Free Republic

Today’s attack was a chilling reminder of the day earlier in November when the seven-year-old girl was snatched by a saltwater crocodile 210 miles east of Darwin. ... Saltwater crocodiles, which can grow up to 25ft and weigh more than a ton, are plentiful in the Northern Territory... Crocodiles are protected in the Northern Territory and their numbers have increased steadily, resulting in a number of attacks on people, One man writing to the Northern Territory News today said: ‘This has got to stop – there are too many crocs. ‘Of course we need to use common sense when in...

Because of the importance of the US market, chocolate manufacturers in Switzerland are submitting to Uncle Sam’s intrusion in their factories but they are not happy about it. “The fact that a foreign authority is involved in our Swiss businesses is unseemly,” Daniel Bloch, of Chocolats Camille Bloch, told Handelszeitung, the German-language business journal. The newspaper has discovered that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to inspect 21 chocolate factories and 18 dairies in Switzerland. The move is part of the implementation of America’s Food Safety Modernization Act, new legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama last...

Republican Heather Wilson, a candidate for U.S. Senate in New Mexico, has a new ad criticizing her opponent, Democratic congressman Martin Heinrich, for voting twice for a medical device tax that Heinrich had noted himself would be bad for job creation. ... Wilson, a former member of the House, is running to replace retiring Democrat Jeff Bingaman in the Senate.

A national group representing off-highway recreationists is suing the U.S. Forest Service to try to overturn a new travel management plan on national forest lands in the Sierra west of Reno they say is overly restrictive. The Pacific Legal Foundation said in a lawsuit filed recently the agency plan adopted in 2010 illegally closed more than 800 miles of roads and trails the public has used for years in the Tahoe National Forest. ... Similar disputes are under way in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, primarily in northeast Nevada's Elko County, and in the Eldorado National Forest in California mostly west...

Welcome to the Wild West, 2012 style. The Feds to Tombstone: “If you want to fix your water line, better lawyer up and talk to President Obama.”... Obama, is truly the out of touch candidate. The U.S. Forest Service — of which the president is ultimate boss — is preventing, on the flimsiest of excuses, Tombstone Arizona from rebuilding its water pipeline. Obama, conniving, is putting Tombstone, a fixture of American history, in mortal danger. ... A massive forest fire in 2011 wiped out the vegetation in Coronado National Park, wherein lies Tombstone’s waterworks — which were destroyed by the...

The U.S. Forest Service has re-examined the effects of a logging project on lynx habitat in an attempt to lift a judge's block of the Lolo National Forest project. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ruled in June that the Forest Service did not properly analyze the cumulative effects of the 2,038-acre Colt-Summit project on lynx habitat.

August 12, 2012SCRUBBED : PHOTO OF PRESIDENT OBAMA REMOVED JUST DAYS AFTER BOOK EXPOSES AGENDA TO ELIMINATE SUBURBS by Lee Stranahan A photo of President Obama was suddenly pulled from the website of the group Building One America, whose goals were documented extensively in Stanley Kurtz’s book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. The book, which was released ten days ago, reveals what Kurtz refers to as Obama’s plan to undercut the political and economic independence of America's suburbs. Kurtz connects current Obama administration policy with his personal history, and with groups...

Fauquier County is only about an hour from the nation’s capital but it feels like a different world— rolling hills dotted with vineyards, idyllic horse farms, and stifling regulations and ridiculous penalties meted out by capricious bureaucrats. Wait, what? Well, I guess it’s not that easy to get away from it all. Martha Boneta, who owns a small local farm, found that out the hard way when she was threatened with $5,000 in fines for not getting the proper permit to sell produce and host 10-year-old’s birthday party on her property. "Boneta already had a business license the county issued...

There is a "growing radicalized environmentalist faction" in Canada that is opposed to the country's energy sector policies, warns a newly declassified intelligence report. The RCMP criminal intelligence assessment, focusing on Canadian waters, cites potential dangers from environmental activists to offshore oil platforms and hazardous marine shipments, representing perhaps the starkest assessment of such threats by the Canadian security community to date. The report drew a sharp dismissal from Greenpeace — a prominent environmental group singled out in the document

A spunky 17-year-old who had his right arm partially torn from his body during a vicious alligator attack, told FoxNews.com that he wants the alligator’s head. "I'm going to use it for a prosthetic armrest," Kaleb Langdale said in an exclusive interview. “I want his head." The Florida teen lost his right arm below the elbow Monday night during an alligator attack. He said he survived by offering the 11-foot alligator his arm, and used the skills he learned by watching TV shows like "Swamp People" to survive the brutal attack. "I'm glad the alligator attacked me, because if it...

Second Amendment: The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom. Just as the world's worst human...

Perhaps no river crossing in Yosemite Valley has been more photographed than the historic Stoneman Bridge: a single, arching span faced with rough-hewn granite that provides a dramatic foreground to Half Dome, the park's most iconic natural marvel. Yet the 205-foot bridge is slated for possible removal under proposed plans for restoring the natural flow of the Merced River. As a federally designated "Wild and Scenic River," some say its course should be shaped only by nature as it meanders through the valley — and bridge abutments alter that course. The future of the roughly 80-year-old Stoneman and two other...

NEVADA CITY, Calif. - A mountain lion attacked a 63-year-old man camping northwest of Nevada City. ... the man decided to stop and sleep for the night while on the planned hiking trip, and laid a sleeping bag out on a tributary to the Yuba River. The man told officials that during the attack, the mountain lion bit and clawed him through the sleeping bag. The animal bit into the man's cap and his clothes. "The lion immediately began a ferocious attack. It bit him into his head. It bit him on the hands," said Patrick Foy, of the Department...

The exhausted crew of the Brigitte Bardot scramble to evacuate the ailing vessel. And Captain Paul Watson goes on the offensive, sending a team to board the heavily armed security vessel: the Shonan Maru.

Barack Obama will fly to Colorado Springs Friday to tour the scene of the Waldo Canyon Fire, which continues to ravage homes and forest on the edge of Colorado’s second most populous city. ... Politically, the fire offers Obama a chance to be on the ground in a key swing state assuming the responsibilities of actually being President. Further, with the Supreme Court set to issue its ruling on the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, traveling to the fire lines on Friday offers the President an opportunity to attempt to turn the page should the Court rule part or all...

Green agenda targets slurry bombers As fire rages out of control on the edge of Colorado Springs, threatening lives and property, it is time we listen to those who have warned us about the negative effect environmentalists and President Barack Obama have had on the federal government’s ability to fight fires. Much of what’s burning is the Pike National Forest, which is federal property. Yet it took almost three days to get federal fire fighting aircraft off the ground to begin dumping meaningful loads of slurry to slow the fire’s growth. Because the Forest Service has a shortage of planes,...

As crews continue to face off against a fast-moving wildfire in northern Colorado, some in the timber industry say the area's fire danger has been heightened by U.S. Forest Service policies and an economy that discourages them from harvesting millions of acres of dead trees that stand ready to burn. The High Park Fire burned has about 80 square miles west of Fort Collins, Colo. It is 15 to 20 percent contained but has been active on its west flank, where there are many beetle-killed trees... As bad as the fire has been, timber experts say the forests of northern...

RENO -- As part of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) National Sage-Grouse Planning Strategy, the BLM and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) are holding interactive social and economic public workshops. ... Interested partners will be guided on how to contribute social and economic information in the development of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement to amend Land Use Plans throughout the Greater Sage-grouse’s range in Nevada and Northeast California. They will also provide an opportunity for individuals to provide information regarding the use of public lands resources, how public lands influence their quality of life and how the BLM and U.S....

When the steel claw of an excavator slashes into the berm of the Great Works Dam on Monday morning, it will mark the start of a multimillion-dollar project to allow endangered and dwindling species to return to their historic spawning grounds along Maine’s longest river, the Penobscot. When the project is done - scheduled for 2015, after an additional dam is razed and another bypassed - it will open access to 1,000 miles of habitat for the native fish, including endangered Atlantic salmon and short-nosed sturgeon that journey from the Gulf of Maine to breed in the cold, fresh waters...

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...