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
 

In 1880, Leadville, CO was a silver mining town with a population of about 40,000 people. By 2005, Leadville had less than 2700 citizens but as a part of Lake County with close to 8000 residents, the area and its citizens are in serious danger from those old mining camps. I wanted to find out more about Leadville so I looked at Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia Leadville was full of lead about 1 million short tons but also produced over 2.9 million ounces of gold, 240 million ounces of silver, 785 thousand short tons of zinc and 53 thousand short tons of copper.

Many years of mining left behind substantial contamination of the soil and water, so that the EPA designated some former mining sites in Leadville as Superfund sites designated for clean up. Wikipedia stated that according to authorities, the town is now 98% cleaned up and the Superfund designation is about to expire. Well guess again.

The Lake County Commissioners declared a state of emergency in Colorado today. As I understand it, because mines are hollow, the water that seeps down the walls and across the floor may carry with it toxic contaminants like lead. If allowed to run free as surface water runoff, it poses a hazardous waste problem to the area. During WWII the Bureau of Mines dug drainage tunnels to direct and contain the runoff.  The Leadville mines tunnel was later sold to the Bureau of Reclamation as many of them were. According to an article in the Vail Daily News, “in 1992, a lawsuit by the Sierra Club prompted the construction of the tunnel treatment plant.” And everyone was supposed to live happily ever after.

However, there is a cave in somewhere in that mine now blocking the tunnel, and water is building up on the one side of the cave-in due to heavy snowfall and ice melt. It’s building up to a tune of “over a billion gallons of toxic acid and metal-laden water to form a pool at the headwaters of the Arkansas River, according to Commissioner Hickman. He explained that the water is now nearly 200 feet high and continues to apply pressure against the cave-in.” The same Vail Daily article said that the Denver Post stated “snow pack levels in the Upper Arkansas Valley are 163 percent of normal,” so more water than ever is going to continue to apply pressure. Commissioner Hickman said that he is afraid that the environmental degradation of the Arkansas River will be beyond anyone’s comprehension if the whole thing explodes. Lately, there appears to be a back-up situation from Leadville’s mine tunnel to the California Gulch tunnel treatment plant also.

The Bureau of Reclamation knows about the problem, has taken some steps but is moving too slowly for the commissioners. The commissioners should be on edge. This administration is not known for its quick action during human disasters, or for their prevention. The Bureau of Reclamation has been accused of failing to warn citizens when the Teton Dam in Idaho gave way in 1976. Fourteen people died and 300,000 acre-feet of water surged through the area causing one billion dollars in damages. A couple of Senators, Salazar and Wiens, have voiced their concern over the Leadville tunnel. Salazar accused the Bureau of not cooperating with the EPA or Colorado’s Dept. of Health. Other than that nothing much has been done as the water continues to build. There is a trailer park situated right where the water will rush through if the dam gives way.

All I can think of is the recent push to mine all over the country again eventually leaving more void pockets like the existing abandoned mines in Leadville. Mountain top strip mining, coal mining, and even in Michigan, mining for copper is on the agenda once again. Look at the age of the mines in Leadville that are still causing a problem and costing millions from the Superfund to clean up or contain. The U.S. hasn’t fully remedied the problems from mines that over 100 years old, but is willing to invest in new mining all over the country again? Add to that the Bureau of Reclamation’s failure to act on the behalf of citizen’s safety as it has in the past, and even though the EPA has pressured them with concern about this particular tunnel for years. Since, I don’t have much faith in the Bush EPA, this must be really bad for them to pay attention. It’s bad enough for us to pay attention and keep a watchful thumb on excessive mining in the future, especially for filthy fossil fuel like coal.

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20080214/NEWS/972891293.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadville,_Colorado.

 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.