Our World and Everything in It

I was watching a news program and that little ticker of news across the bottom said that an agreement was hatched between the largest private landowner in the country to use forest service roads for possible development in our forests. Plum Creek Timber Co. is the landowner. Plum Creek became an REIT in 1999. 

An REIT is a Real Estate Investment Trust that allows investors to buy equity in large tracks of land. A REIT is also a pass through entity distributing 90%, although many distribute 100%, of their total net income to its equity holders. The equity holders are then taxed on that income, not the REIT. For a pretty good explanation about REIT’s read: http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/real-estate/reit.htm.

Plum Creek is first and foremost a lumber company, the heir to the timberland originally granted by the federal government to the Northern Pacific Railway in the 1860s according to Wikipedia. Plum Creek’s website states that they replant some 85 million seedlings per year, work closely with conservation groups to preserve wildlife habitat and protect clean water sources. A good thing environmentally since they own, or rather their shareholders own, close to 8 million acres of wooded forest land.

But Senators Jon Tester D-Montana, and Jeff Bingaman D-NM want an investigation into the new ruling that allows Plum Creek to use forest service drives because the closed door negotiations didn’t allow the public to weigh in. And I’m beginning to see why. Here’s the bad thing.

Some of the places developed by Plum Creek already are high-end lodge and golf facilities right in the middle of our national forests. Who does that cater to in these economic times? You and I aren’t going to stay and golf there.  And what about developing subdivisions in these forests? An article in the International Herald Tribune stated, “Montana county officials say the proposal would make it easier for Plum Creek to sell timberland for houses or other development.” This may be the result of all the public/forest land the Bush Administration has auctioned off over the past 8 years.

Development??? There are empty houses standing all over the country so what the heck are we doing? Huge landowners like Plum Creek are no longer just harvesting wood and replanting, they are developing the land for high-end resorts so their shareholders make more money. These are some of our most pristine wild forestlands. It’s about as bad as Governor Crist of Florida filling in and developing the everglades when people are moving out of Florida because they can’t afford the homeowner’s premiums anymore.

So for as much as Plum Creek attempts to do for the environment, they equally hurt it with unnecessary development. It’s becoming a little clearer why there was such an onslaught against wolves especially around our national parks. We just got a stay of relief for the wolves that were scheduled for massive annihilation in the Yellowstone area. Plum Creek has a resort called “The Yellowstone Club,” and others like Moonlight Basin. These are high-end resorts and housing right in the heart of the very lands where these animals roam. Recently, buffalo have been slaughtered as well as wild mustang horses too. Ever wonder why? The excuses that were given for this massive kill were never very clear, but it’s becoming a lot more clear now.

I read about Bush’s plan to allow lumbering throughout our more dense forest areas like Idaho and surmised that development would soon follow. It just so happens that Plum Creek has its hand in natural resource business opportunities also that are relative to mineral extraction, natural gas production, and communication and transportation rights of way. That says a lot more. Mineral extraction and natural gas production is a whole other form of real estate development for big energy and another big motive for the animal removal and the easy, quiet deal to allow the use of forest service roads to facilitate Plum Creek.

The two Senators are worried that allowing Plum Creek to use forest service roads for development will set a precedent for other developers to do likewise. It looks to me like that was the plan all along. Clear out many of the animals that are under protection, make deals on the sly, and the next thing we’re asking is, “When did we lose our forests to homes and country clubs we don’t need?”

We certainly know what happens when humans attempt to habitate areas that are home to wild animals. It becomes a struggle for the critters who ultimately are eliminated as pests.

It doesn’t appear there are many sacred untouched tracts of land in our country anymore that are protected from development and the almighty dollar.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/11/america/Forest-Road-Deal.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Creek_Timber

http://www.plumcreek.com/AboutPlumCreek/tabid/54/Default.aspx

I’ve already blogged that Idaho and Wyoming’s own state statistics show elk and deer populations are far over the limit for their species. The proper scientific limit for wolves to be secure from extinction should be near 3000, yet the number 1500 seems to be the norm for these states to begin to eradicate wolves because they pose a threat to deer and elk populations???

The hunt has already begun. Defenders of Wildlife states: “Locals have organized weekend eradication “wolf hunts” to kill any wolf that they find. One group tracked a wolf for 35 miles on snowmobiles before shooting it dead.” Now that’s real sporting. You know we’ve had a war going on for how long, isn’t that enough blood thirst for most Americans, or has it heightened the sense of the kill for some so much that they can’t turn it off? On the other hand, has it desensitized us to pain, suffering, and death that we just bury our heads anymore? To look forward to killing animals that are clearly being eradicated for no viable reason except for the sport is an indication of a nation’s decline in my book.

But the biggest testament to a nation’s decline is knowing full well we’re being lied to about many, many things, and doing nothing about it, even something that could be championed like this wolf slaughter issue. A study by the Dept. of Agriculture proved wolves are not attacking cattle in huge numbers either. And this N.Y. Times article just 2 years ago shows how badly the wolf populations were suffering from the parvo disease. It shows a pack of new wolf cubs that died shortly after the picture was taken. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/national/15wolf.html So in 2006, the gray wolf population declined from disease, yet two years later wolves are out of control?  What a pack of lies, and the liars head up departments in our U.S. government.

A lot of people think no big deal. But it was a big deal when the first gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone not very long ago. The rangers there have good things to say about the balance the wolves restored to the forest. As part of this reintroduction and study, many wolves are numbered, their packs have names, and some of the wolves have been viewed so much they gained notoriety and names, like Limpy, number 253M. Defenders says: “Limpy was many things to many people – to wolf-watchers, he was the hobbling member of Yellowstone’s famous Druid Peak Pack. To Utahans, he was the first wolf to be seen in the state for more than 70 years.”

For wolf novices the Druid Peak Pack was the second pack introduced to Yellowstone from Canada, and one of the most observed. Check out one girls sighting at her visit to Yellowstone and her video of the Druid pack on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNeFetdSHrQ. We’re talking tourism and educational fodder here.

I don’t know if the girl saw Limpy with hind legs that were crippled in a fight. No matter now, Limpy was shot dead in Wyoming on elk feeding grounds the first day wolves were taken off the endangered list. Remember elk numbers are beyond where they should be in these states. The wolves were out doing their job. Limpy obviously wasn’t speedy enough as a cripple. Two other wolves were shot with him.

So what we have here is the beginning of a slaughter perpetrated by lies from U.S. officials to practically eradicate a species that have only reached half their peak. Meanwhile, people have posted pictures on You Tube and commented on their trips to Yellowstone and the opportunity to see the notorious wolves.

You know what this reminds me of? Natives in Africa, deprived of an education, with very little means of sustenance for survival that kill endangered species in order to take the habitat over for farming, as well as, eat the bushmeat. Once the natives are taught that protecting the animals brings tourism to the area to view the animals, and all types of new income opportunity is opened to them, they embrace it wholeheartedly and the animals begin to flourish under the native’s good stewardship.

What’s the excuse for the states of Idaho, and Wyoming? They are neither stupid nor starving, but appear to be shooting themselves in the foot relative to tourism by killing the wolves, or there are ulterior motives worth a heck of a lot more money. It can’t be the hunting industry. It will only flourish from wolf hunts for so long. A few hunting seasons and the wolves will be gone, and then what’s to shoot? Oh yeah, all those excessive deer and elk populations.

My best guess for ulterior motives still lies with Bush’s plan to reverse the Roadless Rule, where Idaho might find themselves stripped of a heck of a lot more than the wolf population. If that happens, the second largest forest in America will slowly disappear from mining, drilling, and logging. Wolf hunters could face eminent domain issues in the future and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

Click on Defenders at the right to sign a petition to stop this senseless slaughter.

As for Limpy, he’s famous.  Just search “Limpy the Wolf” on the internet. There are pages of urls for him.

On March 5, 2008 I got an email from Earthjustice that buffalo are being threatened in a particular area outside of Yellowstone in Montana called Horse Butte peninsula. Supposedly the buffalo carry a virus that threatens cattle, although no cattle have ever died from it, and there are no cattle grazing nearby. As a matter of fact, Earthjustice said that “in 2002 cattle grazing on public lands was stopped by a court order and the remaining private land in the area ha[d] been purchased by new owners who ha[d] declared the property open to bison.” The best part is the government is using hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money for this slaughter. Earthjustice, the Buffalo Field Campaign, and local landowners want the slaughter stopped and a new environmental impact study initiated that takes into account the above ruling and therefore the justification for this slaughter. What a tail chase with our money.

As of April 3 Defenders of Wildlife reports that 3,000 bison have been killed in the past 15 years. If you’re like me you’re thinking that’s not many. I ate buffalo last summer for the first time because I don’t eat pork or beef, and I know it’s free range. But then I read that already this year alone 1100 bison have been slaughtered, a quarter of their wild population. Now we’re getting into mindless, and needless slaughter. This hasn’t happened since the 1800’s.

Earthjustice, the Buffalo Field Campaign, and local landowners are calling for a halt to the buffalo slaughter and the initiation of a new environmental impact study that takes into account the current circumstances in the area and removes the justification for the killings.

Because I’m always looking at and receiving information on environmental things, I’m a little alarmed at the widespread slaughter of wildlife across our most forested states and can’t help thinking these animals are being forfeited for the mining, oil, and lumber industries. Because none of the excuses for the execution that’s taking place are true. And parts of our national parks have been up for auction in the past few years. It’s as if everything is being cleared away from the perimeter of those parks, perhaps for more slant oil drilling?

Anyway, since I enjoyed the buffalo I ate last summer the first thing I though was who gets all the meat? I found that much of it is given to Native Americans on reservations, and food banks. The Native American handout is such an irony isn’t it? Early Native Americans believed in taking only what was needed from the earth. This is a big slaughter for nothing. They are being urged to not accept the buffalo meat at the reservations by the Buffalo Field Campaign.

Another irony. We have wolves being slaughtered because they supposedly threaten to eat cattle, yet the deer and elk populations are up in Idaho and Wyoming where wolves are threatened. So evidently the wolves aren’t all that bloodthirsty. And even if they are, can’t we see our way to a different compromise. We’re killing buffalo in another state over nothing and looking to hand it out. Why not let buffalo graze in wolf territory and let nature balance things out? We seem to constantly spend money to introduce wildlife, get it to flourish, then spend more money to slaughter it all.

In the balance of all these Nero like mood swings of government is our wildlife, and all of its habitat. It’s outrageous to kill off a species of animal in such a short period of time and despite a public outcry against it. After all it’s our money, it’s our wildlife, and it’s our world.
http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/bison_0308/w5eu6wb9qmtdwie?

http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/press0304/news0304/030204.html

In 24 hrs over 30,000 logged on to protest here at Defenders of Wildlife: https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1059&autologin=true&s_einterest=C3C4&s_Affiliate=act_&JServSessionIdr005=0iwmuej2l2.app26a

I just wrote about Colorado’s forests being decimated by beetles whose populations are out of control due to global warming. They are killing lodge pole pines with other evergreen trees at risk also, while the Bush administration pushes to end the Roadless Rule that will decimate one of the largest forested areas in the country, which is in Idaho to the mining, oil, and lumber industry.  The big picture for the wolf kill, buffalo kill, and mustang roundups is getting clearer isn’t it? Alaska, Wyoming, and Idaho are some of the states with huge forests at risk without this rule, and the same states that are home to the slaughter of these animals. If these animals remained protected, their habitat couldn’t be touched. They must be removed for the next phase of this unethical, and unscrupulous plan to take place! So now we should see clearly we’ve been lied to again about the reasons for the slaughter.

The intelligence and ethics level of this administration has hit an all time low by destroying the very trees that help remove CO2 from the air and protect us from baking at a time when many of our trees have been destroyed already by fires and floods over the past two years, and on the heels of the Colorado lodge pole blight. We need more trees, not less. Do we see Europe attacking their landscapes as we do? http://www.15years.gov.si/backround-information/biodiversity/.

We cannot afford to let this happen in the interest of big money because once our forests are gone, they are gone forever. And don’t think that once oil, lumber, and mining interests move in they will simply stop with a new president in office. This is the march of the wealthy destroying our country in their last ditch effort to get a stronghold before this administration is through. The sad thing is we haven’t even begun to practice conservation. We haven’t unleashed the alternative energy innovation we already have. This is the same type of unintelligent, quick-triggered decision-making that ignored any and all alternatives that got us into a war, which is costing us dearly. We must unite to keep this type of movement from advancing until we see this administration exit. 

The Heritage Forest Campaign explains:

Spanning 58.5 million acres in 38 states, America’s national forest roadless areas contain some of our nation’s last pristine forests. From the expansive wilds of the American Southwest and Northern Rockies to the colorful deciduous woods of New England and the Appalachians, these last tracts of unspoiled backcountry provide habitat for wildlife, headwaters to rivers, and unparalleled recreational opportunities for millions of Americans.

The state of Idaho contains over 9.3 million acres of National Forest roadless areas - the most of any state outside of Alaska.  Idaho’s roadless backcountry makes up the core of the last intact forest ecosystem in the lower 48 states - the last place where all of the native plants, fish and wildlife - from the smallest plant to the largest predator - can still be found.

In 2001, the U.S. Forest Service issued the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects Idaho’s and all of the country’s national forest roadless areas from most logging and new roads being built for mining, coal, gas, logging and other development. The rule was the result of almost three years of deliberation that included 600 public hearings and more than 1.5 million written comments submitted with the overwhelming majority supporting the complete protection of all remaining roadless areas.

The American public has continued to support this policy, and has repeatedly opposed proposals to reverse or weaken it.

Please join forces for OUR heritage, OUR land, OUR wildlife, and OUR vision for the future not the powerful big money interests that seek to take every last pristine piece of God’s country we have left.

Sign a petition to Chief Gail Kimble to save our forests. There is an April 7th deadline so please sign on for a unified voice: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/idaho_roadless/i3u8iui227b7jnew?
 

Many of us had lovely ash trees in our yard once upon a time, and there are many parks around Michigan that have yet to clear out all of the ash trees that died from the ash borer, a simple bug.
Well, there are a lot more bugs to come and we can thank global warming for it.

Colorado is bearing the brunt of an increase in bark beetle bugs that have killed millions of acres of lodge pole pines. These pines are exactly what their name describes, tall, tall trees pine trees whose needled branches are disproportionately at the top third of the entire trunk, think Q-tip. The bottom portion of the trunk is a straight shot of wood, used to build log lodges.

An article on abcnews.com stated 1.5 million acres are already wiped out and all of the lodge pole pines may be gone in 3 to 5 years. It said the infestation was first noticed in 1996. What the heck takes so long for our agencies to act on anything? I lost my ash tree, and the whole time Bayer brand systemic spray would have worked. By time I applied anything to my tree, it was already too late. I know what I found for news before that. Our state officials said nothing worked against the ash borer…so people failed to act. State officials were wrong!

Colorado officials said, “the infestation was concentrated in five northern Colorado counties straddling the Continental Divide and has reached southern Wyoming.” The amount of trees taken by the beetles increased 1500 percent last year and “forest officials attributed the spread of the beetle to warm winters and drought. Susan Gray, group leader for forest health management with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, said only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles.” Keep an eye on your spruce trees! Spruce and aspen pines are susceptible to the beetle also.

To add insult to injury relative to our trees and forests, the Bush administration looks to weaken the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This rule protects millions of acres of trees in Idaho against the oil, natural gas, timer, and mining industries. According to Earthjustice, Idaho contains more unspoiled wild forest than any state outside Alaska, providing the last intact forest habitat for countless fish, wildlife, and plant species. These areas are enjoyed by hunters, anglers, hikers, and all who treasure the backcountry. Earthjustice disclosed why Bush is pushing the Roadless Rule aside:

The administration’s proposal will open the door to logging millions of pristine acres, risk dangerous toxic contamination from mining, degrade clean fish-bearing streams and important wildlife habitat, and fail to live up to the public’s overwhelming desire to protect all of these areas for future generations.

This forest giveaway could lead to 545 million tons of phosphate being mined on nearly 8,000 unspoiled acres near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Any increase in phosphate mining would worsen the already serious problem of selenium poisoning in local streams and aquifers. Selenium is an extremely dangerous contaminant known to cause birth defects, which bio-accumulates in the food web — persisting for centuries after entering the environment.

Read more about this and sign a petition to stop President Bush before he weakens the Roadless Rule even more. We’re already losing trees and a lot of our landscape from extreme weather, i.e., floods, fires, tornadoes, and now bugs. Does the Bush administration have a clue about conservation? Do they even care? Trees protect us from the sun, and take CO2 out of the air for Pete’s sake, and the powers that be want to give them away to big money.

About the pine beetle infestation:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4133205

More about Bush sidestepping the Roadless Rule: http://www.earthjustice.org/our_work/campaigns/roadless_rule.html
Sign the petition to save our national forests: http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/roadless_ID_0308
 

Watched Oprah’s “Green” show tonight, and learned some things I’ll pass along here.  I know it’s a rerun, but hey, I missed it the first time around.  She handed out reusable cloth grocery bags first, reminding everyone that it takes 1000 years for plastic to break down. I know what most of the ladies in the audience were thinking. How are we supposed to get a huge shopping basket of goods into that little bag? It’s only good for small trips. My answer is to look for grocery stores that recycle those bags in bins in the bottle return area. I don’t throw mine out. I swear I can cram 50 plastic bags into one. I’ve got a trunk full for drop off now. Also look for paper recycling drop offs near your home. I reuse big plastic shopping bags to collect and cart my junk mail and any paper for recycling.

Recycle your clothes, your sports equipment, fitness equipment, appliances, yard gear, aluminum foil, and glass, just about everything. Have yard sales and meet your neighbors. My neighborhood has them all the time. Here are some interesting statistics that were on the show relative to recycling and conservation:

We use 10 billion paper bags per year that takes 14 million trees to produce.
We use 380 billion plastic bags. Try bringing your own, and then recycle.
Junk mail uses 100 million trees and 20 billion gals. of water a year.
We ask for 8 billion ATM receipts a year. It is equal to a roll of paper 2 billion ft. long that would wrap around the equator 15 times.
Using 1 less 2-ply napkin a day will save one billion tons of paper waste per year.
It takes 5 liters of water to make the plastic bottle for just one liter of water. Use re-useable bottles and for Pete’s sake get a water tap filter! New Wave Enviro products have personal reusable plastic bottles with built in filters.
Oh and our little obsession with bottled water costs big money, enough to provide the entire world with clean drinking water.

Some brand names that provide really good green products are 7th Generation, Meyers, Method reusable micro-fiber clothes. And Shaklee has been producing all natural cleaning products for years. People rave about a product called H2. Two drops of the natural cleaner in a container of water will clean everything in your house, and it works.

Americanforest.org is a website where you can buy a tree for $1 each and they will plant it. It’s the least we can do considering. And for absolutely stunning cinematography, do not miss “Planet Earth” on the Discovery Channel. I’ve seen some of it. We were given the care of such a beautiful, majestic planet, and pretty much pigged it up. The DVD and book are also available in stores. This DVD could be thought of as an heirloom for future generations to witness. For those of you out there who have pooh, poohed the poor polar bear this is heart-wrenching stuff. A woman said it changed her life when she watched a polar bear swim, and swim, and swim in what is now open water to the point of exhaustion. He finally found land where he dug the hole that would be his grave. He curled up and died.

For more statistics and tips look for The Green Book a Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen.

A lot of the info came from Sundance at http://www.sundancechannel.com/thegreen.

I just got through reading some current worldwide environmental news and have to say, we don’t seem to have a clear-cut view of anything. What we profess, what we say, and what we actually do is all contrary.  First, I saw the Pope give his blessing and speak on behalf of peace and the environment over the Christmas season to over one billion Catholics. And the World Council of Churches that represents 560 million Christians worldwide is calling concerns over global warming a matter of faith. The WCC has had a program about climate change since 1992 and books about ecotheology (I’m interested).  Dr. Samuel Kobia the Secy. General of the WCC stipulates that Christians are well aware that dominion over all living things was given to us. He said that meant, “We were entrusted with the care of the rest of God’s creation.” The emphasis is on the word “CARE” here.

Care doesn’t come under savagely taking a machete to an orangutan trying to defend it’s young, or hooking a live dolphin in the side and sending it to be stripped of skin before it’s even dead, while the resulting meat is basically poison from ingesting too many pollutants, or shooting 6 elephants dead for stepping into a coffee field that is supposed to be their sanctuary. We should actively try to get this stopped, but our demands for things like lumber and coffee encourage it.  Oh and don’t forget about native animals and the latest Internet hunting websites that have yet to be banned in over 20 states.

I have to say I did not catch all of last night’s CNN “Planet in Peril.” I was into animal rights before the entire environment needed help too. So I was too squeamish to watch the abuse of beautiful creatures, especially those close to extinction. I’ve seen enough. I belong to all types of animal rights groups and read their mail. I don’t sleep well when I see something too extreme, and I mean for a long, long time. Even years later I can picture something horrid I forgot about. Memory is a funny thing. It doesn’t go away easily.

 I just read my National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) newsletter and thought I’d pass on some of the latest news. There is a new plan—again—to sell off some of our national parks. It seems the U.S. is shy of money, (the war), and this is one of the ways this administration plans on making up some of the deficit. So why not sell off some of our national heritage, and to who? … the wealthy of course. Some prime habitat in Greater Yellowstone for bears, elk, and wolves, part of the Greater Cumberland Plateau, all in all 270,000 acres of national forests over 35 states may be up for grabs.
 
     If we sell off all this forest land, continue to have the forest fires that seem to increase every year, strip mine for coal, extract oil from tar sands which also strip mines large swaths of land, and continue the urban sprawl, what do we expect will happen? There is an awful lot going on behind the scenes that everyone assumes has cleared up. Well guess again. The war in Iraq overshadows much.The arctic drilling is not a dead issue either.
 
The Bush administration is eyeballing the Beaufort Sea, a year round polar bear habitat just offshore of Alaska’s Arctic national Wildlife Refuge and Western Arctic Reserve. Does reserve mean anything anymore? I thought we were supposed to be getting past the idea of oil?  Not going to happen until we get an oilman out of office. We have a president that says we need to get away from our dependence on oil and the drills are literally poised to ruin pieces of pristine land everywhere.

Take the tar sands oil development, which is supposed to be one of the most destructive mining techniques of all. The process involves strip-mining large swaths of land and Bush is prepared to offer tens of thousands of acres of it near Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and Glen Canyon wilderness. The terrain would be irreversibly altered forever.

To keep practice up for war games, the Navy plans on blasting thousands of square nautical miles with what is described as “ear-splitting” mid-frequency sound on sea mammals who are trying to survive in their ocean habitat that we are polluting with mercury and garbage from cruise ships to freighters. Coal mining threatens to strip the Rocky Mountain habitat of grizzly bears by taking 40 million tons of coal out of the Flathead River Valley by the Cline Mining Corporation. I’ve talked about the abuse of land from coal mining where mountaintops are literally removed. The plan will establish waste dumps and settling ponds right on top of the headwaters of the Flathead River in BC. It may be happening in Canada but the trouble is that it threatens wildlife downstream in Montana’s Glacier National Park and poisons the watershed region of the Flathead River.

And finally, the federal government threatens the revived wolf population again. I guess they think the wolves were only useful during the last election for scare tactics about terrorism and continuing the war that no one seems to want any longer. First we let wolves populate, and then brutally kill them off. To me it smells of canned hunts. There is no reason to attack wolves en masse this way. It was seen on TV that wolves are territorial. When a recording of another pack is aired via loudspeaker the experiment worked. Wolves that were predatory in that particular area stayed away. There are many humane ways to do business that this big moral society bypasses. If you really care about the wolves contact Governor “Butch” Otter of Idaho and tell him what you think of him. He wants to take the first shot at the wolves and to eliminate at least 75 percent of them. Ditto for the wolves in Yellowstone Park. Remember that big battle to allow them to come back. We did, and now those in power want to kill them off again. See what I mean about playing games with their lives. They were used for the last election, and now abused by the users.

I think we’re all feeling a little abused these days.

Eminent Domain is a well-known issue in Monroe County. Signs “No Eminent Domain” sprouted across lawns in Erie against the railroad. Michigan is one of nine states with ballot issues in the recent election that resulted in restricting eminent domain. We know the problem well. Eminent domain is a landowner’s worst nightmare next to Mother Nature. It strips a citizen of property rights in a blink much like a tornado that is seen and gone.

Frank Eathorne, a 3^rd generation rancher in Wyoming voted for Bush-Cheney and didn’t mind the big oil and gas boom that brought jobs and

royalties to the state. He figured it couldn’t be all that bad, until it hit home. Frank thought he owned 32,000 acres. Turns out he only owns the grass on top. The federal government owns most of what is beneath. Washington has no ethics where oil is concerned. Frank built a new home in a far corner of his property to get away from the noise of 40 oil wells, 80 miles of pipeline, and 3 railroad tracks.

Why should we care? Frank voted for the environmental grinches. The federal government is doing this everywhere though. In a year-end push, the Republican Congress is going to hit the floor in support of anything big energy. Our national parks and forests are up for grabs. “The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service have been selling long term leases of wild, pristine public lands to oil and gas companies determined to lock them up for development for decades,” Earthjustice Newsletter Dec. 2006. The federal government wants to poke around our public lands without review of consequences for the environment. Some examples:

• The BLM tried to lease the remaining 389,000 acres of previously protected land in Alaska. The entire Arctic coast in Alaska outside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would belong to oil and gas developers.

• Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule was tossed. It protected 50 million acres of wild national forests and grasslands from building roads, logging, and development. It was a powerful tool against developers. A federal court judge has only recently reinstated it.
• The Bush Administration has habitually tried to permit drilling in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming
• The BLM is trying to open 90% of New Mexico’s Chihuahua Desert to drilling. It is a biologically diverse desert ecosystem and an energy developer’s land grab.
• In 2005, the Forest Service opened up 52,075 acres to new drilling in forests.

Closer to home, the AuSable River’s South Branch area is being threatened by Savoy Energy. Michigan’s Dept. of Environmental Quality approved a permit to drill near the secluded spot. The state owned 5,300 acres of wilderness surrounds miles of the AuSable’s South Branch. It is the Mason Tract and one of the greatest trout fishing areas in the lower 48. George W. Mason, an auto industrialist donated the land to preserve the experience of the river and the wild. The state owns the top land. The federal government own the subsurface mineral rights. This area is in trouble. A road was started, destroying the old forest area of the south branch. Earthjustice has halted the progress for now.

How do the feds get around drilling in areas that are protected? It’s called slant drilling. If they can’t legitimately let big energy drill somewhere, they lease the surrounding land to set up slant drills. They drill at an angle into the ground beneath the protected land. Los Padres National Forest has 20 such drills around one end of its perimeter. Some of the drills are positioned near sensitive habitats. One is near Lake Piru already listed as impaired by the EPA. It’s not just about a couple of drills.  As Frank found, there are also deep wells and miles of pipeline. Expanded oil drilling in Los Padres will also emit 12,179 more pounds of air pollutants per day.

This is an awful lot of activity on behalf of fossil fuels by the federal government. Aren’t we  repositioning ourselves for new sources of renewable energy? It looks like we’re hearing the old “fork tongue” again.  We need to voice our concerns to congress and push for alternatives. We need incentives for companies that think green. We need to stop the demand for fossil fuels that gives the wrong people power.  Our land has been high-jacked. The song says “This land is your land, this land is my land.” And I want it back!

 
 
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