Tis the season for romance for the cowboy's wife
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
By Julie Carter
Romance is all about viewpoint. The level of romance is relative to the amount of time a rancher and his wife spend working together, often making little seem like more.
When you pick up the coffee table photo album, the photos are often of big brandings in a working pen with friends and neighbors hard at it.
That is not all there is to the action and the photo never reveals the endless hours of work that led to that particular Western Currier and Ives pictorial.
First, a date must be selected for a branding, usually a Saturday so the kids can be there to flank calves. All the neighbors and friends are called and the calendars marked.
The requisite vaccines, wormers and implants are ordered and the necessary equipment, i.e. branding irons, vaccine guns, sterilizing solutions, buckets, implant guns, knives for earmarking and castrating, and whetstones will all be checked to make sure they are in working order.
The cattle have to be gathered, sometimes done over a period of days, culminating in the final gathering to the pens on branding day.
The assignments will be well thought out who is going to rope, flank, give shots, brand and turn little bulls into little steers.
A long grocery list for beverages, snacks, coffee breaks, breakfast and lunch meals for a big crew will be written, shopped and stored.
All this is done ahead. By the time the assorted friend/neighbor crew shows up, the work is ready to commence.
A week before a branding can look like this:
Monday: Cattle are gathered from the big, rough, brushy pastures to smaller traps close to the working pens. The head cowboy, being good to his wife, will give her the choice of driving the feed truck with the clutch that slips or riding the green colt to push up the calves at the back of that herd.
At noon the same day, the wife mentions that she needs to go to town to get groceries for feeding the big crew. He will answer,”This afternoon we have to make another drive. We didn¹t gather all the cattle out of that pasture yet.”
Making plans for the next day, the cowboy gives her instruction. “Tomorrow you better ride a broke horse, we¹re going to have to separate the bulls and move them to the back pastures to keep them from fighting and tearing down every fence on the place.”
She recognizes the thoughtful caring in his consideration of the horse she should ride. She again mentions that she is going to need a day to go get groceries, since it¹s only 85 miles to town.
Tuesday: They saddle for the long trip to the back pasture where the bulls will go. He gives her a broke horse and decides he will ride a green colt. That will give the colt the needed miles of riding and guarantee that his wife will have to ride twice as hard doing whatever needs to be done. And, more importantly, with a good solid horse, she will be able to pack their lunches in the saddlebags.
Arriving back home late, it¹s too late to go to town for groceries, but she reminds him again she¹ll need time to do that and that it is 85 miles to town.
Wednesday: The cull cows are separated and driven to a separate trap for shipping later. Her good, broke horse is worn out from yesterday, so she gets her choice of the colts to hold herd on while he cuts the cows.
Today the cowboy will give her lots of free, valuable instruction about how to get that colt to work a cow. When she seems less than appreciative of his wisdom, he lays it off to some hormone fluctuation.
At dark when the routine chores are done, she stands right in front of him and says, “I have to go to town no later than tomorrow to get groceries to feed this mob Saturday. You know it’s 85 miles.”
He replies, “We’ll see. We have to go check waters tomorrow. Haven¹t done that for a couple days, and we should probably go make sure the bulls are staying put.”
Thursday: The bulls tore down a good stretch of fence to escape, the standpipe on one of the water reserves broke and the water valve that has been needing a little attention decided to finally go bad.
That evening his response to the grocery dilemma was: “Don’t you have anything in the freezer you can just feed them?”
Friday: Bulls re-gathered, fences fixed, water valve patched and at noon, she gathers the checkbook, her list and heads out without saying anything to the other hat in the house. The last and only thing she had said to him since the previous evening was, “pass the butter.”
He realizes she is going the 85 miles to town and to make good use of the effort he tells her, “While you’re in town, pick up 250 doses of IBR and 250 doses of 7-Way, and 250 implants. We have 200 calves to work, but the women will probably give those things and you know they always waste some of the shots. While you are at it, you¹d better get some 14-gauge needles, too. Those women always bend a lot of needles.”
Silence.
Saturday: Depending on a gal’s viewpoint and her proximity to the skillet, breakfast with 20 or so cowboys around the table can be fun. Funny stories, neighbors not seen through the winter months and plenty of good food start the day off best.
The anticipation of all the cowboy action when the sun comes up makes for a happy crowd. It is a strange but true phenomenon: Cowboys do not always regard cowboy activities as work.
When everyone has their fill of breakfast, the rancher will adjourn the crowd to begin the day¹s work.
At this point, the ranch wife will often stay behind. She deals with the debris left from breakfast and proceeds to prepare coffee break snacks and drinks.
With that lined out, she will start lunch for the same crew that just left the table.
In middle of the morning, one of the neighbors may notice the ranch wife is not around. “Hey, Jim, where’s Karen today?”
Jim’s sincere reply is, “I gave her the day off so she could cook.” Truly, in his mind, that endearing gesture was all about love. Mostly.
More of Julie’s stories and her book are available at www.julie-carter.com
Sunday, February 10, 2008
FLE
Rejecting National ID With so many states on record opposing REAL ID, the feds have been shifting through numerous stories trying to justify their national ID. First, they said it was a national security tool. But by now everyone realizes how easy it would be for criminal organizations and terrorists to avoid or defeat a national ID system. Then REAL ID became a way to control illegal immigration. But it has the same defects here too. Illegal immigrants will use a mix of forgery, fraud, and corruption at any motor vehicles bureau in the country to get around REAL ID. Driving illegal immigrants further into criminality deepens the problem rather than fixing it. And should law-abiding American citizens really have to carry a national ID to get at illegal immigrants? Just who is the criminal here? Next, we were told that having a national ID was about identity fraud. But putting our personal information, Social Security Numbers, and basic identity documents like birth certificates into a nationwide string of government databases is a recipe for more identity theft, not less. WHEN THE Department of Homeland Security came out with the final REAL ID regulations last month, a top official threw the department's final Hail Mary, suggesting that REAL ID could be used to control access to cold medicine. That's right: cold medicine. The lesson? Once a national ID system is in place, the federal government will use it for tighter and tighter control of every American. The DHS has admitted that not a single state will comply with the REAL ID law by the May 11, 2008 deadline....
Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased. A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself. Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said. The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel. At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but "those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks," he said....
Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying Truth: Drift Nets To Be Legalized In a Senate floor speech, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) inadvertently made plain that the proposed changes to the nation's spying laws radically expand how the government wiretaps inside the United States. Rockefeller was decrying an amendment that would require the government to discard non-emergency evidence if a court later finds that the spying methods violate the law. Rockefeller makes clear that the impending changes to the law aren't about making it easier for the National Security Agency to listen in on a particular terrorism suspect's phone calls. Instead, the changes are about letting the nation's spooks secretly and unilaterally install filters inside America's phone and internet infrastructure. Rockefeller, the chief Democratic architect of the changes, explains: Unlike traditional [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application orders which involve collection on one individual target, the new FISA provisions create a system of collection. The courts role in this system of collection is not to consider probable cause on individual targets but to ensure that procedures used to collect intelligence are adequate. The courts' determination of the adequacy of procedures therefore impacts all electronic communications gathered under the new mechanisms, even if it involves thousands of targets. In short, the changes legalize Room 641A, the secret spying room inside AT&T's San Francisco internet switching center that was outed by former AT&T employee Mark Klein. That room sits at the center of a lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged illegal participation in the government's secret, warrantless spying program. Under the new rules, secret spying court judges will no longer be evaluating whether the government has probable cause to eavesdrop on a spy or a terrorist who is inside the United States or to wiretap a particular foreigner via wiretaps inside the United States. Instead the judges will simply evaluate descriptions of how NSA filters in the infrastructure are designed to not catch purely domestic traffic. They can also approve or disapprove of how the spooks 'disguise' or reveal the identities of Americans who are one of the parties in any communication that involves a foreigners....
Why the Protect America Act Is a Bad Idea The lone virtue of the Protect America Act is that the powers it granted are now set to expire in mid-February. As this revised deadline approaches, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid will once again face pressure to rush the White House's preferred legislation out the door. The president will claim that failure to act before the Protect America Act sunsets will undermine the government's ability to eavesdrop on terrorists. It's an ominous claim, but it's not true. The Protect America Act allows the administration to "authorize" eavesdropping programs for a year at a time. That means that the government's various warrantless surveillance activities will continue to operate at least through August. And of course, if the need for new wiretaps arises after the act sunsets, the administration still has the opportunity to file for warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA even allows the government to begin surveillance first and apply for an emergency warrant after the fact. Bush's predecessor was also an ardent supporter of increased wiretapping authority. For example, on July 29, 1996, Bill Clinton unveiled a proposal to expand government surveillance by permitting the use of “roving wiretaps.” The nation was still reeling from terrorist attacks on the Atlanta Olympics and American barracks in Saudi Arabia, and many suspected that the explosion of TWA Flight 800 was also the work of terrorists. Clinton argued that these tragedies highlighted the need for legislative changes, and he pressed Congress to act before its August recess. But Congress had a bipartisan tradition of its own to defend. As they had done since Watergate, Congressional leaders raised concerns about civil liberties. Then-Speaker Newt Gingrich said he was willing to consider changes to the law, but vowed to do so “in a methodical way that preserves our freedoms.” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott vowed that Congress would not “rush to a final judgment” before going on vacation. In the end, the 104th Congress finished its term without giving President Clinton the wiretapping authority he sought. Today’s Democratic Congress has been far less protective of Americans’ privacy rights. Last August, in a virtual repeat of the events of 1996, Bush demanded that Congress approve expanded wiretapping powers before going on vacation. This time, Congressional leaders showed few qualms about “rushing to judgment." Indeed, both houses of Congress approved the White House’s preferred legislation with minimal changes within three days of its introduction. Why are today’s Democrats less concerned with civil liberties than Republicans were a decade ago?....
FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans. The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans. Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in." But it's unnerving to privacy experts. "It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project. The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect....
Is Retroactive Telecom Immunity Unconsitutional? The Senate continues debate on whether to grant amnesty to telecoms that turned over Americans phone records to the nation's spooks and helped them spy on Americans' international phone and email conversations. But Findlaw columnist and Cardozo law school professor Anthony Sebok suggests that freeing the telecoms without giving some sort of compensation to those suing the companies would amount to an unconstitutional taking. Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against suspected participating telecoms for alleged violations of federal privacy law. Proponents of immunity say the companies were simply acting in good faith for five years and that the Administration showed them paperwork certifying the government thought its own conduct was legal. Opponents say the telecoms knew they were violating the clear dictates of federal privacy law and that no one should be above the law -- especially since this wasn't a one-off request just days after 9/11. Sebok's argument, however, hinges on the constitutionality of the provision, which would require a judge to dismiss a civil suit so long as the Attorney General writes a secret letter saying the company did not participate or did so only after getting paperwork saying the government thought its own use of the data was legal....
New Weapon Against Terror: A Flashlight? It looks like a normal flashlight, but Homeland Security has paid close to a million dollars for it. It can stop you right in your tracks. Law enforcement is already calling it "controversial." The point of this device is to disorient you, so we modified the video when we showed it on air. If you wish to see the unmodified footage of the device in action, you can click here -- but be warned, you may find the experience uncomfortable. For riots and chaotic situations, police often use tasers, rubber bullets and pepper spray to try and control the crowd. But there could soon be a new weapon in their arsenal: a hi-tech flashlight with a big punch. "Flashblindness, the 'Oh my gosh this light is really bright, I can't see anything behind it.' That effect is immediate for everybody," said Bob Lieberman, president of Intelligent Optical Systems. Nausea and a feeling of disorientation soon follow. The device is called the "LED Incapacitator." Intelligent Optical Systems is the company building it right here in California, thanks to an $800,000 contract from Homeland Security. Once Lieberman turned on the Incapacitator for us, we started feeling the effects. It can be irritating to watch the video, but in person it's even more stunning. According to Lieberman, the device flashes LED lights at several specific frequencies. Before your brain has time to adjust to one frequency, the Incapacitator flashes another. Add multiple colors and random pulses and the brain just can't keep up....
Bush Administration Appeals Patriot Act Ruling The Bush administration on Friday appealed a federal court decision declaring as unconstitutional a central provision of the Patriot Act, which Congress quickly adopted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. At issue is a September ruling by an Oregon judge who said the Patriot Act gave too much power to the government when it came to snooping on suspected criminals in the United States -- a violation of constitutional search-and-seizure rules. The administration is asking the San Francisco-based, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken. The judge ruled that the Patriot Act made it too easy for the government to secure warrants against criminal suspects from a secret court designed to help the authorities monitor and gather intelligence on terror suspects. Unlike search and surveillance warrants doled out against criminal suspects by federal judges, the secret court hands out warrants without even asking what probable cause the government has. Also, the government is not required to disclose what it is searching for or what it found. "Since the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791, the government has been prohibited from gathering evidence for use in a prosecution against an American citizen in a courtroom unless the government could prove the existence of probable cause that a crime has been committed," Aiken ruled....
DHS Appoints Cybersecurity Official with Poor Security Record The Department of Homeland Security has appointed an official to head a top cybersecurity position charged with overseeing a new multi-million-dollar national protection plan despite the official's poor security record and ongoing investigations by the FBI and the DHS inspector general into events that occurred previously under his watch, according to Government Executive. Scott Charbo was formerly the chief information officer for the DHS before his new appointment. Last year the House Homeland Security Committee investigated how he and his staff responded to breaches under his watch and found that he not only failed to properly address threats that occurred but also failed to manage a contractor, Unisys, that is now under investigation for criminal fraud and failure to protect DHS computers from intrusions. The committee found that Unisys, which had a $1.7 billion contract with DHS to secure and manage the IT network for DHS and the Transportation Security Administration, failed to detect intrusions to the network for three months beginning in June 2006. The intrusions, on 150 computers, were traced to a Chinese-language hacker site. The FBI is currently investigating Unisys, according to a Washington Post story last year....
WA house judiciary casts vote to strip gun owners of right to jury trial The Washington State House Judiciary Committee cast its votes today to strip Washington gun owners of the right to a trial by jury. Since at least 1959, Washington citizens have had the right to a jury trial with a standard of “clear, cogent, and convincing evidence” before losing their right to bear arms due to being involuntarily committed for an alleged mental health illness. House Bill 3095, sponsored by Committee Chairwoman Rep. Pat Lantz (D-26), effectively removes these protections by stripping citizens of their right to bear arms, perhaps permanently, after being involuntarily committed for a mere 14 days. In these “probable cause” hearings there is no jury, no elected judge, and the standard of guilt is a mere preponderance of the evidence. “Setting aside the question of whether or not people should lose their right to bear arms after being involuntarily committed, it is inexcusable to deprive Washingtonians of the fundamental right to a jury trial and a reasonable standard of guilt,” noted CCRKBA Executive Director Mark A. Taff. “What other fundamental rights are our legislators willing to remove without the benefit of a jury trial?” Taff noted that alleged armed robbers and child molesters have a fundamental right to a unanimous verdict by a jury of their peers with the highest possible standard, “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Even in civil cases, the Washington Constitution dictates that “right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.”....
Police set to search for guns at homes As Boston police prepare to go into some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, knock on doors of private houses, and ask if they can search for illegal guns without a warrant, officials are trying to pitch the idea of the plan as friendly cooperation to residents who still see it as a threatening intrusion. A friendly looking logo - a drawing of a house surrounded by the sun - adorns the brochure police have drafted to explain and promote the initiative, "Safe Homes." Photos of officers playing baseball with children and chatting with teenagers dot the pamphlet. Twice, police have taken calls from listeners on a black radio station in Roxbury. Police plan to search for weapons in four Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods by late February or early March. Relying on the tips from schools, community organizations, and parents, they will look in the rooms of any children whose parents or guardians give consent to the search, French said. (The program does not apply to anyone over 18, because they are legally adults and parents can no longer give consent to a search of their rooms.) Ten officers and a sergeant assigned to the city's schools have been trained to conduct the searches....
Rejecting National ID With so many states on record opposing REAL ID, the feds have been shifting through numerous stories trying to justify their national ID. First, they said it was a national security tool. But by now everyone realizes how easy it would be for criminal organizations and terrorists to avoid or defeat a national ID system. Then REAL ID became a way to control illegal immigration. But it has the same defects here too. Illegal immigrants will use a mix of forgery, fraud, and corruption at any motor vehicles bureau in the country to get around REAL ID. Driving illegal immigrants further into criminality deepens the problem rather than fixing it. And should law-abiding American citizens really have to carry a national ID to get at illegal immigrants? Just who is the criminal here? Next, we were told that having a national ID was about identity fraud. But putting our personal information, Social Security Numbers, and basic identity documents like birth certificates into a nationwide string of government databases is a recipe for more identity theft, not less. WHEN THE Department of Homeland Security came out with the final REAL ID regulations last month, a top official threw the department's final Hail Mary, suggesting that REAL ID could be used to control access to cold medicine. That's right: cold medicine. The lesson? Once a national ID system is in place, the federal government will use it for tighter and tighter control of every American. The DHS has admitted that not a single state will comply with the REAL ID law by the May 11, 2008 deadline....
Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased. A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself. Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said. The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel. At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but "those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks," he said....
Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying Truth: Drift Nets To Be Legalized In a Senate floor speech, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) inadvertently made plain that the proposed changes to the nation's spying laws radically expand how the government wiretaps inside the United States. Rockefeller was decrying an amendment that would require the government to discard non-emergency evidence if a court later finds that the spying methods violate the law. Rockefeller makes clear that the impending changes to the law aren't about making it easier for the National Security Agency to listen in on a particular terrorism suspect's phone calls. Instead, the changes are about letting the nation's spooks secretly and unilaterally install filters inside America's phone and internet infrastructure. Rockefeller, the chief Democratic architect of the changes, explains: Unlike traditional [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application orders which involve collection on one individual target, the new FISA provisions create a system of collection. The courts role in this system of collection is not to consider probable cause on individual targets but to ensure that procedures used to collect intelligence are adequate. The courts' determination of the adequacy of procedures therefore impacts all electronic communications gathered under the new mechanisms, even if it involves thousands of targets. In short, the changes legalize Room 641A, the secret spying room inside AT&T's San Francisco internet switching center that was outed by former AT&T employee Mark Klein. That room sits at the center of a lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged illegal participation in the government's secret, warrantless spying program. Under the new rules, secret spying court judges will no longer be evaluating whether the government has probable cause to eavesdrop on a spy or a terrorist who is inside the United States or to wiretap a particular foreigner via wiretaps inside the United States. Instead the judges will simply evaluate descriptions of how NSA filters in the infrastructure are designed to not catch purely domestic traffic. They can also approve or disapprove of how the spooks 'disguise' or reveal the identities of Americans who are one of the parties in any communication that involves a foreigners....
Why the Protect America Act Is a Bad Idea The lone virtue of the Protect America Act is that the powers it granted are now set to expire in mid-February. As this revised deadline approaches, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid will once again face pressure to rush the White House's preferred legislation out the door. The president will claim that failure to act before the Protect America Act sunsets will undermine the government's ability to eavesdrop on terrorists. It's an ominous claim, but it's not true. The Protect America Act allows the administration to "authorize" eavesdropping programs for a year at a time. That means that the government's various warrantless surveillance activities will continue to operate at least through August. And of course, if the need for new wiretaps arises after the act sunsets, the administration still has the opportunity to file for warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA even allows the government to begin surveillance first and apply for an emergency warrant after the fact. Bush's predecessor was also an ardent supporter of increased wiretapping authority. For example, on July 29, 1996, Bill Clinton unveiled a proposal to expand government surveillance by permitting the use of “roving wiretaps.” The nation was still reeling from terrorist attacks on the Atlanta Olympics and American barracks in Saudi Arabia, and many suspected that the explosion of TWA Flight 800 was also the work of terrorists. Clinton argued that these tragedies highlighted the need for legislative changes, and he pressed Congress to act before its August recess. But Congress had a bipartisan tradition of its own to defend. As they had done since Watergate, Congressional leaders raised concerns about civil liberties. Then-Speaker Newt Gingrich said he was willing to consider changes to the law, but vowed to do so “in a methodical way that preserves our freedoms.” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott vowed that Congress would not “rush to a final judgment” before going on vacation. In the end, the 104th Congress finished its term without giving President Clinton the wiretapping authority he sought. Today’s Democratic Congress has been far less protective of Americans’ privacy rights. Last August, in a virtual repeat of the events of 1996, Bush demanded that Congress approve expanded wiretapping powers before going on vacation. This time, Congressional leaders showed few qualms about “rushing to judgment." Indeed, both houses of Congress approved the White House’s preferred legislation with minimal changes within three days of its introduction. Why are today’s Democrats less concerned with civil liberties than Republicans were a decade ago?....
FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans. The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans. Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in." But it's unnerving to privacy experts. "It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project. The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect....
Is Retroactive Telecom Immunity Unconsitutional? The Senate continues debate on whether to grant amnesty to telecoms that turned over Americans phone records to the nation's spooks and helped them spy on Americans' international phone and email conversations. But Findlaw columnist and Cardozo law school professor Anthony Sebok suggests that freeing the telecoms without giving some sort of compensation to those suing the companies would amount to an unconstitutional taking. Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against suspected participating telecoms for alleged violations of federal privacy law. Proponents of immunity say the companies were simply acting in good faith for five years and that the Administration showed them paperwork certifying the government thought its own conduct was legal. Opponents say the telecoms knew they were violating the clear dictates of federal privacy law and that no one should be above the law -- especially since this wasn't a one-off request just days after 9/11. Sebok's argument, however, hinges on the constitutionality of the provision, which would require a judge to dismiss a civil suit so long as the Attorney General writes a secret letter saying the company did not participate or did so only after getting paperwork saying the government thought its own use of the data was legal....
New Weapon Against Terror: A Flashlight? It looks like a normal flashlight, but Homeland Security has paid close to a million dollars for it. It can stop you right in your tracks. Law enforcement is already calling it "controversial." The point of this device is to disorient you, so we modified the video when we showed it on air. If you wish to see the unmodified footage of the device in action, you can click here -- but be warned, you may find the experience uncomfortable. For riots and chaotic situations, police often use tasers, rubber bullets and pepper spray to try and control the crowd. But there could soon be a new weapon in their arsenal: a hi-tech flashlight with a big punch. "Flashblindness, the 'Oh my gosh this light is really bright, I can't see anything behind it.' That effect is immediate for everybody," said Bob Lieberman, president of Intelligent Optical Systems. Nausea and a feeling of disorientation soon follow. The device is called the "LED Incapacitator." Intelligent Optical Systems is the company building it right here in California, thanks to an $800,000 contract from Homeland Security. Once Lieberman turned on the Incapacitator for us, we started feeling the effects. It can be irritating to watch the video, but in person it's even more stunning. According to Lieberman, the device flashes LED lights at several specific frequencies. Before your brain has time to adjust to one frequency, the Incapacitator flashes another. Add multiple colors and random pulses and the brain just can't keep up....
Bush Administration Appeals Patriot Act Ruling The Bush administration on Friday appealed a federal court decision declaring as unconstitutional a central provision of the Patriot Act, which Congress quickly adopted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. At issue is a September ruling by an Oregon judge who said the Patriot Act gave too much power to the government when it came to snooping on suspected criminals in the United States -- a violation of constitutional search-and-seizure rules. The administration is asking the San Francisco-based, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken. The judge ruled that the Patriot Act made it too easy for the government to secure warrants against criminal suspects from a secret court designed to help the authorities monitor and gather intelligence on terror suspects. Unlike search and surveillance warrants doled out against criminal suspects by federal judges, the secret court hands out warrants without even asking what probable cause the government has. Also, the government is not required to disclose what it is searching for or what it found. "Since the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791, the government has been prohibited from gathering evidence for use in a prosecution against an American citizen in a courtroom unless the government could prove the existence of probable cause that a crime has been committed," Aiken ruled....
DHS Appoints Cybersecurity Official with Poor Security Record The Department of Homeland Security has appointed an official to head a top cybersecurity position charged with overseeing a new multi-million-dollar national protection plan despite the official's poor security record and ongoing investigations by the FBI and the DHS inspector general into events that occurred previously under his watch, according to Government Executive. Scott Charbo was formerly the chief information officer for the DHS before his new appointment. Last year the House Homeland Security Committee investigated how he and his staff responded to breaches under his watch and found that he not only failed to properly address threats that occurred but also failed to manage a contractor, Unisys, that is now under investigation for criminal fraud and failure to protect DHS computers from intrusions. The committee found that Unisys, which had a $1.7 billion contract with DHS to secure and manage the IT network for DHS and the Transportation Security Administration, failed to detect intrusions to the network for three months beginning in June 2006. The intrusions, on 150 computers, were traced to a Chinese-language hacker site. The FBI is currently investigating Unisys, according to a Washington Post story last year....
WA house judiciary casts vote to strip gun owners of right to jury trial The Washington State House Judiciary Committee cast its votes today to strip Washington gun owners of the right to a trial by jury. Since at least 1959, Washington citizens have had the right to a jury trial with a standard of “clear, cogent, and convincing evidence” before losing their right to bear arms due to being involuntarily committed for an alleged mental health illness. House Bill 3095, sponsored by Committee Chairwoman Rep. Pat Lantz (D-26), effectively removes these protections by stripping citizens of their right to bear arms, perhaps permanently, after being involuntarily committed for a mere 14 days. In these “probable cause” hearings there is no jury, no elected judge, and the standard of guilt is a mere preponderance of the evidence. “Setting aside the question of whether or not people should lose their right to bear arms after being involuntarily committed, it is inexcusable to deprive Washingtonians of the fundamental right to a jury trial and a reasonable standard of guilt,” noted CCRKBA Executive Director Mark A. Taff. “What other fundamental rights are our legislators willing to remove without the benefit of a jury trial?” Taff noted that alleged armed robbers and child molesters have a fundamental right to a unanimous verdict by a jury of their peers with the highest possible standard, “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Even in civil cases, the Washington Constitution dictates that “right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.”....
Police set to search for guns at homes As Boston police prepare to go into some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, knock on doors of private houses, and ask if they can search for illegal guns without a warrant, officials are trying to pitch the idea of the plan as friendly cooperation to residents who still see it as a threatening intrusion. A friendly looking logo - a drawing of a house surrounded by the sun - adorns the brochure police have drafted to explain and promote the initiative, "Safe Homes." Photos of officers playing baseball with children and chatting with teenagers dot the pamphlet. Twice, police have taken calls from listeners on a black radio station in Roxbury. Police plan to search for weapons in four Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods by late February or early March. Relying on the tips from schools, community organizations, and parents, they will look in the rooms of any children whose parents or guardians give consent to the search, French said. (The program does not apply to anyone over 18, because they are legally adults and parents can no longer give consent to a search of their rooms.) Ten officers and a sergeant assigned to the city's schools have been trained to conduct the searches....
Friday, February 08, 2008
Studies Say Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Increase Warming Clearing land to produce biofuels such as ethanol will do more to exacerbate global warming than using gasoline or other fossil fuels, two scientific studies show. The independent analyses, which will be published today in the journal Science, could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels. President Bush and many members of Congress have touted expanding biofuel use as an integral element of the nation's battle against climate change, but these studies suggest that this strategy will damage the planet rather than help protect it. One study -- written by a group of researchers from Princeton University, Woods Hole Research Center and Iowa State University along with an agriculture consultant -- concluded that over 30 years, use of traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as regular gasoline. Another analysis, written by a Nature Conservancy scientist along with University of Minnesota researchers, found that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands in Southeast Asia and Latin America to produce biofuels will increase global warming pollution for decades, if not centuries. Tim Searchinger, who conducts research at Princeton and the D.C-based German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the research he and his colleagues did is the first to reveal the hidden environmental cost of producing biofuels....
Fish and Wildlife finishes counting Mexican gray wolves Fifty-two Mexican gray wolves are roaming southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona—seven fewer than last year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's just completed annual count of the animals. The survey, released Thursday, counted 29 wolves in Arizona and 23 in New Mexico. Environmentalists said Fish and Wildlife has not done enough to protect the wolves and increase their numbers. On the other hand, the manager of Catron County, home to many of the wolves in New Mexico, said he believes the count is low. Counts are done each January. In 2007, the survey found 59 wolves, about half in each state. The federal program removed 22 wolves from the wild in 2007—19 of them either for killing livestock or because they were young pups associated with a parent wolf that killed livestock. Two were removed for moving outside the wolves' designated range, and the other was removed for "nuisance behavior," Fish and Wildlife said. In addition, three wolves disappeared in November from the Gila National Forest of southwestern New Mexico. The agency is investigating the disappearance of the alpha pair of the Durango pack and a pup....
Resolution Urges Congress to Leave Utah's Wilderness Alone The future of 9 million acres of public land is in limbo. Congress is considering declaring the Utah parcels federal wilderness, including acreage in the Uintah Basin. In response, Utah lawmakers are moving a resolution that sends a clear message to Congress - "keep your hands off our land." "It's frustrating to me that so many of these discussions come from people who are not from the West, (not) from Utah certainly," Ogden Representative Kerry Gibson says. "I think that many of these people would be highly offended if we came into their state and designated large swaths of their state as unaccessable [sic]. It's quite offensive." Gibson and his colleagues on the House Natural Resources Committee voted unanimously Wednesday for the resolution. H.J.R. 10 urges Congress not to designate additional wilderness areas in Utah without the support of the state's congressional delegation. It also stresses such a wilderness designation could tie up the state's untapped energy resources. However, designated wilderness areas and energy speculation are not mutually exclusive, according to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. The group's attorney, Stephen Block, says the vast majority of new oil and gas drilling is not slated for the land in question. "I think it's entirely consistent to protect these public lands here in our state at the same time that we have a very robust energy sector," Block says. The bill garnered the support of the Utah Petroleum Association, Responsible Energy Developers and the Farm Bureau, which represents ranchers whose income depends on grazing cattle on public lands....
Gov. Freudenthal seeks delay on Wyo. Range drilling plan Gov. Dave Freudenthal asked the U.S. Forest Service on Thursday to delay acting on a proposal to drill for natural gas in the Wyoming Range, a popular hunting and recreation area within the Bridger-Teton National Forest near the Idaho border. Houston-based Plains Exploration and Production Co. wants to drill 136 gas wells on 17 well pads spread over about 10,000 acres on the northeast corner of the Wyoming Range. Some of the acreage is near a rural subdivision of expensive homes and cabins. The Forest Service says the Plains Exploration plan would disturb about 400 acres and result in building about 15 miles of road. "In a historical context, such a proposal is quite modest," Freudenthal said in a letter to the Forest Service. "In the Wyoming Range, this proposal is monumental, far reaching and fraught with controversy." He noted that a second energy company has proposed drilling some 200 wells in the same area, raising fears he expressed earlier of industrializing the Wyoming Range....
Forest Service Pushes New Logging Rule In its effort to boost commercial logging, the Bush administration on Thursday proposed giving managers of the nation's 155 federal forests greater discretion in letting timber companies cut down more trees on the federally controlled land. The new planning rule is the latest response by the Forest Service to court rulings that have rejected previous policies as not doing enough to protect wildlife and the environment. Officials said the new rule would ensure public involvement in the nation's 193 million acres of national forests. But environmentalists said the Bush administration was again trying to strip important protections for wildlife and clean water for the benefit of the timber industry. Administration officials said last month they had decided it was quicker and cheaper to do an environmental impact statement on the 2005 rule, as ordered by a judge, rather than wait for a federal appeals court to consider the case. "We're proud of this vitally important planning process, and yet we recognize that improvements were needed to emphasize more public collaboration, to be more adaptive to changing environmental conditions and to ensure the protection of wildlife," said Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System....
Tester assails Bush budget's approach to rural issues Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., on Wednesday slammed the president's proposed 2009 budget as a failure for rural Americans. "He absolutely got an F," Tester said during a call with reporters. " 'Incomplete' could also apply. I almost think maybe he just dropped out before the budget even got started." Tester criticized proposed cuts to some rural health care and development programs, Essential Air Service, Amtrak and the U.S. Forest Service. He said Bush would raise some fees on veterans using VA facilities and faulted the president for not putting money toward a permanent agriculture disaster relief fund. "The list goes on and on with this budget," he said. "I cannot tell you how disappointed I am, and how really out of touch this budget is with what's going on in America, particularly rural America." Tester and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., made the call in conjunction with the release of a "Rural Report Card" by the Democratic Policy Committee that condemned Bush's budget....
Crow Tribe signs economic compact Leaders from the Crow Tribe, the state of Montana and the federal government gathered in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday for the signing of a first-of-its-kind compact that will aid economic development on the Crow Reservation. The agreement addresses the lack of legal framework that had kept many on the reservation from borrowing money and getting the financing they needed for all kinds of investments. The compact makes it easier for banks to file secured loans on the reservation, which will lead to a greater flow of capital to the Crow community. Tribal leaders in war bonnets and traditional dress stood behind Crow Chairman Carl Venne and Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson as they put their signatures to the compact. The agreement covers transactions in which personal property is used as collateral for loans, including bank loans for business startups, auto loan financing and revolving lines of credit. Such transactions usually fall under state law, but as sovereign nations Indian tribes are not subject to state laws. That made it very difficult for banks to make secured loans in those communities. A bank's claim on collateral is filed as a lien with the secretary of state's office, and the agreement will allow such liens to be enforceable on the reservation....
Southwestern treasures "Yes, the same thing done on public and private land could mean the difference between ending up in jail and walking out scot-free with plenty of money in your pockets," Ms. Farnsworth added with a sad smile. What she was trying to explain sounded bizarre, but the hard facts backed her up. In this archaeologically rich region of the country, a law enacted during the presidency of Jimmy Carter made a peculiar zigzag: It accepted the importance of cultural preservation on government property, but all but brushed it off on private land. Under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, hunting for Anasazi artifacts and selling them to the highest bidder is legal if you do it on private ranches, but is forbidden if you step onto federal or tribal property. The federal government appears to lack strong convictions about what it should protect and where. "Only 15 percent of the Four Corners area has been surveyed and inventoried by archaeologists," Ms. Farnsworth said. "The rest is still untouched. We suspect there are somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 unexplored archaeological sites out there."....
Group seeks protection for walrus under Endangered Species Act A conservation group filed today to protect Pacific walruses because of the threat to their northern habitat by global warming. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list walruses as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of warming and its effect on sea ice used by the animals as a feeding and resting platform. The group also said oil and gas development throughout the animals' range was a threat. Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, said he had not seen the petition and could not comment. The listing request was filed as the Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to list polar bears as threatened because sea ice has diminished due to global warming. "The Arctic is in crisis from global warming," said Shaye Wolf, lead author of the petition and a biologist with the conservation group....
The Fluid Envelope - A Case Against Climate Alarmism The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the Goebbelian substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and previous warm periods appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we dont fully understand either the advance or the retreat....
Bush threatens farm bill veto if goals missed President George W. Bush warned on Wednesday he will veto the new U.S. farm law if it raises taxes or fails to cut off subsidies to farmers and land owners making more than $200,000 a year. "I'm confident we can come together and get a good farm bill," Bush told Agriculture Department employees. "But if Congress sends me legislation that raises taxes or (does) not make needed reforms, I'm going to veto it." It was the strongest statement yet to Congress from the administration of its goals for the omnibus farm law, which covers farm subsidies, land stewardship, nutrition programs like food stamps and rural economic development. Lawmakers and the administration have been deadlocked since the start of the year over the five-year, $286 billion bill....
White House race seen shunning agriculture The next president of the United States has so far said very little about agriculture, cattle or livestock, which the president of the nation's largest cattle group called "kind of scary." "As I have listened to the candidates in their primaries for the last two or three months, I have yet to hear anything mentioning the word agriculture, mentioning the livestock industry or mentioning the cattle industry," John Queen, president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, told Reuters on Wednesday. "It is kind of scary to me." The NCBA has about 30,000 members and more than 5,000 of them are in Reno this week for the group's annual convention. Queen said he would welcome the chance to question any of the candidates about their policies on agriculture, livestock, ethanol and energy, and conservation....
Ewe gives birth to 4 lambs If there's a mother-of-the-year award for sheep, a ewe belonging to a Powell couple deserves consideration. The ewe gave birth to four lambs Jan. 19 and is busily engaged in the job of raising them. Steve Martin and his wife have kept a flock of sheep and raised lambs for more than 20 years. They say quadruplets are rare among sheep. Martin says it's also notable that the new mother has tended to all four lambs. A ewe often will reject one lamb after a multiple birth....
Painting the West William Matthews is a well-respected and nationally known Western watercolor artist who will sign his new book "Working in the West" today from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Broschofsky Galleries, in The Courtyard at 360 East Ave. in Ketchum. "I'm a cowboy, and I work all the time always focusing on painting," Matthews said. Matthews spends time on ranches depicting the older traditional way of ranching as opposed to modern methods by which ranchers use ATVs, trucks and helicopters. "I prefer the old and more traditional ranching techniques of cowboys on horseback with teams of horses," Matthews said. "I pick and choose where I paint, and it's about the attitude and ranch methodology and respect for the tradition of ranching." Matthews said watercolor painting is a difficult medium, and it is unforgiving because he can not cover up his mistakes. "That's why I love it," Matthews said. "It's the most impressive medium and every day it is a challenge."....
The cowboy way Dusty Richards sometimes thinks he was born at the wrong time. The award-winning novelist feels right at home in the hardscrabble world of America’s Wild West, where cowboys went on cattle drives and men enforced the law on horseback with a pistol. In his most recent book, Montana Revenge, Richards writes about one such sheriff and his horse: “The horse between his knees was still breathing hard and snorting out his nose from the long run. Repeatedly bobbing his head, Cob danced some coming downhill, as if he knew more than his rider did about what this place might hold for him.” Richards, 70, says his love of the West is a deep connection he has felt since childhood. But the writer says he is grateful he “didn’t have to live as tough a life as it would have been then.” He’s happy where he is, sitting in the lakefront home he shares with Pat, his wife of 47 years, writing books and short stories about the cowboy life. The Arkansas resident is comfortable wearing Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. He writes his vivid Western tales on a laptop computer. This modern-day cowboy writer’s cell phone rings to the tune of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” He also has a pair of spurs — on the wall. Richards won these Spurs — awards — fair and square last year from the Western Writers of America....
Fish and Wildlife finishes counting Mexican gray wolves Fifty-two Mexican gray wolves are roaming southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona—seven fewer than last year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's just completed annual count of the animals. The survey, released Thursday, counted 29 wolves in Arizona and 23 in New Mexico. Environmentalists said Fish and Wildlife has not done enough to protect the wolves and increase their numbers. On the other hand, the manager of Catron County, home to many of the wolves in New Mexico, said he believes the count is low. Counts are done each January. In 2007, the survey found 59 wolves, about half in each state. The federal program removed 22 wolves from the wild in 2007—19 of them either for killing livestock or because they were young pups associated with a parent wolf that killed livestock. Two were removed for moving outside the wolves' designated range, and the other was removed for "nuisance behavior," Fish and Wildlife said. In addition, three wolves disappeared in November from the Gila National Forest of southwestern New Mexico. The agency is investigating the disappearance of the alpha pair of the Durango pack and a pup....
Resolution Urges Congress to Leave Utah's Wilderness Alone The future of 9 million acres of public land is in limbo. Congress is considering declaring the Utah parcels federal wilderness, including acreage in the Uintah Basin. In response, Utah lawmakers are moving a resolution that sends a clear message to Congress - "keep your hands off our land." "It's frustrating to me that so many of these discussions come from people who are not from the West, (not) from Utah certainly," Ogden Representative Kerry Gibson says. "I think that many of these people would be highly offended if we came into their state and designated large swaths of their state as unaccessable [sic]. It's quite offensive." Gibson and his colleagues on the House Natural Resources Committee voted unanimously Wednesday for the resolution. H.J.R. 10 urges Congress not to designate additional wilderness areas in Utah without the support of the state's congressional delegation. It also stresses such a wilderness designation could tie up the state's untapped energy resources. However, designated wilderness areas and energy speculation are not mutually exclusive, according to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. The group's attorney, Stephen Block, says the vast majority of new oil and gas drilling is not slated for the land in question. "I think it's entirely consistent to protect these public lands here in our state at the same time that we have a very robust energy sector," Block says. The bill garnered the support of the Utah Petroleum Association, Responsible Energy Developers and the Farm Bureau, which represents ranchers whose income depends on grazing cattle on public lands....
Gov. Freudenthal seeks delay on Wyo. Range drilling plan Gov. Dave Freudenthal asked the U.S. Forest Service on Thursday to delay acting on a proposal to drill for natural gas in the Wyoming Range, a popular hunting and recreation area within the Bridger-Teton National Forest near the Idaho border. Houston-based Plains Exploration and Production Co. wants to drill 136 gas wells on 17 well pads spread over about 10,000 acres on the northeast corner of the Wyoming Range. Some of the acreage is near a rural subdivision of expensive homes and cabins. The Forest Service says the Plains Exploration plan would disturb about 400 acres and result in building about 15 miles of road. "In a historical context, such a proposal is quite modest," Freudenthal said in a letter to the Forest Service. "In the Wyoming Range, this proposal is monumental, far reaching and fraught with controversy." He noted that a second energy company has proposed drilling some 200 wells in the same area, raising fears he expressed earlier of industrializing the Wyoming Range....
Forest Service Pushes New Logging Rule In its effort to boost commercial logging, the Bush administration on Thursday proposed giving managers of the nation's 155 federal forests greater discretion in letting timber companies cut down more trees on the federally controlled land. The new planning rule is the latest response by the Forest Service to court rulings that have rejected previous policies as not doing enough to protect wildlife and the environment. Officials said the new rule would ensure public involvement in the nation's 193 million acres of national forests. But environmentalists said the Bush administration was again trying to strip important protections for wildlife and clean water for the benefit of the timber industry. Administration officials said last month they had decided it was quicker and cheaper to do an environmental impact statement on the 2005 rule, as ordered by a judge, rather than wait for a federal appeals court to consider the case. "We're proud of this vitally important planning process, and yet we recognize that improvements were needed to emphasize more public collaboration, to be more adaptive to changing environmental conditions and to ensure the protection of wildlife," said Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System....
Tester assails Bush budget's approach to rural issues Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., on Wednesday slammed the president's proposed 2009 budget as a failure for rural Americans. "He absolutely got an F," Tester said during a call with reporters. " 'Incomplete' could also apply. I almost think maybe he just dropped out before the budget even got started." Tester criticized proposed cuts to some rural health care and development programs, Essential Air Service, Amtrak and the U.S. Forest Service. He said Bush would raise some fees on veterans using VA facilities and faulted the president for not putting money toward a permanent agriculture disaster relief fund. "The list goes on and on with this budget," he said. "I cannot tell you how disappointed I am, and how really out of touch this budget is with what's going on in America, particularly rural America." Tester and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., made the call in conjunction with the release of a "Rural Report Card" by the Democratic Policy Committee that condemned Bush's budget....
Crow Tribe signs economic compact Leaders from the Crow Tribe, the state of Montana and the federal government gathered in the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday for the signing of a first-of-its-kind compact that will aid economic development on the Crow Reservation. The agreement addresses the lack of legal framework that had kept many on the reservation from borrowing money and getting the financing they needed for all kinds of investments. The compact makes it easier for banks to file secured loans on the reservation, which will lead to a greater flow of capital to the Crow community. Tribal leaders in war bonnets and traditional dress stood behind Crow Chairman Carl Venne and Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson as they put their signatures to the compact. The agreement covers transactions in which personal property is used as collateral for loans, including bank loans for business startups, auto loan financing and revolving lines of credit. Such transactions usually fall under state law, but as sovereign nations Indian tribes are not subject to state laws. That made it very difficult for banks to make secured loans in those communities. A bank's claim on collateral is filed as a lien with the secretary of state's office, and the agreement will allow such liens to be enforceable on the reservation....
Southwestern treasures "Yes, the same thing done on public and private land could mean the difference between ending up in jail and walking out scot-free with plenty of money in your pockets," Ms. Farnsworth added with a sad smile. What she was trying to explain sounded bizarre, but the hard facts backed her up. In this archaeologically rich region of the country, a law enacted during the presidency of Jimmy Carter made a peculiar zigzag: It accepted the importance of cultural preservation on government property, but all but brushed it off on private land. Under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, hunting for Anasazi artifacts and selling them to the highest bidder is legal if you do it on private ranches, but is forbidden if you step onto federal or tribal property. The federal government appears to lack strong convictions about what it should protect and where. "Only 15 percent of the Four Corners area has been surveyed and inventoried by archaeologists," Ms. Farnsworth said. "The rest is still untouched. We suspect there are somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 unexplored archaeological sites out there."....
Group seeks protection for walrus under Endangered Species Act A conservation group filed today to protect Pacific walruses because of the threat to their northern habitat by global warming. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list walruses as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of warming and its effect on sea ice used by the animals as a feeding and resting platform. The group also said oil and gas development throughout the animals' range was a threat. Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, said he had not seen the petition and could not comment. The listing request was filed as the Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to list polar bears as threatened because sea ice has diminished due to global warming. "The Arctic is in crisis from global warming," said Shaye Wolf, lead author of the petition and a biologist with the conservation group....
The Fluid Envelope - A Case Against Climate Alarmism The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the Goebbelian substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and previous warm periods appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we dont fully understand either the advance or the retreat....
Bush threatens farm bill veto if goals missed President George W. Bush warned on Wednesday he will veto the new U.S. farm law if it raises taxes or fails to cut off subsidies to farmers and land owners making more than $200,000 a year. "I'm confident we can come together and get a good farm bill," Bush told Agriculture Department employees. "But if Congress sends me legislation that raises taxes or (does) not make needed reforms, I'm going to veto it." It was the strongest statement yet to Congress from the administration of its goals for the omnibus farm law, which covers farm subsidies, land stewardship, nutrition programs like food stamps and rural economic development. Lawmakers and the administration have been deadlocked since the start of the year over the five-year, $286 billion bill....
White House race seen shunning agriculture The next president of the United States has so far said very little about agriculture, cattle or livestock, which the president of the nation's largest cattle group called "kind of scary." "As I have listened to the candidates in their primaries for the last two or three months, I have yet to hear anything mentioning the word agriculture, mentioning the livestock industry or mentioning the cattle industry," John Queen, president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, told Reuters on Wednesday. "It is kind of scary to me." The NCBA has about 30,000 members and more than 5,000 of them are in Reno this week for the group's annual convention. Queen said he would welcome the chance to question any of the candidates about their policies on agriculture, livestock, ethanol and energy, and conservation....
Ewe gives birth to 4 lambs If there's a mother-of-the-year award for sheep, a ewe belonging to a Powell couple deserves consideration. The ewe gave birth to four lambs Jan. 19 and is busily engaged in the job of raising them. Steve Martin and his wife have kept a flock of sheep and raised lambs for more than 20 years. They say quadruplets are rare among sheep. Martin says it's also notable that the new mother has tended to all four lambs. A ewe often will reject one lamb after a multiple birth....
Painting the West William Matthews is a well-respected and nationally known Western watercolor artist who will sign his new book "Working in the West" today from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Broschofsky Galleries, in The Courtyard at 360 East Ave. in Ketchum. "I'm a cowboy, and I work all the time always focusing on painting," Matthews said. Matthews spends time on ranches depicting the older traditional way of ranching as opposed to modern methods by which ranchers use ATVs, trucks and helicopters. "I prefer the old and more traditional ranching techniques of cowboys on horseback with teams of horses," Matthews said. "I pick and choose where I paint, and it's about the attitude and ranch methodology and respect for the tradition of ranching." Matthews said watercolor painting is a difficult medium, and it is unforgiving because he can not cover up his mistakes. "That's why I love it," Matthews said. "It's the most impressive medium and every day it is a challenge."....
The cowboy way Dusty Richards sometimes thinks he was born at the wrong time. The award-winning novelist feels right at home in the hardscrabble world of America’s Wild West, where cowboys went on cattle drives and men enforced the law on horseback with a pistol. In his most recent book, Montana Revenge, Richards writes about one such sheriff and his horse: “The horse between his knees was still breathing hard and snorting out his nose from the long run. Repeatedly bobbing his head, Cob danced some coming downhill, as if he knew more than his rider did about what this place might hold for him.” Richards, 70, says his love of the West is a deep connection he has felt since childhood. But the writer says he is grateful he “didn’t have to live as tough a life as it would have been then.” He’s happy where he is, sitting in the lakefront home he shares with Pat, his wife of 47 years, writing books and short stories about the cowboy life. The Arkansas resident is comfortable wearing Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. He writes his vivid Western tales on a laptop computer. This modern-day cowboy writer’s cell phone rings to the tune of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” He also has a pair of spurs — on the wall. Richards won these Spurs — awards — fair and square last year from the Western Writers of America....
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Five Minutes With Trent Loos, Rancher-Activist-Advocate For Farmers & Producers
If you want to get Trent Loos to sit still for an interview, you’d better be prepared to work around his schedule, which includes hosting radio shows, launching promotional campaigns, creating a regular e-newsletter and speaking at dozens of agricultural meetings and conferences every year. And try not to schedule a conversation during a raging blizzard sweeping over the Loup, Nebraska, area where he farms and ranches – especially not when his goats are delivering kids and a mountain lion roaming the area has already picked off two of his herd. But when he’s not tracking cougars or caring for livestock, Loos puts his passion into a cause that ought to be a priority with all farmers and ranchers, no matter what they’re raising: Communicating to consumers the benefits of our food production system and the safe, abundant, affordable sustenance we all too often take for granted. His radio programming, which encompasses an audience of more than four million on 100-plus stations across the country, includes daily Loos Tales and Rural Route programming, various “Trails & Tales” and a Truth Be Told show. His Loos Tales TV programming, which examines the people, places and policies affecting rural America, airs weeknights at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Central on Dish Network 9411. Loos says that in his interviews and professional speaking engagements, he’s seeing a new sense of urgency among farmers and producers trying to convince both policymakers and the public that a viable system of agriculture is vital to America’s security and well-being. He argues that “the stakes are high,” and that the time for action is now....
If you want to get Trent Loos to sit still for an interview, you’d better be prepared to work around his schedule, which includes hosting radio shows, launching promotional campaigns, creating a regular e-newsletter and speaking at dozens of agricultural meetings and conferences every year. And try not to schedule a conversation during a raging blizzard sweeping over the Loup, Nebraska, area where he farms and ranches – especially not when his goats are delivering kids and a mountain lion roaming the area has already picked off two of his herd. But when he’s not tracking cougars or caring for livestock, Loos puts his passion into a cause that ought to be a priority with all farmers and ranchers, no matter what they’re raising: Communicating to consumers the benefits of our food production system and the safe, abundant, affordable sustenance we all too often take for granted. His radio programming, which encompasses an audience of more than four million on 100-plus stations across the country, includes daily Loos Tales and Rural Route programming, various “Trails & Tales” and a Truth Be Told show. His Loos Tales TV programming, which examines the people, places and policies affecting rural America, airs weeknights at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Central on Dish Network 9411. Loos says that in his interviews and professional speaking engagements, he’s seeing a new sense of urgency among farmers and producers trying to convince both policymakers and the public that a viable system of agriculture is vital to America’s security and well-being. He argues that “the stakes are high,” and that the time for action is now....
Sen. Kerry Blames Tornados on Global Warming Kerry appeared on MSNBC on February 6 to discuss storms that have killed at least 50 people throughout the Southeastern United States. So, of course, Kerry used the platform to advance global warming alarmism. “[I] don’t want to sort of leap into the larger meaning of, you know, inappropriately, but on the other hand, the weather service has told us we are going to have more and more intense storms,” Kerry said. “And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth. And so it goes to global warming and larger issues that we’re not paying attention to. The fact is the hurricanes are more intensive, the storms are more intensive and the rainfall is more intense at certain places at certain times and the weather patterns have changed.” Kerry’s assertion tornado activity is related to any type of climate change is questionable based on the writings of at least one meteorologist. Roger Edwards, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla., has doubts about any global warming and tornado relationship. “As of this writing, no scientific studies solidly relate climatic global temperature trends to tornadoes,” Edwards wrote on the Earth & Sky Web site in April 2007. “I don’t expect any such results in the near future either, because tornadoes are too small, short–lived, hard to measure and count, and too dependent on day to day, even minute to minute weather conditions.”
Gov again slams royalty cut A federal plan to keep a bigger share of federal mineral royalties is designed to recoup costs for paperwork and manpower required for collection and distribution of the money, a federal Minerals Management Service Spokesman says. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, meanwhile, says the change is "an absolute crime." While the states and the federal government used to split those royalties 50-50, the split is now 52-48 with the federal government getting the larger share. The change first became law as part of a spending bill signed by President Bush in December. Bush suggested extending the provision by another year in his proposed budget released Monday. Gary Strasburg, a spokesman for the Minerals Management Service, which is part of the Interior Department, said the extra money for the federal government is intended to cover the administrative costs. But it will be deposited into the general treasury, he said....
The Collapse of Central Valley Salmon The latest federal government data on 2007's salmon run on the Sacramento River point to an "unprecedented collapse" in the fishery considered for years to be one of the most healthy on the West Coast. If the data is verified in upcoming meetings of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), commercial and recreational salmon fishing in California and Oregon ocean waters and recreational salmon fishing in Central Valley rivers could be closed or severely restricted in 2008. This alarming news couldn't come at a worse time, since recreational and commercial fishermen are already reeling from draconian restrictions on rockfish, lingcod and other groundfish in California. "The magnitude of the low abundance, should it be confirmed in verification efforts now underway, is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned in the upcoming Council process to set 2008 ocean salmon seasons," according to an internal memo of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) by Donald O. McIsaac, Ph. D, Executive Director....
Snow news good news for Colorado River area A snowy January on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains has water managers crossing their fingers for something they haven't seen for a while: a truly wet year on the Colorado River. The latest forecast calls for the river to receive 120 percent of its normal inflow from melting mountain snow. If that prediction comes to pass, 2008 would go down as the best year on the Colorado in more than a decade. As of Tuesday, snow levels were above average by as much as 56 percent in parts of central and western Colorado credited with supplying large amounts of water to the river system. Elsewhere in the high country of Colorado, Utah and Arizona, the snowpack is almost double what it normally is this time of year with more winter storms in the forecast for this weekend....
Power Struggle The first sign that there might be something wrong with the water on Craig Duderstadt’s south Texas ranch was when the cows wouldn’t drink. Last summer, they began to bypass their special groundwater well-fed trough, preferring to drink from a muddy puddle of rainwater. “This is a full water trough, and they’d walk a couple hundred yards and drink from a water hole. They’d walk right past that water trough,” Duderstadt said. “You can’t make ‘em drink.” About that same time, the well water used inside the house for everything from showering to drinking started running red and slimy. A well filter that would normally last six months plugged up in a matter of hours—one time, Craig couldn’t even get it out of the filter casing because of all the sediment. The Duderstadts stopped drinking the water, too. A Culligan driver now brings four blue jugs of clean water a month from Victoria, the nearest big town, about a 30-minute drive northeast. The culprit, they say, is a uranium mining operation 1,250 feet from their front door. They say the water turns bad when the mining company drills exploration wells nearby....
Judge delays decision on eagle's status Calling the fate of Arizona's eagles "an important issue for our district and the United States," a federal judge in Phoenix postponed a decision Tuesday about protections for the state's desert-nesting bald eagles. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Murguia will decide if federal officials acted too hastily in removing Arizona's smaller, lighter bald eagles from the federal endangered-species list. Arizona's small band of raptors was removed from endangered-species protections in August along with the nation's other 11,000 bald eagles in the lower 48 states. The action to include Arizona eagles was protested by Gov. Janet Napolitano, U.S. Reps. Harry Mitchell and Raul Grijalva, all three Democrats, along with conservation groups and Indian tribes. In a courtroom filled with more than 75 tribal leaders and members of the public, lawyers for the Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon, the groups that filed the lawsuit, asked that the Arizona birds be put back on the endangered-species list, at least until their status can be reviewed by wildlife officials....
Cost to save bighorn pegged at $26.7m Saving the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep could cost at least $26.7 million over the next 20 years, a new federal study estimates. Environmentalists and federal officials consider this a good investment in protecting a shaggy, endangered mammal that is found from Tuolumne to Tulare counties and across to the Sierra Nevada's remote east side. "It looks like a fair amount of money," Bob Williams, Nevada field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Tuesday, "but compared to other species, this is relatively small, and the costs are in line with what the species needs." The public costs cover state and federal dollars directly spent on bighorn sheep monitoring and recovery. But they also include the potential sacrifice of fees that ranchers pay so their animals can graze on federal lands. To help the sheep, some such grazing would be restricted....
Uranium Exploration Near Grand Canyon With minimal public notice and no formal environmental review, the Forest Service has approved a permit allowing a British mining company to explore for uranium just outside Grand Canyon National Park, less than three miles from a popular lookout over the canyon’s southern rim. If the exploration finds rich uranium deposits, it could lead to the first mines near the canyon since the price of uranium ore plummeted nearly two decades ago. A sharp increase in uranium prices over the past three years has led individuals to stake thousands of mining claims in the Southwest, including more than 1,000 in the Kaibab National Forest, near the Grand Canyon. To drill exploratory wells on the claims in the Kaibab forest requires Forest Service approval. Vane Minerals, the British company, received such approval for seven sites in December. The Forest Service granted the approvals without a full-dress environmental assessment, ruling that the canyon could be “categorically excluded” from such a review because exploration would last less than a year and might not lead to mining activity....
Voices in the Wild Sawtooth National Forest Supervisor Jane Kollmeyer will decide in February whether to allow construction of a 90-foot-tall communications stealth tower (cleverly disguised as a pine tree) on the 8,700-foot summit. The tower would provide cellular coverage from Galena Lodge to Petit Lake, including much of the village of Smiley Creek in the Stanley Basin. Proponents of the tower argue for public safety along Highway 75, which connects the towns of Ketchum and Sun Valley with Galena Summit and the Stanley Basin to the north, where stranded motorists could call for help. Others say backcountry skiers and hikers could call for help in an emergency. Critics of the tower plan say it will be unsightly and detract from the splendor of the area, popular with backcountry skiers, snowboarders and hikers. On a clear day, Galena Summit affords views from Stanley to Bald Mountain, a distance of 60 miles, as well as the Sawtooth, Boulder and White Cloud mountains. Jackie Richter, U.S. Forest Service project leader for the proposed Galena Summit Tower study, has collected 94 comments on both sides of the issue and is awaiting an environmental assessment before the Forest Service can proceed with a decision....all this over a fake tree, a "cleverly disguised" fake tree.
Limestone Madness Nothing loves limestone more than the native ocotillo that covers the Empire Valley hills, southeast of Tucson. The problem is, mining interests including California Portland Cement have their own brand of love for those same hills just above Vail. The result is a four-year battle between the community-based Empire-Fagan Coalition, mining companies and the Arizona State Land Department, which approved new leases last year for three limestone-mining claims. The leases--still working their way through litigation--bring up the on-again, off-again debate about Arizona's laws that govern mining and state trust land reform. Empire High School teacher Mike Carson heads the Empire-Fagan Coalition, which questions if the land department is doing the right thing by approving mining leases near a growing residential area dependent on well water. Despite the land department's lease approvals, Carson and his neighbors are optimistic they will prevail....
BLM tries to balance gas, art An ongoing dust-up may have just gained clarity over how to further develop natural gas resources in the nearly 138,000 acres known as the West Tavaputs Plateau Project Area. A main issues is how to preserve "the world's longest rock art gallery" amid gas operations that critics say are already ruining centuries-old petroglyphs. "We've had to take a hard look at all the issues in that area," said Brad Higdon, planning and environmental coordinator in the Bureau of Land Management's Price field office. "Certainly, cultural resources are key issues because of the sensitivity of the area." The BLM announced Friday that the draft environmental impact statement for a proposal by Colorado-based Bill Barrett Corp. and other operators is now available for public comment until May 1. The BLM is scheduling public meetings to be held between now and May 1 in the Salt Lake City, Price and Roosevelt areas. The plan proposed by Barrett Corp. and others is to drill up to 807 more natural gas wells in the Tavaputs Plateau. At full production from those added wells, the area could some day produce more than 50 percent of Utah's demand for natural gas, Higdon estimated....
Americans Spending Less Time in Nature Anyone who has ever tried to book a room near Yellowstone National Park in August knows that natural places can get very crowded. But biologist Oliver Pergams says those crowds can hide an important trend: Every year, a smaller percentage of Americans are fishing, camping or engaging in other nature-based activities. Since the late 1980s, the percentage of Americans taking part in such activities has declined at slightly more than 1 percent a year. The total effect, Pergams says, is that participation is down 18 percent to 25 percent from peak levels. Pergams teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For several years now, he has been collecting outdoor head counts kept not only by national parks, but also by state and local parks, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and commercial polling firms. "We've got data for hunting licenses, fishing licenses, three different data sources for camping and backpacking and hiking," Pergams says....
Valentine's Day goes green with eco-friendly flowers, treats You drive a hybrid, bring your own bags to the market, keep tabs on your carbon footprint. As an eco-conscious individual, you practice what you preach. So, what are the eco-sensitive to do on Valentine's Day? What of the emissions created by flying and trucking those beautiful flowers (treated with who knows what) across the globe? What about the wine? The chocolate? Turns out the floral industry's been listening to such concerns. Programs like Florverde in Colombia and VeriFlora Certified Sustainably Grown in the United States help ensure participating floral farms, handlers, and distributors abide by environmental and social best-practice standards. European flowers, too, have their own certification standards in place. Not every farm and flower is Earth-perfect. But the tide is turning. Organic chocolate is easier to find, especially at chain retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and at local shops such as Flat Black Coffee Co., Savenor's Market, Cardullo's in Harvard Square, and Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge (and South End). Look for the USDA Organic and Fair Trade logos on chocolate from makers Dagoba, Lake Champlain, Art Bar, and Green & Black's. Endangered Species Chocolates puts an eco-twist on chocolate by donating 10 percent of its net profits to environmental organizations....well, I needed some help with my chocolate addiction, and this just might do it.
US Arctic drilling rights sale smashes record A sale of oil and gas rights in U.S. waters of the Chukchi Sea, off the northwestern coast of Alaska, has brought in a record $2.66 billion despite protests over the opening the environmentally sensitive area to drilling. Oil company bidding for the acreage being offered by the federal government's Minerals Management Service surpassed the previous record set in the early 1980s, underscoring how high oil prices have transformed undesirable high cost regions into exploration hotspots. The federal government, in its latest budget, had estimated it would receive only $67 million for the acreage, said MMS Director Randall Luthi, who traveled from Washington to attend the sale. A small group of protesters, one dressed in a polar bear costume, braved temperatures of -24 degrees Celsius (-11 Fahrenheit) outside the public library in Anchorage where the lease sale was being held....
Helping wildlife cross roads In the mountains near Vail, the state is planning to build the first wildlife bridge in Colorado history, while near Boulder, wildlife specialists are considering protecting elk by either building a wildlife underpass or fitting the animals with collars that would trigger lights warning of their presence. The measures are a result of an upsurge in car-animal accidents as human use of highways grows and habitats shrink. Nine Canada lynx — listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — have been killed in recent years in Colorado, two on Interstate 70 on West Vail Pass. Now, a coalition that includes the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project and natural-resource agencies wants to build a bridge over I-70 in that area to reconnect critical wildlife habitat. The goal of the bridge is to not only protect the Canada lynx, but other wildlife including moose, mountain lion, black bear and elk....
Judge spurns timber group's suit over bird A federal judge Tuesday rejected an attempt by the timber industry to remove federal protections for the marbled murrelet, an imperiled Northwest seabird that nests in coastal forests and stands in the way of logging. The American Forest Resource Council, an industry group based in Portland, sued the federal government arguing the bird should be removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species. But U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington, D.C., turned down the lawsuit Tuesday, concluding that there had been no official federal decision to keep the bird protected, and therefore there was nothing for the timber group to challenge in court. He said, however, that the timber group could still petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the bird from the list. Chris West, vice president of the council, said Tuesday that the group is assessing its options and may do that. The Forest Resource Council tried to force the issue in court after the Bush administration concluded that marbled murrelets in the Northwest do not differ enough from more plentiful birds in Alaska to merit protection on their own. But the administration, through the Fish and Wildlife Service, has not taken any further action on that conclusion. Instead, the federal agency said it would first review the condition of the entire murrelet population, including the Alaska birds....
Turner 'almost done' buying up ranchland CNN founder Ted Turner, the largest private landowner in Nebraska and the United States and the nation's largest bison rancher, said Wednesday that he is about done buying new ranches. He said he would like to reach 2 million acres nationwide before he dies — about 40,000 acres more than he currently owns. "I'm almost done. I've got enough," said Turner, who was visiting Omaha for the reopening and renaming of one of his 54 bison restaurants, now called Ted's Nebraska Grill. The 69-year-old billionaire, philanthropist and conservationist said he isn't interested in free-standing ranches anymore, only "reasonably priced" parcels adjacent to his current operations, which include five ranches in Nebraska near Gordon, Oshkosh and Mullen. The ranches cover 425,221 acres, an area larger than Douglas and Sarpy Counties combined. "You know what 2 million acres is?" Turner asked over a plate of bison miniburgers and transfat-free onion rings. "If my land was all connected, in one long straight line, a mile deep, it would stretch from New York to San Francisco." Then he joked: "I've been thinking about doing some swaps. I'd be able to cut the United States in half and charge people from going from the north to the south."....I always wondered what his ego was like. Now I know.
Cloning Splits Meat Industry The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently deemed cloned meat to be as safe to eat as meat from traditionally bred livestock, but it still looks to be a tough sell in Montana, with a state representative already planning legislation opposing it, insiders in the meat industry expressing skepticism and a public that remains wary. To be sure, livestock cloning has its share of proponents in the state, and elsewhere throughout the nation. Included among them are officials from the Montana Stockgrowers Association and a cross-section of ranchers, though not all support it. To skeptics, however, the FDA’s decision is unfavorable for different reasons. Some say it came too soon. Others have moral and ethical qualms. And still others just don’t know what to think about it – they feel we’ve stepped into strange futuristic territory, which can be unnerving....
USDA shuts down supplier of beef to schools The U.S. Department of Agriculture has shut down operations at a Chino slaughterhouse accused of supplying meat from at-risk cattle and treating weak animals cruelly. The agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced late Tuesday that it was indefinitely suspending inspection at Hallmark Meat Packing, an action that in effect bars the supplier from slaughtering and producing meat while authorities investigate the allegations. The meatpacker clearly violated "federal regulations and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act," USDA undersecretary for food safety Richard Raymond said in a statement. After the release of a video from the Humane Society of the United States, the USDA last week suspended the company's contracts for federal food programs. The video showed slaughterhouse workers forcing "downer" cows to their feet using sticks, electric prods and water hoses. Westland Meat Co., Hallmark's distributor and a ground beef supplier for the National School Lunch Program, voluntarily halted operations at the time....
The Other Side of Los Angeles There was a time not too long ago that great herds of antelope roamed the western Mojave. In the 1880s, driven by heavy snows across the valley floor, they headed east toward their feeding grounds. The Indians were already long gone from the region, and, like the mighty buffalo of the Great Plains, the antelope’s days were numbered. A few months after Custer and his gray horse unit were killed in the horrific clash in the greasy grass, a sporting party gathered at the arroyos and foothills of the Antelope Valley where the fleet animal liked to range. “They came on horseback and in springboard wagons,” says valley historian Gloria Gine Hossard. “Their faces flushed with excitement and the effects of an ample supply of liquid spirits. Their suits were of the latest fashion and cut from the most expensive material deemed suitable for the hunting field. Packed inside the felt-lined leather boxes were the latest in firearms, new Sharps and Henry rifles, well oiled, manicured and pampered....
Chupacabra update: Mystery grows with new test results Its DNA has been flown across the continent as Cuero residents search for a final answer about their mysterious, blood-sucking beast. The much-anticipated results are back from experts at the University of California at Davis. Last year, the KENS I-Team had scientists from Texas State University evaluate DNA from the animal Canion found. The animal was one of three peculiar, lavender-colored, dog-like animals Cuero residents found last July. Results from Texas State University stated the animal is from the coyote family. But Canion wanted to know more, so she sent more DNA, tooth and tissue samples, off to California. Results from the University of California at Davis show the animal is in fact a mutt: on the mother's side it is part coyote. "On the paternal side, it had Mexican wolf in it," said Canion. Scientists from the University of California at Davis say they can't tell when the Mexican wolf heritage made its way into the gene pool. "It was a hybrid, because it has this other breed in it," she said. Canion is referring to the hairless, odd-colored skin originally thought to be caused by parasites or disease. Now, experts aren't so sure. The Cuero rancher said she expects further testing to find out where all the hair has gone and why the animal, she says, seems to crave just blood from its victims. "We still can't figure that one out," she said....
Gov again slams royalty cut A federal plan to keep a bigger share of federal mineral royalties is designed to recoup costs for paperwork and manpower required for collection and distribution of the money, a federal Minerals Management Service Spokesman says. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, meanwhile, says the change is "an absolute crime." While the states and the federal government used to split those royalties 50-50, the split is now 52-48 with the federal government getting the larger share. The change first became law as part of a spending bill signed by President Bush in December. Bush suggested extending the provision by another year in his proposed budget released Monday. Gary Strasburg, a spokesman for the Minerals Management Service, which is part of the Interior Department, said the extra money for the federal government is intended to cover the administrative costs. But it will be deposited into the general treasury, he said....
The Collapse of Central Valley Salmon The latest federal government data on 2007's salmon run on the Sacramento River point to an "unprecedented collapse" in the fishery considered for years to be one of the most healthy on the West Coast. If the data is verified in upcoming meetings of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), commercial and recreational salmon fishing in California and Oregon ocean waters and recreational salmon fishing in Central Valley rivers could be closed or severely restricted in 2008. This alarming news couldn't come at a worse time, since recreational and commercial fishermen are already reeling from draconian restrictions on rockfish, lingcod and other groundfish in California. "The magnitude of the low abundance, should it be confirmed in verification efforts now underway, is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned in the upcoming Council process to set 2008 ocean salmon seasons," according to an internal memo of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) by Donald O. McIsaac, Ph. D, Executive Director....
Snow news good news for Colorado River area A snowy January on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains has water managers crossing their fingers for something they haven't seen for a while: a truly wet year on the Colorado River. The latest forecast calls for the river to receive 120 percent of its normal inflow from melting mountain snow. If that prediction comes to pass, 2008 would go down as the best year on the Colorado in more than a decade. As of Tuesday, snow levels were above average by as much as 56 percent in parts of central and western Colorado credited with supplying large amounts of water to the river system. Elsewhere in the high country of Colorado, Utah and Arizona, the snowpack is almost double what it normally is this time of year with more winter storms in the forecast for this weekend....
Power Struggle The first sign that there might be something wrong with the water on Craig Duderstadt’s south Texas ranch was when the cows wouldn’t drink. Last summer, they began to bypass their special groundwater well-fed trough, preferring to drink from a muddy puddle of rainwater. “This is a full water trough, and they’d walk a couple hundred yards and drink from a water hole. They’d walk right past that water trough,” Duderstadt said. “You can’t make ‘em drink.” About that same time, the well water used inside the house for everything from showering to drinking started running red and slimy. A well filter that would normally last six months plugged up in a matter of hours—one time, Craig couldn’t even get it out of the filter casing because of all the sediment. The Duderstadts stopped drinking the water, too. A Culligan driver now brings four blue jugs of clean water a month from Victoria, the nearest big town, about a 30-minute drive northeast. The culprit, they say, is a uranium mining operation 1,250 feet from their front door. They say the water turns bad when the mining company drills exploration wells nearby....
Judge delays decision on eagle's status Calling the fate of Arizona's eagles "an important issue for our district and the United States," a federal judge in Phoenix postponed a decision Tuesday about protections for the state's desert-nesting bald eagles. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Murguia will decide if federal officials acted too hastily in removing Arizona's smaller, lighter bald eagles from the federal endangered-species list. Arizona's small band of raptors was removed from endangered-species protections in August along with the nation's other 11,000 bald eagles in the lower 48 states. The action to include Arizona eagles was protested by Gov. Janet Napolitano, U.S. Reps. Harry Mitchell and Raul Grijalva, all three Democrats, along with conservation groups and Indian tribes. In a courtroom filled with more than 75 tribal leaders and members of the public, lawyers for the Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon, the groups that filed the lawsuit, asked that the Arizona birds be put back on the endangered-species list, at least until their status can be reviewed by wildlife officials....
Cost to save bighorn pegged at $26.7m Saving the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep could cost at least $26.7 million over the next 20 years, a new federal study estimates. Environmentalists and federal officials consider this a good investment in protecting a shaggy, endangered mammal that is found from Tuolumne to Tulare counties and across to the Sierra Nevada's remote east side. "It looks like a fair amount of money," Bob Williams, Nevada field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Tuesday, "but compared to other species, this is relatively small, and the costs are in line with what the species needs." The public costs cover state and federal dollars directly spent on bighorn sheep monitoring and recovery. But they also include the potential sacrifice of fees that ranchers pay so their animals can graze on federal lands. To help the sheep, some such grazing would be restricted....
Uranium Exploration Near Grand Canyon With minimal public notice and no formal environmental review, the Forest Service has approved a permit allowing a British mining company to explore for uranium just outside Grand Canyon National Park, less than three miles from a popular lookout over the canyon’s southern rim. If the exploration finds rich uranium deposits, it could lead to the first mines near the canyon since the price of uranium ore plummeted nearly two decades ago. A sharp increase in uranium prices over the past three years has led individuals to stake thousands of mining claims in the Southwest, including more than 1,000 in the Kaibab National Forest, near the Grand Canyon. To drill exploratory wells on the claims in the Kaibab forest requires Forest Service approval. Vane Minerals, the British company, received such approval for seven sites in December. The Forest Service granted the approvals without a full-dress environmental assessment, ruling that the canyon could be “categorically excluded” from such a review because exploration would last less than a year and might not lead to mining activity....
Voices in the Wild Sawtooth National Forest Supervisor Jane Kollmeyer will decide in February whether to allow construction of a 90-foot-tall communications stealth tower (cleverly disguised as a pine tree) on the 8,700-foot summit. The tower would provide cellular coverage from Galena Lodge to Petit Lake, including much of the village of Smiley Creek in the Stanley Basin. Proponents of the tower argue for public safety along Highway 75, which connects the towns of Ketchum and Sun Valley with Galena Summit and the Stanley Basin to the north, where stranded motorists could call for help. Others say backcountry skiers and hikers could call for help in an emergency. Critics of the tower plan say it will be unsightly and detract from the splendor of the area, popular with backcountry skiers, snowboarders and hikers. On a clear day, Galena Summit affords views from Stanley to Bald Mountain, a distance of 60 miles, as well as the Sawtooth, Boulder and White Cloud mountains. Jackie Richter, U.S. Forest Service project leader for the proposed Galena Summit Tower study, has collected 94 comments on both sides of the issue and is awaiting an environmental assessment before the Forest Service can proceed with a decision....all this over a fake tree, a "cleverly disguised" fake tree.
Limestone Madness Nothing loves limestone more than the native ocotillo that covers the Empire Valley hills, southeast of Tucson. The problem is, mining interests including California Portland Cement have their own brand of love for those same hills just above Vail. The result is a four-year battle between the community-based Empire-Fagan Coalition, mining companies and the Arizona State Land Department, which approved new leases last year for three limestone-mining claims. The leases--still working their way through litigation--bring up the on-again, off-again debate about Arizona's laws that govern mining and state trust land reform. Empire High School teacher Mike Carson heads the Empire-Fagan Coalition, which questions if the land department is doing the right thing by approving mining leases near a growing residential area dependent on well water. Despite the land department's lease approvals, Carson and his neighbors are optimistic they will prevail....
BLM tries to balance gas, art An ongoing dust-up may have just gained clarity over how to further develop natural gas resources in the nearly 138,000 acres known as the West Tavaputs Plateau Project Area. A main issues is how to preserve "the world's longest rock art gallery" amid gas operations that critics say are already ruining centuries-old petroglyphs. "We've had to take a hard look at all the issues in that area," said Brad Higdon, planning and environmental coordinator in the Bureau of Land Management's Price field office. "Certainly, cultural resources are key issues because of the sensitivity of the area." The BLM announced Friday that the draft environmental impact statement for a proposal by Colorado-based Bill Barrett Corp. and other operators is now available for public comment until May 1. The BLM is scheduling public meetings to be held between now and May 1 in the Salt Lake City, Price and Roosevelt areas. The plan proposed by Barrett Corp. and others is to drill up to 807 more natural gas wells in the Tavaputs Plateau. At full production from those added wells, the area could some day produce more than 50 percent of Utah's demand for natural gas, Higdon estimated....
Americans Spending Less Time in Nature Anyone who has ever tried to book a room near Yellowstone National Park in August knows that natural places can get very crowded. But biologist Oliver Pergams says those crowds can hide an important trend: Every year, a smaller percentage of Americans are fishing, camping or engaging in other nature-based activities. Since the late 1980s, the percentage of Americans taking part in such activities has declined at slightly more than 1 percent a year. The total effect, Pergams says, is that participation is down 18 percent to 25 percent from peak levels. Pergams teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For several years now, he has been collecting outdoor head counts kept not only by national parks, but also by state and local parks, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and commercial polling firms. "We've got data for hunting licenses, fishing licenses, three different data sources for camping and backpacking and hiking," Pergams says....
Valentine's Day goes green with eco-friendly flowers, treats You drive a hybrid, bring your own bags to the market, keep tabs on your carbon footprint. As an eco-conscious individual, you practice what you preach. So, what are the eco-sensitive to do on Valentine's Day? What of the emissions created by flying and trucking those beautiful flowers (treated with who knows what) across the globe? What about the wine? The chocolate? Turns out the floral industry's been listening to such concerns. Programs like Florverde in Colombia and VeriFlora Certified Sustainably Grown in the United States help ensure participating floral farms, handlers, and distributors abide by environmental and social best-practice standards. European flowers, too, have their own certification standards in place. Not every farm and flower is Earth-perfect. But the tide is turning. Organic chocolate is easier to find, especially at chain retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and at local shops such as Flat Black Coffee Co., Savenor's Market, Cardullo's in Harvard Square, and Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge (and South End). Look for the USDA Organic and Fair Trade logos on chocolate from makers Dagoba, Lake Champlain, Art Bar, and Green & Black's. Endangered Species Chocolates puts an eco-twist on chocolate by donating 10 percent of its net profits to environmental organizations....well, I needed some help with my chocolate addiction, and this just might do it.
US Arctic drilling rights sale smashes record A sale of oil and gas rights in U.S. waters of the Chukchi Sea, off the northwestern coast of Alaska, has brought in a record $2.66 billion despite protests over the opening the environmentally sensitive area to drilling. Oil company bidding for the acreage being offered by the federal government's Minerals Management Service surpassed the previous record set in the early 1980s, underscoring how high oil prices have transformed undesirable high cost regions into exploration hotspots. The federal government, in its latest budget, had estimated it would receive only $67 million for the acreage, said MMS Director Randall Luthi, who traveled from Washington to attend the sale. A small group of protesters, one dressed in a polar bear costume, braved temperatures of -24 degrees Celsius (-11 Fahrenheit) outside the public library in Anchorage where the lease sale was being held....
Helping wildlife cross roads In the mountains near Vail, the state is planning to build the first wildlife bridge in Colorado history, while near Boulder, wildlife specialists are considering protecting elk by either building a wildlife underpass or fitting the animals with collars that would trigger lights warning of their presence. The measures are a result of an upsurge in car-animal accidents as human use of highways grows and habitats shrink. Nine Canada lynx — listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — have been killed in recent years in Colorado, two on Interstate 70 on West Vail Pass. Now, a coalition that includes the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project and natural-resource agencies wants to build a bridge over I-70 in that area to reconnect critical wildlife habitat. The goal of the bridge is to not only protect the Canada lynx, but other wildlife including moose, mountain lion, black bear and elk....
Judge spurns timber group's suit over bird A federal judge Tuesday rejected an attempt by the timber industry to remove federal protections for the marbled murrelet, an imperiled Northwest seabird that nests in coastal forests and stands in the way of logging. The American Forest Resource Council, an industry group based in Portland, sued the federal government arguing the bird should be removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species. But U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington, D.C., turned down the lawsuit Tuesday, concluding that there had been no official federal decision to keep the bird protected, and therefore there was nothing for the timber group to challenge in court. He said, however, that the timber group could still petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the bird from the list. Chris West, vice president of the council, said Tuesday that the group is assessing its options and may do that. The Forest Resource Council tried to force the issue in court after the Bush administration concluded that marbled murrelets in the Northwest do not differ enough from more plentiful birds in Alaska to merit protection on their own. But the administration, through the Fish and Wildlife Service, has not taken any further action on that conclusion. Instead, the federal agency said it would first review the condition of the entire murrelet population, including the Alaska birds....
Turner 'almost done' buying up ranchland CNN founder Ted Turner, the largest private landowner in Nebraska and the United States and the nation's largest bison rancher, said Wednesday that he is about done buying new ranches. He said he would like to reach 2 million acres nationwide before he dies — about 40,000 acres more than he currently owns. "I'm almost done. I've got enough," said Turner, who was visiting Omaha for the reopening and renaming of one of his 54 bison restaurants, now called Ted's Nebraska Grill. The 69-year-old billionaire, philanthropist and conservationist said he isn't interested in free-standing ranches anymore, only "reasonably priced" parcels adjacent to his current operations, which include five ranches in Nebraska near Gordon, Oshkosh and Mullen. The ranches cover 425,221 acres, an area larger than Douglas and Sarpy Counties combined. "You know what 2 million acres is?" Turner asked over a plate of bison miniburgers and transfat-free onion rings. "If my land was all connected, in one long straight line, a mile deep, it would stretch from New York to San Francisco." Then he joked: "I've been thinking about doing some swaps. I'd be able to cut the United States in half and charge people from going from the north to the south."....I always wondered what his ego was like. Now I know.
Cloning Splits Meat Industry The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently deemed cloned meat to be as safe to eat as meat from traditionally bred livestock, but it still looks to be a tough sell in Montana, with a state representative already planning legislation opposing it, insiders in the meat industry expressing skepticism and a public that remains wary. To be sure, livestock cloning has its share of proponents in the state, and elsewhere throughout the nation. Included among them are officials from the Montana Stockgrowers Association and a cross-section of ranchers, though not all support it. To skeptics, however, the FDA’s decision is unfavorable for different reasons. Some say it came too soon. Others have moral and ethical qualms. And still others just don’t know what to think about it – they feel we’ve stepped into strange futuristic territory, which can be unnerving....
USDA shuts down supplier of beef to schools The U.S. Department of Agriculture has shut down operations at a Chino slaughterhouse accused of supplying meat from at-risk cattle and treating weak animals cruelly. The agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced late Tuesday that it was indefinitely suspending inspection at Hallmark Meat Packing, an action that in effect bars the supplier from slaughtering and producing meat while authorities investigate the allegations. The meatpacker clearly violated "federal regulations and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act," USDA undersecretary for food safety Richard Raymond said in a statement. After the release of a video from the Humane Society of the United States, the USDA last week suspended the company's contracts for federal food programs. The video showed slaughterhouse workers forcing "downer" cows to their feet using sticks, electric prods and water hoses. Westland Meat Co., Hallmark's distributor and a ground beef supplier for the National School Lunch Program, voluntarily halted operations at the time....
The Other Side of Los Angeles There was a time not too long ago that great herds of antelope roamed the western Mojave. In the 1880s, driven by heavy snows across the valley floor, they headed east toward their feeding grounds. The Indians were already long gone from the region, and, like the mighty buffalo of the Great Plains, the antelope’s days were numbered. A few months after Custer and his gray horse unit were killed in the horrific clash in the greasy grass, a sporting party gathered at the arroyos and foothills of the Antelope Valley where the fleet animal liked to range. “They came on horseback and in springboard wagons,” says valley historian Gloria Gine Hossard. “Their faces flushed with excitement and the effects of an ample supply of liquid spirits. Their suits were of the latest fashion and cut from the most expensive material deemed suitable for the hunting field. Packed inside the felt-lined leather boxes were the latest in firearms, new Sharps and Henry rifles, well oiled, manicured and pampered....
Chupacabra update: Mystery grows with new test results Its DNA has been flown across the continent as Cuero residents search for a final answer about their mysterious, blood-sucking beast. The much-anticipated results are back from experts at the University of California at Davis. Last year, the KENS I-Team had scientists from Texas State University evaluate DNA from the animal Canion found. The animal was one of three peculiar, lavender-colored, dog-like animals Cuero residents found last July. Results from Texas State University stated the animal is from the coyote family. But Canion wanted to know more, so she sent more DNA, tooth and tissue samples, off to California. Results from the University of California at Davis show the animal is in fact a mutt: on the mother's side it is part coyote. "On the paternal side, it had Mexican wolf in it," said Canion. Scientists from the University of California at Davis say they can't tell when the Mexican wolf heritage made its way into the gene pool. "It was a hybrid, because it has this other breed in it," she said. Canion is referring to the hairless, odd-colored skin originally thought to be caused by parasites or disease. Now, experts aren't so sure. The Cuero rancher said she expects further testing to find out where all the hair has gone and why the animal, she says, seems to crave just blood from its victims. "We still can't figure that one out," she said....
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Pinon Canyon meetings planned The Army has authorized several meetings this week with focus groups in La Junta and Trinidad to talk about the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. The move has opponents of the expansion protesting that the Army is defying a new federal budget law, while Fort Carson officials argue they only are fulfilling a different mandate from Congress. Lt. Col. Jim Rice, the Pinon Canyon project manager at Fort Carson, confirmed Monday that Kreativo, a Pueblo public relations firm owned by Glenn Ballantyne, had been contracted to conduct invitation-only meetings this week with community members in La Junta and Trinidad. The meetings come approximately a month after President Bush signed the 2008 omnibus budget bill, which includes a one-year ban on the Army spending any money this year on the proposed 414,000-acre expansion of the training site northeast of Trinidad. That ban was authored by Reps. Marilyn Musgrave and John Salazar, a Republican and Democrat who are opposed to any expansion of the 238,000-acre training area. Ranchers opposed to the expansion call the meetings the latest example of the Army disregarding the funding ban....
Texas farmers take water war with Mexico to Canada More than 40 Texas farmers, ranchers and irrigation districts are gearing up to take their long-standing water war with Mexico to the next level, in this case a Canadian judge. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs came to the Rio Grande Valley for a pep talk Tuesday, to reinvigorate farmers who have been fighting for three years and running up legal bills near $500,000. "You roll over now and you won't be in good shape," Combs told a room full of farmers and ranchers. In 2004, the farmers and ranchers sued Mexico for $500 million, arguing that their southern neighbor had shorted them on Rio Grande water from 1992 to 2002 in violation of a 1944 treaty. In June, a tribunal operating under the North American Free Trade Agreement decided it did not have jurisdiction, stalling the case before it got started. Most frustrating to the landowners was that the U.S. State Department had intervened at the last moment and sided with Mexico. "When they did that it really just hit you in the stomach," said Joe Barrera, general manager of the Brownsville Irrigation District....
Land agencies could endure heavy cuts President Bush's proposed 2009 budget would shrink the funding for every land management agency except the National Park Service. Under Bush's plan, the U.S. Forest Service discretionary budget would fall $373 million from 2008 levels, to $4.1 billion. Money for state and private forestry programs, research, maintenance, management and law enforcement would decrease from 2008. Dollars would be cut from wildfire preparedness, hazardous fuels suppression and other fire operations but would be boosted for fire suppression. The overall U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget would shrink by $65 million from 2008 levels, the Bureau of Land Management by $30 million and the Bureau of Indian Affairs by $100 million. While Bush proposes the levels as a first step, Congress has ultimate say over how much gets spent. The Park Service would see a slight overall increase of $14 million, to $2.4 billion. While its operating budget would shoot up by $161 million, its finances for construction and maintenance would drop by $46 million and land acquisition would fall by $48 million....
Lawmakers will debate tax credits for land conservation Idaho lawmakers will consider a bill that would offer income tax credits to farmers, ranchers and forest owners as an incentive to preserve their land. The House Revenue and Taxation Committee voted 13 to 4 today to consider a bill that would fund up to $3 million in tax credits per year. The measure would offer up to $500,000 for landowners who donate conservation easements on their property. The easements would have to last at least 30 years. A coalition of ranchers, growers, loggers, sportsmen and conservationists is pushing the bill. The group commissioned a poll in November that found 83% of Idaho voters supportive of using tax credits to encourage the protection of ranches, farms, private forests and open space.
Feds anticipate sage grouse decision in 2009 Federal officials may recommend by the end of the year whether to extend protections to the greater sage grouse in Montana, Wyoming and other Western states. In December, a federal judge in Idaho said the Bush administration's 2005 decision not to place the bird on the endangered-species list was "tainted by the inexcusable conduct" of a senior Interior Department official and done without considering information from experts. In the wake of the decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will conduct a yearlong, intensive review of the bird and decide whether it should be placed on the list, Diane Katzenberger, an agency spokeswoman in Denver, said Tuesday afternoon. A notice of the decision to conduct that status review is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register next week, Katzenberger said....
Will the 'domino' fall? A diverse and ostensibly powerful alliance of organizations and elected officials has been opposing new oil and gas drilling projects in the Wyoming Range for about three years. It's unclear what the campaign has yielded, if anything. Those who have joined to protect the mountain range in the western part of the state are an eclectic group of people and organizations, including Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal, Republican U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range, the Wilderness Society, the National Outdoor Leadership School, miners, ranchers, outfitters, hunters and even some gas patch workers. A bill to protect the range, introduced by Barrasso five months ago, would stop the sale of any future leases there, and allow for negotiated buyouts -- and the subsequent permanent retirement of existing leases. But the bill has languished in the Senate, and is still waiting for its first hearing in a subcommittee. Meanwhile, in what Freudenthal has characterized as "the first domino" toward industrialization of the Wyoming Range, Plains Exploration and Production Co. is moving forward with plans for a 17-pad, 136-well development of legally valid gas leases it owns in the Upper Hoback River Basin, just south of Bondurant....
Does state have a say? When it comes to energy development in the Wyoming Range, do residents of the Equality State have a say in the matter? At least one cattle rancher in Daniel is beginning to wonder. If the federal government sells oil and gas leases in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, could Wyoming residents -- even if a majority agree they don't want drilling there -- do anything at all to stop it? For J.J. Healy, who runs a cow-calf operation near a proposed drilling site south of Bondurant, these are two of the most basic questions that emerge for him when he considers the big picture. Today, if he looks out his ranch window, he'll see a familiar panorama: rolling, sage-speckled hills, behind them a slow dip into a hay meadow, and beyond that the gentle, but majestic rise of the wooded and snow-covered peaks of the Wyoming Range. What Healey sees has been relatively untouched by industrialization thus far. That holds true for most of the range, but recent plans to develop gas leases in this mountain forest would change everything, he said....
Fish and Game proposes grizzly bear compensation Idaho lawmakers will hold a hearing on a proposal to compensate ranchers when grizzly bears kill livestock in eastern Idaho. The Senate Resources and Environment Committee voted Monday to hold the hearing, likely to be scheduled for next week, after a 12-member Idaho Department of Fish and Game advisory group introduced the legislation. The compensation would come from Fish and Game's Big Game Depredation Fund. A deductible of $1,000 would be required before a claim could be filed. Idaho ranchers and landowners already can be compensated by the state for damage caused by black bears and mountain lions. Last April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted Endangered Species Act protections for the estimated 500 grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park. Fish and Game now manages the population in the eastern part of Idaho, thought to be about 40 bears. Ken Marlor, chairman of the Fish and Game advisory group, said there have been a few cases of grizzlies causing damage to property in eastern Idaho. He said it's difficult to track the incidents because the bears are always on the move, the Post Register reported....
Ridley agrees to $6M settlement in BSE lawsuit Winnipeg feed maker Ridley Inc. will pay $6 million to Canada's cattle producers to end its exposure to class actions over the arrival of mad cow disease. The company said in a press release Tuesday that it will pay $6 million into a plaintiffs' settlement trust fund to settle claims against it in four co-ordinated lawsuits filed by ranchers in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. "Ridley makes no admission of liability or wrongdoing in the matter and we will continue to contest any allegation we were responsible for the plaintiffs' damages," said Ridley CEO Steve VanRoekel in the company's release. However, he said, "resolving these lawsuits now minimizes the costs associated with defending an already lengthy litigation, eliminates the uncertainty, and allows us to move our business forward." The proposed suits had alleged that negligence by both Ridley and the federal government led to the the infection of an Alberta cow with mad cow disease, and the subsequent BSE crisis starting in May 2003....
Texas farmers take water war with Mexico to Canada More than 40 Texas farmers, ranchers and irrigation districts are gearing up to take their long-standing water war with Mexico to the next level, in this case a Canadian judge. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs came to the Rio Grande Valley for a pep talk Tuesday, to reinvigorate farmers who have been fighting for three years and running up legal bills near $500,000. "You roll over now and you won't be in good shape," Combs told a room full of farmers and ranchers. In 2004, the farmers and ranchers sued Mexico for $500 million, arguing that their southern neighbor had shorted them on Rio Grande water from 1992 to 2002 in violation of a 1944 treaty. In June, a tribunal operating under the North American Free Trade Agreement decided it did not have jurisdiction, stalling the case before it got started. Most frustrating to the landowners was that the U.S. State Department had intervened at the last moment and sided with Mexico. "When they did that it really just hit you in the stomach," said Joe Barrera, general manager of the Brownsville Irrigation District....
Land agencies could endure heavy cuts President Bush's proposed 2009 budget would shrink the funding for every land management agency except the National Park Service. Under Bush's plan, the U.S. Forest Service discretionary budget would fall $373 million from 2008 levels, to $4.1 billion. Money for state and private forestry programs, research, maintenance, management and law enforcement would decrease from 2008. Dollars would be cut from wildfire preparedness, hazardous fuels suppression and other fire operations but would be boosted for fire suppression. The overall U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget would shrink by $65 million from 2008 levels, the Bureau of Land Management by $30 million and the Bureau of Indian Affairs by $100 million. While Bush proposes the levels as a first step, Congress has ultimate say over how much gets spent. The Park Service would see a slight overall increase of $14 million, to $2.4 billion. While its operating budget would shoot up by $161 million, its finances for construction and maintenance would drop by $46 million and land acquisition would fall by $48 million....
Lawmakers will debate tax credits for land conservation Idaho lawmakers will consider a bill that would offer income tax credits to farmers, ranchers and forest owners as an incentive to preserve their land. The House Revenue and Taxation Committee voted 13 to 4 today to consider a bill that would fund up to $3 million in tax credits per year. The measure would offer up to $500,000 for landowners who donate conservation easements on their property. The easements would have to last at least 30 years. A coalition of ranchers, growers, loggers, sportsmen and conservationists is pushing the bill. The group commissioned a poll in November that found 83% of Idaho voters supportive of using tax credits to encourage the protection of ranches, farms, private forests and open space.
Feds anticipate sage grouse decision in 2009 Federal officials may recommend by the end of the year whether to extend protections to the greater sage grouse in Montana, Wyoming and other Western states. In December, a federal judge in Idaho said the Bush administration's 2005 decision not to place the bird on the endangered-species list was "tainted by the inexcusable conduct" of a senior Interior Department official and done without considering information from experts. In the wake of the decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will conduct a yearlong, intensive review of the bird and decide whether it should be placed on the list, Diane Katzenberger, an agency spokeswoman in Denver, said Tuesday afternoon. A notice of the decision to conduct that status review is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register next week, Katzenberger said....
Will the 'domino' fall? A diverse and ostensibly powerful alliance of organizations and elected officials has been opposing new oil and gas drilling projects in the Wyoming Range for about three years. It's unclear what the campaign has yielded, if anything. Those who have joined to protect the mountain range in the western part of the state are an eclectic group of people and organizations, including Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal, Republican U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range, the Wilderness Society, the National Outdoor Leadership School, miners, ranchers, outfitters, hunters and even some gas patch workers. A bill to protect the range, introduced by Barrasso five months ago, would stop the sale of any future leases there, and allow for negotiated buyouts -- and the subsequent permanent retirement of existing leases. But the bill has languished in the Senate, and is still waiting for its first hearing in a subcommittee. Meanwhile, in what Freudenthal has characterized as "the first domino" toward industrialization of the Wyoming Range, Plains Exploration and Production Co. is moving forward with plans for a 17-pad, 136-well development of legally valid gas leases it owns in the Upper Hoback River Basin, just south of Bondurant....
Does state have a say? When it comes to energy development in the Wyoming Range, do residents of the Equality State have a say in the matter? At least one cattle rancher in Daniel is beginning to wonder. If the federal government sells oil and gas leases in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, could Wyoming residents -- even if a majority agree they don't want drilling there -- do anything at all to stop it? For J.J. Healy, who runs a cow-calf operation near a proposed drilling site south of Bondurant, these are two of the most basic questions that emerge for him when he considers the big picture. Today, if he looks out his ranch window, he'll see a familiar panorama: rolling, sage-speckled hills, behind them a slow dip into a hay meadow, and beyond that the gentle, but majestic rise of the wooded and snow-covered peaks of the Wyoming Range. What Healey sees has been relatively untouched by industrialization thus far. That holds true for most of the range, but recent plans to develop gas leases in this mountain forest would change everything, he said....
Fish and Game proposes grizzly bear compensation Idaho lawmakers will hold a hearing on a proposal to compensate ranchers when grizzly bears kill livestock in eastern Idaho. The Senate Resources and Environment Committee voted Monday to hold the hearing, likely to be scheduled for next week, after a 12-member Idaho Department of Fish and Game advisory group introduced the legislation. The compensation would come from Fish and Game's Big Game Depredation Fund. A deductible of $1,000 would be required before a claim could be filed. Idaho ranchers and landowners already can be compensated by the state for damage caused by black bears and mountain lions. Last April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted Endangered Species Act protections for the estimated 500 grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park. Fish and Game now manages the population in the eastern part of Idaho, thought to be about 40 bears. Ken Marlor, chairman of the Fish and Game advisory group, said there have been a few cases of grizzlies causing damage to property in eastern Idaho. He said it's difficult to track the incidents because the bears are always on the move, the Post Register reported....
Ridley agrees to $6M settlement in BSE lawsuit Winnipeg feed maker Ridley Inc. will pay $6 million to Canada's cattle producers to end its exposure to class actions over the arrival of mad cow disease. The company said in a press release Tuesday that it will pay $6 million into a plaintiffs' settlement trust fund to settle claims against it in four co-ordinated lawsuits filed by ranchers in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. "Ridley makes no admission of liability or wrongdoing in the matter and we will continue to contest any allegation we were responsible for the plaintiffs' damages," said Ridley CEO Steve VanRoekel in the company's release. However, he said, "resolving these lawsuits now minimizes the costs associated with defending an already lengthy litigation, eliminates the uncertainty, and allows us to move our business forward." The proposed suits had alleged that negligence by both Ridley and the federal government led to the the infection of an Alberta cow with mad cow disease, and the subsequent BSE crisis starting in May 2003....
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Oregon coastal coho listed as threatened — again The Oregon coastal coho, the subject of bitter court battles for years, is once again a threatened species. The decision Monday by NOAA Fisheries Service, the federal agency in charge of restoring declining salmon populations, came in response to a federal court ruling that an earlier decision not to protect the fish violated the Endangered Species Act and could not be supported by science. Bob Lohn, northwest regional director of NOAA Fisheries, said in a statement that the tight schedule under the court ruling made it difficult to reach any other conclusion, and he still believed that Oregon's plan for restoring coho largely through voluntary measures was working. Oregon coastal coho were originally listed as threatened in 1997 under a federal court ruling, then dropped in 2001 after property rights advocates convinced a federal judge that NOAA Fisheries had improperly distinguished between wild and hatchery fish. Putting Oregon coastal coho back brings to 27 the number of Pacific salmon protected by the Endangered Species Act and adds another layer of regulation to logging and other land use decisions on federal, state and private lands in the central Oregon Coast Range, particularly a U.S. Bureau of Land Management plan to ramp up logging to boost federal revenues paid to timber-dependent counties....
Interior Department plans to boost border security The Interior Department plans to boost border security by deploying more law enforcement officers along the Southwest border to deter drug smugglers that are endangering local residents and federal workers and damaging fragile ecosystems. The department controls large areas of land along the border with Mexico, either through the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service or Bureau of Indian Affairs. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's office says he's asking for an $8 million boost in spending for fiscal year 2009. Most of the money would be spent on adding law enforcement officers to border areas. About $2 million will go towards cleaning up environmental damage caused by smugglers and illegal border crossers and on improved radios....
The West, Washington, D.C., and Weapons n 1989, John Shuler of rural Dupuyer, Montana, heard grizzly bears outside his house; fearing they would kill his sheep, he grabbed his rifle and ran into the night. The good news is he survived his encounter with four grizzly bears, as did his sheep. The bad news is his lawyers spent eight years and a quarter of a million dollars to get him acquitted of charges that he violated the Endangered Species Act by killing one of those bears. Early on in that legal battle, the federal government ruled that, although Shuler justifiably feared “death or serious bodily injury”—the test for a self-defense claim—he had no right to arm himself and enter into what the government called “the zone of imminent danger.” That conclusion conflicted directly with an 1895 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which, quoting authority, the Court ruled, “Where an attack is made with murderous intent . . . the person attacked is under no duty to flee. He may stand his ground, and, if need be, kill his adversary.” Moreover, the government’s view of Shuler’s right to arm himself and confront danger conflicted with the ethos of the American West, a vast area from the midst of the Great Plains to the Cascades, from Canada to Mexico....
A look at the biology of wolves in Montana If all goes as planned, then the gray wolf of the Northern Rockies will become just the 18th of 1,255 animals to leave the endangered species list as a recovered species. That's scheduled to happen within the next 60 days and to better understand how the wolf came back from the brink, we took a closer look at the unique biology of a predator that evokes all kinds of emotion. No Montana animal evokes emotion like the wolf and one reason for that is a misunderstanding brought on by myths. "We grew up reading Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs and that's sometimes our only experience with wolves" says Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Wolf Management Specialist Liz Bradley. Real wolves feed on elk and even that spurs controversy as some say wolves help elk....
BLM recommends reducing wild horse herd A wild horse herd along the Montana-Wyoming border that traces its ancestry to the mounts ridden by Spanish conquistadors could be reduced through adoption by more than 35 percent, under recommendations released Monday by federal officials. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says a decade-long drought – coupled with overgrazing by the herd – is severely degrading portions of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range near Lovell, Wyo. To reverse that trend, BLM officials in a new study recommended reducing the herd through adoption to as few as 92 adult horses. The herd currently numbers 143 adults and several dozen foals. “There's definitely drought, but having too many horses during drought years magnifies the situation,” said BLM wild horse specialist Jared Bybee. Wild horse advocates warn that shrinking the herd so drastically would be disastrous. They say it could end up ruining one of the most genetically pure herds of Spanish colonial horses in the country....
World’s Greatest Horseman to be Featured on RFD-TV On Wide World of Horses A special program on the 2008 National Reined Cow Horse Association World’s Greatest Horseman will appear on Wide World of Horses, on RFD-TV. Filmed by Envision! of San Antonio, Texas, the program will feature the excitement and thrills of one of the horse world’s most popular events. The World’s Greatest Horseman contest is part of the NRCHA Fort Dodge Animal Health Celebration of Champions, slated for February 16-24 in Stephenville, Texas. Billed as “one horse, one rider and one very special title,” the event is just that, featuring some of the top trainers in the world, including former champions Ted Robinson, Bob Avila, Jon Roeser, Ron Ralls and Andy Adams. The 30-minute highlight show will air on Monday night, April 7, at 9:30 pm CST and also on Monday at 11:30 am CST. It will air again on Sunday, April 13, at 6:30 am CST. Wide World of Horses airs on RFD-TV (DIRECT TV 379 and DISH NETWORK 231). The National Reined Cow Horse Association, the governing body of cow horse competition, is responsible for promoting the sport, insuring high standards of competition and educating members and the public about the history and tradition of the cow horse....
Interior Department plans to boost border security The Interior Department plans to boost border security by deploying more law enforcement officers along the Southwest border to deter drug smugglers that are endangering local residents and federal workers and damaging fragile ecosystems. The department controls large areas of land along the border with Mexico, either through the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service or Bureau of Indian Affairs. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's office says he's asking for an $8 million boost in spending for fiscal year 2009. Most of the money would be spent on adding law enforcement officers to border areas. About $2 million will go towards cleaning up environmental damage caused by smugglers and illegal border crossers and on improved radios....
The West, Washington, D.C., and Weapons n 1989, John Shuler of rural Dupuyer, Montana, heard grizzly bears outside his house; fearing they would kill his sheep, he grabbed his rifle and ran into the night. The good news is he survived his encounter with four grizzly bears, as did his sheep. The bad news is his lawyers spent eight years and a quarter of a million dollars to get him acquitted of charges that he violated the Endangered Species Act by killing one of those bears. Early on in that legal battle, the federal government ruled that, although Shuler justifiably feared “death or serious bodily injury”—the test for a self-defense claim—he had no right to arm himself and enter into what the government called “the zone of imminent danger.” That conclusion conflicted directly with an 1895 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which, quoting authority, the Court ruled, “Where an attack is made with murderous intent . . . the person attacked is under no duty to flee. He may stand his ground, and, if need be, kill his adversary.” Moreover, the government’s view of Shuler’s right to arm himself and confront danger conflicted with the ethos of the American West, a vast area from the midst of the Great Plains to the Cascades, from Canada to Mexico....
A look at the biology of wolves in Montana If all goes as planned, then the gray wolf of the Northern Rockies will become just the 18th of 1,255 animals to leave the endangered species list as a recovered species. That's scheduled to happen within the next 60 days and to better understand how the wolf came back from the brink, we took a closer look at the unique biology of a predator that evokes all kinds of emotion. No Montana animal evokes emotion like the wolf and one reason for that is a misunderstanding brought on by myths. "We grew up reading Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs and that's sometimes our only experience with wolves" says Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Wolf Management Specialist Liz Bradley. Real wolves feed on elk and even that spurs controversy as some say wolves help elk....
BLM recommends reducing wild horse herd A wild horse herd along the Montana-Wyoming border that traces its ancestry to the mounts ridden by Spanish conquistadors could be reduced through adoption by more than 35 percent, under recommendations released Monday by federal officials. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says a decade-long drought – coupled with overgrazing by the herd – is severely degrading portions of the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range near Lovell, Wyo. To reverse that trend, BLM officials in a new study recommended reducing the herd through adoption to as few as 92 adult horses. The herd currently numbers 143 adults and several dozen foals. “There's definitely drought, but having too many horses during drought years magnifies the situation,” said BLM wild horse specialist Jared Bybee. Wild horse advocates warn that shrinking the herd so drastically would be disastrous. They say it could end up ruining one of the most genetically pure herds of Spanish colonial horses in the country....
World’s Greatest Horseman to be Featured on RFD-TV On Wide World of Horses A special program on the 2008 National Reined Cow Horse Association World’s Greatest Horseman will appear on Wide World of Horses, on RFD-TV. Filmed by Envision! of San Antonio, Texas, the program will feature the excitement and thrills of one of the horse world’s most popular events. The World’s Greatest Horseman contest is part of the NRCHA Fort Dodge Animal Health Celebration of Champions, slated for February 16-24 in Stephenville, Texas. Billed as “one horse, one rider and one very special title,” the event is just that, featuring some of the top trainers in the world, including former champions Ted Robinson, Bob Avila, Jon Roeser, Ron Ralls and Andy Adams. The 30-minute highlight show will air on Monday night, April 7, at 9:30 pm CST and also on Monday at 11:30 am CST. It will air again on Sunday, April 13, at 6:30 am CST. Wide World of Horses airs on RFD-TV (DIRECT TV 379 and DISH NETWORK 231). The National Reined Cow Horse Association, the governing body of cow horse competition, is responsible for promoting the sport, insuring high standards of competition and educating members and the public about the history and tradition of the cow horse....
Monday, February 04, 2008
Budgets
President Proposes Budget for BLM in FY 2009 With a focus on the protection and sustainable development of public land resources, the Administration today requested a $1.002 billion gross budget for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in Fiscal Year 2009. The FY 2009 budget proposal includes a $10 million increase for the BLM’s role in implementing Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne’s Healthy Lands Initiative, which supports landscape-level restoration work in key areas across eight Western states....
Agency budget highlights Interior The White House is proposing a 3.7 percent cut in the Interior Department’s budget. The budget proposes $141 million in savings from the elimination or reduction of nine programs. The budget proposes to eliminate the Bureau of Land Management’s $10 million range improvement fund. Eliminating the fund will shift the responsibility of building and maintaining public land projects to those using the land, the administration said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs budget for road maintenance would get cut by $13 million. The administration says tribes could use Transportation Department funds for maintaining roads on Indian reservations. The Office of Surface Mining would receive $20 million less in discretionary grants for projects related to restoring lands affected by coal mining. The administration said this program duplicates efforts being undertaken through the office’s recently revised abandoned mine land grant program....
USDA Total USDA expenditures are estimated at $95 billion in FY 2009, which is approximately the same level as FY 2008. Roughly 76 percent of expenditures, or $72 billion in 2009, will be for mandatory programs that provide services required by law, which include many of the nutrition assistance, commodity, export promotion and conservation programs. Wildland Fires. The budget continues implementation of the President's Healthy Forests Initiative to mitigate the threat of catastrophic wildfires. Resources proposed in the budget will reduce hazardous fuels on almost 2.5 million acres of land. By the end of FY 2009, Federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, will have treated hazardous fuels and accomplished landscape restoration activities on 29.9 million acres of the Nation's forests and wooded rangelands since the beginning of FY 2001. The budget for the Forest Service also provides increased wildland fire resources to protect communities and natural resources, and provides for sustainable forests and communities through full funding of the Northwest Forest Plan....
USFWS The President's $2.2 billion FY 2009 budget request provides significant increases for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for bird conservation and habitat work on private lands across the nation, while sustaining increases in the National Wildlife Refuge System budget and supporting other key Service priorities. The $1.3 billion FY 2009 discretionary budget request represents a reduction of $64.6 million compared to the 2008 enacted level, with most reductions resulting from lowered proposed spending in construction and land acquisition. The request for the Endangered Species Program is $146.8 million. This reflects a decrease of $3.7 million from the 2008 enacted level to eliminate unrequested funding increases and cost savings through reduced administrative costs. The Service?s land acquisition account has been decreasing over the years to reflect our efforts to focus on our current management responsibilities. The request for land acquisition is $10.2 million, a $24.4 million reduction compared to the 2008 enacted level which includes reducing administrative and related costs to a level more in line with the current size of the program....
Park Service President Bush today proposed $2.4 billion in fiscal year 2009 for the National Park Service, including $2.13 billion for operation of the National Park System. This $160.9 million increase over the FY 2008 request for park operations will bolster visitor services and protect park resources and facilities. The request includes increases of nearly $45 million for targeted park base core operations, $36 million for parks’ fixed costs, $22.8 million for cyclic maintenance, $20 million for natural resource health and $ 8.0 million for Service-wide training and professional development programs....
Lawmakers complain Bush budget cuts fire prevention money President Bush's 2009 budget plan would slash money for fire prevention and preparedness in the wake of last fall's devastating wildfires in California, prompting an outcry from Democratic lawmakers who warned of massive layoffs at the Forest Service. Bush did propose a slight increase in money to respond to fires. Among the proposed cuts was a $13 million decrease in money for the Forest Service to clear debris and small trees that can pose a risk of fire. Money for preparedness and readiness, such as firefighter training and equipment, would fall from $942 million to $866 million, according to Democratic aides. Overall the budget for the U.S. Forest Service would decline from $4.5 billion in 2008 to $4.1 billion in 2009 under Bush's proposal. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., chairman of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee, called the proposed cuts to the Forest Service "breathtaking" and said they could result in a layoff of nearly 1,200 employees—10 percent of the agency's work force....
National Parks Conservation Association Calls on Congress to Improve Proposed Parks Budget The nation’s leading voice for the national parks, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), today praised the Administration’s $161-million proposed operating increase for national parks, while criticizing cuts to other critical park programs that undermine this much-needed operating increase. “The $161-million operating increase is an important step toward restoring our national parks, but cutting other critical Park Service funding will impede these efforts to fully restore the park system by its 2016 centennial,” said National Parks Conservation Association President Tom Kiernan. The National Parks Conservation Association is concerned that continuing to cut overall spending in the Department of the Interior will ultimately thwart efforts to restore the parks by their 2016 centennial. The overall fiscal year 2009 Interior budget is down $388 million or 3.5 percent from the current enacted level. The Administration’s overall fiscal year 2009 budget request for the National Park Service is approximately $2.4 billion—an increase of only $14 million over the current fiscal year 2008 budget....
President Proposes Budget for BLM in FY 2009 With a focus on the protection and sustainable development of public land resources, the Administration today requested a $1.002 billion gross budget for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in Fiscal Year 2009. The FY 2009 budget proposal includes a $10 million increase for the BLM’s role in implementing Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne’s Healthy Lands Initiative, which supports landscape-level restoration work in key areas across eight Western states....
Agency budget highlights Interior The White House is proposing a 3.7 percent cut in the Interior Department’s budget. The budget proposes $141 million in savings from the elimination or reduction of nine programs. The budget proposes to eliminate the Bureau of Land Management’s $10 million range improvement fund. Eliminating the fund will shift the responsibility of building and maintaining public land projects to those using the land, the administration said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs budget for road maintenance would get cut by $13 million. The administration says tribes could use Transportation Department funds for maintaining roads on Indian reservations. The Office of Surface Mining would receive $20 million less in discretionary grants for projects related to restoring lands affected by coal mining. The administration said this program duplicates efforts being undertaken through the office’s recently revised abandoned mine land grant program....
USDA Total USDA expenditures are estimated at $95 billion in FY 2009, which is approximately the same level as FY 2008. Roughly 76 percent of expenditures, or $72 billion in 2009, will be for mandatory programs that provide services required by law, which include many of the nutrition assistance, commodity, export promotion and conservation programs. Wildland Fires. The budget continues implementation of the President's Healthy Forests Initiative to mitigate the threat of catastrophic wildfires. Resources proposed in the budget will reduce hazardous fuels on almost 2.5 million acres of land. By the end of FY 2009, Federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, will have treated hazardous fuels and accomplished landscape restoration activities on 29.9 million acres of the Nation's forests and wooded rangelands since the beginning of FY 2001. The budget for the Forest Service also provides increased wildland fire resources to protect communities and natural resources, and provides for sustainable forests and communities through full funding of the Northwest Forest Plan....
USFWS The President's $2.2 billion FY 2009 budget request provides significant increases for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for bird conservation and habitat work on private lands across the nation, while sustaining increases in the National Wildlife Refuge System budget and supporting other key Service priorities. The $1.3 billion FY 2009 discretionary budget request represents a reduction of $64.6 million compared to the 2008 enacted level, with most reductions resulting from lowered proposed spending in construction and land acquisition. The request for the Endangered Species Program is $146.8 million. This reflects a decrease of $3.7 million from the 2008 enacted level to eliminate unrequested funding increases and cost savings through reduced administrative costs. The Service?s land acquisition account has been decreasing over the years to reflect our efforts to focus on our current management responsibilities. The request for land acquisition is $10.2 million, a $24.4 million reduction compared to the 2008 enacted level which includes reducing administrative and related costs to a level more in line with the current size of the program....
Park Service President Bush today proposed $2.4 billion in fiscal year 2009 for the National Park Service, including $2.13 billion for operation of the National Park System. This $160.9 million increase over the FY 2008 request for park operations will bolster visitor services and protect park resources and facilities. The request includes increases of nearly $45 million for targeted park base core operations, $36 million for parks’ fixed costs, $22.8 million for cyclic maintenance, $20 million for natural resource health and $ 8.0 million for Service-wide training and professional development programs....
Lawmakers complain Bush budget cuts fire prevention money President Bush's 2009 budget plan would slash money for fire prevention and preparedness in the wake of last fall's devastating wildfires in California, prompting an outcry from Democratic lawmakers who warned of massive layoffs at the Forest Service. Bush did propose a slight increase in money to respond to fires. Among the proposed cuts was a $13 million decrease in money for the Forest Service to clear debris and small trees that can pose a risk of fire. Money for preparedness and readiness, such as firefighter training and equipment, would fall from $942 million to $866 million, according to Democratic aides. Overall the budget for the U.S. Forest Service would decline from $4.5 billion in 2008 to $4.1 billion in 2009 under Bush's proposal. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., chairman of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee, called the proposed cuts to the Forest Service "breathtaking" and said they could result in a layoff of nearly 1,200 employees—10 percent of the agency's work force....
National Parks Conservation Association Calls on Congress to Improve Proposed Parks Budget The nation’s leading voice for the national parks, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), today praised the Administration’s $161-million proposed operating increase for national parks, while criticizing cuts to other critical park programs that undermine this much-needed operating increase. “The $161-million operating increase is an important step toward restoring our national parks, but cutting other critical Park Service funding will impede these efforts to fully restore the park system by its 2016 centennial,” said National Parks Conservation Association President Tom Kiernan. The National Parks Conservation Association is concerned that continuing to cut overall spending in the Department of the Interior will ultimately thwart efforts to restore the parks by their 2016 centennial. The overall fiscal year 2009 Interior budget is down $388 million or 3.5 percent from the current enacted level. The Administration’s overall fiscal year 2009 budget request for the National Park Service is approximately $2.4 billion—an increase of only $14 million over the current fiscal year 2008 budget....
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