Free Republic

Near a northwest Boulder home early Tuesday, wildlife officers fired non-lethal bean bags at an adult mountain lion that was feeding on a deer carcass -- adding to the growing list of sightings and animal attacks in the neighborhood in recent weeks. A woman had her Jack Russell terrier taken by a lion Dec. 24 outside her home ... residents down the road have reported a family of lions drinking at their backyard pond; and Colorado Division of Wildlife officers have fielded several reports of sightings in the neighborhood. Tuesday, they found two animal carcasses within a few blocks. "People...

Wolves in Idaho have killed 325 cattle, sheep and dogs so far in 2008, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game says. "You can't just keep stuffing wolves on top of each other,"

The United States Department of the Interior oversees 507 million acres -- mostly in the West -- of national parks, national monuments, wildlife refuges, Indian reservations, and rangelands. Through its Bureau of Reclamation, it maintains over 600 dams with reservoirs that provide water and hydropower to 30 million Westerners, and irrigates 60% of the vegetables grown in America. Almost 70% of the nation's oil and gas reserves are found on Bureau of Land Management administered lands, also under the purview of the Interior Department. ... Speaking of the green-sainted Babbitt, we may see a return to the bad old '90s,...

A federal trapper continues hunting for the wolves that have now killed five cows in the Big Hole Valley. Graham McDougal with U.S. Wildlife Services hasn't been able to kill any wolves from the pack, said Carolyn Sime, wolf program manager with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The pack has killed five cows and injured another ... Sime said ...she understands why Giem is frustrated with the problem but the wolves have remained elusive. "I share his frustration," she said. "It's one of those tough deals where wolves are just running around so much that it's really...

Billings, Mont. (AP) -- A judge has put gray wolves in the Northern Rockies back on the endangered species list about seven months after the federal government took them off. The order from U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula means the federal government must either drop or overhaul its proposal to strip wolves of federal protection — a process likely to drag on for at least several months.

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency permitter was surprised to hear Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. blame her agency when it pulled out of the Kensington gold mine permit process. While the company announced EPA comments on the environmental review of the mine would trigger months of delay, EPA scientist Patty McGrath was expecting they would be addressed in a couple of weeks. "They made this decision on their own, without discussing it with us first, which is why we don't understand why they're pointing to our comments as the reason for the delay," McGrath said. Coeur announced it was canceling the...

Officials with Wild Earth Guardians filed a petition Tuesday under the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act asking the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to develop a recovery plan for wolves in the Southern Rocky Mountains. At the same time, Catron County commissioners in New Mexico are calling for the removal of a non-collared wolf causing predation against domestic pets and livestock in their area. The expansive region WildEarth Guardians seeks to open to wolves includes much of western Colorado, northern New Mexico and south-central Wyoming. On the other side of the wolf debate, Catron County commissioners in...

A conservation group officially notified the city of San Francisco Wednesday intends to sue over alleged harm to two federally protected species on a city-owned golf course in Pacifica. The Center for Biological Diversity claims activities at San Francisco's Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica are harming and killing California red-legged frogs and San Francisco garter snakes in violation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The California red-legged frog is listed as a threatened species and the San Francisco garter snake is classified as an endangered species under the law. The law requires submission of a 60-day notice of intent...

BARROW, ALASKA -- Federal scientists flying over the Arctic Ocean last month spotted something nearly unprecedented during their annual count of bowhead whales: nine polar bears in the open sea, miles from anywhere. One was swimming 60 miles off Barrow. A flight a week or so later found five bears plying their way through the swells. The findings wouldn't have been so alarming -- they are powerful swimmers -- except that their likely destination, the sea ice on which the predators depend for survival, had retreated 400 miles offshore.

The first-ever scientific census shattered earlier estimates that said there were at least 250-350 bears roaming the area. More recent data placed the minimum population at around 563 bears. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is in charge of regulating endangered species, is currently reviewing the bears' status in Montana as part of a five-year review required by the Endangered Species Act. The study's results will help biologists determine whether the bear still needs federal protection, a conclusion due out early next year.

PARIS (AFP) – An orbiting observatory has spotted a massive cluster of galaxies in deep space that can only be explained by the exotic phenomenon known as dark energy, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday. Spotted in a scan by ESA's orbiting X-ray telescope XMM-Newton, the cluster's mass is about 1,000 times that of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, it said. The huge cluster, known by its catalogue number of 2XMM J083026+524133, lies 7.7 billion light years from Earth and helps confirm the existence of dark energy, the agency said. Under this hypothesis, most of the Universe...

WASHINGTON — Compared to the polar bear, the American pika is downright tiny. Weighing only 4 ounces to 6 ounces, this small, rabbitlike mammal with thick brown hair that lives on boulder-covered slopes near alpine meadows in Western mountain ranges, could represent the latest effort to use the Endangered Species Act to combat global warming. Environmentalists filed a lawsuit today in U.S. district court in Sacramento, Calif., to force the Bush administration to decide whether to list the pika for protection under the act. The lawsuit claims the animal is threatened by rising temperatures and says the U.S. Fish and...

Bill Berry — 8/19/2008 5:18 am It's not yet Labor Day, and those of us who still adhere to old-school election rituals are pledged to keep politics at arm's length until we get past the last barbecue. So let's refrain from asking that old crowd stopper, "Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?" Something could always change between now and Sept. 1. The economy might surge, gas prices may plummet, America's standing in the rest of the world could rise. It's possible that peace and prosperity would re-emerge. Let's wait just in case. Still, it's hard...

The Associated Press reported Monday details of a proposal by the Interior and Commerce departments that would change how the 1973 law is implemented, allowing federal agencies to decide for themselves - without seeking the opinions of government wildlife experts - whether dams, highways and other projects have the potential to harm endangered species and habitats. Current law requires federal agencies to consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service if a project poses so much as a remote risk to species or habitats. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne defended the changes in a call...

WASHINGTON, DC, August 12, 2008 (ENS) - The Bush administration has proposed sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act, releasing a plan to give federal agencies the authority to decide without expert consultation whether their activities could harm endangered and threatened species. Administration officials contend the proposal will make the law easier to implement, but critics say the plan would undermine federal protection of imperiled plants and animals. Announced Monday by the head of the U.S. Interior Department, the proposed changes would relax the current requirement that federal agencies consult with federal wildlife experts to ensure activities they undertake or...

SCIENTISTS have been stunned by the discovery of a shark that had eaten a polar bear. Part of the jaw of a young polar bear was found in the stomach of a Greenland shark in Svalbard, northern Norway. Kit Kovacs, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said: "We've never heard of this before. "We don't know how it got there. We can't say whether or not the shark took a swimming young bear or ate a carcase.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The administration of US President George W. Bush has proposed revisions to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) so that the law can not be used to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases. The new regulations would reduce reviews by government scientists that have been mandatory whenever federal agencies propose projects such as dams or highways that could threaten endangered species...

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today the State of Alaska has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This action follows written notice given more than 60 days ago to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior and Director Dale Hall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the regulation listing the polar bear as threatened be withdrawn.“We believe that the Service’s decision to list...

<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The state of Alaska sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Monday, seeking to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.</p> <p>Gov. Sarah Palin and other state officials fear a listing will cripple offshore oil and gas development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in Alaska's northern waters, which provide prime habitat for the only polar bears under U.S. jurisdiction.</p>

It is time, says a U of T biologist, that we began 'to think of humans as part of the natural world' July 13, 2008 Murray Whyte Staff Reporter Consider the Jefferson salamander. About average-finger length, its grey skin mottled with black. Amphibious, spawning in Southern Ontario's quickly vanishing woodland vernal pools. Prognosis: Dying. Now, the urban raccoon. Plump and furry, not so adept at fishing as its rural cousins, perhaps, but expert at garbage-tipping. An adaptable squatter in buildings both abandoned and, as homeowners near High Park well know, occupied. Prognosis: Thriving. The tiny Jefferson, its numbers dwindling to...

Gray wolves in the greater Yellowstone area of the northern Rocky Mountains, which would have been fair game for hunters in three states as a result of a federal government decision in March, were again put under the protections of the Endangered Species Act by a judge in Montana on Friday. The action by the judge, Donald W. Molloy of Federal District Court, took the form of a preliminary injunction and could be reversed. But Judge Molloy’s language showed serious reservations about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove endangered species protections for the wolves. Environmental groups, including Defenders...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced it has removed the Preble's meadow jumping mouse populations in Wyoming from protection under the Endangered Species Act. The service said it is also amended the listing for Preble's to indicate the subspecies remains threatened in the Colorado portion of its range. "For Colorado basically nothing changes," A new management plant with a new critical habitat map will be developed by 2010... The determination is based on a better understanding of the distribution of and threats to Preble's meadow jumping mouse populations in Wyoming and Colorado

Bob McLeod is all in favour of protecting Arctic polar bears. But he thinks the Bush administration is being "hypocritical" by trying to do it at the expense of American big game hunters, who spend millions each year seeking polar bear trophies in Canada's North. McLeod, the Northwest Territories' minister of human resources, on Monday opened a four-day trip in Washington to protest a Department of the Interior decision in May that prohibits the import of polar bear hides from Canada. The import ban was automatically triggered when the U.S. listed polar bears as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act,...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain this week reversed his position and drew environmentalists' wrath when he came out in favor of lifting the federal ban on offshore oil drilling. Mr. McCain apparently realizes he needs motorists' votes more than environmentalists' endorsements. Better late than never. Rising gasoline prices have focused voters' attention. A poll last October in the San Francisco Bay Area found 69 percent willing to pay an additional 10-cent gasoline tax to "fight global warming." This week only 37 percent liked the idea. The federal government imposing costly greenhouse-gas restrictions was the latest Capitol Hill fad until rising...

Environmentalists have their thongs in a wad because the Bush administration has given oil companies permission to "annoy" and "potentially harm" polar bears. This past week, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations that give legal protection to seven oil companies that are planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. Out of the estimated 25,000 polar bears in the Arctic, about 2,000 supposedly live in or around the Chukchi Sea. Of course, the environmentalists are throwing a fit because they believe that this gives oil companies a blank check to...

ASHINGTON - Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to...

A judge awarded more than $4.2 million to a late Nevada rancher's estate after finding that the U.S. Forest Service engaged in an unconstitutional "taking" of water rights out of hostility to the rancher, a property rights activist. The decision ... involved the Fifth Amendment clause against private property being taken for public use without just compensation. The rancher, Wayne Hage, bought the sprawling Pine Creek Ranch in central Nevada in 1978. the taking occurred when the Forest Service made it impossible for Hage to maintain irrigation ditches, which deprived the ranch of water and made it unviable. The government...

The habitat of cane toads is spreading across Australia and the poisonous amphibians are decimating populations of freshwater crocodiles, according to a leading biologist. Dr Mike Letnic, of Sydney University, says scores of crocodiles in the tropical, northern region have died after eating toads. His team visited the Victoria River district of the Northern Territory. "[In 2006] we counted more than 600 crocodiles and in 2007 we counted less than 400," he said. "There were dead crocs everywhere. The only thing that had changed between visits was that cane toads had moved through the river system."

"I grew up in San Rafael, in a household where we competed to see how many dishes we could fit in a dishwasher, to not be wasteful of water and energy. My mother was a relatively celebrated local environmentalist in Marin County in the 1970s, before it was hip. She was on the board of Save the Whales.... My colleagues at the Academy of Sciences are incredible experts at identifying and describing new species. My job is to map the knowledge they have provided about life on earth into patterns.... If we don't have a place for species to go,...

After five years of futile efforts to find or confirm sightings of any Caribbean monk seals — even just one — the U.S. government on Friday announced that the species is officially extinct and the only seal to vanish due to human causes.

Dead lodgepole pines turned into products from pellet fuel to pens. millions of beetle- kill pines in the nearby hills and mountains could explode into a fire ... But locals also realize that using the wood for beetle-kill products is just a start - and not a silver bullet. "There's little stuff going on, but not near what we need," ... But, still, he's grateful. "Small steps lead to big trips," ... Dead and dying lodgepole acreage in Colorado has grown to 1.5 million since the first signs of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in 1996... homes, property and lives...

Polar Bears Endangered - By Greenie Bureaucrats By Humberto Fontova There are roughly twice as many polar bears in the world today as thirty years ago. But on May 14th U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a “threatened species.” In 1972 the creatures had already lost value in the U.S. when the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited their hunting in Alaska. (And no, it's not the hunting ban that caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.) After 1972 U.S. hunters started hunting polar...

Fresh off a successful campaign to get polar bears declared a threatened species, a conservation group today petitioned to provide Endangered Species Act protections to the bears' main prey because of global warming. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to list ringed seals and two other species - spotted and bearded seals - as threatened or endangered. All three seals live in the Bering, Chukchi or Beaufort seas off Alaska's coast and depend on sea ice that is receding rapidly, according to the petition. "Ice is essential for them to give birth and rear their...

Alaska Suing U.S. Gov't over extra Polar-Bear Safeguards Written by Reuters Thursday, 22 May 2008 The state of Alaska is suing the U.S. government to stop it listing the polar bear as a threatened species. Gov. Sarah Palin says an endangered-species designation will slow development in her state. The Republican governor has argued that the ice-dependent bear, the first mammal granted Endangered Species Act listing because of global warming, does not need additional protections, as mandated by U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. " We believe that the listing was unwarranted and that it's unprecedented to list a currently healthy...

A conservation group gave notice Tuesday that it will sue to force federal action on a petition to list the Pacific walrus as a threatened species because of threats from global warming and offshore petroleum development. The deadline was May 8 for an initial 90-day review of the petition by the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to Center for Biological Diversity attorney Brendan Cummings. The group filed the petition in February. Shaye Wolf, a biologist and lead author of the petition, said Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than the best predictions of climate models. "As the sea ice...

SPECIES STATUS: Unreliable data, threat to energy development cited. By DAN JOLING The Associated Press The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday. She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.

A preventive war worked out so well in Iraq that Washington last week launched another. The new preventive war -- the government responding forcefully against a postulated future threat -- has been declared on behalf of polar bears, the first species whose supposed jeopardy has been ascribed to global warming. The Interior Department, bound by the Endangered Species Act, has declared polar bears a "threatened" species because they might be endangered "in the foreseeable future," meaning 45 years. (Note: 45 years ago, the now-long-forgotten global cooling menace of 35 years ago was not yet foreseen.) The bears will be threatened...

After 18 years of a law practice devoted to counseling landowners, home builders and commercial interests affected by the long arm and severe penalties of the Endangered Species Act, I am used to incredulous looks and outraged oaths from clients coming to grips with the Act's incredible burdens on impacted private citizens. "Are you telling me I can't build my Burger King because a Delhi Sands flower-loving fly that has never been seen and is above ground only a few days a year might be near-by?" "I can't build a connector road because the noise from construction might damage the...

If Secretary of the Interior Kempthorne announces that the polar bear is now officially "threatened," the impacts on the American economy will be extreme and almost certainly not anticipated or understood by the public at large.The Endangered Species Act operates in a very unaccountable fashion, and if the polar bear is listed as a "threatened" species, every federal action --the grant of a permit, the award of a grant-- that leads even indirectly to the emission of greenhouse gases will come under at least the theoretical review of the United States Fish & Wildlife Service pursuant to Section 7 of...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today announced that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.  This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened species. In making the announcement, Kempthorne said,...

A FEDERAL judge in Cal ifornia last month or dered the Interior De partment to decide by this Friday whether to list polar bears as a threatened species because of global warming. It's a fine chance for the Bush administration to stand up for common-sense environmentalism and sound science. You see, polar bears are thriving - and will do so under all but the most speculative scenarios of global-warming apocalypse. Any "threatened" listing would be absurd. The case started with a lawsuit filed by Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005. To settle it, the Fish and Wildlife...

US lists polar bear as threatened species By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago Government officials say the Interior Department has decided to protect the polar bear as a threatened species because of global warming. The officials told The Associated Press the bears are threatened by the decline in Arctic sea ice. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement was to come from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. He scheduled a news conference Wednesday. The action comes a day before a court-imposed deadline on deciding whether the bear should be put under the protection of...

Thursday is the deadline set by a federal judge in Alaska for the Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether the polar bear is a threatened or endangered species. All the evidence shows the polar bear doesn’t need his help. Environmental groups petitioned for such a listing and sued when a decision was not forthcoming by the deadline. They claimed that global warming had already diminished polar ice, would continue to do so and doom the estimated 23,000 or so bears to extinction by perhaps 2050. If the bears were listed, the service would be obliged to designate “critical habitat.”...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - An American Indian who shot a bald eagle for use in a tribal religious ceremony must stand trial, a federal appeals court has ruled. A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Thursday reversed a 2006 lower court ruling that dismissed a criminal charge against Winslow Friday, a Northern Arapaho Indian who has acknowledged shooting a bald eagle in 2005 during the tribe's Sun Dance. In dismissing the charge, U.S. District Judge William Downes of Wyoming said the federal government has shown "callous indifference" to American Indian religious beliefs. Eagle feathers are...

Six federally protected sea lions were apparently shot to death on the Columbia River as they lay in open traps put out to ensnare the animals, which eat endangered salmon. State and federal authorities are investigating. The discovery came one day after three elephant seals were found shot to death at a breeding ground in central California. Trapping will be suspended during the investigation, said Rick Hargrave, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife who was at the scene Sunday.

State and federal authorities said they are investigating the deaths of six sea lions found dead at the Columbia River traps. They appeared to have been shot. The bodies of four California sea lions and two Steller sea lions were found at the traps early Sunday afternoon. There were two California sea lions and one Steller sea lion at each of two traps just below the Bonneville Dam. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and federal investigators are treating the area as a crime scene. Both species of sea lion are federally protected but Oregon and Washington state are...

Apr. 4 - Palestinian fishermen catch and kill a giant sea turtle, thought to be a Leatherback, an endangered species. The rare giant sea turtle caught on a beach near Gaza City was slaughtered and eaten by Palestinian fishermen who said its blood was an aphrodisiac, among other therapeutic qualities. A Reuters cameraman said the fishermen collected the giant turtle's blood and gave it to children suffering from trauma and adults with back problems.

Scientists have begun moving the Mojave Desert's flagship species, the desert tortoise, to make room for tank training at the Army's Fort Irwin despite protests by some conservationists. The controversial project, billed as the largest desert tortoise move in California history, involves transferring 770 endangered reptiles from Army land to a dozen public plots overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Fort Irwin has sought to expand its 643,000-acre training site into tortoise territory for two decades. The Army said it needs an extra 131,000 acres to accommodate faster tanks and longer-range weapons used each month to train some...

WASHINGTON — With little- noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.