Free Republic

BAILEY, Colo.- The search for a mountain lion continues after it attacked an 8-year-old boy in Bailey Wednesday night. Colorado Parks and Wildlife says the child was playing on a trampoline in his yard when he heard a friend calling from down the street. As he ran towards his friend's home, the mountain lion pounced, grabbing the boy by the head. The boy's brother was also outside and heard a commotion. He ran to his father and told him something didn't sound right. His father rushed down the street and found the mountain lion on top of his son. The...

NEW YORK — Before the United Nations can save the planet, it needs to clean up its own house. And as scandal after scandal has unfolded over the past decade, from Oil for Food to procurement fraud to peacekeeper rape, the size of that job has become stunningly clear. But any understanding of the real efforts that job entails should begin with a look at the long and murky career of Maurice Strong, the man who may have had the most to do with what the U.N. has become today, and still sparks controversy even after he claims to have...

I just love it when someone slips up, and tells us country folk what’s really being planned for us. Rural cleansing is the purposeful removal of rural citizens from the countryside and the relocation of rural populations into urban areas. Many public officials and media pundits scoff at the mere suggestion that rural cleansing is taking place, but the problem, you see, is that there are people who have inadvertently left tell-tale clues we can use to piece together things for ourselves. One of the most startling clues I’ve run across lately comes from a July 1, 1998 newspaper article...

SALT LAKE CITY — A coalition of conservation groups is hailing a federal judge's ruling Monday to strike down portions of the Richfield Bureau of Land Management plan they said gave deference to off-road vehicles at the expense of the environment. "This landmark decision is a resounding rejection of the BLM’s mismanagement of Utah’s stunning public lands,” said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. ... The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance was among seven groups that filed a legal challenge to the Bush-era plans following their adoption in 2008, contending they imperiled pristine landscapes. The Richfield plan...

Tennessee’s second poorest county will suffer even more if the federal government buys 120,000 acres of land in that area, near Memphis, all for the stated purpose of wildlife preservation, said that county’s mayor. Lauderdale County Mayor Rod Schuh told Tennessee Watchdog Friday that his county, while poor, relies on farming and agriculture as the primary drivers of its economy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s plan to expand the Lower Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge, assuming it buys out as many properties as it can, will rob the county of its most valuable commodity, Schuh said. Primarily, almost 60 percent of...

As promised, the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. appealed to an expanded panel of a federal appeals court in San Francisco today to allow it to keep operating at Point Reyes National Seashore. The oyster farm and owner Kevin Lunny asked an 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a decision in which a smaller panel of the court ruled against the company by a 2 to 1 vote in September. In that ruling, the smaller panel upheld a federal trial judge’s denial of a preliminary injunction that would have allowed the oyster harvesting to continue...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is looking to close 2-million acres of forest to protect a toad and frog habitat. The service held a meeting in Prather Wednesday to discuss closing parts of nine forests.

With the imminent return of Ken Salazar to Colorado, and talk of his future political aspirations bubbling up in the papers, we thought it a good time to recount a brief history of Secretary Salazar’s failures at the Interior Department. ... First and foremost amongst Salazar’s fiascos is the BP oil spill. The Deepwater Horizons disaster is firmly etched in the American conscience as an example of bumbling incompetence and haphazard, if not non-existent, leadership. Salazar mucked up his role so badly that unnamed White House sources spanked him publicly in The Washington Post as an “erratic spokesman” who was...

New Mexico Dem Senate candidate Martin Heinrich misleads with defense of medical device tax. Democratic New Mexico congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Martin Heinrich defended his vote to uphold a job-killing provision of Obamacare on Tuesday, despite his previous acknowledgment that the provision would have negative economic consequences for his home state. ... Heinrich voted June 7 of this year to uphold the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers that will take effect next year under Obamacare ... The medical device tax is sure to be a hot topic in the New Mexico campaign. New Mexico is home...

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 Charlotte, N.C., man says he was arrested unfairly on a traffic violation because police were worried he would organize protests during the Democratic National Convention. ... Tyson's lawyer, Derek Fletcher, says a police report of the arrest claimed his client was on a terrorist watch list and should be held until the convention ends Thursday. Tyson says he's an activist with the Rainforest Action Network. He thinks he was targeted by police to stop him from organizing protests

Western lawmakers are crying foul over new Interior Department guidelines that resurrect the controversial Wild Lands policy that was killed by Congress in April 2011. Bureau of Land Management manuals uncovered by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) include language nearly identical to the draft proposal put forth by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in December 2010. The “Wild Lands” policy was intended to identify and manage wilderness areas while circumventing the normal — and transparent — congressional process. Pulling manuals from the BLM site on July 31, the lawmakers compared the policies and found the new language...

WASHINGTON — The Utah men who were the first in the nation to swing a legal sledgehammer to controversial wildlands policy No. 3310 are celebrating its demise, saying it's gratifying to see how the right kind of pressure can effect such a reversal. "It's tremendous. It's the best news I have heard for a long time," said Uintah County Commissioner Mike McKee. "We are very pleased." Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday directed the Bureau of Land Management to abstain from designating any "wildlands" on public lands under its purview. Instead, he said the federal agency will work with Congress...

California is the unfortunate testbed for almost every new lunatic idea promulgated by the radical left—which is to say, every idea they offer—the complete explanation for why the state is such a train wreck. One of the worst examples is California’s oppressive environmental statutes. In combination with these, Agenda 21 has spread like cancer throughout California. Today I received some explicit examples of how this is playing out in Ventura County. The county Board of Supervisors is attempting to impose, almost word-for-word, the Wildland Project’s despotic edicts that will turn wide swaths of rural private property into complete wastelands. A...

The Interior Department reversed a Bush-era policy on wilderness on Thursday, restoring the authority of its Bureau of Land Management to identify and recommend new areas for protection. Green Since 2003, the department has excluded wilderness as a criterion it applies in managing federal lands for the public benefit. “The new Wild Lands policy affirms the B.L.M.’s authorities under the law — and our responsibility to the American people — to protect the wilderness characteristics of the lands we oversee,” the bureau’s director, Bob Abbey, said in a statement. Environmentalists welcomed the decision but questioned why it had taken nearly...

Under the plans, which were leaked to the daily Vedomosti newspaper, the majority of Russia's 141 million-strong population would be concentrated in just twenty urban centres rather than sparsely spread out over one fifth of the earth's surface as is now the case. At the moment, ninety per cent of Russia's towns are relatively small with a population of 100,000 people or less, many of them in remote locations. The leaked plan said such places had "no future" and were not worth developing. Instead, it proposed relocating people to twenty giant agglomerations where Russia's main natural resources such as oil...

"GMUG" stands for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests. Combined, they encompass some 2.9 million acres of National Forest lands in Central and Western Colorado. These three forests are home to some of the most outstanding recreational opportunity in the West. Right now, the forest's are revising their Forest Plans. These management plans provide broad guidance on what activities may or may not occur on these lands. The BlueRibbon Coalition (BRC), a national recreation advocacy group that champions recreational access and responsible use of public and private lands, is growing increasingly concerned about the influence several anti-access groups...

THE WILDLANDS PROJECT - Wild-Eyed in the Wilderness - Insight on the News - Nation http://www.insightmag.com/news/2001/04/23/Nation/The-Wildlands.Project.WildEyed.In.The.Wilderness-210931.shtml THE WILDLANDS PROJECT - Wild-Eyed in the Wilderness By John Elvin Sure, life is wild in this country now, but you ain't seen nothin' yet. With the support of major corporations, wealthy foundations, environmentalist groups and friends in government, convicted eco-terrorist Dave Foreman, a founder of the radical Earth First "Monkey Wrench" gang of professed saboteurs, is mapping a new "re-wilded" America that would be 50 percent "off-limits" to human occupation. This huge portion of the re-wilded U.S. mainland would be home to...

Nov. voters to decide on land buy tax for wildlands By JAMIE MANFUSO Herald Tribune 3/30/04CHARLOTTE COUNTY, FLA -- County voters will decide in the November elections whether to increase their property tax rates for 10 years to buy wildlands.The Charlotte commissioners will ask the voters to OK a 0.5-mill increase, $50 for a home with $100,000 taxable value. Voters will also decide whether the county can issue general obligation bonds to pay for the land.While the exact amount of the bond issuance hasn't been determined, it could be for $70 million or more, including interest. That's the amount...

A copy of an e-mail I received. Action is needed!!!! Revived Wild Sky bill gets a hearing (Note: This is part of the implementation intent of The Wildlands Project, or TWP. It is part of making a ‘no humans corridor’: the ‘Yellowstone 2 Yukon.’ Does this raise any Regd Flags? If not, it sure should! Now, how many times and places has this tired old quote been used: “ ... boost tourism and recreation"?