Circle of Chiefs Archives - Outdoor Writers Association of America

It’s time to take action against CWD

OWAA Developer — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 22:31:43 +0000

BY GEORGE HARRISON AND JIM LOW
A television commercial in frequent rotation these days shows masked robbers smashing into a bank lobby. As panic-stricken customers fall to the floor, the bank’s uniformed security man watches with an air of blithe insouciance. “Do something!” implores a customer. But the man with the badge calmly explains, “Oh, I’m not a security ‘guard.’ I’m a security monitor. I only notify people if there’s a robbery…There’s a robbery.”
The point of the ad (for identity theft protection) is that just knowing you have a problem isn’t enough. You need someone to do something about the problem. The commercial’s dark humor has little appeal to hunters like me, who have watched the slow-motion disaster of chronic wasting disease spread across North America. I get a sinking feeling with every report of the always-fatal deer disease turning up in a new county, state, region or country. And the worst part is that agencies charged with guarding wildlife resources talk mostly about monitoring the spread of the disease.
I don’t mean to imply that wildlife agencies are doing nothing. Action requires knowledge and, for much of the disease’s 50-year history, too little was known about its nature to enable effective action. As they have learned more, state wildlife agencies have improved strategies for slowing the disease’s spread. Yet even containment, let alone eradication, remain out of reach.
Monitoring remains a critical element of chronic wasting disease management. Surveillance monitoring through random testing of hunter- and road-killed deer allows agencies to detect outbreaks in new areas. After that, more intensive, targeted testing endemic areas helps agencies define the geographic extent of outbreaks and track the percentage of deer that are infected. With this information, they can implement measures to reduce the risk of spreading chronic wasting disease. Such measures include bans on feeding deer, restricting transportation of live deer or deer carcasses and changes in hunting regulations aimed at reducing deer population density and thereby reducing opportunities for disease transmission.
Reducing deer numbers in targeted areas isn’t always popular, but when agencies have taken the time to inform hunters and other interest groups about the dangers of the disease, such measures have enjoyed strong public support. A much greater challenge is overcoming resistance from vested interests and politicians.
Claims by the captive-deer/elk industry that wild deer are infecting their facilities are ridiculous. Diseased wild deer didn’t wander from Colorado to southern Wisconsin, the first eastern state to face a large-scale chronic wasting disease outbreak. The disease arrived in Wisconsin on wheels.
Furthermore, the standard scenario of finding the disease in captive deer and subsequently detecting increasing prevalence among adjacent free-ranging deer undermines the theory of multiple wild origins.
Even leaving these facts aside, there is no denying two things.
One: holding deer in unnaturally high concentrations inside high-fence facilities is made to order for rapid transmission of disease.
Two: shipping deer between facilities, across state and international boundaries, is the only reasonable way to account for outbreaks separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, not to mention oceans.
Nearly 20 years ago, when Wisconsin’s chronic wasting disease outbreak was still confined to a small area, state officials were concerned that it could spread to new areas through the importation of elk from contaminated game farms in Colorado, South Dakota and Montana.
“We know that three captive elk from infected Colorado farms came to Wisconsin,” said Kerry Beheler, wildlife health specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in 2001. “That is why we annually test hunter-killed deer from areas surrounding those Wisconsin farms.”
Asked why Wisconsin still allowed game farms to import contaminated elk and deer into the state, knowing the danger of the disease spreading to the wild herd, Beheler replied, “We allow it because there is no law against it.”
At the time, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture regulated game farm deer and elk importation. Department officials offered the same rationale for continuing to allow a practice that clearly endangered Wisconsin’s captive and free-ranging deer herds.
In December 2015, the Missouri Department of Conservation tried to implement moderate, commonsense regulations to address the threat of spreading chronic wasting disease by transshipment of deer and elk. The captive-cervid industry filed suit, and within months a sympathetic judge enjoined the department from enforcing its regulations, effectively putting the agency out of the business of regulating captive cervids. The agency is currently waiting for the Missouri Supreme Court to decide whether it has authority to protect the state’s wild deer resource, which pumps $1 billion a year into the state’s economy, dwarfing the economic impact of the state’s canned hunting industry.
Thanks to “we don’t care” attitudes in many state agencies, and to legal maneuvers in others, chronic wasting disease has spread to 24 states and threatens to destroy a sport hunting tradition as old as our nation. But that isn’t the worst of it.
The ethically indefensible practice of shooting big game inside high fences also strikes at the very foundation of a conservation movement that has been envied and emulated worldwide. The North American Model of Conservation is based on the principle that the nation’s wildlife resources belong to all of us, collectively. Individuals may own lands and waters, but not the fish and wildlife in and on them. Those are held in trust by our governments and managed for the public good.
The notion that owners of pay-to-shoot operations should be able to privatize wildlife while simultaneously destroying public resources should outrage hunters and anyone else interested in preserving our wild legacy. If the government agencies we set up to manage and protect our wildlife are unwilling or unable to do so, hunters must take up the challenge or tell our children to sell their rifles, bows and shotguns and take up golf.
If you are committed to the future of hunting, don’t merely monitor the spread of chronic wasting disease. Dig into this issue and take it to your audiences with a call to action. Interview your state’s wildlife officials and tell your audience where they stand — or where they refuse to take a stand — on the issue.
Urge your readers, viewers or listeners to hold their conservation agencies and elected officials accountable for inaction on the biggest threat to wildlife in decades. For more information, you can send them to the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance’s website (http://cwd-info. org/).
The time for monitoring is past. It’s time for action.
Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs honorees are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
—
George Harrison won the Circle of Chiefs award in 1981 and the Ham Brown award in 2006. He served as OWAA president in 1985. Harrison, a nature journalist, wrote a monthly column for Sports Afield for 25 years; was an editor for National Wildlife for 42 years and a founding editor of Birds & Blooms. He has authored 14 books and hosted six PBS specials.
—
Jim Low joined the Circle of Chiefs in 2009. His career included stints as a general assignment reporter, magazine editor and as a public information officer for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The post It’s time to take action against CWD appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

A new attitude toward managing fish

OWAA Developer — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 19:40:47 +0000

BY TED WILLIAMS
“Donald J. Trump believes there needs to be a Roosevelt Reboot … President Trump will instruct USFWS policy to use good science … Our Public Lands and water … will always remain public and open.”
The above is from the still active website http://www.sportsmenfortrump.com.
Now for some fact checking. Let’s limit it to what Trump has done for anglers in just his first year in office: revocation of the “stream protection rule” that prevented mining companies from using streams for waste disposal; revocation of the rule requiring mining companies to set aside money to clean up their toxic messes; revocation of the “Clean Water Rule” (all major streams will remain protected, but it will be perfectly fine to foul some of their tributaries); and revocation of the ban on oil drilling in ecologically sensitive offshore habitats.
Next up is the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
Congress established a 200-mile limit, kicked out most of the foreign fishing fleet and gave commercial fishermen a “stake in their own future” with the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976. It sounded so progressive, so Jeffersonian, so flexible. But somehow, assigning the job of regulating to those who required regulation didn’t work. It was as if Congress recruited grade schoolers to write their own curriculum. The result was day-long cookies and milk. So in 1996, Congress strengthened the act, outlawing overfishing.
A mantra from fishermen, both commercial and recreational, has been: “Don’t listen to the scientists; we see lots of fish in areas they claim are depleted. We depend on fish, so let us kill more now.”
That is precisely what recreational red snapper fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico told Trump’s Department of Commerce Director Wilbur Ross.
Accordingly, Ross directed the National Marine Fisheries Service to extend the federal recreational red snapper season, thereby delaying rebuilding the depleted stock by as much as six years and allowing Gulf anglers to exceed their annual catch limit by as much as 50 percent.
In internal memos — obtained during litigation by the Environmental Defense Fund and Ocean Conservancy — Commerce’s policy and planning director, Earl Comstock, advised Ross that not extending the season would be “devastating” to the sport-fishing industry and that, while the agency would take flak for unlawfully allowing overfishing, he shouldn’t fret because opponents couldn’t do much about it. Magnuson, Comstock noted, prevents temporary restraining orders “so your action would remain in effect for at least 45 days before a court could act.”
Fisheries activist Charles Witek, former chair of the Coastal Conservation Association’s Atlantic States Committee and former member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, responded: “It was a patently illegal action. … What it tells you is that you have an administration that places short-term economic gains over the long-term health of fish stocks, with really no regard for the science.”
Meanwhile, the summer flounder stock was in a seven-year nosedive. Accordingly the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council followed its legal mandate by cutting recreational and commercial catch limits, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission allocated the smaller recreational catch limit among the states. This meant that anglers in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut would have to live with a daily bag limit reduced from five to three fish and a size limit increased from 18 to 19 inches. This, said New Jersey anglers, would be impossible. And besides, the scientists had it all “wrong;” there were “lots of fish.”
The loudest opposition to scientific fisheries management invariably issues from New Jersey. And no voice there is shriller than that of the Recreational Fishing Alliance. While the alliance claims to represent anglers, there’s scarcely anyone involved who doesn’t profit from killing fish. The mandated catch reduction “will be a death blow to an industry already struggling under the burden of overregulation,” declared its director James Donofrio.
Claiming the needed reduction in summer flounder kill could be rendered merely by asking fishermen to voluntarily use bigger hooks and practice catch and release, the alliance and its allies prevailed on senators and representatives from New Jersey, who demanded Ross overrule the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Ross readily complied. Never before had one of the commission’s science-based decisions been nixed by a lay bureaucrat in Commerce. It was another gross violation of federal law.
“New Jersey essentially gave ASMFC the middle finger,” said John McMurray of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
Currently there’s a big push by dozens of me-first fishing interests to infuse Magnuson with “flexibility,” a euphemism for more dead fish on the dock. The Recreational Fishing Alliance, for example, defines Magnuson’s catch limits and accountability measures to prevent overfishing as the dirty work of “anti-fishing environmental groups who have lobbied against our efforts” and who control the minds of anglers “still drinking the KoolAid of the anti-fishing environmental groups.”
But the alliance has found new hope. In a recent press release it proclaims that “the days of the environmental zealots running the show are, for the most part, over,” and that it is “excited” about the Trump administration’s “new attitude towards fishery management.”
Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs honorees are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
—
Ted Williams serves as national chair of the Native Fish Coalition and writes the monthly “Recovery” column for The Nature Conservancy’s online magazine Cool Green Science.

The post A new attitude toward managing fish appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

The politics of outdoor writing

OWAA Developer — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 19:33:16 +0000

BY PAT WRAY
We in the Circle of Chiefs write regularly in OU about threats: to our clean air and water, to our public lands, to our endangered species. My message concerns a far more immediate and deadly threat, the potential destruction of our free press, our First Amendment rights and ultimately, our democracy and way of life.
President Donald Trump has, for the last year, embarked on a near-continual attack on respected American press institutions, even as he fawns over those fringe outlets that shamelessly promote his message. He regularly denigrates The New York Times and Washington Post, two of the pillars of American journalism, and not coincidentally, two of our most effective watchdogs over political missteps — think Pentagon Papers and Watergate.
His attacks on the press are not the normal executive branch complaints about unfairness. No, implicit in his tweets and quotes are threats of government action. Here’s a quote from a discussion at the White House:
“It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write, and people should look into it.”
His tweets are even more unhinged. Here’s one from Oct. 11, 2017:
“Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”
Is there bias? Certainly. On both sides. Welcome to the world of human frailties. But anyone who knows anything about American history understands the absolute necessity of a free and unfettered Fourth Estate.
But now we have a president who doesn’t know or care anything about American history. He wants what he wants right now; historical implications do not matter, long-term consequences be damned. Members of the free press are not loyal. They are in his way. Therefore, the press is an “enemy of the people,” a description so fraught with tyranny and bloodshed it should never, ever be used by an American politician.
Were any one of those quotes read alone they would be considered unfortunate. Taken as a group, in the context of his unstable maunderings, they are terrifying. A continual litany of verbal attacks on the press by the president could easily mobilize a group of his most ardent supporters to attack a newspaper or broadcast outlet considered critical of him. Even more frightening is the possibility of his using governmental agencies to impose stricter controls on the outlets and to marginalize the leaders of those organizations.
If your response is, “It can’t happen here,” read again the president’s statements about the press. Then explore the actions by Vladimir Putin, the world leader Trump most admires, against the press in Russia over the past decade.
The threat against our free press by the present administration is real. Our only effective deterrent is the will of the people. And the people’s will is determined and strengthened by the knowledge they glean from the free press.
We in OWAA are outdoor journalists, true. Our interests lie in the natural world. But first and foremost we are journalists, and if political opinions are under attack, how long before our articles and columns about natural resource protection are labeled fake news? Our responsibility to the nation and to the tenets of democracy is no less important and no less solemn than that of political reporters from the most powerful newspapers and broadcast companies.
We must speak out against the pressure and threats and demonization of the press coming from the White House. I know political commentary is not part of your regular outdoor beat, but you need to find a way to make it part of your message. Your involvement could not be more critical. Because freedom of the press is not just about the press. It’s about freedom.

Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs honorees are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
—
Pat Wray is an award-winning writer and book author from Corvallis, Oregon. A former Marine helicopter pilot and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife information supervisor, he lives with his wife Debbie, about whom it has often been said, “What was she thinking?”

The post The politics of outdoor writing appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Navigating the “Waters of the United States” Conundrum

OWAA Developer — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 00:35:19 +0000

Executive order means to define terms in Clean Water Act

[level-non-member]
Members, remember to log in to view this post.
[/level-non-member]
[level-membersupporter]
BY KRIS THOEMKE
In a recent email thread, the Chiefs discussed the Trump Administration’s actions related to the environment and natural resources. The new Administration’s initial comments and proposed actions about policies affecting the environment and our natural resources has many people on edge. While the concerns are real, the widespread condemnation of the new Administration’s proposed actions is best described as speculation. The issues the President wants to change are complicated. That means change will not happen quickly. Consider the following example.
One of the hot button issues relates to how the Federal government intends to define the term “waters of the United States.” The mainstream media’s reaction to President Trump signing an Executive Order that will reexamine how to define this term was largely negative. The headlines created an impression that our nation’s waters may not be protected if the Clean Water Rule is rescinded; “Trump will try to sidestep science in rolling back clean water rule” (E & E news); “Trump aims to eliminate clean water rule” (National Public Radio), “EPA and Army Corps seek to rescind clean water rule” (Reuters), Trump administration moves to withdraw clean-water rule” (The Spokesman-Review) and Trump Signs Executive Order to Begin Water Rule Rollback (NBC /News)
What you may not realize is that a clear definition of this term has been at the center of a controversy for the past two decades. To those who know about the issue, the most recent action is one of many efforts to define this term. Here is why this term matters.
Protection of the country’s waters and wetlands is based on the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972. This law regulates discharges of pollutants into “navigable waters of the United States.” Authority to do this was vested with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This key piece of federal legislation made it unlawful to discharge any pollutants from a point source into navigable waters unless a permit was first obtained.
One of the most controversial parts of the CWA is how to define which waters and wetlands are included in, “waters of the US.” As an Act of Congress the CWA is a law. Typically, laws do not provide the level of specificity necessary to be effectively implemented. To give agencies the ability to enforce the law, they develop regulations that provide specific guidance on how to uphold the law. These regulations are found in the Code of Federal Regulations. The EPA regulation that defines “waters of the United States” is in Title 40, Part 230.3 (s) of the Code:
The term waters of the United States means:

All waters which are currently used, or were used in the past, or may be susceptible to use in interstate or foreign commerce, including all waters which are subject to the ebb and flow of the tide;
All interstate waters including interstate wetlands;
All other waters such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds, the use, degradation or destruction of which could affect intestate or foreign commerce including any such waters:
1. Which are or could be used by interstate or foreign travelers for recreational or other purposes; or
2. From which fish or shellfish are or could be taken and sold in interstate or foreign commerce; or
3. Which are used or could be used for industrial purposes by industries in interstate commerce;
All impoundments of waters otherwise defined as waters of the United States under this definition;
Tributaries of waters identified in paragraphs (s)(1) through (4) of this section;
The territorial sea;
Wetlands adjacent to waters (other than waters that are themselves wetlands) identified in paragraphs (s)(1) through (6) of this section; waste treatment systems, including treatment ponds or lagoons designed to meet the requirements of CWA (other than cooling ponds as defined in 40 CFR 423.11(m) which also meet the criteria of this definition) are not waters of the United States. Waters of the United States do not include prior converted cropland. Notwithstanding the determination of an area’s status as prior converted cropland by any other federal agency, for the purposes of the Clean Water Act, the final authority regarding Clean Water Act jurisdiction remains with EPA.

Some landowners took great exception to this definition. Numerous court challenges arose when EPA and/or the Corps claimed jurisdiction over a parcel of land under the definition of “waters of the US.” This action gives the government the right to regulate development of the land under the CWA. Landowners believed the agencies over-extended the definition of “waters of the US” beyond what the regulation and the CWA intended and took their grievances to the courts. The ability of the Federal government to regulate private land has long been something that strikes fear into the souls of private landowners.
Two Supreme Court decisions shaped the current interpretation on what constitutes “waters of the US.” In 2001 the US Supreme Court issued their ruling on the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) versus the United States Army Corps of Engineers. SWANCC contended that isolated intrastate, non-navigable waters on their property should not be considered “waters of the US.” The Corps contended that the lands were “waters of the US,” in large part because there were man-made ponds on the property being used by migrating birds. At issue was whether these wetland areas are considered navigable waters under the Clean Water Act.
The Court determined that these wetlands were not connected to “waters of the US” and thus not subject to regulation by the Corps and the Clean Water Act. While the ruling was clear that isolated wetlands are not considered “waters of the US,” the Court’s decision did not render an opinion on whether other waters and wetlands fall under this definition.
The second Supreme Court decision came in the 2006 Rapanos versus United States. The case is complicated and there are numerous case briefs that summarize the decision. The Oyez brief ( https://www.oyez.org/cases/2005/04-1034) is succinct and clearly explains the facts of the case:

“John Rapanos sought to fill in three wetland areas on his property in order to build a shopping center. Rapanos ignored warnings from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality that the area was protected wetlands under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The CWA allows the government to regulate the discharge of any pollutant (including dirt or sand) into “navigable waters,” which the Act defines as “the waters of the United States.” Under regulations issued by the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), wetlands are covered by the CWA as long as they are adjacent to traditionally navigable waters or tributaries of such waters. After Rapanos also ignored cease-and-desist orders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the government brought a civil suit against him. Rapanos argued before the District Court that the CWA gives the government jurisdiction to regulate only traditionally navigable waters. The government countered that Rapanos’s lands were covered by the CWA as “adjacent wetlands” under the Corps’s interpretation of the Act; the sites drained into man-made drains which eventually emptied into navigable rivers and lakes. The District Court rejected Rapanos’s argument and upheld the Corps’s regulations including the wetlands as “waters of the United States.” The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the “hydrological connection” of the wetlands to the navigable waters qualifies them as “waters of the United States” under the Act.”

When the case reached the Supreme Court, the decision was a rare 4 -1- 4 split decision. Four Justices led by the late Justice Anton Scalia concluded, “The phrase “the waters of the United States” includes only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water “forming geographic features” that are described in ordinary parlance as “streams,” “oceans, rivers, [and] lakes,” Webster’s New International Dictionary 2882 (2d ed.), and does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall. The Corps’ expansive interpretation of that phrase is thus not “based on a permissible construction of the statute.” The justices also stated, “A wetland may not be considered “adjacent to” remote “waters of the United States” based on a mere hydrologic connection.”
Justice Stevens wrote a dissent, which was joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The dissent argued that the Corps’ regulations should be upheld as a reasonable interpretation of the Act. The inclusion of all wetlands adjacent to tributaries of navigable waters was most consistent with the CWA’s purpose of eliminating pollution in the nation’s waters.
What makes this decision controversial is that Justice Kennedy’s opinion, while concurring with the Scalia opinion, stated that a wetland does not need to have a continuous surface connection to a continuously flowing body of water to be considered a wetland as defined by the CWA. What Justice Kennedy opined was a wetland that is not adjacent to a traditionally navigable water must have a ‘significant nexus’ with one to be classified as a wetland. To have a significant nexus, the wetland in question must be shown to have a significant effect on the water quality of navigable waters. His decision went so far as to suggest the wetlands that were subject of the Rapanos case might be wetlands if the Corps could demonstrate a significant nexus.
If this summary of these cases leaves you wondering what are or are not “waters of the US,” you are not alone. The SWANCC and Rapanos decisions resulted in considerable confusion about what are “waters of the US” The uncertainty that evolved from interpretation of the decisions created challenges for business and regulators. The EPA and Corps attempted to provide guidance on how to identify “waters of the US” in 2003, 2008 and 2011. These attempts were unsuccessful and contributed to the growing uncertainty arising from the SWANCC and Rapanos decisions.
To resolve this issue, the Obama administration directed the EPA and the Corps to prepare a rule to resolve the ambiguities created by the Supreme Court decisions and other guidance documents. The result was the 2015 Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the US Rule. As stated on the EPA website, (https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/guidance-identify-waters-protected-clean-water-act), the rule was intended to “provide clearer, more predictable guidelines for determining which water bodies are protected by the Clean Water Act.” Further, the rule would,

“reaffirm protections for small streams that feed into larger streams, rivers, bays and coastal waters. It will also reaffirm protection for wetlands that filter pollution and help protect communities from flooding. Discharging pollution into protected waters (e.g., dumping sewage, contaminants, or industrial pollution) or filling protected waters and wetlands (e.g., building a housing development or a parking lot) require permits. This guidance will keep safe the streams and wetlands that affect the quality of the water used for drinking, swimming, fishing, farming, manufacturing, tourism and other activities essential to the American economy and quality of life. It also will provide regulatory clarity, predictability, consistency and transparency.”

In developing the rule, the authors reviewed over 1200 published peer-reviewed scientific reports. Prior to implementation, it was reviewed by the EPA Science Advisory Board. EPA, the Corps and many environmental organizations believed that the Clean Water Rule would provide the guidance needed to clarify the definition of “waters of the US.” Some of the country’s leading sportsmen’s and conservation groups including the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, Berkley Conservation Institute, Izaak Walton League of America, National Wildlife Federation, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited and Wildlife Management Institute issued a joint press release supporting the Clean Water Rule.
Not surprisingly, this new attempt to clarify the definition of “waters of the US” met with resistance. The agriculture sector and numerous county governments opposed the new definition. The American Farm Bureau Federation claimed the rule “expands federal jurisdiction beyond what was authorized by Congress, resulting in the imposition of burdensome requirements on farmers and ranchers”. (http://www.fb.org/issues/regulatory-reform/clean-water-act/).
The National Association of Counties expressed concern that the rule would result in roadside ditches, flood control channels and storm water management structures owned and maintained by local governments being declared “waters of the US” and thus under federal jurisdiction. Requiring a permit to maintain these structures would be burdensome and result in lengthy delays that would put public safety at risk.
Notwithstanding the objections, the Clean Water Rule became effective on August 28, 2015. Multiple legal challenges filed immediately after the rule was finalized led to an October 9, 2015 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to issue nationwide stay on implementing the rule. As of this writing, the Court has not issued an opinion on the legal challenge thus the Clean Water Rule has yet to take effect. Whether the Court will ever rule on the legal challenges is now in doubt.
One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to order a review of the Clean Water Rule. On February 28, 2017, the President signed an Executive Order calling for the EPA and the Corps to review the Clean Water Rule and begin the process to either rescind to revise the rule in a manner “consistent with Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion” in Rapanos v. United States.
The Executive Order set a clear path for what the President wants to accomplish. Section 1 states, “It is in the national interest to ensure that the Nation’s navigable waters are kept free from pollution, while at the same time promoting economic growth minimizing regulatory uncertainty, ensuring due regard for the roles of Congress and the states under the Constitution.” Sec. 2 directs the EPA and Corps to review the Obama Clean Water Rule for “consistency with the policy set forth in section 1 of this order and publish for notice and comment a proposed rule rescinding or revising the rule, as appropriate and consistent with law.” It also directed EPA and the Corps to, “review all orders, rules, regulations, guidelines, or policies implementing or enforcing the final rule listed in subsection (a) of this section for consistency with the policy set forth in section 1 of this order and shall rescind or revise, or publish for notice and comment proposed rules rescinding or revising, those issuances, as appropriate and consistent with law and with any changes made as a result of a rulemaking proceeding undertaken pursuant to subsection (a) of this section.” Section 3 states the EPA and Corps “shall consider interpreting the term “navigable waters,” [of the United States] as defined in 33 U.S.C. 1362(7), in a manner consistent with the opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia in Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. 715 (2006).”
What the headlines and the stories from both sides of the controversy do not make clear is that rescinding the rule does not eliminate protection to the nation’s waters. No President or Federal agency has the power to make such a unilateral decision. Clearly, President Trump wants the EPA and Corps to take a different approach to defining “waters of the US” than what is in the 2015 the Clean Water Rule.
With the process only beginning, no one can predict what will be the outcome. What we know so far is this. The Executive Order calls for a two-step process. The first step began on July 27, 2017 when EPA and the Corps published their intent rescind the definition of “waters of the US” as it was defined in the 2015 Clean Water Rule. That definition will be replaced by the definition used prior to the new definition’s brief tenure before being stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Thus, the old definition from Title 40, Part 230.3(s) and the precedents established by the Supreme Court decision are what EPA and the Corps will use to define “waters of the US.” This definition provides continuity and reasonable certainty for the regulated community as it did in the past. Public comments on this step were accepted until August 28, 2017.
The second step will be to undertake rulemaking that substantially reevaluates the definition of ‘‘waters of the United States” as described in the 2015 Clean Water Rule Rulemaking follows a specific process prescribed in the Administrative Procedures Act. Part of the rulemaking process includes public input so there will be opportunities for organizations and individuals to influence the process.
Expect this to be a lengthy and contentious process. By lengthy, I predict two or more years and that does not include the legal challenges that will likely surface once a new rule is developed. Agreeing on definition of the innocuous sounding term, “waters of the US”, will not be easy. If it was, the issues could have been settled many years ago. Special interest groups and individuals will have plenty to say during the rulemaking process.
Those involved will labor and argue over every word. In defining any term, words matter. I say this with confidence based firsthand experience with two previous Corps’ actions that involved highly charged issues. One of them, developing the plan to restore Florida’s Everglades, lasted years and I will never forget the partisan and often heated arguments over wording of the plan that were commonplace in the process. The good news is stakeholders developed a plan to restore the Everglades and it is being implemented.
The same outcome could be true for defining “waters of the US” but it will require a level of cooperation among opposing sides that currently does not exist but must be developed if we want a definition of “waters of the US” that can be implemented. The Obama version of the rule is dead. The Executive Order is a decision that will not be rescinded by this President. That leaves two options during the upcoming rulemaking. One is for a group of stakeholders representing the various views to work together to define “waters of the US” in a way that all sides can support. Admittedly, this is a big challenge. But it is doable. The other option, identifying those with opposing views as “enemies” and fighting them over every detail, will never resolve the issue. Reality is a harsh teacher.
–Kris Thoemke is a consulting marine ecologist and part time professor teaching environmental policy and management classes for American Public University. He is a member of the Circle of Chiefs.
[/level-membersupporter]

The post Navigating the “Waters of the United States” Conundrum appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Once gone, public land is hard to get back again

OWAA Developer — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 21:15:17 +0000

BY RICH PATTERSON, CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA and LARRY STONE, ELKADER, IOWA
Want to buy hunting property for less than 3 cents an acre? You’ll need to go back to 1803 and buy about 530,000,000 acres to get that bargain price.
That’s what the residents of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware and 12 other states did when Thomas Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase. They coughed up the money to buy 827,000 square miles of distant Western land that doubled the size of the United States. No one knew exactly how much land was transferred from France to the U. S., so the per-acre cost isn’t precise. But adjusted for inflation, we’re still talking less than 50 cents an acre in today’s economy.
What a deal! Yet some Eastern taxpayers complained about covering the bill to buy the vast, Western wilderness from the French. Only a few hardy explorers had ventured into the virtually uncharted expanse, which was the homeland of an unknown number of Native Americans.
That wilderness, which fascinated President Jefferson and captivated the “voyage of discovery” expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, eventually was transformed into more than a dozen new states. Sadly, countless Native Americans were killed, displaced or forced onto reservations. But, the Louisiana Purchase now includes some of the most productive private agricultural land in the world, as well as public wild lands, rugged mountains, forests, prairies and coal and oil fields.
Our state, Iowa, became public land with the Louisiana Purchase, but soon federal policy called for privatizing land. Iowa’s rich soil and gentle topography became available for homesteading, purchase, and land grants just as millions of immigrants poured into our country and native-born Americans moved West in droves. Iowa was opened to settlement in 1833. By 1900, most of the state’s 36 million acres had been converted into 200,000 individual farms. In those 67 years — less than one human lifespan — Iowa’s wildlife-rich public land was almost completely changed to private ownership.
Iowa has public recreational and open space land today, but just a smidgen. Fewer than 700,000 total acres are protected by local, state and federal agencies. Compare that with more than 1 million acres devoted to roads and road rights-of-way. Private farms and farmland cover more than 26 million acres – more than 70 percent of the state.
Most hunting takes place on private land, which is open for general use only with the permission of benevolent landowners. Where there are public areas to hunt, hike and camp, almost all have had to be reacquired by the government after years in private ownership.
Linn County, Iowa, recently paid $7.1 million to buy 485 acres of private land that will become public parkland. That’s just a shade under $15,000 an acre for land that had been public after the Louisiana Purchase, but which private individuals bought for a song during the 1800s push to privatize the state.
We Iowans, who many would say have sacrificed our own natural lands to be able to grow food, fiber and fuel that benefit others, now take for granted the privilege of recreating on natural lands elsewhere. Many of us travel west to national parks, forests and wildlife refuges where we leave dollars earned from our agricultural economy to boost the tourism economies of the places we visit. But we also cherish just the notion of knowing the land is out there, whether we actually set foot on it or not.
Now, with the political climate in Washington, D.C., and some Western states, the pendulum may be swinging back toward privatization. But our public lands are a precious part of our proud American heritage — too precious to abandon to private interests. Because of the foresight of our ancestors, the people of this country (the taxpayers) own millions of acres where they can hunt, fish, camp, hike, bird-watch, boat and just savor the resources they collectively own. To sell or give away those lands for the financial benefit of a few would be a scar on the face of democracy and a one-way street on the road to oligarchy.
Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs honorees are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Rich Patterson is a fishery biologist who served as executive director of Dillon and Indian Creek Nature Center. He has been a freelance writer focusing on conservation and environmental issues since 1971.
— Following a 25-year career as an outdoor writer with The Des Moines Register, Larry Stone has spent another 20 years as an Iowa-based freelance conservation writer, photographer, blogger and lecturer.

The post Once gone, public land is hard to get back again appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Public lands in jeopardy

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:57:47 +0000

BY JIM LOW
I spent last Father’s Day visiting my son, David, who works as an interpretive ranger at a state park just outside Las Vegas. I was excited when he and his girlfriend, Jenn, suggested we hike at Gold Butte, a 350,000-acre cultural heritage site administered by the Bureau of Land Management. I worried a little about midsummer hiking in the desert, without suspecting that I was entering landscape embroiled in one of the hottest public-lands debates of my lifetime.
My first clue came when we pulled over for a selfie at the gates of Cliven Bundy’s ranch. The man himself was in jail, awaiting trial in connection with his 2014 standoff with federal officials over illegal cattle grazing. But his aura hung in the air above the ugly compound, and it did nothing to make me feel safer.
A few miles down a gravel road and a bit farther down a rugged two-track brought us to a parking lot within sight of a modest rock outcropping. I thought, “We came all this way into a godforsaken landscape for this?” But I trusted David had brought me here for a reason, so I loaded my lumbar pack with camera gear and lots of water.
Scrambling over slick rock with natural bridges and pinnacles was fun, but I could have done something similar within two hours of home in Missouri. Things grew more interesting as we worked our way farther into the area, where the sandstone bore fantastic designs in burgundy, mauve, apricot and other, indescribable, colors. The Midwest had nothing to compare with this.
Then the petroglyphs began appearing. A few at first, a smattering that might have been Neolithic graffiti. Then a sentence here, a paragraph there, and finally, whole chapters of Southern Paiute history, unintelligible yet eloquent in its variety and visual ingenuity. I was enthralled. “Come on,” David urged, “The best is yet to come.”
Down into a gulch and back up the other side we hiked. At the foot of an 80-foot sandstone overhang, carved into desert varnish on a small rock facet hung a human figure, suspended in perpetual free-fall — Falling Man. Disarmingly simple, yet powerfully evocative, this gestural masterpiece ranks in my mind with the cave paintings of Lascaux. I was momentarily stunned, then captivated.
How would you assign a monetary value to this treasure trove of human and natural artworks? In a way, the United States has already done so. If you believe that actions speak louder than words, they you would be forced to conclude that Americans consider these
things worthless.
Gold Butte’s 350,000 acres, along with the similar but more spectacular treasures in the Bears Ears area of southeastern Utah, were unprotected until President Barack Obama set aside 1.65 million acres as national monuments on Dec. 28.
Gold Butte is an area of critical environmental concern because it harbors the endangered desert tortoise and desert bighorn sheep, not to mention historic mining sites and pioneer-era artifacts, while the Bears Ears’ 1.9 million acres house tens of thousands of cliff dwellings, granaries, ceremonial kivas and other ancient structures.
Despite strong support from Indian tribes and the non-Indian public for protecting the Bears Ears area, Republican lawmakers did all they could to discourage President Obama from designating the area a national monument. Republican lawmakers already are agitating for President Elect Donald Trump to reverse this and other similar protections extended to select federally owned lands under the 1906 Antiquities Act going back two decades.
Even more concerning are pronouncements by President Elect Donald Trump and a plank in the Republican Party’s national platform calling for privatization of public lands.
Trump suggested paying off the national debt, partly by selling off $16 trillion in federal assets. The Washington Post’s fact checker called Trump’s proposal “nonsensical,” and gave it his worst rating — “Four Pinocchios.” According to the Government Accountability Office, even if the federal government sold off all its landholdings (including military bases, national parks and national forests) the proceeds would be $3 trillion, a fraction of the national debt. But senior Trump campaign advisor Barry Bennett was unimpressed by these facts and stuck by the lie that selling federal assets could erase the national debt.
“Oh, my goodness,” Bennett said in a Washington Post interview. “Do you know how much land we have? You know how much oil is off shore? And in government lands? Easily.”
Thanks to these types of lies Americans have come to accept several ridiculous notions about federal lands, including the notion that federal agencies are depriving American taxpayers of their birthright by holding onto public-trust lands. The suggested remedy is turning these lands over to the states.
There are several things wrong with this idea. First, federal ownership is the only thing preserving Americans’ right to use their public lands. Assume for a moment that states came into possession of the 435 million acres owned by the BLM and the Forest Service. Since states already lack the resources needed to administer their own meager landholdings, and since states don’t have the luxury of running budgetary deficits year after year, they would be forced to sell or lease these lands to the highest bidders. Overall, Western states have sold 31 million acres of their original public lands.
A report in Salon noted the two-pronged approach that the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Prosperity use to run this confidence game on America’s public landowners — you and me. First they lobby Congress to pass bills, often written by the council and other groups backed by the Koch brothers to enable them to get their hands on federal lands. Then they generate mountains of disinformation about how the federal government is violating their right to land owned by the American people.
Here is an excerpt from the Americans for Prosperity brochure on federal land management:
“Obviously, federal agencies need sufficient land to exercise their constitutional functions, like military bases for national security and interstate highways for commerce. However, the vast majority of this land is not used for such purposes, but rather sits idle with little access given to American citizens. Washington’s hoarding of inactive federal lands is legally questionable and economically destructive, necessitating these lands to be speedily transferred to their rightful owners, We the People.”
The American Legislative Exchange apparently considers national forests and land administered by the BLM — the infrastructure for $656 billion-dollar-a-year outdoor recreation industry — idle. Add to this figure the value of timber and minerals extracted from Forest Service and BLM and and you have a more than $1 trillion annual boost to America’s economy and 9.4 million jobs. Idle? It would be laughable if it weren’t so outrageous.
You have to give the land grabbers credit for the boldness of their lies, though. Telling gullible Americans like Amon and Ryan Bundy that they must take back land they already own so it can be pillaged by extractive industries in the guise of “We the People” is a stroke of propaganda genius that Machiavelli would admire.
Idaho has sold or traded away 41 percent of the federal land it received when it became a state. Nevada’s record is even worse. It has jettisoned 99 percent of its original landholdings. In the bidding way, that would ensue if more federal lands were given to states, extractive industries would be able to pay the highest prices, and our treasured national parks, forests and other wild lands would quickly be replaced by vast scars on the landscape.
A few pieces of prime federal land might end up as nature-based theme parks and luxury resorts where well-heeled visitors could spend the night in the Tower House at Mesa Verde National Park, enjoy zip-lining from the top of Half Dome or take log-flume rides in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Think of all the geothermal energy we could tap if we sold Yellowstone National Park to Exxon. Whatever else happens if federal lands go on the auction block, you can be sure that the Koch brothers and other millionaires will snap up the choicest tracts of national forest and turn them into hunting, fishing and golf resorts for themselves and their cronies.
These prospects would cause Teddy Roosevelt to spin in his grave and should be repugnant to anyone who has ever hunted, fished, hiked, camped or simply watched
Nature Channel shows filmed on public lands. It should be similarly horrifying to outdoor communicators whose stock in trade is working on and communicating about these lands. Yet, the Republican Party’s national platform proposes removing unspecified federal lands from federal protection. In a masterpiece of hiding malign intent in fuzzy language, the platform says that “certain” federally controlled lands should be given to states. It doesn’t specify which lands, nor does it say that states could not sell, give away or develop the newly severed federal lands however they choose. President Elect Trump denied wanting to sell or give away federal lands, but he did not oppose the Republican platform plank proposing the raid on federal lands. Given the many policy reversals Trump has made
since his election, it’s impossible to say what he might do in this regard.
Before President Obama protected Bears Ears, Utah’s representatives designed legislation to undermine the designation.
Situations like this are exactly why Congress created the Antiquities Act. This is why nearly every president of both parties since 1906 has used the act when Congress failed do to its job.
So far, President Obama has granted federal protection to more than 260,000 acres of land and water.
Will President Elect Trump break with precedent and negate this and other previous presidential actions protecting public lands? Was Trump’s proposal to sell off federal land only a campaign talking point, or did he mean it?
I can’t answer these questions, so I will pose another one. Can we afford to wait and see? To me, it seems the prudent thing to do is to tell our local, state and federal elected officials not to sell our public lands.
Eighteenth-century philosopher Joseph de Maistre said that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve.
If you think that you don’t deserve to keep your public-land birthright, your choice is easy. Do nothing at all.
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Jim Low has worked as a photographic officer in the army, reporter for the West Plains Daily Quill, editor of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio Game & Fish magazines and public information officer for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

The post Public lands in jeopardy appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

From prospectors to cattlemen: Roots of the Sagebrush Rebellion

OWAA Developer — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 21:32:17 +0000

BY CHRIS MADSON
— Second in a two-part series
The romantic image of pioneer miners as gray-bearded prospector leading burros into some lonesome mountain valley is no more accurate than our conception of the fur trade. Mineral deposits on the West’s public domain were often discovered by individual prospectors, but the extraction of minerals took equipment and men, commodities the independent operator could seldom afford. Control of the gold, silver and copper quickly passed into the hands of well-financed companies.
The conflict over federal land is far older than the recent movement for states to take control of acreage within their borders, it is older than the occupation at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and older than the face-off at Cliven Bundy’s ranch. It is a story that goes back to when Lewis and Clark opened the West and stretches through the eras of fur trading, mining and massive cattle companies.
Underground mines required huge quantities of timber to guard against cave-ins. In 1897, the General Land Office reported that the steady loss of forest to mining operations “fully demonstrated the want of wisdom in placing the public timber thus free of cost at the disposal of the public. It is also unjust in granting exceptional privileges to the residents of the States, Territories.”
The problem was that the trees weren’t going to the average citizen. “Large corporations and companies have secured permits at different times to cut many millions of feet,” the 1897 report observed. And sometimes, the big operators didn’t bother with permits.
In 1853, Edward Matteson, a California miner, updated an ancient technique to expedite the extraction of placer gold — he built dams uphill from his diggings, then brought the water through a ditch and then a hose and nozzle, generating a high-pressure stream that washed tons of gravel into his sluices. It was called hydraulic mining, and it was quickly adopted anywhere mine companies had a source of uphill water. Tons of silt from these operations choked rivers and streams, exacerbating floods and, after particularly heavy runoff, depositing thick layers of mud in the floodplains and crop fields below. Often, the silt carried heavy metals and acids that killed fish and other aquatic life for miles. Once again, the public’s interest suffered while the profit from the public’s land found its way into the coffers of big companies.
Out on the prairie, the situation wasn’t much better.
Starting even a small ranch took capital. The cattleman needed a good remuda of horseflesh, the tack to saddle them and the money or equipment to keep them shod. He needed to prove up a claim on a piece of land for headquarters. And he needed some cows. The price of a Texas longhorn at the northern railheads varied between $3 and $8 a head, and that investment wouldn’t begin paying dividends until this spring’s calves had grown into 2- to 4-year-old steers. A cattleman, as opposed to a cowboy, was a man of property who might have to wait years to see a return on his investment.
In the years after the Civil War, the appetite for beef in America and Europe far outstripped the supply, and the producers made quick fortunes. It didn’t take long for investors on both sides of the Atlantic to take advantage of the situation.
The first British cattle corporation to operate in the United States formed in 1879, raising capital of $350,000 with which it bought up ranches in South Dakota and Wyoming. Over the next 20 years, 36 more British corporations invested $34 million in the Western cattle business. At the same time British capitalists were making their presence felt, well-heeled Americans from the East and Midwest were buying into the business. What had been a family-run, hand-to-mouth calling became an industry, and as was the case with most other industries of the time, the big money took complete control.
In the years of the open range on public land, the big conglomerates played the system to gain control of key tracts of land. In 1884, The New York Times reported on the General Land Office’s investigation of illegal claims on the public domain. According to the newspaper, inspectors from the Land Office had found millions of acres of illegally fenced land and claims.
In 1880, the governor of Wyoming estimated that the ranching operations in the state ran 540,000 head of cattle and about 375,000 head of sheep. Over the next three years, the number of cattle in the state rose to about 800,000, where it plateaued, and the number of sheep continued to climb, reaching more than 6 million by 1909.
The condition of pastureland across the West was essentially the same — 30 years of intense grazing had done damage to grasses and broad-leafed forage plants that would last for decades or even longer. At the same time, invasive plants like cheatgrass had been imported with contaminated seed, which would damage the rangeland in the Great Basin forever. The dreaded cattle disease brucellosis was brought to North America with infected livestock and was probably introduced into Yellowstone bison shortly after 1900 when domestic cows were used to foster young buffalo in an effort to preserve the species.
After less than a century, this is what Jefferson’s dream for his beloved Western territory looked like: a land controlled and operated by millionaires and conglomerates, many of whom had connived or simply flouted the law to control the economy and politics of the public domain. A land stripped of its pristine promise: the range overgrazed; the forests over-cut; mountainsides raw and bleeding from the pitiless extraction of precious metals; streams polluted; the great herds of game, the beaver, the sage grouse all but extinct.
The entire nation was appalled. Faced with the ruin wrought by an unfettered market and a moneyed elite, a generation of Americans began looking for a different way to realize the democratic ideal in the arid West. It began in 1872 with the creation of the world’s first national park, continued in 1890 with the protection of our first national forest, and culminated in the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, two laws that mandated better management of Bureau of Land Management lands.
The movement proceeded from the notion that our common interest is sometimes best served when we own things together. The idea of places and resources held in the public trust gained traction with wildlife in the 1840s and was extended over the next century to the great open spaces of the West’s public domain.
The form and function of the consensus has been hammered out over 100 years. It has changed with time, and it will continue to change as the people who care about the public domain change, and as the land itself changes. Finding consensus among 300 million citizens is always a challenge, and it is especially difficult when we look for consensus on managing public land in the West.
But neither history nor recent experience supports the notion that these lands would better serve America if they were in private hands. The demands big business continues to make on the public domain in the West haven’t changed; they’ve been held in check only by federal regulations that seek to control the management of national forests and BLM holdings. If these lands were to be given to the states, or sold to private interests, these smaller governing entities or owners would not have the power to resist the influence the corporations wield. Even the federal government struggles to resist that influence. Land use would quickly return to the patterns that developed in the nineteenth century. The resources on the public domain, renewable and nonrenewable, would be sacrificed to enhance profits and the public would lose its right to visit what was left.
These days, Americans are dispossessed, confined in our apartments, on our quarter-acre lots, estranged from the land that, in large part, has defined our character as a people and a nation. We are held prisoner by economics. Perhaps the only physical expression of freedom we have left is the public domain. Together, we can use it without destroying it; we can enjoy it without dividing it.
We should never give it up.
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Chris Madson is a freelance writer specializing in conservation and hunting subjects. He lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The post From prospectors to cattlemen: Roots of the Sagebrush Rebellion appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Roots of the Sagebrush Rebellion

OWAA Developer — Sat, 01 Oct 2016 17:29:11 +0000

BY CHRIS MADSON
It was supposed to be for the common man. That’s what Thomas Jefferson thought when he forged the deal that made the 800,000 square miles of Louisiana Territory the property of the United States. “The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on,” he wrote to James Madison in 1785. “The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.”
But, in much of the interior West, Jefferson’s vision went largely unrealized. The American ideal, the democratic association of free men on free land, stalled in the Western wilderness.
The confrontation over federal land is older than the occupation at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, older than the face-off at Cliven Bundy’s ranch, older than the Sagebrush Rebellion that arose in the 1970s and the often heated debate over the Taylor Grazing Act in the 1920s and 1930s. It is a contest between greed and the public interest that stretches back to Lewis and Clark and the opening of the West.
It took a huge bank account and a focused mission to survive, let alone prosper, on these vast, untamed landscapes. That is why the West was opened, not by a few intrepid settlers, yearning to breathe free, but by a succession of well-funded companies that explored and exploited the frontiers and eventually stripped them of anything that could be converted to profit.
These days, we celebrate the free trapper as the apotheosis of American liberty. We choose to ignore the far-flung corporate conglomerates that forced their way into the heart of the continent: the Hudson’s Bay Company; the North West Company; the Missouri Fur Company; William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company; and the powerful American and Pacific fur companies, formed and backed by the New York entrepreneur John Jacob Astor.
When Astor incorporated the American Fur Company in the spring of 1808, he invested $1 million in the firm. Soon thereafter, he established the Pacific Fur Company to exploit the fur trade between the Columbia River and the Far East, investing another $400,000 in that plan, which included the purchase of a new ship. The fur trade was big business.
The unrelenting pressure on furbearing animals, especially the beaver, had a predictable effect. As early as 1826, naturalist John D. Godman predicted that the beaver was headed for extinction. “A few individuals may, for a time, elude the immediate violence of persecution,” he wrote, but the species would eventually be lost “in the fathomless gulf of avarice.”
When beaver became scarce, the European market turned to other fibers to manufacture hats, and the great beaver hunt in the Rockies came to an end.
So ended the first great wave of development on the public domain in the American West. The beaver, whose pelts had built an empire, had been hunted to the brink of extinction. The men who had set the traps were gone, a large proportion of them the victims of violent deaths, the rest fading away on hardscrabble farms in Missouri or Ohio or Oregon as they mourned the passing of a life they loved and had spent their best years to destroy. The profit from 30 years of toil and danger was in New York and London, in the vaults of the big companies that had run the business. It was a pattern that would become all too familiar over the next century.
The beaver trade died just as American enthusiasm for the Elysian fields of Oregon began to take hold. In 1846, the United States finally settled the long-standing border dispute with Britain, and the boundary between the two nations was set on the 49th parallel. At the same time, the U.S. took almost half of Mexico by force, adding another 500,000 square miles to the public domain. California joined the union in 1850; Oregon followed in 1859, and visionaries began to talk about the need to tie the East and West together. Wagons and sailing ships weren’t enough, the thinking went. The solution was at hand, the miracle of the age: the railroad.
Congress authorized $93 million worth of bonds, with the principal and interest guaranteed by the federal government, to encourage the big rail companies to build the transcontinental lines. Why this outpouring of generosity? Our eighth-grade history books told us that it was a simple commitment to the idea that the nation should be united by rail, and there’s little doubt that a patriotic impulse was one of the motives the railroad magnates shared.
Another was sheer greed. The railroaders distributed $250,000 in bonds around Washington, D.C., to congressmen and other key officials who could help sweeten the deal. The bonds were worth nothing if the transcontinental line wasn’t built; they were worth plenty if it was.
State and federal governments were also generous with land grants. The railroads west of the Mississippi were given 175 million acres along potential routes. Combined with the control the railroads had over routes and choices of town sites, this allowed company insiders to reap huge profits in real estate.
The deals that were made to complete the three great transcontinental rail lines were “leveraged” to the hilt, which meant main players borrowed far more than they could pay back — unless the rail project yielded an immense profit — and many of them found ways to evade any personal financial responsibility to investors through limited liability corporations and other means. The key players in just the California part of the shell game that built the Union Pacific transcontinental line came away with $10 million in clear profit.
The chicanery, bribery and fraud eventually led to scandals. More than 30 members of Congress had taken gifts of shares from the company, but no one was indicted and only two members of Congress were even censured. The organizers at the California end of the line avoided a similar investigation when all the records of their finance and construction company were mysteriously destroyed in a fire.
The lack of adequate capital to back the rampant speculation surrounding the transcontinental railroads was largely to blame for the financial panic of 1873 and the six-year depression that followed. As always, the brunt of the downturn fell on people of modest means. More than 18,000 businesses closed their doors, small farms failed, and wages in the railroad sector and elsewhere were slashed.
It took more than 2,000 wooden ties to build a mile of track and at least 30 poles to string the telegraph line alongside. It’s been estimated that between 20 and 25 percent of all timber cut in the last third of the nineteenth century found its way into railroads. The demand was so intense that the mountains within 30 miles of the tracks in Wyoming were almost denuded. Ties floated down local streams wherever possible, scouring creek beds, which then became smothered with silt from the surrounding hillsides.
Once again, the common folk shouldered the brunt of the cost of the great project, in money, heartache and blood. The environment sustained a heavy blow, and a handful of wealthy speculators reaped the profit.
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Chris Madson is a freelance writer specializing in conservation and hunting subjects. He lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The post Roots of the Sagebrush Rebellion appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Opinion: Minnesota should ban lead shot

OWAA Developer — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 21:14:33 +0000

BY MICHAEL FURTMAN
Anyone who hunts in the southern and western parts of Minnesota knows there are two types of public land ownership — those acquired by the Duck Stamp and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as waterfowl production areas, and those purchased by similar state stamps or other Minnesota funding that are managed as state wildlife management areas by the Department of Natural Resources.
These parcels are virtually identical except for signage, and when adjacent to each other, the land complex is sometimes managed as a whole by the two partner organizations. But there’s one big difference. On federal waterfowl protection areas, hunters must use nontoxic shot for hunting any upland species. To comply with federal law which requires the use of nontoxic shot for waterfowl, they use it when duck hunting on wildlife management areas as well. But if you were shooting a pheasant on these lands managed by the Department of Natural Resources, you can shoot lead.
Right now, if your target is a mallard, you must use steel. If it is a rooster pheasant, you can shoot lead. What sense does that make, considering you’re standing in practically the same spot, spewing shot out over the same marsh?
While it’s a given waterfowl production areas have wetlands for waterfowl production, almost every wildlife management area also contains wetlands, and waterfowl production and hunting are two major uses. In much of what the Department of Natural Resources classifies as the “farmland zone,” these wildlife management areas also provide critical habitat for pheasants and sharp-tailed grouse.
So it made sense to everyone managing these lands that given the toxicity of lead to waterfowl and other birds, the use of nontoxic shot should be required for all small game on wildlife management areas. By far the largest number of upland hunters using these lands are those chasing pheasants. Since the best pheasant cover is near wetlands, the majority of those birds are bagged nearby.
Wishing to avoid more lead in the few remaining wetlands in the state’s prairie region, the Department of Natural Resources announced its proposal in October 2015 to require nontoxic shot for upland hunting on these particular wildlife management areas near wetlands. It would not be applied to bullets or slugs or big game hunting.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation and Safari Club International organized their constituents to oppose this proposal. They also sent official letters to the department during the comment period.
Ryan Burt, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Safari Club wrote to the Department of Natural Resources, “… it is disturbing that the DNR is attempting to accomplish through administrative rulemaking what radical anti-hunting groups have largely been unable to do through litigation or legislation — pricing hunters out of hunting.” Steel, he asserted, is far more expensive, and all one needs to do is go to a sporting goods store to see that Safari Club International is right.
But they aren’t right. Depending upon where and when you buy your shotshells, steel is often as cheap, or cheaper, than lead. Since shot weights and speeds are different in lead loads than steel, apple-to-apple comparisons are not easy. But a simple online search for loads suitable for pheasant hunting reveals that Rogers Sporting Goods sells a case of lead Federal Wing-Shok 12-gauge 2¾ shells for $129.99, and the similar steel Speed-Shok for $119.99. If you move up to 3-inch shells and into premium ammo designed specifically for pheasant hunting (Federal Prairie Storm), Cabela’s sells a case of steel for $199.99, with the lead version priced at $214.99. Clearly, nontoxic loads are not going to price anyone out of hunting.
Then there are the comments of Jake McGuigan of the National Shooting Sports Foundation to the Department of Natural Resources, who said, “This legislation seeks to use lead as a means to end hunting in Minnesota.”
Seriously? This would come as shocking news to the numerous pheasant hunters (myself among them) who using steel, love to prowl the federal waterfowl protection areas. Even more baffling was endless information about the California Condor, the lack of evidence of health risks to humans, how wildlife management should focus on species population health and not that of individuals. It was not much more than a “traditional ammo” form letter which could be sent to any agency or region considering restricting the use of lead shot, little of which had anything to do with the proposal in Minnesota.
Apparently the Safari Club and the National Shooting Sports Foundation still see bogeyman, anti-hunters under every bed. They act as if hunters were being asked to make a sacrifice akin to abandoning cars to travel by bike, when in fact the sacrifice — if any — is more like asking them to change brands of cars.
The proposal in Minnesota was simply to avoid the risk of soil and water contamination to ensure these remaining pockets of habitat stay healthy. The wildlife management areas proposed for the ban on lead shot frequently contain wetlands which are just as important to waterfowl production, staging and migration as their federal counterparts. The impacts on waterfowl by lead shot are well documented, and if these groups want to reopen that debate, they best be prepared for a serious ass-whooping. In a sea of soybeans and corn, these parcels are critical habitat not only to waterfowl and upland game birds, but every grassland passerine and wetland wading species native to the region. And lead is deadly to them all.
Just as the ban on lead did not end duck hunting — but did save millions of ducks — a limited ban on it for important wildlife lands in Minnesota won’t end upland hunting, but will save the lives of birds.
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Michael Furtman joined OWAA in 1986. He received the Circle of Chiefs Award in 2001, and is the only writer to ever receive the highest conservation communicator awards from both Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited. A passionate pheasant hunter, he’s used only steel shot on roosters for over a decade.

The post Opinion: Minnesota should ban lead shot appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Renewable energy working in Iowa

OWAA Developer — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 03:30:22 +0000

[level-non-member]
Members, remember to log in to view this post.
[/level-non-member]
[level-membersupporter]
BY RICH PATTERSON
The windmill graphic on my Iowa driver’s license is a fitting symbol for the energy revolution sweeping the state.
When conventional fuel prices spiked years ago, Iowa leaders became concerned that vast amounts of money were leaving the state to buy oil, natural gas and coal. Iowa may lack petroleum, but it has incessant wind and plenty of sunshine. Harnessing these limitless resources seemed prudent and governments, utilities, environmentalists, manufacturers and nonprofits converged to position Iowa into its current leadership role in renewable energy.
“We had strong public policy and leaders like then-governor Tom Vilsack (now U.S. Secretary of Agriculture) who were interested in making it happen and worked with people to get it done,” said Rob Hogg, an Iowa State Senator. “Wind manufacturing was a target for economic development. We added renewable energy training at community colleges and passed production tax credits to encourage small-scale, locally owned wind and solar projects.”
Today 31 percent of Iowa’s electricity comes from the wind and sun. It will likely reach 40 percent by 2020, propelled in part by declining costs of renewable installations. In 1983 it cost 55 cents to produce a kilowatt of wind electricity. Today it’s a nickel. Photovoltaic costs, although higher than wind, are also tumbling.
Iowa’s renewable energy boom arrived with little controversy. Farmers receive royalty payments for each turbine on their property and about 6,000 Iowans are now employed in the wind industry assembling turbines, constructing and maintaining wind farms, and providing equipment to support the industry. So strong has employment grown that Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids erected a massive turbine that produces 24 percent of its electric consumption and offers an associate degree of applied wind maintenance.
“Our graduates have been hired by many utilities and are now maintaining turbines all over the world,” said Tom Kaldenberg, associate vice president of the school.
Van Meter Industrial is a wholesale electrical supply distributor. “Five years ago we had one employee serving the photovoltaic market,” said Brad Duggan, Van Meter’s Renewable Energy Product Manager. “Now we have five. At least 47 Iowa companies are involved in the solar energy supply chain and at least 680 Iowans are employed in installing, marketing and supplying the solar industry.”
Renewable energy isn’t perfect and won’t completely replace conventional power generation. Calm occasionally envelops usually gusty Iowa and the sun refuses to shine at night. Wind turbines kill birds and bats, but this threat has diminished. Some people simply don’t like windmills, although I’ve heard few Iowans express this.
Wind and solar reduce the negative impact of burning fossil fuels. Once in place these renewables release no emissions to the atmosphere and don’t pull water from rivers or the ground. There’s no need for dams to block fish movement and no concern about a nuclear catastrophe or mercury and acid raining down into lakes and the oceans.
There are significant economic and legal differences between wind and solar electricity. Massive wind farms are owned by utilities and, like coal or nuclear plants, the utility produces and sells the power. To a consumer there isn’t any difference between buying electricity produced at a coal plant or wind farm. In contrast, photovoltaics and the electricity they produce are owned by individuals.
Wind often blows all day and night, while the sun only works the day shift. To completely rely on solar electricity a homeowner needs a stand-alone system to charge batteries when the sun’s shining and yield electricity when it’s not. Battery systems are expensive and normally only cost effective if a home is a long distance from the grid.
Increasingly common are grid intertie net metered systems where electricity flows both ways through a meter. There is no power storage. Essentially the grid acts as a battery. When a home is producing more electricity than is being used, power flows outward to the grid, running the meter backward. At night electricity is pulled in and the meter runs forward. At the end of the month the utility bills the customer for the net amount used.
Over 20 years ago, while director of the Indian Creek Nature Center, I acquired photovoltaic panels that Jimmy Carter erected on the White House and Ronald Reagan later removed and put in storage. I wanted to create Iowa’s first net metered photovoltaic system, but there was no legal mechanism for a grid intertie. Fortunately my utility, Alliant Energy, was cooperative and helped legally and technically connect the system with their grid. This led to a permanent legal mechanism that enables property owners to net meter either wind or solar generated electricity.
Although small, our system cut the electric bill by 41 percent and the Nature Center is now constructing, with Alliant’s help, a new building that will produce more electricity than it consumes, a concept that can be incorporated into many structures.
Because utilities don’t produce home or business generated solar electricity, they face a dilemma somewhat akin to electric cars, where the owner uses roads but does not pay gasoline taxes needed to maintain them. Utilities must sustain their grid but can’t sell electricity they don’t produce. Essentially net meter customers have free access to the grid. Utilities are likely to eventually charge a grid access fee.
Economics is driving renewable energy expansion, at least in Iowa. Cedar Rapids based Paulson Electric recently prepared a bid to place a photovoltaic system on our home. For a cost of $13,150 a new system will produce 93 percent of our electric consumption. We will receive state and federal tax credits of about $6,312, reducing our cash cost to $6,838. The payback on investment is about 11.2 percent. That’s far more impressive than the microscopic interest we receive from our traditional investments.
Renewable energy isn’t pie-in-the-sky. In Iowa it has created significant employment while reducing environmental threats caused by hydro, nuclear and fossil fuel. It is a model that is expanding across the country and holds great promise for a cleaner future.
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council and policy spokesmen. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
For the past four decades Rich Patterson has pioneered techniques of energy efficiency and renewable energy generation at the Indian Creek Nature Center and his home. He is a past OWAA board president and can be reached through his website www.windingpathways.com.

[/level-membersupporter]

The post Renewable energy working in Iowa appeared first on Outdoor Writers Association of America.