RODEO
Professional Bull Riders donate $50,000 to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame
The Professional Bull Riders, Inc. (PBR) is proud to announce that it has made a donation in the amount of $50,000 toward efforts to reopen the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy, which is located adjacent to PRCA, the national headquarters of the ProRodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in Colorado Springs, Colo. The Hall of Fame, which has suffered financial losses over the past few years, was temporarily closed earlier this year by the PRCA. The PRCA plans to reopen the Hall of Fame once it has analyzed reasons for its financial situation and created a plan that will enable the Hall to run more efficiently and to achieve a greater presence in the area's tourism industry. PBR President and 2000 PRCA Hall of Fame inductee, Ty Murray of Stephenville, Texas, is passionate about the Hall's historical significance. States Murray, "The Hall of Fame was intended to immortalize the sport of rodeo and its legendary athletes. The PBR is honored to be in a position to provide resources that will enable the Hall to open its doors once again and preserve the legacy of rodeo and its notables." Added Murray, "the PBR felt compelled to help ensure that the history of professional rodeo be immortalized and made available to the public as soon as possible." Murray is a nine-time PRCA world champion and the only seven-time PRCA world champion all-around cowboy in professional rodeo history....
PRCA Commissioner: State of the PRCA
On January 26th, Commissioner Troy Ellerman issued this memo to the PRCA Membership. In it, he provides an overview of the PRCA for the coming fiscal year, by addressing change, image, sponsor relations, finance and committees. If your interested in the future of the PRCA, you better check this out.
Monday, January 31, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Panel Advises Ending Tax Breaks for Easements An influential joint congressional committee recommended yesterday that lawmakers do away with income tax breaks available to homeowners who give charitable organizations easements that restrict changes to personal residences or surrounding land. Over the next decade, the reforms would save the U.S. Treasury $1 billion, according to a staff report released by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The proposal goes well beyond previously announced plans for the reform of what are known as "historic facade easements" and "conservation easements." The recommendations are aimed at ending tax breaks originally designed to preserve historic buildings and the environment....Go here to download the report and thanks to Jon Christensen for the links...
Encounters with cougars on the rise in Oregon When Laurie Gurney turned back toward her house last October with an armload of firewood, a cougar stood between her and the front door. As Russell Trump drove near Yoncalla last year, a cougar stood in the middle of the road. Rancher Ernie Wheeler had a 3-day-old calf killed on his ranch last October. He's pretty sure the predator was a cougar. In most every corner of Douglas County, cougar sightings continue to be made and many are reported to wildlife officials. In most cases, the cats are just minding their own business and passing through. But, it seems, according to calls to officials, more cougars are being seen closer to rural residential areas, and they don't seem as fearful of humans....
Not in my playground! W e all know NIMBYs, those folks who say "Not in My Back Yard!" to every development proposal that comes anywhere near them. Researchers have even identified a subspecies called BANANAs -- "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody" -- who oppose any and all development, whether it's close to them or not. In recent years, a distinct new breed seems to have emerged. I've dubbed them the NIMPs, for "Not in My Playground." NIMPs are ardent conservationists, staunch champions of wilderness and natural areas, protectors of endangered species -- as long as these noble goals don't interfere with their own preferred forms of recreation or favorite vacation spots. Current case in point: wolves....
Gas industry rebuts NPRC report A report recently released by the coalbed methane industry counters findings of a study on wastewater management by a conservation group, an industry spokesperson said. Karen Brown, coordinator of the Coalbed Natural Gas Alliance (CNGA), called the report commissioned last fall by the Northern Plains Resource Council "misleading and inaccurate.'' Brown said the NPRC report "leads the public to believe that injection and water treatment are the only logical and technically sound water management tools'' for coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. But an NPRC spokesman said the industry's report still shows that injection and treatment are affordable options for managing coalbed methane water....
Agency in transition The story goes that in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service, a would-be ranger taking the qualifying exam was asked who created the national forests. "God created the forests but Teddy Roosevelt greatly expanded upon them," the acute applicant said. President Roosevelt began his major expansion 100 years ago this month when he convened an American Forest Congress. His 1905 gathering led to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service and more forest reserves, including the Siskiyou in southwestern Oregon....
Loggers Going Into Ore. Old Growth Reserve A timber company plans to start logging next week in a burned area that had been reserved as old growth forest, setting up a confrontation with environmentalists who believe leaving the dead trees standing is better for fish, wildlife and the forest. John West, president of Silver Creek Timber Co., said Friday he was just waiting for formal imposition of an appeals court order issued earlier this month that had cleared the way for logging some old growth reserve burned in the 500,000-acre Biscuit fire, which threatened 17,000 people in Oregon's Illinois Valley in 2002. Under pressure from the timber industry, the Forest Service expanded its original plans to harvest only in areas designated for logging under the Northwest Forest Plan, which settled lawsuits over the northern spotted owl by dividing federal forest land into areas for logging, and fish and wildlife habitat. The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction that had barred logging on two timber sales in an old growth reserve until a lawsuit brought by environmentalists is resolved....
Raids net thousands of artifacts in Oregon Federal agents executing 22 search warrants this week across Central and Southeast Oregon seized thousands of archaeological artifacts thought to have been stolen from public lands in what they said is the largest case of its kind in the region. The seizures cap a two-year federal investigation into the suspected theft and sale of artifacts looted from sites that may date back thousands of years. Robbery of the native treasures is increasingly fueled by a wealthy, worldwide collectors market willing to pay top dollar for rare remnants of the past, experts said....
Regional forester: Clear cutting forests would help with drought Clear-cutting 25 percent of forest land would help alleviate the ongoing drought, a U.S. Forest Service official told Wyoming lawmakers. Testifying before the Legislature's Joint Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Interim Committee on Thursday, Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables said his agency was looking at ways to make more water available from public forest lands. "Water is going to be the defining environmental issue in this country and in the West, and there's a lot of interest in increasing water yields" on forest lands," Cables said. Cables said studies had shown that it took a 25 percent clear cut to get an appreciable gain in water, and that areas must remain open permanently to maintain the water gain....
Good Grazing: Preserving Cattle Country A coalition of ranchers and conservationists are finding new ways to make cattle ranching compatible with environmental preservation. As NPR's John Burnett reports, the plan pits preservation and financial incentives against development and unrestrained land-use. Cattle ranchers in the Malpai Borderlands Group receive cash and tax breaks in exchange for keeping their lands out of the hands of developers. They also agree to manage their cattle in ways less likely to damage fragile desert landscapes. The Malpai Group, which began in 1993, protects 800,000 acres while also sustaining working cattle ranches. And an increasing number of experts think the Malpai model is an idea that could work elsewhere....
Agency plans sage grouse hunt Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials are recommending another conservative sage grouse hunting season for 2005. Agency data show estimated harvest rates were well below 5 percent of the statewide fall population in 2002 and 2003. Emmerich said the same most likely will be true for 2004. He said the state's sage grouse numbers are high enough to support another conservative hunt, similar to the 2002-04 seasons. In 2002, the department shortened the sage grouse season to basically two weekends in the fall, with a last-Saturday-in-September opening date. Fall counts by biologists estimate a population of about 100,000 sage grouse in Wyoming over the past three years....
After the Divorce: Improving Science at Federal Wildlife Agencies Michael Runge and his colleagues from the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) got out of their car, hiked the short distance to Chaska Lake near the Minnesota River, and looked around carefully. Here, at the nearly 14,000-acre Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis, a floodplain forest of cotton-wood, green ash, and silver maple trees stretches from the riverbanks to the bulrushes and cattails growing in the marshlands along the lake's shallows. Runge, a USGS research ecologist based at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, was in Minnesota on a cool and drizzly fall day last year to check out Chaska Lake and other sites for possible inclusion in a scientific study. The study will examine about 20 wildlife refuges in the upper Midwest and Northeast. It seeks to help refuge managers determine whether and to what extent adjusting water levels behind impounded wetlands would attract migrating shorebirds, wading birds, waterfowl, and other wildlife. The study's importance goes beyond helping FWS better manage its 545 wildlife refuges and shedding new light on bird habitats. It represents a new era of scientific research and cooperation between FWS and USGS. It also represents a renewed effort by FWS to rebuild its scientific credibility and to foster research related to the federal wildlife agency's program and management responsibilities....
Effort to Reinforce Border Creates Divide On the southwestern-most tip of the country, just across the border from Tijuana, rugged canyons drop down to a rich Pacific estuary, where millions have been spent restoring fresh and saltwater marshes that sustain the California brown pelican and other rare birds and plants. But this landscape also represents a gaping hole in the nation's defenses against terrorists, drug traffickers and other criminals, federal officials say. At some points, a worn-out border fence teeters atop cliffs. In at least one spot along the sloping side of a canyon, erosion has buried so much of the fence that migrants and other travelers can step over it. Near the wind-swept shoreline of Border Field State Park, the 10-foot-tall steel panels that make up the fence are pocked with holes. The Bush administration proposes closing off this final 3.5-mile stretch of border between the United States and Mexico by moving massive amounts of dirt from nearby mesas into canyons to create a long earthen berm. On the berm, parallel to the existing border fence, a second fence and a patrol road would be constructed....
Column: Greener fields in the forecast Heading into his second term, President Bush has earned tremendous political capital he can spend on big goals at home and abroad. The environment is often overlooked in discussions of Mr. Bush's domestic agenda. The president has a chance to advance a bold vision for environmental progress under his top policy ideal: the ownership society. Let's hope he does so. One bold move that could garner support of conservatives and environmentalists alike would be ending all energy subsidies. This would please conservatives, who decry tax breaks for wasteful spending on costly renewable energy boondoggles, and environmentalists, who claim the fossil fuel industry gets unnecessary and unmerited public support. The government would save money and consumers would decide what fuels will meet their energy needs....
A New Range War Corraled in a federal holding pen at Palomino Valley, Nev., a buckskin mare with the number 9598 cold-branded in code on its neck suddenly faces an uncertain future. When the 12-year-old was rounded up in November as part of a federal program to humanely control the mustang population in the West, it looked as if it would be relocated to a grassy farm in Oklahoma or Kansas. But that all changed weeks later. Thanks to a controversial revision of the 1971 law protecting wild horses and burros, the mare could be sold, killed and butchered. Icons of independence and a living reminder of the old West, mustangs have always excited fierce passions. But the passion turned to anger after Republican Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana quietly inserted a rider in the federal budget that lifted the ban on selling wild horses for slaughter....
This Time, Developer May Not Get His Water Of all the obstacles standing between Ben Ewell and his dream of building a new town in the foothills above Fresno, water would seem the least of them. The ambitious project sits along the shores of Millerton Lake, which holds the flow of the San Joaquin River. With a single pipeline acting as a straw, Ewell draws federal water from the lake to his golf course and high-priced houses nestled in the oak-and-granite hills. Now, the real estate developer wants to use this same plumbing to siphon water to an even bigger planned community of 1,000 houses, a hotel, shopping centers, conference halls and a second golf course. But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, on the eve of a Fresno County vote to approve the first phase of new houses, says it made a serious mistake when it allowed Ewell to pump water from the lake. The whole scheme amounts to an illegal diversion of federal water that bureau officials say they have known about for a decade but chose not to stop....
Colorado considering statewide water compact When manager Tom Backhus looks out across the 4 Eagle Ranch, he sees cattle, horses and snow sparkling like diamonds as far as the eye can see, a range dotted by log cabins visited every year by people who want to learn about the West. Water attorney Glenn Porzak has a different vision. He sees a reservoir filled to the brim with water to help feed Colorado's growing thirst, along with boats, fishermen and others enjoying a big mountain lake. The days appear to be numbered for the guest ranch 20 miles west of Vail: The 1,400-acre spread is owned by the Denver Water Board and if all goes as planned, the ranch will be submerged in a decade. This is not just another water project for Colorado. State officials want it to serve as a blueprint for the rest of the state, which is struggling through one of the worst droughts in history and is a key watershed for much of the West....
Modern-day rustler foiled by the old branding iron Roddy Dean Pippin is a cattle rustler -- a strange modern-day living that comes with plenty of old occupational hazards, short of the rope. Many Americans might think that the brazen theft of cattle died out with frontier justice and 19th-century range wars. But Pippin, a 6-foot-1-inch West Texan, is around to disabuse anyone of that notion. Pippin, 21, was arrested early Aug. 8 while trying to haul four cows and four calves to a sale barn in Decatur. He changed his story about buying them in Oklahoma when he was told that the Open Top J brand on the cattle was identical to the mark burned into the hides of livestock reported stolen from a ranch near Quanah. He confessed. Then, to the amazement of his interrogators, he confessed some more. As with many rustling cases dating back generations, it was the hot-iron brand on a steer's hip that helped put a thief behind bars. The association and others are concerned that a major change in the ranching industry -- the introduction of high-tech identification ear tags expected this decade -- might make it easier for the next Roddy Dean Pippin....
Visionary painter rides into spirit world The Amazon-like, buxom woman with two long black braids stooped to walk through the doorway. Her eyes were locked on a wheelchair-bound man who watched her enter the room. She was his Venus, his goddess of love and beauty. The painting, titled "Welcome,'' like much of Ernie Pepion's work, reveals something perhaps a little beyond the nationally exhibited artist's reach, yet accurately reflects the crippled man's pains, needs and desires. When he died Jan. 13, the painter from the Blackfeet Nation left all that behind....
His photos document the lives of the cowboys Bob Moorhouse looks every inch the cowboy. Six feet tall. Marlboro man mustache and serious cowboy hat. Blue jeans and boots. Only this cowboy packs a Canon digital camera instead of a six-shooter. Mr. Moorhouse has become something of a legend himself. He is nationally recognized for his photos of real cowboys hard at work on a real ranch. "I'm a cowboy first," he says, "but a camera usually goes with me."....
On The Edge of Common Sense: No cudding! Cow's digestion incredible I am a student of the cow. I have come to conclude that cows lead a fairly boring life. When I am giving cows their sporadic weekly check, I think it's probably the high point of their day. They graze their life away, and if they are not grazing, they are chewing their cud. This cud is part of a magnificent ruminant digestive process that allows them to digest foods that are virtually inedible to simple-stomached animals like people. For instance, cows derive nutritional benefit from lettuce! Who'd'a thunk it?....
Panel Advises Ending Tax Breaks for Easements An influential joint congressional committee recommended yesterday that lawmakers do away with income tax breaks available to homeowners who give charitable organizations easements that restrict changes to personal residences or surrounding land. Over the next decade, the reforms would save the U.S. Treasury $1 billion, according to a staff report released by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The proposal goes well beyond previously announced plans for the reform of what are known as "historic facade easements" and "conservation easements." The recommendations are aimed at ending tax breaks originally designed to preserve historic buildings and the environment....Go here to download the report and thanks to Jon Christensen for the links...
Encounters with cougars on the rise in Oregon When Laurie Gurney turned back toward her house last October with an armload of firewood, a cougar stood between her and the front door. As Russell Trump drove near Yoncalla last year, a cougar stood in the middle of the road. Rancher Ernie Wheeler had a 3-day-old calf killed on his ranch last October. He's pretty sure the predator was a cougar. In most every corner of Douglas County, cougar sightings continue to be made and many are reported to wildlife officials. In most cases, the cats are just minding their own business and passing through. But, it seems, according to calls to officials, more cougars are being seen closer to rural residential areas, and they don't seem as fearful of humans....
Not in my playground! W e all know NIMBYs, those folks who say "Not in My Back Yard!" to every development proposal that comes anywhere near them. Researchers have even identified a subspecies called BANANAs -- "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody" -- who oppose any and all development, whether it's close to them or not. In recent years, a distinct new breed seems to have emerged. I've dubbed them the NIMPs, for "Not in My Playground." NIMPs are ardent conservationists, staunch champions of wilderness and natural areas, protectors of endangered species -- as long as these noble goals don't interfere with their own preferred forms of recreation or favorite vacation spots. Current case in point: wolves....
Gas industry rebuts NPRC report A report recently released by the coalbed methane industry counters findings of a study on wastewater management by a conservation group, an industry spokesperson said. Karen Brown, coordinator of the Coalbed Natural Gas Alliance (CNGA), called the report commissioned last fall by the Northern Plains Resource Council "misleading and inaccurate.'' Brown said the NPRC report "leads the public to believe that injection and water treatment are the only logical and technically sound water management tools'' for coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. But an NPRC spokesman said the industry's report still shows that injection and treatment are affordable options for managing coalbed methane water....
Agency in transition The story goes that in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service, a would-be ranger taking the qualifying exam was asked who created the national forests. "God created the forests but Teddy Roosevelt greatly expanded upon them," the acute applicant said. President Roosevelt began his major expansion 100 years ago this month when he convened an American Forest Congress. His 1905 gathering led to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service and more forest reserves, including the Siskiyou in southwestern Oregon....
Loggers Going Into Ore. Old Growth Reserve A timber company plans to start logging next week in a burned area that had been reserved as old growth forest, setting up a confrontation with environmentalists who believe leaving the dead trees standing is better for fish, wildlife and the forest. John West, president of Silver Creek Timber Co., said Friday he was just waiting for formal imposition of an appeals court order issued earlier this month that had cleared the way for logging some old growth reserve burned in the 500,000-acre Biscuit fire, which threatened 17,000 people in Oregon's Illinois Valley in 2002. Under pressure from the timber industry, the Forest Service expanded its original plans to harvest only in areas designated for logging under the Northwest Forest Plan, which settled lawsuits over the northern spotted owl by dividing federal forest land into areas for logging, and fish and wildlife habitat. The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction that had barred logging on two timber sales in an old growth reserve until a lawsuit brought by environmentalists is resolved....
Raids net thousands of artifacts in Oregon Federal agents executing 22 search warrants this week across Central and Southeast Oregon seized thousands of archaeological artifacts thought to have been stolen from public lands in what they said is the largest case of its kind in the region. The seizures cap a two-year federal investigation into the suspected theft and sale of artifacts looted from sites that may date back thousands of years. Robbery of the native treasures is increasingly fueled by a wealthy, worldwide collectors market willing to pay top dollar for rare remnants of the past, experts said....
Regional forester: Clear cutting forests would help with drought Clear-cutting 25 percent of forest land would help alleviate the ongoing drought, a U.S. Forest Service official told Wyoming lawmakers. Testifying before the Legislature's Joint Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Interim Committee on Thursday, Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables said his agency was looking at ways to make more water available from public forest lands. "Water is going to be the defining environmental issue in this country and in the West, and there's a lot of interest in increasing water yields" on forest lands," Cables said. Cables said studies had shown that it took a 25 percent clear cut to get an appreciable gain in water, and that areas must remain open permanently to maintain the water gain....
Good Grazing: Preserving Cattle Country A coalition of ranchers and conservationists are finding new ways to make cattle ranching compatible with environmental preservation. As NPR's John Burnett reports, the plan pits preservation and financial incentives against development and unrestrained land-use. Cattle ranchers in the Malpai Borderlands Group receive cash and tax breaks in exchange for keeping their lands out of the hands of developers. They also agree to manage their cattle in ways less likely to damage fragile desert landscapes. The Malpai Group, which began in 1993, protects 800,000 acres while also sustaining working cattle ranches. And an increasing number of experts think the Malpai model is an idea that could work elsewhere....
Agency plans sage grouse hunt Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials are recommending another conservative sage grouse hunting season for 2005. Agency data show estimated harvest rates were well below 5 percent of the statewide fall population in 2002 and 2003. Emmerich said the same most likely will be true for 2004. He said the state's sage grouse numbers are high enough to support another conservative hunt, similar to the 2002-04 seasons. In 2002, the department shortened the sage grouse season to basically two weekends in the fall, with a last-Saturday-in-September opening date. Fall counts by biologists estimate a population of about 100,000 sage grouse in Wyoming over the past three years....
After the Divorce: Improving Science at Federal Wildlife Agencies Michael Runge and his colleagues from the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) got out of their car, hiked the short distance to Chaska Lake near the Minnesota River, and looked around carefully. Here, at the nearly 14,000-acre Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis, a floodplain forest of cotton-wood, green ash, and silver maple trees stretches from the riverbanks to the bulrushes and cattails growing in the marshlands along the lake's shallows. Runge, a USGS research ecologist based at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, was in Minnesota on a cool and drizzly fall day last year to check out Chaska Lake and other sites for possible inclusion in a scientific study. The study will examine about 20 wildlife refuges in the upper Midwest and Northeast. It seeks to help refuge managers determine whether and to what extent adjusting water levels behind impounded wetlands would attract migrating shorebirds, wading birds, waterfowl, and other wildlife. The study's importance goes beyond helping FWS better manage its 545 wildlife refuges and shedding new light on bird habitats. It represents a new era of scientific research and cooperation between FWS and USGS. It also represents a renewed effort by FWS to rebuild its scientific credibility and to foster research related to the federal wildlife agency's program and management responsibilities....
Effort to Reinforce Border Creates Divide On the southwestern-most tip of the country, just across the border from Tijuana, rugged canyons drop down to a rich Pacific estuary, where millions have been spent restoring fresh and saltwater marshes that sustain the California brown pelican and other rare birds and plants. But this landscape also represents a gaping hole in the nation's defenses against terrorists, drug traffickers and other criminals, federal officials say. At some points, a worn-out border fence teeters atop cliffs. In at least one spot along the sloping side of a canyon, erosion has buried so much of the fence that migrants and other travelers can step over it. Near the wind-swept shoreline of Border Field State Park, the 10-foot-tall steel panels that make up the fence are pocked with holes. The Bush administration proposes closing off this final 3.5-mile stretch of border between the United States and Mexico by moving massive amounts of dirt from nearby mesas into canyons to create a long earthen berm. On the berm, parallel to the existing border fence, a second fence and a patrol road would be constructed....
Column: Greener fields in the forecast Heading into his second term, President Bush has earned tremendous political capital he can spend on big goals at home and abroad. The environment is often overlooked in discussions of Mr. Bush's domestic agenda. The president has a chance to advance a bold vision for environmental progress under his top policy ideal: the ownership society. Let's hope he does so. One bold move that could garner support of conservatives and environmentalists alike would be ending all energy subsidies. This would please conservatives, who decry tax breaks for wasteful spending on costly renewable energy boondoggles, and environmentalists, who claim the fossil fuel industry gets unnecessary and unmerited public support. The government would save money and consumers would decide what fuels will meet their energy needs....
A New Range War Corraled in a federal holding pen at Palomino Valley, Nev., a buckskin mare with the number 9598 cold-branded in code on its neck suddenly faces an uncertain future. When the 12-year-old was rounded up in November as part of a federal program to humanely control the mustang population in the West, it looked as if it would be relocated to a grassy farm in Oklahoma or Kansas. But that all changed weeks later. Thanks to a controversial revision of the 1971 law protecting wild horses and burros, the mare could be sold, killed and butchered. Icons of independence and a living reminder of the old West, mustangs have always excited fierce passions. But the passion turned to anger after Republican Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana quietly inserted a rider in the federal budget that lifted the ban on selling wild horses for slaughter....
This Time, Developer May Not Get His Water Of all the obstacles standing between Ben Ewell and his dream of building a new town in the foothills above Fresno, water would seem the least of them. The ambitious project sits along the shores of Millerton Lake, which holds the flow of the San Joaquin River. With a single pipeline acting as a straw, Ewell draws federal water from the lake to his golf course and high-priced houses nestled in the oak-and-granite hills. Now, the real estate developer wants to use this same plumbing to siphon water to an even bigger planned community of 1,000 houses, a hotel, shopping centers, conference halls and a second golf course. But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, on the eve of a Fresno County vote to approve the first phase of new houses, says it made a serious mistake when it allowed Ewell to pump water from the lake. The whole scheme amounts to an illegal diversion of federal water that bureau officials say they have known about for a decade but chose not to stop....
Colorado considering statewide water compact When manager Tom Backhus looks out across the 4 Eagle Ranch, he sees cattle, horses and snow sparkling like diamonds as far as the eye can see, a range dotted by log cabins visited every year by people who want to learn about the West. Water attorney Glenn Porzak has a different vision. He sees a reservoir filled to the brim with water to help feed Colorado's growing thirst, along with boats, fishermen and others enjoying a big mountain lake. The days appear to be numbered for the guest ranch 20 miles west of Vail: The 1,400-acre spread is owned by the Denver Water Board and if all goes as planned, the ranch will be submerged in a decade. This is not just another water project for Colorado. State officials want it to serve as a blueprint for the rest of the state, which is struggling through one of the worst droughts in history and is a key watershed for much of the West....
Modern-day rustler foiled by the old branding iron Roddy Dean Pippin is a cattle rustler -- a strange modern-day living that comes with plenty of old occupational hazards, short of the rope. Many Americans might think that the brazen theft of cattle died out with frontier justice and 19th-century range wars. But Pippin, a 6-foot-1-inch West Texan, is around to disabuse anyone of that notion. Pippin, 21, was arrested early Aug. 8 while trying to haul four cows and four calves to a sale barn in Decatur. He changed his story about buying them in Oklahoma when he was told that the Open Top J brand on the cattle was identical to the mark burned into the hides of livestock reported stolen from a ranch near Quanah. He confessed. Then, to the amazement of his interrogators, he confessed some more. As with many rustling cases dating back generations, it was the hot-iron brand on a steer's hip that helped put a thief behind bars. The association and others are concerned that a major change in the ranching industry -- the introduction of high-tech identification ear tags expected this decade -- might make it easier for the next Roddy Dean Pippin....
Visionary painter rides into spirit world The Amazon-like, buxom woman with two long black braids stooped to walk through the doorway. Her eyes were locked on a wheelchair-bound man who watched her enter the room. She was his Venus, his goddess of love and beauty. The painting, titled "Welcome,'' like much of Ernie Pepion's work, reveals something perhaps a little beyond the nationally exhibited artist's reach, yet accurately reflects the crippled man's pains, needs and desires. When he died Jan. 13, the painter from the Blackfeet Nation left all that behind....
His photos document the lives of the cowboys Bob Moorhouse looks every inch the cowboy. Six feet tall. Marlboro man mustache and serious cowboy hat. Blue jeans and boots. Only this cowboy packs a Canon digital camera instead of a six-shooter. Mr. Moorhouse has become something of a legend himself. He is nationally recognized for his photos of real cowboys hard at work on a real ranch. "I'm a cowboy first," he says, "but a camera usually goes with me."....
On The Edge of Common Sense: No cudding! Cow's digestion incredible I am a student of the cow. I have come to conclude that cows lead a fairly boring life. When I am giving cows their sporadic weekly check, I think it's probably the high point of their day. They graze their life away, and if they are not grazing, they are chewing their cud. This cud is part of a magnificent ruminant digestive process that allows them to digest foods that are virtually inedible to simple-stomached animals like people. For instance, cows derive nutritional benefit from lettuce! Who'd'a thunk it?....
Sunday, January 30, 2005
MAD COW DISEASE
Lip implant tissue link with mad cow disease
FEARS that cosmetic implants used in lips and cheeks could trigger vCJD, the human form of “mad cow” disease, have prompted the Government to launch an investigation. Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, said that experts were examining the possibility that tissue implants such as collagen could transmit blood-borne diseases such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if contaminated. Although no evidence of such transmission has been discovered, the committee on microbiological safety of blood and tissues believes there might be a risk. The expert group’s study of a range of aesthetic fillers, which are often made from human or bovine tissue, had already found samples containing material from dead bodies and birds, Sir Liam added....
Lip implant tissue link with mad cow disease
FEARS that cosmetic implants used in lips and cheeks could trigger vCJD, the human form of “mad cow” disease, have prompted the Government to launch an investigation. Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, said that experts were examining the possibility that tissue implants such as collagen could transmit blood-borne diseases such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if contaminated. Although no evidence of such transmission has been discovered, the committee on microbiological safety of blood and tissues believes there might be a risk. The expert group’s study of a range of aesthetic fillers, which are often made from human or bovine tissue, had already found samples containing material from dead bodies and birds, Sir Liam added....
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER
When “country” goes skiing
By Julie Carter
Carhart ski wear and Solomon skis is a combination known best to the rural folks of America.
Call them rednecks if you will. Redneck has been defined as a glorious lack of sophistication. That also qualifies in snow skiing.
I’ve watched ranch folk go to the ski slopes for several decades now and there has been a common theme that carries through from then to now. They come to have a good time and skiing finesse is not what it is about.
I know this because I am a second generation redneck skier and have taught a third generation the basics of enjoying the snow on the mountain.
Everyone that wants to ski has to learn to ski. Not an obvious natural skill that comes with being born, strapping a couple of boards to your feet which are entombed in big heavy masochistic boots, brings with it a complete set of problems to conquer.
First, nothing is done easily when you are clothed in so many layers you resemble the Michelin tire guy from the commercials.
Then you stuff all those pockets with snacks for the kids, a camera, Chap Stick, sunscreen, Kleenex to wipe the snow off the goggles after each fall and wipe aforementioned children’s noses, money for hot cocoa and the car keys. Rural folk travel prepared for anything.
Every time you bend over to fasten a boot buckle or pick up the ski pole you just dropped for the third time, your car keys, buried in a pocket deep within, perform surgery on your body and the orange you are saving for the gondola ride, rolls across the slope.
Your goggles are fogged up and you just remembered that you were going to go to the restroom before you got all the kids ready to get in the lift line. Why does it appear like all those people in the real ski clothes with matching everything never struggle with clothes, kids or escaping oranges?
The male rednecks are easy to spot in their Carhart clothing and most often if not a cowboy hat, they are simply wearing a cap with a cow feed or gun company logo on the front of it. Their jackets frequently wear the same logo.
Their Wranglers are two shades of denim--faded on the front and with a darker definite “wet” look to the back pocket area. That comes from challenging themselves on that blue, more difficult, slope and finding out at the bottom it was in fact a black diamond which can translate to “write your will before you ski.”
The younger cowboys can be found chasing the latest and fast growing sport of snowboarding. Again, the full length tan canvas duck material outfit is a dead giveaway.
This young man will be right at home on a bucking bull or riding a horse full speed across a rough pasture, rope twirling and in hot pursuit of wild cow. On a snow board, it may take him awhile to get the hang of having both his feet tied to a board that wants to leave the mountain before he does.
During these weeks that the local ski area offers such a great deal to students of area schools, Wednesday should be designated Redneck Day at the ski area. Students come to ski from many small rural schools and bring their parents with them.
When in a crowd of like kind, we country people can find reason to celebrate our glorious lack of sophistication.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net or at the hot cocoa stand looking for some aspirin.
© Julie Carter 2005
The following is in response to this article.
Letter to the Editor, by Laura Schneberger
Dear Editor,
In response to Bobbie Holiday's, Mexican Wolves Did Their Part, Ms. Holiday has once again shown that her primary interest is in promoting only the environmental propaganda supporting the wolf reintroduction program. Ignoring the plight of rural areas that have the entire weight and consequences of the program on their shoulders has become an art form for pro wolfers and agency personnel.
Rural Arizonans and New Mexicans are seldom surprised to see these kinds of letters and articles covering for the USFWS and their blatant disregard for the welfare of the people in the reintroduction areas. There is a select group of people who feel it is their job to keep the program looking clean and shiny regardless of reality and they work very hard to keep up appearances.
Failures of the program usually have to do with the impact on people. They include but aren't limited to several final rule violations. The rule specifically states that livestock killers will be removed, permanently. It also states that wolves in the wild will be monitored, collared, vaccinated and kept track of. That livestock kills will be investigated and the situation mitigated promptly.
These rules are violated indiscriminately and on a regular basis.
The FWS doesn't have a current count on how many wolves are actually out there in the wild, simply because they stopped counting a couple years ago. Those of us on the receiving end of the program feel that the majority of their budget is now spent promoting full blown recovery and giving pro wolf presentations to Kindergarteners rather than following the rule and fulfilling their obligations to rural people. Although reports and sightings go to the agency on a regular basis, verifying the spread of wolves beyond the Gila Wilderness or beyond the western boundary in AZ has become low or no priority. The agency has a (we don't want to know) attitude. If they know they may have to admit their job is done.
Opening up the boundaries is an easy task because it can be done on paper and makes it look like there has been limited, hard won, progress. In reality, The agency has ignored the boundary rule for several years unless it pertains to collared re-released stock killers that should never have been re-released anyway. Refusal by the agency to remove those problem animals the second and even third time, is not well tolerated. In a nutshell the boundary rule has been meaningless for a long time. Ask any rancher in central New Mexico and they will tell you wolf management personnel are a much rarer species in their neck of the woods than wolves are.
Release of fresh wolves into the Gila National Forest beyond the Gila Wilderness is completely unnecessary since a substantial wild born population already lives there. The only thing that would be accomplished by doing this would be to throw a bunch of inexperienced animals out on top of the ranchers in those areas and increase the stock killing that Agency personnel don't seem inclined to want to investigate any longer.
Don't fall for the pie in the sky assessments of this program. The success of it was had off the backs of hard working rural people trying to make a living under the most brutal of circumstances.
As successful as they claim to be, agency personnel put their obligations to ranchers, outfitters and rural dwellers on a low priority list while they promote unnecessary and superficial changes to make it look like they are actually going to accomplish something meaningful. Those changes are often the whims of the environmental extremists who are allowed to partner with the program.
Bobby is right about one thing, the wolves are out there, the program is finished. The unsaid goal of the pro-wolfers, agency and the litigation happy, non government organizations, is to prolong the misery as long as it takes to remove the rest of the ranches and other forest users from the picture. That is how they believe true success will be measured.
Sincerely
Laura Schneberger
Gila Forest inholder
Black Range
Winston New Mexico
Remember, I welcome submissions for this section of The Westerner
When “country” goes skiing
By Julie Carter
Carhart ski wear and Solomon skis is a combination known best to the rural folks of America.
Call them rednecks if you will. Redneck has been defined as a glorious lack of sophistication. That also qualifies in snow skiing.
I’ve watched ranch folk go to the ski slopes for several decades now and there has been a common theme that carries through from then to now. They come to have a good time and skiing finesse is not what it is about.
I know this because I am a second generation redneck skier and have taught a third generation the basics of enjoying the snow on the mountain.
Everyone that wants to ski has to learn to ski. Not an obvious natural skill that comes with being born, strapping a couple of boards to your feet which are entombed in big heavy masochistic boots, brings with it a complete set of problems to conquer.
First, nothing is done easily when you are clothed in so many layers you resemble the Michelin tire guy from the commercials.
Then you stuff all those pockets with snacks for the kids, a camera, Chap Stick, sunscreen, Kleenex to wipe the snow off the goggles after each fall and wipe aforementioned children’s noses, money for hot cocoa and the car keys. Rural folk travel prepared for anything.
Every time you bend over to fasten a boot buckle or pick up the ski pole you just dropped for the third time, your car keys, buried in a pocket deep within, perform surgery on your body and the orange you are saving for the gondola ride, rolls across the slope.
Your goggles are fogged up and you just remembered that you were going to go to the restroom before you got all the kids ready to get in the lift line. Why does it appear like all those people in the real ski clothes with matching everything never struggle with clothes, kids or escaping oranges?
The male rednecks are easy to spot in their Carhart clothing and most often if not a cowboy hat, they are simply wearing a cap with a cow feed or gun company logo on the front of it. Their jackets frequently wear the same logo.
Their Wranglers are two shades of denim--faded on the front and with a darker definite “wet” look to the back pocket area. That comes from challenging themselves on that blue, more difficult, slope and finding out at the bottom it was in fact a black diamond which can translate to “write your will before you ski.”
The younger cowboys can be found chasing the latest and fast growing sport of snowboarding. Again, the full length tan canvas duck material outfit is a dead giveaway.
This young man will be right at home on a bucking bull or riding a horse full speed across a rough pasture, rope twirling and in hot pursuit of wild cow. On a snow board, it may take him awhile to get the hang of having both his feet tied to a board that wants to leave the mountain before he does.
During these weeks that the local ski area offers such a great deal to students of area schools, Wednesday should be designated Redneck Day at the ski area. Students come to ski from many small rural schools and bring their parents with them.
When in a crowd of like kind, we country people can find reason to celebrate our glorious lack of sophistication.
Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net or at the hot cocoa stand looking for some aspirin.
© Julie Carter 2005
The following is in response to this article.
Letter to the Editor, by Laura Schneberger
Dear Editor,
In response to Bobbie Holiday's, Mexican Wolves Did Their Part, Ms. Holiday has once again shown that her primary interest is in promoting only the environmental propaganda supporting the wolf reintroduction program. Ignoring the plight of rural areas that have the entire weight and consequences of the program on their shoulders has become an art form for pro wolfers and agency personnel.
Rural Arizonans and New Mexicans are seldom surprised to see these kinds of letters and articles covering for the USFWS and their blatant disregard for the welfare of the people in the reintroduction areas. There is a select group of people who feel it is their job to keep the program looking clean and shiny regardless of reality and they work very hard to keep up appearances.
Failures of the program usually have to do with the impact on people. They include but aren't limited to several final rule violations. The rule specifically states that livestock killers will be removed, permanently. It also states that wolves in the wild will be monitored, collared, vaccinated and kept track of. That livestock kills will be investigated and the situation mitigated promptly.
These rules are violated indiscriminately and on a regular basis.
The FWS doesn't have a current count on how many wolves are actually out there in the wild, simply because they stopped counting a couple years ago. Those of us on the receiving end of the program feel that the majority of their budget is now spent promoting full blown recovery and giving pro wolf presentations to Kindergarteners rather than following the rule and fulfilling their obligations to rural people. Although reports and sightings go to the agency on a regular basis, verifying the spread of wolves beyond the Gila Wilderness or beyond the western boundary in AZ has become low or no priority. The agency has a (we don't want to know) attitude. If they know they may have to admit their job is done.
Opening up the boundaries is an easy task because it can be done on paper and makes it look like there has been limited, hard won, progress. In reality, The agency has ignored the boundary rule for several years unless it pertains to collared re-released stock killers that should never have been re-released anyway. Refusal by the agency to remove those problem animals the second and even third time, is not well tolerated. In a nutshell the boundary rule has been meaningless for a long time. Ask any rancher in central New Mexico and they will tell you wolf management personnel are a much rarer species in their neck of the woods than wolves are.
Release of fresh wolves into the Gila National Forest beyond the Gila Wilderness is completely unnecessary since a substantial wild born population already lives there. The only thing that would be accomplished by doing this would be to throw a bunch of inexperienced animals out on top of the ranchers in those areas and increase the stock killing that Agency personnel don't seem inclined to want to investigate any longer.
Don't fall for the pie in the sky assessments of this program. The success of it was had off the backs of hard working rural people trying to make a living under the most brutal of circumstances.
As successful as they claim to be, agency personnel put their obligations to ranchers, outfitters and rural dwellers on a low priority list while they promote unnecessary and superficial changes to make it look like they are actually going to accomplish something meaningful. Those changes are often the whims of the environmental extremists who are allowed to partner with the program.
Bobby is right about one thing, the wolves are out there, the program is finished. The unsaid goal of the pro-wolfers, agency and the litigation happy, non government organizations, is to prolong the misery as long as it takes to remove the rest of the ranches and other forest users from the picture. That is how they believe true success will be measured.
Sincerely
Laura Schneberger
Gila Forest inholder
Black Range
Winston New Mexico
Remember, I welcome submissions for this section of The Westerner
OPINION/COMMENTARY
World Heritage Areas: A Critical Analysis
Our nation's most valued landmarks remind us of the liberty, strength, and justice of America at its best. Yet, unfortunately, politics - international politics, to be exact - is making use of long-standing national landmarks we think of as distinctly and unambiguously American: The Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, to name a few. Since 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) - the cultural arm of the U.N. - has designated 22 sites in the U.S. and some 788 sites worldwide as cultural or natural sites of "world heritage."1 UNESCO describes these extraordinary buildings, monuments, and natural parks as being of "outstanding value to humanity,"2 and their preservation, therefore, a matter of global concern. Administered from its headquarters in Paris, UNESCO enforces international protection of World Heritage sites under the terms of the 1972 World Heritage Treaty, 3 which the U.S. was the first nation to ratify in 1973.4 When a site is designated a "World Heritage Site," it does not become the property of the U.N. Indeed, ceding formal authority of U.S. territory to an outside power would violate long-established principles of national sovereignty. The government of the country hosting the site has legal authority and is, ultimately, responsible for its care.5 The House of Representatives approved the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act in 1999. The measure required congressional approval before any more U.S. properties are designated as U.N. World Heritage Areas. The Senate failed to even vote on the bill.20 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist could rectify this injustice, and should be encouraged to do so, though the House would be required to vote again before the measure would be presented to the President. An alternative to adoption of a renewed American Land Sovereignty Protection Act could be a concurrent resolution expressed by Congress reminding the U.N. of Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the World Heritage Treaty. This passage affirms that the sovereignty of the state on which a World Heritage site is situated will be respected.21 The last Congress failed to act on such a resolution (introduced by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas), which also called for Congress to again withdraw the U.S. from UNESCO.22 Congress should act to make it clear to the U.N. that the authority to manage U.S. lands rests exclusively with the American people....
World Heritage Areas: A Critical Analysis
Our nation's most valued landmarks remind us of the liberty, strength, and justice of America at its best. Yet, unfortunately, politics - international politics, to be exact - is making use of long-standing national landmarks we think of as distinctly and unambiguously American: The Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, to name a few. Since 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) - the cultural arm of the U.N. - has designated 22 sites in the U.S. and some 788 sites worldwide as cultural or natural sites of "world heritage."1 UNESCO describes these extraordinary buildings, monuments, and natural parks as being of "outstanding value to humanity,"2 and their preservation, therefore, a matter of global concern. Administered from its headquarters in Paris, UNESCO enforces international protection of World Heritage sites under the terms of the 1972 World Heritage Treaty, 3 which the U.S. was the first nation to ratify in 1973.4 When a site is designated a "World Heritage Site," it does not become the property of the U.N. Indeed, ceding formal authority of U.S. territory to an outside power would violate long-established principles of national sovereignty. The government of the country hosting the site has legal authority and is, ultimately, responsible for its care.5 The House of Representatives approved the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act in 1999. The measure required congressional approval before any more U.S. properties are designated as U.N. World Heritage Areas. The Senate failed to even vote on the bill.20 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist could rectify this injustice, and should be encouraged to do so, though the House would be required to vote again before the measure would be presented to the President. An alternative to adoption of a renewed American Land Sovereignty Protection Act could be a concurrent resolution expressed by Congress reminding the U.N. of Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the World Heritage Treaty. This passage affirms that the sovereignty of the state on which a World Heritage site is situated will be respected.21 The last Congress failed to act on such a resolution (introduced by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas), which also called for Congress to again withdraw the U.S. from UNESCO.22 Congress should act to make it clear to the U.N. that the authority to manage U.S. lands rests exclusively with the American people....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
America Is Not Facing an Unavoidable Energy Shortage
The year 2004 will be remembered as a year of high prices for gasoline and natural gas, and Americans are understandably worried about the cost of energy for 2005 and beyond. But the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released a preliminary version of its Annual Energy Outlook 2005, and it paints a surprisingly optimistic picture for the decades ahead. With regard to petroleum, EIA acknowledges that global demand will remain strong, especially with China's growing need for motor fuels unlikely to subside. Nonetheless, the report does not predict runaway prices. Demand may be increasing, but EIA believes that the global supply can expand to meet it. Under one set of assumptions, EIA projects that the inflation-adjusted price "rises slowly to $30.31 per barrel in 2025." Under another set of assumptions, the price reaches $35 per barrel by 2025 -- still less than the current price and in line with the average over the last few years. If true, then the inflation-adjusted price at the pumps should stay below $2.00 per gallon for a long time. The story is similar for natural gas. EIA expects to see enough new supplies coming online in the years ahead to meet demand, which is "projected to grow from 22 trillion cubic feet in 2003 to almost 31 trillion cubic feet in 2025." The agency predicts additional natural gas production from the Rocky Mountain region, Alaska, and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as more supplies from overseas shipped in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Indeed, EIA sees homeowners paying less for natural gas in 2025 than they are paying today. EIA also projects an increase in construction of electric power plants to meet demand, which it sees expanding by 1.8 percent each year through 2025. Most of these new plants will use natural gas, with many of the rest being coal-fired. EIA estimates that we'll be paying an inflation-adjusted 7.3 cents per kilowatt hour on our electric bills in 2025, compared to 7.4 cents today....
America Is Not Facing an Unavoidable Energy Shortage
The year 2004 will be remembered as a year of high prices for gasoline and natural gas, and Americans are understandably worried about the cost of energy for 2005 and beyond. But the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released a preliminary version of its Annual Energy Outlook 2005, and it paints a surprisingly optimistic picture for the decades ahead. With regard to petroleum, EIA acknowledges that global demand will remain strong, especially with China's growing need for motor fuels unlikely to subside. Nonetheless, the report does not predict runaway prices. Demand may be increasing, but EIA believes that the global supply can expand to meet it. Under one set of assumptions, EIA projects that the inflation-adjusted price "rises slowly to $30.31 per barrel in 2025." Under another set of assumptions, the price reaches $35 per barrel by 2025 -- still less than the current price and in line with the average over the last few years. If true, then the inflation-adjusted price at the pumps should stay below $2.00 per gallon for a long time. The story is similar for natural gas. EIA expects to see enough new supplies coming online in the years ahead to meet demand, which is "projected to grow from 22 trillion cubic feet in 2003 to almost 31 trillion cubic feet in 2025." The agency predicts additional natural gas production from the Rocky Mountain region, Alaska, and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as more supplies from overseas shipped in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Indeed, EIA sees homeowners paying less for natural gas in 2025 than they are paying today. EIA also projects an increase in construction of electric power plants to meet demand, which it sees expanding by 1.8 percent each year through 2025. Most of these new plants will use natural gas, with many of the rest being coal-fired. EIA estimates that we'll be paying an inflation-adjusted 7.3 cents per kilowatt hour on our electric bills in 2025, compared to 7.4 cents today....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
STRONGER ECONOMIES CAN AFFORD CLEANER ENVIRONMENTS
Environmentalism is a laudable, but expensive luxury affordable only by those nations that can already provide food, shelter and security for their citizens, says Pete Geddes of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE).
While liberals believe globalization is a source of pollution and worker exploitation, the overwhelming consensus among economists is that the quickest way to boost living standards and improve environmental quality is through freer trade. For example:
* Mexico City’s notoriously dirty air is improving, with regulations that have significantly reduced the levels of lead, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
* Today, Mexico City’s air is cleaner than that of Los Angeles 30 years ago.
* Mexico, however, cannot afford to implement American environmental standards until its economy develops and its political system continues to open up.
Geddes says it is vital to understand the connection between economic progress and the increased demand for environmental quality. Indeed, demonizing poorer nations for not adopting higher standards or for accepting “sweatshop” conditions is counterproductive:
* Multinational corporations, for instance, pay significantly higher wages than local firms; their jobs are among the most coveted in developing countries.
* The World Bank notes that globalization is responsible for a spectacular decline in poverty in East and South Asia; between 1990 and 2001, the number of people living on less than $1 day in this region fell from 472 million to 271 million.
Source: Pete Geddes, “A Race to the Top,” Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, January 19, 2005.
For text:
http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=433
STRONGER ECONOMIES CAN AFFORD CLEANER ENVIRONMENTS
Environmentalism is a laudable, but expensive luxury affordable only by those nations that can already provide food, shelter and security for their citizens, says Pete Geddes of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE).
While liberals believe globalization is a source of pollution and worker exploitation, the overwhelming consensus among economists is that the quickest way to boost living standards and improve environmental quality is through freer trade. For example:
* Mexico City’s notoriously dirty air is improving, with regulations that have significantly reduced the levels of lead, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
* Today, Mexico City’s air is cleaner than that of Los Angeles 30 years ago.
* Mexico, however, cannot afford to implement American environmental standards until its economy develops and its political system continues to open up.
Geddes says it is vital to understand the connection between economic progress and the increased demand for environmental quality. Indeed, demonizing poorer nations for not adopting higher standards or for accepting “sweatshop” conditions is counterproductive:
* Multinational corporations, for instance, pay significantly higher wages than local firms; their jobs are among the most coveted in developing countries.
* The World Bank notes that globalization is responsible for a spectacular decline in poverty in East and South Asia; between 1990 and 2001, the number of people living on less than $1 day in this region fell from 472 million to 271 million.
Source: Pete Geddes, “A Race to the Top,” Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, January 19, 2005.
For text:
http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=433
OPINION/COMMENTARY
Bush Still Can't Shake His 'C' Average
In 2001, President Bush gave the commencement address at his alma mater. He told the graduating class at Yale that they could do anything, be anything, change the world. “And to you 'C' students, you too can be president of the United States.” Well, W., here’s lookin’ at you. Recently, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research bringing market principles to resolve environmental problems, released its end of term report card for the Bush Administration. PERC’s mid-term report slapped Bush with a C- and this year, Bush didn’t do much better. The Bush Administration showed a little improvement, snagging a C+. PERC helped pioneer the Free Market Environmentalism (FME) movement. In short, FME espouses property rights, which encourage environmental stewardship, market incentives that spur conservation, and polluter liability. The Bush Administration didn’t quite measure up to the FME standards. (Learn more about alternative environmentalism on aBE.) Okay, so a C+ isn’t exactly a grade that your mother would brag to her friends about or hang up on the refrigerator, but it is an improvement, a movement in the right direction....
Bush Still Can't Shake His 'C' Average
In 2001, President Bush gave the commencement address at his alma mater. He told the graduating class at Yale that they could do anything, be anything, change the world. “And to you 'C' students, you too can be president of the United States.” Well, W., here’s lookin’ at you. Recently, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research bringing market principles to resolve environmental problems, released its end of term report card for the Bush Administration. PERC’s mid-term report slapped Bush with a C- and this year, Bush didn’t do much better. The Bush Administration showed a little improvement, snagging a C+. PERC helped pioneer the Free Market Environmentalism (FME) movement. In short, FME espouses property rights, which encourage environmental stewardship, market incentives that spur conservation, and polluter liability. The Bush Administration didn’t quite measure up to the FME standards. (Learn more about alternative environmentalism on aBE.) Okay, so a C+ isn’t exactly a grade that your mother would brag to her friends about or hang up on the refrigerator, but it is an improvement, a movement in the right direction....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
No End to Energy Stalemate
In December 2004, the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) released a report titled "Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Energy Challenges." The group claims to have established "a constructive center in the often polarized debate over national energy policy," and indeed its report contains ideas and recommendations often found in reports produced by industry groups or by environmental advocacy groups but rarely in both. The report contains some good ideas, and the studies prepared by subcontractors to the commission, listed in an appendix to the report, may contain valuable original research. (This writer has not read them.) However, the report's recommendations often seem to combine the worst, rather than the best, of what these two sides in the debate have to offer. Rather than setting their private interests and agendas aside, corporate members of the commission call on taxpayers and consumers to subsidize and bear the financial risk of programs that would benefit them, while the commission's professional environmental advocates make little effort to temper their alarmist agenda with sound science or common sense....
No End to Energy Stalemate
In December 2004, the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) released a report titled "Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Energy Challenges." The group claims to have established "a constructive center in the often polarized debate over national energy policy," and indeed its report contains ideas and recommendations often found in reports produced by industry groups or by environmental advocacy groups but rarely in both. The report contains some good ideas, and the studies prepared by subcontractors to the commission, listed in an appendix to the report, may contain valuable original research. (This writer has not read them.) However, the report's recommendations often seem to combine the worst, rather than the best, of what these two sides in the debate have to offer. Rather than setting their private interests and agendas aside, corporate members of the commission call on taxpayers and consumers to subsidize and bear the financial risk of programs that would benefit them, while the commission's professional environmental advocates make little effort to temper their alarmist agenda with sound science or common sense....
OPINION/COMMENTARY
PETA President To Get a Taste of Her Own Medicine
Dressed as eco-terrorists, carrying comically large gasoline cans and matches, and holding a banner depicting an arson fire under the words "PETA's Kind Choice," representatives from the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) will gather to protest the Manhattan book-signing appearance of Ingrid Newkirk. Newkirk, the president and co-founder of the radical group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is promoting a new animal-rights book misleadingly titled "Making Kind Choices." A CCF spokesperson will be on-hand with leaflets detailing PETA's shameful history and tactics, and a list of Ingrid Newkirk's most controversial quotables. Meanwhile, other CCF advocates will appear dressed in the all-black garb of the PETA-funded Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group of arsonists and violent saboteurs describes by the FBI as a "domestic terror organization." In 2001 PETA made a large cash contribution to the ELF, the only such donation ever publicly acknowledged....
PETA President To Get a Taste of Her Own Medicine
Dressed as eco-terrorists, carrying comically large gasoline cans and matches, and holding a banner depicting an arson fire under the words "PETA's Kind Choice," representatives from the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) will gather to protest the Manhattan book-signing appearance of Ingrid Newkirk. Newkirk, the president and co-founder of the radical group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is promoting a new animal-rights book misleadingly titled "Making Kind Choices." A CCF spokesperson will be on-hand with leaflets detailing PETA's shameful history and tactics, and a list of Ingrid Newkirk's most controversial quotables. Meanwhile, other CCF advocates will appear dressed in the all-black garb of the PETA-funded Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a group of arsonists and violent saboteurs describes by the FBI as a "domestic terror organization." In 2001 PETA made a large cash contribution to the ELF, the only such donation ever publicly acknowledged....
Saturday, January 29, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Open-range zoning to end in Rio Verde Grazing livestock between homes in the foothills near Rio Verde will become taboo, as plans were announced this week to eradicate the area's open-range designation. Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley and state Sen. Carolyn Allen, R-Scottsdale, announced they would change the rules for Rio Verde Foothills, a 20-square-mile county island where residents have complained for years about loose horses and cows. Stapley and Allen said they were startled to learn the open-range zoning in Rio Verde Foothills benefits a few property owners who have long received agricultural exemptions on property taxes....
Suit protests grazing closures Two southern Utah counties have filed a lawsuit contesting grazing closures in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Garfield and Kane counties argue that, since 1999, the Bureau of Land Management has permanently discontinued livestock grazing on over 240,000 acres in the monument without notifying Congress, as required by the Federal Lands and Policy Act. Such closures have put pressures on individual ranchers, and on the economies of both counties, the suit said....
It's Not All Blue Skies for Drilling Project When he turned Mt. Rushmore into his granite canvas, sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would remain visible, Lord willing, "until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away." Borglum's vision endures in the Black Hills of South Dakota about 130 miles from here, but for nearly a month every year, it may soon become harder to see the famous faces through the man-made haze generated by the addition of 50,000 gas wells in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. It is just one of several ways in which the largest expansion of natural gas drilling approved by the federal government is expected to degrade air quality in the region that today has the clearest skies in the lower 48 states. Government scientists expect that the drilling expansion, combined with a planned increase in coal mining and oil drilling in the northern Great Plains, will nearly double smog-forming emissions and greatly increase particulate matter pollution in a thinly populated region that has produced less than 3% of the amount of unhealthful air found in Los Angeles. The BLM moved forward with the project despite its own air quality analysis, which concluded that the pollution would cloud views at more than a dozen national parks and monuments, exceed federal air quality standards in several communities and cause acid rain to fall on mountain lakes, where it could harm fish and wildlife....
‘Wolfmen' reflect on controversy As he read through the e-mails at his office, one from a wolf activist caught Ed Bangs' attention. It arrived shortly after Bangs made the difficult decision that wolves preying on livestock had to be killed. ‘‘May your putrid corpse rot in hell,'' the e-mail said. He shrugged it off. It wasn't the first message of its kind; it wouldn't be the last. The business of wolf management requires a thick skin, said Bangs, the federal government's wolf recovery coordinator for the region. ‘‘You can't take it personal, or you'd be a raving lunatic.'' Bangs, along with Joe Fontaine and Carter Niemeyer, have long been the public faces for what has arguably been one of the most contentious conservation efforts of the last century — returning the gray wolf to the wild in the Northern Rockies....
Protection waived for jumping mouse The Preble's meadow jumping mouse, once seen as a costly impediment to development, is now viewed by the government as a critter that never really existed - and is no longer in need of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The Interior Department said Friday that new DNA research shows the 9-inch mouse, which can launch itself a foot and a half into the air and switch direction in mid-flight, is probably identical to another variety of mouse common enough not to need protection. Manson and other Interior officials cited a peer-reviewed but unpublished study by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science suggesting the Preble's mouse is genetically identical to the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. The study was paid for by Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, the Energy Department, the state of Wyoming and the Denver museum. Interior officials acknowledged that 14 peer reviewers had split 8-6 to narrowly support the study's conclusions....
Stream setback proposal draws fire from landowners Developers, ranchers and other landowners are fighting a proposed law that would prohibit them from building homes and other structures near the state's rivers and streams. Sen. Bob Hawks, D-Bozeman, is carrying a bill drafted by environmental groups that would establish a 30-yard building setback from the high-water mark of streams and a 100-yard setback from the high-water mark of rivers. Critic Bill Myers said passage of the bill would ruin any chances of developing his property, the money from which would pay for his retirement. Myers owns a small chunk of land along the Bigfork Bay in Bigfork. "All my eggs are in a small basket this bill would crush," he told lawmakers Thursday....
Norton: Cooperation works for water, species President Bush has a bold, clear vision for meeting the water supply and endangered species challenges facing Western communities. Interior Secretary Gale Norton delivered that key message to 300 members of the Colorado Water Congress here Friday, emphasizing the effectiveness of cooperative, locally driven partnerships in which the federal government works with stakeholders as catalyst and coordinator to resolve natural resource issues. "Americans have always looked to the West with hope, and they should do so now in this new term of the administration,” Norton said. “The president envisions preventing crises by innovative thinking and long-term planning; avoiding long years of litigation by cooperative agreements and replacing costly laws with common-sense legislation.”....
Navratilova backs PETA sheep effort Martina Navratilova is helping an animal rights group in its campaign against an Australian sheep farming practice. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released the contents of a letter Thursday that it said Navratilova wrote to Prime Minister John Howard over the practice of mulesing. The procedure - named after inventor and rancher J.H. Mules - involves slicing flesh and wool away from the sheep's rump to prevent blowflies from laying their eggs in the skin....
'Across the Generations' According to cowboy Chuck Milner, the best things to raise on a ranch are children, and several of Thursday's performances showed the ranching culture is being passed on to the next generation. Milner and his children, Hallie, 11, and Cody, 8, performed songs Thursday at the Elko Convention Center. Milner played the guitar while Hallie played the fiddle and Cody the mandolin. He said traditions are meant to be handed down. Another of the cowboy poets, Wylie Gustafson, said he has his father to thank for his love of singing and poetry. "I would not be here right now if it wasn't for him singing songs to us at night," Wylie said. He and his father, Rib Gustafson, performed several songs Thursday in the Great Basin College Theatre....
Open-range zoning to end in Rio Verde Grazing livestock between homes in the foothills near Rio Verde will become taboo, as plans were announced this week to eradicate the area's open-range designation. Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley and state Sen. Carolyn Allen, R-Scottsdale, announced they would change the rules for Rio Verde Foothills, a 20-square-mile county island where residents have complained for years about loose horses and cows. Stapley and Allen said they were startled to learn the open-range zoning in Rio Verde Foothills benefits a few property owners who have long received agricultural exemptions on property taxes....
Suit protests grazing closures Two southern Utah counties have filed a lawsuit contesting grazing closures in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Garfield and Kane counties argue that, since 1999, the Bureau of Land Management has permanently discontinued livestock grazing on over 240,000 acres in the monument without notifying Congress, as required by the Federal Lands and Policy Act. Such closures have put pressures on individual ranchers, and on the economies of both counties, the suit said....
It's Not All Blue Skies for Drilling Project When he turned Mt. Rushmore into his granite canvas, sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would remain visible, Lord willing, "until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away." Borglum's vision endures in the Black Hills of South Dakota about 130 miles from here, but for nearly a month every year, it may soon become harder to see the famous faces through the man-made haze generated by the addition of 50,000 gas wells in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. It is just one of several ways in which the largest expansion of natural gas drilling approved by the federal government is expected to degrade air quality in the region that today has the clearest skies in the lower 48 states. Government scientists expect that the drilling expansion, combined with a planned increase in coal mining and oil drilling in the northern Great Plains, will nearly double smog-forming emissions and greatly increase particulate matter pollution in a thinly populated region that has produced less than 3% of the amount of unhealthful air found in Los Angeles. The BLM moved forward with the project despite its own air quality analysis, which concluded that the pollution would cloud views at more than a dozen national parks and monuments, exceed federal air quality standards in several communities and cause acid rain to fall on mountain lakes, where it could harm fish and wildlife....
‘Wolfmen' reflect on controversy As he read through the e-mails at his office, one from a wolf activist caught Ed Bangs' attention. It arrived shortly after Bangs made the difficult decision that wolves preying on livestock had to be killed. ‘‘May your putrid corpse rot in hell,'' the e-mail said. He shrugged it off. It wasn't the first message of its kind; it wouldn't be the last. The business of wolf management requires a thick skin, said Bangs, the federal government's wolf recovery coordinator for the region. ‘‘You can't take it personal, or you'd be a raving lunatic.'' Bangs, along with Joe Fontaine and Carter Niemeyer, have long been the public faces for what has arguably been one of the most contentious conservation efforts of the last century — returning the gray wolf to the wild in the Northern Rockies....
Protection waived for jumping mouse The Preble's meadow jumping mouse, once seen as a costly impediment to development, is now viewed by the government as a critter that never really existed - and is no longer in need of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The Interior Department said Friday that new DNA research shows the 9-inch mouse, which can launch itself a foot and a half into the air and switch direction in mid-flight, is probably identical to another variety of mouse common enough not to need protection. Manson and other Interior officials cited a peer-reviewed but unpublished study by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science suggesting the Preble's mouse is genetically identical to the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. The study was paid for by Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, the Energy Department, the state of Wyoming and the Denver museum. Interior officials acknowledged that 14 peer reviewers had split 8-6 to narrowly support the study's conclusions....
Stream setback proposal draws fire from landowners Developers, ranchers and other landowners are fighting a proposed law that would prohibit them from building homes and other structures near the state's rivers and streams. Sen. Bob Hawks, D-Bozeman, is carrying a bill drafted by environmental groups that would establish a 30-yard building setback from the high-water mark of streams and a 100-yard setback from the high-water mark of rivers. Critic Bill Myers said passage of the bill would ruin any chances of developing his property, the money from which would pay for his retirement. Myers owns a small chunk of land along the Bigfork Bay in Bigfork. "All my eggs are in a small basket this bill would crush," he told lawmakers Thursday....
Norton: Cooperation works for water, species President Bush has a bold, clear vision for meeting the water supply and endangered species challenges facing Western communities. Interior Secretary Gale Norton delivered that key message to 300 members of the Colorado Water Congress here Friday, emphasizing the effectiveness of cooperative, locally driven partnerships in which the federal government works with stakeholders as catalyst and coordinator to resolve natural resource issues. "Americans have always looked to the West with hope, and they should do so now in this new term of the administration,” Norton said. “The president envisions preventing crises by innovative thinking and long-term planning; avoiding long years of litigation by cooperative agreements and replacing costly laws with common-sense legislation.”....
Navratilova backs PETA sheep effort Martina Navratilova is helping an animal rights group in its campaign against an Australian sheep farming practice. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released the contents of a letter Thursday that it said Navratilova wrote to Prime Minister John Howard over the practice of mulesing. The procedure - named after inventor and rancher J.H. Mules - involves slicing flesh and wool away from the sheep's rump to prevent blowflies from laying their eggs in the skin....
'Across the Generations' According to cowboy Chuck Milner, the best things to raise on a ranch are children, and several of Thursday's performances showed the ranching culture is being passed on to the next generation. Milner and his children, Hallie, 11, and Cody, 8, performed songs Thursday at the Elko Convention Center. Milner played the guitar while Hallie played the fiddle and Cody the mandolin. He said traditions are meant to be handed down. Another of the cowboy poets, Wylie Gustafson, said he has his father to thank for his love of singing and poetry. "I would not be here right now if it wasn't for him singing songs to us at night," Wylie said. He and his father, Rib Gustafson, performed several songs Thursday in the Great Basin College Theatre....
Friday, January 28, 2005
MAD COW DISEASE
Mad Cow Disease Found in French Goat, EU Says Mad cow disease has been found in a goat, the first time the brain-wasting affliction that ravaged European cattle herds and killed at least 100 people, has been diagnosed in another animal, the EU said on Friday. "A suspected case of BSE (news - web sites) in a goat slaughtered in France in 2002 has been confirmed today by a panel of European scientists," the EU Commission said in a statement. Scientists initially thought the animal, born in 2000, had scrapie, a disease from the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the formal name for mad cow disease. The Commission underlined there was little risk of humans catching the disease due to strict food hygiene and animal feed rules. "Precautionary measures to protect consumers from this eventuality have been applied in the EU for several years ... any possible risk to consumers is minimal," it said. The EU's food safety authority EFSA said it was too early to analyze the risk from goat meat and further checks were needed. "Important information gaps do not allow at this stage the quantification of BSE-related risk with regard to the consumption of goat meat," it said in a statement.The 25-nation bloc has approximately 11.6 million goats with the largest herds found in France, Spain and Greece. Up until now, the risk of mad cow disease jumping species has focused on sheep not goats. No case of BSE has ever been confirmed as naturally occurring in sheep, but there are fears that some sheep diagnosed as having scrapie -- not known to be harmful to humans -- might be carrying the brain-wasting affliction....
Mad Cow Disease Found in French Goat, EU Says Mad cow disease has been found in a goat, the first time the brain-wasting affliction that ravaged European cattle herds and killed at least 100 people, has been diagnosed in another animal, the EU said on Friday. "A suspected case of BSE (news - web sites) in a goat slaughtered in France in 2002 has been confirmed today by a panel of European scientists," the EU Commission said in a statement. Scientists initially thought the animal, born in 2000, had scrapie, a disease from the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the formal name for mad cow disease. The Commission underlined there was little risk of humans catching the disease due to strict food hygiene and animal feed rules. "Precautionary measures to protect consumers from this eventuality have been applied in the EU for several years ... any possible risk to consumers is minimal," it said. The EU's food safety authority EFSA said it was too early to analyze the risk from goat meat and further checks were needed. "Important information gaps do not allow at this stage the quantification of BSE-related risk with regard to the consumption of goat meat," it said in a statement.The 25-nation bloc has approximately 11.6 million goats with the largest herds found in France, Spain and Greece. Up until now, the risk of mad cow disease jumping species has focused on sheep not goats. No case of BSE has ever been confirmed as naturally occurring in sheep, but there are fears that some sheep diagnosed as having scrapie -- not known to be harmful to humans -- might be carrying the brain-wasting affliction....
NEWS ROUNDUP
To drill or not to drill? A classic Western controversy surrounds the proposed gas drilling on the Roan Plateau. On one side, the Federal Government, gas companies, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association are pushing for more domestic energy production. On the other side, a coalition of ranchers, citizens, politicians and environmentalists attempt to put differences aside, unify, and restrict any drilling on the Plateau’s upper reaches....
Fire season drawing concern of governor Frustrated with what she sees as federal foot-dragging, Gov. Janet Napolitano is turning to the state's congressional delegation to help determine if and when the state will get air tankers for the upcoming fire season. In a letter to the delegation, Napolitano said she worried that Arizona was destined to a repeat of last year, when air tankers were grounded in the midst of Arizona's fire season. The U.S. Forest Service will be offering contracts for tanker operations in mid- to late-March, Napolitano told the congressmen, without citing her source. "That is simply too late for Arizona as our wildland fire season starts earlier in the year and we need to make decision (sic) on allocation of state resources now," she wrote....
Eureka mill to close after 25 years Wednesday, Jim Hurst reached deep into his bag of tricks, mumbled a few incantations and conjured up a handful of absolutely nothing. "There's nothing left," the lumber mill owner said. "I've pulled several rabbits out of the hat to keep it running this long. But there's no more tricks up the sleeve. It's over." After 25 years in the business, Eureka's Owens and Hurst Lumber Co. is silencing the saws. Hurst, who has been a vocal advocate of the timber industry and an outspoken critic of environmentalists, blamed the U.S. Forest Service for not providing enough public-land logs to keep his operation afloat. And he blamed the conservation community for forcing the agency's hand with regard to diminishing harvests....
Environmentalists sue to stop logging at national monument Environmentalists sued the federal government this week over plans to log Giant Sequoia National Monument, saying the move would cater to the timber industry at the expense of an ecosystem home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees. The Sierra Club and four other environmental groups said a plan by the U.S. Forest Service to log parts of the 327,769-acre monument in central California was scientifically suspect. They filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeking to block the plan and have it vacated....
Salmon survival game plays out on board A new board game will teach children the life cycle of salmon and steelhead trout. The U.S. Forest Service and 12 partners ordered 1,200 of the games to be made by the federal printing office at cost of $36,000. The Salmon Life Cycle game will be distributed to schools in the lower Columbia River Basin, and will be available at any national forest headquarters office in Oregon and Washington or from the partners, Glen Sachet , spokesman for Mount Hood National Forest, said Wednesday. The game will be loaned, similar to checking out a book from a library, and will not be sold, Sachet said....
Species act violated in flood, but Mesquite won't face fine Federal and city officials have agreed to develop a long-term plan to protect lives, property and endangered species habitat on the Virgin River after emergency flood-control measures altered the river's channel. The city won't be fined for Endangered Species Act violations that might have occurred during and after this month's flooding, Mayor Bill Nicholes said. ''We all admit that private communications might have helped,'' Nicholes said after meeting Wednesday with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Army Corps of Engineers officials. ''But stopping water going into homes was a priority.'' ''As far as any fines, that's pretty much satisfied there won't be anything,'' he said. Officials bulldozed about 80 acres of critical habitat for several federally protected birds and fish while struggling Jan. 11 to keep the river out of homes and a middle school in the southeast Nevada community near the Arizona and Utah border....
Wildlife officials opt to open dunes to off-road vehicles Federal wildlife officials cleared the way Thursday to reopen desert dunes popular with Inland off-roaders, saying desert tortoises and a plant threatened with extinction can survive among the recreational vehicles. Environmentalists said they would fight the decision to open nearly 50,000 acres, or about one-third, of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area to motorcycles, dune buggies and all-terrain vehicles. Damage from off-road play would push the species closer to extinction, they said. "They can't just go ahead and throw the dunes open," said Daniel Patterson, ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Idyllwild....
Fish and Wildlife Service denies petitions to list common grasses under ESA The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced it will not move to add two common grasses, found in California, Baja California, Mexico, and Arizona, to the Federal list of threatened and endangered species. The Service said it has completed a review of the two grasses, Arizona brome (Bromus arizonicus) and nodding needlegrass (Nassella cernua), in response to two petitions filed in June 2002 by a private citizen. The petitions claim the two species are in decline and threatened by commercial, residential, and agricultural development, off-highway vehicle activity, energy development, cattle grazing, fires, military activities, introduction on nonnative plants, roadside herbicide use and mowing, and law enforcement activities along the border between the United States and Mexico....
Coho report in line with Bush approach Contrary to findings by federal scientists, Oregon officials have concluded that Oregon coast coho salmon are not at risk and thus no longer in need of protection under the Endangered Species Act. If U.S. officials accept Oregon's conclusion -- outlined in a draft report -- the state probably would take over management of the prized fish and become the first state in a drive by the Bush administration to emphasize local control over wildlife issues. It would lead the way in reshaping national policy on endangered species....
Column: Mexican grays did their part Skeptics had predicted that captive wolves would never withstand the harsh realities of survival in the wild, but those wolves proved that they still harbored the inherent capability to bring down elk, find den sites for the birth of their pups and produce offspring that knew nothing about the zoos where their parents had been fed by humans. Today, natural reproduction in the wild has nearly replaced release of captive wolves as the source for population growth. Despite the success of the Mexican wolf recovery program, there are critical problems screaming for remedial correction. Immediate action must begin to correct two major problems in the federal rule that governs protocol for the project. First, the rule must be relaxed so wolves that roam outside the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area boundaries are removed only when they cause livestock depredation or present a threat to humans. Second, the rule must be modified to develop authority to conduct releases of Mexican wolves directly into the Gila National Forest....
Park: River runners' deal may not float While Grand Canyon National Park officials on Wednesday applauded an agreement between private boaters and commercial outfitters for rafting trips on the Colorado River through the park, they cautioned that other viewpoints must be considered. The Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association, the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association, American Whitewater and the Grand Canyon River Runners Association announced what they billed as a historic compromise between user groups competing for the limited space on the river. Their compromise called for a split of river permits between commercial and private rafters, the continued use of motors, an adjustment to spread out use throughout the year and improvements to the permitting system....
Underfunded national parks must turn away children, study says National parks in California are so underfunded and understaffed that they've eliminated educational programs and are turning away thousands of children each year. According to a study this week from the National Parks Conservation Association, roughly 80,000 kindergartners through 12th graders participate in educational programs each year at parks such as Joshua Tree, Yosemite and Lassen Volcanic. That amounts to only 1 percent of the state's 7 million public and private school students. NPCA, a nonprofit advocacy group, estimates that the 11 parks would require a $7 million increase in their operating budgets to meet current demand. The national park system as a whole suffers from a shortfall of more than $600 million, according to the NPCA study, prompting parks around the country to cut programs and staff....
Congress to restart debate on energy bill With home heating bills up 30 percent or more over the past few years and electric rates rising, Congress will once again try to pass an energy bill aimed at boosting U.S. supplies of natural gas. While similar bills have languished in Congress, energy companies have taken steps of their own to increase supplies. More than 26 proposals are on the drawing board to build facilities to receive natural gas imports from overseas. And some electric companies have turned to building coal-fired power plants instead of the once more popular gas-fired ones. When Congress made its initial stab at an energy bill four years ago, the major impetus was an electricity shortage that hit California and caused price spikes throughout the West. But today, many lawmakers are more worried about the high price of natural gas, which has boosted consumer utility bills and cost thousands of jobs at chemical, paper and fertilizer companies -- industries that use large amounts of natural gas....
Column: Thwarting America's Energy Needs Well of course you want the entire shoreline of the East and West Coast to be filled with windmills producing insignificant amounts of energy! Nothing better than to head for the beaches of New Jersey or California and look out on the inspiring vista of wall-to-wall windmills. And let's not stop there. Kansas could be turned into a huge wind farm to keep the streetlights on in Topeka. Then there's the promise of hydrogen as a seemingly endless form of energy for our cars and other vehicles. Never mind the billions it would require to reproduce the existing network of gas stations across the nation -- or the fact that it would cost a lot of money and take a lot of energy just to split off that hydrogen molecule for a drive to grandma's house. Surely the US government is on top of all of this. Anyone remember the Bush energy plan? Well, maybe not....
Five Garfield County towns oppose drilling on top of Roan Plateau The city councils of at least five Garfield County towns have voted to oppose a federal plan to allow drilling for natural gas on top of the Roan Plateau. Some of the towns are endorsing an alternative drafted by a coalition of environmental and community groups. The Bureau of Land Management last November proposed up to 200 wells on top of the sprawling plateau, which towers more than a half mile above the Colorado River valley about 150 miles west of Denver....
Global warming novel a hit with politicians, but not scientists A provocative new novel that says fears of global warming are unjustified and stoked by an environmentalist-media conspiracy is taking Washington by storm. "State of Fear," a novel by Michael Crichton, the best-selling author of "Jurassic Park," and the creator of the TV show "ER," compares scientists who warn of global warming to advocates of eugenics who said that the mixing of races would ruin the world's genetic stock. In an appendix explaining his position, Crichton writes: "Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon. Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made. Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century."....
Huge manure fire burns into third month But Dickinson, who makes his living in the cattle business, has an environmental problem on his hands that is vexing state officials: a 2,000-ton pile of burning cow manure. Dickinson owns and manages Midwest Feeding Co. about 20 miles west of Lincoln, which takes in as many as 12,000 cows at a time from farmers and ranchers and fattens them for market. Byproducts from the massive operation resulted in a dung pile measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet high and 50 feet wide that began burning about two months ago and continues to smolder despite Herculean attempts to douse it....
U.S. ranchers say Canada appears to be complying with BSE feed safeguards A group of American ranchers say Canada appears to be complying with a key safeguard against the spread of mad cow disease. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) released some initial findings Thursday based on a tour some of its members took of Alberta feedlots and a slaughter facility last week. One issue the ranchers focused on is how well Canada is following a ban imposed in 1997 against feeding cattle meat or bonemeal from cows or other ruminants....
Mad cow hard to get, study suggests A person would have to eat 1.5 kilograms of brain and viscera from an infected cow in a single sitting to contract the human form of mad-cow disease, according to a new study in the medical journal The Lancet. While that is markedly less than Alberta Premier Ralph Klein's estimate that "you would have to eat 10 billion meals of brains, spinal cords, ganglia, eyeballs and tonsils to get the disease," it still provides fairly good assurance that eating Canadian beef is safe, researchers say. Jean-Philippe Deslys, a prions researcher at the French Atomic Energy Commission, said that while his research does not provide a definitive minimum infective dose for the transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy from cattle to humans, it strongly suggests that existing measures to protect the food supply are adequate....
Cowboy's Best Friend For Rodney Hopwood's 13-month-old border collie, Marco, the first glimpse of civilization came after a long journey. "He's never been to town," Hopwood, a Kimberly, Idaho, dog trainer, said Wednesday. But the trek to the Red Bluff Bull and Gelding Sale is an annual rite for Hopwood, who's been showcasing cattle dogs here for nine years. The sale -- the biggest of its kind west of the Rocky Mountains -- is the only one that Hopwood brings his dogs to....
The oldest trade rebranded Can a bordello really be sold as a resort destination? George Flint, head of the Nevada Brothel Association, insists that a trip to the Mustang Ranch could be “just as important as driving to Mount Rushmore”. This is all in marked contrast to the Mustang Ranch's history. The first legal brothel in America saw the murder of a boxer, a mysterious fire and several government raids; it is also cited (unfavourably) in the Internal Revenue's tax manual. It was owned by Joe Conforte, who spent time in jail, tried to float the brothel on the stockmarket, fled charges of money-laundering, racketeering and bribery, and is now rumoured to be living in Brazil. In 1999, the government seized the Mustang Ranch (this time to shut it down for good). When the Bureau of Land Management auctioned the ranch's assets on eBay in 2003, Mr Gilman paid $145,000 for the brothel's trademark and pink stucco building, which he airlifted to a site beside the Wild Horse....
The last two days you may have noticed gaps or spaces between items that normally aren't there. Well, I don't know why they are there either....blogspot.com must be experiencing some kind of a problem with their publishing function.
To drill or not to drill? A classic Western controversy surrounds the proposed gas drilling on the Roan Plateau. On one side, the Federal Government, gas companies, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association are pushing for more domestic energy production. On the other side, a coalition of ranchers, citizens, politicians and environmentalists attempt to put differences aside, unify, and restrict any drilling on the Plateau’s upper reaches....
Fire season drawing concern of governor Frustrated with what she sees as federal foot-dragging, Gov. Janet Napolitano is turning to the state's congressional delegation to help determine if and when the state will get air tankers for the upcoming fire season. In a letter to the delegation, Napolitano said she worried that Arizona was destined to a repeat of last year, when air tankers were grounded in the midst of Arizona's fire season. The U.S. Forest Service will be offering contracts for tanker operations in mid- to late-March, Napolitano told the congressmen, without citing her source. "That is simply too late for Arizona as our wildland fire season starts earlier in the year and we need to make decision (sic) on allocation of state resources now," she wrote....
Eureka mill to close after 25 years Wednesday, Jim Hurst reached deep into his bag of tricks, mumbled a few incantations and conjured up a handful of absolutely nothing. "There's nothing left," the lumber mill owner said. "I've pulled several rabbits out of the hat to keep it running this long. But there's no more tricks up the sleeve. It's over." After 25 years in the business, Eureka's Owens and Hurst Lumber Co. is silencing the saws. Hurst, who has been a vocal advocate of the timber industry and an outspoken critic of environmentalists, blamed the U.S. Forest Service for not providing enough public-land logs to keep his operation afloat. And he blamed the conservation community for forcing the agency's hand with regard to diminishing harvests....
Environmentalists sue to stop logging at national monument Environmentalists sued the federal government this week over plans to log Giant Sequoia National Monument, saying the move would cater to the timber industry at the expense of an ecosystem home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees. The Sierra Club and four other environmental groups said a plan by the U.S. Forest Service to log parts of the 327,769-acre monument in central California was scientifically suspect. They filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeking to block the plan and have it vacated....
Salmon survival game plays out on board A new board game will teach children the life cycle of salmon and steelhead trout. The U.S. Forest Service and 12 partners ordered 1,200 of the games to be made by the federal printing office at cost of $36,000. The Salmon Life Cycle game will be distributed to schools in the lower Columbia River Basin, and will be available at any national forest headquarters office in Oregon and Washington or from the partners, Glen Sachet , spokesman for Mount Hood National Forest, said Wednesday. The game will be loaned, similar to checking out a book from a library, and will not be sold, Sachet said....
Species act violated in flood, but Mesquite won't face fine Federal and city officials have agreed to develop a long-term plan to protect lives, property and endangered species habitat on the Virgin River after emergency flood-control measures altered the river's channel. The city won't be fined for Endangered Species Act violations that might have occurred during and after this month's flooding, Mayor Bill Nicholes said. ''We all admit that private communications might have helped,'' Nicholes said after meeting Wednesday with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Army Corps of Engineers officials. ''But stopping water going into homes was a priority.'' ''As far as any fines, that's pretty much satisfied there won't be anything,'' he said. Officials bulldozed about 80 acres of critical habitat for several federally protected birds and fish while struggling Jan. 11 to keep the river out of homes and a middle school in the southeast Nevada community near the Arizona and Utah border....
Wildlife officials opt to open dunes to off-road vehicles Federal wildlife officials cleared the way Thursday to reopen desert dunes popular with Inland off-roaders, saying desert tortoises and a plant threatened with extinction can survive among the recreational vehicles. Environmentalists said they would fight the decision to open nearly 50,000 acres, or about one-third, of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area to motorcycles, dune buggies and all-terrain vehicles. Damage from off-road play would push the species closer to extinction, they said. "They can't just go ahead and throw the dunes open," said Daniel Patterson, ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Idyllwild....
Fish and Wildlife Service denies petitions to list common grasses under ESA The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced it will not move to add two common grasses, found in California, Baja California, Mexico, and Arizona, to the Federal list of threatened and endangered species. The Service said it has completed a review of the two grasses, Arizona brome (Bromus arizonicus) and nodding needlegrass (Nassella cernua), in response to two petitions filed in June 2002 by a private citizen. The petitions claim the two species are in decline and threatened by commercial, residential, and agricultural development, off-highway vehicle activity, energy development, cattle grazing, fires, military activities, introduction on nonnative plants, roadside herbicide use and mowing, and law enforcement activities along the border between the United States and Mexico....
Coho report in line with Bush approach Contrary to findings by federal scientists, Oregon officials have concluded that Oregon coast coho salmon are not at risk and thus no longer in need of protection under the Endangered Species Act. If U.S. officials accept Oregon's conclusion -- outlined in a draft report -- the state probably would take over management of the prized fish and become the first state in a drive by the Bush administration to emphasize local control over wildlife issues. It would lead the way in reshaping national policy on endangered species....
Column: Mexican grays did their part Skeptics had predicted that captive wolves would never withstand the harsh realities of survival in the wild, but those wolves proved that they still harbored the inherent capability to bring down elk, find den sites for the birth of their pups and produce offspring that knew nothing about the zoos where their parents had been fed by humans. Today, natural reproduction in the wild has nearly replaced release of captive wolves as the source for population growth. Despite the success of the Mexican wolf recovery program, there are critical problems screaming for remedial correction. Immediate action must begin to correct two major problems in the federal rule that governs protocol for the project. First, the rule must be relaxed so wolves that roam outside the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area boundaries are removed only when they cause livestock depredation or present a threat to humans. Second, the rule must be modified to develop authority to conduct releases of Mexican wolves directly into the Gila National Forest....
Park: River runners' deal may not float While Grand Canyon National Park officials on Wednesday applauded an agreement between private boaters and commercial outfitters for rafting trips on the Colorado River through the park, they cautioned that other viewpoints must be considered. The Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association, the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association, American Whitewater and the Grand Canyon River Runners Association announced what they billed as a historic compromise between user groups competing for the limited space on the river. Their compromise called for a split of river permits between commercial and private rafters, the continued use of motors, an adjustment to spread out use throughout the year and improvements to the permitting system....
Underfunded national parks must turn away children, study says National parks in California are so underfunded and understaffed that they've eliminated educational programs and are turning away thousands of children each year. According to a study this week from the National Parks Conservation Association, roughly 80,000 kindergartners through 12th graders participate in educational programs each year at parks such as Joshua Tree, Yosemite and Lassen Volcanic. That amounts to only 1 percent of the state's 7 million public and private school students. NPCA, a nonprofit advocacy group, estimates that the 11 parks would require a $7 million increase in their operating budgets to meet current demand. The national park system as a whole suffers from a shortfall of more than $600 million, according to the NPCA study, prompting parks around the country to cut programs and staff....
Congress to restart debate on energy bill With home heating bills up 30 percent or more over the past few years and electric rates rising, Congress will once again try to pass an energy bill aimed at boosting U.S. supplies of natural gas. While similar bills have languished in Congress, energy companies have taken steps of their own to increase supplies. More than 26 proposals are on the drawing board to build facilities to receive natural gas imports from overseas. And some electric companies have turned to building coal-fired power plants instead of the once more popular gas-fired ones. When Congress made its initial stab at an energy bill four years ago, the major impetus was an electricity shortage that hit California and caused price spikes throughout the West. But today, many lawmakers are more worried about the high price of natural gas, which has boosted consumer utility bills and cost thousands of jobs at chemical, paper and fertilizer companies -- industries that use large amounts of natural gas....
Column: Thwarting America's Energy Needs Well of course you want the entire shoreline of the East and West Coast to be filled with windmills producing insignificant amounts of energy! Nothing better than to head for the beaches of New Jersey or California and look out on the inspiring vista of wall-to-wall windmills. And let's not stop there. Kansas could be turned into a huge wind farm to keep the streetlights on in Topeka. Then there's the promise of hydrogen as a seemingly endless form of energy for our cars and other vehicles. Never mind the billions it would require to reproduce the existing network of gas stations across the nation -- or the fact that it would cost a lot of money and take a lot of energy just to split off that hydrogen molecule for a drive to grandma's house. Surely the US government is on top of all of this. Anyone remember the Bush energy plan? Well, maybe not....
Five Garfield County towns oppose drilling on top of Roan Plateau The city councils of at least five Garfield County towns have voted to oppose a federal plan to allow drilling for natural gas on top of the Roan Plateau. Some of the towns are endorsing an alternative drafted by a coalition of environmental and community groups. The Bureau of Land Management last November proposed up to 200 wells on top of the sprawling plateau, which towers more than a half mile above the Colorado River valley about 150 miles west of Denver....
Global warming novel a hit with politicians, but not scientists A provocative new novel that says fears of global warming are unjustified and stoked by an environmentalist-media conspiracy is taking Washington by storm. "State of Fear," a novel by Michael Crichton, the best-selling author of "Jurassic Park," and the creator of the TV show "ER," compares scientists who warn of global warming to advocates of eugenics who said that the mixing of races would ruin the world's genetic stock. In an appendix explaining his position, Crichton writes: "Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon. Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made. Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century."....
Huge manure fire burns into third month But Dickinson, who makes his living in the cattle business, has an environmental problem on his hands that is vexing state officials: a 2,000-ton pile of burning cow manure. Dickinson owns and manages Midwest Feeding Co. about 20 miles west of Lincoln, which takes in as many as 12,000 cows at a time from farmers and ranchers and fattens them for market. Byproducts from the massive operation resulted in a dung pile measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet high and 50 feet wide that began burning about two months ago and continues to smolder despite Herculean attempts to douse it....
U.S. ranchers say Canada appears to be complying with BSE feed safeguards A group of American ranchers say Canada appears to be complying with a key safeguard against the spread of mad cow disease. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) released some initial findings Thursday based on a tour some of its members took of Alberta feedlots and a slaughter facility last week. One issue the ranchers focused on is how well Canada is following a ban imposed in 1997 against feeding cattle meat or bonemeal from cows or other ruminants....
Mad cow hard to get, study suggests A person would have to eat 1.5 kilograms of brain and viscera from an infected cow in a single sitting to contract the human form of mad-cow disease, according to a new study in the medical journal The Lancet. While that is markedly less than Alberta Premier Ralph Klein's estimate that "you would have to eat 10 billion meals of brains, spinal cords, ganglia, eyeballs and tonsils to get the disease," it still provides fairly good assurance that eating Canadian beef is safe, researchers say. Jean-Philippe Deslys, a prions researcher at the French Atomic Energy Commission, said that while his research does not provide a definitive minimum infective dose for the transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy from cattle to humans, it strongly suggests that existing measures to protect the food supply are adequate....
Cowboy's Best Friend For Rodney Hopwood's 13-month-old border collie, Marco, the first glimpse of civilization came after a long journey. "He's never been to town," Hopwood, a Kimberly, Idaho, dog trainer, said Wednesday. But the trek to the Red Bluff Bull and Gelding Sale is an annual rite for Hopwood, who's been showcasing cattle dogs here for nine years. The sale -- the biggest of its kind west of the Rocky Mountains -- is the only one that Hopwood brings his dogs to....
The oldest trade rebranded Can a bordello really be sold as a resort destination? George Flint, head of the Nevada Brothel Association, insists that a trip to the Mustang Ranch could be “just as important as driving to Mount Rushmore”. This is all in marked contrast to the Mustang Ranch's history. The first legal brothel in America saw the murder of a boxer, a mysterious fire and several government raids; it is also cited (unfavourably) in the Internal Revenue's tax manual. It was owned by Joe Conforte, who spent time in jail, tried to float the brothel on the stockmarket, fled charges of money-laundering, racketeering and bribery, and is now rumoured to be living in Brazil. In 1999, the government seized the Mustang Ranch (this time to shut it down for good). When the Bureau of Land Management auctioned the ranch's assets on eBay in 2003, Mr Gilman paid $145,000 for the brothel's trademark and pink stucco building, which he airlifted to a site beside the Wild Horse....
The last two days you may have noticed gaps or spaces between items that normally aren't there. Well, I don't know why they are there either....blogspot.com must be experiencing some kind of a problem with their publishing function.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Interior rancher leading the fight against prairie dogs They might look innocent enough, but for rancher Charles Kruse, prairie dogs are anything but harmless. “I've sold a third of my herd, my neighbor Jerry Heinrichs has had to sell 100% of his herd, my brother Daniel had all of his cows shipped up to Pierre last year.” 650 acres of Kruse's land in the Conata Basin is overrun by prairie dogs, turning once green pasture into a barren wasteland in just three short years. “When you have 70,000 acres of prairie dog town next to you and they are all coming off onto your property it's really frustrating to be a farm rancher.” Kruse says recent poisoning efforts on federal land is not enough. Now, he is suing the Secretary of South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks, and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture for mis–managing the federal lands. “In 41–11–15 it says there were supposed to set up a fund to compensate landowners for lost income and it hasn't been done and we would like the secretaries to obey the laws.”....
Drilling's effects on landowners at issue A lawmaker is taking a growing property-rights fight between ranchers and oil and gas companies to the Capitol. Rep. Kathleen Curry is proposing legislation that would force the companies to negotiate how they do business on private land where they have obtained subsurface property rights. By building roads, drilling and placing pumps on once-productive agricultural land, the companies are affecting landowners' property values, said Curry, D-Gunnison. Curry wants to create an "incentive to negotiate," she said Tuesday. "The goal is to minimize decreases in property rights."....
Judge denies logging halt of Biscuit fire-killed trees A federal judge has denied a request to halt logging within the area burned by the massive 2002 Biscuit fire. The request was brought by environmentalists who claim the US Forest Service failed to protect hundreds of dead trees that should have been left standing for salmon habitat. US District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene ruled that the claims brought by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics were not serious, and they were unlikely to win in a trial....
Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange slated for reintroduction Key Arizona members of Congress will try, again, to push through a complicated land swap bill that would allow Flagstaff to expand Pulliam Airport. The Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange bill is set to be reintroduced in the Senate and House of Representatives this week. The bill died during Congress' last session that ended in early December, prompting ranch owner Fred Ruskin to begin dropping strong hints that he didn't plan to wait for another try in Washington, D.C. All told, the legislation would have allowed the Forest Service to exchange 21,236 acres of land near Flagstaff, Williams, Camp Verde, Clarkdale and Cottonwood for approximately 35,000 acres of the private ranch land....
Editorial: Federal agencies need consolidation Today, three federal agencies manage the vast majority of public lands in the United States. The Forest Service, under the Department of Agriculture, manages nearly 200 million acres. The National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, both under the Department of Interior, manage 84 million and 262 million acres, respectively. And that’s one agency too many. How these agencies and their missions evolved is a long story. The National Park Service is the only one of the three with the strictly preservationist role — to protect the "crown jewels" of America’s natural wonders. But at this point we don’t need both a Forest Service and a BLM, which have come to serve very similar purposes. Given the compatibility and redundancy of their missions, they should be combined into a single agency. Ideally, this would improve consistency and predictability in how federal lands are managed and help reduce public confusion about agency missions....
Hunter ordered to pay $15,000 after grizzly shooting, cover-up A Kentucky bow hunter who killed a federally protected grizzly bear near Island Park, Idaho, and then tried to cover it up, has been ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution. Dan Walters, 46, of Dry Ridge, Ky., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court this week to a misdemeanor charge of killing the bear, a 300-pound, 7-year-old sow that was part of efforts to restore the grizzly, a threatened species protected under the Endangered Species Act. Walters also will be forbidden from hunting for two years....
Column: Bison management: time to sink or swim Indecision is usually a fatal disease. The ongoing Yellowstone National Park bison saga is a perfect example of treading water. The National Park Service has demonstrated over the past 3½ decades that it is no longer capable of making tough decisions or executing a plan of action. Enter Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Schweitzer has proposed temporarily depopulating Yellowstone National Park of bison over a period of a few years. Bison would be rounded up, tested for brucellosis, and those testing positive would be sent to the slaughter house. Bison that test negative would be held on various ranches until the brucellosis-free bison can be returned to Yellowstone. Already there are howls of protest....
New wells officially on tap at Padre With crews poised to start drilling this week, the National Park Service has approved a controversial plan to allow five more natural gas wells at Padre Island National Seashore. The move angered environmentalists, who are calling for the federal government to buy the private mineral rights under the seashore. However, the decision was not unexpected. In its environmental assessment of the plan released in November, the Park Service recommended allowing the drilling, saying the environmental impact was minimal and the federal government could not deny access to private mineral rights on the property. The Park Service's regional office in Denver made that position official Wednesday....
Animal rights group wants to give doomed horses to tribes An animal rights group hopes to muster support to defeat legislation that they say would result in thousands of wild horses being used as food for Europeans. Rather, the group would like to give those horses to Indian tribes. The controversy started when Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., sponsored legislation that reversed a longstanding Bureau of Land Management law. For years the BLM required people adopting wild horses to prove over the course of a year that they could adequately care for them before the agency would grant legal ownership. Burns’ legislation allows the bureau to sell horses that are 10 or older, or that have been unsuccessfully offered for adoption three times, without the waiting period. The law outraged many who worried that the horses could end up in countries like France and Belgium where horse steaks are considered a delicacy....
Utah, Interior OK plan to clear air in parks The Interior Department and Utah agreed Wednesday to a plan aimed at helping to reduce haze in Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion national parks. The agreement, two years in the making, helps implement the National Parks Service's plan to wipe out haze in national parks across the country, restoring "natural visibility" by 2018. "It says we'll play nicely with one another," said Cheryl Heying, planning branch manager at the Utah Division of Air Quality. Restoring visibility to its natural condition in the national parks is something we're committed to in the state of Utah." The memorandum sets up a process for the Park Service to notify the state to address major pollution sources, such as power plants, if progress is not being made toward clearing the air....
Environmentalists threaten legal action to stop rechanneling of river A national environmental group has threatened legal action to block the rechanneling of the Virgin River, but city officials said the work is needed to protect public infrastructure and private property following damaging floods earlier this month. Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Denver-based Center for Biological Research, said Mesquite officials are doing work beyond what is necessary and could affect habitats along the river. “They need to slow down and talk to some biologists and everyone else with an interest in the river,” Patterson said, adding that federal law should require the halt to the rechanneling efforts....
Survey finds Oregon farmers depend on irrigation "Many people think irrigation is not a big issue in Oregon because of how wet the state appears to be," says Jim Johnson, land use and water planning coordinator for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "However, irrigation is really a key to Oregon agriculture. Nearly 45 percent of all farms and ranches in the state do some type of irrigation totaling about 1.9 million acres." The latest figures show 17,776 of Oregon's 40,033 farms irrigate some or all of their land. The number of farms is up slightly from the 1997 irrigation survey, but the number of acres irrigated is down by 55,850 acres. Reasons vary for the relatively small drop in acreage, according to Johnson....
U.S. threat aimed at NAFTA Frustrated by legal challenges and stalled talks, the U.S. lumber industry is threatening an unprecedented constitutional challenge of NAFTA that could risk unravelling the decade-old free trade deal completely. The U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports yesterday confirmed statements by Sen. Michael Crapo of Idaho that it may file a lawsuit challenging the wide-ranging trade deal's authority over U.S. law. "The grounds would be that it is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and it violates our rights," said Harry Clark, a lawyer for the coalition. Trade experts said last night the constitutional challenge, if successful, could seriously undermine the free trade pact between Canada, Mexico and the United States....
Pilot animal ID program tracks cattle on trucks using GPS, cellular technology On any given day on the remote roads of Kansas, hundreds of tractor-trailers are hauling cattle across the state's vast rangelands, headed for feedlots and slaughterhouses. And in an era of mad cow disease and the threat of agroterrorism, federal agriculture regulators want to be able to locate within 48 hours - or sooner - the whereabouts of each of the nation's 100 million-plus head of cattle. Enter a Kansas proposal that would combine GPS, cellular and radio frequency technologies to track cattle as they are in transit. It is one of the ideas the U.S. Department of Agriculture is testing and one that could shape the nation's emerging animal identification system....
Wagon journey ends in Austin A group of El Paso-area students landed on the Capitol steps Tuesday better acquainted with history and proud of their part in retracing the southern gold rush using horse-drawn wagons to cover the 650-mile journey. Fourteen Socorro Independent School District students participated in the project that replicated -- in reverse -- the mid-1800s route taken by adventurer William P. Huff, whose 300,000-word diary guided the group along the way. Slider history teacher Victor Gonzalez, who accompanied the students, said the firsthand experience of hitching the horses, feeding them and living along the trail amplified what they learn from textbooks....
Magdalena agency gathering stockyard histories A project to preserve and improve Magdalena's Stock Driveway and Shipping Yards as a national historical site and to attract tourism is plodding along. The Magdalena Area Community Development Corp. has recently entered into an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to gather and record oral histories throughout Socorro and Catron counties. Built in 1885 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed its branch line to Magdalena, the stock driveway began being utilized by cattle and sheep drivers to ship their stock, according to a chamber of commerce publication. The Magdalena Stock Driveway is one of only three original and historic cattle and sheep herding stockyards in existence in the country today....
Interior rancher leading the fight against prairie dogs They might look innocent enough, but for rancher Charles Kruse, prairie dogs are anything but harmless. “I've sold a third of my herd, my neighbor Jerry Heinrichs has had to sell 100% of his herd, my brother Daniel had all of his cows shipped up to Pierre last year.” 650 acres of Kruse's land in the Conata Basin is overrun by prairie dogs, turning once green pasture into a barren wasteland in just three short years. “When you have 70,000 acres of prairie dog town next to you and they are all coming off onto your property it's really frustrating to be a farm rancher.” Kruse says recent poisoning efforts on federal land is not enough. Now, he is suing the Secretary of South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks, and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture for mis–managing the federal lands. “In 41–11–15 it says there were supposed to set up a fund to compensate landowners for lost income and it hasn't been done and we would like the secretaries to obey the laws.”....
Drilling's effects on landowners at issue A lawmaker is taking a growing property-rights fight between ranchers and oil and gas companies to the Capitol. Rep. Kathleen Curry is proposing legislation that would force the companies to negotiate how they do business on private land where they have obtained subsurface property rights. By building roads, drilling and placing pumps on once-productive agricultural land, the companies are affecting landowners' property values, said Curry, D-Gunnison. Curry wants to create an "incentive to negotiate," she said Tuesday. "The goal is to minimize decreases in property rights."....
Judge denies logging halt of Biscuit fire-killed trees A federal judge has denied a request to halt logging within the area burned by the massive 2002 Biscuit fire. The request was brought by environmentalists who claim the US Forest Service failed to protect hundreds of dead trees that should have been left standing for salmon habitat. US District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene ruled that the claims brought by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics were not serious, and they were unlikely to win in a trial....
Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange slated for reintroduction Key Arizona members of Congress will try, again, to push through a complicated land swap bill that would allow Flagstaff to expand Pulliam Airport. The Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange bill is set to be reintroduced in the Senate and House of Representatives this week. The bill died during Congress' last session that ended in early December, prompting ranch owner Fred Ruskin to begin dropping strong hints that he didn't plan to wait for another try in Washington, D.C. All told, the legislation would have allowed the Forest Service to exchange 21,236 acres of land near Flagstaff, Williams, Camp Verde, Clarkdale and Cottonwood for approximately 35,000 acres of the private ranch land....
Editorial: Federal agencies need consolidation Today, three federal agencies manage the vast majority of public lands in the United States. The Forest Service, under the Department of Agriculture, manages nearly 200 million acres. The National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, both under the Department of Interior, manage 84 million and 262 million acres, respectively. And that’s one agency too many. How these agencies and their missions evolved is a long story. The National Park Service is the only one of the three with the strictly preservationist role — to protect the "crown jewels" of America’s natural wonders. But at this point we don’t need both a Forest Service and a BLM, which have come to serve very similar purposes. Given the compatibility and redundancy of their missions, they should be combined into a single agency. Ideally, this would improve consistency and predictability in how federal lands are managed and help reduce public confusion about agency missions....
Hunter ordered to pay $15,000 after grizzly shooting, cover-up A Kentucky bow hunter who killed a federally protected grizzly bear near Island Park, Idaho, and then tried to cover it up, has been ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution. Dan Walters, 46, of Dry Ridge, Ky., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court this week to a misdemeanor charge of killing the bear, a 300-pound, 7-year-old sow that was part of efforts to restore the grizzly, a threatened species protected under the Endangered Species Act. Walters also will be forbidden from hunting for two years....
Column: Bison management: time to sink or swim Indecision is usually a fatal disease. The ongoing Yellowstone National Park bison saga is a perfect example of treading water. The National Park Service has demonstrated over the past 3½ decades that it is no longer capable of making tough decisions or executing a plan of action. Enter Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Schweitzer has proposed temporarily depopulating Yellowstone National Park of bison over a period of a few years. Bison would be rounded up, tested for brucellosis, and those testing positive would be sent to the slaughter house. Bison that test negative would be held on various ranches until the brucellosis-free bison can be returned to Yellowstone. Already there are howls of protest....
New wells officially on tap at Padre With crews poised to start drilling this week, the National Park Service has approved a controversial plan to allow five more natural gas wells at Padre Island National Seashore. The move angered environmentalists, who are calling for the federal government to buy the private mineral rights under the seashore. However, the decision was not unexpected. In its environmental assessment of the plan released in November, the Park Service recommended allowing the drilling, saying the environmental impact was minimal and the federal government could not deny access to private mineral rights on the property. The Park Service's regional office in Denver made that position official Wednesday....
Animal rights group wants to give doomed horses to tribes An animal rights group hopes to muster support to defeat legislation that they say would result in thousands of wild horses being used as food for Europeans. Rather, the group would like to give those horses to Indian tribes. The controversy started when Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., sponsored legislation that reversed a longstanding Bureau of Land Management law. For years the BLM required people adopting wild horses to prove over the course of a year that they could adequately care for them before the agency would grant legal ownership. Burns’ legislation allows the bureau to sell horses that are 10 or older, or that have been unsuccessfully offered for adoption three times, without the waiting period. The law outraged many who worried that the horses could end up in countries like France and Belgium where horse steaks are considered a delicacy....
Utah, Interior OK plan to clear air in parks The Interior Department and Utah agreed Wednesday to a plan aimed at helping to reduce haze in Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion national parks. The agreement, two years in the making, helps implement the National Parks Service's plan to wipe out haze in national parks across the country, restoring "natural visibility" by 2018. "It says we'll play nicely with one another," said Cheryl Heying, planning branch manager at the Utah Division of Air Quality. Restoring visibility to its natural condition in the national parks is something we're committed to in the state of Utah." The memorandum sets up a process for the Park Service to notify the state to address major pollution sources, such as power plants, if progress is not being made toward clearing the air....
Environmentalists threaten legal action to stop rechanneling of river A national environmental group has threatened legal action to block the rechanneling of the Virgin River, but city officials said the work is needed to protect public infrastructure and private property following damaging floods earlier this month. Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Denver-based Center for Biological Research, said Mesquite officials are doing work beyond what is necessary and could affect habitats along the river. “They need to slow down and talk to some biologists and everyone else with an interest in the river,” Patterson said, adding that federal law should require the halt to the rechanneling efforts....
Survey finds Oregon farmers depend on irrigation "Many people think irrigation is not a big issue in Oregon because of how wet the state appears to be," says Jim Johnson, land use and water planning coordinator for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "However, irrigation is really a key to Oregon agriculture. Nearly 45 percent of all farms and ranches in the state do some type of irrigation totaling about 1.9 million acres." The latest figures show 17,776 of Oregon's 40,033 farms irrigate some or all of their land. The number of farms is up slightly from the 1997 irrigation survey, but the number of acres irrigated is down by 55,850 acres. Reasons vary for the relatively small drop in acreage, according to Johnson....
U.S. threat aimed at NAFTA Frustrated by legal challenges and stalled talks, the U.S. lumber industry is threatening an unprecedented constitutional challenge of NAFTA that could risk unravelling the decade-old free trade deal completely. The U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports yesterday confirmed statements by Sen. Michael Crapo of Idaho that it may file a lawsuit challenging the wide-ranging trade deal's authority over U.S. law. "The grounds would be that it is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and it violates our rights," said Harry Clark, a lawyer for the coalition. Trade experts said last night the constitutional challenge, if successful, could seriously undermine the free trade pact between Canada, Mexico and the United States....
Pilot animal ID program tracks cattle on trucks using GPS, cellular technology On any given day on the remote roads of Kansas, hundreds of tractor-trailers are hauling cattle across the state's vast rangelands, headed for feedlots and slaughterhouses. And in an era of mad cow disease and the threat of agroterrorism, federal agriculture regulators want to be able to locate within 48 hours - or sooner - the whereabouts of each of the nation's 100 million-plus head of cattle. Enter a Kansas proposal that would combine GPS, cellular and radio frequency technologies to track cattle as they are in transit. It is one of the ideas the U.S. Department of Agriculture is testing and one that could shape the nation's emerging animal identification system....
Wagon journey ends in Austin A group of El Paso-area students landed on the Capitol steps Tuesday better acquainted with history and proud of their part in retracing the southern gold rush using horse-drawn wagons to cover the 650-mile journey. Fourteen Socorro Independent School District students participated in the project that replicated -- in reverse -- the mid-1800s route taken by adventurer William P. Huff, whose 300,000-word diary guided the group along the way. Slider history teacher Victor Gonzalez, who accompanied the students, said the firsthand experience of hitching the horses, feeding them and living along the trail amplified what they learn from textbooks....
Magdalena agency gathering stockyard histories A project to preserve and improve Magdalena's Stock Driveway and Shipping Yards as a national historical site and to attract tourism is plodding along. The Magdalena Area Community Development Corp. has recently entered into an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to gather and record oral histories throughout Socorro and Catron counties. Built in 1885 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed its branch line to Magdalena, the stock driveway began being utilized by cattle and sheep drivers to ship their stock, according to a chamber of commerce publication. The Magdalena Stock Driveway is one of only three original and historic cattle and sheep herding stockyards in existence in the country today....
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Protection vs. recreation: the tortoise tussle As Congress considers whether to tinker with the venerable Endangered Species Act, a dust-up between environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts is spotlighting the power of judges to protect animals from the agencies assigned to defend them. At issue is the Mojave desert tortoise, a species whose numbers in Southern California have shrunk in recent decades. Federal wildlife officials, who believe they only have an obligation to keep the tortoise from dwindling further, are facing fire from environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club. A federal judge has been sympathetic to the tortoise's defenders, rejecting pleas from off-roaders who fear losing access to large swaths of the desert. The dispute is part of an enduring trend in which environmentalists are turning to the courts to fight any federal rollback of protections for rare plants and animals. In recent months, judges have been grappling with how far to go to protect animals such as Arizona's pygmy owl and the southwestern willow flycatcher....
Murray tries again for wilderness bill Sen. Patty Murray yesterday launched yet another bid to win congressional approval for Wild Sky, a popular but tormented effort to create Washington's first new wilderness area in a generation. "Wild Sky reflects the great tradition of preserving places that make Washington state unique," Murray, D-Wash., said of the proposal to protect 106,000 acres in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. But while Murray said the bill's prospects in the Senate are good, where it has already passed twice, its future in the House is far less certain. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., said he would consider Wild Sky only if it is trimmed of roughly 13,000 acres that contain logging roads and other marks of modern intrusion....
Ranchers to sue state over prairie dogs Landowners in southwestern South Dakota are asking the state to compensate them for losses caused by black-tailed prairie dogs that moved from federal land onto the ranchers' private land. The approximately 60 landowners filing suit have lost about $5 million because the state failed to control the prairie dog population in the area around the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, said rancher Charles Kruse of Interior. The lawsuit alleges that the state Agriculture Department and the state Game, Fish and Parks Department did not comply with state laws related to the reintroduction of the endangered black-footed ferret and the management of prairie dogs, the ferrets' main food. A 1992 state law allowed the two departments to participate in the programs to reintroduce the black-footed ferret, but it set several conditions. One of those conditions said private landowners had to be compensated if increases in the prairie dog population were needed. Prairie dog numbers skyrocketed in some parts of southwestern South Dakota in recent years because of drought and a halt in poisoning on federal land while federal officials studied whether to designate the prairie dog as an endangered species. The drought and prairie dogs destroyed grazing on parts of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. The critters also moved from the federal grasslands onto adjacent private lands....
LAND TRIAL JUDGE COULD RULE SOON Attorneys crammed a complicated two-year legal battle into less than two hours Tuesday when they made their closing arguments in a trial to determine the ownership of hundreds of acres of land and mineral deposits in Upshur County. State District Judge Paul Banner said he hopes to make a ruling by the end of next week, after he examines scores of maps, documents and other pieces of evidence. Plaintiffs W.L. Dixon and Barton McDonald filed a lawsuit against Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson claiming the 4,662-acre William King Survey actually lies about two miles west of where it appears on today's maps, leaving a vacancy in the eastern position. Historically, vacancies have been discovered in mostly small tracts of land, gaps between surveyed areas. Vacancies belong to the state, rendering invalid titles to land and minerals held by private entities in the vacancy. Because vacancies benefit the state's Permanent School Fund, lawmakers included an incentive to find them - a fraction of the mineral values in the vacant area....
Panel endorses wildlife trust fund CHEYENNE -- A bill that would preserve wildlife habitat for future generations through a $75 million state trust fund was unanimously endorsed by a Senate committee on Tuesday. Under the Wildlife and Natural Resource Funding Act, only the interest and earnings generated by the account could be spent. Allowable projects would include improving or acquiring habitat and accepting easements that could protect land from development. A board appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate would evaluate, rank and prioritize proposed wildlife improvement projects and determine which ones to fund, with an emphasis on public-private partnerships....
Bison activists want disease targeted, not animals Bison-protection activists urged Gov. Brian Schweitzer on Tuesday to join them in attacking disease in Yellowstone National Park bison and end the hazing, capturing and killing of the animals as they leave the park. Schweitzer, who earlier this month halted a planned bison hunt this winter, said he agrees that ridding the herd of brucellosis should be a priority, but he also said that hunting must be a part of population control beyond Yellowstone's borders. He and representatives of the Buffalo Field Campaign agreed the bison need more room to roam outside the park on public land, but Schweitzer warned the group's leaders that allowing a more free-ranging herd must not jeopardize Montana's status as a brucellosis-free state....
Group making a point with 'endangered' snakehead A group of politicians from Western states has embarked on an unlikely cause: having the voracious, invasive northern snakehead declared as an endangered species. But the move isn't so much about the toothy fish - it's a stunt aimed at gaining attention to property owners' concerns about the federal government infringing on their rights to protect endangered species. Alan Gardner, a commissioner in rural Washington County, Utah, admitted the application is a ploy for publicity. "It may let other people in other areas realize what impact the Endangered Species Act has on them," Mr. Gardner said. The petition filed by Mr. Gardner and government officials from a dozen other Western states asks the federal government to protect the northern snakehead and its possible habitat - a massive stretch of land from upstate New York to parts of North Carolina....
Governors Want Clean Air Protections New York Gov. George Pataki and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are pressing Congress to protect key parts of the Clean Air Act as lawmakers and the Bush administration seek to change the law. The two moderate Republicans on Tuesday urged senators considering updating the act not to reduce the powers states have now to enforce environmental regulations or create tougher state regulations. The governors, who both place great emphasis on their environmental initiatives, wrote to members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which will hold a hearing Wednesday to consider changes to the Clean Air Act....
Bankruptcy Threat With an Edge Timber giant Pacific Lumber Co. has told the Schwarzenegger administration that unless it is allowed to cut more trees, the firm may file for bankruptcy, which it says would likely terminate environmental safeguards promised as part of a $480-million deal struck more than five years ago. The federal and state governments paid the company that money to protect several thousand of acres of ancient redwoods under a 1999 agreement preserving the Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County. But now Pacific Lumber, owned by Houston-based Maxxam Inc., says it faces financial ruin because it is starting to run out of marketable timber. Unless the state grants permission for logging on a dozen areas of flood-prone watersheds the company still owns near Eureka, it says, it will have to file for bankruptcy, closing mills and laying off workers....
New sawmill is a pleasant surprise In the Seattle metropolitan area, as in most Western cities, any talk of new jobs these days usually centers around the so-called new economy: computers, biotechnology, the service industry. So it came as a surprise when Sierra Pacific Industries, a privately held company in Redding, Calif., announced a proposal last week to build something that's become a rarity around here: a sawmill. "Well, that's a switch," regional economist Dick Conway said. Like many in the area, Conway has become more used to hearing about sawmills closing, not opening....
An End to the West's Drought? Early January surveys of snowpack show that the Colorado River Basin, which gathers runoff from Wyoming to Southern California, will receive 98 percent of "normal" precipitation this year. If the rest of the winter meets historic averages, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the West's most massive reservoirs which have shrunk over the past five years to 56 percent and 36 percent of capacity, respectively, will rise. That's good news not only for the recreationists who love to boat in the desert, but also for the tens of millions of people who rely on the river for agricultural and drinking waters, including farmers in Arizona and urbanites in Las Vegas. But I wouldn't bet on the reservoirs filling up just yet. As reported in High Country News this month, scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered through analysis of the growth rings of trees that drought is a persistent visitor to the West. Over the past 500 years, a half-dozen major droughts, some lasting many decades, have struck the Colorado River Basin, according to research from the university's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. So the current drought could last a long while, whether it is interrupted by an occasional wet year or not....
Entertaining 'Across Cultures' As the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering gathered steam Monday, the featured evening performance at the Western Folklife Center's G Three Bar Theater was entitled "Across Cultures" - but it could well have been called "Across Oceans." A pair of poets from the Australian Bush shared the stage with Grupo Cimarron, a joropo band from the eastern plains of Colombia, and the unique mix of music, rhyme and culture from around the world delighted the near-capacity crowd....
It just suits them Russ Weaver preached the Gospel in a cowboy hat and a gold-and-silver belt buckle that bore a cross to more than 800 people that filled the Stock Show's livestock auction room for Sunday's Cowboy Church services. Cowboy church is an international movement that began reaching out to Christians from agricultural backgrounds more than three decades ago. When the movement's pioneers saw that Christians with farming, ranching and rodeo backgrounds were not regularly attending a church, they decided to take the church to them. Services were held in their workplaces, such as rodeo arena barns, where jeans and vests prevailed over the suit-and-tie attire of a traditional church, and bales of hay doubled as pews and prayer altars....
Cow Stuck In A Well An unusual rescue in Fresno County, came to a happy ending. A cow got stuck in a well near South and Peach Monday night. That's west of Fowler. An 80,000 lb. excavator was brought in to free the cow. Yet there she was, an 8-month old heifer, 20-feet down at the bottom of an abandoned well west of Selma. Rancher Steve Farris noticed she was missing from the herd late Monday and went searching for her, "I got about right over here by the fence and I heard this moo."....
Protection vs. recreation: the tortoise tussle As Congress considers whether to tinker with the venerable Endangered Species Act, a dust-up between environmentalists and off-road enthusiasts is spotlighting the power of judges to protect animals from the agencies assigned to defend them. At issue is the Mojave desert tortoise, a species whose numbers in Southern California have shrunk in recent decades. Federal wildlife officials, who believe they only have an obligation to keep the tortoise from dwindling further, are facing fire from environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club. A federal judge has been sympathetic to the tortoise's defenders, rejecting pleas from off-roaders who fear losing access to large swaths of the desert. The dispute is part of an enduring trend in which environmentalists are turning to the courts to fight any federal rollback of protections for rare plants and animals. In recent months, judges have been grappling with how far to go to protect animals such as Arizona's pygmy owl and the southwestern willow flycatcher....
Murray tries again for wilderness bill Sen. Patty Murray yesterday launched yet another bid to win congressional approval for Wild Sky, a popular but tormented effort to create Washington's first new wilderness area in a generation. "Wild Sky reflects the great tradition of preserving places that make Washington state unique," Murray, D-Wash., said of the proposal to protect 106,000 acres in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. But while Murray said the bill's prospects in the Senate are good, where it has already passed twice, its future in the House is far less certain. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., said he would consider Wild Sky only if it is trimmed of roughly 13,000 acres that contain logging roads and other marks of modern intrusion....
Ranchers to sue state over prairie dogs Landowners in southwestern South Dakota are asking the state to compensate them for losses caused by black-tailed prairie dogs that moved from federal land onto the ranchers' private land. The approximately 60 landowners filing suit have lost about $5 million because the state failed to control the prairie dog population in the area around the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, said rancher Charles Kruse of Interior. The lawsuit alleges that the state Agriculture Department and the state Game, Fish and Parks Department did not comply with state laws related to the reintroduction of the endangered black-footed ferret and the management of prairie dogs, the ferrets' main food. A 1992 state law allowed the two departments to participate in the programs to reintroduce the black-footed ferret, but it set several conditions. One of those conditions said private landowners had to be compensated if increases in the prairie dog population were needed. Prairie dog numbers skyrocketed in some parts of southwestern South Dakota in recent years because of drought and a halt in poisoning on federal land while federal officials studied whether to designate the prairie dog as an endangered species. The drought and prairie dogs destroyed grazing on parts of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. The critters also moved from the federal grasslands onto adjacent private lands....
LAND TRIAL JUDGE COULD RULE SOON Attorneys crammed a complicated two-year legal battle into less than two hours Tuesday when they made their closing arguments in a trial to determine the ownership of hundreds of acres of land and mineral deposits in Upshur County. State District Judge Paul Banner said he hopes to make a ruling by the end of next week, after he examines scores of maps, documents and other pieces of evidence. Plaintiffs W.L. Dixon and Barton McDonald filed a lawsuit against Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson claiming the 4,662-acre William King Survey actually lies about two miles west of where it appears on today's maps, leaving a vacancy in the eastern position. Historically, vacancies have been discovered in mostly small tracts of land, gaps between surveyed areas. Vacancies belong to the state, rendering invalid titles to land and minerals held by private entities in the vacancy. Because vacancies benefit the state's Permanent School Fund, lawmakers included an incentive to find them - a fraction of the mineral values in the vacant area....
Panel endorses wildlife trust fund CHEYENNE -- A bill that would preserve wildlife habitat for future generations through a $75 million state trust fund was unanimously endorsed by a Senate committee on Tuesday. Under the Wildlife and Natural Resource Funding Act, only the interest and earnings generated by the account could be spent. Allowable projects would include improving or acquiring habitat and accepting easements that could protect land from development. A board appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate would evaluate, rank and prioritize proposed wildlife improvement projects and determine which ones to fund, with an emphasis on public-private partnerships....
Bison activists want disease targeted, not animals Bison-protection activists urged Gov. Brian Schweitzer on Tuesday to join them in attacking disease in Yellowstone National Park bison and end the hazing, capturing and killing of the animals as they leave the park. Schweitzer, who earlier this month halted a planned bison hunt this winter, said he agrees that ridding the herd of brucellosis should be a priority, but he also said that hunting must be a part of population control beyond Yellowstone's borders. He and representatives of the Buffalo Field Campaign agreed the bison need more room to roam outside the park on public land, but Schweitzer warned the group's leaders that allowing a more free-ranging herd must not jeopardize Montana's status as a brucellosis-free state....
Group making a point with 'endangered' snakehead A group of politicians from Western states has embarked on an unlikely cause: having the voracious, invasive northern snakehead declared as an endangered species. But the move isn't so much about the toothy fish - it's a stunt aimed at gaining attention to property owners' concerns about the federal government infringing on their rights to protect endangered species. Alan Gardner, a commissioner in rural Washington County, Utah, admitted the application is a ploy for publicity. "It may let other people in other areas realize what impact the Endangered Species Act has on them," Mr. Gardner said. The petition filed by Mr. Gardner and government officials from a dozen other Western states asks the federal government to protect the northern snakehead and its possible habitat - a massive stretch of land from upstate New York to parts of North Carolina....
Governors Want Clean Air Protections New York Gov. George Pataki and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are pressing Congress to protect key parts of the Clean Air Act as lawmakers and the Bush administration seek to change the law. The two moderate Republicans on Tuesday urged senators considering updating the act not to reduce the powers states have now to enforce environmental regulations or create tougher state regulations. The governors, who both place great emphasis on their environmental initiatives, wrote to members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which will hold a hearing Wednesday to consider changes to the Clean Air Act....
Bankruptcy Threat With an Edge Timber giant Pacific Lumber Co. has told the Schwarzenegger administration that unless it is allowed to cut more trees, the firm may file for bankruptcy, which it says would likely terminate environmental safeguards promised as part of a $480-million deal struck more than five years ago. The federal and state governments paid the company that money to protect several thousand of acres of ancient redwoods under a 1999 agreement preserving the Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County. But now Pacific Lumber, owned by Houston-based Maxxam Inc., says it faces financial ruin because it is starting to run out of marketable timber. Unless the state grants permission for logging on a dozen areas of flood-prone watersheds the company still owns near Eureka, it says, it will have to file for bankruptcy, closing mills and laying off workers....
New sawmill is a pleasant surprise In the Seattle metropolitan area, as in most Western cities, any talk of new jobs these days usually centers around the so-called new economy: computers, biotechnology, the service industry. So it came as a surprise when Sierra Pacific Industries, a privately held company in Redding, Calif., announced a proposal last week to build something that's become a rarity around here: a sawmill. "Well, that's a switch," regional economist Dick Conway said. Like many in the area, Conway has become more used to hearing about sawmills closing, not opening....
An End to the West's Drought? Early January surveys of snowpack show that the Colorado River Basin, which gathers runoff from Wyoming to Southern California, will receive 98 percent of "normal" precipitation this year. If the rest of the winter meets historic averages, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the West's most massive reservoirs which have shrunk over the past five years to 56 percent and 36 percent of capacity, respectively, will rise. That's good news not only for the recreationists who love to boat in the desert, but also for the tens of millions of people who rely on the river for agricultural and drinking waters, including farmers in Arizona and urbanites in Las Vegas. But I wouldn't bet on the reservoirs filling up just yet. As reported in High Country News this month, scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered through analysis of the growth rings of trees that drought is a persistent visitor to the West. Over the past 500 years, a half-dozen major droughts, some lasting many decades, have struck the Colorado River Basin, according to research from the university's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. So the current drought could last a long while, whether it is interrupted by an occasional wet year or not....
Entertaining 'Across Cultures' As the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering gathered steam Monday, the featured evening performance at the Western Folklife Center's G Three Bar Theater was entitled "Across Cultures" - but it could well have been called "Across Oceans." A pair of poets from the Australian Bush shared the stage with Grupo Cimarron, a joropo band from the eastern plains of Colombia, and the unique mix of music, rhyme and culture from around the world delighted the near-capacity crowd....
It just suits them Russ Weaver preached the Gospel in a cowboy hat and a gold-and-silver belt buckle that bore a cross to more than 800 people that filled the Stock Show's livestock auction room for Sunday's Cowboy Church services. Cowboy church is an international movement that began reaching out to Christians from agricultural backgrounds more than three decades ago. When the movement's pioneers saw that Christians with farming, ranching and rodeo backgrounds were not regularly attending a church, they decided to take the church to them. Services were held in their workplaces, such as rodeo arena barns, where jeans and vests prevailed over the suit-and-tie attire of a traditional church, and bales of hay doubled as pews and prayer altars....
Cow Stuck In A Well An unusual rescue in Fresno County, came to a happy ending. A cow got stuck in a well near South and Peach Monday night. That's west of Fowler. An 80,000 lb. excavator was brought in to free the cow. Yet there she was, an 8-month old heifer, 20-feet down at the bottom of an abandoned well west of Selma. Rancher Steve Farris noticed she was missing from the herd late Monday and went searching for her, "I got about right over here by the fence and I heard this moo."....
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Buyout plan to retire grazing permits targets ranchers Rancher Darryl Sullivan works several jobs to makes ends meet. He sells horse trailers and livestock equipment in Las Cruces, makes custom hats, levels fields and puts in cement irrigation ditches. His two grown sons aren't interested in taking over the 44-Bar Ranch, south of Socorro, that has been in the family for five generations. That's why Sullivan is eyeing a proposal backed by Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians and other environmental groups to use taxpayer money to buy out and retire federal land grazing leases. The grazing permit buyout proposal has slowly been gaining momentum in Congress and among a growing number of ranchers. Proponents say as many as 50 ranchers in New Mexico, 250 in Arizona and others around the West are coming out to support it....
Drilling Plan OKd for Rare Desert Land Overriding objections by New Mexico's governor, the Interior Department announced a final plan Monday for expanding oil and gas drilling on Otero Mesa, a rare desert grassland and one of a handful of places in the western U.S. where opposition to drilling had united ranchers, property rights advocates, hunters and conservationists. The plan, crafted by the Bureau of Land Management, is smaller in scope than originally contemplated, but much larger than what Gov. Bill Richardson indicated he would support. It allows drilling a maximum of 141 exploratory wells and 84 producing wells on nearly 2 million acres of Chihuahuan grassland in southern New Mexico....Go here for the AP version of the Otero Mesa decision....
Forest Service gets tough on snowmobilers The Flathead National Forest is beefing up patrols and getting tougher on snowmobilers who venture into areas where they're not supposed to. Forest officials say snowmobile trespassing into designated wilderness and other areas where motor vehicles are forbidden is becoming an increasing problem in the region. Forest Service officers plan stepped up patrols from the ground and by air to catch snowmobilers who cross boundaries, and there will be stiffer punishment for those who are caught, Brady said. The Forest Service will pursue mandatory court appearances, as opposed to issuing citations at the scene, in most cases. Past fines have averaged about $200, but Brady said the agency will seek higher fines - up to $500 - and snowmobiles may be impounded until a case is resolved or the fine is paid, Brady said....
Clouds of suspicion persist over reports on Cedar fire Last week, like something out of the "The Twilight Zone," a new twist bubbled to the surface in the ongoing story of the Cedar fire. In a Jan. 18 request for a grand jury probe, its fourth, the committee produced written declarations by two eyewitnesses – Donna Jennings and Lori Munger. On the evening of Oct. 25, 2003, these women had joined a group admiring the sunset. "The evening was clear and we could see for miles," writes Jennings, a geophysicist who worked for Science Applications International Corp. for 18 years but is now a stay-at-home mom. "We were looking to the northwest and my friend Lori Munger called our attention to what she described as a small orange color 'floating in the air' like a parachute. Instantaneously, we all saw a HUGE wall of flame the size of a large building. Prior to this there was no smoke. The smoke was intense and blowing bent over to the southwest, sideways, not straight up. We were in shock. Next, a small fire started UPWIND from the original burst of flame. As we watched, more small fires were set, like someone setting backfires. Each small fire was exactly the same size and spaced the same distance from the last when it started. . . . The vegetation was very thick and we were several miles away, but all of us knew and agreed that this fire was deliberately being set." The group discussed a gunshot they heard before the fires started. They also noticed flashing lights near the fires....
PETA calls on secretary of interior to ban traps After several dogs were left to suffer for more than two days in leghold traps set by National Park Service (NPS) employees at Badlands National Park in Scenic, S.D., PETA appealed to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to ban snares, leghold, and body-gripping traps on all NPS lands. PETA’s letters and calls went unanswered, and the group is now making a public appeal for a ban on these cruel devices. On Tuesday, PETA representatives and Humane Officer Jill Gravley of the Humane Society of the Black Hills—who found the dogs—will hold a news conference in Rapid City to reveal graphic photos of the injured dogs and to urge Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to ban the traps and snares on all NPS lands....
Study: Buy more land, quickly, for Everglades restoration State and federal officials should buy more land, and do so quickly, in order to restore the Everglades before the property becomes developed or too expensive, according to a report released Monday. The report on water storage is the seventh and final in a series by the National Academy of Sciences that gives advice to federal and state agencies and other entities engaged in restoring the greater Everglades. The 30-year, $8.4 billion federal-state restoration program is intended to restore some of the natural water flow through the sensitive ecosystem that once stretched uninterrupted from a chain of lakes near Orlando to Florida Bay. The report also suggested speeding up projects that restore the natural flow of the water and considering the use of Lake Okeechobee for additional water storage....
Scientists call for world panel to combat species loss Scientists called on Monday for the creation of a global panel of experts on species loss, warning that the planet was racing towards a man-made extinction crisis. "Biodiversity is being destroyed irreversibly by human activities," said the appeal, made by leading biologists and environmentalists at the start of a conference in Paris on wildlife loss. The proposal won the immediate endorsement of French President Jacques Chirac, who pledged to promote it at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an offshoot of the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro....
US lab lists policies capping gas supply A national laboratory managed by the US Department of Energy has identified 40 environmental policy and regulatory constraints on the supply of natural gas. In a study released Jan. 24 by the House Committee on Resources, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) says regulations limit gas supply by restricting access to gas resources, delaying exploration and production (E&P) or transportation, or increasing costs. Also on Jan. 24, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources opened its conference on natural gas....
N.D.'s unique law on property sales challenged by environmentalists The grasslands, tree groves and wetlands, with signs warning hunters to keep out, mark a stretch of rolling prairie near here as a haven for wildlife. Court documents mark it as something else: the focus of a battle over a North Dakota law that conservationists say is unmatched in the nation in limiting their work. The 1985 law requires land buyers to submit their plans to a public review board, and gives the governor final authority to approve or reject any purchases, though denials are rare and the law allows conservation groups already operating in the state to continue buying land. Farm groups and county officials who support the measure say it helps ensure that farmland will not be lost. Conservationists and other critics say it hampers their work and keeps new groups from operating in North Dakota....
Water use reflects thirst to conserve Drought-inspired conservation has reduced metro Denver's water consumption to levels not seen since 1969, despite a 65 percent growth in the number of customers over that span. Denver Water delivered just 59.4 billion gallons last year, 22.6 billion gallons fewer than the utility did before the onset of drought in 2000, new agency numbers show. "It's astonishing," Liz Gardener, Denver Water's conservation manager, said of the 28 percent drop. Similar savings have been noted in Aurora and Colorado Springs, the Front Range's two other municipal giants....
Drug company sued over death of rancher The widow of a Clay County rancher and rodeo rider who was killed by an accidental injection of a cattle antibiotic has filed a lawsuit alleging the drug's manufacturer failed to warn about its dangers. Rourk Erickson, 38, was killed in 2003 when a cow charged and the needle holding the antibiotic punctured his skin, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in North Platte by Erickson's widow, Debra. The drug, Micotil 300, is used to treat respiratory infections in cattle. In animals, Micotil is to be injected only under the skin, and it can be deadly if overdosed or injected into the bloodstream. It also can be fatal to humans....
It's All Trew: In case you were wondering how long a well-rope was During a recent coffee shop session, an elderly gentleman described a certain distance by saying, "It was as long as a well-rope." I had not heard the term since childhood and innocently asked, "Just how long is a well-rope?" Now, so all of us, especially the younger readers, stay on the same page, a well-rope is a long manila rope, some 3/4 to an inch in diameter. It is threaded through a block pulley hanging in the top of a windmill tower, with one end hanging down over the sucker-rod or pipe, and the other end passed through a snatch block at ground level and tied to a power source like a truck. This device allows a water well to be repaired and serviced with simple tools and minimal labor. A second determining factor is most sucker-rods are 10 to 18 feet in length and most pipe is 20 feet in length. Therefore, most windmill towers are a least 30 feet tall to allow removal of the pipe....
What's in a Song? Musgrave's 'Escalante Adios' Hearing such ballads as "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" or "Streets of Laredo," it's easy to think of lonesome cowboys and trail drives frozen in time. And those melancholy laments are likely to be heard in Elko, Nevada at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. But new verses deal with issues facing today's ranchers. Curly Musgrave's "Escalante Adios," tells of the federal government taking grazing lands away from ranchers in southern Utah to make a new national park. With the help of the Western Folklife Center, we look at the story behind the music, as part of our occasional series, "What's in a Song?"....
FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major virus. "Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least, unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease unit. The study was immediately hailed by British officials, who said it will save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up until now we have, quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and mad cow were spread by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick Brown, Britain's Agriculture Minister. "By eliminating it, we can focus our resources elsewhere."....
Buyout plan to retire grazing permits targets ranchers Rancher Darryl Sullivan works several jobs to makes ends meet. He sells horse trailers and livestock equipment in Las Cruces, makes custom hats, levels fields and puts in cement irrigation ditches. His two grown sons aren't interested in taking over the 44-Bar Ranch, south of Socorro, that has been in the family for five generations. That's why Sullivan is eyeing a proposal backed by Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians and other environmental groups to use taxpayer money to buy out and retire federal land grazing leases. The grazing permit buyout proposal has slowly been gaining momentum in Congress and among a growing number of ranchers. Proponents say as many as 50 ranchers in New Mexico, 250 in Arizona and others around the West are coming out to support it....
Drilling Plan OKd for Rare Desert Land Overriding objections by New Mexico's governor, the Interior Department announced a final plan Monday for expanding oil and gas drilling on Otero Mesa, a rare desert grassland and one of a handful of places in the western U.S. where opposition to drilling had united ranchers, property rights advocates, hunters and conservationists. The plan, crafted by the Bureau of Land Management, is smaller in scope than originally contemplated, but much larger than what Gov. Bill Richardson indicated he would support. It allows drilling a maximum of 141 exploratory wells and 84 producing wells on nearly 2 million acres of Chihuahuan grassland in southern New Mexico....Go here for the AP version of the Otero Mesa decision....
Forest Service gets tough on snowmobilers The Flathead National Forest is beefing up patrols and getting tougher on snowmobilers who venture into areas where they're not supposed to. Forest officials say snowmobile trespassing into designated wilderness and other areas where motor vehicles are forbidden is becoming an increasing problem in the region. Forest Service officers plan stepped up patrols from the ground and by air to catch snowmobilers who cross boundaries, and there will be stiffer punishment for those who are caught, Brady said. The Forest Service will pursue mandatory court appearances, as opposed to issuing citations at the scene, in most cases. Past fines have averaged about $200, but Brady said the agency will seek higher fines - up to $500 - and snowmobiles may be impounded until a case is resolved or the fine is paid, Brady said....
Clouds of suspicion persist over reports on Cedar fire Last week, like something out of the "The Twilight Zone," a new twist bubbled to the surface in the ongoing story of the Cedar fire. In a Jan. 18 request for a grand jury probe, its fourth, the committee produced written declarations by two eyewitnesses – Donna Jennings and Lori Munger. On the evening of Oct. 25, 2003, these women had joined a group admiring the sunset. "The evening was clear and we could see for miles," writes Jennings, a geophysicist who worked for Science Applications International Corp. for 18 years but is now a stay-at-home mom. "We were looking to the northwest and my friend Lori Munger called our attention to what she described as a small orange color 'floating in the air' like a parachute. Instantaneously, we all saw a HUGE wall of flame the size of a large building. Prior to this there was no smoke. The smoke was intense and blowing bent over to the southwest, sideways, not straight up. We were in shock. Next, a small fire started UPWIND from the original burst of flame. As we watched, more small fires were set, like someone setting backfires. Each small fire was exactly the same size and spaced the same distance from the last when it started. . . . The vegetation was very thick and we were several miles away, but all of us knew and agreed that this fire was deliberately being set." The group discussed a gunshot they heard before the fires started. They also noticed flashing lights near the fires....
PETA calls on secretary of interior to ban traps After several dogs were left to suffer for more than two days in leghold traps set by National Park Service (NPS) employees at Badlands National Park in Scenic, S.D., PETA appealed to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to ban snares, leghold, and body-gripping traps on all NPS lands. PETA’s letters and calls went unanswered, and the group is now making a public appeal for a ban on these cruel devices. On Tuesday, PETA representatives and Humane Officer Jill Gravley of the Humane Society of the Black Hills—who found the dogs—will hold a news conference in Rapid City to reveal graphic photos of the injured dogs and to urge Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to ban the traps and snares on all NPS lands....
Study: Buy more land, quickly, for Everglades restoration State and federal officials should buy more land, and do so quickly, in order to restore the Everglades before the property becomes developed or too expensive, according to a report released Monday. The report on water storage is the seventh and final in a series by the National Academy of Sciences that gives advice to federal and state agencies and other entities engaged in restoring the greater Everglades. The 30-year, $8.4 billion federal-state restoration program is intended to restore some of the natural water flow through the sensitive ecosystem that once stretched uninterrupted from a chain of lakes near Orlando to Florida Bay. The report also suggested speeding up projects that restore the natural flow of the water and considering the use of Lake Okeechobee for additional water storage....
Scientists call for world panel to combat species loss Scientists called on Monday for the creation of a global panel of experts on species loss, warning that the planet was racing towards a man-made extinction crisis. "Biodiversity is being destroyed irreversibly by human activities," said the appeal, made by leading biologists and environmentalists at the start of a conference in Paris on wildlife loss. The proposal won the immediate endorsement of French President Jacques Chirac, who pledged to promote it at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an offshoot of the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro....
US lab lists policies capping gas supply A national laboratory managed by the US Department of Energy has identified 40 environmental policy and regulatory constraints on the supply of natural gas. In a study released Jan. 24 by the House Committee on Resources, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) says regulations limit gas supply by restricting access to gas resources, delaying exploration and production (E&P) or transportation, or increasing costs. Also on Jan. 24, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources opened its conference on natural gas....
N.D.'s unique law on property sales challenged by environmentalists The grasslands, tree groves and wetlands, with signs warning hunters to keep out, mark a stretch of rolling prairie near here as a haven for wildlife. Court documents mark it as something else: the focus of a battle over a North Dakota law that conservationists say is unmatched in the nation in limiting their work. The 1985 law requires land buyers to submit their plans to a public review board, and gives the governor final authority to approve or reject any purchases, though denials are rare and the law allows conservation groups already operating in the state to continue buying land. Farm groups and county officials who support the measure say it helps ensure that farmland will not be lost. Conservationists and other critics say it hampers their work and keeps new groups from operating in North Dakota....
Water use reflects thirst to conserve Drought-inspired conservation has reduced metro Denver's water consumption to levels not seen since 1969, despite a 65 percent growth in the number of customers over that span. Denver Water delivered just 59.4 billion gallons last year, 22.6 billion gallons fewer than the utility did before the onset of drought in 2000, new agency numbers show. "It's astonishing," Liz Gardener, Denver Water's conservation manager, said of the 28 percent drop. Similar savings have been noted in Aurora and Colorado Springs, the Front Range's two other municipal giants....
Drug company sued over death of rancher The widow of a Clay County rancher and rodeo rider who was killed by an accidental injection of a cattle antibiotic has filed a lawsuit alleging the drug's manufacturer failed to warn about its dangers. Rourk Erickson, 38, was killed in 2003 when a cow charged and the needle holding the antibiotic punctured his skin, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in North Platte by Erickson's widow, Debra. The drug, Micotil 300, is used to treat respiratory infections in cattle. In animals, Micotil is to be injected only under the skin, and it can be deadly if overdosed or injected into the bloodstream. It also can be fatal to humans....
It's All Trew: In case you were wondering how long a well-rope was During a recent coffee shop session, an elderly gentleman described a certain distance by saying, "It was as long as a well-rope." I had not heard the term since childhood and innocently asked, "Just how long is a well-rope?" Now, so all of us, especially the younger readers, stay on the same page, a well-rope is a long manila rope, some 3/4 to an inch in diameter. It is threaded through a block pulley hanging in the top of a windmill tower, with one end hanging down over the sucker-rod or pipe, and the other end passed through a snatch block at ground level and tied to a power source like a truck. This device allows a water well to be repaired and serviced with simple tools and minimal labor. A second determining factor is most sucker-rods are 10 to 18 feet in length and most pipe is 20 feet in length. Therefore, most windmill towers are a least 30 feet tall to allow removal of the pipe....
What's in a Song? Musgrave's 'Escalante Adios' Hearing such ballads as "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" or "Streets of Laredo," it's easy to think of lonesome cowboys and trail drives frozen in time. And those melancholy laments are likely to be heard in Elko, Nevada at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. But new verses deal with issues facing today's ranchers. Curly Musgrave's "Escalante Adios," tells of the federal government taking grazing lands away from ranchers in southern Utah to make a new national park. With the help of the Western Folklife Center, we look at the story behind the music, as part of our occasional series, "What's in a Song?"....
FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major virus. "Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least, unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease unit. The study was immediately hailed by British officials, who said it will save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up until now we have, quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and mad cow were spread by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick Brown, Britain's Agriculture Minister. "By eliminating it, we can focus our resources elsewhere."....
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