Grouse summit: Status quo won’t do

The scientists say:
“Speaker after speaker emphasized that the status quo approach was not tenable — conserving sage grouse and sage grouse habitat while also developing the rich gas, oil and coal-bed methane fields of Wyoming.”

Industry turns it into:
“Ranchers, oil and gas men, biologists, conservationists and state and federal officials are meeting to consider a newer, smarter way of conserving sage grouse while tapping the energy wealth of the Cowboy State.”

Grouse summit: Status quo won’t do
By Brodie Farquhar. Casper Star-Tribune correspondent

A related story at WWPblog

Click the FWS photo for a short of the Sage Grouse.

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Bloodbath in Florida: Panther-vehicle fatalities hit record high

This is from the Carnivore Conservation blog. Panther-vehicle fatalities.

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Notice about this blog during the rest of the summer

From now on, I will be gone an increasing amount of time. During that period, this blog might have a guest editor such as “BE,” who will actively run it and post material. It will also be unedited from time to time.

If the blog is not being actively edited, the default setting is that you can post comments if you have posted before. Don’t put more than one hyperlink in your comments, however, or the spam filter may decide your comment is spam.

If you haven’t posted comments here before, they will go into the moderation queue and they will stay there, until I, or someone else approves them. That could be a while.

Sorry for the break in continuity, but the outdoors calls.

Webmaster,
Ralph Maughan

Mountain Express picks up story on the illegal killing of Basin Butte wolf B313F

I told the story back on June 20. Now the Idaho Mountain Express has done a report on it.

Stanley wolf killed illegally. Lost River Valley resident charged with shooting. By Jason Kauffman. Idaho Mountain Express.

Cheney: Amending environmental laws to help business. Cheney left no tracks. . .

Vice President Cheney has been in the news a lot lately. One major reason is that he thinks he discovered something about his office that others have failed to see in over 200 years — it is not really part of the executive branch of government. As a result, laws applying to the executive branch don’t apply to him.

Most Americans are not willing to see the error of the past beliefs and the unique exemption of the Office of Vice President from the law, and down the at the Washington Post they are doing an unflattering 4-part series on Cheney. The most recent, part IV, is quite relevant to this blog.

Cheney has been the source of a good deal of the lawlessness of this Administration not just in military policy (e.g., torture, exposing secret agents like Valerie Plame), but in environmental policy too.

Amending environmental laws to help business. Cheney left no tracks as he steered policy moves to ease pollution control. Washington Post as reprinted in MSNBC.

Corrupt former number 2 in Interior will do time.

Despite pleas from his buddies, such as Idaho’s governor Butch Otter, J. Steven Griles, the former second-ranking official in the U.S. Dept. of Department has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who himself is now in prison.

Abramoff snitched on many of his past “associates.” These congressmen and other former federal government officials are now in prison too, heading there, or fighting federal charges.

The Washington Post today has an interesting story on Griles’ corruption, Abramoff, and his various female friends. Abramoff, Prison and a Crazy Little Thing Called Love.

Lastly, today Rocky Barker at the Idaho Statesman has a blog on the prison sentence. [Idaho Governor] Otter’s riding buddy gets prison sentence.

By Dana Milbank

Tahoe flames resume march. Fireline is breached.

Jumping a containment line, the fire forces another evacuation. By Tim Reiterman and Lee Romney, Times Staff Writers.

This fire will, as it should, increase the public perception of the problem of people building in areas where fires are expected and normally burn without great loss of property.

Update: Indeed the debate has already begun. Fires Ignite Debate on Urban Interface Development. Headwaters News. 

Rocky Barker says salmon have swimmed back into the consciousness of Idahoans

Barkers blog in the Idaho Statesman. June 26