Approaching: Mark Rey’s court date

This has got to be one of my favorite stories. It is too rare these days that public officials are directly held to account. The court date for Rey is set for Tuesday.

Agriculture chief may face jail time

As the story illustrates, and we’ve gone over before, Rey spent much time with disgraced Sen. Larry Craig and as a former timber lobbyist before being appointed undersecretary for natural resources and agriculture by the Bush Administration. Rey moved to privatize your public land, dismantle the legal safeguards for wild places, and so much more.

Although I am skeptical about the possibility that Rey will indeed be thrown behind bars for this particular contempt, he should be - the lawlessness and public land profiteering personified by this man ought be reprimanded, he’d make a fine example.

Idaho roadless plan is good but it needs tweaking, Risch says

Idaho’s roadless plan is good but it needs tweaking, Risch says. He says it needs to further restrict logging, but conservationists say that revision is not enough. Idaho Statesman. By Erika Bolstad.

This roadless area plan was developed by Risch in 2006 while he was briefly governor. He was one of just a few governors who took up Bush’s offer to states to let them resolve the roadless area issue (subject to Bush Administration approval). Most governors preferred President Clinton’s total protection plan.

The Administration’s final approval was for a modified plan that provided significantly less protection than Risch had proposed (more logging). Now Risch is running for the U.S. Sentate to replace Larry Craig (his Democratic opponent will be Larry LaRocco, a former Idaho congressman).

Critics hit bill on bark beetles. Senator Barrasso’s forest bill claims called ‘dishonest.’

Earlier I posted about Wyoming US Senator John Barrasso’s “Wyoming Forest and Watershed Restoration Act of 2007” which would allow the state of Wyoming to subcontract US Forest Service lands to timber companies with the notion that this would somehow stop the beetle epidemic that is sweeping the state (actually sweeping most of the Rocky Mountains states and Provinces).

It continues to get negative media coverage. Critics hit bill on bark beetles. Barrasso’s forest bill claims called ‘dishonest.’  Jackson Hole News and Guide. By Noah Brenner.

Barrasso’s move is, sadly enough, typical of a number important political and economic leaders. They use our growing situation of planetary distress as a great way to advance their personal objectives — all the morality of maggot.

Craig, “ecoterrorists”, hidden riders, and industrial legacy

There is no doubt, the hoopla surrounding ID Senator Larry Craig is a well deserved condemnation of hypocrisy that’s been years in the coming and nobody is celebrating his descent more than progressives throughout the Northwest. Now, he has resigned effective September 30.

But the shamefull manner in which a powerful Republican Senator squandered his standing is thankfully failing to completely overshadow just what it is many in Idaho and throughout the West are celebrating:

In the meantime, his actions in backrooms of the nation’s capital deserve attention. Call it a Craig’s List of how to block good deeds, or at least see that they don’t go unpunished.

Forest Service seeks to decommission 19,000 miles of old logging and unauthorized roads in its Northern Region

This is great news for fisheries and clean water. Abandoned logging roads often don’t heal. In fact, they can generate more and more erosion as the years go by, the culverts wash out, and small disturbances turn into gullies. In addition, there are many “use” ways — roads never constructed that were made simply by people driving. Because they were never planned or located to fit the land, these too are major sources of erosion.

Unfortunately, the Service doesn’t have the money to to this, but there is a bill moving through the House that would provide the money. “The ‘Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative’ under consideration by the House would set aside funding for road decommissioning, road and trail repair and maintenance, and the removal of fish barriers.”

Story in the Missoulian. Forest Service seeks closure of worn-out roads. By Perry Backus.

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Rocky Barker’s blog: Cowboys and loggers lose in two courtrooms

Here is more on the big victory, slapping down the Bush Administration’s new grazing regulations. Rocky Barker goes on to tie it with the recent Bush defeat on the roadless issue ruling.

One point about the headline — ” Cowboys and loggers.” Cowboys and loggers are the employees. Like so many of us, they are the ones who get the “short end of the stick.” It’s ranchers and forest developers who lost in two courtrooms. The condition of injured or “retired” loggers and cowboys is often not a happy one.

Barker’s blog in the Idaho Statesman.

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Information on the big victory on roadless areas- June 8, Rocky Mountain News. Roadless rule survives challenge By Todd Hartman.

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Cut by loss of timber payments, Oregon counties curb services

Western Republicans should really take a political hit for this, although they probably won’t.

Idaho’s Senator Craig, for example, has been braying how he got money for the rural schools and rural county services (formerly dependent on timber revenues funded). The Bush Administration had wanted to do it by selling off national forest land around the country. A public opinion firestorm stropped that bad idea.

Because the Republican Congress failed to pass a budget for FY 2007 budget, the school funding was about to expire and the only legislative “vehicle” available that would stop these schools from running out of money was the military appropriations supplemental which President Bush just vetoed, claiming it contained a “surrender” date and “pork barrel spending” (spending such as this).

Now the funding is gone, and it won’t come back easily, if at all. How did Senator Craig and the other Western Republicans vote? Yes, to defund the schools and rural counties so the President could continue his occupation of of Iraq.

The New York Times tells part of the story in this article, but it is not just a rural Oregon disaster. Timber (and Its Revenues) Decline, and Libraries Suffer. New York Times.

The Challis Messenger tells the story more directly. Challis is about the most Republican place in Idaho, although they do have one Democratic county commissioner.

School, county road funding again in limbo. Challis Messenger. By Todd Adams.

Note that Custer County got far more than its share of radioactive fallout during the days of open air atom bomb testing in Nevada. Bush also vetoed the money for the “downwinders.” No doubt more pork barrel

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You’re going to pay more, but ranchers to pay less to use public lands this year

They’ve gone and done it again — dropped public land grazing fees as low as the law allows. For a buck, thirty-five a month ranchers can let a cow stomp all over the the public land trample the banks and shit in the streams. Oh, yes, and their calves get to do it for free.

For those not so favored, you will be paying more fees this year to access your land. For $80 you can get the card below that will let you into many public land areas.

The High Country News blog has some thoughts on the new grazing fees. Buddy can you spare a cow.

The Missoula Independent has an article too. Unfair warning. Scaling back recreation on public lands, quietly. By John S. Adams