Free Republic

Deal Finalized to Sell 12,000 Acres Canaan Valley Wetlands to Federal Government CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - A Maryland-based utility completed on Thursday the $16 million sale of 12,000 acres of wetlands the federal government will add to the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Allegheny Energy Inc., Sen. Robert C. Byrd, Rep. Alan Mollohan and others announced the sale to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "With this transaction, we are confident the acreage will be dedicated to helping preserve the largest freshwater wetland area in central and southern Appalachia," said Alan Noia, Allegheny's chairman, president and chief executive officer. ...

BLM to Restrict Travel on 330,000 acresin Kremmling [COLORADO] Region Access and use of North Sand Hills Special Recreation Management Area in question The BLM is now implementing its OHV Management Strategy developed during the last few days of the Clinton administration. The predetermined goal is to implement travel management plans restricting travel to existing or, even worse, designated trails. The motorized community needs to voice its concerns over a hastily designed strategy that is now going to be hastily implemented before the BLM has gained the necessary expertise to make OHV-related decisions. These scoping meetings are designed so that ...

Voting On Lies And Misinformation Sheriff Michael E. Cook 02.13.02 Well the people here in good old Oregon are upset once more. It now looks like the court will decide if our assisted suicide law makes it or not, based on the Constitution. I hear the same thing every day, "The people passed it so it should stand." Well the people have no right to pass an Unconstitutional law, just like our elected representatives have no right to pass one. So if it can't pass the muster then it must go away. Oregon has many problems with our initiative ...

Farmers clean up vandalism 02/13/02 By KEHN GIBSON The Bureau of Reclamation has decided to not pursue vandalism charges against those who painted figures in the agency’s parking lot after the perpetrators agreed to clean up after themselves. Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger said investigators identified suspects within hours after body outlines of “dead” farmers were spray painted in the parking lot of the bureau’s office at 6600 Washburn Way. Numerous protest signs were hung on a nearby fence. Evinger met Tuesday with three bureau officials to discuss the case. “They did not want to escalate the situation, and ...

Public lands in Lower 48 feared vulnerable in energy debate By CHRISTOPHER THORNE Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - With much of the public debate over drilling on public lands centered on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, western conservationists fear that a national energy policy now being developed will strip protections from 300 million acres of public lands in the lower 48 states. The Senate is scheduled to begin debate this week on a Democratic energy bill that was introduced in response to a bill adopted last year by the GOP-held House that mirrored President Bush's energy ...

Report: EPA Gives $2B to Nonprofits Tue Feb 12, 4:52 PM ET By LARRY MARGASAK and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) has given more than $2 billion to nonprofit groups since 1993, often without competitive bidding, an Associated Press computer analysis found. The agency's internal watchdog says some groups may have received favored treatment. The grants went to a wide variety of groups including environmental lobbies that sue the agency and senior citizen centers that function like temporary worker agencies. Among the grants listed in agency documents as awarded ...

Elko officials outraged over Flora accusation By JEFFRY MULLINS, Associate Editor ELKO -- Local officials were outraged today by Gloria Flora's accusations that they committed eco-terrorism. "We were just standing up for our rights, protecting our property rights and our rights to access our public lands," said Assemblyman John Carpenter, R-Elko. Carpenter said Flora was the real eco-terrorist. "I think that's what she committed when she ruined that road," he said, explaining that the Forest Service dumped fill on South Canyon Road to close it off after the county had cleared it. She's the one that committed eco-terrorism, not ...

<p>The Senate passed an election-year farm bill Wednesday that boosts subsidies for grain and cotton growers and doubles spending on conservation programs.</p> <p>Unlike a House-passed bill, the Senate legislation would impose strict new limits on the payments that any one farm could receive. Some subsidies are now essentially unlimited.</p>

Washington: A radical environmental group that has carried out 600 attacks since 1996 has become the largest and most active United States-based terrorist group, the FBI's top domestic terrorism officer said. But the efforts of a House of Representatives committee to shed light on the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and its companion, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), were frustrated when a former ELF spokesman, Craig Rosebraugh, refused to answer questions from members of Congress. "I'll take the Fifth Amendment," Mr Rosebraugh said more than 50 times to questions ranging from whether he helped produce an ELF training film to ...

FBI: Left Wing Green Terrorists the most active terror organization in the U.S Report by J.J. Johnson - Sierra Times.com: 02.13.02 WASHINGTON -- Move over Al-Queda. It's now official: The Earth Liberation Front, a left wing organization that has carried out 600 attacks since 1996 has become the largest and most active U.S.-based terrorist group, the FBI's top domestic terrorism officer said Tuesday. But you might see this report buried in the inside of your Wednesday fish wrap. Kenneth Lay will get all the glory for taking the fifth in front of Congress Tuesday. But the House Subcommittee on ...

County expected to delay oak law Grading last October knocked down up to 100 trees By MELINDA BURNS NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER It's been more than four years since the Kendall-Jackson Winery bulldozed 840 oak trees on a ranch in Los Alamos -- four years and nothing but controversy over how to prevent something like that from happening again. The county Board of Supervisors has not made up its mind whether to side with the environmentalists and take a regulatory approach to protecting oaks; or side with the ranchers and enact voluntary guidelines. Since the Kendall-Jackson incident, two conflicting oak tree ...

Linda3L International ag show Tue Feb 12 09:54:44 2002 64.12.104.22 Tulera Ca. is putting on one of the worlds largest agricultural show in the world, the gates just opened, people are pouring in shoulder to shoulder by the thousands from all over the country and the world. Our business has a booth there, we were next to the Klamath Relief Funds aka Bucket Brigade also Klamath water users..booth, it ended up they needed more room so our business moved on down the row. but husband said that the KRF booth was incredibly nice.. the bucket(12 foot tall!) is there on ...

THE GREAT GOLD HEIST E-mail04/29/96 by Karen Bixman Not for commercial use THE GREAT GOLD HEIST by Karen Bixman On October 8, 1994 the biggest gold heist in history occurred,even but this theft lacked the melodrama of a Jesse James holdup or the excitement of a Brink's truck robbery. Nary a word was reported by the media evenweven though this thievery was committed in the light of day. The citizens that were being robbed tried to cry out for help but the lawmen wouldn't listen because unbeknownst to them they were helping the bandits gain their booty. The 103rd Congress ...

February 12, 2002 Trumped-Up Eco-Terrorism: An Arsonist's Tale By JAMES HIBBERD HOENIX, Feb. 11 — At first, Mark Warren Sands says, it was a matter of pique. Someone was building a house in his upscale Phoenix suburb where Mr. Sands did not want it. So, he says, he burned it down. But as one arson grew to eight, and as fear spread that Phoenix was under attack by eco-terrorists fighting residential sprawl, Mr. Sands, a laid- off public relations and marketing executive, began lighting fires seemingly to prove something to himself: that he still knew how to run a ...

Greens Force Strategic Mine Out of Business Sierra Times : 02.12.02 Communist China now controls supply of rare minerals. Mountain Pass, San Bernardino County, California. The world's largest lanthanide mine in the Mojave Desert between Barstow, California and Las Vegas, Nevada was regulated out of business by twenty-nine local, state and federal agencies and by elected and appointed government officials. The People's Republic of China becomes the principal source of these strategic minerals. This California deposit was accidentally discovered by three uranium prospectors in 1949 while prospecting under the 1872 mining law. Never before had such a large deposit ...

Eminent Domain in Anaheim: "Citizens' property bulldozed by ruling" In "Razing homes for schools" (News, Feb. 2), the Register reported on the Anaheim City School District's plans to raze homes if its $111 million bond measure passes in March. Proposition 39 lowered the threshold for government plunder, so the measure is likely to pass. Anyone who pretends illegal immigration is not a problem ought to take a close look. The single biggest factor in Anaheim's school overcrowding condition is illegal immigration. What's about to happen in Anaheim will have profound effects on the liberty and property rights of all. Foul ...

LYNX SCANDAL AFFECTS PA, NY AND THE NORTHEAST When the Washington Times broke the story about federal and state wildlife biologists in the Pacific Northwest allegedly falsifying data regarding the presence of the Canada lynx in forests there, it sounded like another left coast phenomenon.The truth of the matter is that under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 states have been declared lynx "historic habitat" including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The ESA requires a national survey to be done to investigate the population of lynx in the habitat areas. It was the Washington State part ...

It comes too late to save the farms and livelihoods of hundreds of southern Oregon farmers left high and dry last summer, but the National Academy of Sciences released a report Feb. 5 bearing out what those farmers have been saying all along &#151; the federal government did not have sufficient scientific evidence to cut off irrigation water to the farms below Oregon's Klamath Lake Dam. Two hundred thousand acres of the Klamath Valley in southwest Oregon went without irrigation water last summer, with 1,500 affected farm families suffering losses that may total $250 million, dwarfing a $20 million ...

I promised a Part 2 in "The Case of the Missing Canadian Lynx." Well, the story has turned into a full-blown investigation because of the amount of information I have received. After my last piece, "The Case of the Missing Canadian Lynx, Part 1," I heard from officials in Washington, D.C., and Washington state. Suffice it to say, this is a real, live detective story. It may not be as glitzy as the Enron case, but it has all the elements of the Enron story and then some. The honesty and credibility of federal green agencies is in question and ...

<p>The Water and Power Subcommittee will hold a hearing March 7 on the findings from a National Academy of Science report that found insufficient evidence to justify shutting off the water to Klamath Basin, said Rep. Greg Walden.</p> <p>Faced with drought conditions in 2001, federal biologists recommended that water be diverted from irrigation canals to the river to help sucker fish and coho salmon listed as an endangered species.</p>