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Relinquishment: The
latest Water stealing scheme.
by Tom Flint
forwarded by Sharon Shumate
"The
best thing for fish is probably to stop all irrigation, terminate
any kind of development in riparian areas and ... to take out the dams and
... move east," (Will Stelle, regional director of NMFS,
Dec 18 1999, Tri-Cities Herald)
2/3/02 - Washington State
continues to try and balance the states water needs off the backs of
farmers and property owners by something called relinquishment (
definition; to give up, abandon, or surrender ) in the latest
working of water legislation.
Basically
what this means is if you have not used the maximum amount of your water
allocation from your water right, then the state wants the difference of
the water from what you used to what your maximum allocation is.
Relinquishment is nothing more than
a way for the for the state to steal peoples' water rights in the
name of growth and salmon restoration and in stream flows based on
speculation and junk science.
In some years
farmers may use their maximum water right allocation and in some
years they will not depending upon a variety of factors, the largest of
which is the type of crop being grown and weather conditions. One
can make a comparison to a annualized purchased annuity and the purchase
of property and the associated water right. The purchaser of the
annuity has the right to a payback of that investment.
Let's say that the annual annuity
payback is $1000 and you put it in a account and you used $ 600,
leaving you with a balance of $ $400. Comparing this to the water
right, now through relinquishment the state of Washington wants this
annual $ 400 balance you have, forever. This maneuver is nothing
short of robbery, and is another misappropriation an attack on western
water law. If the state would like water for growth, salmon
and instream flows, then they need to work on a system where the state
could purchase the unused balance of water from water right owners or
people with other water allocations. To try and steal it through relinquishment
is one more example of the West side mentality that says we need it and
you will give it to us.
I see this as a
taking, as the water right is a value of the property when you bought it.
Now our government is still hard at work with your tax dollars trying to
steal water from people based upon unknown in stream flows for salmon when they
have yet to define what that is and how much a salmon actually needs.
If you are a
water right holder and water user I would encourage you to contact your
representative and let them know how you feel about water relinquishment and
the other attempts that have been tried to take water away from people.
The following articles have been
condensed to save space and may not contain the correct punctuation or
structure.) (Underlined titles are linked to the original article.)
Judge rules state can't use NMFS
flow -- Feb 2 2002, The Register Guard. ( Thanks Joe Lilly )
The state Department of Ecology cannot base water rights decisions on
river flow rates set by the federal National Marine Fisheries Service, a
judge has ruled. The decision Thursday by Benton County Superior
Court Judge Dennis Yule was based on the state's adoption of the water
flow standard and not the merits of the federal biological opinion on
salmon and steelhead. The ruling is considered a victory for
the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association and the Kennewick Hospital
District, which filed a lawsuit claiming the state had illegally adopted
the federal standard without proper public review. The ruling
was being studied for possible appeal. ``We are going to have
to go back and discuss with the Ecology Department what the next step will
be,'' Assistant Attorney General Barbara Markham said. In
addition to restricting use of the biological opinion, Yule questioned the
feasibility of the state's case-by-case consultation approach to water
rights applications. ``No matter how assiduously the state may seek
case-by-case consultation, it appears to me that the department would not
receive it,'' Yule said. Yule's ruling affects nine
applications for Columbia River water rights. The judge left
open the question of whether his ruling applies to all Columbia River
water rights applications before the state. Brian Iller,
attorney for the irrigators, said he intends to file a motion requiring
the state to issue the nine disputed applications as soon as possible.
``They are free to issue the permits,'' he said. ``But they
cannot apply the biological (water) flow targets.'' In the
case, irrigators set out to prove Ecology Department officials had adopted
federal flow targets as the basis for water decisions on the Columbia
River. Draft permits said water users could not make
withdrawals during July and August - the peak of irrigation season -
making their permits substantially less valuable. Bob Barwin,
a top water manager for the Ecology Department in Yakima, said he tried to
meet federal demands while giving water seekers some of what they wanted.
Based on a study done by one of the applicants, Barwin concluded that 18
fish a year would die if the nine water rights permits were granted.
The state did not do any quantitative analysis of the fishery impacts, the
irrigators contend. Markham defended the lack of a formal
study, saying NMFS has the best available science. ``Do you
see any point in doing a quantitative analysis when the river already is
overdrafted?'' she asked. ``In each case, the evidence is that
there is already not enough water for fish.'' Attorneys for
the irrigators convinced Yule that top agency officials did not give the
permits the individual analysis required by the Legislature.
``The people of Washington did not say, 'We crown Mr. Barwin the king to
determine what flows are going to be,''' Buchal said. ``What
we find especially appalling is that they didn't really have any evidence
at all.''
WATER IN THE BANK, Who owns the water?
-- Feb 1 2002, Tidepool, by Ed Hunt. ( Thanks Alice Smith )
Under a new federal plan issued this week, Klamath Basin farmers would get
plenty of water through the next decade, but they could voluntarily sell
water back to the the federal government using a "water bank"
set up for endangered fish and wildlife. Interestingly, the
new plan seems to philosophically accede the contention by the farmers
that they have a property "right" to the irrigation water.
The farmers have brought suit against the federal government saying that
denying them irrigation water was a constitutional "takings" of
private property. Such a right to water has been
established in court, but only in a case where water allocations were much
more carefully spelled out. However, the bottom line of the
new federal plan seems to concur with what the farmers are arguing in
court -- that the water belongs to the irrigators. If the
federal government wants it for fish, it will have to buy it. Environmentalists,
fishermen and tribes in the area say that the new plan "turns back
the clock" giving farmers first priority for the water. That's the
same strategy that lead to fish and wildlife declines in the first place.
Buying water back won't help water quality, they say. "In
many ways, this proposal is more openly anti-tribal and anti-environmental
than previous Reclamation policies," Allen Foreman, chairman of the
Klamath Tribe, told
the Oregonian. "The new program actually has the
nerve to propose that for tribal water to stay in Upper Klamath Lake to
protect tribal fisheries, the U.S. government would have to buy it from
Klamath irrigators." The draft biological
assessment from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation admits that diverting water
to farmers would likely hurt coho salmon and other threatened fish -- so
it will still have to be reviewed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and
National Marine Fisheries Service.
Private
water meetings continue -- Jan 30 2002, Tri Cities Herald, by
Chris Mulick.
Precious little consensus has been reached during water policy
negotiations in the first two weeks of the 2002 legislative session.
Negotiators have continued to meet privately since the session commenced
Jan. 14, and more talks are scheduled this week. But so far,
lawmakers have failed to introduce a bill, only releasing drafts designed
to stimulate stakeholder reaction. Nobody, not even the negotiators
themselves, have liked what they've seen. "They're not getting
very far," said Gary Chandler, who last year was the point man on
water issues for the House Republican Caucus but now leads the lobbying
team for the Association of Washington Business. As
demanded by Gov. Gary Locke, four issues are being simultaneously
negotiated by all four legislative caucuses:
-- Negotiators want to reform
Washington's "use it or lose it" water laws to provide more
incentive for conservation.
-- Local governments want more certainty
over water supplies to meet growth.
-- Environmentalists want assurances of
adequate stream flows to aid fish.
-- Agriculture and other interests want
money to pay for new storage projects and replacing aging waterworks
systems.
The hang-up of all hang-ups
continues to be deciding what kinds of incentives should be used to
encourage water users to give up some of their water, at least
temporarily, for fish. Granger Rep. Bruce Chandler, the Republicans'
point-man in the House, is wary of reliance on regulatory processes that
strong-arm users into giving up their water. "They
have to be incentives and not a gun to the head," he said.
Olympia Sen. Karen Fraser, the Democrats' top negotiator in the Senate,
said a final resolution probably will have to include a combination of
"sticks and carrots." "When it comes to the
environment, it usually does," said Fraser. "Most of the
sticks are in current law." The incentives, as she
sees them, could be the simple removal of regulatory barriers to allow
water users to make contributions to increase stream flows. Water
users want more emphasis put on developing a free market system that would
promote the buying and selling of water at an agreeable price. But
whatever mechanisms are chosen, they will have to guarantee flow targets
will be met or there may be no bill this year. Without such
assurances, setting flow targets is meaningless, said Karen Allston,
director of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy.
If agreement can be reached on the stream flow issue, most believe
everything else will fall into place. "Once you do that, it's
easy to do a lot of other things," Fraser said. But no one has
been willing to concede any ground so far. And though the
session is only in its third week, time already appears to be running out.
Talks among chief negotiators, which actually began in September, have
been held exclusively in closed-door sessions, and nothing has been
brought before the full water committees in either house.
"We've got to get our act together," said Rep. Kelli Linville, a
Bellingham Democrat and chairwoman of the House Agriculture and Ecology
Committee. Bruce Chandler said he's been frustrated by some
stakeholder groups whose positions seem to built on quicksand.
"Everything has been so tentative," he said. Jim Waldo,
who heads Locke's executive water policy team, has managed to maintain a
sunny disposition throughout slowing negotiations. But though
there is some dissenting opinion, most agree negotiators and stakeholders
should stay the course, together hammering out all four issues at once.
"The challenge is to balance all this," Fraser said. "Each
component of the bill is the equivalent of a huge, complex bill."
Klamath
plan backs irrigation -- Jan 29 2002, Oregonian, by
Michael Milstein.
Klamath Basin farmers would get nearly a full supply of irrigation water
through the next decade under a proposal unveiled Monday by the Bush
administration, but they could voluntarily sell water back to the
government through a "water bank" set up to help protected fish.
The draft U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plan gives farmers a leg up in the
heated contest for water in the arid basin. But top officials cautioned
Monday that it is merely a first step toward divvying water among farmers,
wildlife and tribes in coming years. "What it means is
the Department of Interior is working as hard as it can to deliver water
to farmers, while also meeting our obligations to the tribes" and the
Endangered Species Act, said Bennett Raley, assistant secretary of
interior. "We're doing everything we can, but we're going to follow
the law." Because the plan -- called a biological assessment --
admits that diverting water to farms probably would harm endangered
suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath
River, it faces review by federal biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. Biologists
found in a similar review last year that the imperiled fish needed more
water to make it through last summer's drought. That prompted severe
cutbacks in irrigation deliveries and an emotional summer of protests in
the Klamath Basin. But the mountains ringing the basin hold
far more snow now than they did last year, and the Bush administration has
had a full year to review its options for calming the Klamath Basin's
water struggles. Farmers had hoped the administration would
find room to provide reliable irrigation water even with the demands of
the Endangered Species Act. They were among many interests in the basin
briefed Monday in Klamath Falls by Raley and Reclamation Commissioner John
Keys. "It seems like they have spent a long time on this, so we
are hopeful it will be workable," said Dan Keppen of the Klamath
Water Users Association. "We just don't want to see a repeat of last
year -- that's the bottom line." Turning back the clock
But while farmers greeted the plan warmly, Klamath Basin tribes and
conservation groups complained that it turns back the clock.
By giving farms first priority for water, they said, the plan embraces the
same strategy that led to the decline of waterfowl and the now-endangered
fish that Native Americans once depended on for food. Buying
some water back from farmers through the proposed "water bank"
will not restore an ecosystem beset by declining water quality, they said.
"In many ways, this proposal is more openly anti-tribal and
anti-environmental than previous Reclamation policies," said Allen
Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribe. "The new program actually has
the nerve to propose that for tribal water to stay in Upper Klamath Lake
to protect tribal fisheries, the U.S. government would have to buy it from
Klamath irrigators." They said the proposal clearly signals the
intention of the Bush administration to satisfy the needs of farmers
before fulfilling the demands of the Endangered Species Act.
"They're basically acknowledging that their plan does not meet the
needs of fish," said Reed Benson, executive director of WaterWatch of
Oregon. "But I think they've decided they want to be on the side of
farmers, and if the fish don't get what they need, that's the fishes'
problem." WaterWatch was among an alliance of conservation and
fishermen's groups that said last week they would sue if federal agencies
fail to draw up a Klamath water plan that protected fish.
Based on peak years The plan released Monday proposes to provide water to
farmers at the same level as federal water managers did from 1961 to 1997,
the years when the Klamath Reclamation Project reached its peak water
deliveries. Doing so would drop Upper Klamath Lake during the
summer, putting it as much as 3 feet below the levels biologists have
mandated for fish and below its historic levels, the plan says.
That would leave less habitat for suckers and would lead to warmer and
shallower water, making algae-caused fish kills more common and damaging,
it says. Sending water to farms also would harm coho salmon by leaving
less habitat for young fish downstream in the Klamath River, the plan
says. It offers a series of suggestions for reducing the harm to
fish that could be adopted into a final operations plan for the basin's
intricate network of dams and canals. They include leasing
water from willing farmers to devote to fish needs; encouraging farmers to
irrigate more in winter to reduce the needs of crops during the basin's
dry summers; and installing long-proposed fish screens to keep protected
fish from getting sucked into irrigation canals. It also proposes
pursuing restoration of wetlands that naturally filter water entering the
region's lakes and rivers. Some had hoped the Bush
administration would advance a broader plan to bring the many demands for
water in the basin more in line with the limited amount available,
especially in drought years. Senators' reactions Sen. Gordon
Smith, R-Ore., was still reviewing the proposal Monday. Rep Greg Walden,
R-Ore., who has joined Smith to advocate relief for the basin's farmers,
said the 10-year span of the new plan should give federal agencies more
flexibility in managing water. A spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden,
D-Ore., said the senator would continue pushing a five-year, $175 million
plan to create a Klamath Basin task force that would address the basin's
problems. "I'm not sure that anybody is going to be happy
about this assessment," said Josh Kardon, Wyden's chief of staff.
"The farmers get government handouts instead of certainty; the tribes
and the environmentalists may feel like an afterthought."
The biological assessment was scheduled be available today on the Web at
www.doi.gov.
Acting BPA chierf gets not to take reins
-- Jan 25 2002, Oregonian by Jonathan Brinckman.
Steve Wright was named administrator of the Bonneville Power
Administration on Thursday, becoming the 13th head of the federal agency
that distributes nearly half of the Northwest's electricity.
The position usually goes to a person chosen by the president's party, in
this case the Republicans, but Wright, a 21-year BPA veteran, was named
interim director by the Clinton administration and has the support of
Republicans and Democrats. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
announced the appointment on Thursday. Wright, 44, was deputy
to the previous BPA administrator, Judi Johansen. He has been acting head
of the BPA since late 2000, when Johansen resigned to take a position at
PacifiCorp, the Portland-based private utility. After guiding
the agency through the last year's drought and a West Coast power crisis,
he was endorsed by all the U.S. senators from the Northwest.
"Steve Wright's leadership at the BPA during this past year has been
impressive, and he has earned the respect of this administration,"
said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the region's senior Republican senator.
Wright took two key actions last year: He led a drive to cut demand for
BPA power by 10 percent. That allowed the agency to meet its power supply
obligations without buying large amounts of electricity on an expensive
wholesale market. He directed that the amount of water spilled over
federal dams on the Columbia River be sharply reduced, which hurt salmon
but increased electricity generation. Reducing spill forces more young
migrating salmon through the dams' turbines, and that causes increased
death rates. At the time, conservationists and tribal
officials sharply criticized the spill decision. Still, many
conservationists said Thursday that they support Wright, mainly because of
his strong record on conservation. Tribes have remained critical of
Wright, however, and a tribal official said Thursday that the agency is
spending too little on salmon recovery. "Wright's turning BPA into a
salmon-recovery skinflint," said Don Sampson, executive director of
the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. Officials of
publicly owned and investor-owned utilities said they were thrilled by
Wright's appointment. "The administration is appointing
someone who has already proven to be a great asset to the region,"
said Patrick Reiten, a vice president of the Pacific Northwest Generating
Cooperative, which manages power supply needs of 15 electric cooperatives.
Wright started at the BPA in 1981, shortly after receiving his master's in
public affairs from the University of Oregon. He worked in the
agency's energy conservation office in Portland, then directed its
California and Washington, D.C., offices. He became deputy administrator
in 2000 and shortly afterward was appointed acting administrator.
As administrator, he will be paid $138,200 a year. "I'm
committed to operating BPA as a sound business enterprise, but one whose
mission starts with meeting our responsibilities to serve the
public," Wright said Thursday. "That means striving for strong
environmental stewardship, low rates, reliable service and being open to
the public's ideas." Wright and his wife, Kathleen, have
three children and live in Portland.
Steelhead
spawning in urban streams -- Jan 22 2002, Seattle P-I.
Retired biologist John Shully regularly walks the banks of frigid Ashland
Creek looking for signs of rare summer steelhead that are now spawning in
urban creeks throughout Jackson County. These close cousins of
salmon first swam into the upper Rogue River during the hottest days of
summer. They lingered until the coldest days of winter to
reproduce in tributary creeks ranging from the wilds of the woods to the
hippest parts of downtown Ashland. Most people are oblivious to the
secretive steelhead. "I point them out to people, and they're
shocked," Shully said. "Most people have never seen fish in
Ashland Creek, let alone big, gorgeous ones. "But they're here.
Oh, man, are they here." Wild steelhead are a coastwide
phenomenon from Northern California well into Alaska, but most of the
rivers welcome home their fish in winter. The Rogue and Umpqua
basins are two of only a handful of coastal streams with a separate run of
steelhead that migrate in the summer. The summer steelhead then
stick around through fall before they spawn in the winter, with mid- to
late-January the peak time. The wild steelhead are now in some of
the small backyard tributary streams of Central Point, Eagle Point and
Shady Cove, Ore., as well as the waters of Wagner Creek near Talent, Ore.,
and the backwoods of Trail, Ore. But perhaps some of the most
unusual of these winter haunts are the streams that meander through east
Medford, Ore.'s dense housing developments. These wild steelhead,
ranging from barely 16 ounces to more than 10 pounds, dart into the
tributaries during high-water periods that come during and after
rainstorms, said fish biologist Mike Evenson of the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife. They often migrate, then spawn amid as much
streamside cover as they can and return back downstream even before the
high waters subside so they often go unnoticed. It's a far
different scenario when large fall chinook salmon head up Bear Creek and
spawn along downtown Medford, where residents easily can see them from the
Main Street bridge. "The summer steelhead are hard to see when
they're spawning, even if you're looking for them," Evenson said.
"There could be a whole bunch behind someone's house, and they
would never know." That relative obscurity is one of the many
qualities that inspires Shully to keep such close tabs on them.
"These fish are my favorite, because they are so mysterious,"
Shully said. "They're really neat fish."
Tainted
data -- A look at how environmental agencies work and how
environmental issues are covered in most of the mainstream media --
Jan 19 2002, USNEWS, by Michael Barone.
On Dec. 17, 2001, Audrey Hudson of the Washington Times reported that
three U.S. Forest Service officials, two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
officials, and two employees of the Washington State Department of Fish
and Wildlife had planted samples of Canadian lynx hair on rubbing posts
and mailed samples of the hair in to laboratories for testing. The
agencies are conducting a yearslong survey of the Gifford Pinchot and
Wenatchee national forests to see if the Canadian lynx, declared a
threatened species by the Fish and Wildlife Service, is found there. The
lynx hair placed on rubbing posts and sent into laboratories actually came
from captive animals. A flurry of reports followed. Some
papers, like the Seattle Times, focused on the mailing of the lynx
hair to the laboratories and let the government employees elaborate their
excuse–that they were just making a blind test of the laboratories'
ability to identify lynx hair. There were reports that one or more of the
employees notified their supervisors of what they were doing or kept
personal notes saying that the lynx hair was obtained from captive
animals. But everyone agrees that sending in the samples, with
tags indicating where they were allegedly found in the wild and no
indication they were obtained from captive animals, is not allowed under
the survey procedures. Six of the employees were barred from
surveying the area, and one retired. The names of the federal
employees have not been revealed to protect their privacy.
Precisely what happened is not entirely clear. Even so, the story tells us
a lot about how government environmental protection agencies work and how
environmental issues are covered in most of the mainstream media.
It tells us, first of all, that there are people in environmental agencies
who are willing to lie and cheat in order to produce evidence that can be
used to restrict human use of the environment. And it tells us something
about the agency culture. For this was not just individual lying and
cheating. There was more than one individual in each of these agencies who
did the same thing, and it seems very unlikely that they all came up with
this idea on their own. And that means that people willing to lie and
cheat thought that there was a significant likelihood that others in their
agency would be willing to lie and cheat, and that it was very unlikely
that others in the agency would blow the whistle on them.
The cause of restricting human use of the natural environment is so
important, so worthy, so good, that it justifies such behavior.
Lying and cheating, evidently, is part of the culture of these agencies.
The heads of the agencies would certainly like us to think lying and
cheating is uncharacteristic. But they admit that the
credibility of their agencies is placed in doubt by these incidents.
"I spent many years training to become a biologist and consider this
a slap in the face to myself and other biologists," Jeffrey Koenings,
director of the Washington State department, told the Duluth
News-Tribune. "Our integrity and professionalism is
now being questioned because of the arrogant actions of a few."
Barbara Weber, a U.S. Forest Service official in Washington State, told
the Seattle Times, "It affects the reputation of us as an
agency overall because we say we are a science-based organization.
If people are tainting data and planting data, that speaks to the
integrity and credibility of the agency as a whole and any policy we make
with that data."
Right.
The story about the lynx hair fakery was
broken in the conservative-leaning Washington Times, and stories on
the subject appeared in the Seattle Times, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., the
Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., and the Christian Science Monitor.
A Nexis search turned up nothing on the subject in the New York Times
or the Washington Post. Perhaps that's not surprising, but the
stories–casting grave doubt on the credibility of government
environmental restriction agencies–don't fit the template of recent Times
and Post stories on the environment. Look at a January
13 Times news story, on the Bush administration's environmental
record. As Andrew Sullivan notes in his invaluable andrewsullivan.com,
this story "assumes several things: (a) that the conventional
left-liberal approach to environmental policy is correct; (b) that there
is no reason for the Bush administration to pursue a marginally different
environmental agenda than Clinton, except to cater to business interests;
and (c) that, if the administration does do some pro-environmental things,
it cannot possibly do them except out of naked political calculus, rather
than the merits of the case." Absent from the article is any
substantive argument made in behalf of any Bush policy. Present in good
number are characterizations by so-called environmental groups–a more
accurate, value-free description is environmental restriction advocates.
Or consider a January 14 Washington Post story on Interior
Secretary Gale Norton's refusal to relay the Fish and Wildlife Service's
criticism of an Army Corps of Engineers proposal. The lead
paragraphs of the story quote copiously from Fish and Wildlife's
statement. It quotes later environmental restriction
advocates. Only far down in the text is the Army Corps allowed
to provide, briefly, the rationale for its position, and Secretary
Norton's spokesman to explain her approach. To the writer's credit, Fish
and Wildlife is characterized as "an agency dominated by biologists
who tend to tilt green on environmental issues." The
writer might have added, if he had kept up with the Washington Times,
the Christian Science Monitor, and the regional papers covering the
faked lynx hair story, that it is an agency at least some of whose
employees lied and cheated by forwarding evidence that could be used to
impose environmental restrictions. An agency with, we have some
reason to believe, an institutional culture that tolerates lying and
cheating if it helps impose environmental restriction. An agency
that, until it sharply disciplines the employees who lied and faked data,
does not seem greatly to mind such behavior. Liberal national
media are quite ready to make it clear when there is reason to doubt the
credibility of agencies (like the Army Corps) opposing environmental
restrictions. But they seem to regard environmental
restrictionists, whether in government agencies or in organizations
financed by direct-mail appeals, as people acting totally out of
altruistic motives whose positions are the only ones people concerned with
the environment could take. As for the rest of us, we are free
to remain skeptical when the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest
Service, or the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife tells us
something is so.
Leery
of grizzle tests, legislator demands review of all endangered-species
studies -- Jan 10 2002,
Seattle Times. ( Thanks Alice Smith )State Rep. Bob Sump is accusing
wildlife officials of a coverup in a study to determine whether grizzly
bears exist in northeastern Washington. Sump, R-Republic, has called
for a review of all state studies involving threatened and endangered
species. Sump grew suspicious of a request by a state biologist to get
grizzly-bear hairs from a Colville taxidermist and linked it to recent
reports of problems in lynx studies. A state Department of
Fish and Wildlife official said there was no impropriety. The
grizzly sample was sought as part of a planned check of laboratory
results, said Steve Pozzanghera, an assistant deputy director of the
department. An official with Boise Cascade, which owns much of
the land where the bear test was conducted, also confirmed the planned
blind testing. Blind samples are known samples that are
submitted to a lab to determine the accuracy of its tests. The
state agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest
Service are being investigated by the inspector general of the U.S.
Department of the Interior after seven state and federal biologists
acknowledged sending falsely marked hair samples for DNA testing during a
nationwide lynx survey. The scientists have said they were
testing the accuracy of the DNA testing. Unlike the lynx
survey, Pozzanghera said, the use of blind samples was part of the grizzly
study. Sump wants to add the grizzly-bear survey to a list of
studies that should be investigated. He said taxidermist Jim Gintz was
preparing a bear rug for a resident who legally shot the animal in Alaska
when he was approached by a state biologist. Gintz refused a
request to give hair samples to the biologist, Sump said. When
the taxidermist declined, the biologist got samples instead from a tanned
hide at a sporting-goods store, as well as from live grizzlies in British
Columbia, he said. The samples were sent for DNA testing along
with hair samples collected in the field. Pozzanghera said the
study was conducted in an area known as the Wedge, just east of Colville,
on land owned largely by Boise Cascade, to determine whether it contained
grizzly bears. Grizzlies are known to frequent an area just
across the Canadian border and are believed to cross into the U.S. there,
he said. None of the samples from the field tested positive
for grizzlies, Pozzanghera said. Steve Tveit, Boise Cascade's
timberlands manager for the Washington region, confirmed his company knew
about the blind samples and agreed the samples should be part of the
study. Sump doesn't buy that explanation. "You tell me
why a Fish and Wildlife agent has got to go and beg for hair to send in
for a blind sample when they could have picked up the phone and gotten
samples from any number of sources," he said.
Greens
& other true believers lie because they think they are morally
superior to you and I -- Jan 7 2002, Enter Stage
Right - A Journal of Modern Conservation, by Alan Caruba. http://www.enterstageright.com/index.html#Feature (
Thanks Rex Lyle )
Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute and a former
senior policy analyst for the US Department of State, recently took note
of sanctions applied to Steven R. Arnold, a former researcher at the
Tulane University Center for Bioenvironmental Research. The
Federal Office of Research Integrity found that Arnold had "committed
scientific misconduct by intentionally falsifying the research results
published in the Journal Science and by providing falsified and fabricated
materials to investigating officials." His punishment?
He will be unable to receive federal research funding for five years.
Avery called it "one of the most dramatic scientific frauds of modern
times," noting that the Tulane Center said it found that various
pesticides, safe when tested individually, were 1,000 times more dangerous
when tested together. It raised the spector of modern
agriculture's chemicals undermining the health of the human population and
the natural ecology through a blind spot in our regulatory testing."
And it was a lie. This is part of the campaign of
endless lies designed to secure the ban of every single pesticide and
herbicide that protects human health against insect and rodent predators,
and the vast food crops produced by American farmers. In 1996 a book was
published, "Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility,
Intelligence and Survival? - A Scientific Detective Story." Written
by Theo Colbert, even the author her book admitted it was based on mere
suspicions. It has been cited, however, as proof of yet
another bogus threat conjured up by environmentalists. " The
book speculated that man-made chemicals were causing ailments ranging from
cancer to attention deficit disorder by disrupting our endocrine
systems," noted Avery. The book's forward was written by
then Vice President Al Gore. When Arnold's falsified research was
published in 1996, Carol Browner, the Administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency, said, "The new study is the strongest evidence to
date that combinations of estrogenic materials may be potent enough to
significantly increase the risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, birth
defects and other major health concerns." As we now know,
there is no such evidence, except that purposely created to further the
goal of the environmental movement to end the use of pesticides and
herbicides. Beginning with Rachel Carson's bogus and
discredited "science" in "Silent Spring", this attack
on beneficial chemicals has never ceased. In a similar fashion,
Michael Bellesile's book, "Arming America" was seized upon by
gun-control advocates as having demolished "the myth" that
individuals have the right to gun ownership. The book asserted
that private gun ownership was uncommon in early America. It
turns out that the author deliberately misinterpreted Colonial documents,
misquoted early federal laws, distorted historical accounts, and cited San
Francisco records that experts agree were destroyed in the 1906
earthquake. The willingness to lie regarding environmental issues
was revealed in December when it was found that federal and state wildlife
biologists had planted false evidence of a rare cat species in two
national forests, the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Wenatchee
National Forest in Washington State. This is the same forest
area that the Earth Liberation Front has recently boasted of
"spiking" trees in order to do injury to lumberjacks culling
trees for purposes of forest management. The cascade of
lies about everything environmental should, by now, have convinced the
public that US government officials responsible for setting national
policies and environmental groups seeking to determine what those policies
should be cannot be trusted. The public, however, has rarely
paid any attention to anything than the lies published by a compliant and
complacent mainstream media that has fully adopted the goals of the
environmental and animal rights movements. The costs of these
policies are astronomical. Billions of dollars are wasted on
wasteful programs said to "protect" the environment.
Billions of dollars are going to be allocated to States and environmental
groups to put more and more land aside from any use. Late on the evening
of December 20th, the Senate, without any public debate or a recall vote,
passed S-990, The American Wildlife Enhancement Act of 2001. We will never
know who voted for this act. This was the same tactic used to pass the UN
Convention on Desertification. Now $600 million in taxpayer dollars will
be given out for "the acquisition of an area of land or water that is
suitable or capable of being made suitable for feeding, resting or
breeding by wildlife." Translation: Any property can be designated
for virtual seizure. One can only pray the President will veto this
full-scale attack on property rights in America. This is how
environmental groups achieve their goals. They are goals based in a
consuming hatred of humankind and its need for food and shelter.
They are goals that are intended to undermine and destroy America's
economic power, based on access to its vast natural resources. They are
goals intended to strip Americans of the most fundamental right of
self-defense. They are the goals of those who believe they are morally
superior to you and I, and therefore have the right to subvert the truth
to achieve total control over our lives and our nation. While
Americans look to the Middle East and elsewhere, fearful of terrorist
organizations intent on harming our lives and our society, they continue
to ignore the internal enemies who, by stealth and deception, work to
destroy the progress of real science that protects and extends our lives,
and to undermine our most fundamental Constitutional protections. If
we lose this struggle, it will be because of our inertia and indifference.
The environmentalists, animal rights, and gun control advocates are
counting on that. In the political year ahead, their closest
allies will be the Democratic Party.
Tom Flint resides in Ephrata WA
and is the editor for Save Our Dams.
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