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The US is scrapping a joint project with the EU to land a robot on Mars due to lack of money. Charles Bolden, the chief of US space agency NASA, announced the move at a press conference in Washington on Monday (13 February) on how his agency plans to spend its 2013 budget. He said: "Tough choices had to be made ... This means we will not be moving forward with the planned 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions that we had been exploring with the European Space Agency (ESA)." He added the US is not giving up on Mars as...

The United States has a long history of working to protect species from extinction. In 1939, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) was created for this purpose, and in 1973 the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed to augment its power. Protecting species naturally puts the government at odds with landowners, however. The ESA effectively allows the government to determine how land can be used, even if it is on private land. As current estimates put the percentage of endangered species on private land at 90%, this conflict is somewhat inevitable. This became evident even as far back as...

Your Sept. 23 editorial “Way of the Wolf in Wyoming” implies that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Fish and Wildlife Service have somehow betrayed the species we worked so hard to recover. And it is recovered. Today, more than 1,650 wolves, in 244 packs, occupy the northern Rocky Mountains, exceeding recovery goals for 11 consecutive years. We understand the emotional reaction to wolf hunting, but the facts don’t support your conclusions. Wyoming’s plan will maintain a healthy wolf population...

JLH NEWS By: Jeff Head Emmett, ID September 28, 2011 This just in regarding the wolves here in Idaho. As many may know, the wolves were forced upon Idaho by the Federal government several years ago. They were not native, Rocky Mountian wolves. They brought in large timber wolves from Canada, starting in Yellowstone and then spreading into Idaho and surrounding states. Well, over the years their numbers, and their negative impact have grown so much that the state sued to take them off the endangered species list and allow them to be hunted. It took a while, but...

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...

A small songbird that makes its home in sage scrub habitat on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and elsewhere on the Southern California coast should no longer be protected by federal law, a new lawsuit argues. The California gnatcatcher, which was named a threatened subspecies by the federal government in 1993, is the subject of litigation from the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento law group that successfully sued several years ago to remove Endangered Species Act protections for the bald eagle.

A grizzly bear killed a hunter in Boundary County today before another hunter fatally shot the bear. Officials from the Boundary County Sheriff’s Office, Idaho Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are at the scene of the attack, which occurred about 10 a.m. in the remote area of Buckhorn Mountain near the Montana border. The hunter who was killed is not a resident of Boundary County, officials said. The victim’s name is being withheld pending family notification. The hunter’s partner shot and killed the attacking grizzly, officials said. Several rifle hunting seasons are open in the...

BOISE --Idaho's congressional delegation introduced legislation today that would amend the Endangered Species Act to clarify that people have the right to defend themselves and their families from grizzly bear attacks. The legislation is in response to the well-publicized case of Jeremy Hill, a north Idaho man who was charged last month with violating the ESA for killing a grizzly bear on his property in May. Hill said he believed he was defending himself and his family. While the U.S. attorney later dropped all federal criminal charges, Hill agreed to pay a $1,000 fine. Grizzly bears are listed as threatened...

Porthill man pays $1,000 fine for violating Endangered Species ActCOEUR d'ALENE - The U.S. Attorney's Office in Boise announced Wednesday it is dismissing the pending misdemeanor criminal charge against Jeremy M. Hill for the killing of a grizzly bear on his Porthill property on May 8. Hill, 33, agreed that under provisions of the Endangered Species Act and related regulations, he committed a violation. Hill shot a 2-year-old male grizzly bear that was with its mother and a sibling on Hill's 20-acre property. Regulations prohibit removing nuisance bears, except when authorized by government authorities. Hill, who pleaded not guilty in...

... the federal government's got their back. (Also read: "Eric Holder Sides with Grizzlies as Well as Black Panthers" at the Tatler.) A North Idaho man killed a grizzly bear that was threatening his family. Now he could face jail time if the Obama administration has its way.Rachel Hill looked out her bedroom window on the evening of Mother’s Day and saw three grizzly bears attacking the children’s 4H club pigs’ pen. The Hill children had been outside practicing basketball a half hour earlier, so seeing the bears concerned her and her husband, Jeremy Hill. After calling for his kids...

“Grizzly shooter garners support,” CDAPress.com reports. Jeremy M. Hill, 33, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing the animal with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border. He lives five miles from the closest grizzly bear recovery zone. It seems Mr. Hill killed a grizzly that had wandered into his yard when his children were present. Hill also maintains the bear and her cubs had gone after some pigs raised by his children. Because the federal government considers it an endangered species, he now faces charges “punishable by up to a year...

History tells us that listing a critter as an endangered species does little for the species and can do a great deal of harm to the local economies—the spotted owl and the delta smelt are two oft-cited cases. But there is not a big body of evidence showing how these listing decisions were made. It was just assumed that the species plight warranted protection. But that was before the listing proposal for the dunes sagebrush lizard threatened a large segment of U.S. domestic oil production and the economies of Southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. Rallies in opposition to the listing...

Federal Judge Donald Molloy held his nose and upheld a congressional rider Wednesday that removed Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in Idaho and Montana. The ruling will allow wolf hunting seasons set to begin next month to proceed as planned. Molloy, of Missoula, Mont., previously ruled against two federal rules that delisted wolves and scolded Congress Wednesday, saying the so-called wolf rider attached to a federal spending bill last May undermined and disrespected the rule of law. "Inserting environmental policy changes into appropriations bills may be politically expedient, but it transgresses the process envisioned by the Constitution by avoiding...

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...

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...

The dune sagebrush lizard is a 3-inch critter that lives only among stands of shinnery oak, which itself is a somewhat rare tree that lives only in the sandy soil on something like 4 million acres spread between Roswell, New Mexico and Midland, Texas. The area around Midland is known as the Permian Basin, and is one of the oldest and most prolific crude oil regions in North America.

ROSWELL — About 400 opponents of the federal government's proposed listing of the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species delivered a full-throated protest at a rally here in the hour before a Fish and Wildlife Service public hearing on the plan. "Enough is enough," shouted New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce, a headliner at the rally organized by oil industry employees, concerned citizens and officials of area chambers of commerce. Several speakers, including Pearce, asserted that the years long effort by conservationists to have the dunes sagebrush lizard, also known as the sand dune lizard, listed as an endangered species...

Tx Lands Commish Jerry Patterson opens with a few jokes before diving straight into the meat of the debate over whether a possible listing of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard on the federal Endangered Species List would put an end to oil drilling in West Texas. Recorded April 26, 2011 at a Permian Basin Petroleum Associated rally at the Midland Center in downtown Midland, Texas.

You can't make this up.  First, a Spotted Owl destroyed the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest, then a minnow turned the most productive agricultural land in the world into a dustbowl, and now, as energy prices spike and the economy sputters, they're going after Texas with a scurrilous reptile.    Specifically, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.  That's the latest more-important-than-people critter being used to lock-up resources in the name of planet Earth.  The drilling moratorium didn't cause enough pain, so onto the Endangered Species Act - known at the Sierra Club as "Ol' Reliable" - to make certain Texas has...

Species: After the harm done by the spotted owl and delta smelt, the listing of a tiny reptile as endangered may be the latest salvo in the war on domestic energy. As Yogi Berra would say, it's deja vu all over again. If the dunes sagebrush lizard is listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an endangered species, another key part of the American economy will fall prey to the eco-extremist mantra that every little critter's well-being trumps that of the American people and economy. Last December, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the lizard, a three-inch-long...

It might, if the US Fish and Wildlife Service puts the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard on the endangered-species list. USFWS has an open period for public comment at the moment on the proposal, which if adopted could force oil companies in West Texas and New Mexico to close up shop. The industry argues that USFWS is relying on bad data and faulty methodology: A three-inch lizard that thrives in desert conditions could shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state’s top two oil producing counties.Called the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, it...

LAS CRUCES — A short, drab lizard is creating quite a dustup in the state's oil patch. Rallies. YouTube videos. Resolutions. At issue is whether the dunes sagebrush lizard should be added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species list. "Most of the oil and gas jobs in southeast New Mexico are at risk," says New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce, who will headline a rally in Roswell on Thursday to oppose the lizard's potential listing. "Irresponsible, unbalanced overregulation limits the amount of energy produced, which kills jobs, causes severe budget problems in the state, and increases costs to...

Science can’t change the fact that environmental protection requires judgment calls Buried in the continuing resolution funding the federal government for the remainder of 2011 is a rider that delists the gray wolf as an endangered species in Montana and Idaho. The rider had bipartisan sponsorship from Sen. Jon Tester, Montana Democrat, and Rep. Michael K. Simpson, Idaho Republican, but the public reaction is anything but bipartisan. Among environmentalists - and particularly among endangered species advocates - there is outrage that Congress had the temerity to poke this small hole in the Endangered Species Act. How dare Congress inject politics...

From the moment Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970, and signed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) into law, they have been the primary engines of social change used by leftists environmental elitists to destroy America. They have done so by infiltrating the EPA, and the US Fish & Wildlife (USF&W) the agency which decides what animals will be listed as endangered. Now, 28 years later, these renegade environmentalist wackos are prepared to use the ESA to shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state's top two oil...

From the moment Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970, and signed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) into law, they have been the primary engines of social change used by leftists environmental elitists to destroy America. They have done so by infiltrating the EPA, and the US Fish & Wildlife (USF&W) the agency which decides what animals will be listed as endangered. Now, 28 years later, these renegade environmentalist wackos are prepared to use the ESA to shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state's top two oil...

From the moment Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970, and signed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) into law, they have been the primary engines of social change used by leftists environmental elitists to destroy America. They have done so by infiltrating the EPA, and the US Fish & Wildlife (USF&W) the agency which decides what animals will be listed as endangered. Now, 28 years later, these renegade environmentalist wackos are prepared to use the ESA to shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state's top two oil...

Congressman Steve Pearce, R-N.M., will be attending a rally opposing the listing of the Sand Dune Lizard as an endangered species with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Artesia today [Wednesday]. If listed, regulations may be invoked to conserve the lizard’s habitat; regulations posing potentially devastating effects on oil and gas industry operations within or near the lizard’s habitat. The Sand Dune Lizard is listed as Endangered by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, and has been a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act by the SUFWS since 2001. Threats to the lizard...

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 U.S. Senate approved a must-pass budget bill on Thursday, removing wolves in Montana and Idaho from Endangered Species Act protections and placing wolf management under state game departments. A rider in the budget bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, returns the legal playing field back to 2009 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had delisted the wolves in Montana and Idaho. Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, attached a similar measure to the House version of the budget bill. “This is a responsible step, and a...

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...

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...

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,...

Using a massive $410 billion spending bill as a cloak, Democrat leaders in Congress have been caught attempting to create almost limitless new federal powers to regulate climate change without any public notice, public comment, or public debate. The provision slipped into this bill would allow the Department of Interior to regulate all greenhouse gas emissions across the entire country based on the listing of the polar bear as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Democrats are distorting the intention of the ESA to give the federal government vast new climate change powers, and are trying to do it...

The Montana House has overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to disregard the federal law protecting endangered and threatened species. Republicans enthused by Gov. Brian Schweitzer's recent tough talk on wolves led a 61-39 vote Saturday to nullify the federal Endangered Species Act in Montana. Tea party politics in the Legislature have spawned increasing belief in an 18th-century doctrine that purported to give states the ultimate say in constitutional matters...

A Republican budget bill would strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act protections across most of the Northern Rockies. A two-sentence provision tucked into the GOP's continuing budget resolution directs Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to reissue a 2009 rule that took wolves off the endangered list in Montana, Idaho and parts of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

Nothing's worked. Not the clamp on federal timber sales that hammered Oregon's mill towns. Not the lawsuits or the listing as an endangered species. The belated work to retain and restore its favored old-growth habitat will take decades to unfold. Twenty plus years of trying to save the northern spotted owl and it's still slipping away. Come summer, federal wildlife officials expect to finish a draft environmental impact statement that most likely recommends taking to the woods with shotguns. Over the next year, in three or more study areas from Washington to northern California, they might kill 1,200 to 1,500...

U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy is telling attorneys for environmental groups and wildlife management agencies to gather their data and help resolve whether gray wolves should still be an "experimental species" in the Northern Rockies. When wolves were re-introduced in Central Idaho and Yellowstone Park in the mid-90s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had them designated as an "experimental, non-essential" species. That allowed scientists to work on re-building wolf populations and gauging their survival, but also answered ranchers' concerns by allowing wolves that preyed on livestock to be killed. The question over whether the wolves are still "experimental"...

Wildlife officials have dropped their appeal of a court ruling that forces the government to revise its flawed plan to protect critical habitat for Canada lynx. The move means the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will have to reconsider areas in Colorado, Montana and Idaho for critical habitat designation... A second plan in 2009 designated 39,000 square miles in Maine, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington as critical habitat. But U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy last year faulted wildlife officials for excluding Colorado, where lynx are making a strong comeback, and some national forests in Montana and Idaho. Some Colorado...

Reason TV gives a report on the problems plaguing California’s Central Valley, once a breadbasket to the world, and now a government-created basket case of dust, unemployment, poverty, and now starvation. The short documentary focuses on two federal policies that heavily impact the farming region, the first water policy and environmentalism, and the second immigration: The crisis in the Central Valley comes directly from the application of the Endangered Species Act to the Delta smelt, one of a number of bait fish species indigenous to the area. The order by a federal judge relying on that law cut off irrigation...

Wolves and grizzly bears are mostly to blame for a steep population decline in a signature elk herd in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, government scientists said on Wednesday. The elk population in the northern section of the park is prized by sportsmen who hunt outside Yellowstone boundaries in Montana and by the millions who pour into the park each year to see wildlife. Annual counts of the northern Yellowstone elk population show it has plummeted by more than 70 percent since 1995, falling from 16,791 to fewer than 5,000 today. Biologists said wolves and grizzlies are the...

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, author of some of the most controversial rulings in recent Montana history, announced Wednesday that he will be taking senior status in August 2011. "Senior status" means retirement from active service. Senior judges continue to hear cases, usually with a reduced case load. He blocked removal of gray wolves from the endangered-species list and dismissed a lawsuit filed by Montana and other states that wanted out from under federal gun laws. He declared a U.S. Forest Service plan for dropping retardant on fires illegal and said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arbitrarily excluded parts...

A recent court ruling on wolves in the northern Rockies should help guide another judge who will decide on federal protection for a mouse species in Colorado and Wyoming, environmental groups argue. A cattlemen's group says the judge should decide for himself about the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, a critter about the size of other mice but with a 6-inch tail and the ability to leap up to 3 feet to escape predators...There is no surprise in environmentalists linking the mouse and wolf cases, said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.

Environmentalists said Tuesday they intend to sue the Obama administration to force it to restore gray wolves across the lower 48 states — even as Republicans in Congress sought unsuccessfully to strip the animals of protection. The Center for Biological Diversity said in a formal notice to the Interior Department that it will sue the agency in 60 days unless the government crafts a plan to bring back wolves ...

The state of Alaska filed a lawsuit Tuesday in an effort to stop a federal agency's plan to protect endangered sea lions by restricting fishing in the western Aleutian Islands. According to Parnell's office, up to 900 people are employed by fleets in the areas where fishing will be restricted. It says the plan would cost fishery losses of tens of millions of dollars annually, and it believes the federal agency committed procedural violations that limited input from the public and experts.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission has voted to support congressional action aimed at removing gray wolves from the federal endangered species list. The commission voted 4-1 after a lengthy meeting Saturday in support of federal legislation that would declare the wolves recovered and no longer in need of federal protections.