Wilderness Experts to Congress: Pine Beetle Bad, but Not 'Armageddon'

Congress is set to take a look at the pine beetle outbreak during a hearing this week, and Colorado conservationists will be there to testify. They've been joining with local governments to get across a message: The beetle outbreak is a serious problem, but not the ecological Armageddon sometimes portrayed in the media. Dr. Greg Aplet with The Wilderness Society office in Denver is a forest ecologist who has been studying forests in Colorado for a number of years. He says an important scientific consensus has emerged on the relationship between lodgepole pine forests and these beetles. "The scale and intensity of the outbreak is unlike any outbreak that we've observed before, but that does not mean the end of lodgepole pine in the Rockies." Sloan Shoemaker is executive director of the Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale. He will testify at the hearing that a changing climate means it's time to stop trying to adapt the ecosystem to human-built communities...PublicNewsService

Western governors focus on water woes

Quenching the growing demand for water in the warming West will require a bigger push for conservation, innovative technology and a rethinking of supply and demand, Western governors and water experts said Sunday. About 600 people gathered in Park City for the first day of the Western Governors’ Association meeting. The three-day meeting focuses on key issues that affect states throughout the West, including water use, climate change and energy. This year — with several cabinet members from the Obama administration and a record attendance — the political landscape has shifted and there’s a renewed urgency for swapping ideas and working together, attendees said. The governors approved several resolutions Sunday, including one calling for a national policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “Global warming poses a serious threat to the Western economy, public health and environment,” the resolution said. Sunday’s main discussion, which included Canadian officials and experts from the Middle East and Australia, focused on managing water amid changing climate conditions...AP

Giffords, Grijalva move to stymie Rosemont Mine

The U.S. Forest Service says it cannot stop development of the proposed Rosemont Copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, but Southern Arizona’s two representatives in Congress have asked the Secretary of Agriculture to overrule the agency’s interpretation of the law. U.S. Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva, both Democrats, have sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking him to “direct the Forest Service to remain open to the possibility that their analysis will result in a ‘no action’ recommendation.” Under federal environmental law, a “no action” finding would block development of the mine. Coronado National Forest posted a document on its website saying the agency could not legally prevent the Rosemont Mine from using forest land for copper mining operations. Three days earlier, the Pima County Board approved an agreement with the Forest Service to participate in the deliberations on the proposed mine about 40 miles southeast of Tucson. In that agreement, the county said it disagrees with the Forest Service’s assertion that it can’t block the development of the mine...AzBiz

AZ wanted a jaguar collared despite 2 deaths in Sonora

The two young biologists tried to sedate the snared jaguar with a blow gun. They thrust at it with an improvised jab stick. The big cat kept charging at them. Finally, they were able to sedate the jaguar, but it was too late. The old, spotted male, his teeth broken and worn down, died within a day, apparently killed by the stress of the capture and the 100-degree heat. It was April 2003, deep in the nearly impenetrable thornscrub of the Sierra Madre Mountains in eastern Sonora, 135 miles south of the Arizona border. In the coming years, that ill-fated attempt to capture and put a radio-collar on a jaguar in Mexico helped polarize the debate over whether to capture and collar a jaguar in Arizona. Macho B, the last known wild jaguar in the United States, was captured on Feb.18 this year; 12 days later he was euthanized. Arizona Game and Fish officials have said the Mexican jaguar death stemmed from a lack of experience, equipment and training and is no reason not to capture a jaguar here. Still, the similarities between the incidents raise questions about what went wrong in the Mexican capture — and what officials here should have learned about snaring big cats...ArizonaDailyStar

Biologists bring endangered falcons back to New Mexico

The last place the rare northern aplomado falcon was known to nest before disappearing from the United States more than a half-century ago was a grassy plain in far southwestern New Mexico. Through an intensive reintroduction program, the falcon -- an endangered species that was once found throughout the Southwest and northern Mexico -- is returning to the grasslands near Deming. Biologists last week placed four captive-bred falcons inside a large wooden box several feet above the desert floor so they would be protected from predators while they get acclimated to their new home. In a few days, the door on the box will be opened and the 35-day-old falcons will get to stretch their wings. The release is the first of many planned this year by The Peregrine Fund, which has been working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other state and federal agencies over the past decade to reintroduce the falcon in Texas and New Mexico. Over the last three years, 120 captive-bred falcons have been released in New Mexico. Aside from the four young birds being released in the Deming area, Montoya said another 100 birds will be released at sites in southern New Mexico and Texas later this summer...AP

BLM completes major land swap with New Mexico

The Bureau of Land Management and New Mexico have completed a land swap that allows Union Pacific Railroad to move ahead with efforts to secure a Santa Teresa refueling station. The exchange was announced Friday by Union Pacific spokesman Luis Heredia. The State Land Office will give the BLM a square mile of land on the edge of the Organ Mountain recreation area east of Las Cruces and 9,300 acres in the Sand Ranch about 25 miles east of Roswell. In return, the BLM will provide 320 acres on the Las Cruces west mesa and 1,838 acres along an eight-mile stretch of Union Pacific track north of the Santa Teresa port of entry. Heredia said Omaha, Neb.-based Union Pacific will bid to acquire the 1,838-acre tract when it is offered for sale at auction, perhaps this fall. AP

Who’s afraid of the big bad lamb? Ask the coyote under the porch

It took them two weeks, but they eventually caught one. Wildlife agents in eastern Oregon have been after two wolves since these predators killed two dozen lambs and a calf in three separate attacks. One of the wolves responsible for these attacks was captured May 3, the day before the species was removed from the federal list in Oregon. Wolves remain protected under the Oregon Endangered Species Act, however. Once these biologists got a hold of a critter, they decided an electronic collar would help track the animal’s movements and activate guard boxes to warn the landowner when a wolf approaches the ranch. The landowner can’t do anything, of course, because these wolves are still protected by the state endangered species act. This all seems logical to some people, but it certainly doesn’t make any sense to the ranchers in Oregon. Or anywhere else, in my opinion...OthelloOutlook

Animal ID money may be cut in ag bill

Funding for the national animal identification system would be zeroed out under the fiscal year 2010 agriculture appropriations bill approved June 11 by the House Ag-riculture Appropriations Subcommittee. USDA has been trying to implement a national animal identification program that would trace each animal from birth to food use since the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States in December 2003. USDA initially proposed making the program mandatory, but it remained voluntary amid strong opposition from cattle ranchers. Only about one-third of animal premises in the country have signed up to be registered, and DeLauro has strongly criticized USDA for its management of the program. As House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., noted at the markup, USDA has received $142 million for animal identification since fiscal 2004 and has registered only 35 percent of animal premises. Last year, USDA got $14.2 million to run the program, but increased registrations by only 3 percent. At this rate, DeLauro said, it will take USDA 12 years to register all the animal premises in the country. DeLauro said she favors mandatory registration and noted that it took Canada only two years to register all its premises. DeLauro told reporters afterward that she favors a mandatory animal identification system because she thinks it would “provide assurance against economic calamity” and “protect our export markets.” But DeLauro said she also thinks USDA has mismanaged the program and wasted money...AgWeek

To whom will the USDA be most responsive?

The thousands of livestock producers attending the USDA sessions and strongly opposing the program, or the the committee chairman who controls their budget?

Take a wild guess.

Cattle TB confirmed in Texas

Cattle tuberculosis (TB) has been confirmed in a west Texas dairy that has been quarantined since April when some cattle in the herd responded to a TB test being conducted prior to a sale. (The sale was cancelled.) The cattle TB diagnosis was confirmed at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, where Mycoplasma bovis, the bacteria that causes TB, was cultured from tissues that had been collected during the necropsy of the test-positive cattle. "The infected herd remains quarantined while the final disposition of the herd is determined — either slaughtering the herd or repeatedly testing and removing infected animals until the herd is free of cattle TB," said Dr. Bob Hillman, Texas' state veterinarian and head of the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC). "Dairy, calf-raising and dairy animal replacement operations with epidemiological links to the infected herd are being tested to determine both the origin and potential spread of the disease."...Feedstuffs

Spring roundups as timeless as Texas

Until the big dun bull with the festering eye got his horns stuck in the loading chute, things were going pretty smoothly last week during the spring roundup on the sprawling South Pope Ranch. The 82,000-acre spread lies just north of Big Bend National Park and its rocky terrain of prickly pear, spiky lechuguilla and creosote bush would seem fit only for scorpions, jack rabbits and javelinas. But somehow, about 500 cattle and their calves find ample sustenance here. And twice a year, mounted cowboys wearing heavy leather chaps come to gather them, combing brushy, thorny pastures of 10,000 acres or more. And on this, the second day of the 10-day spring roundup, some 160 head already were in the pens, bawling, moaning, and ready to be worked. The yearlings were big and rowdy, and the new calves looked healthy. Such is the life of the Texas cowboys who work the spring and fall roundups on hundreds of ranches around the state. Out of sight and largely out of mind to urban Texans, they practice a cattle-working tradition that goes back centuries to Mexico and Spain. “The roundup is the cowboy way. You’re back to working cattle like they did in the 1800s,” said rancher Debbie O’Neill, 55, who most of the year works alone on the vast ranch, a 40-mile drive from Marathon. “The most exciting part is packed into these 10 days. You get to see people and see all your cattle. The rest of the year, I feed cattle, fix fences and check water,” she said...SanAntonioExpressNews

Song Of The Day #062

Tommy Collins (Leonard Raymond Sipes) was born on a farm just outside OKC in 1930. After high school and attending college, he joined his friend Wanda Jackson and her parents on a trip to Bakersfield, Ca. The Jacksons returned to Ok. but Collins stayed, having made friends with local DJ Terry Preston (Ferlin Husky). Collins wrote songs for Cliffie Stone and then signed a recording contract with Capitol in 1953. He had many hits for Capitol, such as today's selection, but he was also a very successful songwriter. His songs were recorded by such artists as Faron Young, George Jones, Merle Haggard (20 songs) and George Strait. Haggard's hit single Leonard was his tribute to Collins. Collins passed away in 2000.

His music is still available, including the 5 CD box set Leonard, or you might try his The Capitol Collection.

Collins wrote and sang our selection today You Better Not Do That. It was recorded in 1953 and that's the then little known Buck Owens playing lead guitar.

Issue of Property Rights Is Likely to Arise in Sotomayor’s Confirmation Hearings

...Judge Sonia Sotomayor will doubtless be questioned about Kelo at her confirmation hearings next month. But her answers will be complicated by her participation in a 2006 decision applying and extending Kelo. Bart Didden, the property owner on the losing side of that decision, Didden v. Village of Port Chester, said in an interview that he had been contacted by aides to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who seemed eager to explore Judge Sotomayor’s views on property rights. The ruling in Didden is not popular among some property rights and constitutional law professors. Eight of them filed a brief in 2006 unsuccessfully urging the Supreme Court to hear an appeal. “This is the worst federal court takings decision since Kelo,” said Ilya Somin, who teaches property law at George Mason University and helped write the brief. “It’s very extreme, and it is significant as a window into Judge Sotomayor’s attitudes toward private property.”...The case arose from a meeting in 2003 between Mr. Didden, who owned property in Port Chester, N.Y., and an executive of a company that had been designated by the village to develop a 27-acre urban renewal area that included part of the property. What happened at that meeting, Mr. Didden said, amounted to extortion. Mr. Didden had made arrangements to put a CVS drug store on his lot. At the meeting, the executive, Gregg Wasser, demanded $800,000 as the price for permission to proceed with that project, Mr. Didden said in court papers. The alternative, Mr. Wasser said, according to the papers, was to have the village condemn Mr. Didden’s property so that Mr. Wasser’s company could put a Walgreen’s in the same place. “Here is a private person standing in the shoes of the government with the power to condemn or not condemn,” Mr. Didden said. “The $800,000 wasn’t going to rehabilitate a public park or build a soccer stadium. It was going into his pocket.” Mr. Didden refused. The next day the village condemned his property...Mr. Didden and a business partner sued, and a federal judge dismissed their case in 2004. When the case reached Judge Sotomayor’s court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Mr. Didden said he had reason to be hopeful...But then more than a year passed. In the end, the decision was terse and unsigned, and it rejected Mr. Didden’s claims. “It took 54 weeks to issue those four paragraphs,” Mr. Didden said. According to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the median interval between argument and decision in the Second Circuit, both then and now, is less than a month. The brief decision in Didden made two points. First, it said Mr. Didden had filed his suit too late. The village had announced the redevelopment plan in 1999, and Mr. Didden did not sue until 2004. His claim, the court said, was therefore barred by a three-year statute of limitations. That was a curious ruling, Professor Epstein said, because it required Mr. Didden to sue over his claim of extortion before it happened...NYTimes

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline. The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area. The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint. Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country. Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes...Telegraph

There you have it, kind of a "Buffalo Commons" for urban areas.

China says no to greenhouse gas cuts after talks with US

China will not accept binding cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions, an official said Thursday, after the United States said it made progress with Beijing in talks here on a global climate pact. The comments came after a visit by US climate change envoy Todd Stern aimed at pressing the Asian giant to commit to hard numbers on emissions reductions ahead of December talks in Copenhagen on a new global warming treaty. "China is still a developing country and the present task confronting China is to develop its economy and alleviate poverty, as well as raise the living standard of its people," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters. "Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in its emissions, so it is not possible for China in that context to accept a binding or compulsory target."...AFP

Somebody slap me. The commies are making more sense than our folks.

Global warming may spread plant seeds faster and farther

A team headed by a Finnish researcher concludes that stronger winds caused by global warming may be dispersing seeds and pollen over longer distances. An increase in temperature of only a couple of degrees may increase the dispersal of plants in Northern forests and the spread of plant species into forest clearings after logging or forest fires. University of Helsinki researcher Anna Kuparinen headed the international research into the impact of global warming on seed and pollen dispersal. The goal was to learn whether global warming would accelerate the dispersal of plant populations in forests. Seed and pollen dispersal profoundly affects the dynamics and genetic variation of plant populations, Kuparinen said in a news release. Spreading into more favorable areas will help them survive in the warming climate. Wind conditions play a key role, as turbulent vertical streams, in particular, spread seeds very efficiently, even over long distances. The researchers also discovered that a temperature only three degrees Celsius warmer increased the dispersal of seeds and the speed at which plant populations spread throughout the growth season...Oregonian

Biofuels and ‘Land Grabs’ in Poor Nations

Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, warned on Thursday that biofuels remain an important driver behind big land acquisitions and land leases in poor countries that jeopardize local inhabitants’ food security. About one-fifth of the activities that Mr. De Schutter deemed as “land grabs” – often backed by hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds – are projects in parts of Africa and Asia aimed at growing crops to make feedstock for biofuels. “There still is a vast market for first-generation agrofuels,” said Mr. De Schutter, who added that he considered the safeguards adopted by the European Union in 2008 “absolutely insufficient to monitor to the impacts on the countries concerned by shifts in land use for agrofuels production.”...NYTimes

Limits on oil & gas production drives their price up, which makes biofuels more competitive, providing the incentive to switch from food to fuel crops, which drives up the price of food & feed crops, resulting in higher food prices.

Damn those markets. They just won't do what the central planners want.

Departments to Toughen Standards for Mining

The Obama administration said Thursday that it would toughen standards for mountaintop-removal coal mining but would not end the practice as some environmental groups had hoped. Officials from four agencies said they had agreed to order a more rigorous legal and environmental review of pending and future applications for mountaintop mining in Appalachia. The technique involves blasting the tops off mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams. The practice has buried hundreds of miles of streams and has polluted water throughout the region. The officials, representing the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, did not make clear whether the new process would result in the granting of more mining permits or fewer. Earlier this year the administration imposed a virtual moratorium on mountaintop mining pending this review, leaving the status of 110 permits in limbo. In the interim, however, the administration has granted 42 such permits while denying 6. It appears that those 42 projects will now move forward...NYTimes

Private Bid to Trap Carbon Emissions Is Revived

A public-private project to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions that was abandoned by the Bush administration is being restarted, Steven Chu, the energy secretary, announced Friday. The project, known as FutureGen, was dropped in January 2008 because the Bush administration said that costs had doubled to $1.8 billion, from $950 million. A study later found that a math error had caused the increase to be overstated; costs had actually risen 39 percent, to $1.3 billion. Under the project, a coal plant will be built in Mattoon, Ill., that will store nearly all of its emissions underground, where they cannot contribute to global warming. The project does not have a green light yet. The Department of Energy said it and FutureGen would make a final decision early next year, after additional cost assessments. For now, the department is estimating government contributions at slightly more than $1 billion, with most of that coming from stimulus money designated for advancing clean coal technologies. The FutureGen Alliance of large coal producers and users will provide $400 million to $600 million...NYTimes

Congress abandoning Obama clean energy goals

Congress is all but abandoning President Barack Obama's goal of producing fully one-quarter of the nation's electricity from renewable sources -- wind, solar and the like -- by 2025, though a push for at least some increase is making headway. Both the House and Senate are considering legislation that would establish the first national requirement for electric utilities to generate a certain percentage of their power from renewable energy -- from wind turbines and solar cells to biomass and geothermal sources. To gain wider congressional support, the proposals have been whittled back. They now pale in comparison to what Obama repeatedly has maintained is feasible and necessary to shift the nation away from coal and other fossil fuels and to clean energy sources. This shift, he argues, is needed to combat climate change and make the nation more energy independent...AP

Senate energy bill on tight timeline

Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she expects to mark up climate and energy legislation before the August recess, with hopes of a bill reaching the full Senate in the fall. The Senate legislation will be based on the bill currently making its way through the House but is likely to include tougher short-term targets for capping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The House legislation proposes a cut of 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. “You might see a little bit of a stronger bill come out of our committee,” said Boxer, who noted that her bill is based on the House cap-and-trade proposal. “You’ll see some refinements and changes and tweaks.” The tight timeline could help the bill gain support in the House, where Democrats from rural and conservative states have raised concerns about casting a tough vote for climate and energy legislation without any promise that the Senate will act on the bill...Politico