OWL2: "Bother me? No. I watching to see if they leave their lunchboxes open."
OWL1: "I'm hungry too, but if those stupid Forest Rangers don't quit spying on us with those binoculars, we are all leaving."
Posted on 06/09/2012 10:42:26 AM PDT by inkling
Tombstone, Arizona (CNN) -- The six Forest Service rangers suddenly crouched, whispering, on their way up the rocky mountain trail. It was early Friday afternoon, the first day of the Tombstone Shovel Brigade, and the rangers were out in force, hiking to the spot where dozens of volunteers worked with picks and shovels to move and bury Tombstone's makeshift water line.
Shhh! Look! Do you see it?
The rangers stopped in their tracks. Binoculars emerged from pockets, and fingers pointed to a stand of trees.
And there it was, a Mexican spotted owl, perched high in a pine tree. It was a male, the rangers said, with his back turned to the intruders. He scratched and preened. But mostly, the owl seemed to be watching the nest in a nearby sycamore tree where his mate tended to an owlet.
The owl is a threatened species, and until a few days ago its presence in fire-scorched Miller Canyon was a matter of speculation. But now that it has surfaced, the owl could be a game-changer in the water war between the U.S. Forest Service and the Wild West city made famous by the 30-second gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Tombstone is trying to repair a 26-mile pipeline that has brought mountain spring water into the city since 1881. It was damaged during last summer's Monument Fire and monsoon rains that brought mud, water and boulders crashing down the denuded slopes...
With the conservative Goldwater Institute taking on Tombstone's legal work, the court battle has blossomed into a full-blown states rights dispute. Tombstone is getting the attention of activists from Utah, New Mexico and other Western states who say the federal government has gone too far. It has become ground zero in a rekindled Sagebrush Rebellion.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Perhaps it should join the choir invisible?
They have been caught at this dozens of times, and there is never any prosecution or consequences. They are even allowed to continue presenting "studies" in court after perjury.
A favorite trick is to transplant a food plant for an endangered species (particularly insects) as they tend not to wander away, and the plants are similarly protected.
The Mexican Spotted Owl is rare in Arizona, but there are plenty of them over the border. One nesting pair held up construction of an interstate interchange south of Tucson for a while a couple years ago.
I think that they transplanted a pocket gopher to a county in SW Wa and have been using it to stop development on private property.
I don’t know why the property owners don’t just spread insecticide and get rid of the food that the gophers eat. It’s a very easy solution.
I live in a very urban area crisscrossed with numerous interstate and other divided limited access highways ~ AND ~ we had an eagle nesting in a tree in my backyard.
Actually, many species 'flock' to activity by 'man', because they know what slobs most people are, and that they don't eat all their food, and throw 'out' the remains, which the animals then feed on.
I was at a Mexican style restaurant that had outside eating accommodations.
The birds were there, just waiting, and fearlessly flew in to pick up any scrap discarded on the ground.
Hell, we can see em all day here by I-95 in Florida.
In fact, it sounds like you live near me in PSL Florida
We had a young bear on our property when we first started to clear the land. The loggers and the neighbors saw it walking down the street. The problem was there were no adult bears in the area. It seems cruel to drop off a young bear in an area where there are no other bears and I believe that is what happened.
So we're catering to illegal-alien birds now, too?
OWL2: "Bother me? No. I watching to see if they leave their lunchboxes open."
OWL1: "I'm hungry too, but if those stupid Forest Rangers don't quit spying on us with those binoculars, we are all leaving."
Next to i-95/I-395/I-495, VA 286, 7900, and a variety of other freeways and byways ~ and dead trees. Eagles need a large dead treebranch for takeoff and landing.
The EPA has banned many of the effective poisons and insecticides that were available, and have effectively made it very difficult to eliminate vermin.
Recently, an entrepreneur has developed a method of injecting oxygen and propane into the gopher holes and igniting it to create underground explosions.
Seems very effective, watching for this method to be banned, too dangerous to something or other, ya know.
That’s amazing! I could never get a danged Poulan to run long enough to get anything done.
I had the same experience at a ski resort in CO. Birds would swoop down and light on the same picnic table I was eating at, and wait for me to get up. The locals called them "camp robbers" but I don't know what their official name was.
Rodenator! Great videos and likn of looks like fun! http://www.rodenator.com/pests-controls-videos-rodenators
I agree. I bought one some time ago when I was logging and tried to use it to trim my loads. After about a half hour of pulling on the G dammed thing I used it for a hammer and that was the end of that.
I went back and bought another Johnsered.
The MEXICAN Spotted Owl....great, another ILLEGAL.....
The officials probably pant the ‘endangered’ species.
We need to elect more Jeff Flakes to Congress.
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