Free Republic

DEMING — The shock waves from Saturday's unsolved slaying of a southeast Arizona rancher continued to be felt this week as the Luna County Sheriff's Office told a gathering of 100 ranchers and residents to be alert and take precautions when in remote areas. Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos called Thursday's informational meeting in response to the fatal shooting of 58-year-old Robert Krentz, a Cochise County, Ariz., rancher well-known to New Mexico ranchers in the state's bootheel in southern Hidalgo County. A suspect in the slaying has not been identified, but the Cochise County sheriff's office has said footprints led...

KPHO-TV: Robert Krentz, 58, was a third generation rancher who was inducted into the Arizona Farming and Ranching Hall of Fame one year ago.

Mark Potok and the SPLC Think YOU ARE A RACIST! Read The New Report "Hate And Slander For Profit" An Exclusive From Digger's Realm Border Rancher Rob Krentz And Dog Found Shot To Death After Aiding Illegal Alien By Digger The body of Rancher Rob Krentz and his dog were found shot to death on his ranch. Krentz, who always was good-natured and willing to help people, had called in that he had found an illegal alien at one of his watering holes and was assisting him. That was the last that was heard from him before his body was...

Robert Krentz, an Arizona rancher with ties to New Mexico, on Saturday was found shot on his ranch. Carol Capas, public information officer for the Cochise County Sheriff's Office, said there were no details available about the killing of Krentz, 58, on Sunday evening. She said Krentz's ranch is about 35 miles northeast of Douglas, Ariz. Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association, said she grew up with Krentz's family in Arizona and counted Krentz as a member of the association. She said he joined in order to collaborate with New Mexico ranchers on issues such...

EPA says it is confident it will prevail in court By Tim Hearden Capital Press A national beef group is invoking the so-called "Climategate" controversy as it challenges a recent U.S. government ruling on climate change. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has filed a petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to overturn the EPA's recent greenhouse gas "endangerment" ruling. The ruling states that gases believed to cause global warming pose a human health risk and is the first step toward their regulation by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The NCBA and other producer...

When the new West is won, will there be cowboys? In light of what her neighbors are up to, Double O Ranch owner Vicki Olson isn’t so sure. “I guess the point that I keep hammering at is that if they succeed, that means all of us third- and fourth-generation ranchers are gone,” Olson said. She is the average Montana rancher, 56 going on 70, working a spread gouged from the pebbly soil by her grandparents 100 years ago. Her neighbor, the nonprofit American Prairie Foundation, is methodically acquiring ranches and crafting a 3.5-million-acre wildlife reserve out of private property...

"A creepy string of calf mutilations in southern Colorado has a rancher and law enforcement investigators mystified. Four calves have been found dead in a pasture just north of the New Mexico state line in recent weeks. The dead calves had their skins peeled back and organs cleared from the rib cage. One calf had its tongue removed. But rancher Manuel Sanchez has found no signs of human attackers, such as footprints or ATV tracks. And there are no signs of an animal attack by a coyote or mountain lion . Usually predators leave pools or blood or drag marks...

The Texas Department of Transportation is pulling the last plug on the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's embattled plan to build a toll-road network across the state. The agency said earlier this year it was scaling down the project and dropping the name "Trans-Texas Corridor." Now, transportation officials say it's fully dead. Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of the decision in a report posted online Tuesday. The news comes a day after Perry's Republican primary opponent, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, secured the coveted endorsement of the powerful Texas Farm Bureau — a vocal opponent of the...

Frank Gwozdz says coyotes have made a meal out of his livestock so often in the past several months that the farmer is thinking of leaving agriculture. “They are wiping me out,’’ Gwozdz said ...from his 110-acre farm in Dartmouth in Southeastern Massachusetts. In the past several months, Gwozdz said, coyotes have killed two cows, four calves, 14 goats, two lambs, two sheep, and numerous geese, ducks, and chickens. “They are getting bolder and bolder,’’ Gwozdz said of the coyotes... Gwozdz said he and his family have tried to deter the animals, sometimes by standing guard into the early morning...

Kathy Konen has lost guard dogs to wolves in the past, but nothing prepared the Dillon rancher for the killing of 120 buck sheep last week. "They were in the sagebrush, on the creek bottom - just all over the pasture," Konen said Thursday. "It's a terrible loss to our livestock program." Konen said they discovered the attack Aug. 16 while checking their sheep in the Rock Creek drainage of the Blacktail Mountains south of Dillon, where they pasture buck sheep in summer. She said they check their sheep every two or three days, so the attack was recent. She...

HORSE SPRINGS, N.M. — Wranglers at the Platt ranch were marking calves the old-fashioned way last week, roping them from horseback and burning a brand onto their haunches. What they were emphatically not doing, said Jay Platt, the third-generation proprietor of the ranch, was abiding by a federally recommended livestock identification plan, intended to speed the tracing of animal diseases, that has caused an uproar among ranchers. They were not attaching the recommended tags with microchips that would allow the computerized recording of livestock movements from birth to the slaughterhouse. “This plan is expensive, it’s intrusive, and there’s no need...

Ranchers in the Lemhi Valley of Idaho have suffered increased losses from wolf depredation, as wolf numbers expand. Allen Bodenhamer, who raises cattle near Baker, ID lost three calves this past spring. At first he thought the kills were made by coyotes, then realized he was dealing with wolves. “When coyotes kill a calf they get hold of the back of the neck and basically strangle it. They usually don’t start eating on it while it is still alive. A wolf grabs it by the top of the back or just in front of the hips and is eating on...

The state’s largest farm organization is in favor of legislation that would terminate the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) in both name and concept. Texas Farm Bureau President Kenneth Dierschke expressed support for HB 11 by State Rep. David McQuade Leibowitz (D-San Antonio), which repeals the authority for the establishment and operation of the massive transportation project. “We hope you will agree with us that it is finally time to kill the Trans-Texas Corridor,” Dierschke testified before the House Transportation Committee on April 21. Although the farm organization recognizes the need to build and maintain Texas’ infrastructure, Dierschke said Texas Farm Bureau...

Bandera local farmers and rancher charge that the I-69 Trans-Texas Corridor Tier One Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) has failed to meet important environmental standards. Barbara Mazurek, Bandera County Farm Bureau President says that these failures are indicative of the problems that exist with the entire Tran-Texas Corridor (TTC). “Because these environmental standards have not been met, the Texas Department of Transportation should seriously consider alternatives to its current model,” Mazurek said. According to Mazurek, there are three main reasons that the DEIS is flawed. • It limits its analysis to alternatives that fit the TTC “vision” of a multimodal...

California's worst drought in decades is forcing the state's cattle ranchers to downsize their herds because two years of poor rainfall have ravaged millions of acres of rangeland used to feed their cows and calves. --snip-- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought in May after the state recorded two years of below-average rainfall, a sharp reduction in Sierra Nevada snowpack and its driest spring on record. Late last month, state water officials warned local agencies that their water deliveries could be cut by as much as 85 percent next year. The drought has drained many reservoirs, left lawns and...

State highway officials said Wednesday that the first step in carrying out their decision to build a controversial toll road along the present U.S. 59, and not through farm and ranch land, is to get federal approval. Although no federal funding has been sought for the Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, the Texas Department of Transportation is bound by federal environmental law. The project has generated thick volumes about its likely impact on the natural environment and the communities in its path. The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is expected to undergo public review late this year and then get sent to...

The Forest Service says it's trying to protect resources by ordering a 30 percent reduction in cattle grazing on grasslands in southwestern North Dakota. Some ranchers were surprised by the order. Doug Pope is the president of the Little Missouri Grazing Association. He says the Medora District has had more than 4 inches of rain this spring. He says a lot of people thought Forest Service letter ordering the cuts was unwarranted. The Forest Service manages grazing on about 1 million public acres on the National Grasslands. Ron Jablonski is the Forest Service ranger for the Medora District. He says...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

While Gov. Rick Perry was in Johnson Coliseum addressing SFA graduates, on the other side of campus a group of citizens were not so happy about his appearance in Nacogdoches. In the free-speech area of campus, near North Street and Vista Drive, many farmers, property owners and concerned citizens gathered for a Citizens Against the Trans-Texas Corridor Rally. Holding protest signs and using a tractor as a symbol of the farming community, those who gathered wanted to make their cause heard by the governor, as well as the community. Many vehicles traveling on North Street honked in support of the...

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...