Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

“We’re going to get this land back, and that’s all there is to it,” said Ernie Two Bulls, a Lakota Sioux, five years ago in reference to the southern half of Badlands National Park. Now, it looks like Two Bulls might just be right — the Park Service is considering returning that former reservation land to the tribe (the northern unit of the park would remain under federal management).

During World War II, the U.S. military confiscated 133,000 acres in southwestern South Dakota from the Lakota, and turned it into a bombing range. In 1976, that land became the southern unit of Badlands National Park. The Lakota have been trying to regain control of their former reservation land, with its sacred gravesites, historic teepee rings, and wealth of fossils, for nearly a decade. Protestors, including Two Bulls, occupied camps in the park for three years to make their point (see our story “Trouble over the Badlands“).

The LA Times reports:

The park service has dissolved 23 parks and historic sites since 1930, but none has been returned to tribes. “It’s really exciting for us to think about walking down this road,” said Sandra J. Washington, head of planning for the service’s Omaha office, which oversees Badlands. “The intention is to be as honorable as possible.”

The change would require congressional approval and the process is in its earliest stages, with officials still to decide whether the south section should be handed over solely to the tribal government, become a separate park run by the tribe with help from the park service, or left as is.

The southern Badlands are arid, eroded, and full of unexploded bombs, which might make contemplating such benevolence easier. Don’t look for similar proposals for other scenic former tribal lands — like Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The recently passed $300 billion Farm Bill ladles out plenty of lard, but not all of it’s rotten. A provision championed by Montana Sen. Max Baucus, D, authorizes $500 million in bonds to buy land for conservation. Republicans have ripped the provision as “green pork,” claiming that only one piece of land in the U.S. — a chunk of western Montana owned by Plum Creek Timber Co. — fits all of the necessary criteria. But Plum Creek, which owns 1.2 million acres in the state, plans to sell some of that timberland for real estate development, and Baucus’ provision could help put nearly 300,000 acres of it in public hands instead (also see our just-published story “Easing into development“). Rather than sprouting woodsy second homes, the land would be set aside for hiking, hunting, timber-cutting and wildlife.

The Missoulian’s Michael Jamison reports:

Under the provision, the state or a nonprofit would sell up to $500 million in tax-credit bonds to an investor. In return, the investor would receive a tax credit of somewhat more than the initial $500 million. The state or nonprofit then would use a portion of the money to purchase key lands. …

To qualify for Baucus’ “Forestry Bond” program, the woodsy parcels must be adjacent to U.S. Forest Service lands, must be at least 40,000 acres in size, and must be covered by a native fish conservation plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

(In 2000, Plum Creek signed onto just such a plan for its lands in Montana, ensuring fish would be protected even as logging continued.)

In light of the fact that other federal dollars for buying land, like the Land and Water Conservation Fund, have largely dried up over the past eight years, the provision, earmark or no, is positive news. (see our story “As threats loom, conservation dollars disappear.”) Does it still count as pork if it’s good for you?

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

In our May 26 issue, in Two Weeks in the West, we ran some stats on the massive Tejon Ranch development planned for Southern California. Among other things, we noted that the development would result in thousands of homes being built on 20,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered California condor (only 39 of which still soar over SoCal).

Interestingly, though, no objections to the plan had been raised by the condor biologists that the Tejon Ranch Company recruited to vet the project — because the company made them promise not to publicly criticize their plans. The Associated Press has the story:

The developer has retained the services - and secured the public silence - of three condor experts. That’s a significant portion of the half-dozen or so scientists specializing in condors on Tejon, according to the developer’s chief consultant on the bird, Peter Bloom. …

David Clendenen, a condor expert who declined to work for Tejon, criticized those who accepted the consulting job, saying the arrangement “destroys their credibility completely.”

“For us, the ultimate line in the sand is you don’t allow development in designated critical habitat, and it’s that simple,” he said.

Enviros liked the deal because it protected nearly 240,000 acres of wild country — but at what cost to the condor?

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

We’ve written before about the meddling of Julie MacDonald, a political appointee in the Interior Department who routinely overruled decisions made by Fish and Wildlife Service scientists (see Two weeks in the West and Science-censoring Interior official resigns). Her interference has forced the agency to reconsider at least seven of its decisions about threatened or endangered species.

Now, it appears MacDonald wasn’t the only one tainting science with politics. The Missoulian reports:

Robin Nazzaro of the Government Accounting Office testified Wednesday to the House Natural Resources Committee that at least four other Bush appointees might have played questionable roles in the ESA decisions approved by MacDonald. They include a former assistant secretary, a deputy assistant secretary and the secretary’s chief of staff, she said.

The webs of corruption will (in all likelihood) be swept out of Interior next January. But the effects are likely to linger for years, as Fish and Wildlife and other agencies work to clean up the mess and restore integrity.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The New York Times has a story today on the growing importance of native species of bees in agriculture. The European honeybee, which pollinates millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. crops, is buzzing off into the sunset, beset by mites and a mysterious malady called Colony Collapse Disorder (see our story “Silence of the Bees“).

So farmers and orchardists are now turning to the humble native bees, which are often hardier and better pollinators. However, these bees are in trouble too, hit by habitat loss and overuse of pesticides. See our story about the native bees last year, in “Native Hum“.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

New uranium mines are proposed for dozens of places in the West, including Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. Mining companies claim that the safety issues of past uranium mines won’t be an issue — these mines will be in-situ rather than open pit, so the radioactive metal will be dissolved underground and won’t come into direct contact with miners or nearby residents (see our story “Navajos pay for industry’s mistakes” for more on the health problems caused by old uranium mines and mills).

There’s one little hitch, though — such mines have a history of contaminating groundwater (see our story “Underground movement“). In Wyoming, an operating in-situ mine was just cited for numerous violations, including spills and an inadequate cleanup bond. The Casper Star-Tribune has the story:
(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The “crown jewels of our public lands” will get another chance at permanent recognition next week. On Weds., April 9, the House votes on HR 2016. The bill would officially enact the National Landscape Conservation System, a collection of some 800 national monuments, wilderness areas, scenic rivers, and historic trails overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the importance of permanently enacting the NLCS:

“While I don’t have any particular reason to believe other secretaries [of the Interior] will come in and undo the system, the fact is it can be pulled apart to disparate units,” says Elena Daly, BLM’s director of the NLCS in Washington. “It gives us legislative authority to exist and would require legislative action to undo. It would put us on par with (the) National Park Service.”

The congressional stamp of approval also would create a systematic way to manage these areas. Currently, the 860 disparate units don’t have the same designations or protections. Some were created by states, others by various departments of the federal government.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Northern New Mexico is rich with tradition and beauty — pinon nut gathering, pilgrimages to a church known for its healing powers, dramatic landscapes captured on canvas by Georgia O’Keeffe. But another, darker tradition scars the lives of its residents — heroin addiction, at a rate four times the national average.

The New York Times just ran a story examining this drug plague. The article quotes Angela Garcia, an anthropologist who in 2006 wrote a deeply personal story for HCN about the same topic (”Land of Disenchantment” won that year’s Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for reporting on drug and alcohol use). Angela described the messy and painful lives of addicts and their needless deaths from overdoses, and traces the drug use to a profound sense of loss among the Hispanic people of the region, whose families were pushed off their historical land grant properties more than a century ago:
(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you’re starting to see the impacts of a climate out of whack. Around here the past few years, in the Colorado mountains at nearly 6,000 feet, we’ve seen heavy rain in January and February, when by all rights it should be snowing. And butterflies, hatched weeks too early, flapping over barely-budded plants in a vain search for flowers. And premature blossoms on fruit trees, fooled into bloom by an oddly-warm March, only to be zapped by freezes into May.

Now researchers have confirmed that global warming is whacking Westerners especially hard. Over the past five years, we’ve had an increase in average temperature that’s 70 percent greater than the increase experienced by the rest of the planet.

For “Warming in the West,” the report released today by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) and the Natural Resources Defense Council, RMCO analyzed new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature data for 11 Western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007, the average regional temperature was 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th-century average, compared to the overall global rise of 1 degree. Both Washington and Oregon saw temperatures 40 percent higher than the worldwide figure.

The report’s next-to-last chapter, “Immediate Action Can Curb Global Warming,” holds out the hope of salvation — if we’ll get off our collective asses and make meaningful policy changes. Now.

But stopping the climatic train wreck is going to be much, much harder than we can even imagine, writes HCN contributing editor Matt Jenkins in a story for Miller-McCune. Read Matt’s grim — but realistic — assessment in A Really Inconvenient Truth. And check out our earlier story, Save Our Snow. On second thought, a cave might be a great place to be.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Recently we wrote about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s attempt to back out of an agreement about its upcoming decision on whether to list the greater sage grouse as threatened or endangered (see our story “Crying fowl“).

The agency had promised to consider a major upcoming scientific report in making its determination, to allow public comment on that report, and to come out with a listing decision next spring. But a few days later, officials tried to wiggle out of the agreement, claiming that the deal hadn’t been properly approved (despite the fact that Department of Justice lawyers had signed off on it).

Critics charged that the agency was playing politics, trying to avoid listing the bird because of the potential impacts on energy development and home-building. Now, a federal judge has ruled that Fish and Wildlife can’t abandon the deal, reports the AP:

Judge B. Lynn Winmill rejected (the agency’s) claims, saying the deal, which was filed with the court, should be treated and honored like any other legally binding contract.

The ruling is another setback for the agency since it ruled in January 2005 that the sage grouse did not merit threatened or endangered status.

Score one for the sage grouse.

Francisco Tharp

If you’ll be spending any time in the San Francisco Bay area summer and fall, you may want to hold your breath–while you’re there, that is.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California’s agriculture department plans to cover San Francisco, Marin County and the East Bay with Checkmate, a hormone that impedes the reproductive efforts of the light brown moth. Beginning in August, the dustings will occur at night.

State officials see the spraying as a preemptive strike against WMD (Widespread Moth Destruction), which could devastate California’s agriculture industry.

But those rascally health aficionados in the area (yes, the same area that outlawed plastic bags in 2007) are outraged. Hundreds of folks who were sprinkled with Checkmate in Santa Cruz and Monterrey Counties from September to December reported coughing, wheezing, and headaches, among other symptoms.

The article says,

The USDA’s Hawkins said the EPA has generally not been concerned over the toxicity of Checkmate. For example, he said, the agency never set a maximum limit for the pesticide in food or required farm workers to stay out of fields that had just been sprayed.

Somehow this doesn’t make me feel any safer. After all, the USDA doesn’t see anything wrong with genetically modified crops (see HCN’s “Brave New Hay”), and the Environmental Protection Agency extinguished California’s attempt to cut CO2 emissions.

Click here to see why one organization is ready to “run” and “escape” from “a toxic cloud of government corruption.”

Or, click here to see why we have nothing to fear…that’s right, nothing to fear at all.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a new way to cut down on our demand for oil: change your car’s oil only as often as the manufacturer recommends.

Most cars, says the story, do fine with an oil change every 5,000 or even 10,000 miles. So ignore the little sticker from Grease Monkey that says you’ll be due for an oil change after 3,000.

Don’t know what your manufacturer recommends? The 3,000 Mile Myth site provides a list of the most common makes and models.

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

A federal district judge has ruled that the Mexican spotted owl won’t be stripped of its “critical habitat” — 8.6 million acres in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. The 2004 habitat designation for the threatened raptor will stand, says Judge Susan Bolton — despite a lawsuit from Arizona cattle ranchers seeking to overturn the designation, which they fear will limit livestock grazing.

Every creature on the Endangered Species List is supposed to have “critical habitat” set aside for it — the territory “essential for the conservation of the species” (see our story here). Scientists have found that species with critical habitat do twice as well as species without it (see our sidebar here).

The Bush administration, under a steady barrage of court orders, has reluctantly set aside critical habitat for 387 species. But nine out of ten of these designations were slashed drastically (by an average of 70 percent) between the initial amount proposed by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the final designation. The owl’s habitat is no exception — the original critical habitat proposal, back in 1997, was 13.5 million acres.