Note to readers

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When it's a choice between the National Finals Rodeo and blogging, blogging comes in second.

Obama's ag secretary prospects emerging from mainstream

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There are those in the larger world of agriculture who believe that one of President-elect Barack Obama's most important appointments is secretary of agriculture. Some activists see the choice as one that should echo the change theme sounded by the Obama campaign, and would move agriculture in a whole new direction, first tackling issues like subsidies, organics and food safety. Given the list of candidates for the top U.S. ag job, it appears that the Obama team is looking for experienced people who know how to work in Washington. On Thursday, though, word in the Washington Post was that three candidates were leading the pack: Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, former U.S. Representative Charles Stenholm (D-TX) and Dennis Wolff, Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture and a dairy farmer. Other names still appear to be in the hopper, according to Washington sources, including U.S. Representatives Sanford Bishop (D-GA), who headed Obama's Georgia campaign, and John Salazar (D-CO), a farmer-rancher....

Hispanic caucus wants John Salazar in ag job

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The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is lobbying for the selection of Colorado's Rep. John Salazar to be the next agriculture secretary. Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., chairman of the 21-member group, said Thursday that the caucus sent a letter to Barack Obama's transition team backing Salazar last week. He said he's also urged members to follow up by calling members of the team, including former Denver mayor Federico Pena, to make their pitch for Salazar. The potato farmer and rancher from Manassa in the San Luis Valley won re-election to a third term last month.

Obama & USDA

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On the campaign trail, President-elect Barack Obama said his administration would help small family farms, end childhood hunger and upgrade roads and bridges in rural areas. His commitment to the rural and impoverished parts of America helped secure critical victories for him in Midwestern Corn Belt states, such as Iowa and Minnesota, and has heightened expectations for the U.S. Department of Agriculture as Obama prepares to appoint an agriculture secretary to oversee wide-ranging efforts. In cash-strapped times, the challenges of mounting new initiatives are daunting. And the USDA is still battling long-running problems: subsidy programs that give huge sums to ineligible, millionaire farmers; a food inspection system that puts Americans at risk for food-borne illnesses; and nutrition programs that fail to identify more than 30 percent of Americans who live in poverty and are at risk of hunger every month. Many of the problems that Obama wants to tackle have been controversial for several decades. Improper payment of crop subsidies -- intended to help struggling family farmers -- is a prime example. Last week, a report by the Government Accountability Office asserted that the USDA continued to give federal subsidies to ineligible, wealthy farmers despite a series of congressional reforms. Between 2003 and 2006, more than 2,700 farmers who were earning more than the cutoff of $2.5 million annually continued to receive subsidies. Unwarranted payments totaled $49 million....

Judge orders full review of Duke's Cliffside unit

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A federal judge ordered Duke Energy Corp. on Tuesday to undergo a full environmental assessment of a coal-fired generator under construction in western North Carolina, giving the company 60 days to comply with regulations initially ignored by the Bush administration. The federal judge allowed Duke to continue building its Cliffside unit but dismissed the company's argument that it doesn't need a full assessment to ensure it is using the best-available technology. U.S. District Court Judge Lacy Thornburg wrote that ongoing construction without the review could result in "emissions capable of causing serious health problems, or the shut down of construction and/or in costly retrofitting that would result in unnecessary rate increases." Environmental groups, which led the lawsuit, hailed the decision and said it could serve as precedent to alter the building plans of perhaps a dozen U.S. power plants that began construction during a three-year period. "This is the cleanest, purest legal victory we could have," said John Walke, director of the clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is part of the lawsuit...

Environmentalists want new wolf recovery plan Environmentalists say the federal government's current plan for re-establishing the Mexican gray wolf in the wild is outdated and legally invalid, and petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday to revise it. "We're managing a very imperiled population of wolves based on planning that's over 20 years old and didn't imagine actual recovery goals — the threshold at which we can say we've done enough and we can take the animal off the (endangered species) list," said Rob Edward, director of carnivore recovery for WildEarth Guardians in Denver. The current recovery plan was completed in 1982 — 16 years before any wolves were released into the wild in the Southwest. It focused heavily on captive breeding and said little about how to manage wolves in the wild or the process of developing a viable wild population, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos. The center, WildEarth Guardians and the Rewilding Institute petitioned Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall for clear goals and deadlines for delisting the species with attention to the wolves' genetic pool. Amendments to the Endangered Species Act in 1988 established standards for recovery plans that were not met in the 1982 Mexican wolf plan, the groups said....

Environmentally minded cowboys run a green ranch in Arizona Mr. Heyneman is the ranch manager at the Kane and Two Miles Ranches, which cover 850,000 acres of mostly public land on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The ranches are a partnership between the Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund, which together spent $4.5 million for the land as an investment in conservation. But the parcels came with a controversial catch: cows. Yet here, the cattle have gone green. Or, if you prefer, the conservationists have gone cowboy. It’s an unlikely partnership between ranchers and environmentalists, two groups usually on opposite sides of the fence. Then again, those fences don’t usually come in 3,000-foot-high red rock. The project isn’t about nourishing cattle with ecofriendly feed or building wooden instead of barbed-wire fences. These cowboy-conservationists aren’t that kind of green. What they are doing, instead, is asking whether cattle ranching can be successful and environmental. Actually, this may be the more revolutionary question. Environmental groups have been buying up land in the West to control the 80-year-old grazing permits it comes with. The idea is to retire the permits, and with them, the cows. That, eco-activists hope, will save the land. The Trust didn’t have that option. If it retired its permits, Heyneman says, the government would just reallocate them. So if it wanted to preserve a quintessential American vista, it had to get in the cattle business. What began as an environmental initiative therefore became a ranching operation that defies the conventions of two sciences: ecology and economics....

Truckee Carson Irrigation District indicted A federal grand jury indicted the Truckee Carson Irrigation District and four of its employees on Wednesday for allegedly falsifying records to secure additional water supplies from the U.S. government. The four indicted include David Overvold, 58, project manager for the irrigation district based in Fallon, and Lyman McConnell, 64, the district's lawyer. They and two others are charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, falsification of records, false claims and false statements. If convicted, they could face 20 years or more in prison. McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for eastern California, said the four allegedly were part of a scheme to inflate data from 2000 through 2005 regarding the efficiency of the district's water deliveries so as to secure additional water credits from the bureau to boost supplies primarily for Nevada farmers and ranchers. Under a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation, the district operates the irrigation system in northern Nevada's Newlands Project created more than a century ago. As part of a water efficiency incentive policy adopted in 1988, the bureau agreed to provide credits to the district that would allow it to boost its share of water supplies from area dams and reservoirs owned by the bureau....

Parks Pick-Me-Up? As our National Parks emerge from eight years of pinched budgets, drooping morale and dreadful political appointees, conservationists hope for a turnaround with the Obama administration--even amidst economically turbulent times. "We recognize there's a zone of opportunity with the transition, with new leadership in the White House, the Department of Interior and in Congress," says David Nimkin, Southwest regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. "But there are also profound financial constraints. So our message and our focus must change accordingly." The change? Trying to steer economic-stimulus efforts toward the parks, through back-to-work and service programs. It also means highlighting these preserves as sound investments in tough times, given the vital tourism revenue they generate for surrounding communities....

Alaska is battleground for Endangered Species Act At the Resource Development Council’s annual conference in Anchorage, Denby Lloyd, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, projected a large map of the state on an overhead screen. One at a time, swathes of red marking the habitat of Cook Inlet beluga whales, Steller’s sea lions, spectacled eiders, polar bears, Kittletz’s murrelet, bowhead whales, Aleutian shield fern, Lynn Canal herring and other species protected by the Endangered Species Act were layered on top of one another, encroaching further and further in on Alaska’s familiar coastline until all but a small bubble in the Interior remained. “God,” uttered a man seated at a linen-covered table close to the podium, audibly sucking in his breath. “I guess I was impressed when I saw these graphs,” said Lloyd. “It appears that the ESA will blanket Alaska’s coastline, with potential to smother human activities.” In a session entitled “The Endangered Species Act: Should Alaska’s Natural Resource Economy be Listed as Endangered?” state, environmental and industry officials weighed in on the impact that new ESA regulations would shape Alaska’s future in resource development. It was perhaps appropriate that what loomed largest in the panel discussion was the Arctic’s most massive land-based predator, the polar bear....

Despite deaths, grizzly population grows The number of grizzly bear deaths in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem increased markedly this year, but the population still continued to grow. According to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, an estimated 80 grizzlies died in the Yellowstone area in 2008. In 2007, 49 grizzlies died. The numbers of grizzly deaths are estimated from known, probable, estimated unknown and unreported deaths from a variety of causes, according to Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team figures. Despite the deaths, the grizzly population in the ecosystem increased an estimated 4 percent this year. In 2007, there were an estimated 571 grizzlies. In 2008, the number increased to an estimated 596 grizzlies. Based on those figures, the population will double in 20 years, said Chuck Schwartz, Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team leader in Bozeman, Mont....

Obama Teams Are Scrutinizing Federal Agencies Wearing yellow badges and traveling in groups of 10 or more, agency review teams for President-elect Barack Obama have swarmed into dozens of government offices, from the Pentagon to the National Council on Disability. A typical approach has been playing out at the Environmental Protection Agency, where the Obama team is led by Lisa Jackson, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Robert Sussman, a former Clinton official and now a lawyer and fellow at the Center for American Progress. Both are considered front-runners for senior administration jobs (Jackson as EPA administrator, Sussman as a top EPA deputy). On a recent Monday, the pair arrived at an 11 a.m. EPA senior staff meeting. Both had worked at the agency under President Bill Clinton, so they fit in easily, fully acquainted with the acronym-laden lingo. Their team's questions have been specific, trained on a handful of issues, according to employees and other sources interviewed. A top concern is climate change, an issue they want to address with several EPA program initiatives. They also are asking how much money the enforcement divisions need to go after polluters. The team also has focused on drinking-water standards, asking about how to reduce children's and mothers' exposure to perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel that is leaching into groundwater near military bases. Jackson, Sussman and their team members hope to interview 100 staffers before filing their report, but they will do so with agreed-upon "rules of engagement," as the EPA's lawyers call them....

Grijalva for Interior Secretary Now that President-elect Barack Obama has put together his administration's economic, foreign-policy and national-security teams, the transition process comes to the interesting part. How about Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva as Secretary of the Interior? Grijalva is reportedly under serious consideration for the post that far more important than the attention usually accorded it by a neglectful media would suggest. As a westerner, he fits what would appear to be the first requirement: 15 of the past 16 Interior secretaries have come from the region where the federal government is a major land owner. But there is a lot more to Grijalva than his region. The five-term congressman currently chairs the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. And he has been a genuine activist in that position, challenging giveaways to agribusiness and big ranchers who have taking advantage of ridiculously cheap grazing permits on federal lands in the west and exploring the role that oil and gas development on federal property has played in the decline of hunting habitats in the west. And when it comes to voting in the House, the congressman from the Tuscon area has been a steady defender of environmental interests -- his lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters is 95 percent positive....

Ranchers using plan to help endangered species Federal officials have approved a habitat conservation plan that will let a group of southwestern ranchers improve and maintain their lands while helping several species considered threatened or endangered. The plan will enable ranchers affiliated with the Malpai Borderlands Group in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico to continue using their lands for cattle-raising activities while providing long-range benefit to plant, fish and animal species that are threatened or endangered. And it will let them address endangered species issues in a more efficient way than on a project-by-project basis, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services spokesman Jeff Humphrey. ``It's so hard not to be reactive when you're a landowner when it involves endangered species,'' said Bill McDonald, chairman of the Malpai group, which includes more than 20 of about 30 ranching families spread across 828,000 acres in the two states. Their plan, finally approved in October, is designed to let ranchers improve grasslands and watersheds and enable them to manage their ranching functions. Fish and Wildlife has issued a permit that allows Malpai members to ``take,'' or kill, a threatened or endangered species if it is incidental to their lawful operations and if the taking will not jeopardize the population's survival....

Judge scales back ruling on roadless nat'l forests A federal magistrate judge ruled Tuesday that a Clinton-era ban against new road construction and development on millions of acres of national forest would apply only to 10 western states. Two years ago, Judge Elizabeth Laporte invalidated a 2005 Bush administration rule that overturned the 2001 "Roadless Rule," which protected 58.5 million acres of federal land in about 40 states. But in August, a federal judge in Wyoming invalidated President Bill Clinton's Roadless Rule, leading the Bush administration to request that the two judges modify their conflicting rulings. In response, Laporte reduced the geographic scope of her 2006 ruling. The move is only a temporary fix. Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Denver are expected to rule on the case next year, and road construction rules also could change under President-elect Barack Obama's administration....

States blast feds' sheep rule The Bush administration is attempting to usurp wildlife management authority from Western states through an end-of-term, under-the-radar move on bighorn sheep, state officials and wildlife advocates charge. Without consulting or even notifying any state agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have drafted an agreement that would, in effect, take jurisdiction over the transplantation of bighorn sheep on national forests. That's according to documents provided to the Star-Tribune by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the state of Wyoming. Although the federal action was drafted sometime in September, regional wildlife agencies didn't find out about it until the third week in November, state officials said. According to the written agreement itself, it was created out of concern for the declining bighorn sheep population in the West. But critics say the real reason for the move is to protect domestic sheep producers, at the expense of bighorns. In a letter sent Monday to USDA Undersecretaries Mark Rey and Bruce Knight, the wildlife agencies' association condemned the agreement for being "drafted without input from any state wildlife agency, whose statutory authority to manage resident wildlife is clearly established." As written, the action "contravenes existing law and policy, is unworkable in day-to-day management of the states' wildlife resources and produces a host of undesirable (and perhaps unintended) consequences," the letter contends. Member agencies of the group know of no law or regulation providing the Forest Service with the authority to require disease testing of bighorn sheep or any other native resident wildlife, the group argues....

West Slope pushing BLM on health study Western Slope communities are pressing the federal Bureau of Land Management to add a comprehensive health study of oil and gas drilling to its environmental assessment for managing public lands. The request is in response to worries voiced repeatedly by residents as oil and gas development grows in the region. "What we need is adequate data to know how things are changing and where change is coming from," said Keith Lambert, the mayor of Rifle and one of those asking for the assessment. The request comes after a string of health studies released this year found no immediate health risk — but raised questions. Outside the Front Range, volatile organic pollution from oil and gas operations is projected to rise to 69 percent of all sources in 2010, up from 35 percent in 2005, according to a state Air Pollution Control Division analysis. The question is whether those emissions will have, either locally or regionally, health effects....

Solar thermal projects gather steam -- and opposition Just up the road, past pump jacks bobbing in California's storied oil patch, look sharp and you'll catch a glimpse of the state's energy future. Rows of gigantic mirrors covering an area bigger than two football fields have sprouted alongside almond groves near California 99. This is a power plant that uses the sun's heat to produce electricity for thousands of homes. Owned by Palo Alto-based Ausra Inc., it's the first so-called solar thermal facility to open in California in nearly two decades. It's part of a drive to build clean electricity generation using the sun, wind and other renewable sources with an urgency not seen since the days of environmentalist Gov. Jerry Brown. Add President-elect Barack Obama's stated intention to push for more renewable power and you've got the equivalent of a green land rush. At least 80 large solar projects are on the drawing board in California, more than in any other place in the country. The scale of some is unrivaled on the planet. One facility planned for the Mojave Desert is projected to take up a land mass the size of Inglewood....

Government backs off plan to drill in Utah canyons A section of whitewater rapids tucked between high cliffs, little changed since explorer John Wesley Powell boated through in 1896, and a canyon decorated with thousands of ancient rock art panels have been pulled off the auction block by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. For the second time in a week, the bureau announced late Tuesday that it was pulling auction parcels from an expanded oil-and-gas leasing program in Utah. The latest tracts include land inside Nine Mile Canyon and Desolation Canyon on the Green River. The bureau didn't say why it was pulling the lease tracts, but the prospect of drilling near Utah's scenic treasures brought condemnation from conservation groups. Together with previous deferrals, the BLM has pulled nearly 100,000 acres from an auction set for Dec. 19, leaving more than 276,000 acres up for bid....

Activists sue to shut down Delta pumps Reaching back to the laws of ancient Rome, environmentalists sued Monday to cut off Delta water operations and dramatically shake up the long-term balance between economic and environmental needs in the region. If it succeeds, the lawsuit would shift the focus from the worsening conflict between individual species of fish and the amount of water pumped out of the Delta to a comprehensive attempt to balance competing interests. "The only things that are already protected are already endangered," said Michael Jackson, a lawyer for the environmental groups. "But what's happening is the whole bottom is falling out of the ecosystem. You cannot list everything (as an endangered species) and you can't protect species by species." By invoking the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that dates to the Roman Empire, the environmental groups seek to force regulators to consider the environment, recreation, aesthetics and other values to be passed to future generations in the Delta much more rigorously. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the California Water Impact Network and retired federal biologist Felix Smith, seeks to stop water deliveries from the Delta until the massive state and federal pumping stations near Tracy come into compliance with laws that the environmentalists say are being broken....