Ray Ring

Senior Editor

The New York Times reports:

On a dark highway near Anchorage, Specialist Steven Cavanaugh of the Army, who had survived 300 missions in Iraq, was critically injured in December when his vehicle hit a moose. Specialist Cavanaugh died Dec. 6.

Meanwhile, the Casper Star-Tribune reports that Brandon Foster came home from Afghanistan and lasted 88 days in Wyoming, then:

On the 88th day, Brandon died in a car crash caused by deer on the road. He was 23.

The loss is terrible for family and friends, especially since it comes soon after the relief of his safe return from war.

The Star-Trib story is a feature on the life and death of young Brandon Foster.

The Times story sums up the problem, with info such as:

Wildlife-related crashes are a growing problem on rural roads around the country. The accidents increased 50 percent from 1990 to 2004, based on the most recent federal data, according to the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University …

The basic problem is that rural roads are being traveled by more and more people … Each year, about 200 people are killed in as many as two million wildlife-related crashes at a cost of more than $8 billion …

It’s something High Country News often covers. For our most recent story, on efforts to build wildlife road-crossings, go here. And for an in-depth HCN story on wildlife deaths (roadkill), including some interesting people who are obsessed with it, go here.

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

David Nolt, writing for NewWest.Net, dissects a Montana development that illustrates a disturbing regionwide trend. The development is called the Ameya Preserve, and this blog has already found it irritating, here and here.

A few excerpts from Nolt:

There are many unique aspects to the proposed Ameya Preserve … but in one key respect the project is almost commonplace in the New West: it’s aimed at the ultra-rich, those who can afford to spend many millions of dollars on a second or third or fourth home.

… What the developers hope will set Ameya apart are its eco-friendliness and its emphasis on cultural amenities. Call it the thinking-man’s second-home community, or, if you’re more cynical, the liberal elite’s luxury retreat.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Pat McGavran, an Idaho Statesman reader, has written a column about all the people who leave their engines idling while they go into latte shops etc etc etc etc …

Among McGavran’s points:

Idling excuse/myth: Continually turning the engine on and off is bad for the car.

Fact: Frequent restarting has little impact on engine components (battery, starter) but excessive idling can damage cylinders, foul spark plugs and corrode the exhaust system.

Idling excuse: Starting the car uses more fuel than letting it idle.

Fact: Idling for 10 seconds uses more fuel than restarting. Every 15 minutes of idling wastes a quarter of a gallon of fuel and idling for 10 minutes each day costs 22 gallons or $66 a year.

McGavran also says, with modern vehicles, you don’t need to warm up your engine in cold weather.

She’s begun a campaign to ask idlers to PLEASE TURN OFF THE ENGINES!

I’ve been tempted to make the same request, countless times. Idling is one of my pet peeves, for reasons such as: Air pollution in our Western cities gets worse and worse. We fight wars over fuel supplies. Idling exemplifies some bad character traits (selfishness and insistence on personal comfort regardless of impacts).

I see the idlers everywhere. Those not behind the wheel are all types New West, Old West, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and so on and on and on.

McGavran’s column is here. Maybe, inspired by her, I’ll finally get the gumption to ask some to turn it off — trying to be polite about it — and maybe you’ll consider doing the same?

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

A delegation of Lakota leaders led by activist Russell Means this week announced their withdrawal from the United States at a press conference in Washington, D.C., after earlier delivering their message to the State Department.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” said Means.

Means said the new country, including parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, would not levy taxes and would issue its own passports and driver’s licenses.

The treaties signed with the U.S., some more than 150 years ago, are “worthless words on worthless paper…repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life,” according to the Lakota freedom activists’ website.

The website draws sharp contrasts between the tribe’s health and well being and that of the general U.S. populace:

- Lakota death rate is the highest in the United States.

- The Lakota infant mortality rate is 300 percent more than the U.S. average.

- Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is about 800 percent higher than the national average.

- Alcoholism affects 8 in 10 families.

- Median income is $2600-$3500 per year, and 97 percent live below the poverty line.

- One-third of the homes lack clean water and sewage while 40 percent lack electricity.

- Unemployment rates on Lakota reservations is 85 percent or higher.

- Teenage suicide is 150 percent higher than the national average.

Means said the Lakotas’ rights are ensured by the Vienna Convention of 1980, and bolstered by the United Nations’ non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples — opposed by the United States when it was adopted in September.

The press conference was attended by Bolivian Ambassador Gustavo Guzman. “We are here because the demands of indigenous people of America are our demands,” he said.

Means said the new country, including parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, would not levy taxes and would issue its own passports and driver’s licenses.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Thirteen million dollars later, research by the Department of Energy — intended to supercede Yucca Mountain data tainted by an email scandal three years ago — is, well, no good.

According to an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel of scientists reporting to Congress, concluded in a 30-page report that “a water infiltration model by DOE and Sandia National Labs did not consider all available data, was not calibrated with other site information and did not consider likely significant evaporation.”

The Yucca Mountain Project is a proposed repository for more than 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste, located 100 northwest of Las Vegas.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said “it is obvious” DOE tried to “shortcut” research in order to stay on schedule.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Oxfam International announced in November that natural disasters have increased from an average of 120 a year in the early 1980s to as many as 500 today. Flood and windstorm disasters have risen six-fold, from about 60 in 1980 to 240 in 2006. The number of people affected annually by disasters of all types averaged 174 million from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, but jumped to 254 million from 1995 to 2004. In 2007, floods in Asia alone affected 250 million people.

Climate change is a major factor. But the increase in people affected is also due to skyrocketing population around the planet.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, natural disasters of all types are killing about 120,000 people per year, double the toll of a decade ago.

Millions of people in the U.S. and around the world have been driven from their homes or deprived of their livelihoods by hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, tornadoes and volcanoes.

Estimates for the number of “environmental refugees” may reach 1 billion in the coming decades, affecting one of every six people on the planet.

For lots more information and numbers, see a report by the Society for Environmental Journalists.