregation laws would still be under lower court review, and Rosa Parks would still be sitting in the back of the bus....
The Second Amendment a second class right? The brief presented by the Solicitor General makes some valid points upon which Second Amendment supporters can agree. The brief states the administration's opinion that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and that laws restricting that right should be subject to "strict scrutiny" – meaning that legislators must weigh the proposed benefit of the law carefully before infringing on a Constitutionally guaranteed right. Additionally, the brief expresses the opinion that the District of Columbia's strict gun ban should be overturned. So far, so good. The Solicitor General's brief also takes a bizarre turn. While the Solicitor General calls for "strict scrutiny" for gun laws in general, he calls on the Supreme Court to apply only "intermediate scrutiny" as it determines Heller vs. DC. The Solicitor General also argues that the Second Amendment is not a "fundamental" right. So what the Solicitor General seems to be saying is that, well, sure, the Second Amendment calls for individual rights, and those rights should be afforded "strict scrutiny" most of the time, but the administration does not believe that gun rights are "fundamental" rights, and so, therefore, Your Honor, you don't need to be too strict in your decision-making process in this case. In fact, we don't think you should really decide this case, but you should send it back down to the Circuit Court for more study, and while they are at it, tell them they only need to use "intermediate scrutiny". In essence, the Solicitor General is saying that our Second Amendment rights are second-class rights that don't rise to the level of "fundamental" rights as do really important rights such as the First Amendment, or the Fourth and Fifth Amendments....

Wilderness plan closes trails to bikes Many of the area's skilled mountain bikers are concerned about a proposal that would ban them from some of their most-prized local trails, including a segment of the Colorado Trail. The proposal is part of a draft plan by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to guide management of 2.4 million acres of public lands in Southwest Colorado. The plan recommends classifying 55,000 acres as new wilderness, including 51,000 acres west of Hermosa Creek. The designation would overlay the Colorado Trail along the Indian Trail Ridge segment, which lies between Kennebec Pass and the intersection with the Highline Loop Trail. Several other popular trails would be affected, including Corral Draw and Clear Creek. Some mountain bikers are calling the proposal extreme. "There's 500,000 ways to preserve it other than by banning bicyclists," mountain biker Gardner Catsman said. The Colorado Trail, a 500-mile route from outside Denver to Durango, is "a premier, world-class, long-distance" trail for mountain bikers, according to the trail's Web site, with the strenuous 75-mile segment from Molas Pass to Durango being especially revered among the sport's elite....
Blowin' in the Wind If you thought the 2008 presidential race was shattering all records for windy rhetoric, it's nothing compared to the political eco-rhetoric being spun to US taxpayers -- to get them to cough up billions of dollars to fuel a renewable wind power industry boom sensible investors won't touch with a turbine's rotor blade. At present, the growth of the wind power industry in the US lags behind that in Europe. While Denmark and Germany pioneered wind power growth in Europe, Britain is about to steal the world lead. The UK wants to develop an unprecedented 33 gigawatts of wind power, mostly offshore, that will, literally, change the face of Britain. 7,000 wind turbines -- one every half-mile around the entire coastline -- are to be built in a bid to install power capacity that theoretically would be enough for all 25 million homes by 2020. Wind power sounds a great European success story -- one to be echoed in the US, it seems, as 2008 is set to see wind power developments shatter records for the fourth consecutive year. However, a closer look at the European "success" story reveals that all is not quite as it seems. Wind seems to be blowing in the mind of the politically correct and those on the recent environmentalist bandwagon but the cost is going to be huge, no companies will plunge into it without massive government subsidies and, if actually built, power reliability will take a nosedive....
Interior under pressure to delay Alaska drilling rights sale The Interior Department says it has no plans to delay the Feb. 6 lease sale for oil drilling rights in Alaska's Chukchi Sea, despite growing concerns from department scientists, environmentalists and lawmakers that energy development could be devastating to polar bears and other wildlife there. Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service announced earlier that it would not meet its deadline this month for making a decision on whether to designate polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That means the lease sale next month likely would occur before any decision on the bear's' status is made, jeopardizing the government's ability to protect it. It is widely expected that the polar bear will be listed. The U.S. Geological Survey reported in September 2007 that new research suggests that at the current rate of sea ice melting, more than two-thirds of the world's polar bear population would be lost by the middle of the century, and cautioned that this was a conservative estimate. At a recent hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., told Randall Luthi, director of the Minerals Management Service, the Interior agency responsible for offshore leasing, that the agency's decision to go ahead with the lease sale was "negligent in the extreme." Also at the hearing, committee chairman Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., introduced legislation that would compel the administration to delay the sale until the polar bear status was resolved. Contributing to skepticism about Interior's ability to balance wildlife interests with those of energy developers, the environmental watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility last week released a series of e-mail exchanges among employees at Interior's Minerals Management Service in December 2005, when the agency was in the process of developing the environmental impact statement upon which the lease sale is based....
Measure would ban horse slaughter Buried deep within the government spending bill Congress passed last month is a provision that effectively bans horse slaughter in the United States. The measure bars the U.S. Department of Agriculture from collecting fees to pay for horse meat inspections, without which slaughter can't legally continue. But if Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky has his way, it won't be the last legislative effort to end a practice he and others consider inhumane. Whitfield, R-1st District, and others are sponsoring legislation that would ban the transport, sale, purchase or donation of horses to be slaughtered for human consumption. The idea would be to permanently prohibit the practice nationwide and also prevent horses from being taken to other countries for slaughter. Whitfield said the legislation represents a final step that needs to be taken because horses are being transported eventually to be slaughtered beyond the U.S. border. "The problem now is that people are moving more of the horses to Mexico, where the slaughter process is even worse than it was in the U.S," he said. With the closing of U.S. slaughterhouses, some equine groups are expressing concerns about a glut of unwanted horses as the cost of caring for them increases. According to the USDA, more than 100,000 horses were slaughtered in the United States in 2006 -- primarily for dinner tables in Asia and Europe....
USDA amends regulations on imports from BSE minimal-risk countries USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has amended its regulations for the importation of animals and animal products, removing several restrictions regarding animal identification and ruminant-materials processing from regions that present a minimal risk of introducing bovine spongiform encephalopathy into the United States. This amended rule makes final several minor changes from a proposed rule published in the Aug. 9, 2006, Federal Register. Under this amended rule, APHIS is allowing: ---The unique individual identification of animals by means other than ear tags, provided the APHIS administrator has approved the manner of identification for the type of animal intended for importation and the identification is traceable to the premises of origin of the animal ---The importation of hide-derived — in addition to bone-derived — gelatin for any use, provided certain conditions are met; and non-ruminant material that is processed in BSE minimal-risk regions to be processed in facilities that also process material derived from ruminants from the minimal-risk region. APHIS said it is updating this rule to remove these restrictions because they provide no additional safeguards against the introduction of BSE into the United States....

BLM Implements Impound to End Cattle Trespass (BLM News Release) Federal Magistrate Robert A. McQuaid ordered Inger Casey and Larry Hiibel to remove their unauthorized livestock from public lands southwest of Winnemucca last fall or the cattle would be impounded by the Bureau of Land Management. The cattle were not removed and the impoundment began yesterday. The Court issued its rulings on Hiibel August 16, 2007, and gave him five days to remove his livestock from public lands. He ruled on Inger Casey September 27, 2007, and gave her 15 days to remove their livestock. The BLM gave Hiibel almost five additional months and Casey almost four months to comply with the Court Orders. “BLM does not impound livestock without first giving the owners many opportunities to remove their animals,” said Gail Givens, BLM Winnemucca Field Manager. “In this instance, efforts to effect voluntary removal have gone on for many years.” During the past four to five years the BLM issued numerous warnings and trespass notices to Casey and Hiibel. After all efforts failed, BLM issued criminal citations to Casey in August 2006 and Hiibel in April 2007. The impoundment will continue as long as necessary to remove the cattle. Impounded animals will be transported to holding facilities where their owners will have the first right to claim them upon payment of past fines and impoundment fees. If the cattle are not claimed and the fees paid within seven days, the livestock will be auctioned to recoup the fees. The vast majority of our ranchers strive to be good stewards of the public rangelands,” added Givens. “Casey and Hiibel are cheating those operators who follow the rules and pay their fees.”

Without Proof, an Ivory-Billed Boom Goes Bust It has been almost three years since a research team, led by Cornell University and the Nature Conservancy, announced the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods — a 550,000-acre tract of bottomland hardwood forest. Researchers have also reported spotting an ivory-billed woodpecker in a northwest Florida swamp. The large, yellow-eyed bird had not been conclusively seen in the United States since around the end of World War II, and some scientists have questioned whether the more recent reports of sightings are legitimate. Nevertheless, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended spending $27 million on recovery efforts for the woodpecker. The patch of Arkansas bayou where the researchers said they spotted the bird is in the heart of Monroe County. Once an agricultural and manufacturing center, the county is now one of the poorest places in Arkansas. For its roughly 10,000 residents, the reported rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker fired hopes of an economic turnaround not seen since the soybean boom of the 1970s. After the sighting was announced, local economies seemed to benefit for a while as scientists, bird-watchers and news media outlets from around the world flocked to Brinkley and to the other communities in the patchwork quilt of fragmented forest and farmland that surrounds the Big Woods. “People came from everywhere,” said Gene DePriest, who still has an ivory-billed cheeseburger, salad and dessert on the menu of his barbecue restaurant in Brinkley. “I sold over $20,000 worth of T-shirts in six months.” Lately, though, the ivory-billed boom has pretty much been a bust, especially since researchers and bird-watchers have, so far, failed to take a definitive picture of the woodpecker. A blurry video clip released when the rediscovery was announced failed to convince many ornithologists of the animal’s existence. There have since been plenty of purported sightings, but still no picture....

Politicians Power Up With 'Green-Collar' Workers When Hal Jordan, the fictional playboy test pilot, was given a power ring from a dying spaceman, thus making him the Green Lantern of Sector 2814 (Earth), he joined an elite military institution called the Green Lantern Corps -- a group dedicated to preserving order in the universe while sporting distinctive green attire. Now, thanks largely to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and others, they've been joined by a new emerald power: the "green-collar" worker. "We need to make sure that we start jump-starting the jobs in this country again," Clinton said during Monday's Democratic presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "That's why I want to put money into clean-energy jobs, green-collar jobs." Later, when speaking of his plans of an economic stimulus during his presidency, Edwards said what he had "proposed for green-collar jobs will create jobs within 30 or so days, so we will have an immediate impact on the economy and stimulate the economy." This wasn't the first time either Clinton or Edwards has touted such jobs. In various speeches on the campaign trail, Clinton has used green-collar to describe the employment that'll be created in the wake of job losses in manufacturing and other sectors....

Power Switch From light bulbs to clothes washers, the energy law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in December will change many of the appliances in the average American home. The incandescent light bulb, invented two centuries ago and perfected and popularized by Thomas Edison in the late 1800s, will become a thing of the past by the middle of the next decade. The look of the future? The curvaceous compact fluorescent bulbs that recently have become popular and other bulbs featuring light-emitting diodes or other advanced technologies. The energy law will also bring about important but less noticeable changes in the way clothes washers, dishwashers, boilers and dehumidifiers use energy and water. The goal is to reduce U.S. electricity use, a major source of greenhouse gases that scientists say contribute to global climate change....
Court case a threat to farmers, ranchers Conservation. In Colorado, no word holds more power. We hear and obey appeals to conserve our water, our natural resources, our Western heritage. And yet, in Telluride, conservation now means that agricultural land can be taken without regard for the owner's rights. The land of the farmer and rancher members of the Colorado Farm Bureau has long served as natural open space throughout Colorado. Should the Colorado Supreme Court issue an unfavorable ruling in 2008, agricultural land is at significant risk of being publicly expropriated. The San Miguel Valley Corp. has owned land near Telluride for decades. To date, the current owner has only used the land for agriculture. The property is known as the Valley Floor and sits at the entrance to Telluride. It is beautiful and revered by the citizens of Telluride. But it is not in Telluride, nor does Telluride own any part of it. Yet the wealthy residents of Telluride believe the property should be theirs - and that it should be taken from its current owner to be used as Telluride wishes. Should landowners be forced to give up property under Colorado's eminent domain law for open-space purposes, regardless of their desire to sell? The Colorado legislature has already said no. In 2004, the General Assembly, concerned about abuses of eminent domain power in Colorado, passed a statute restricting the ability of home-rule towns to condemn property outside their boundaries for parks, recreation or open space. The law makes Telluride's taking of the Valley Floor illegal. But a San Miguel County judge declared the statute unconstitutional and the condemnation was allowed to proceed....
Cougar Plan Challenged In Court A group of ranchers and wildlife advocates are suing the state over its plan to kill cougars. A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon to stop the federal government from killing up to two thousand cougars across the state. One local rancher says that not all angles have been examined and that the cougars are a self-limiting population. Michael Moss is a goat dairy farmer in the Rogue Valley and says that he is behind the lawsuit. "The fact of the matter is, these goats spend everyday from six thirty in the morning until the sun goes down, out roaming the farm right on the edge of BLM land and we've never lost a goat to cougar predation." Moss says landowners can change small things in their behavior so cougars and not encouraged. He suggests bringing in pets at night, not leaving food out on the porch and locking up farm animals...Yes sir, it's real simple. All you sheep and goat ranchers just gather all your livestock each night and make sure they are "locked up". Bring in that stock dog and make sure it's "locked up". Bring in all the mutton, lamb and high priced dog food you've been leaving on the porch and make sure it's "locked up". According to Mr. Moss, the night belongs to the cougars. You only control your property half the time. 'Course, another option would be to "lock up" dumb ass goat farmers.
Texas: Still Number One, Baby For the third consecutive year, Texas was the nation's leader in the amount of wind capacity added to the electric grid. Nearly $3 Billion worth of wind-powered electric generators were installed in Texas during 2007, growing the state's total wind capacity by 59%. Texas' 1,618 megawatts (MW) of new wind power installations were more than twice as much as were added in any other state during this record-shattering year for the U.S. wind industry. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that 4,356 MW of the nation's 16,818 MW is currently operating in Texas. The state's cumulative wind generating capacity – representing 26% of all wind power installed in the nation – will produce as much electricity as is used by 1 million Texas homes. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), there were 3,064 MW of signed commitments made during 2007 to build new wind power plants – a level that is greater than for any other type of new power plant. ERCOT is currently developing plans and cost estimates for new transmission lines that could support much higher levels of wind power in the future as part of the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) process, which is expected to be finalized during 2008. Previous studies by ERCOT suggest that the wind on the drawing board combined with that now operating in Texas could reduce wholesale power costs by more than $1 billion per year while reducing statewide power plant emissions by as much as 5%....
Sayonara cyanide: Poison land mines should be banned They're hollow, spring-loaded land mines, 6-inch-long aluminum cylinders with a lethal dose of sodium cyanide inside. Partially buried, topped with a trigger, covered by cotton impregnated with liquid bait, you'll find them around ranches and farms, on public and private lands, in at least 15 states. When a coyote or fox or pet dog tugs at the device, it unleashes a lethal dose of poison into their mouths, which mixes with saliva to form a gas that causes convulsions, then paralysis, and finally death. The government calls them M-44s. They're part of the arsenal employed by the federal Wildlife Services agency in a long-running, futile attempt to control coyotes and other predators that prey on livestock and poultry. But the devices are indiscriminate killers. The government spends about $10 million a year, and jeopardizes the health and welfare of the public, in order to protect livestock and poultry from predators. A better use of the money would be to compensate ranchers for losses, and teach them to reduce predation by using guard dogs, night penning, fencing and other proven techniques....Yes sir, it's real simple....
Active volcano under ice Although it has not erupted for more than 2000 years, heat from the geologically active Hudson Mountains Subglacial Volcano helps explain why nearby Pine Island Glacier shrinks by more than a kilometre every year, British scientists claim. The discovery follows reports last week that Antarctica's ice cap is melting faster than previously believed. According to those findings, the greatest loss was from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula. Together, they lost nearly 200billion tonnes of ice in 2006 alone. Glaciologists Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge claim the discovery of the first known subglacial volcanic eruption promises to improve predictions of future sea-level rise caused by the melting of the WAIS. "We believe this was the biggest eruption in Antarctica during the last 10,000 years," Dr Corr said. "It blew a substantial hole in the ice sheet and generated a plume of ash and gas that rose around 12km." The team identified a large layer of volcanic ash in the ice. Additional evidence for the eruption came from ice cores collected across the continent....
Little progress made in clearing Ore. slide or determining cause Railroad and government officials say it's too soon to tell what caused the landslide that buried train tracks outside of Oakridge, choking off one of Oregon's major passenger and freight routes. A broad section of hillside slumped down Saturday morning, obliterating 3,000 feet of Union Pacific-track under a snowy mound of mud and trees more than 20 feet deep. Part of the slide began in an area clear-cut in 1993 and replanted in 1995, said Willamette National Forest spokesman Judy McHugh, though most of slide occurred on Forest Service land that had not been thinned. Geologists had yet to visit the site, hampering any discussion of the slide's cause, she said. Meanwhile, railroad crews were still trying to get their hands around clearing the slide. The tracks are the main connection between Eugene and California for both Union Pacific and Amtrak. Fifteen trains, carrying 33 million gross tons of freight, use the track daily....
Enviromental group praises roadless policies The Wilderness Society celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Roadless Area Conservation policy Tuesday, hailing the rule's resiliency in spite of what it sees as the Bush administration's assaults and touting the areas as essential to Americans looking to escape encroaching development. "When people come to Idaho, it's to experience what our nation was like before it got developed and roaded," said Holly Endersby, an Idaho hunter, angler, horse packer and grandmother. "These opportunities only exist because of the protection that roadless areas provide. I hope my grandchildren will get to travel in wild country like I have." Endersby participated in a teleconference headed by Mike Dombeck, who was Forest Service chief when the rule was enacted. Dombeck said only 3 percent of the land in the United States is more than 17,000 feet from the nearest road and that open space in the nation is being gobbled up at the rate of 10,000 acres a day. Rather than to continue to fight the roadless rule, Dombeck said, "It's time to look to the future. It's time to focus our energies on other areas."....
Number of drilling rigs declines in 2007 For the first time in years, Wyoming saw a decline in drilling for oil, natural gas and coalbed methane last year. Don Likwartz, supervisor of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, blamed the downturn on a lack of space in the pipelines, drillers coming up against environmental restrictions and the lack of new permits to drill on federal land. In 2007, Wyoming averaged 73 rigs a month that were actively drilling for oil and natural gas, down from an average of 99 in 2006. The 73 rigs were the fewest since 2003 when 54 were drilling on average per month. Most of the drilling activity last year was in the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline areas of southwest Wyoming, Likwartz said. Coalbed methane drilling rigs, which are counted separately from the rigs drilling for oil and deeper natural gas, declined from an average of 47 a month in 2006 to 35 in 2007 - the lowest since the state began tracking methane drilling in 1999. Some weeks in 2007 there were no rigs drilling for methane in Wyoming. Likwartz said drilling for oil and deep gas was hampered mainly by a lack of space in pipelines to ship the products....
Opposition reacts to losing forest planners A conservation group is blasting a proposal that could remove scientists and planners from National Forests, including the Bridger-Teton, in favor of consolidated “eco-based service centers” run by private corporations. The restructuring could eliminate thousands of planning and science jobs on National Forests across the country, effectively placing planning efforts governed by the National Environmental Policy Act under private control. Bridger-Teton officials have critiqued proposal, saying the plan isn’t clear and could cause a disconnect between the planning process and the implementation of initiatives on the forest. Congress has effectively choked off funding for the restructuring for this fiscal year, but it could be revived next fall. Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell has stated she supports the effort, but is expected to release a clarifying statement later this week. The proposal is based on a feasibility study by a private firm called Management Analysis, Inc....
Bison range talks make some progress Two sides involved in a bitter dispute over the last 2 1/2 years are ready to move forward with negotiations that could again put them working side by side at the National Bison Range. Lead negotiators for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said two days of meetings in Missoula last week went a long way toward re-establishing their trust in one another. A joint news release stressed that the Bison Range, often called the crown jewel of the national wildlife refuge system, would remain a national refuge administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under any new annual funding agreement between the two governments. Opponents of tribal involvement at the range, most notably Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, fear it could be the first step in the weakening or dismantling of the refuge system. "It is important to note that the emerging partnership between the Service and CSKT is a government-to-government relationship and is not a move toward privatization of the National Wildlife Refuge System," said the release, issued by Rob McDonald of the tribes and Matt Kales of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The release said "significant progress" was made in establishing the framework for negotiating a new funding agreement....
Mines are being reopened as gold fever sweeps state Gold fever is sweeping Arizona. Mining companies are scouring the earth, looking for new deposits and working to reopen venerable mines, some with histories that date to territorial days. With the yellow metal selling for just under $900 per ounce, more weekend gold diggers are heading for the hills with pans, picks and metal detectors. Prospecting outfitter Promack Treasure Hunting in Apache Junction has seen its business triple in the past year, and membership in the Superstition Mountain Treasure Hunters gold-panning club has grown to 400 from 70 in the same period. Club leaders say members can return from a weekend of prospecting with $1,000 or more in gold. Demand has pushed up the price of gold as much as 45 percent in the past 12 months and brought a dozen or so mainly Canadian mining companies into the state. While the state is known as one of the world's top copper-producing regions, it also has a gold-mining legacy....
Mining claims soar on Colo. public lands Colorado's mining rush is in full swing. But this time, it's not gold. It's rich deposits of uranium, molybdenum and other hardrock minerals that are luring miners to try their luck in the state's semi- arid public lands as world demand skyrockets. For instance, after decades on hiatus, thousands of prospectors are back on the Western Slope staking claims, eager to tap the area's uranium reserves. The price of uranium, used as raw material inside nuclear reactors, has doubled in recent years as developing nations embrace nuclear energy to power their economies. Uranium claims on Colorado's federal lands, mostly in Montrose and Mesa counties, hit a whopping 10,730 in 2007 from as few as 120 in 2003 and 2,725 in 2005, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Overall, new mineral claims on Colorado's public lands have jumped 239 percent since 2003....
Police seek suspect in Black Bear Diner robbery A man who robbed the Black Bear Diner in northeast Bend Friday night may have fled the area in a waiting vehicle, police said after a search by officers, a police dog, deputies, State troopers, and a U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement officer failed to turn up any sign of the suspect. Shortly before 10 p.m. on January 18, Bend Police were called to the popular restaurant at 1465 NE Third Street to the report of a robbery. A female employee told officers that a man of unknown age, possibly Hispanic, entered the diner, demanded money then fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, Sgt. Tom Pine reported. No weapons were displayed and no one was injured in the robbery....The next time you see the Forest Service claim they don't have the budget or the personnel to police Federal lands, ask them how come they are investigating diner robberies.
Pneumonia strikes bighorn sheep Two more dead Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep were found in the Elkhorn Mountains on Monday, raising the total to at least 10 that have died from pneumonia and prompting concerns about a potential die off of the herd. "In the worst-case scenario, based on similar situations throughout the West, we could see what's called an all-age die off, " Tom Carlsen, a wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said Tuesday. "That's because we're seeing adult sheep die as well as younger ones. It can kill almost all of the population. This wouldn't be the first die-off in Montana." Last month, eight bighorn sheep reportedly died in Colorado from pneumonia; New Mexico had an outbreak in 2006. "These are things we as professional biologists and scientists spend a lifetime looking at those, and we don't know what causes them to contract this," Carlsen said. There have been studies done "with wild and domestic sheep together, and almost without exception, when wild sheep and domestic sheep come together, the wild sheep die from pneumonia."....
Aerial hunt clash goes underground For the next week, Alaska wolves are the stars of an underground advertising campaign in the Washington, D.C., subway. The $4,500 campaign promotes federal legislation that would end aerial hunting of wolves, a practice that has been used in Alaska to help improve populations of moose and caribou. The ads are sponsored by the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, which has used its political-action arm to run commercials in Alaska targeting Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young for his record on environmental and renewable energy issues. For its subway campaign, Defenders picked the Capitol South Metro Station, a strategic location that sees an average of 6,000 commuters each day -- and not just Capitol Hill staffers. Many tourists pass through the stop on their way to visit the Capitol and congressional offices. The ads feature some photos of cuddly wolves as well as a gruesome image of a wolf carcass hanging on the wing of an airplane. They urge support for the federal legislation, sponsored by longtime Young adversary, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.....
Ranchers battle meat imports Ranchers from across the country are heading to Capitol Hill this week to push back on the Bush administration’s plans to import meat from Argentina despite concerns over foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed a rule in early 2007 to allow into the country imports of meat, primarily mutton and lamb, from Argentina’s southern region of Patagonia. But U.S. cattlemen, citing past cases of infection, worry that the South American nation might bring in contaminated meat and spread the dreaded disease to American herds, decimating the industry. “If we don’t get an answer from USDA, we are going to get Congress to nip this thing in the bud,” said Jess Peterson, director of government affairs for the United States Cattlemen’s Association (USCA). A highly contagious airborne disease that can travel in either fresh or frozen meat, FMD produces lesions in the mouths and hooves of livestock, such as sheep and cattle. Animals can be vaccinated in preparation for a potential outbreak, but once infected, they generally have to be killed and their carcasses burned. Entire herds can be taken out by the disease, resulting in billions of dollars of lost revenue. If the rule is finalized, the USDA expects an average of 13.2 million pounds of sheep meat per year to arrive in the U.S., according to the Argentine government. That would result in a price decline in the U.S. of about 10 cents per pound of lamb and mutton — overall, an annual $17.7 million loss affecting U.S. sheep ranchers....