Free Republic

Bush Seeks $100M for Land Conservation By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Writer January 30, 2002, 10:14 PM EST WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will ask Congress to fund a $100 million program to encourage private landowners to take up conservation projects with public land managers and local communities. "Conservation is a responsibility of citizenship, and the citizens who live on the land often know more than anyone else about the land and how to conserve it," said Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who plans to announce the new program Thursday at Pennsylvania's John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum. "Our ...

Colorado Dunes Closer to Park Status By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Writer January 30, 2002, 7:45 PM EST WASHINGTON -- Congress' efforts to convert the tallest sand dunes in North America into a Colorado national park and wildlife refuge took a big step Wednesday with a private conservation group buying a huge ranch next to it. The Nature Conservancy said it is spending $31.28 million to purchase the 97,000-acre Baca Ranch and two 14,000-foot peaks in southern Colorado, next to Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve. The ranch's plentiful aquifer keeps the 750-foot-high dunes intact and nourishes the ...

After 75 Years, Still No Relief In Sight! (The U.S. Forest Service must end the cover-up.) By Donald R. Soeken, Ph.D: 01.30.02 GAP MILLS, W. VA.-The French philosopher Albert Camus probably said it best: "There comes a time in every man's life when to remain silent is to lie." At the tender age of 60, I can no longer remain silent about the U.S. Government's incredible - and continuing - denial of my rights as a property owner in the great state of West Virginia. Since 1975, when I purchased more than 300 acres of forest land in Monroe ...

Klamath Crisis affect ranchers as well as farmers By Jeffry Mullins: 01.30.02 While cattle ranchers across the West suffered through another year of drought last year, those in the Klamath Basin faced even greater losses when the federal government abruptly cut off irrigation water. The plight of ranchers such as Mike Byrne of Tulelake, Calif., hasn't received as much publicity as those of potato and onion farmers. Byrne said ranching operations are scattered mostly around the edges of the basin. Along with farmers, the ranchers have rights to irrigation water from Upper Klamath Lake under a century-old irrigation project. ...

Lynx Fraud: Why are these folks not in jail? I am outraged by the fact that the American people have been subjected to fraud by officials from the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife who planted false evidence of a Canadian Lynx on three occasions in our national forests. The seven federal and state scientists were participating in a three-year survey to determine lynx habitat that would establish land-use restrictions in 16 states and 57 national forests. These criminals say they submitted the false samples to test laboratory accuracy. ...

All in the Name of Environmental Protection... How the Feds and Eco-Elitists Take Private Land for Fun and Profit By Tom DeWeese Those who have read George Orwell’s classic book, "Animal Farm" will be familiar with the phrase "everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others." The line was used by the ruling pigs in the story to justify why they were giving themselves special privileges over the other animals. It was necessary, you see, that the leaders have the best – the better to deal with the pressing issues of State. Citizens of communist countries (the political ...

If you can't steal the land through the front door, then make sure you have the back door open and ready. This is now standard operating procedure in the United States Congress and so it was in the wee hours of December 20th as Congress rushed to adjourn for the Christmas holiday. The result was "Son of CARA," yet another attack on the ownership of property in America.For more than two years, property rights advocates have been fighting a desperate battle to stop the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA). Enactment of CARA would have assured the largest federal land ...

Preliminary project strategy gives higher water priority to farmers A preliminary water management strategy released by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation today would grant significantly greater priority to farmers in the battle for water in the Upper Klamath Basin. A draft biological assessment for the Klamath Reclamation Project’s 2002 operations states anyone who wants to use water for purposes other than irrigation, including protection of endangered fish, should buy the water from farmers. The move by the Bureau of Reclamation, likely to draw determined opposition, represents a complete turnabout from government policy in recent years, when the highest priority for ...

Convoys backing farmers to return 01/28/02 By ANITA BURKE The organizers of three relief convoys that brought aid and attention to the Klamath Basin last summer have started planning three more convoys for this spring. Although plans are still preliminary, Klamath Bucket Brigade Inc. and the Nevada-based Jarbidge Shovel Brigade intend to put together convoys that will depart from Maine, Virginia and Florida this spring, said Bill Ransom, a Bucket Brigade organizer. “There’s a general interest ... across the United States,” he said. “We’re finding people all over the country are interested in helping.” Plans tentatively call for the ...

Health & Science: Environmentalists, Forest Service debate Sierra Nevada logging plan Copyright © 2002 AP Online By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press RENO, Nev. (January 27, 2002 8:25 a.m. EST) - The federal government and environmentalists engaged in a bitter dispute over the answer to a thorny question: Are burned trees no longer alive? The debate has resurfaced as the Forest Service tries to log fire-killed trees in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere in the West as part of an effort to reduce fire threats. Environmentalists have successfully appealed to suspend logging in some cases, arguing that many trees are ...

Scientific findings run counter to theory of global warming Joseph Perkins SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE January 25, 2002 Oh dear. What will the doomsayers say now? How will they explain away yet two more scientific studies that clearly contradict the global warming orthodoxy? For much of the past 14 years, since the United Nations created its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we've been warned that human activity is overheating the planet. And nowhere is that supposed to be more evident than in Antarctica, the proverbial bellwether for planetary climate change. Indeed, in recent years there have been any number of scary ...

To: President George W. Bush, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, United States Congress, Western State Governors Seven employees from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and Washington state falsified data during a three year study of the habitat of the Canadian lynx in Washington state. They submitted hair samples from captive lynx and tried to pass them off as wild. None of the scientists were fired! They were sent to counseling and given different jobs. The lynx survey would have been used to establish land-use rules in 16 states and 57 national forests. These agencies are falsifying ...

Subject: CENTER-RIGHT, Issue 194, Jan 24, 2002 Date: 24 Jan 2002 23:49:57 -0000 From: "Center-Right" Reply-To: center-right-feedback-103@lb.bcentral.com To: List Member   CENTER-RIGHT, a free weeklyish e-newsletter of centrist, conservative, and libertarian ideas. Issue 194, Jan 24, 2002 Over 2600 subscribers Check out (and link to) our Web site http://www.center-right.org/ PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD THIS to anyone you think might be interested. ======================================================== "Centers for Development Control" by Dave Shiflett, from http://www.TechCentralStation.com, Jan. 14, 2002   In a development watched closely by those of us who live beyond the city limits, doctors and researchers from the Centers for Disease ...

Fellow Freepers, we are proud to present the new Free Republic Network! We have been working for several months to plan and implement a greatly expanded version of the Free Republic Network, which will feature a new array of services for Network Chapters, and new relationships with some of the most successful conservative organizations. The new Network is dedicated to providing services for two types of organizations, Affiliates/Chapters and Strategic Partners, and to training and supporting individual conservative activists. Affiliates are independent grassroots organizations for which the Network will provide key services, such as information on setting up a ...

January 14, 2001 Recent Advertising Campaign The Center for Consumer Freedom has started running a series of full page ads in national magazines exposing some of the goals and actions of groups that are extremist in nature and generally feel that their beliefs should dictate your actions. The first three ads in the series can be seen below. Click here to hear the PETA quote by Bruce Friedrich that we used in the first PETA advertisement. Search ConsumerFreedom.com for more information on PETA and Greenpeace. Sign up to get the ConsumerFreedom's daily headlines.   For more information about the campaign, ...

Ranchers win big in court By Tom Jackson King, Managing Editor It took a quarter of a million dollars and three years, but local rancher Jeff Menges and the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association have won a major ruling on how cattle grazing can occur on federal public lands in Arizona.On Dec. 17, the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled three to zero that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service could not prohibit cattle grazing on public lands designated as "critical habitat" for endangered species, but where there is no sign any endangered species is currently ...

There are environmentalists, and then there are Doolittle environmentalists. The former is a pretty sharp group. The latter is a sub-culture right up there with the Moonies, snake handlers and charter members of the Will and Grace fan club.Dr. Doolittle was not an environmentalist. He was a fictional character who spoke to fictional animals. Unfortunately, many of the folks who rant about man's destruction of nature are ingrained with a Doolittle Complex. Those who mindlessly oppose domestic energy exploration and necessary drilling in the ANWAR, the anti-timber, anti-rancher, anti-meat, anti-mining, anti-anything adherents of PETA, The Fund For Animals, Earth First, ...

Global Warming Natural, May End Within 20 Years, Says Ohio State University Researcher COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Global warming is a natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years, predicts an Ohio State University researcher. The researcher suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide -- often thought of as a key "greenhouse gas" -- is not the cause of global warming. The opposite is most likely to be true, according to Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering. It is the rising global temperatures that are naturally increasing the ...

Westerners have for years believed themselves the target of a national government in league with environmental extremists out to destroy their traditional way of life and deny them the use of the land that makes that way of life possible. Now, it appears that the Westerners have proof not only of the existence of a war against them, but of the willingness of their enemies within the environmental movement and federal government agencies to lie, cheat and misuse the law to accomplish their ends. Indeed, for perhaps the first time, the proof that even paranoids have enemies is coming to ...

Naked Greens By Lowell Ponte Now that new scientific evidence is turning against them, many Greens to advance their own selfishness, ideology and hypocrisy are now turning against science. continue…