Ballot proposals target oil, gas industry A bevy of environmental groups banded together Thursday to file four separate proposed ballot initiatives that would increase taxes on the oil and gas industry in one way or another. All of the measures would funnel the extra money — estimated by the groups in the range of $200 million to $300 million annually — into clean energy development, wildlife habitat preservation and mitigation efforts to communities hardest hit by booming growth in the industry. Joe Neuhof, West Slope field director for the Colorado Environmental Coalition, said the filing of multiple proposals was intended to give a menu of options for how to raise severance taxes and where to send that money. The initiatives present a variety of complex ways to effectively raise taxes — from eliminating a property-tax credit or an exemption for small wells to simply raising the tax rate. They also specify different proportions for where the extra money should go. Environmental groups have long argued that Colorado's rates for severance tax — money paid when companies remove, or "sever," natural resources from the ground — lag behind those of neighboring states. Gov. Bill Ritter and Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, both have said this year they are working on a proposal to raise the severance tax....
Colorado Town Fears Avalanche of Water More than 1 billion gallons of contaminated water - enough to fill 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools - is trapped in a tunnel in the mountains above the historic town of Leadville and threatening to blow. Lake County Commissioners have declared a local state of emergency for fear that this winter's above-average snowpack will melt and cause a catastrophic tidal wave. The water is backed up in abandoned mine shafts and a 2.1-mile drainage tunnel that is partially collapsed, creating the pooling of water contaminated with heavy metals. County officials have been nervously monitoring the rising water pressure inside the mine shafts for about two years. An explosion could inundate Leadville and contaminate the Arkansas River....
Witness surfaces in Boulder land grab A witness has surfaced in the Boulder, Colo., case in which a former judge and his wife used a little-known state law concerning "adverse possession" to gain ownership of a significant portion of their neighbor's valuable building lot in a pricy subdivision. It seems one of the neighbors now reports seeing a woman who looked like Edie Stevens, the judge's wife, "tromping, stomping and kicking the ground, causing vegetation and dirt to rise from the ground in the area where the dirt path … later appeared." That statement comes from neighbor Josephine Touchton, whose affidavit, along with other photographic and sworn evidence, was submitted to the court in Boulder by Don and Susie Kirlin. They had been ordered by a Boulder judge to give nearly one-third of their building lot in the Boulder residential development to a neighbor, former judge Richard McLean, and his wife. McLean and Stevens alleged they used the land belonging to the Kirlins' "adversely" for more than 18 years, during that course of time building a path to cross the land....
Biofuels Meltdown Last week two studies published in Science announced what anyone might have suspected all along. "Biofuels," rather than reducing carbon emissions, are adding to them -- possibly by a factor of nearly 100! The two studies may finally puncture the myth that anything is to be gained from burning crops for fuel. From the very beginning, there was never any indication that turning corn into ethanol was improving our energy independence. As that effort faltered, the myth arose that at least it was reducing carbon emissions. Now it has been shown to do neither. How did we ever get into this? The historical record makes it fairly clear. It was a combination of ill-thought-out ideas from "alternate energy" enthusiasts (most of them trying to find a way around nuclear power), plus politicians who think they can override the laws of nature by passing legislation. Meanwhile, thanks to a 51-cents-per-gallon tax break, 25 percent of the American corn crop is being turned into ethanol. Farmland prices are soaring and food prices are escalating all over the world. The whole fiasco can probably be traced to a single paragraph in Amory Lovins Soft Energy Paths, the 1976 book that inspired President Carter's embrace of "alternate energy" and convinced California Governor Jerry Brown that his state didn't need to build any more power plants....
Bill would require California's science curriculum to cover climate change Reading, writing and . . . global warming? A Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require "climate change" to be among the science topics that all California public school students are taught. The measure, by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would mandate that future science textbooks approved for California public schools include climate change. "You can't have a science curriculum that is relevant and current if it doesn't deal with the science behind climate change," Simitian said. "This is a phenomenon of global importance and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon." The state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, Jan. 30 by a 26-13 vote. It heads now to the state Assembly. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken numerous actions to reduce global warming, but he has yet to weigh in on Simitian's bill. Other Republicans in the Capitol, however, are not happy about the proposal. Some say the science on global warming isn't clear, while others worry the bill would inject environmental propaganda into classrooms....
Huge beef recall issued The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the largest beef recall in its history Sunday, calling for the destruction of 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef produced by a Chino slaughterhouse that has been accused of inhumane practices. However, the USDA said the vast majority of the meat involved in the recall -- including 37 million pounds that went mostly to schools -- probably has been eaten already. Officials emphasized that danger to consumers was minimal. The recall applies to beef slaughtered at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. since Feb. 1, 2006. The company has produced no meat since Feb. 4 of this year, when operations were suspended....Hell, let's go into the sewers and outhouses and retrieve this stuff...and send it to the USDA.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
From : Jon Marvel
Subject : [wwpmessenger] Harv Forsgren Called
Date : Tue, Jan 08, 2008 05:01 PM
Friends:
Today Harv Forsgren the new Region 4 Forester called me back and we discussed many things.
Among them was setting up a meeting in person with Harv, and he agreed to do that. I will let everyone know when that is happening and where.
I also asked him to involve himself on bighorn sheep issues in the Region (we went over the whole issue) and to help establish Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout as a MIS on the Sawtooth National Forest where there is no MIS aquatic species on the Forest’s south end (Harv is a fisheries biologist).
I also asked him to issue a memo throughout the region that would permit WWP and other interested groups to place grazing utilization cages on Forests throughout the region in cooperation with the agency. He was amenable to that request but we will discuss it further at our meeting.
All in all it was a good start for us.
Jon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From : Jon Marvel
Subject : [wwpmessenger] Please Excuse My Mistake
Date : Tue, Jan 08, 2008 05:15 PM
To All Recipients of WWP’s Online Messenger:
Through two touches touch of a key a few minutes ago, I mistakenly sent two emails to WWP’s Online Messenger that were intended for a smaller group of WWP staff and board members. They were entitled: “Harv Forsgren Called” and “Don Pickett Is Peeved”.
Please delete and do not not forward those two emails, and please excuse my mistake. I will attempt to hit the right key next time.
Thanks for your understanding !
Jon Marvel
ED WWP
*******************************************
Subject : [wwpmessenger] Harv Forsgren Called
Date : Tue, Jan 08, 2008 05:01 PM
Friends:
Today Harv Forsgren the new Region 4 Forester called me back and we discussed many things.
Among them was setting up a meeting in person with Harv, and he agreed to do that. I will let everyone know when that is happening and where.
I also asked him to involve himself on bighorn sheep issues in the Region (we went over the whole issue) and to help establish Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout as a MIS on the Sawtooth National Forest where there is no MIS aquatic species on the Forest’s south end (Harv is a fisheries biologist).
I also asked him to issue a memo throughout the region that would permit WWP and other interested groups to place grazing utilization cages on Forests throughout the region in cooperation with the agency. He was amenable to that request but we will discuss it further at our meeting.
All in all it was a good start for us.
Jon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From : Jon Marvel
Subject : [wwpmessenger] Please Excuse My Mistake
Date : Tue, Jan 08, 2008 05:15 PM
To All Recipients of WWP’s Online Messenger:
Through two touches touch of a key a few minutes ago, I mistakenly sent two emails to WWP’s Online Messenger that were intended for a smaller group of WWP staff and board members. They were entitled: “Harv Forsgren Called” and “Don Pickett Is Peeved”.
Please delete and do not not forward those two emails, and please excuse my mistake. I will attempt to hit the right key next time.
Thanks for your understanding !
Jon Marvel
ED WWP
*******************************************
WWP Online Messenger # 131
WWP and HCPC Win Protection of Bighorn Sheep and Closure Of The Last Domestic Sheep Grazing Allotment On The Nez Perce National Forest
Western Watersheds Project and our co-plaintiff, the Hells Canyon Preservation Council have won another important victory protecting Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep from a fatal disease transmitted by domestic sheep.
This federal court win stops grazing by domestic sheep on the last domestic sheep grazing allotment on the Nez perce National Forest located in central Idaho just east of Riggins, Idaho.
Here is today’s (11/15) story from the Lewiston, Idaho Morning Tribune:
Ruling: Domestic Sheep Must Go
Judge agrees domestic sheep pose threat to bighorn cousins, bars ranchers from turning them out on Allison-Berg grazing allotment
By Eric Barker
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A federal judge ruled ranchers can't turn out domestic sheep this fall and winter on a Nez Perce National Forest grazing allotment where bighorn sheep are known to roam.
The ruling hints at what could be the end to domestic sheep grazing on public land in the Snake and Salmon river corridors where ranchers, wildlife managers and environmentalists have clashed for years over the danger domestic sheep pose to their wild cousins.
Judge Lynn B. Winmill at Boise ruled Tuesday ranchers cannot use the Allison-Berg grazing allotment along the Salmon River during the winter of 2007 and 2008. The judge agreed with arguments by environmentalists, the Nez Perce Tribe and the Forest Service that evidence shows bighorn sheep are prone to die-offs when they interact with domestic sheep.
"A cautious approach is particularly appropriate here because the bighorns sighted near the Allison-Berg allotment are a native species. The loss of this herd would create an irreparable injury to the genetic diversity of bighorns," Winmill said in his decision.
Ranchers argued there is no scientific proof domestic sheep are responsible for spreading a pneumonia-like disease to wild sheep, and the area in question is quite large and occupied by only a few bighorns. They also noted no die-offs have occurred in the area.
Winmill said even though science cannot say for sure domestic sheep are responsible for infecting bighorns with the disease, overwhelming evidence shows wild sheep become ill and often die when the two species mix. Because of that evidence, it has long been the policy of many land and wildlife management agencies to keep domestic sheep out of areas used by bighorns. Agencies like the Forest Service have retired or arranged for the buyout of many grazing allotments in places like Hells Canyon where domestic and wild sheep can come in contact with each other.
One holdout of that policy has been the Allison-Berg allotment and other nearby federal grazing allotments on the Payette National Forest. The Hailey-based environmental group Western Watersheds Project, which opposes public land grazing, filed a lawsuit earlier this year to stop the planned turnout of sheep on Allison-Berg and the five other allotments on the Payette Forest.
Before the case was resolved, the Forest Service opted to cancel grazing on the Payette allotments. But it initially approved fall and winter grazing on Allison-Berg, saying there is little evidence bighorn sheep use the area.
Western Watersheds moved forward with the lawsuit and the Nez Perce Tribe, which joined the suit as a friend of the court, submitted evidence showing bighorns do use Allison-Berg. That prompted the Forest Service to revisit the decision and eventually cancel the planned grazing.
But the ranchers who use the allotment had previously joined the suit and asked Winmill to overturn the agency's decisions. Winmill refused.
Mick Carlson of Riggins and his family have used the allotment, which is near the Gospel Hump Wilderness Area on the north side of the Salmon River east of Riggins, for eight decades. He will now have to seek alternative pasture for his sheep and said in court papers not being able to use the allotment would cost him $75,600.
"I have no place to go after the middle of December," he told the Tribune on Wednesday. "I'm going to have to feed hay or truck them out of here and put them on pasture somewhere 150 or 200 miles away."
Although Winmill's decision only applies to the fall and winter grazing season, the tone of his decision should be a strong signal to the Forest Service that all grazing in the area should end, said Jon Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds.
"As the judge points out, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence, that is agreed to by the scientists, is that when you bring domestic sheep in contact with the bighorns, the bighorns die," he said. "We will try and encourage the Forest Service to keep these allotments closed because the risk is too high."
Carlson said he is worried that might be the direction the agency is heading but he plans to fight to keep spring and summer grazing open on the allotment.
"They have the upper hand," he said. "I think the basic thing is they don't want any grazing. They didn't give a damn whether it's sheep or not. They just want you out of there."
Marvel also said his group would use the ruling to try to convince other public land managers to cancel grazing allotments in areas where bighorns and domestic sheep can mix.
---
Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 743-9600, ext. 273.
Western Watersheds Project Is A Regional Conservation Organization Working To Protect And Restore Western Watersheds And Wildlife
WWP and HCPC Win Protection of Bighorn Sheep and Closure Of The Last Domestic Sheep Grazing Allotment On The Nez Perce National Forest
Western Watersheds Project and our co-plaintiff, the Hells Canyon Preservation Council have won another important victory protecting Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep from a fatal disease transmitted by domestic sheep.
This federal court win stops grazing by domestic sheep on the last domestic sheep grazing allotment on the Nez perce National Forest located in central Idaho just east of Riggins, Idaho.
Here is today’s (11/15) story from the Lewiston, Idaho Morning Tribune:
Ruling: Domestic Sheep Must Go
Judge agrees domestic sheep pose threat to bighorn cousins, bars ranchers from turning them out on Allison-Berg grazing allotment
By Eric Barker
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A federal judge ruled ranchers can't turn out domestic sheep this fall and winter on a Nez Perce National Forest grazing allotment where bighorn sheep are known to roam.
The ruling hints at what could be the end to domestic sheep grazing on public land in the Snake and Salmon river corridors where ranchers, wildlife managers and environmentalists have clashed for years over the danger domestic sheep pose to their wild cousins.
Judge Lynn B. Winmill at Boise ruled Tuesday ranchers cannot use the Allison-Berg grazing allotment along the Salmon River during the winter of 2007 and 2008. The judge agreed with arguments by environmentalists, the Nez Perce Tribe and the Forest Service that evidence shows bighorn sheep are prone to die-offs when they interact with domestic sheep.
"A cautious approach is particularly appropriate here because the bighorns sighted near the Allison-Berg allotment are a native species. The loss of this herd would create an irreparable injury to the genetic diversity of bighorns," Winmill said in his decision.
Ranchers argued there is no scientific proof domestic sheep are responsible for spreading a pneumonia-like disease to wild sheep, and the area in question is quite large and occupied by only a few bighorns. They also noted no die-offs have occurred in the area.
Winmill said even though science cannot say for sure domestic sheep are responsible for infecting bighorns with the disease, overwhelming evidence shows wild sheep become ill and often die when the two species mix. Because of that evidence, it has long been the policy of many land and wildlife management agencies to keep domestic sheep out of areas used by bighorns. Agencies like the Forest Service have retired or arranged for the buyout of many grazing allotments in places like Hells Canyon where domestic and wild sheep can come in contact with each other.
One holdout of that policy has been the Allison-Berg allotment and other nearby federal grazing allotments on the Payette National Forest. The Hailey-based environmental group Western Watersheds Project, which opposes public land grazing, filed a lawsuit earlier this year to stop the planned turnout of sheep on Allison-Berg and the five other allotments on the Payette Forest.
Before the case was resolved, the Forest Service opted to cancel grazing on the Payette allotments. But it initially approved fall and winter grazing on Allison-Berg, saying there is little evidence bighorn sheep use the area.
Western Watersheds moved forward with the lawsuit and the Nez Perce Tribe, which joined the suit as a friend of the court, submitted evidence showing bighorns do use Allison-Berg. That prompted the Forest Service to revisit the decision and eventually cancel the planned grazing.
But the ranchers who use the allotment had previously joined the suit and asked Winmill to overturn the agency's decisions. Winmill refused.
Mick Carlson of Riggins and his family have used the allotment, which is near the Gospel Hump Wilderness Area on the north side of the Salmon River east of Riggins, for eight decades. He will now have to seek alternative pasture for his sheep and said in court papers not being able to use the allotment would cost him $75,600.
"I have no place to go after the middle of December," he told the Tribune on Wednesday. "I'm going to have to feed hay or truck them out of here and put them on pasture somewhere 150 or 200 miles away."
Although Winmill's decision only applies to the fall and winter grazing season, the tone of his decision should be a strong signal to the Forest Service that all grazing in the area should end, said Jon Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds.
"As the judge points out, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence, that is agreed to by the scientists, is that when you bring domestic sheep in contact with the bighorns, the bighorns die," he said. "We will try and encourage the Forest Service to keep these allotments closed because the risk is too high."
Carlson said he is worried that might be the direction the agency is heading but he plans to fight to keep spring and summer grazing open on the allotment.
"They have the upper hand," he said. "I think the basic thing is they don't want any grazing. They didn't give a damn whether it's sheep or not. They just want you out of there."
Marvel also said his group would use the ruling to try to convince other public land managers to cancel grazing allotments in areas where bighorns and domestic sheep can mix.
---
Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 743-9600, ext. 273.
Western Watersheds Project Is A Regional Conservation Organization Working To Protect And Restore Western Watersheds And Wildlife
Where did I put those keys?
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
By Julie Carter
I laid down my pickup keys this week and they are still right there. Wherever that is.
That scenario seems to run in stages with me, I’ll go days where I can’t find anything that I’m sure I put somewhere. I also walk off and leave quite a few things that I need when I get where I’m going.
Living between two working offices, at home and at the newspaper office, is a recipe for a mental challenge at best. Add that to a job that is drawn to chaos, long, odd hours, piles and piles of paper and an assortment of technical pieces of equipment to keep up with, and my list-making personality goes into overdrive.
If I could just find that list, or remember which list it is that, I’m working on.
The search for whatever it is I can’t find often reveals more than the item I’m looking for.
I tore the pickup apart and found everything except the keys: an old (very old) French fry, an earring I thought was long gone, 14 pens, a grocery list, a sock, three gloves (none that match), a short piece of rope, a broken umbrella, two rain ponchos, two MREs (military Ready to Eat meals), a dead flashlight, a roll of duct tape, pliers and enough sunflower seeds to feed a family of squirrels for the winter, but no keys.
While I’m sure the contents of the pickup search and my manner of chaotic stress-induced forgetfulness could be psychoanalyzed, ad nauseum, I prefer to write it off as living in a fast spinning world that doesn’t allow for immaculate cleaning or organized anything.
As I vaguely recall, I am truly happier when things are a little tidier and in their place where I can find them. It has been quite some time since that experience.
Every ranch pickup I know has a personality built around the contents one would find in doing an inventory.
Gloves, sometimes one of each, right and left, are stuffed under the seat or on the dashboard. Other treasures would be a pair of broken sunglasses, a piece of inner tube, a flattened roll of toilet paper too dirty to use, an empty binocular case and a piece of paper with a phone number on it, but no name.
There is always mail and usually an old envelope from someone you had already chewed out because you “never got it.” It’s not unusual for the papers to be important things like the state land lease or the overdraft notice from the bank.
Usually you can find a gun or two and lots of ammunition lying around, but rarely the right ammo for those same guns. There are windmill leathers, preg testing gloves, enough loose change to put a kid through college and a bottle of 10-40 oil.
If a personality profile can be built around the contents of a ranch pickup, or mine, then it probably has a name I can’t spell. I prefer to think that, basically, we are prepared for almost anything.
Stop and smell the roses you say? That was exactly what I was doing when I laid down my keys.
Visit Julie’s Web site at www.julie-carter.com
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy
By Julie Carter
I laid down my pickup keys this week and they are still right there. Wherever that is.
That scenario seems to run in stages with me, I’ll go days where I can’t find anything that I’m sure I put somewhere. I also walk off and leave quite a few things that I need when I get where I’m going.
Living between two working offices, at home and at the newspaper office, is a recipe for a mental challenge at best. Add that to a job that is drawn to chaos, long, odd hours, piles and piles of paper and an assortment of technical pieces of equipment to keep up with, and my list-making personality goes into overdrive.
If I could just find that list, or remember which list it is that, I’m working on.
The search for whatever it is I can’t find often reveals more than the item I’m looking for.
I tore the pickup apart and found everything except the keys: an old (very old) French fry, an earring I thought was long gone, 14 pens, a grocery list, a sock, three gloves (none that match), a short piece of rope, a broken umbrella, two rain ponchos, two MREs (military Ready to Eat meals), a dead flashlight, a roll of duct tape, pliers and enough sunflower seeds to feed a family of squirrels for the winter, but no keys.
While I’m sure the contents of the pickup search and my manner of chaotic stress-induced forgetfulness could be psychoanalyzed, ad nauseum, I prefer to write it off as living in a fast spinning world that doesn’t allow for immaculate cleaning or organized anything.
As I vaguely recall, I am truly happier when things are a little tidier and in their place where I can find them. It has been quite some time since that experience.
Every ranch pickup I know has a personality built around the contents one would find in doing an inventory.
Gloves, sometimes one of each, right and left, are stuffed under the seat or on the dashboard. Other treasures would be a pair of broken sunglasses, a piece of inner tube, a flattened roll of toilet paper too dirty to use, an empty binocular case and a piece of paper with a phone number on it, but no name.
There is always mail and usually an old envelope from someone you had already chewed out because you “never got it.” It’s not unusual for the papers to be important things like the state land lease or the overdraft notice from the bank.
Usually you can find a gun or two and lots of ammunition lying around, but rarely the right ammo for those same guns. There are windmill leathers, preg testing gloves, enough loose change to put a kid through college and a bottle of 10-40 oil.
If a personality profile can be built around the contents of a ranch pickup, or mine, then it probably has a name I can’t spell. I prefer to think that, basically, we are prepared for almost anything.
Stop and smell the roses you say? That was exactly what I was doing when I laid down my keys.
Visit Julie’s Web site at www.julie-carter.com
FLE
DHS Warns Of Pregnant Prosthetic Belly Bombings The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are warning against a new type of terrorism carried out by women who appear to be pregnant. It may be the newest wave in suicide attacks: a prosthetic pregnant belly serving as a compartment for explosives. The belly opens up from the front and the explosives are placed inside. "It's not the first time we've had women involved before in one way or another," says security expert Robert Strang. Strang tells CBS 2 he isn't surprised at the new lows terrorists will stoop to -- lows that include those with Down syndrome even carrying out suicide attacks in Baghdad. "They're recruiting anybody they can get to do those things that's not going to inform law enforcement, that's not going to be a threat to these organizations that can get the job done," says Strang. With terrorist training camps up and running in Pakistan, there are now fears Americans might one day be involved. Authorities are increasingly worried that Al Qaeda is actively recruiting people who look like Americans and sound like Americans to carry out the next attack on America....
Migrant-smuggling ring dealt serious blow Authorities say they have crippled a human-smuggling ring that shuttled 24 to 60 illegal immigrants daily to the Phoenix area from the border town Naco in southeastern Arizona. Two Cuban nationals are suspected of running the organization, which law-enforcement officials described as one of the largest and most sophisticated operations in Arizona. They said the ring moved four to six loads of immigrants per day, averaging six to 10 people per load, and grossed as much as $130,000 a week. The two, Jose Luis Suarez-Lemus, 41, and Roel Ayala Fernandez, 35, both Valley residents, are believed to have taken over the syndicate about a year ago, but authorities say the operation has been in existence for at least a decade and may have smuggled tens of thousands of immigrants into the country. Both are in custody. In all, 48 people have been identified in a criminal indictment relating to the seven-month investigation into the organization. Authorities executed search warrants in Phoenix, Peoria and Bisbee. Ten people have been arrested, and others are still at large. A total of 75 suspects have been identified. "Operation River Walkers" began as a money-laundering case of the state Financial Crimes Task Force, which has spent several years investigating smuggling organizations by tracking Western Union money shipments sent to Arizona drophouses for the payment of coyote fees. Phoenix police Lt. Vince Piano said detectives got an intimate look into the syndicate's inner workings, from the $1,000 paid to the border organizer arranging the loads to the $50 for the drophouse cook. Smugglers often charged up to $2,500 per person....
Border locals complain DHS uncompromising Border residents complained to a House panel Thursday that the Homeland Security Department has been unwilling to listen to them as it builds a security fence along the U.S-Mexico border. The complaints stem from the federal government's effort to build 700 miles of fence along the southern border, required by a 2006 law signed by President Bush. The Homeland Security Department wants to finish about 370 miles by the end of the year. But local officials said the department has ignored them and their concerns in its rush to meet that goal. For example, some landowners want the department to leave in place barbed wire fencing that costs $8,000 to $10,000 a mile. The fencing is being ripped out as vehicle barriers are erected along the border, said Nan Stockholm Walden, an Arizona farmer and rancher. "There's been a breakdown in trust," she said. "There seems to be no willingness to compromise or listen at all and that's where people become suspicious and tell DHS they won't let them on their land." The Homeland Security Department has filed dozens of condemnation lawsuits against landowners in Texas, Arizona and California to get access to their property. Recently, Homeland Security agreed to a local plan to improve levees on the Rio Grande near Hidalgo County in response to opposition to plans that would put homes behind the fence. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster asked the panel to "use your muscle to bring them to the table and work with us." "We were told that the (Customs and Border Protection) had held 18 town hall meetings that, on investigation, turned out to be meals in restaurants and phone calls," said Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition of elected officials and business owners....
Dangerous Delay in Background-Checking Legal Immigrants It seems that immigration, legal and illegal, is too numerically overwhelming for the federal government to handle properly. This is an egregious problem, one highlighted earlier this month when President George W. Bush's Administration announced that it will grant permanent residency status to tens of thousands of legal immigrants without first completing their required background checks against the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigative files because the backlog of legal immigration cases is too large and growing rapidly. The change in status will affect an unknown number of applicants whose cases otherwise are complete but whose FBI checks have been pending for more than six months. The backlog has left many legal immigrants in limbo. I applaud these immigrants for following the rules and applying to live here legally. They are not the problem; the federal government is. Part of the problem is that the system of background checks is inefficient. The FBI stores more than 86 million investigative files which electronically complete the background checks for about 90% of legal immigrants within three months. The remaining 10% can take years to finish through paper-based searches for any mention of an applicant's name in records stored in 265 locations across the country. Congress has approved more money to speed the FBI name checks. Unfortunately, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency handling the background checks for permanent residency status, plans to use the increased funding to hire more FBI contractors. What USCIS should do is mount an intensive campaign with the FBI to make all FBI files electronic, so that it will no longer require so much time and manpower to dig through paper files across the country. But such a common-sense idea rarely occurs to bureaucrats....
Real ID Act a real intrusion on rights, privacy If, as proposed in the law, a person must have a Real ID Act-compliant card in order to access a federal building, access any regulated or interstate mode of transportation, or obtain any federal benefit, then we have surrendered to the federal government (that is, federal bureaucrats) the power to deny citizens all manner of activities guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Consider: A person not possessing a Real ID Act-compliant identification card could not enter any federal building, or an office of his or her congressman or senator or the U.S. Capitol. This effectively denies that person their fundamental rights to assembly and to petition the government as guaranteed in the First Amendment. A person seeking to exercise their right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment could henceforth be denied that ability if they do not possess a precious Real ID card, because the federal bureaucracy known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives probably will decree that such a form of identification is necessary to meet federal requirements for purchasing a firearm. Very possibly the Real ID card will be required in order to vote in any election for federal office. A veteran may be denied access to a VA hospital because he or she lacks the requisite Real ID card, perhaps because they did not have the money required to purchase it or because they could not locate the background forms the Department of Homeland Security required to obtain one. A business traveler, unable to afford to travel by private jet, is denied the ability to make a living because their job requires air travel and they do not have a Real ID card — even though they demonstrably pose no danger whatsoever to their fellow travelers....
Baby held in locked room at airport dies A 14-day-old infant traveling here for heart surgery died at Honolulu International Airport on Friday after he, his mother and a nurse were detained by immigration officials in a locked room, a lawyer for the boy's family said. The Honolulu medical examiner's office yesterday identified the infant as Michael Futi of Tafuna, American Samoa's largest village, which is located on the east coast of Tutuila Island. Autopsy findings have been deferred. According to police, the child died at 5:50 a.m. It is unknown why immigration officials detained the mother, the nurse and the child....
Database Will Target Illegal Gun Traffic Several East Coast cities are launching a new tactic against urban gun violence by creating a database to pool information on gun-related crimes and firearms trafficking. The program announced Wednesday will combine data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with material collected by local agencies, including ballistics tests and information gathered in police interrogations. The database, expected to be in operation later this year, will make it more difficult for illegal gun dealers to do business throughout the Interstate 95 corridor, said a group that included 11 mayors and various law enforcement officials from cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., and Richmond, Va. "Violent crime, particularly gun crime, is not just a local problem," Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said. "It's a national problem." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who co-founded the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition along with Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said he thinks the federal government hasn't done enough to curb the use of illegal guns....
Error Gave F.B.I. Unauthorized Access to E-Mail A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode. F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said. Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized. The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect....
FBI warns of revenge attacks by Hezbollah The FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent a bulletin today to state and local law enforcement authorities advising them to watch for potential retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah, one day after the Lebanese militia group vowed to avenge the death of a top commander by attacking Israeli and Jewish targets around the world. "While retaliation in the U.S. homeland is unlikely, Hezbollah has demonstrated a capability to respond outside the Middle East to similar events in the past," according to the "intelligence bulletin" that was sent to about 18,000 state and local law enforcement officials late this afternoon. FBI officials also said they were ramping up their own domestic intelligence-gathering efforts to identify and neutralize any potential Hezbollah threats in the United States in the aftermath of Tuesday's car-bomb assassination of Imad Mugniyah in Syria. On Wednesday, the FBI quietly sent a confidential internal bulletin to its 101 Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country warning of the possible domestic consequences of Mugniyah's killing....
TSA: Taking, Splurging, and Appropriating When the infant agency first started hiring employees, top brass set up their recruiting offices in lavish hotels with golf courses, pools, and spas, such as the Wyndham Peaks Resort in Telluride, Colorado. Then, at a cost of 435 million taxbucks, they created 150 "temporary assessment centers" across the country to vet their new hires. The final cost to the poor dumb slob sucker taxpayer was $39,727 per hireling. Following its second year of existence, the TSA threw itself a massive "we love ourselves" half-million-dollar awards ceremony/banquet at the Grand Hyatt in D.C. Senior executives awarded themselves bonuses averaging $16,000 apiece and passed out $81,000 worth of plaques to pet employees. One received a "lifetime achievement award" for two whole years of service. Meanwhile, many of those $39,727 hirelings who graduated from one of those 435 million dollars' worth of "temporary assessment centers" have gone on to join their senior executives in their criminal careers. Jewelry valued at $8,500 disappeared from one woman's checked luggage. A man's $1,300 flat-screen video monitor was boosted from its carrying case. Another passenger caught a checkpoint screener sneaking bucks from his billfold. Custom-made jewelry checked by rapper Lil' Kim disappeared. Digital cameras, portable DVD players, iPods, and silver-plated cufflinks go missing. According to ABC News, 400 of the first 2,000 screeners hired at New York's three major airports already had criminal records. So that's what taxpayers got for their $39,727 hirelings. By November 2004, the TSA had already paid out $1.5 million in damages to 15,000 passengers who filed theft claims against screeners....
DHS Warns Of Pregnant Prosthetic Belly Bombings The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are warning against a new type of terrorism carried out by women who appear to be pregnant. It may be the newest wave in suicide attacks: a prosthetic pregnant belly serving as a compartment for explosives. The belly opens up from the front and the explosives are placed inside. "It's not the first time we've had women involved before in one way or another," says security expert Robert Strang. Strang tells CBS 2 he isn't surprised at the new lows terrorists will stoop to -- lows that include those with Down syndrome even carrying out suicide attacks in Baghdad. "They're recruiting anybody they can get to do those things that's not going to inform law enforcement, that's not going to be a threat to these organizations that can get the job done," says Strang. With terrorist training camps up and running in Pakistan, there are now fears Americans might one day be involved. Authorities are increasingly worried that Al Qaeda is actively recruiting people who look like Americans and sound like Americans to carry out the next attack on America....
Migrant-smuggling ring dealt serious blow Authorities say they have crippled a human-smuggling ring that shuttled 24 to 60 illegal immigrants daily to the Phoenix area from the border town Naco in southeastern Arizona. Two Cuban nationals are suspected of running the organization, which law-enforcement officials described as one of the largest and most sophisticated operations in Arizona. They said the ring moved four to six loads of immigrants per day, averaging six to 10 people per load, and grossed as much as $130,000 a week. The two, Jose Luis Suarez-Lemus, 41, and Roel Ayala Fernandez, 35, both Valley residents, are believed to have taken over the syndicate about a year ago, but authorities say the operation has been in existence for at least a decade and may have smuggled tens of thousands of immigrants into the country. Both are in custody. In all, 48 people have been identified in a criminal indictment relating to the seven-month investigation into the organization. Authorities executed search warrants in Phoenix, Peoria and Bisbee. Ten people have been arrested, and others are still at large. A total of 75 suspects have been identified. "Operation River Walkers" began as a money-laundering case of the state Financial Crimes Task Force, which has spent several years investigating smuggling organizations by tracking Western Union money shipments sent to Arizona drophouses for the payment of coyote fees. Phoenix police Lt. Vince Piano said detectives got an intimate look into the syndicate's inner workings, from the $1,000 paid to the border organizer arranging the loads to the $50 for the drophouse cook. Smugglers often charged up to $2,500 per person....
Border locals complain DHS uncompromising Border residents complained to a House panel Thursday that the Homeland Security Department has been unwilling to listen to them as it builds a security fence along the U.S-Mexico border. The complaints stem from the federal government's effort to build 700 miles of fence along the southern border, required by a 2006 law signed by President Bush. The Homeland Security Department wants to finish about 370 miles by the end of the year. But local officials said the department has ignored them and their concerns in its rush to meet that goal. For example, some landowners want the department to leave in place barbed wire fencing that costs $8,000 to $10,000 a mile. The fencing is being ripped out as vehicle barriers are erected along the border, said Nan Stockholm Walden, an Arizona farmer and rancher. "There's been a breakdown in trust," she said. "There seems to be no willingness to compromise or listen at all and that's where people become suspicious and tell DHS they won't let them on their land." The Homeland Security Department has filed dozens of condemnation lawsuits against landowners in Texas, Arizona and California to get access to their property. Recently, Homeland Security agreed to a local plan to improve levees on the Rio Grande near Hidalgo County in response to opposition to plans that would put homes behind the fence. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster asked the panel to "use your muscle to bring them to the table and work with us." "We were told that the (Customs and Border Protection) had held 18 town hall meetings that, on investigation, turned out to be meals in restaurants and phone calls," said Foster, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition of elected officials and business owners....
Dangerous Delay in Background-Checking Legal Immigrants It seems that immigration, legal and illegal, is too numerically overwhelming for the federal government to handle properly. This is an egregious problem, one highlighted earlier this month when President George W. Bush's Administration announced that it will grant permanent residency status to tens of thousands of legal immigrants without first completing their required background checks against the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigative files because the backlog of legal immigration cases is too large and growing rapidly. The change in status will affect an unknown number of applicants whose cases otherwise are complete but whose FBI checks have been pending for more than six months. The backlog has left many legal immigrants in limbo. I applaud these immigrants for following the rules and applying to live here legally. They are not the problem; the federal government is. Part of the problem is that the system of background checks is inefficient. The FBI stores more than 86 million investigative files which electronically complete the background checks for about 90% of legal immigrants within three months. The remaining 10% can take years to finish through paper-based searches for any mention of an applicant's name in records stored in 265 locations across the country. Congress has approved more money to speed the FBI name checks. Unfortunately, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency handling the background checks for permanent residency status, plans to use the increased funding to hire more FBI contractors. What USCIS should do is mount an intensive campaign with the FBI to make all FBI files electronic, so that it will no longer require so much time and manpower to dig through paper files across the country. But such a common-sense idea rarely occurs to bureaucrats....
Real ID Act a real intrusion on rights, privacy If, as proposed in the law, a person must have a Real ID Act-compliant card in order to access a federal building, access any regulated or interstate mode of transportation, or obtain any federal benefit, then we have surrendered to the federal government (that is, federal bureaucrats) the power to deny citizens all manner of activities guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Consider: A person not possessing a Real ID Act-compliant identification card could not enter any federal building, or an office of his or her congressman or senator or the U.S. Capitol. This effectively denies that person their fundamental rights to assembly and to petition the government as guaranteed in the First Amendment. A person seeking to exercise their right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment could henceforth be denied that ability if they do not possess a precious Real ID card, because the federal bureaucracy known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives probably will decree that such a form of identification is necessary to meet federal requirements for purchasing a firearm. Very possibly the Real ID card will be required in order to vote in any election for federal office. A veteran may be denied access to a VA hospital because he or she lacks the requisite Real ID card, perhaps because they did not have the money required to purchase it or because they could not locate the background forms the Department of Homeland Security required to obtain one. A business traveler, unable to afford to travel by private jet, is denied the ability to make a living because their job requires air travel and they do not have a Real ID card — even though they demonstrably pose no danger whatsoever to their fellow travelers....
Baby held in locked room at airport dies A 14-day-old infant traveling here for heart surgery died at Honolulu International Airport on Friday after he, his mother and a nurse were detained by immigration officials in a locked room, a lawyer for the boy's family said. The Honolulu medical examiner's office yesterday identified the infant as Michael Futi of Tafuna, American Samoa's largest village, which is located on the east coast of Tutuila Island. Autopsy findings have been deferred. According to police, the child died at 5:50 a.m. It is unknown why immigration officials detained the mother, the nurse and the child....
Database Will Target Illegal Gun Traffic Several East Coast cities are launching a new tactic against urban gun violence by creating a database to pool information on gun-related crimes and firearms trafficking. The program announced Wednesday will combine data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with material collected by local agencies, including ballistics tests and information gathered in police interrogations. The database, expected to be in operation later this year, will make it more difficult for illegal gun dealers to do business throughout the Interstate 95 corridor, said a group that included 11 mayors and various law enforcement officials from cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., and Richmond, Va. "Violent crime, particularly gun crime, is not just a local problem," Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said. "It's a national problem." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who co-founded the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition along with Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said he thinks the federal government hasn't done enough to curb the use of illegal guns....
Error Gave F.B.I. Unauthorized Access to E-Mail A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode. F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said. Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized. The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect....
FBI warns of revenge attacks by Hezbollah The FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent a bulletin today to state and local law enforcement authorities advising them to watch for potential retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah, one day after the Lebanese militia group vowed to avenge the death of a top commander by attacking Israeli and Jewish targets around the world. "While retaliation in the U.S. homeland is unlikely, Hezbollah has demonstrated a capability to respond outside the Middle East to similar events in the past," according to the "intelligence bulletin" that was sent to about 18,000 state and local law enforcement officials late this afternoon. FBI officials also said they were ramping up their own domestic intelligence-gathering efforts to identify and neutralize any potential Hezbollah threats in the United States in the aftermath of Tuesday's car-bomb assassination of Imad Mugniyah in Syria. On Wednesday, the FBI quietly sent a confidential internal bulletin to its 101 Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country warning of the possible domestic consequences of Mugniyah's killing....
TSA: Taking, Splurging, and Appropriating When the infant agency first started hiring employees, top brass set up their recruiting offices in lavish hotels with golf courses, pools, and spas, such as the Wyndham Peaks Resort in Telluride, Colorado. Then, at a cost of 435 million taxbucks, they created 150 "temporary assessment centers" across the country to vet their new hires. The final cost to the poor dumb slob sucker taxpayer was $39,727 per hireling. Following its second year of existence, the TSA threw itself a massive "we love ourselves" half-million-dollar awards ceremony/banquet at the Grand Hyatt in D.C. Senior executives awarded themselves bonuses averaging $16,000 apiece and passed out $81,000 worth of plaques to pet employees. One received a "lifetime achievement award" for two whole years of service. Meanwhile, many of those $39,727 hirelings who graduated from one of those 435 million dollars' worth of "temporary assessment centers" have gone on to join their senior executives in their criminal careers. Jewelry valued at $8,500 disappeared from one woman's checked luggage. A man's $1,300 flat-screen video monitor was boosted from its carrying case. Another passenger caught a checkpoint screener sneaking bucks from his billfold. Custom-made jewelry checked by rapper Lil' Kim disappeared. Digital cameras, portable DVD players, iPods, and silver-plated cufflinks go missing. According to ABC News, 400 of the first 2,000 screeners hired at New York's three major airports already had criminal records. So that's what taxpayers got for their $39,727 hirelings. By November 2004, the TSA had already paid out $1.5 million in damages to 15,000 passengers who filed theft claims against screeners....
Friday, February 15, 2008
Bingaman Presses for Day of Recognition for Ranchers U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman is once again cosponsoring a resolution to recognize the “American Cowboy.” The Senate resolution acknowledges the role of ranchers in the development of the West. The resolution states that ranchers embody our nation’s strong work ethic, are good stewards of the environment, and play a major role in our nation’s economy. This year American Cowboy day is July 26, 2008. Approximately 800,000 ranchers are in business across the country. New Mexico ranchers generated $964 million in sales in 2005, the most recent year for which numbers are available. In terms of agriculture production, only the dairies are a larger industry in New Mexico than ranching. “Ranching in New Mexico is not just a tradition; it’s a way of life. This bill would recognize the hard working men and women of our state who continue to keep ranching alive,” Bingaman said. The resolution encourages communities across the country to observe July 26, 2008 as the National Day of the American Cowboy, and mark the day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
Senators support forest restoration New Mexico's two senators joined forced to introduce legislation aimed at large-scale national forest restoration projects with an eye toward reducing wildfires, restoring ecosystems and creating jobs. U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, submitted the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008 Tuesday. Bingaman, a Democrat, and Domenici, a Republican, said the legislation would authorize $40 million annually for landscape-scale forest restoration projects that cover 50,000 acres or more. Competitive grants would be awarded to restoration projects that are developed in collaboration with local communities. Eligible projects must be in need of ecosystem restoration, utilize the best-available science, encourage the use of restoration byproducts such as woody biomass and be located primarily on National Forest System land. Conceptually, the senators said the bill is similar to the Community Forest Restoration Act, legislation Bingaman wrote and Domenici supported. As a result of the measure, which was enacted in 2007, millions of dollars was invested in small-scale forest restoration projects in New Mexico. But this legislation, developed by the New Mexico lawmakers with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), would allow the state to compete for bigger grants and treat significantly larger pieces of land. The Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008 was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A hearing on the bill will be scheduled for spring....
War Of The Roses Islamofascists demonize Valentine's Day in Arab countries, but here in the West, the holiday draws its puritanical zealots from the environmental left. They've made Valentine's Day a boogeyman. Alone among cash crops, it seems, roses pollute the environment, exploit workers and cause global warming. Quite a lot of blame for one of nature's finer creations, but not if the idea is to turn consumers against the flower trade, much of which is based in Colombia and is sustained with Valentine's Day sales. It's become an annual event. This year, it's "Blood Roses: Valentine's Day in Bogota," as the Huffington Post screeched, smearing Colombia's flower trade as a twin industry to the illegal blood diamond trade in West Africa. Other media reports were almost as bad and as irresponsible. In reality, lawfully produced flowers provide a livelihood to 99,000 poor Colombians, many of whom were driven from their homes by war and the global drug trade — which trashes the environment, too. When Americans buy roses at the market, they help sustain these war refugees by providing jobs to let them lead dignified lives. Targeting Colombia's rose trade is nothing more than attacking poor people out of environmental self-righteousness....
CAO would ‘welcome’ investigation into carbon offsets The Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for the House said Tuesday he would “welcome” an examination into the carbon offset marketplace, which has been a tool for the “Green the Capitol” initiative he oversees. CAO Daniel Beard was reacting to a letter sent by two top House Republicans to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week, seeking a closer look at the program. As part of the one-year-old “Green the Capitol” project, which aims at reducing the level of pollution created by members of Congress, the House purchased $89,000 in carbon offsets from the Chicago Climate Exchange, an offset brokerage company. The company then paid farms in the Midwest to take steps to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one of the leading causes of global warming and is released both naturally, such as through the breaking-apart of soil, and by man-made design, such as through coal-burning power plants. Carbon offsets were created to counterbalance the release of carbon into the air through practices such as planting trees, which feed off of carbon and produce oxygen, or employing companies to use non-carbon-producing fuels as energy. Last week Republican Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked the GAO to look into “questionable purchases of carbon offsets” after recent media criticism of the venture revealed that while several farmers who had received money from the House purchase were actively sequestering carbon, they might not actually be using the money to further their carbon reduction efforts....
Will Global Warming Save Lives? A report commissioned by Britain's Health Department says that one blistering hot summer between now and 2017 could kill more than 6,000 Britons. The panel of scientific experts that compiled the study believes the chance of that is 25%. Naturally, the global-warming-will-kill-us-all crowd latched onto that speculation, as did headline writers. "U.K. May Suffer Heat Wave That Kills 3,000," topped a Bloomberg story, while Reuters opted for "Climate Change May Kill Thousands In U.K. By 2017." The panel also said global warming will bring warmer winters, which will cut down on cold-related deaths in Britain. So should we fear human-created climate change or embrace it? Surprisingly, the BBC stood out as one media agent that took enough care to balance its coverage. Under the Web site headline "Global Warming 'May Cut Deaths,' " it reported 20,000 deaths are linked to the cold each year in the U.K. and that those deaths fell 3% a year from 1971 through 2003, a period in which summers warmed but heat-related deaths did not change. In the U.S., a warmer climate could save tens of thousands. Thomas Gale Moore, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has studied and written extensively about global warming, believes as many as 40,000 American lives would be spared each year....
Sheep versus sheep It's another example of the New and Old West coming into conflict. This time it's bighorn sheep versus domestic sheep or, more specifically, wildlife advocates versus the sheep herding industry. During a telephone conference call yesterday, Feb. 14, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopted an interim strategy for separating bighorn sheep from domestic sheep. The policy establishes buffer zones between occupied bighorn sheep range and sheep allotments on federal land statewide. Where the two overlap, however, bighorn sheep will be moved or killed. The Nez Perce Tribe, as well as sportsmen's groups, environmentalists and ranchers, have been watching closely as the state of Idaho and U.S. Forest Service attempt to sort out the problem. Fish and Game's new strategy came in response to Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's call for a policy to manage the interaction between the herds by Feb. 15. The governor established a working group led by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Idaho Department of Agriculture in response to judicial orders requiring sheep ranchers to pull their sheep off Hells Canyon allotments....
Green Jobbed As the Los Angeles Times noted this week, alternative energy "is becoming one of the darlings of Democratic-controlled Capitol Hill." Democrats even want to include tax breaks for it in the economic stimulus package. A cap-and-trade system to cut CO2 emissions has also found favor. The thinking is that we can radically alter our economy and at the same create millions of well-paying "green-collar jobs." Even some business groups embrace the idea. "The one thing that the Chamber of Commerce and the Sierra Club agree on," notes energy lobbyist Scott Segal, "is that the answer to climate change is transformative technologies." Maybe so. But claims that spending on green technologies will create "millions" of new jobs, as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have repeatedly claimed, are false. Such assertions rest on fallacious economic logic that sounds good on the stump but in reality results in a lower standard of living and fewer jobs for all Americans....
Group to pay ranchers for losses caused by wolves A new state program will reimburse livestock producers for wolf predation losses. The new plan will replace the current one, which has been funded by Defenders of Wildlife for the past 20 years. The plan is called for under the state's wolf management plan, and George Edwards with the Montana Dept. of Livestock, says it's not tied to wolf population control. "Whether the wolves are listed. Still listed or de-listed will not affect this program because this program is primarily in place to help livestock producers who have suffered a wolf loss." The Defenders of Wildlife will provide a $100,000 grant to get the new program started, but Edwards says it will take federal funds and private dollars to maintain. The Department of Livestock is accepting donations, and all contributions are tax deductible.
The 2008 House Energy Tax Bill: Repeating Past Mistakes Taxing successful energy sources and subsidizing unsuccessful ones: That is the essence of Washington's energy policy mistakes during the 1970s and early 1980s. These mistakes are about to be repeated in the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008, recently introduced in the House. This bill would effectively raise taxes on the oil and natural gas sector and spend much of the revenue on alternative energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels. As it did decades ago, this approach would likely backfire and raise prices for consumers while reducing energy security. Congress should craft a new energy policy that relies on the market to meet the nation's energy needs. The bill proposes a number of changes in the tax code, the effect of which would be to raise taxes paid by companies working to expand domestic oil and natural gas supplies....
Save the prairie dogs! - PETA To combat these perceived injustices, a group - the prairie Dog Coalition - is working hard to secure a more stable footing for our burrowing friends, and pushing two ideas. The first, a legislative one, is recognition of a renamed “Prairie Dog Day” in our cities and counties. And they’ve been making headway. This year, the City of Denver joined Boulder in issuing a proclamation celebrating Prairie Dog Day, and giving our rodent residents the recognition they deserve. The second idea is to give another look to our yard-destroying, grazing-land inhabiting, “plague-carrying” neighbors. Says Dr. Lauren McCain, Co-Chair of the Coalition - which comprises some 30 member organizations - “we’re looking to raise awareness on groundhog day, and get people the information they need to know about prairie dogs. Because of population, destruction of habitat, disease and predation, and policies allowing them to be poisoned and exterminated, more than 90% of the historical prairie dog population has been destroyed.” As a “keystone” species, the health of the North American plains in many ways depends upon the continued survival of these social critters....I'm beginning to wonder just how damn many of these "keystone" and "canary in a coal mine" species there are.
The Transportation Commission's Proposed 200 Percent Gas Tax Increase In mid-January, the congressionally created National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission released its final report, which, among other proposals, recommends raising the federal fuel tax by 25 cents to 40 cents per gallon over the next five years and thereafter indexing it to the rate of inflation.[1] With the federal fuel tax at 18.3 cents per gallon of gasoline and 22.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel, the commission is proposing that one of the nation's most regressive taxes be increased by a staggering 136 percent to 218 percent. These tax revenues would then be spent on a variety of new road, transit, administrative, and environmental initiatives, including a 700 percent increase in Amtrak subsidies. While these recommendations are supported by several government-dependent transportation trade associations—including major tax users such as the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and the American Public Transportation Association—the Administration, taxpayers, fiscal conservatives, and many Members of Congress have openly criticized the report. To date, critics and skeptics have focused largely on the proposed tax increase, which would be little more than a massive transfer of income and wealth from motorists to a much bigger version of today's ill-conceived federal transportation program and the select few who benefit from it....
Alexander gets Restore New Mexico award Dennis Alexander, State Conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in New Mexico, was presented the Restore New Mexico Award today in recognition of the agency's participation and financial support of landscape-scale restoration efforts across the state. Jesse Juen, Associate State Director for the BLM in New Mexico, presented the award at the annual meeting of the National Association of Conservation Districts in Reno, Nev. on behalf of all New Mexico partners involved in the program. The NRCS has provided over $4 million in Environmental Quality Incentives Program grants to over 100 landowners with federal grazing allotments to restore degraded rangelands in New Mexico. The BLM, landowners and other partners have been able to match or exceed these funds, greatly enlarging the size and scope of the restoration projects....
Keep polar bears off endangered species list The Department of the Interior, in response to litigation from environmental groups, is considering whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. For the first time in the history of the ESA, the threat of global warming would be the reason for listing a well-known species. Given the ESA’s sweeping powers, such a move would raise energy prices by putting an end to promising new oil and natural gas production in Alaska. Even more troubling, listing the polar bear could be used as a back door to implement global warming policy nationwide by restricting energy production and use throughout the U.S. This would obviously harm the economy and — considering the ESA’s poor track record — could also harm the polar bears as well. The President should tell the DOI not to take this highly problematic step. While being highly successful in violating private property rights and hampering economic activities—especially for farmers, ranchers, and loggers in the rural West and elsewhere — the statute has done little to protect species....
Lawmakers seek probe of meat safety of School Lunch Program Lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the safety of meat in the National School Lunch Program, citing concerns raised by alleged abuses at a slaughterhouse in Chino, Calif. Democratic Reps. George Miller of California, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Carolyn McCarthy of New York, along with Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, are asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., a supplier to school lunch programs, in the wake of release of a Humane Society video showing disabled cows being mistreated. Meanwhile, the San Bernardino County district attorney's office said it will hold a press conference Friday to announce whether charges will be filed against Westland/Hallmark. A phone message left late Thursday for Westland President Steven Mendell was not immediately returned. USDA officials have put a hold until Feb. 19 on meat products from the facility, which are used by major hamburger chains and school districts around the nation. Investigations have found no evidence that meat from disabled animals has entered the food supply....
Rodeos could be modified A Mexican-style rodeo tradition could be history after the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved drafting an ordinance that could go as far as banning so-called "coleadas" or steer tailing, which some local charros or cowboys admit they proudly practice. By a 3-2 vote, supervisors Tuesday approved the proposal that would also reiterate state law prohibiting cruelty to animals. Supervisors also agreed to prohibit tripping or felling an equine animal, or intentionally tripping, dragging, or felling any bovine animal by the tail. The proposal would also require veterinarians to be in attendance throughout the duration of any event using animals and provide local remedies for violations. According to San Juan Bautista resident Martin Marquez, president of the Asociacion de Charros El Herradero de San Martin, steer tailing exercises are happening in the county and are indeed part of so-called "charreadas" or Mexican style rodeo. However, he said, local charros no longer practice horse tripping and instead perform a modified exercise putting the rope through the horse's front legs without making it fall. "It's sad that despite all the pains we've taken to follow the rules, they will be targeting steer tailing which is traditional and part of the charreria," Marquez said. "Coleadas are not cruel and inhumane. How do they know it's painful to the bulls, which fall on soft sand."....
Lake Monster? Los Angeles may have the largest populus, but within its history lurks several anomalies which defy the hustle and bustle of city life. Elizabeth Lake, located close to Palmdale in "north county" was once inhabited by one of these anomalies. It is said that the old lake, one of ten named Elizabeth in California, was created by the Devil who bestowed upon the waters one of his demonic pets, that being a diabolical beast. Sightings of such a creature date back to the 1830s when a Spaniard named Don Pedro Carillo claimed that such a leviathan had burnt down his ranch which sat on the shore. Was a dragon to blame? Don Chico Lopez who also built a ranch near the lake was next to observe the monster some fifty years later during the early 1880s saying that it was winged, and had flippers. Workers reported seeing ominous shadows over the lake cast by the demon and the disappearance of livestock was recorded. In 1886 a Don Felipe Rivera claimed that a creature over forty-feet long, with six legs and two leathery wings had eaten one of his steers, although others claim that the beast was a giant snake. Basque immigrant Miguel Leonis purchased the ranch next and a great deal of land throughout southern California. Legend states that after losing several of his animals, Leonis stalked the beast and attacked it one night, causing injury to its eye after bullets seemed to bounce off its tough skin. The wounded creature skulked back into the lake and soon after allegedly fled, but rumour was rife that many settlers, ranchers and the likes avoided the area for years....
CAO would ‘welcome’ investigation into carbon offsets The Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for the House said Tuesday he would “welcome” an examination into the carbon offset marketplace, which has been a tool for the “Green the Capitol” initiative he oversees. CAO Daniel Beard was reacting to a letter sent by two top House Republicans to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week, seeking a closer look at the program. As part of the one-year-old “Green the Capitol” project, which aims at reducing the level of pollution created by members of Congress, the House purchased $89,000 in carbon offsets from the Chicago Climate Exchange, an offset brokerage company. The company then paid farms in the Midwest to take steps to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one of the leading causes of global warming and is released both naturally, such as through the breaking-apart of soil, and by man-made design, such as through coal-burning power plants. Carbon offsets were created to counterbalance the release of carbon into the air through practices such as planting trees, which feed off of carbon and produce oxygen, or employing companies to use non-carbon-producing fuels as energy. Last week Republican Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked the GAO to look into “questionable purchases of carbon offsets” after recent media criticism of the venture revealed that while several farmers who had received money from the House purchase were actively sequestering carbon, they might not actually be using the money to further their carbon reduction efforts....
Will Global Warming Save Lives? A report commissioned by Britain's Health Department says that one blistering hot summer between now and 2017 could kill more than 6,000 Britons. The panel of scientific experts that compiled the study believes the chance of that is 25%. Naturally, the global-warming-will-kill-us-all crowd latched onto that speculation, as did headline writers. "U.K. May Suffer Heat Wave That Kills 3,000," topped a Bloomberg story, while Reuters opted for "Climate Change May Kill Thousands In U.K. By 2017." The panel also said global warming will bring warmer winters, which will cut down on cold-related deaths in Britain. So should we fear human-created climate change or embrace it? Surprisingly, the BBC stood out as one media agent that took enough care to balance its coverage. Under the Web site headline "Global Warming 'May Cut Deaths,' " it reported 20,000 deaths are linked to the cold each year in the U.K. and that those deaths fell 3% a year from 1971 through 2003, a period in which summers warmed but heat-related deaths did not change. In the U.S., a warmer climate could save tens of thousands. Thomas Gale Moore, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has studied and written extensively about global warming, believes as many as 40,000 American lives would be spared each year....
Sheep versus sheep It's another example of the New and Old West coming into conflict. This time it's bighorn sheep versus domestic sheep or, more specifically, wildlife advocates versus the sheep herding industry. During a telephone conference call yesterday, Feb. 14, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopted an interim strategy for separating bighorn sheep from domestic sheep. The policy establishes buffer zones between occupied bighorn sheep range and sheep allotments on federal land statewide. Where the two overlap, however, bighorn sheep will be moved or killed. The Nez Perce Tribe, as well as sportsmen's groups, environmentalists and ranchers, have been watching closely as the state of Idaho and U.S. Forest Service attempt to sort out the problem. Fish and Game's new strategy came in response to Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's call for a policy to manage the interaction between the herds by Feb. 15. The governor established a working group led by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Idaho Department of Agriculture in response to judicial orders requiring sheep ranchers to pull their sheep off Hells Canyon allotments....
Green Jobbed As the Los Angeles Times noted this week, alternative energy "is becoming one of the darlings of Democratic-controlled Capitol Hill." Democrats even want to include tax breaks for it in the economic stimulus package. A cap-and-trade system to cut CO2 emissions has also found favor. The thinking is that we can radically alter our economy and at the same create millions of well-paying "green-collar jobs." Even some business groups embrace the idea. "The one thing that the Chamber of Commerce and the Sierra Club agree on," notes energy lobbyist Scott Segal, "is that the answer to climate change is transformative technologies." Maybe so. But claims that spending on green technologies will create "millions" of new jobs, as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have repeatedly claimed, are false. Such assertions rest on fallacious economic logic that sounds good on the stump but in reality results in a lower standard of living and fewer jobs for all Americans....
Group to pay ranchers for losses caused by wolves A new state program will reimburse livestock producers for wolf predation losses. The new plan will replace the current one, which has been funded by Defenders of Wildlife for the past 20 years. The plan is called for under the state's wolf management plan, and George Edwards with the Montana Dept. of Livestock, says it's not tied to wolf population control. "Whether the wolves are listed. Still listed or de-listed will not affect this program because this program is primarily in place to help livestock producers who have suffered a wolf loss." The Defenders of Wildlife will provide a $100,000 grant to get the new program started, but Edwards says it will take federal funds and private dollars to maintain. The Department of Livestock is accepting donations, and all contributions are tax deductible.
The 2008 House Energy Tax Bill: Repeating Past Mistakes Taxing successful energy sources and subsidizing unsuccessful ones: That is the essence of Washington's energy policy mistakes during the 1970s and early 1980s. These mistakes are about to be repeated in the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008, recently introduced in the House. This bill would effectively raise taxes on the oil and natural gas sector and spend much of the revenue on alternative energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels. As it did decades ago, this approach would likely backfire and raise prices for consumers while reducing energy security. Congress should craft a new energy policy that relies on the market to meet the nation's energy needs. The bill proposes a number of changes in the tax code, the effect of which would be to raise taxes paid by companies working to expand domestic oil and natural gas supplies....
Save the prairie dogs! - PETA To combat these perceived injustices, a group - the prairie Dog Coalition - is working hard to secure a more stable footing for our burrowing friends, and pushing two ideas. The first, a legislative one, is recognition of a renamed “Prairie Dog Day” in our cities and counties. And they’ve been making headway. This year, the City of Denver joined Boulder in issuing a proclamation celebrating Prairie Dog Day, and giving our rodent residents the recognition they deserve. The second idea is to give another look to our yard-destroying, grazing-land inhabiting, “plague-carrying” neighbors. Says Dr. Lauren McCain, Co-Chair of the Coalition - which comprises some 30 member organizations - “we’re looking to raise awareness on groundhog day, and get people the information they need to know about prairie dogs. Because of population, destruction of habitat, disease and predation, and policies allowing them to be poisoned and exterminated, more than 90% of the historical prairie dog population has been destroyed.” As a “keystone” species, the health of the North American plains in many ways depends upon the continued survival of these social critters....I'm beginning to wonder just how damn many of these "keystone" and "canary in a coal mine" species there are.
The Transportation Commission's Proposed 200 Percent Gas Tax Increase In mid-January, the congressionally created National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission released its final report, which, among other proposals, recommends raising the federal fuel tax by 25 cents to 40 cents per gallon over the next five years and thereafter indexing it to the rate of inflation.[1] With the federal fuel tax at 18.3 cents per gallon of gasoline and 22.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel, the commission is proposing that one of the nation's most regressive taxes be increased by a staggering 136 percent to 218 percent. These tax revenues would then be spent on a variety of new road, transit, administrative, and environmental initiatives, including a 700 percent increase in Amtrak subsidies. While these recommendations are supported by several government-dependent transportation trade associations—including major tax users such as the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and the American Public Transportation Association—the Administration, taxpayers, fiscal conservatives, and many Members of Congress have openly criticized the report. To date, critics and skeptics have focused largely on the proposed tax increase, which would be little more than a massive transfer of income and wealth from motorists to a much bigger version of today's ill-conceived federal transportation program and the select few who benefit from it....
Alexander gets Restore New Mexico award Dennis Alexander, State Conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in New Mexico, was presented the Restore New Mexico Award today in recognition of the agency's participation and financial support of landscape-scale restoration efforts across the state. Jesse Juen, Associate State Director for the BLM in New Mexico, presented the award at the annual meeting of the National Association of Conservation Districts in Reno, Nev. on behalf of all New Mexico partners involved in the program. The NRCS has provided over $4 million in Environmental Quality Incentives Program grants to over 100 landowners with federal grazing allotments to restore degraded rangelands in New Mexico. The BLM, landowners and other partners have been able to match or exceed these funds, greatly enlarging the size and scope of the restoration projects....
Keep polar bears off endangered species list The Department of the Interior, in response to litigation from environmental groups, is considering whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. For the first time in the history of the ESA, the threat of global warming would be the reason for listing a well-known species. Given the ESA’s sweeping powers, such a move would raise energy prices by putting an end to promising new oil and natural gas production in Alaska. Even more troubling, listing the polar bear could be used as a back door to implement global warming policy nationwide by restricting energy production and use throughout the U.S. This would obviously harm the economy and — considering the ESA’s poor track record — could also harm the polar bears as well. The President should tell the DOI not to take this highly problematic step. While being highly successful in violating private property rights and hampering economic activities—especially for farmers, ranchers, and loggers in the rural West and elsewhere — the statute has done little to protect species....
Lawmakers seek probe of meat safety of School Lunch Program Lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the safety of meat in the National School Lunch Program, citing concerns raised by alleged abuses at a slaughterhouse in Chino, Calif. Democratic Reps. George Miller of California, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Carolyn McCarthy of New York, along with Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, are asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., a supplier to school lunch programs, in the wake of release of a Humane Society video showing disabled cows being mistreated. Meanwhile, the San Bernardino County district attorney's office said it will hold a press conference Friday to announce whether charges will be filed against Westland/Hallmark. A phone message left late Thursday for Westland President Steven Mendell was not immediately returned. USDA officials have put a hold until Feb. 19 on meat products from the facility, which are used by major hamburger chains and school districts around the nation. Investigations have found no evidence that meat from disabled animals has entered the food supply....
Rodeos could be modified A Mexican-style rodeo tradition could be history after the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved drafting an ordinance that could go as far as banning so-called "coleadas" or steer tailing, which some local charros or cowboys admit they proudly practice. By a 3-2 vote, supervisors Tuesday approved the proposal that would also reiterate state law prohibiting cruelty to animals. Supervisors also agreed to prohibit tripping or felling an equine animal, or intentionally tripping, dragging, or felling any bovine animal by the tail. The proposal would also require veterinarians to be in attendance throughout the duration of any event using animals and provide local remedies for violations. According to San Juan Bautista resident Martin Marquez, president of the Asociacion de Charros El Herradero de San Martin, steer tailing exercises are happening in the county and are indeed part of so-called "charreadas" or Mexican style rodeo. However, he said, local charros no longer practice horse tripping and instead perform a modified exercise putting the rope through the horse's front legs without making it fall. "It's sad that despite all the pains we've taken to follow the rules, they will be targeting steer tailing which is traditional and part of the charreria," Marquez said. "Coleadas are not cruel and inhumane. How do they know it's painful to the bulls, which fall on soft sand."....
Lake Monster? Los Angeles may have the largest populus, but within its history lurks several anomalies which defy the hustle and bustle of city life. Elizabeth Lake, located close to Palmdale in "north county" was once inhabited by one of these anomalies. It is said that the old lake, one of ten named Elizabeth in California, was created by the Devil who bestowed upon the waters one of his demonic pets, that being a diabolical beast. Sightings of such a creature date back to the 1830s when a Spaniard named Don Pedro Carillo claimed that such a leviathan had burnt down his ranch which sat on the shore. Was a dragon to blame? Don Chico Lopez who also built a ranch near the lake was next to observe the monster some fifty years later during the early 1880s saying that it was winged, and had flippers. Workers reported seeing ominous shadows over the lake cast by the demon and the disappearance of livestock was recorded. In 1886 a Don Felipe Rivera claimed that a creature over forty-feet long, with six legs and two leathery wings had eaten one of his steers, although others claim that the beast was a giant snake. Basque immigrant Miguel Leonis purchased the ranch next and a great deal of land throughout southern California. Legend states that after losing several of his animals, Leonis stalked the beast and attacked it one night, causing injury to its eye after bullets seemed to bounce off its tough skin. The wounded creature skulked back into the lake and soon after allegedly fled, but rumour was rife that many settlers, ranchers and the likes avoided the area for years....
McCain, Clinton Act On Global Warming Senator John McCain took time off from his presidential campaign today to announce the passage of the McCain-Clinton bill to end global warming. "My friends," said McCain, "it was high time that someone reached across the aisle and brought people together on this important issue. I am proud to announce the beginning of the end to global warming. My friend, Hillary Clinton, and I have tackled this tough issue in the true spirit of bi-partisanship." The revolutionary new bill includes measures to fine cattle ranchers up to $25,000.00 per incident for excessive cow flatulence, mandatory purchase of florescent light bulbs by everyone in the US by January 2009, and the end of daylight savings time. A addendum by Senator Ted Kennedy to make it illegal for the sun to shine in certain parts of Florida between 12 PM and 2 PM was dropped from the bill to ensure its passage because of fervent opposition by Christian evangelicals who objected on theological grounds. The bill calls for the creation of The Bureau of Weather Control with an initial cost of 20.3 billion dollars with facilities to be located in Arizona and New York. "This bill will be revenue neutral," promised McCain. "Initial costs will be recouped by the imposition of fines on dairy farmers and ranchers and people who do not comply with the florescent light bulb provision of the new law. The abolition of daylight savings time will serve to stop global warming by having one less hour of daylight and sunshine for a large part of every year. The economy will flourish because this bill creates 20,000 new government jobs for people to inspect cow anuses and light bulb sockets." (satire)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Study: Key Western reservoirs in danger Climate change and a growing demand for water could drain two of the nation's largest manmade reservoirs within 13 years, depriving several Southwestern states of key water sources, scientists warn. Researchers at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Wednesday that there's a 50 percent chance that lakes Mead and Powell will dry up by 2021, and a 10 percent chance the lakes will run out of usable water by 2013. "We were surprised that it was so soon," said climate scientist David Pierce, co-author of the institution's study that detailed the findings. The study, which was released Tuesday, found that if current conditions persist, there's a 50 percent chance the reservoirs will no longer be able to generate hydropower by 2017. Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border and the West's largest storage reservoir, and Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, have been hit hard by a regional drought and are half full. Both lakes were created by dams built on the Colorado River, which provides water for about 27 million people in seven states. Researchers said that if Lake Mead water levels drop below 1,000 feet, Nevada would lose access to all its river allocation, Arizona would lose much of the water that flows through the Central Arizona Project Canal, and power production would cease before the lake level reached bottom....
Bush forest budget called disastrous A Bush administration spending plan that would slash money for the Forest Service could lead to massive layoffs at the agency charged with managing 193 million acres of national forests, Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday. Spending for the Forest Service would be cut by nearly 8 percent next year, to $4.1 billion, in a budget plan submitted by President Bush. The plan could mean the loss of more than 2,700 jobs — nearly 10 percent of the agency's work force — as well as reductions in dozens of non-fire related programs, from road and trail maintenance to state assistance, land acquisition and recreation, lawmakers said. The only bright spot in the budget was a request to increase spending to fight wildfires by about $148 million to just under $1 billion, Dicks said....
New crop of Western ranchers buck cattle industry to go green Seth Nitschke spent his early 20s working at the country's biggest feed lots before he returned home to start a business raising beef cattle fed on the grasses of the Sierra Nevada foothills. Nitschke, 31, who makes his living herding heifers through pastures near Yosemite National Park, would never call himself an environmental activist, though he's planting saplings to protect nearby streams and runs a light herd to let his pastures breathe. Unlike some of his conservative counterparts in traditional livestock production, he and a new crop of cattlemen are quietly working to minimize their industry's ecological footprint, and are forging unlikely alliances with environmental groups. Throughout the West, cattlemen and environmentalists have locked horns over grazing practices for decades. But increasingly, ranchers are buying into the idea that they have a role to play in protecting open space, be it through preserving private wildlands or promoting sustainable grazing techniques that help endangered species flourish. "This new generation of ranchers knows they have to work on the environmental part of it to survive," said Neil McDougald, a rancher at the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Madera County. "I'll guarantee you the guys driving cows today have a better environmental conscience than the ranchers who were riding around holding up stage coaches."....So there you have it Mr. & Mrs. rancher. You either have an "environmental conscience" or you are a robber of stage coaches. My recommendation to all you stage coach robber types is that you better learn how to sing about peace and love.
Unnatural preservation During the past three years, however, Bradley has been checking on the breeding sites of the black, burrow-nesting Cassin’s auklet, and he’s been finding abandoned eggs; dead, black, cue-ball-sized chicks; and skinny, faltering fledglings. “Most of the chicks have died,” says Bradley, a research biologist with PRBO Conservation Science, a nonprofit founded as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, that has spent the past 40 years counting and observing the birds that nest yearly on the Farallons. “This was as complete a failure response as we’d ever seen before. And we’d been following this species for 35 years.” The apparent culprit: Ocean currents, redirected by rising sea temperature, have swept out of range the millions of tiny krill that the adult birds scoop into their beaks, chew into purple, smelly goo and then spit up for their young. In other words, this unprecedented starvation wave may be a result of global warming. Bradley is one of the experts who knows most about the auklet die-off. Just the same, he’s adamant in his belief that he should not attempt to save any of the dying chicks. To do so, he says, would be considered unnatural and unscientific. “You definitely grimace when you see the guy next door who hasn’t done so well and has died at a very young age,” Bradley says. “We try to maintain ourselves as scientists. But we really feel for the birds.” In the world of natural preservation, it’s not just scientists who take Bradley’s don’t-mess-with-Mother-Nature stance....
Ranchers offered offset grasslands The Forest Service met with 16 Billings County ranchers this week and offered to sell each of them up to a section of land to offset the agency's acquisition of the former Eberts ranch. The ranchers have six months to take their deal or leave it. The agency received congressional authorization in late December to sell odd lots, ranging from a quarter to a section of land, on the Little Missouri National Grasslands, so the 5,200-acre Eberts' ranch does not increase the Forest Service's net holdings in North Dakota. However, Congress did not authorize use of the Eberts' ranch as a grass bank. The authorization dictates that the agency must continue leasing out the former Eberts ranch under grazing agreements with the Medora Grazing Association. The Forest Service bought the ranch last year, renaming it the Elkhorn Ranchlands, to preserve it for its association with Theodore Roosevelt, who free-ranged cattle there in the 1880s. The deal cost $5.3 million, with all but $500,000 from federal funds. Congress also said multiple uses of grazing, hunting and oil development have to continue. By authorization, the offset offers had to go to ranchers who are already leasing the parcels in conjunction with their privately owned headquarters....
Governor raps drilling proposal A small exploratory drilling project proposed for Little Mountain south of Rock Springs is a bad idea that could lead to large-scale development of a popular recreation and wildlife area, Gov. Dave Freudenthal told federal officials this week. Freudenthal panned the proposal by the Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Co. to drill two exploratory natural gas wells in the area. The governor expressed "significant concerns" about the proposal in comments submitted to the Bureau of Land Management. The governor worried about impacts on recreation, critical wildlife habitat, sensitive species, air and water quality, among others, and pointed to the area's importance to the quality of life for southwest Wyoming residents. Freudenthal said he doesn't want the project to "trigger the full industrialization" of an "irreplaceable" recreation area. Although the initial proposal is just two wells, "the pressure to expand from two wells seems inevitable," he wrote....
EPA: Reconsider gas field air controls An environmental group seeking stricter air-pollution controls on Colorado's growing natural gas industry is praising a federal order it hopes will "ripple through the Rocky Mountain West." The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the state to respond to objections from Denver-based Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action over a permit for a natural gas compressor station in northeast Colorado. The group argued that state air-quality regulators should have bunched the compressor station together with nearby gas wells owned by the same company when it considered whether to issue an air-quality permit. The state issued a permit based only on the compressor station's emissions. An order issued Friday and signed by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson doesn't reverse the decision but directs regulators to explain it and make any appropriate changes. Grouping the compressor station with the wells as a single source of pollution could trigger the need for more stringent air-pollution controls under the federal Clean Air Act, which Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action favors....
BLM official accused of child rape resigns post Accused rapist Rex Lee Smart has retired from the Bureau of Land Management, ending a 25-year career with the federal agency and six years as head of the Kanab office. BLM spokesman Larry Crutchfield said Wednesday he could not say whether the departure is related to the 13 felony charges Smart faces in a child sex-abuse case. "It is our policy not to comment on personnel issues," Crutchfield said. Smart, 60, faces two sodomy counts, six forcible-sexual-abuse counts, two kidnapping counts and a rape charge, all first-degree felonies. He also is accused of two second-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse....
Celebrating Wilderness Wilderness preservation is an American invention -- a unique contribution of our nation to world civilization. The 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act (September 3, l964) has come and gone, and Americans should renew their pride in and commitment to the National Wilderness Preservation System. It is one of the best ideas our country ever had. One place to start the celebration is with the recognition that wilderness is the basic component of American culture. From the its raw materials we built a civilization. With the idea of wilderness we sought to give that civilization identity and meaning. Our early environmental history is inextricably tied to wild country. Hate it or love it, if you want to understand American history there is no escaping the need to come to terms with our wilderness past. From this perspective, designated Wilderness Areas are historical documents; destroying them is comparable to tearing pages from our books and laws. We can not teach our children what is special about our history on freeways or in shopping malls. As a professional historian I deeply believe that the present owes the future a chance to know its wilderness past....
Coyote 'working' wild turkeys entertains Rankin ranching couple Sundown was settling in when a lone coyote came trotting onto Tommy and Edra Owens' homeplace on hardy ranchland north of Rankin down south from Midland. It was suppertime for the coyote, a clever, savvy, adaptable and legendary prairie and rangeland survivor -- the prairie wolf. The Owens couple had finished their supper when Tommy heard the squawking of wild turkeys, who roost in pine trees in their back yard. Tommy went out and along came Edra. They have lived in this old, mostly dry and rugged country for just about forever. Tommy and coyotes both make their livelihood off of less cunning critters, such as sheep and goats, which Tommy raises. Coyotes also savor the taste of fresh meats, such as that of rabbits, mice and other rodents, birds, snakes and insects. They cotton to fruits and vegetables and, when all else fails, carrion. For supper this evening, wild turkey was on the coyote's menu. "We've got coyotes galore down here," Edra said. "But we have all of these wild turkeys." Once outside, Tommy and Edra were "watching this coyote work those turkeys just like a sheepdog." Tommy, who is a hardy and most likeable 6-foot-4 fellow, gentle and blessed with humor and talent, scurried into house and returned with his .30-06-caliber (thirty-ought-six) rifle and, as Edra tells the tale, "shot at him, but he missed. The coyote ran off."....
How ‘bout them cowboys? These guys and gals are America’s finest. If you’re looking for piercings and tattoos, they’re not readily apparent. In high school they wore cowboy hats and called themselves red necks. Certain administrators thought they were “bad boys.” We knew differently. They were (and are) the greatest products that America manufactures. Honest kids. Polite — shake your hand, look you in the eye — kids who grew up in rural environments where they were force fed solid values and learned basic life skills. They can hunt, fish, rope and weld a blade on the front of an American tank, should someone get caught in hedge rows in France. These days, certain dead souls want to put down cattle and ranching in general. There is a movement against beef — an attack on Ag. Those folks don’t get it. The finest kids this nation has ever produced were weaned on farms and ranches. Curtail farming and you kill the culture these kids were raised in. We should promote Ag, if, for nothing else, the kind of children it produces. You can’t bottle character and sell it. It’s home grown. Like the cattle they raise. How ‘bout them cowboys?....
Trail drives began here in South Texas South Texas, birthplace of the cattle industry, was also the birthplace of trail drives. Cattle were driven from this part of Mexico across Louisiana bayous in the 1700s. After the Texas Revolution, "cowboys" rounded up cattle in the Nueces Strip and drove them east. Cattle were trailed to Ohio, Missouri, and California during the Gold Rush. Herds were driven east to feed the Confederacy during the Civil War, At war's end, vast herds roamed South Texas ranges at a time when there was a great demand for beef in Northern cities. Cattle could be bought cheap in Texas and sold for high prices at railhead towns in Kansas. Texas cattlemen began driving herds north. The great cattle-driving era -- which lasted for about two decades -- began the year after the war, in 1866, when 250,000 longhorns went up the trail. The greatest drive occurred in 1871 when 700,000 head of cattle went north....
Bush forest budget called disastrous A Bush administration spending plan that would slash money for the Forest Service could lead to massive layoffs at the agency charged with managing 193 million acres of national forests, Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday. Spending for the Forest Service would be cut by nearly 8 percent next year, to $4.1 billion, in a budget plan submitted by President Bush. The plan could mean the loss of more than 2,700 jobs — nearly 10 percent of the agency's work force — as well as reductions in dozens of non-fire related programs, from road and trail maintenance to state assistance, land acquisition and recreation, lawmakers said. The only bright spot in the budget was a request to increase spending to fight wildfires by about $148 million to just under $1 billion, Dicks said....
New crop of Western ranchers buck cattle industry to go green Seth Nitschke spent his early 20s working at the country's biggest feed lots before he returned home to start a business raising beef cattle fed on the grasses of the Sierra Nevada foothills. Nitschke, 31, who makes his living herding heifers through pastures near Yosemite National Park, would never call himself an environmental activist, though he's planting saplings to protect nearby streams and runs a light herd to let his pastures breathe. Unlike some of his conservative counterparts in traditional livestock production, he and a new crop of cattlemen are quietly working to minimize their industry's ecological footprint, and are forging unlikely alliances with environmental groups. Throughout the West, cattlemen and environmentalists have locked horns over grazing practices for decades. But increasingly, ranchers are buying into the idea that they have a role to play in protecting open space, be it through preserving private wildlands or promoting sustainable grazing techniques that help endangered species flourish. "This new generation of ranchers knows they have to work on the environmental part of it to survive," said Neil McDougald, a rancher at the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Madera County. "I'll guarantee you the guys driving cows today have a better environmental conscience than the ranchers who were riding around holding up stage coaches."....So there you have it Mr. & Mrs. rancher. You either have an "environmental conscience" or you are a robber of stage coaches. My recommendation to all you stage coach robber types is that you better learn how to sing about peace and love.
Unnatural preservation During the past three years, however, Bradley has been checking on the breeding sites of the black, burrow-nesting Cassin’s auklet, and he’s been finding abandoned eggs; dead, black, cue-ball-sized chicks; and skinny, faltering fledglings. “Most of the chicks have died,” says Bradley, a research biologist with PRBO Conservation Science, a nonprofit founded as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, that has spent the past 40 years counting and observing the birds that nest yearly on the Farallons. “This was as complete a failure response as we’d ever seen before. And we’d been following this species for 35 years.” The apparent culprit: Ocean currents, redirected by rising sea temperature, have swept out of range the millions of tiny krill that the adult birds scoop into their beaks, chew into purple, smelly goo and then spit up for their young. In other words, this unprecedented starvation wave may be a result of global warming. Bradley is one of the experts who knows most about the auklet die-off. Just the same, he’s adamant in his belief that he should not attempt to save any of the dying chicks. To do so, he says, would be considered unnatural and unscientific. “You definitely grimace when you see the guy next door who hasn’t done so well and has died at a very young age,” Bradley says. “We try to maintain ourselves as scientists. But we really feel for the birds.” In the world of natural preservation, it’s not just scientists who take Bradley’s don’t-mess-with-Mother-Nature stance....
Ranchers offered offset grasslands The Forest Service met with 16 Billings County ranchers this week and offered to sell each of them up to a section of land to offset the agency's acquisition of the former Eberts ranch. The ranchers have six months to take their deal or leave it. The agency received congressional authorization in late December to sell odd lots, ranging from a quarter to a section of land, on the Little Missouri National Grasslands, so the 5,200-acre Eberts' ranch does not increase the Forest Service's net holdings in North Dakota. However, Congress did not authorize use of the Eberts' ranch as a grass bank. The authorization dictates that the agency must continue leasing out the former Eberts ranch under grazing agreements with the Medora Grazing Association. The Forest Service bought the ranch last year, renaming it the Elkhorn Ranchlands, to preserve it for its association with Theodore Roosevelt, who free-ranged cattle there in the 1880s. The deal cost $5.3 million, with all but $500,000 from federal funds. Congress also said multiple uses of grazing, hunting and oil development have to continue. By authorization, the offset offers had to go to ranchers who are already leasing the parcels in conjunction with their privately owned headquarters....
Governor raps drilling proposal A small exploratory drilling project proposed for Little Mountain south of Rock Springs is a bad idea that could lead to large-scale development of a popular recreation and wildlife area, Gov. Dave Freudenthal told federal officials this week. Freudenthal panned the proposal by the Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Co. to drill two exploratory natural gas wells in the area. The governor expressed "significant concerns" about the proposal in comments submitted to the Bureau of Land Management. The governor worried about impacts on recreation, critical wildlife habitat, sensitive species, air and water quality, among others, and pointed to the area's importance to the quality of life for southwest Wyoming residents. Freudenthal said he doesn't want the project to "trigger the full industrialization" of an "irreplaceable" recreation area. Although the initial proposal is just two wells, "the pressure to expand from two wells seems inevitable," he wrote....
EPA: Reconsider gas field air controls An environmental group seeking stricter air-pollution controls on Colorado's growing natural gas industry is praising a federal order it hopes will "ripple through the Rocky Mountain West." The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the state to respond to objections from Denver-based Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action over a permit for a natural gas compressor station in northeast Colorado. The group argued that state air-quality regulators should have bunched the compressor station together with nearby gas wells owned by the same company when it considered whether to issue an air-quality permit. The state issued a permit based only on the compressor station's emissions. An order issued Friday and signed by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson doesn't reverse the decision but directs regulators to explain it and make any appropriate changes. Grouping the compressor station with the wells as a single source of pollution could trigger the need for more stringent air-pollution controls under the federal Clean Air Act, which Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action favors....
BLM official accused of child rape resigns post Accused rapist Rex Lee Smart has retired from the Bureau of Land Management, ending a 25-year career with the federal agency and six years as head of the Kanab office. BLM spokesman Larry Crutchfield said Wednesday he could not say whether the departure is related to the 13 felony charges Smart faces in a child sex-abuse case. "It is our policy not to comment on personnel issues," Crutchfield said. Smart, 60, faces two sodomy counts, six forcible-sexual-abuse counts, two kidnapping counts and a rape charge, all first-degree felonies. He also is accused of two second-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse....
Celebrating Wilderness Wilderness preservation is an American invention -- a unique contribution of our nation to world civilization. The 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act (September 3, l964) has come and gone, and Americans should renew their pride in and commitment to the National Wilderness Preservation System. It is one of the best ideas our country ever had. One place to start the celebration is with the recognition that wilderness is the basic component of American culture. From the its raw materials we built a civilization. With the idea of wilderness we sought to give that civilization identity and meaning. Our early environmental history is inextricably tied to wild country. Hate it or love it, if you want to understand American history there is no escaping the need to come to terms with our wilderness past. From this perspective, designated Wilderness Areas are historical documents; destroying them is comparable to tearing pages from our books and laws. We can not teach our children what is special about our history on freeways or in shopping malls. As a professional historian I deeply believe that the present owes the future a chance to know its wilderness past....
Coyote 'working' wild turkeys entertains Rankin ranching couple Sundown was settling in when a lone coyote came trotting onto Tommy and Edra Owens' homeplace on hardy ranchland north of Rankin down south from Midland. It was suppertime for the coyote, a clever, savvy, adaptable and legendary prairie and rangeland survivor -- the prairie wolf. The Owens couple had finished their supper when Tommy heard the squawking of wild turkeys, who roost in pine trees in their back yard. Tommy went out and along came Edra. They have lived in this old, mostly dry and rugged country for just about forever. Tommy and coyotes both make their livelihood off of less cunning critters, such as sheep and goats, which Tommy raises. Coyotes also savor the taste of fresh meats, such as that of rabbits, mice and other rodents, birds, snakes and insects. They cotton to fruits and vegetables and, when all else fails, carrion. For supper this evening, wild turkey was on the coyote's menu. "We've got coyotes galore down here," Edra said. "But we have all of these wild turkeys." Once outside, Tommy and Edra were "watching this coyote work those turkeys just like a sheepdog." Tommy, who is a hardy and most likeable 6-foot-4 fellow, gentle and blessed with humor and talent, scurried into house and returned with his .30-06-caliber (thirty-ought-six) rifle and, as Edra tells the tale, "shot at him, but he missed. The coyote ran off."....
How ‘bout them cowboys? These guys and gals are America’s finest. If you’re looking for piercings and tattoos, they’re not readily apparent. In high school they wore cowboy hats and called themselves red necks. Certain administrators thought they were “bad boys.” We knew differently. They were (and are) the greatest products that America manufactures. Honest kids. Polite — shake your hand, look you in the eye — kids who grew up in rural environments where they were force fed solid values and learned basic life skills. They can hunt, fish, rope and weld a blade on the front of an American tank, should someone get caught in hedge rows in France. These days, certain dead souls want to put down cattle and ranching in general. There is a movement against beef — an attack on Ag. Those folks don’t get it. The finest kids this nation has ever produced were weaned on farms and ranches. Curtail farming and you kill the culture these kids were raised in. We should promote Ag, if, for nothing else, the kind of children it produces. You can’t bottle character and sell it. It’s home grown. Like the cattle they raise. How ‘bout them cowboys?....
Trail drives began here in South Texas South Texas, birthplace of the cattle industry, was also the birthplace of trail drives. Cattle were driven from this part of Mexico across Louisiana bayous in the 1700s. After the Texas Revolution, "cowboys" rounded up cattle in the Nueces Strip and drove them east. Cattle were trailed to Ohio, Missouri, and California during the Gold Rush. Herds were driven east to feed the Confederacy during the Civil War, At war's end, vast herds roamed South Texas ranges at a time when there was a great demand for beef in Northern cities. Cattle could be bought cheap in Texas and sold for high prices at railhead towns in Kansas. Texas cattlemen began driving herds north. The great cattle-driving era -- which lasted for about two decades -- began the year after the war, in 1866, when 250,000 longhorns went up the trail. The greatest drive occurred in 1871 when 700,000 head of cattle went north....
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
GAO
Wildland Fire Management: Federal Agencies Lack Key Long- and Short-Term Management Strategies for Using Program Funds Effectively, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations. GAO-08-433T, February 12.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-433T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08433thigh.pdf
Federal Land Management: Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act Restrictions and Management Weaknesses Limit Future Sales and Acquisitions. GAO-08-196, February 5.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-196
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08196high.pdf
Federal Oversight of Food Safety: FDA's Food Protection Plan Proposes Positive First Steps, but Capacity to Carry Them Out Is Critical, by Lisa R. Shames, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, House Committee on Energy and Commerce. GAO-08-435T, January 29.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-435T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08435thigh.pdf
Wildland Fire Management: Federal Agencies Lack Key Long- and Short-Term Management Strategies for Using Program Funds Effectively, by Robin M. Nazzaro, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, House Committee on Appropriations. GAO-08-433T, February 12.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-433T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08433thigh.pdf
Federal Land Management: Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act Restrictions and Management Weaknesses Limit Future Sales and Acquisitions. GAO-08-196, February 5.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-196
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08196high.pdf
Federal Oversight of Food Safety: FDA's Food Protection Plan Proposes Positive First Steps, but Capacity to Carry Them Out Is Critical, by Lisa R. Shames, director, natural resources and environment, before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, House Committee on Energy and Commerce. GAO-08-435T, January 29.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-435T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08435thigh.pdf
Eminent Domain Proposed To Grab Pfizer N.Y. Plant Affordable-housing activists in Brooklyn, N.Y., are proposing eminent domain be used to seize a prime piece of New York real estate from Pfizer Inc. Pfizer is the same company that inspired economic-development plans in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London after the pharmaceutical giant started building its Global Research & Development headquarters there nearly a decade ago. “Ah, irony,” says Scott Bullock, senior attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, the group that defended Fort Trumbull resident Susette Kelo as the lead plaintiff in Kelo v. City of New London — the property-rights case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The city won the case three years ago. “It shows that once the power goes to government to take properties on behalf of private parties, the tables can easily be turned on you ... if you're out of favor with the powers that be,” Bullock said....I'm sitting here with multiple sclerosis, and I want all drug companies to do well, make profits, conduct research and find a cure. In this instance, though, I hope Pfizer takes it up the ying-yang.
Mayor Bloomberg Compares Threat of Global Warming to Terrorism While he acknowledged that scientists are unable to predict its consequences, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday compared the scourge of global warming to the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Although it is a "long-term" fight, he said, reducing gas emissions may save the life of "everybody" on the planet, the same way that fighting terrorism and its proliferation saves lives in shorter terms. Addressing a U.N. climate change conference, the mayor also announced a new plan to reduce the use of tropical hardwoods by New York City and told delegates that the city plans to host a meeting in June of leaders from 20 major world cities to discuss ways for the largest municipalities to reduce global warming. Other participants in the conference called for a "war" against climate change, in which the United Nations would serve as a front-line combatant. Mr. Bloomberg renewed his call, made first late last year, for taxing countries such as America that emit large amounts of carbons, which are believed to cause changes in the planet's climate....
Bombing away in Socorro, New Mexico Folks living in Socorro, in remote, central New Mexico, are regularly jolted by the sounds of car bombs and calculated cave-ins. It’s all cooked up by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, known here simply as “Tech.” “Energetic materials” refers to anything that blows up, and since people exploding bombs are making life miserable for the American military in the Middle East and other places in the world, Tech’s bomb-testing business is booming. Testing activities have gone on for years, but people living in Socorro have been largely silent as new schemes popped up. After all, it’s the town’s biggest employer: At least 40 percent of the economy is tied to Tech, making Socorro almost a company town. And of course, if you moved here, you most likely knew what you were getting into. But what’s the limit? Schoolteacher Loretta Lowman was painting her house last year when a big bomb blast nearly knocked her off her ladder. The window-rattling explosion rolled in from the backside of “M” Mountain, a 7,300-foot volcanic remnant and landmark in this town of about 9,000. For Lowman, the blast lingered, bookmarked in her mind, and quickly recalled when she heard about a new testing venture. Soon, out there on the edge of its 40-square-mile “field laboratory” a few miles behind the mountain, the U.S. Air Force’s 58th Special Operations Wing, based in Albuquerque, would start practicing dropping stuff....
Idaho Conservation League scolds Otter for bighorn sheep policy The state is creating an environment for more lawsuits over bighorn sheep, the Idaho Conservation League said in a letter mailed this week to Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter. The governor is using a "top down approach" to manage Idaho's bighorns, the group wrote, by asking the state departments of Fish and Game and Agricul-ture to develop a plan to keep the species separate. ICL wants the public to have a say in developing a policy. "Instead of telling the public what is best for a few, the state should ask the public to roll up their sleeves and craft a workable solution," wrote John Robison, ICL's public lands director. However, Otter is expected to make an announcement soon on the state's bighorn policy, which state agency officials say is mostly finished. Following a year of lawsuits and political posturing over bighorns, the plan is likely to be contentious. A judge closed grazing allotments last year after environmental groups sued, saying massive bighorn die-offs happened after contact with disease-carrying domestic sheep. The governor quietly asked the state agencies to find short-term solutions before sheep are turned out on grazing allotments this spring - and before more lawsuits are filed....
Ranches Transformed Into Endangered Jaguar Reserve Jaguars in northern Mexico have a newly protected habitat today due to the official establishment of the Northern Jaguar Reserve in the state of Sonora. The 45,000 acre reserve, which provides a sanctuary for the world's northernmost breeding population of jaguars, is the centerpiece of a binational effort by the Northern Jaguar Project and Naturalia to safeguard and restore the jaguar in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. "This land is perfectly suited to support North America's largest wild cat," said Oscar Moctezuma, director of Naturalia, the Mexican conservation organization that will hold title to the property. With assistance from the Northern Jaguar Project, Naturalia purchased the 10,000 acre Rancho Los Pavos in 2003. Located in a region of abundant biodiversity, Los Pavos was the first ranch acquired to establish this jaguar reserve. Next, the Northern Jaguar Project spearheaded the purchase of the adjacent 35,000 acre Rancho Zetasora at a cost of $1.5 million with contributions from more than 600 individual donors and private foundations. The final payment for Zetasora was made at the end of January and completes the 70 square mile reserve....
Senate approves expedition of eminent domain The South Dakota Senate has approved a measure intended to speed up state hearings on the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad's application to acquire land by condemnation for its $6 billion expansion project. An opponent said the bill could hurt landowners who believe DM&E is not treating them fairly, but the Senate sent the measure to the House on a 20-13 vote. The bill's main sponsor, Sen. Tom Hansen, R-Huron, said DM&E applied more than a year ago for state approval to use eminent domain to acquire land for a right of way from people who are unwilling to sell. Opponents have used delaying tactics to prevent a state hearing, he said. "The time has come to let the process move forward," Hansen said. But Sen. Jim Lintz, R-Hermosa, said DM&E has caused as much of the delay as opponents have. He said many of his neighbors own land that would be crossed by the expansion project. They know the project is likely to be built, but they want to be treated fairly, he said. "Their concern was not to stop the railroad. Their concern was to get a decent price for what the railroad was taking," Lintz said....
Parks' gun rules may change A proposal to allow loaded guns in national parks is complicating an otherwise uncontroversial public lands bill now working its way through the U.S. Senate. The plan - crafted by the National Rifle Association - was pushed by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn and is endorsed by 47 other senators, including Montana Democrats Max Baucus and Jon Tester. Those lawmakers - 39 Republicans and eight Democrats - penned a Dec. 14 letter to Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne, asking that rules be changed to allow loaded guns in national parks. Currently, guns are allowed, but must be unloaded and properly stored. In the letter, the senators said today's rules “infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners who wish to transport and carry firearms on or across these lands.” Coburn's amendment would forbid Interior from enforcing “any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System.” It would create one uniform law for guns on all federal lands, including U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service lands - because the current system results in inconsistencies that “are confusing, burdensome and unnecessary,” the letter said. Critics argue the change would prove dangerous, for many reasons, and this week Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., drew up an alternative public lands bill without the gun-rule changes....
Weasel-like animal threatens forest plan Federal authorities have delayed a major forest-thinning project -- aimed at reducing fire danger near Shaver Lake -- because new research suggests the work could harm the weasel-like Pacific fisher. By late March, Sierra National Forest officials plan revisions to further protect the sensitive fisher in the Kings River Project, about 13,000 acres east of Fresno. The project plan, which had been approved in 2006 after more than a decade of work, could be ready again this fall. The delay pleased environmentalists but disappointed a Tulare County sawmill executive who says he needs timber from the area to keep his 125 employees working. Kent Duysen, general manager of Sierra Forest Products, said sensitive species have been studied for two decades. "At what point do you say we need to move on?" he asked. Environmentalists, who last year sued to stop the project, said the U.S. Forest Service is correct to move cautiously....
Bush proposal cuts national forest fire prevention budget President Bush's proposal to reduce fire-prevention spending in the nation's forests has some on edge in Inland Southern California, where three of the last five Octobers have brought catastrophic wildfires. The proposed U.S. Forest Service cuts, assailed by local experts and Democratic lawmakers, came under fire during a hearing on the Bush budget proposal held Tuesday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior Environment and Related Agencies. At the same Capitol Hill hearing, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, the Bush administration's official overseeing the Forest Service, said the upcoming fire season is likely to be as bad or worse than the past fire season, particularly in Southern California. Bush's budget calls for a $150 million increase in federal funding for the U.S. Forest Service to extinguish blazes, bringing the agency's total firefighting budget to more than $1.14 billion, according to figures provided to the subcommittee. But the proposal slashes the agency's preparedness funding by $77 million, including a $13 million reduction in money to remove dead trees and overgrown brush that act as kindling for fires in 155 national forests. That amounts to more than an 11 percent decrease from last year's preparedness budget of around $5.9 million....
Forest Service studying loss of U.S. firefighters to Calif. force A top federal official acknowledged Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service is losing federal firefighters in California to state and county departments that pay more. But Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, told concerned lawmakers he's still evaluating how much of a problem that is. "On the one hand you hate to lose trained people. On the other hand they're still fighting fires under a unified command system," Rey told a hearing of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee. They're going to be on the fire line along with the federal firefighters." Lawmakers convinced there is a problem ordered the Forest Service to come up with a plan by Feb. 1 to increase recruitment and retention for Southern California forests. That deadline has passed but the agency is working on it, officials said....
Rainbow Family warned to leave Forest campsite Hundreds of Rainbow Family members started gathering deep inside the Ocala National Forest last week. Many who found their way down Paisley Road to a sandy path around a little spot called Duck Pond - some 10 miles south of State Road 40 - might have seen a notice posted high on a pine tree. "This is an ILLEGAL gathering of 75 persons or more without a permit," the notice put up by the U.S. Forest Service reads. "The max penalty is six months in prison and/or a $5,000 fine." But Monday came and went, and the Rainbow Family remained, determined not to give up the government land they settled on. "We've met here for 13 years, and now they're treating us like criminals," said a woman who identified herself by her Rainbow name, Indigo. She was keeping an eye out for any Forest Service Law Enforcement vehicles Monday afternoon. Sure enough, three Forest Service sport utility vehicles pulled down the path around 2 p.m. "Six-point-o rolling through the Rainbow land," she yelled out to alert her brethren. Many in the Rainbow Family have no plans of leaving Duck Pond, even if they get ticketed upward of $250 a day. A couple dozen in the family already have been ticketed for assembling illegally this week. Many in the Rainbow Family questioned officers on where the regulations and rules were posted. "It's your responsibility to find out what's legal and what the rules are," Watson answered. "We have all the rules posted in our offices." After Tooley left, Forest Service officers came back to inform everyone that they had been approved to assemble at Syracuse Island, about 20 miles north. All Rainbow Family members must leave Duck Pond by 4 p.m. today and make the pilgrimage to the new location. That news and the officers were met with harmonizing choruses of John Lennon and Bob Marley songs. About 50 members banded together on fallen trees around the Forest Services vehicles, raising their connected hands high as they sang about peace and love....Let's see, the Forest Service threw Kit Laney in the federal pen for having cattle on the Forest without a permit. I guess Kit's problem was he couldn't sing any John Lennon songs.
Citations piling up for sleds off-limits Seventeen snowmobilers have been caught riding illegally in wilderness areas and other Flathead National Forest lands off-limits to the sleds, part of a flurry of out-of-bounds recreation over the past two weekends. “We are disappointed that some snowmobile riders are being disrespectful and irresponsible by entering areas that are closed to snowmobile travel,” said Steve Brady, the forest's Swan Lake district ranger. With nearly 800,000 acres open to the machines on the Flathead, Brady asked sledders to “respect the areas closed to motorized use.” Those areas include all designated wilderness, such as the Bob Marshall, Great Bear and Mission Mountains wildernesses, as well as the Jewel Basin Hiking Area. Those forest lands have been closed to motorized use, including snowmobiles, for several decades, Brady said. Still, eight snowmobilers were caught on Feb. 3 while riding in Sondreson Meadows, an area on the western boundary of Glacier National Park. U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers said the group - locals from Columbia Falls and Kalispell - knew they were in a nonmotorized area. Then, on Feb. 9, nine more snowmobilers were stopped while sledding in the Mission Mountains Wilderness. Again, all were locals - from West Glacier, Kalispell and Lakeside - and all were cited....Somebody needs to teach these folks how to sing about peace and love.
Logan River cries out for Wild and Scenic River protection What might we have heard? The bass groan of shifting rock as uplift occurred? Before that the sound of inland seas, Paleozoic waters filled with life we know through fossils? What was the sound of mountain water cutting through quartzite over eons, creating the entrenched meander we call the Logan River? Sometimes when I'm in Logan Canyon, I imagine more recent events: the mute snowfall of ice ages, the creep of glaciers, their retreat. I wonder if I might have discerned the scrape of ice and rock, the thump of glacial erratics dropped. Wild, vast forces created these rocks, these mountain rivers. Today beside mountain water live humans, deer, willow. Hermit thrush, yellow warbler, American dipper live above the mountain water, and cutthroat and browns live in it. The Logan River is a thread of dark water, sometimes placid, sometimes rumbling with melt, rapids white as snow, white as a bufflehead's chest in summer. It's also a river that 80 years ago some folks studied for dams, studies that seem to be at the heart of the U.S. Forest Service's baffling refusal to grant the Logan River - most of which runs wild - the status it deserves as a Wild and Scenic River....I sure wish ranchers could write like that. Wish they could sing too.
Plight of the brumbies "This nation is built on the back of horses," says Carter, 67, a petite grandmother with short red hair and deeply tanned skin who drives an old pickup smelling of the hay and earth that covers the soles of her boots. "They should be preserved and protected." Australia is home to an estimated 300,000 wild horses, the largest such population in the world. This abundance is believed to have put so much strain on the habitat that the Australian government has resorted to controversial mass culling campaigns to protect the country's national parks. Images of hunters chasing herds of galloping horses from helicopters and shooting them with semiautomatic rifles have sent shock waves across Australia, where horses are proud symbols of the country's pioneer spirit. The killing first came to public attention in 2000, when 600 horses were killed in the Guy Fawkes River National Park in New South Wales, about an hour-and-a-half drive from here. Public outcry forced the government to halt the helicopter shooting in this part of the country, but it could not stop aerial and ground assaults, often carried out in secret, in other parts of the vast Australian outback. More than 10,000 horses are expected to be shot in Queensland in the next three years, according to an investigation by a newspaper in the state....
PETA Praises Safeway for Adopting New Industry-Leading Animal Welfare Policies Following discussions with PETA about animal welfare and factory farming, supermarket giant Safeway has announced groundbreaking plans to improve conditions for some of the animals who are killed for its stores. Safeway is North America's third-largest grocery chain, with 1,743 stores located throughout the U.S. and Canada. According to the company's new plan, which places it at the forefront of the grocery industry with regard to animal welfare, Safeway will do the following: -- Increase its purchase of chickens and turkeys killed by controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK)--the least cruel method of bird slaughter--and give purchasing preference to suppliers that use or switch to CAK -- Increase the amount of pig meat it purchases from suppliers that don't use gestation crates--restrictive metal enclosures that confine pregnant pigs--by 5 percent over each of the next three years and give purchasing preference to suppliers that don't use gestation crates -- Double the amount of cage-free eggs it sells to more than 6 percent by 2010 and give purchasing preference to producers of cage-free eggs Safeway's new plan also follows PETA's submission of a shareholder resolution--which PETA has now withdrawn--and independent discussions with The Humane Society of the United States on the issue of cage-free eggs. "While we wish that shoppers would stick to the delicious vegetarian options that Safeway has available, the company should be commended for improving the lives and deaths of some of the animals who are killed for its stores," says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich....
Machen denies rumored jabs at agriculture Whether or not University of Florida President Bernard Machen called Florida agriculture a dying industry, he faces a political truism: Reality often plays second fiddle to perception. Machen denied Monday that he said "agriculture is a dying industry in the State of Florida" and "not worthy of the investments being made by the Legislature" in the university's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). Nevertheless, the accusations have generated a storm of reaction among agriculture leaders and their legislative supporters. "He's getting a full-frontal attack from agriculture saying we are important," said Doug Bournique, executive director of the Indian River Citrus League in Vero Beach. "The word's getting very strongly back to the University of Florida that agriculture is very important to this state -- it's the backbone." "Our president, John Hoblick, said he hadn't seen anything galvanize the agriculture industry like this since the penny-a-pound tax," said Rod Hemphill, director of public relations at the Florida Farm Bureau in Gainesville. At issue is how much of a proposed $50 million cut in this year's UF budget IFAS will have to absorb. Stephen Orlando, a UF spokesman, confirmed the university would have to cut that amount from its 2007-08 budget and a similar amount in the next fiscal year....
Livestock tracking delay may put US herd at risk A Bush administration plan to implement a livestock tracking system to prevent the spread of mad cow and other animal diseases is years behind schedule, and further delays could put the nation's herd at risk. The national animal identification program was designed to track the home farm and herdmates of sick animals within 48 hours of an animal disease outbreak. Farmers are not obliged to participate in the program, which was embraced by the U.S. Agriculture Department after discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in 2003. In its 2009 budget plan released on Monday, the Bush administration proposed $24 million for the program to restore funding to a "sufficient" level. A few weeks ago, Congress allotted $9.75 million in fiscal 2008, a sharp drop from the $33.2 million requested by the administration. Some lawmakers have questioned the effectiveness of the program, which has consumed $120 million in federal funding so far. The USDA is worried Congress will be too stingy. If they come in less than $24 million they will be making a decision to slow down implementation of animal ID and will be jeopardizing our nation's herd," Bruce Knight, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulation, told Reuters....
RFID Tattoos to Make a Mark on Cattle Tagging SOMARK Innovations announced it has successfully field tested its chipless RFID technology for cattle identification. SOMARK's permanent animal ID system works by tattooing the animal with dielectric ink. Data is encoded in the tattoo and can be read remotely using a SOMARK reader. The company reported tattoos were applied in less than three seconds and read instantly during the demo. Read range, data capacity, and other technical details were not disclosed. SOMARK called the field test at an undisclosed US location "a giant leap" for the startup company, though president Mark Pydynowski told RFID Update, "From an order of magnitude perspective, SOMARK is months away from commercialization." The technology can be used on a variety of animals, but the company is focusing on the cattle segment, where it promotes its technology as an alternative to RFID ear tags and other identification methods....
NAIS? Oink!! What would lead a group of Amish farmers in Wisconsin to consider moving to Venezuela? Why are dairy farmers and ranchers in Michigan considering selling their herds? Why, NAIS, of course! NAIS stands for National Animal Identification System. It was originally designed to protect exporters of beef from cattle disease by tagging the cattle, and thus, presumably, make outbreaks of animal disease easier to detect earlier. But the idea has been expanded to include all farm animals, including those not part of the food chain, such as horses, for example, kept on farms as pets, or llamas. Critics suggest that even cats and dogs will be included, eventually. NAIS is voluntary, at this point – at least as far as the feds are concerned. However, individual states can make participation compulsory, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture encourages them to do so. Wisconsin, for example, requires dairy farmers to register their farms, thus acquiring an ID number linked to a Global Positional Satellite monitoring system. Failure to register results in denial of a license to produce milk, thus effectively putting the farmer out of business. No wonder the Amish are considering a move to Venezuela! (However, they may be naïve to think that government in Venezuela is any less obnoxious than it is here.) The tagging of animals is not a small job. There are about 1.4 million farms in the United States. If – or when – the tagging of animals becomes mandatory, it will mean inserting tags into 95 million cattle, 93 million turkeys, 60 million pigs, 6.3 million sheep, 1.8 billion chickens, and 2.5 million goats. But the really big producers will get a break. (Isn’t that always the case?) Large farms, where the cattle spend their entire lives cooped up, will be able to register their animals as a single lot. Smaller operators, however, must tag each individual animal, at costs ranging as high as $20 per tag. Veterinarians will be required to report non-compliance that comes to their attention....
Misfits and Why We Love Them One of the great strengths of the Mountain West is our propensity to attract and shelter loners. The sparsely populated crags, windswept plains and river bottoms of this region have given refuge over the years to a special brand of misfit. Those oddballs, mostly harmless, have exerted an anti-homogenizing influence on the region’s culture, which is one reason this area has retained its ethic of individualism so attractive to the rest of the nation. This attractiveness, manifesting itself as lifestyle, has joined metals and agriculture products as one of our most valuable commodities, and fed a massive growth industry, growth itself. A commodity, though, is a uniform product – all sheets of plywood are basically identical – and that’s exactly what our cities and towns and mountains and forests are not. For long decades, while the rest of America ordered food from coast-to-coast restaurant chains, local drive-ins in the economic eddies and backwaters of Wyoming and Idaho and Montana and Oregon continued frying fries and serving burgers, blithely unaware of their own obsolescence. Once common, they’ve become jewels you stumble onto sometimes, when driving long hours to visit relatives. The Mountain West, in this respect at least, is now catching up with the country, and there is plenty to be said for that. Roads get upgraded. Big box stores sprout along newly broadened commercial corridors. Upscale retailers reveal themselves in formerly dilapidated downtown storefronts. Incomes are rising. Yet the ethic of idiosyncrasy is one that’s worth preserving, even as we grow....
It's All Trew: Horse-to-tractor switch laborious The big switch from equine horsepower to gasoline power was about over when I became old enough to remember. I can recall as a young boy, helping harness a team of horses to pull a feed wagon down on the Parsell Ranch on the Canadian River. I never had to farm with horses and I probably couldn't harness a team today on a bet. I do remember the changes made in early tractor wheels when we switched from lugs to knobby tires on our tractors. Dad ordered change-over kits from Montgomery Ward, and we had a blacksmith named "Mac" at Perryton to cut the lug wheels off and weld on the new rims to the old spokes. We were proud to be so progressive in this effort. I also remember the efforts made by dad to weigh the tractors down so the new, knobby tires wouldn't slip when pulling. First we mixed concrete and poured the centers of the wheels around the spokes and later added water, filling the big inner-tubes. When "bar" tread tires were introduced most slippage stopped. The most accurate story of why the farmers changed from horses to tractors is best told by comparing the U.S. Census reports of 1930 and 1940. During the years from 1930 to 1940, census records show the horse and mule population dropped from approximately 52,000 to 18,500 head. During the same time, tractor numbers grew from 8,168 to 12,110. The Roosevelt New Deal programs began in 1934 with tractor numbers increasing rapidly after government benefits began to arrive. The rise in commodity prices, as a result of government programs, made livestock feeds more costly thus making the switch to tractors more desirable. One example cited came from tests showing horsepower farming cost $3 per acre while tractor farming costs from $1.75 to $1.88....
Baxter Black - Large animal vets and bronc riders The Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) is making an effort to encourage more young people to participate in the Bareback, Saddle Bronc and Bull Riding events. Simultaneously, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is making an effort to encourage more students to become livestock and equine veterinarians. Does that mean more young people are less interested in riding or doctoring untamed large herbivorous animals? Exactly! In both cases the primary reasons given by the "non-interested" are: the work is too hard and the pay is not enough. American and Canadian young people, as a rule, have become more worldly, resigned to life, and content with the path most frequently traveled, i.e., team roping and pet practice. 'm thinking if you want bronc riders and large animal practitioners, you need to look somewhere other than civilized America. Someplace like Iran, Tierra del Fuego, Mongolia or Louisiana. And there's hope on the horizon. Already, last year's National Finals Rodeo had more roughstock riders from Louisiana than from Rhode Island, Quebec and Kentucky, all together. We should concentrate on luring bullriders from grittier places. Major League Baseball has done a wonderful job seeking hungry talent from countries like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. There are probably enough baseball players from Mexico and the Caribbean in the major leagues to support their own Low Rider Bus Line....
Mayor Bloomberg Compares Threat of Global Warming to Terrorism While he acknowledged that scientists are unable to predict its consequences, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday compared the scourge of global warming to the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Although it is a "long-term" fight, he said, reducing gas emissions may save the life of "everybody" on the planet, the same way that fighting terrorism and its proliferation saves lives in shorter terms. Addressing a U.N. climate change conference, the mayor also announced a new plan to reduce the use of tropical hardwoods by New York City and told delegates that the city plans to host a meeting in June of leaders from 20 major world cities to discuss ways for the largest municipalities to reduce global warming. Other participants in the conference called for a "war" against climate change, in which the United Nations would serve as a front-line combatant. Mr. Bloomberg renewed his call, made first late last year, for taxing countries such as America that emit large amounts of carbons, which are believed to cause changes in the planet's climate....
Bombing away in Socorro, New Mexico Folks living in Socorro, in remote, central New Mexico, are regularly jolted by the sounds of car bombs and calculated cave-ins. It’s all cooked up by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, known here simply as “Tech.” “Energetic materials” refers to anything that blows up, and since people exploding bombs are making life miserable for the American military in the Middle East and other places in the world, Tech’s bomb-testing business is booming. Testing activities have gone on for years, but people living in Socorro have been largely silent as new schemes popped up. After all, it’s the town’s biggest employer: At least 40 percent of the economy is tied to Tech, making Socorro almost a company town. And of course, if you moved here, you most likely knew what you were getting into. But what’s the limit? Schoolteacher Loretta Lowman was painting her house last year when a big bomb blast nearly knocked her off her ladder. The window-rattling explosion rolled in from the backside of “M” Mountain, a 7,300-foot volcanic remnant and landmark in this town of about 9,000. For Lowman, the blast lingered, bookmarked in her mind, and quickly recalled when she heard about a new testing venture. Soon, out there on the edge of its 40-square-mile “field laboratory” a few miles behind the mountain, the U.S. Air Force’s 58th Special Operations Wing, based in Albuquerque, would start practicing dropping stuff....
Idaho Conservation League scolds Otter for bighorn sheep policy The state is creating an environment for more lawsuits over bighorn sheep, the Idaho Conservation League said in a letter mailed this week to Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter. The governor is using a "top down approach" to manage Idaho's bighorns, the group wrote, by asking the state departments of Fish and Game and Agricul-ture to develop a plan to keep the species separate. ICL wants the public to have a say in developing a policy. "Instead of telling the public what is best for a few, the state should ask the public to roll up their sleeves and craft a workable solution," wrote John Robison, ICL's public lands director. However, Otter is expected to make an announcement soon on the state's bighorn policy, which state agency officials say is mostly finished. Following a year of lawsuits and political posturing over bighorns, the plan is likely to be contentious. A judge closed grazing allotments last year after environmental groups sued, saying massive bighorn die-offs happened after contact with disease-carrying domestic sheep. The governor quietly asked the state agencies to find short-term solutions before sheep are turned out on grazing allotments this spring - and before more lawsuits are filed....
Ranches Transformed Into Endangered Jaguar Reserve Jaguars in northern Mexico have a newly protected habitat today due to the official establishment of the Northern Jaguar Reserve in the state of Sonora. The 45,000 acre reserve, which provides a sanctuary for the world's northernmost breeding population of jaguars, is the centerpiece of a binational effort by the Northern Jaguar Project and Naturalia to safeguard and restore the jaguar in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. "This land is perfectly suited to support North America's largest wild cat," said Oscar Moctezuma, director of Naturalia, the Mexican conservation organization that will hold title to the property. With assistance from the Northern Jaguar Project, Naturalia purchased the 10,000 acre Rancho Los Pavos in 2003. Located in a region of abundant biodiversity, Los Pavos was the first ranch acquired to establish this jaguar reserve. Next, the Northern Jaguar Project spearheaded the purchase of the adjacent 35,000 acre Rancho Zetasora at a cost of $1.5 million with contributions from more than 600 individual donors and private foundations. The final payment for Zetasora was made at the end of January and completes the 70 square mile reserve....
Senate approves expedition of eminent domain The South Dakota Senate has approved a measure intended to speed up state hearings on the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad's application to acquire land by condemnation for its $6 billion expansion project. An opponent said the bill could hurt landowners who believe DM&E is not treating them fairly, but the Senate sent the measure to the House on a 20-13 vote. The bill's main sponsor, Sen. Tom Hansen, R-Huron, said DM&E applied more than a year ago for state approval to use eminent domain to acquire land for a right of way from people who are unwilling to sell. Opponents have used delaying tactics to prevent a state hearing, he said. "The time has come to let the process move forward," Hansen said. But Sen. Jim Lintz, R-Hermosa, said DM&E has caused as much of the delay as opponents have. He said many of his neighbors own land that would be crossed by the expansion project. They know the project is likely to be built, but they want to be treated fairly, he said. "Their concern was not to stop the railroad. Their concern was to get a decent price for what the railroad was taking," Lintz said....
Parks' gun rules may change A proposal to allow loaded guns in national parks is complicating an otherwise uncontroversial public lands bill now working its way through the U.S. Senate. The plan - crafted by the National Rifle Association - was pushed by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn and is endorsed by 47 other senators, including Montana Democrats Max Baucus and Jon Tester. Those lawmakers - 39 Republicans and eight Democrats - penned a Dec. 14 letter to Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne, asking that rules be changed to allow loaded guns in national parks. Currently, guns are allowed, but must be unloaded and properly stored. In the letter, the senators said today's rules “infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners who wish to transport and carry firearms on or across these lands.” Coburn's amendment would forbid Interior from enforcing “any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System.” It would create one uniform law for guns on all federal lands, including U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service lands - because the current system results in inconsistencies that “are confusing, burdensome and unnecessary,” the letter said. Critics argue the change would prove dangerous, for many reasons, and this week Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., drew up an alternative public lands bill without the gun-rule changes....
Weasel-like animal threatens forest plan Federal authorities have delayed a major forest-thinning project -- aimed at reducing fire danger near Shaver Lake -- because new research suggests the work could harm the weasel-like Pacific fisher. By late March, Sierra National Forest officials plan revisions to further protect the sensitive fisher in the Kings River Project, about 13,000 acres east of Fresno. The project plan, which had been approved in 2006 after more than a decade of work, could be ready again this fall. The delay pleased environmentalists but disappointed a Tulare County sawmill executive who says he needs timber from the area to keep his 125 employees working. Kent Duysen, general manager of Sierra Forest Products, said sensitive species have been studied for two decades. "At what point do you say we need to move on?" he asked. Environmentalists, who last year sued to stop the project, said the U.S. Forest Service is correct to move cautiously....
Bush proposal cuts national forest fire prevention budget President Bush's proposal to reduce fire-prevention spending in the nation's forests has some on edge in Inland Southern California, where three of the last five Octobers have brought catastrophic wildfires. The proposed U.S. Forest Service cuts, assailed by local experts and Democratic lawmakers, came under fire during a hearing on the Bush budget proposal held Tuesday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior Environment and Related Agencies. At the same Capitol Hill hearing, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, the Bush administration's official overseeing the Forest Service, said the upcoming fire season is likely to be as bad or worse than the past fire season, particularly in Southern California. Bush's budget calls for a $150 million increase in federal funding for the U.S. Forest Service to extinguish blazes, bringing the agency's total firefighting budget to more than $1.14 billion, according to figures provided to the subcommittee. But the proposal slashes the agency's preparedness funding by $77 million, including a $13 million reduction in money to remove dead trees and overgrown brush that act as kindling for fires in 155 national forests. That amounts to more than an 11 percent decrease from last year's preparedness budget of around $5.9 million....
Forest Service studying loss of U.S. firefighters to Calif. force A top federal official acknowledged Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service is losing federal firefighters in California to state and county departments that pay more. But Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, told concerned lawmakers he's still evaluating how much of a problem that is. "On the one hand you hate to lose trained people. On the other hand they're still fighting fires under a unified command system," Rey told a hearing of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee. They're going to be on the fire line along with the federal firefighters." Lawmakers convinced there is a problem ordered the Forest Service to come up with a plan by Feb. 1 to increase recruitment and retention for Southern California forests. That deadline has passed but the agency is working on it, officials said....
Rainbow Family warned to leave Forest campsite Hundreds of Rainbow Family members started gathering deep inside the Ocala National Forest last week. Many who found their way down Paisley Road to a sandy path around a little spot called Duck Pond - some 10 miles south of State Road 40 - might have seen a notice posted high on a pine tree. "This is an ILLEGAL gathering of 75 persons or more without a permit," the notice put up by the U.S. Forest Service reads. "The max penalty is six months in prison and/or a $5,000 fine." But Monday came and went, and the Rainbow Family remained, determined not to give up the government land they settled on. "We've met here for 13 years, and now they're treating us like criminals," said a woman who identified herself by her Rainbow name, Indigo. She was keeping an eye out for any Forest Service Law Enforcement vehicles Monday afternoon. Sure enough, three Forest Service sport utility vehicles pulled down the path around 2 p.m. "Six-point-o rolling through the Rainbow land," she yelled out to alert her brethren. Many in the Rainbow Family have no plans of leaving Duck Pond, even if they get ticketed upward of $250 a day. A couple dozen in the family already have been ticketed for assembling illegally this week. Many in the Rainbow Family questioned officers on where the regulations and rules were posted. "It's your responsibility to find out what's legal and what the rules are," Watson answered. "We have all the rules posted in our offices." After Tooley left, Forest Service officers came back to inform everyone that they had been approved to assemble at Syracuse Island, about 20 miles north. All Rainbow Family members must leave Duck Pond by 4 p.m. today and make the pilgrimage to the new location. That news and the officers were met with harmonizing choruses of John Lennon and Bob Marley songs. About 50 members banded together on fallen trees around the Forest Services vehicles, raising their connected hands high as they sang about peace and love....Let's see, the Forest Service threw Kit Laney in the federal pen for having cattle on the Forest without a permit. I guess Kit's problem was he couldn't sing any John Lennon songs.
Citations piling up for sleds off-limits Seventeen snowmobilers have been caught riding illegally in wilderness areas and other Flathead National Forest lands off-limits to the sleds, part of a flurry of out-of-bounds recreation over the past two weekends. “We are disappointed that some snowmobile riders are being disrespectful and irresponsible by entering areas that are closed to snowmobile travel,” said Steve Brady, the forest's Swan Lake district ranger. With nearly 800,000 acres open to the machines on the Flathead, Brady asked sledders to “respect the areas closed to motorized use.” Those areas include all designated wilderness, such as the Bob Marshall, Great Bear and Mission Mountains wildernesses, as well as the Jewel Basin Hiking Area. Those forest lands have been closed to motorized use, including snowmobiles, for several decades, Brady said. Still, eight snowmobilers were caught on Feb. 3 while riding in Sondreson Meadows, an area on the western boundary of Glacier National Park. U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers said the group - locals from Columbia Falls and Kalispell - knew they were in a nonmotorized area. Then, on Feb. 9, nine more snowmobilers were stopped while sledding in the Mission Mountains Wilderness. Again, all were locals - from West Glacier, Kalispell and Lakeside - and all were cited....Somebody needs to teach these folks how to sing about peace and love.
Logan River cries out for Wild and Scenic River protection What might we have heard? The bass groan of shifting rock as uplift occurred? Before that the sound of inland seas, Paleozoic waters filled with life we know through fossils? What was the sound of mountain water cutting through quartzite over eons, creating the entrenched meander we call the Logan River? Sometimes when I'm in Logan Canyon, I imagine more recent events: the mute snowfall of ice ages, the creep of glaciers, their retreat. I wonder if I might have discerned the scrape of ice and rock, the thump of glacial erratics dropped. Wild, vast forces created these rocks, these mountain rivers. Today beside mountain water live humans, deer, willow. Hermit thrush, yellow warbler, American dipper live above the mountain water, and cutthroat and browns live in it. The Logan River is a thread of dark water, sometimes placid, sometimes rumbling with melt, rapids white as snow, white as a bufflehead's chest in summer. It's also a river that 80 years ago some folks studied for dams, studies that seem to be at the heart of the U.S. Forest Service's baffling refusal to grant the Logan River - most of which runs wild - the status it deserves as a Wild and Scenic River....I sure wish ranchers could write like that. Wish they could sing too.
Plight of the brumbies "This nation is built on the back of horses," says Carter, 67, a petite grandmother with short red hair and deeply tanned skin who drives an old pickup smelling of the hay and earth that covers the soles of her boots. "They should be preserved and protected." Australia is home to an estimated 300,000 wild horses, the largest such population in the world. This abundance is believed to have put so much strain on the habitat that the Australian government has resorted to controversial mass culling campaigns to protect the country's national parks. Images of hunters chasing herds of galloping horses from helicopters and shooting them with semiautomatic rifles have sent shock waves across Australia, where horses are proud symbols of the country's pioneer spirit. The killing first came to public attention in 2000, when 600 horses were killed in the Guy Fawkes River National Park in New South Wales, about an hour-and-a-half drive from here. Public outcry forced the government to halt the helicopter shooting in this part of the country, but it could not stop aerial and ground assaults, often carried out in secret, in other parts of the vast Australian outback. More than 10,000 horses are expected to be shot in Queensland in the next three years, according to an investigation by a newspaper in the state....
PETA Praises Safeway for Adopting New Industry-Leading Animal Welfare Policies Following discussions with PETA about animal welfare and factory farming, supermarket giant Safeway has announced groundbreaking plans to improve conditions for some of the animals who are killed for its stores. Safeway is North America's third-largest grocery chain, with 1,743 stores located throughout the U.S. and Canada. According to the company's new plan, which places it at the forefront of the grocery industry with regard to animal welfare, Safeway will do the following: -- Increase its purchase of chickens and turkeys killed by controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK)--the least cruel method of bird slaughter--and give purchasing preference to suppliers that use or switch to CAK -- Increase the amount of pig meat it purchases from suppliers that don't use gestation crates--restrictive metal enclosures that confine pregnant pigs--by 5 percent over each of the next three years and give purchasing preference to suppliers that don't use gestation crates -- Double the amount of cage-free eggs it sells to more than 6 percent by 2010 and give purchasing preference to producers of cage-free eggs Safeway's new plan also follows PETA's submission of a shareholder resolution--which PETA has now withdrawn--and independent discussions with The Humane Society of the United States on the issue of cage-free eggs. "While we wish that shoppers would stick to the delicious vegetarian options that Safeway has available, the company should be commended for improving the lives and deaths of some of the animals who are killed for its stores," says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich....
Machen denies rumored jabs at agriculture Whether or not University of Florida President Bernard Machen called Florida agriculture a dying industry, he faces a political truism: Reality often plays second fiddle to perception. Machen denied Monday that he said "agriculture is a dying industry in the State of Florida" and "not worthy of the investments being made by the Legislature" in the university's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). Nevertheless, the accusations have generated a storm of reaction among agriculture leaders and their legislative supporters. "He's getting a full-frontal attack from agriculture saying we are important," said Doug Bournique, executive director of the Indian River Citrus League in Vero Beach. "The word's getting very strongly back to the University of Florida that agriculture is very important to this state -- it's the backbone." "Our president, John Hoblick, said he hadn't seen anything galvanize the agriculture industry like this since the penny-a-pound tax," said Rod Hemphill, director of public relations at the Florida Farm Bureau in Gainesville. At issue is how much of a proposed $50 million cut in this year's UF budget IFAS will have to absorb. Stephen Orlando, a UF spokesman, confirmed the university would have to cut that amount from its 2007-08 budget and a similar amount in the next fiscal year....
Livestock tracking delay may put US herd at risk A Bush administration plan to implement a livestock tracking system to prevent the spread of mad cow and other animal diseases is years behind schedule, and further delays could put the nation's herd at risk. The national animal identification program was designed to track the home farm and herdmates of sick animals within 48 hours of an animal disease outbreak. Farmers are not obliged to participate in the program, which was embraced by the U.S. Agriculture Department after discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in 2003. In its 2009 budget plan released on Monday, the Bush administration proposed $24 million for the program to restore funding to a "sufficient" level. A few weeks ago, Congress allotted $9.75 million in fiscal 2008, a sharp drop from the $33.2 million requested by the administration. Some lawmakers have questioned the effectiveness of the program, which has consumed $120 million in federal funding so far. The USDA is worried Congress will be too stingy. If they come in less than $24 million they will be making a decision to slow down implementation of animal ID and will be jeopardizing our nation's herd," Bruce Knight, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulation, told Reuters....
RFID Tattoos to Make a Mark on Cattle Tagging SOMARK Innovations announced it has successfully field tested its chipless RFID technology for cattle identification. SOMARK's permanent animal ID system works by tattooing the animal with dielectric ink. Data is encoded in the tattoo and can be read remotely using a SOMARK reader. The company reported tattoos were applied in less than three seconds and read instantly during the demo. Read range, data capacity, and other technical details were not disclosed. SOMARK called the field test at an undisclosed US location "a giant leap" for the startup company, though president Mark Pydynowski told RFID Update, "From an order of magnitude perspective, SOMARK is months away from commercialization." The technology can be used on a variety of animals, but the company is focusing on the cattle segment, where it promotes its technology as an alternative to RFID ear tags and other identification methods....
NAIS? Oink!! What would lead a group of Amish farmers in Wisconsin to consider moving to Venezuela? Why are dairy farmers and ranchers in Michigan considering selling their herds? Why, NAIS, of course! NAIS stands for National Animal Identification System. It was originally designed to protect exporters of beef from cattle disease by tagging the cattle, and thus, presumably, make outbreaks of animal disease easier to detect earlier. But the idea has been expanded to include all farm animals, including those not part of the food chain, such as horses, for example, kept on farms as pets, or llamas. Critics suggest that even cats and dogs will be included, eventually. NAIS is voluntary, at this point – at least as far as the feds are concerned. However, individual states can make participation compulsory, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture encourages them to do so. Wisconsin, for example, requires dairy farmers to register their farms, thus acquiring an ID number linked to a Global Positional Satellite monitoring system. Failure to register results in denial of a license to produce milk, thus effectively putting the farmer out of business. No wonder the Amish are considering a move to Venezuela! (However, they may be naïve to think that government in Venezuela is any less obnoxious than it is here.) The tagging of animals is not a small job. There are about 1.4 million farms in the United States. If – or when – the tagging of animals becomes mandatory, it will mean inserting tags into 95 million cattle, 93 million turkeys, 60 million pigs, 6.3 million sheep, 1.8 billion chickens, and 2.5 million goats. But the really big producers will get a break. (Isn’t that always the case?) Large farms, where the cattle spend their entire lives cooped up, will be able to register their animals as a single lot. Smaller operators, however, must tag each individual animal, at costs ranging as high as $20 per tag. Veterinarians will be required to report non-compliance that comes to their attention....
Misfits and Why We Love Them One of the great strengths of the Mountain West is our propensity to attract and shelter loners. The sparsely populated crags, windswept plains and river bottoms of this region have given refuge over the years to a special brand of misfit. Those oddballs, mostly harmless, have exerted an anti-homogenizing influence on the region’s culture, which is one reason this area has retained its ethic of individualism so attractive to the rest of the nation. This attractiveness, manifesting itself as lifestyle, has joined metals and agriculture products as one of our most valuable commodities, and fed a massive growth industry, growth itself. A commodity, though, is a uniform product – all sheets of plywood are basically identical – and that’s exactly what our cities and towns and mountains and forests are not. For long decades, while the rest of America ordered food from coast-to-coast restaurant chains, local drive-ins in the economic eddies and backwaters of Wyoming and Idaho and Montana and Oregon continued frying fries and serving burgers, blithely unaware of their own obsolescence. Once common, they’ve become jewels you stumble onto sometimes, when driving long hours to visit relatives. The Mountain West, in this respect at least, is now catching up with the country, and there is plenty to be said for that. Roads get upgraded. Big box stores sprout along newly broadened commercial corridors. Upscale retailers reveal themselves in formerly dilapidated downtown storefronts. Incomes are rising. Yet the ethic of idiosyncrasy is one that’s worth preserving, even as we grow....
It's All Trew: Horse-to-tractor switch laborious The big switch from equine horsepower to gasoline power was about over when I became old enough to remember. I can recall as a young boy, helping harness a team of horses to pull a feed wagon down on the Parsell Ranch on the Canadian River. I never had to farm with horses and I probably couldn't harness a team today on a bet. I do remember the changes made in early tractor wheels when we switched from lugs to knobby tires on our tractors. Dad ordered change-over kits from Montgomery Ward, and we had a blacksmith named "Mac" at Perryton to cut the lug wheels off and weld on the new rims to the old spokes. We were proud to be so progressive in this effort. I also remember the efforts made by dad to weigh the tractors down so the new, knobby tires wouldn't slip when pulling. First we mixed concrete and poured the centers of the wheels around the spokes and later added water, filling the big inner-tubes. When "bar" tread tires were introduced most slippage stopped. The most accurate story of why the farmers changed from horses to tractors is best told by comparing the U.S. Census reports of 1930 and 1940. During the years from 1930 to 1940, census records show the horse and mule population dropped from approximately 52,000 to 18,500 head. During the same time, tractor numbers grew from 8,168 to 12,110. The Roosevelt New Deal programs began in 1934 with tractor numbers increasing rapidly after government benefits began to arrive. The rise in commodity prices, as a result of government programs, made livestock feeds more costly thus making the switch to tractors more desirable. One example cited came from tests showing horsepower farming cost $3 per acre while tractor farming costs from $1.75 to $1.88....
Baxter Black - Large animal vets and bronc riders The Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) is making an effort to encourage more young people to participate in the Bareback, Saddle Bronc and Bull Riding events. Simultaneously, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is making an effort to encourage more students to become livestock and equine veterinarians. Does that mean more young people are less interested in riding or doctoring untamed large herbivorous animals? Exactly! In both cases the primary reasons given by the "non-interested" are: the work is too hard and the pay is not enough. American and Canadian young people, as a rule, have become more worldly, resigned to life, and content with the path most frequently traveled, i.e., team roping and pet practice. 'm thinking if you want bronc riders and large animal practitioners, you need to look somewhere other than civilized America. Someplace like Iran, Tierra del Fuego, Mongolia or Louisiana. And there's hope on the horizon. Already, last year's National Finals Rodeo had more roughstock riders from Louisiana than from Rhode Island, Quebec and Kentucky, all together. We should concentrate on luring bullriders from grittier places. Major League Baseball has done a wonderful job seeking hungry talent from countries like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. There are probably enough baseball players from Mexico and the Caribbean in the major leagues to support their own Low Rider Bus Line....
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