Free Republic

Is $26 million worth the reputation of a venerable, 1.4 million member environmental group ? The Sierra Club may be about to find out. the 120-year-old organization’s hushed financial marriage to the natural gas industry — and its just-as-secretive divorce — have left some long-time supporters feeling angry, betrayed or misled. The news cut especially deep for activists who have spent years fighting the spread of shale gas drilling in states like New York and Pennsylvania. The Sierra Club quietly accepted $26 million in donations from gas industry interests from 2007 to 2010 — years when the group’s national leaders...

The device that exploded inside a car in Lafayette on Saturday afternoon, sending a husband and wife to the hospital with serious burns, was inside a paper bag with the victims' names written... Lafayette police this morning issued a news release with fresh details of the crime, which remains under investigation. As of 8 a.m. today, no arrests had been made, although ... investigators were looking at a possible suspect. Allyson Stone, 44, and her husband, Christopher Stone, 59, walked out of their home at 337 Lodgewood Point just before 12:56 p.m. Saturday when they saw a package "described as...

The animal had been preying on domestic goats, residents and authorities said. A mountain lion that took a heavy toll on the animals in an Oak Glen petting zoo was killed on Christmas night when it returned to a sheep carcass to feed. The 7-year-old female lion had been raiding the petting zoo at Riley’s at Los Rios Rancho apple orchards. In all, 13 goats and sheep died, said Devon Riley, who owns the business in the mountains east of Yucaipa. When the goats and sheep started to disappear in late November, California Department of Fish and Game officials investigated...

A Los Alamos family is mourning the loss of their pet dog after a mountain lion attacked and killed it in their backyard on Christmas Eve. Police Capt. Randy Foster said that when Hari Viswanathan heard the family dog, named Gwennie, barking outside and found a mountain lion trying to pull it through wooden slats in the fence, he frantically tried to get the big can to let go and even hit it over the head with a shovel. Even after four officers responded and the dog was dead, the mountain lion wouldn't let her go,

Every winter, the capital of Pakistan's Islamic republic is overrun by what is many Muslims' worst nightmare: sounds of screeching wild pigs. Motivated by hunger, the reviled animals descend each night from neighboring hills to feed on the garbage bins of Islamabad's most exclusive addresses — from high-end hotels to the capital's embassies and even the president's residence. On their way to feeding grounds pigs cause traffic accidents and send locals hurrying for cover. Some Islamabad residents have reportedly been injured or even killed by belligerent hogs. ... Now Islamabad officials have all but given up trying to contain the...

New England lawmakers are asking the U.S. Commerce Secretary for an emergency assessment of the abundance of cod in the Gulf of Maine. ... The six lawmakers also are asking Bryson to freeze the cod catch limit at its current level until the study is complete. Fishermen are facing devastating cuts in cod catch next year

Maine’s congressional delegation is supporting Gov. Paul LePage’s request seeking a federal fisheries disaster declaration to provide aid to Maine’s groundfishing fleet. ... His request followed a recent report documenting a sharp decline in Maine’s fishing fleet due to changes in federal fishery management plans.

LITTLE ROCK — As election season gears up in Arkansas, candidates are bringing out their big guns — literally, in some cases. The one campaign issue in Arkansas that tends to unite even the fiercest political rivals is support for gun rights, which is seen as a key credentialing tool for office-seekers at all levels in the Natural State. Tom Cotton Last week, 4th District congressional candidate Beth Ann Rankin announced on a radio show and in a campaign news release that she was “a proud gun owner” and the new holder of a permit to carry a concealed weapon....

A South African farmer has been killed by the pet hippopotamus he raised from the age of five months, and which he once described as being 'like a son' to him. Humphrey the Hippo gouged owner Marius Els, 41, to death by repeatedly biting him in a vicious attack on Saturday night. The farmer's mutilated body was discovered submerged in a river running through his 400-acre farm in rural South Africa. ... Hippos are considered to one of the world's most dangerous animals. They are, by nature, very aggressive -... They commonly attack humans with no apparent provocation, usually using...

A trail camera snapped a shot of a young cougar near the town of Pray in eastern Jackson County on Oct. 20...Agency biologists believe it's the same cat another trail camera caught on film on Oct. 16 near Mauston in Juneau County, about 42 miles from the area where the Jackson County photograph was taken.

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown is calling on President Obama to fire the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, saying she’s worsened the fishing industry’s problems. Brown said Saturday in a press conference at the Gloucester waterfront that Obama should replace Jane Lubchenco. In a statement, Brown said Lubchenco was indifferent to the industry’s struggles and wrongly committed to a new management system he says is destroying fishing jobs.

The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark - from the melodic golden-winged warbler and slow-moving gopher tortoise, to the slimy American eel and tiny Texas kangaroo rat. ... With a Friday deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act... Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawprofessor at the University of Vermont. "They are moving through this large...

Commercial fishermen will no longer have their regulatory cases heard by Coast Guard Administrative Law Judges. Instead, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that as of Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency ALJ’s will preside over all new fishing law enforcement cases. This measure is being taken in response to an inquiry made by the Inspector General into complaints by commercial fishermen that NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service’s regulatory system was being excessive with its penalties and actions. Jerry Slaff, NOAA public affairs officer, said the EPA will provide judges for regulatory cases for the next two years. He said NOAA...

Coyotes lurking in the woods in Massachusetts have been known to attack dogs, chickens, cats, and even, in rare instances, people. But a buffalo ?... A pack of coyotes entered a pen where his 14 buffalos grazed. When they were done, one was missing...“All that was left was skin and bone,” said Kimball, who was keeping watch over the pen today as the herd huddled together and grazed on grass. ... After the coyote attack, he vowed to be vigilant in protecting the animals – armed, if necessary. “I’m going to come out here with my gun, and if I...

MAUMELLE, Ark. - Police are trying to figure out what happened to an Arkansas man who was discovered dead in a bathtub with a sleeping television meteorologist. Homeowner Christopher Barbour, who says he is a friend of 33-year-old KARK weatherman Brett Cummins, told police that he woke up Monday morning and found his friend asleep in his bathtub with a dead man wearing a dog collar lying next to him.

A mountain lion attack has a Monument neighborhood on edge. Residents of the town, located about 20 miles north of Colorado Springs, are keeping a close watch on children and pets after a mountain lion killed a small dog. The dog was coming back inside when the mountain lion struck.

Two miles of beach in San Diego were open Friday despite a series of recent shark sightings. One shark was caught in a photo Wednesday. Its tail fin can clearly be seen in the photo...Experts identified it as a 10- to 12-foot great white. There have been three confirmed shark sightings along that coastline in a week.

Wolf sightings in the Blue Mountains are becoming more frequent this summer, but wildlife officials for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have yet to document firm evidence of a pack forming in the southeastern corner of the state. Paul Wik, district biologist for the department at Clarkston, said the canyons and timbered ridges southeast of Dayton have been a hot spot for wolf reports this year. Some hunters have even captured images of wolves with trail cameras, he said. "It's definitely no secret they are here," Wik said. "The only question to us is what their status is."...

An 18-month-old boy attacked by a cougar in Pacific Rim National Park Monday was in serious condition in B.C. Children's Hospital Tuesday. Julien Sylvester's mother, Sarah Hagar, was at the hospital in Vancouver with her injured son. "The patient is in serious condition, which means he is being monitored closely," ... The family had packed up and was leaving the beach. Julien was walking three metres in front of his grandfather and an unidentified adult when the cougar leaped on the boy from a forest at the edge of the beach, Armstrong said. The cougar was momentarily daunted by Julien's...

Moore Funeral Chapel announces graveside services for Linda Fincher will be held today at 2:00 pm at Mineral Springs Cemetery in West Fork, AR (see sidebar graphic). Family, friends and colleagues of her husband, Hollis Wayne Fincher, incarcerated in minimum security prison on a gun possession charge (see links below), have been working behind the scenes to persuade the Bureau of Prisons to furlough him to attend the services. The latest word given to an aide to Rep. Steve Womack is that officials have no time or ability to respond this quickly, although a bit of hope was received yesterday...

The Missouri Farm Bureau opposes an initiative petition being circulated to require a three-fourths vote of the Missouri legislature to change an initiative statute. The initiative petition, known as “Your Vote Counts,” is backed by the Humane Society of the United States, the organization that successfully initiated the so-called puppy mill measure in November. “If we adopt the position of HSUS, the initiative petition will have no ability to correct a mistake and we think that would be a mistake,” said Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. The HSUS is using vast financial resources to get on the...

Each summer, animal activists travel across the country to meet and discuss the latest topics of the animal rights movement. This year, animal agriculture was once again the focus. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) hosted its annual Taking Action for Animals Conference in Washington, D.C. on July 15-18, and Farm Animal Rights Movement’s Animal Rights 2011 Conference (AR 2011) was held two weeks later on July 21-25 in Los Angeles. Both events claimed to have “record-breaking” attendance, attracting a combined total of more than 1,600 activists from around the world, ranging in age from 20-60 years old....

The 25-year-old was admitted in critical condition, unconscious. His arms were chewed off by his elbow," ... as were "other body parts," ... The shark struck about 50 metres off the coast. It was the first registered shark attack in the Primorye region located on the northwest coast of the Sea of Japan.

A British man has died in a shark attack while on honeymoon in the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. ... A 36-year-old French tourist was killed by a shark off the same beach just over two weeks ago. The Seychelles Tourism Board's director Alain St Ange told the BBC the latest attack was caused by a "foreign shark" and

(KATV) Bryant - Shots ring out in Bryant Monday afternoon, a woman shoots and kills a man she says it's her ex-boyfriend, but claims it was self defense. It happened at about 4:30 p.m. Bryant police were called to the corner of Raymar Road and Meadowlake. When police arrived on the scene they found the alleged suspect taking his last breath and a woman who was very shaken up. She told police the man was her ex-boyfriend and he abducted her. As friends and family hear the news, they rush to the victim's home now guarded by police. It's the...

As we’ve all seen to great effect in the last week, watching laws get made is not for the faint of heart. I’ve made sausage before. That’s a picnic by comparison. Which goes a long way toward explaining something as vague and open to legal interpretation and potential abuse as Arkansas’ “journey” exception to its carry laws. So, when you have a legislative product as poorly crafted as this, it’s only natural to ask for clarification, right? Well, no. This is the state where you have to worry about what the meaning of ‘is’ is. And that’s just the way...

Pack lives about 90 miles east of Seattle . This makes the fourth resident wolf pack in the state, and the second known pack of wolves in the Cascade Mountains ... ... The gray wolf is protected throughout Washington as a state endangered species. In the western two-thirds of Washington, the species is also federally protected under the Endangered Species Act.

LEADVILLE, Colo. -- A black bear went into a tent in a central-Colorado campground and bit or scratched a sleeping teenage boy's arm. State wildlife officials say the boy was camping out with his family in the mountains near Leadville when the bear grabbed him early Friday. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton tells KMGH-TV the boy needed medical care, but his wounds didn't appear to be life-threatening.

The Department of Justice under Eric Holder is refusing to prosecute Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who opened fire on an Arkansas recruiting center two years ago. This comes as Muhammad has admitted that he is an Islamic radical and has implicated himself for the murder. Despite this, the Federal government will not take the case. On the positive side, the state of Arkansas has agreed to do so-- and this will likely mean that Muhammad will face the death penalty for the fatal shooting. Muhammad is an American convert whose middle name even means 'one that fights jihad.' In 2009 he...

The Animal Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for Friday's fire attack at a hamburger restaurant in Gothenburg... In a posting on the animal rights activists website Bite Back Magazine, those allegedly responsible described how they smashed two windows with hammers at the burger restaurant at the Scandinavium Center, poured ten liters of petrol in and set it alight. The posting continued, “We were in a hurry as the sun had risen and it was light outside, so we threw the containers with written ALF-messages on them and some lighted matches into the restaurant and it went up in a big...

An animal rights activist who burned down a Colorado sheepskin store as well as a leather store and restaurant building in Salt Lake City, pleaded guilty to federal charges Wednesday. Walter Edmund Bond, 35, pleaded guilty to felony counts of arson and violence involving animal enterprises. He has already been sentenced to five years in Colorado and could face between five to 20 years for the Utah fires when sentenced Sept. 19. Prosecutor John Huber said the government will argue to make the Colorado and Utah sentences consecutive to one another. "He is unapologetic. He is an unrepentant serial arsonist,"...

Captains issue S.O.S., claiming new rules meant to save the fish are killing their way of life. With the height of the New England fishing season getting under way this week, small family fishermen say controversial new rules are destroying their livelihood — forcing them to sell their boats and instead search for work as laborers on larger vessels. “It’s a death knell. It’s the beginning of the end for small fishermen,” said Rhode Island fisherman Joel Hovanesian, 54, who recently sold his boat. Plymouth fisherman Stephen Welch, 50, a father of two, said: “We’re in a crisis right now.”...

As a lifelong commercial fisherman from Rhode Island who is involved with the regulatory process, I have one simple question to ask: Just what are we trying to accomplish with fish quotas? Federally, the science that drives the stock assessments and sets the quotas is so bad that industry has taken it upon itself to provide a better snapshot of many stocks of concern. Predictably, the picture is not nearly as dire as our federal scientists would lead us to believe. Recently, a side-by-side comparison was done, using the new multi-gazillion-dollar research vessel paid for with your tax dollars and...

Well, sporties, are you ready for 4,200 to 7,300 wolves in the Northern Rockies? Back in April, you’ll remember that Congress stuffed a “bipartisan” rider (Section 1713) into the 2011 Appropriations omnibus (Public Law 112-10). This rider supposedly de-listed Rocky Mountain gray wolves outside Wyoming, by reinstating the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) so called “2009 Rule,” shot down by federal judge Donald W. Molloy last August. Section 1713 went into effect May 5. The same day, two lawsuits were filed before Molloy by Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR)/Wild Earth Guardians (WIGs) and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)....

MISSOULA- The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation filed a note it plans to appeal any decision that adversely affects a state's right to manage fully recovered wolf populations. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy is expected to decide whether Congress acted within Constitutional bounds when it delisted wolves in parts of the West. "We are protecting our right to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals any decision that results in another setback for conservation and science-based wildlife management," said RMEF President and CEO David Allen. An unfavorable ruling may stop wolf hunts planned for this fall in both Montana...

(Fayetteville) -- A possible armed robbery gone wrong leaves one man shot and another stabbed. For Arkansas Gold and Silver Exchange employee Brian Dunnigan, it's an unexpected turn of events Tuesday. "I thought what I heard was a shot go off," he said. "I just kind of blew it off for a minute, until I saw the police pull up. Then I wondered was that really a gunshot I heard?" Police say at this point, it seems a man in the store stabbed shop clerk Chris Leach, who then shot the would-be robber. "Right now, what we're investigating is what...

Conservation Experts: This Size Cat Hasn't Been Seen Here In 100 Years. There has been a wild animal alert issued in the northern suburbs. A mountain lion, yes, a mountain lion, is on the loose. ... We’re not looking for your Aunt Mildred’s kitty here, either. This is a big cat, a 160-pound predator that hunts and eats things. ... Ironically the Eastern mountain lion was officially declared extinct only a few months ago — in March.

HESPERIA -- Michelle Taylor shudders when she realizes she may have been sharing her garage with a mountain lion for the past three days. "I think it was in there since Sunday night," the Hesperia mother of five said after the animal was removed on Tuesday. Her neighbors reported they had seen a mountain lion roaming the area since Friday.

Oregon and Washington have been given permission to resume removing or killing California sea lions at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, a federal agency said Friday. The decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came about six months after a federal appeals court struck down a similar permit aimed at reducing the number of threatened or endangered salmon eaten by the hungry marine mammals. ... the California sea lion population is healthy, estimated at 238,000, while wild Columbia River spring chinook salmon are listed as endangered. ... NOAA Regional Director William Stelle said new data suggest sea lions...

Anyone who reads Chapter 7 of Agenda 21, and then reads their local comprehensive land use plan will immediately recognize that most of the provisions of the local land use plan come directly from Agenda 21. More often than not, the elected officials who adopt these plans have never read Agenda 21, and many have never even heard of the U.N. document, signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1992. The facilitators and professional planners have heard about Agenda 21, but frequently claim that the plan they are working on has nothing to do with the U.N. or Agenda...

TWIN FALLS, Idaho — A federal judge dealt another setback to the J.R. Simplot Co. and other ranchers by reaffirming his late-February decision to halt grazing on 17 Bureau of Land Management allotments covering some 450,000 acres in southern Idaho. Western Watersheds Project director Jon Marvel said Winmill's decision will protect thousands of acres of critical sage grouse habitat from livestock grazing. Marvel's group aims to shut down grazing on public land in the West

Federal wildlife officials say they will take more than 1,300 gray wolves in the Northern Rockies off the endangered species list within 60 days. It marks the first time Congress has taken a species off the endangered list. Idaho and Montana plan public wolf hunts this fall. Hunts last year were canceled after a judge ruled the predators remained at risk.

the wolf soap opera and U.S. District of Montana Judge Donald W. Molloy’s pending ruling – which is STILL pending – circumstances in the high-stakes Endangered Species Act (ESA) political mix have gotten even nuttier. ... USFWS gave away the store in return: In parts 2 and 3, USFWS agreed to withdraw and resubmit for “public review” within 60 days the so-called “M-opinion” that interprets ESA’s statutory (and fuzzy) “significant portion of range” language. This interpretation is critically used to determine whether a species is to be listed as threatened, endangered – or not at all. Now, aren’t you just...

An Island Lake man police say was shot while trying to rob a Wauconda pharmacy in February pleaded not guilty Thursday in Lake County Circuit Court. Guy Conti, 31, is also charged with robbing the same pharmacy two months earlier and faces charges in Arkansas for a similar crime there, Assistant State’s Attorney Ken Larue said. Advertisement Larue said Conti, of the 27000 block of Hickory Street, entered the Wauconda Pharmacy at Liberty and Main streets about 1:45 p.m. on Feb. 14. Wearing a ski mask and wielding a knife, Conti forced his way into the pharmacist’s area and demanded...

A couple of dozen men from the anti-wolf brigade were gathered by noon on East Broadway outside the Russell Smith Federal Courthouse, where U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy is hearing details of a recent settlement hammered out between the Obama administration and 10 conservation groups. The hearing began at 1:30 p.m. "We'll be here all afternoon until it's over," said Toby Bridges of Missoula, who organized the rally through Lobo Watch and expected dozens more to join in as the day went on. Some were in Helena in the morning for a hearing on Senate Bill 414, the Montana Wolf...

I've got the lower. Now I want to really work up an AR that presents as I want it. Some pics that are close to what I'm thinking are included. Where do I go to get the stuff I need to finish this rifle as I like....but spending as little as I can? Not so much the barrels as the furniture... Some links/resources would be terrific!

Little Rock, Ark., Mar 19, 2011 / 01:15 pm (CNA).- In only six years with the Diocese of Little Rock, Father John Obinna Agbakwuo has not only spread the word of God in his parishes, he’s helped build them.Father Agbakwuo, who left the state Feb. 28 to visit family in his native Nigeria and then teach in Austria, has overseen the construction of new parishes for St. James Church in Searcy and St. Albert Church in Heber Springs and a parish hall for St. Richard Church in Bald Knob.You come into a place and see what is needed and the...

A group of concerned citizens who call themselves the Sagebrush Coalition approached the Grand County Council this week requesting help to save public access on Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service roads. “We’ve got a lot of problems in the county,” said Ray Tibbetts, a former county commissioner and member of the coalition. “We as citizens out here need your help. Everybody’s trying to close the roads on the mountains, on the public lands.” The coalition’s plea spurred on other citizens, who said they initially had no intention of addressing council, to voice their concerns about limited access...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Rep. Bryan King, 91st District, and Sen. Jason Rapert, Senate District 18, have proposed ordinances that would allow individual churches to decide whether they want to allow concealed carry weapons inside their buildings. As the law stands now, even with a license for concealed carry, it is prohibited to bring a firearm of any kind into a church or place or worship. "As legal citizens of the United States, we should be allowed to carry a gun where we want to, when we want to," said Anna Linder, a volunteer at Evangel Temple, in Fort Smith....

In January, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy issued an “Order to Show Cause” to parties in a lawsuit (CV-08-14-M-DWM, filed January 2008) by Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders sued, claiming that wolf-management regulations the government issued under Endangered Species Act Section 10(j) authority allow too many wolves to be killed via management actions. Case 14 was stayed in April 2009 while the larger wolf delisting issue was fought out in another lawsuit from Defenders ... So what, and how, is Judge Molloy thinking? Before becoming a judge in 1996, Molloy was working a case for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice,...