Free Republic

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

Funny how the environmental objectives of the "Save the Planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster" squad and that of Marxism line up so neatly. Of course you shouldn't have personal autonomy or private property. It's bad for the 'planet'. And by the planet, we mean the red planet. So it's no surprise that The Nation, where the synergy of the red and the green meet, should roll out a story like this, "If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership." ... And give up...

Colorado has a bear problem. Pure and simple, we have too many bears.. When I was a kid growing up .. my brother and I spent a lot of time in the woods. We were hiking, backpacking, exploring, hunting and climbing around all the time in the high country. Never once did we see a bear. I clearly recall the first time I ever saw a bear in the woods, and I was 31 years old, in 1993. Not too long after that, I took over the outfitting permits in Marble, Colorado, and I remember one day when I saw...

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Bank of the West President and Chief Executive Officer Nandita Bakhshi pushing back on the bank’s decision to no longer conduct business with companies engaged in the exploration and production of coal, oil and natural gas. Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, has 23 branches with dedicated employees who work hard to serve communities and families across Wyoming. In his letter, Barrasso condemned the San Francisco headquarter’s attack on Wyoming’s communities and businesses that depend on fossil fuels for energy security, jobs and economic growth. “This misguided and...

Recordings and summaries of emergency calls show Washington wildlife officials at first objected to an air rescue of a woman treed by wolves, or help from the Okanogan County sheriff. Washington wildlife managers initially opposed sending a helicopter or a search-and-rescue team to save a woman treed by wolves in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, according to recordings and summaries of emergency calls. ... Notes from a call between DNR dispatcher Jill Jones and a wildlife officer summarized WDFW’s position, and her position, shortly before the helicopter launched. “No helicopter. Federally listed species. 3 WDFW personnel saying so,” according to DNR’s...

A troubling trend has occurred for ranchers in NE Washington ... cattle are experiencing breeding issues since the migration of wolves to the area... the rate of female cows .. that didn’t become pregnant has increased from five percent to about 20 percent. A cow must raise a calf every summer for the rancher to recoup costs ... Diamond M also has a winter range to cut costs, but when wolves came into the area about a decade ago, they’ve seen their cattle attacked ... Texas A&M University agreed with the open cow side effect from wolves, and an Eastern...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

A new report has government officials considering setting 10 million acres of across six states in the American west off limits to mining and development to protect the chicken-like Greater Sage Grouse, which is not an endangered species. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report found that much of the Sage Grouse’s habitat sits on top of extremely valuable deposits of minerals including gold, copper, lithium, silver, uranium and many others. The USGS report means that the government’s most restrictive grouse protection plan could kill even more than 31,000 jobs and lead to more than $5.6 billion in reduced annual economic...

A Michigan state senator from the Upper Peninsula says the federal Environmental Protection Agency has done everything in its power to indirectly shut down a mine near Marquette. The issue is back in the news because a limited-government legal foundation announced last month it will represent the Marquette County Road Commission in a federal lawsuit against the EPA. The agency has blocked a plan to build a shortcut road to the Eagle Mine in the western Upper Peninsula. In a phone interview with Michigan Capitol Confidential this week, Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, suggested that the EPA’s real target in the...

The BLM released its draft environmental impact statement Thursday. It is proposing amending up to 11 resource management plans in the two states. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined the Gunnison sage-grouse requires listing as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. ... about 5,000 breeding Gunnison sage-grouse live in the two states. Some 4,000 live in the Gunnison Basin, and the others in six satellite populations in Colorado and a seventh in Utah. ... Fish and Wildlife pointed to the low numbers of birds in the other populations and their range of habitat threats as...

A forestry company filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit against Greenpeace Tuesday for misrepresenting the company’s environmental record to raise funds and promote its agenda. Greenpeace knowingly and deliberately made false claims about the company while fundraising, and fabricated evidence of Resolute’s alleged environmental malfeasance, according to the forestry and paper company Resolute Forest Products. RICO is an anti-mafia law designed to combat organized crime. Greenpeace’ is a global fraud,” states the 124-page legal complaint. “For years, this international network of environmental groups collectively calling themselves ‘Greenpeace’ has fraudulently induced people throughout the United States and...

Oil and gas industry groups on Thursday sued federal agencies over revisions to land management plans in Colorado and other western states to protect the greater sage-grouse. The Western Energy Alliance and the North Dakota Petroleum Council filed the suit in North Dakota, saying the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service failed to follow proper procedures for public involvement in adopting the land use plan amendments. They also say the plans ignore sound science and will hurt western economies. Plan revisions being challenged include ones in northwest Colorado, where greater sage-grouse habitat substantially overlaps with oil and gas...

$16 million in fines dropped, threats canceled. A Wyoming rancher threatened by the Environmental Agency with $16 million fines for getting a state permit and building a stock pond on his ranch has reached a settlement that will have the fines go away and he’ll keep his stock pond. WND reported in 2015 on a lawsuit filed on behalf of Fort Bridger, Wyoming, rancher Andy Johnson by officialsl with the Pacific Legal Foundation seeking to vindicate his property rights. The lawsuit explained federal law clearly exempts stock ponds from the rules of the EPA, which had filed a compliance order...

Bowie Resources Partners’ purchase of Peabody Energy Corp.‘s Twentymile Mine in Routt County has fallen through, and Peabody has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Peabody, the world’s largest privately owned producer of coal, joins other major coal companies including Arch Coal, owner of the West Elk Mine in the North Fork Valley, in going bankrupt. Arch Coal also is in Chapter 11 reorganization. Bowie, owner of the Bowie No. 2 Mine near Paonia, had agreed to buy Twentymile and two mine properties in New Mexico for $358 million. But Peabody previously had said Bowie was still trying to find...

Railroads would be required to have at least two crew members aboard freight trains when they are traversing the state under a bill that won preliminary approval in the Colorado House . ... Minority Leader Brian Del Grosso, R-Loveland, took the Democrats to task over the bill, saying it is a poor way to deal with a problem he said they created. He said over the past several years, Democrats have made policy decisions that have contributed to the slowdown, and even closure of coal mines, citing the recent closure of the Bowie No. 2 mine near Paonia specifically. That...

The North Fork Valley is now down to one operating coal mine after Friday’s announcement that the Bowie No. 2 Mine near Paonia is being idled. Kentucky-based Bowie Resource Partners said in a news release that the action is occurring “as a result of continued market deterioration.” “The mine will remain idle while the market for Bowie No. 2 coal is evaluated,” the company said. The mine employs 108 full-time employees and one contractor. Bowie said it expects that 68 positions will be eliminated ... Just a few years ago, Bowie No. 2 employed more than 300 miners ... Another...

If you like to hunt and fish you better pay attention to this proposal. The feds are creating their own little fiefdoms on Alaksa refuge lands. The proposed regulations grant too much authority to refuge managers. They literally have dictatorial powers. It certainly sets up the right environment for corruption. They are even trying to make it difficult for the public to testify. The environmental extremists showed up at the Fairbanks meeting in force. It appears their plan is to get these regs passed and install their man as manager. (It makes one wonder what the Bundy's issues were in...

The downward slide continued for Colorado's coal industry in 2015, highlighted by production at Routt County's Twentymile Mine, which was down 38 percent. Statewide, production in Colorado was down 18.5 percent, with 18.7 million tons, the lowest amount of coal mined in 23 years. ... Colorado Mining Association President Stuart Sanderson said the drop in production is a result of lower demand, but it was not caused by natural market forces. What we are seeing is the direct result of government regulations that are designed to drive coal out of the energy mix," Sanderson said. He called Colorado's 2010 Clean...

Across all sectors of Colorado the cost of electricity has skyrocketed more than 67 percent between 2001 and 2014, easily exceeding median income growth and the expected rate of inflation . ... For all sectors between 2001 and 2014, the cost per kilowatthour jumped from just over 6 cents to more than 10 cents, or 67.11 percent. ... the data for the remaining sectors emphasizes the double impact that increased energy costs have in the form of rapidly escalating electricity rates on Colorado ratepayers, who see not only their own personal energy costs rise, but are hit a second time...

Obama on federal coal mining is a throwback to Carter administration failings. resident Obama's plot to use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to kill federal coal mining with a thousand paper cuts is not the first time he has used NEPA to try to end energy development. Disturbingly, his scheme is a throwback to President Carter and a decade-long moratorium that ended only when President Reagan took office. Meanwhile millions of Americans, vast regions and the nation's economy will suffer. In 2009, the Obama administration settled a "sweetheart lawsuit" by environmental groups by agreeing to a NEPA study on...