text:
Studio HDRI Pack Bundle
- Overview
Studio HDRI Pack Bundle, GET ALL 3 VOLUMES for one low price!
The A&G Studio HDRI Pack Bundle comes with all three volumes containing 75 high resolution studio HDRI images ready to use in your favorite 3D software! The same photo-real quality you'd expect from A&G, now available in fully unwrapped ready to use exrs! You get all this for under a $1.50 per image! Order yours now and begin your download!
Begin your download NOW!
Share this product!What's Included?
System Requirements
- 75 – 6000px x 3000px hdri images ready to be spherically mapped for beautiful studio IBL renders.
- Each map ships with skylight, background, and reflection versions.
- Fully sIBL compatible.
- Fully compatible with Mental Ray, V-Ray, C4D, and any other renderer that supports exr's and IBL!
- No usage limits. Purchase one copy and use across your whole studio!
Studio HDRI Pack images work with any renderer that supports image based lighting through Open EXR files.
What is the Studio HDRI Pack?The Studio HDRI Pack Bundle contains all three volumes and ships with 75 spherically mapped EXR HDRI images that can be used to emulate studio lighting in your renders.What it's not.The images are not magic. Knowledge of IBL in your software of choice is a must.How is licensing handled?There is no license restrictions upon use of the Studio HDRI Packs. Purchase once and use as often as you like.Is there a student or trial version available?No, not at this time.
- Examples
- Training


text:
Convening in Seattle, June 11 & 12. Register now for this gathering of leaders focused on the New American City. >
June 17–18, 2014 in Washington, DC. Learn more and register to attend. >
Chris Dorle shares key concepts from the Sustainable Cities Design Academy on Detroit's Bloody Run Creek Project. >
in Philadelphia took place November 13 and 14. >
The Mayors' Institute on City Design convened its 57th national session in Charleston, SC, October 16–18, 2013. >
Anne Gatling Haynes illustrates key points of her experience as a resource team member. >
The Mayors' Institute on City Design held a special design institute in Belmar, NJ.
Enjoy a slideshow and recap of the 11th SCDA with teams from Atlanta, Detroit, Greenwood MS, and Morristown NJ. >
AAF program alumae Monica Chadha and Virginia Stanard discuss an interdisciplinary approach to improving the built environment. >

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Photos: OLPC, Classmate and Eee
Summary: How do the three leading education-orientated ultraportable notebooks stack up? Take our visual tour to find out.
2 of 14Image
Small and inexpensive notebooks designed primarily for schoolchildren — particularly in developing countries — have been a hot topic ever since Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project began in 2005. Production XO laptops (above, left) became available in November 2007.
OLPC is a not-for-profit organisation, whereas Intel, which notoriously joined and then exited the OLPC project, most definitely is not. Nevertheless, Intel's World Ahead program has the laudable aim of 'connecting the next billion people to uncompromised technology around the world', and part of that program is a low-cost notebook platform called Classmate (above, centre).
ASUS's Eee (above, right) has proven extremely popular since its mid-2007 launch. Designed in conjunction with Intel, the Eee has a broader remit than the OLPC and the Classmate in that it's less specifically targeted at developing countries and therefore less rugged. In the UK, the Eee is distributed by RM as the RM Asus miniBook.
In the following pages we take a comparative pictorial look at the OLPC XO, Intel Classmate and ASUS Eee.
Photo credit: Charles McLellan
The Intel Classmate (centre) is the bulkiest of the three notebooks, measuring 24.5cm wide by 19.6cm deep by 4.4cm high. The OLPC XO has the biggest footprint (24.2cm x 22.8cm), while the ASUS Eee is the baby of the bunch at 22.5cm by 16.5cm by 3.5cm. The Eee is also the lightest of the trio by some distance, weighing 920g, compared to 1.45kg for both the XO and the Classmate. In terms of overall stylishness the Eee is the winner, but the XO and the Classmate are both more rounded and rugged, and come with carrying handles.
The OLPC XO has the biggest screen, an innovative 7.5in. dual-mode transmissive/reflective LCD that can swivel from traditional clamshell mode to 'e-book' mode with the screen facing outwards, tablet-style (although it's not a touch-screen). The Classmate and Eee both have similar, rather cramped, 7in. TFT displays.
There are three different operating systems on view here: the XO runs a Red Hat Fedora 6-based version of Linux and the Sugar graphical user interface (GUI); the Classmate runs Windows XP (although some Linux distributions are also supported); and the Eee runs a Xandros-based Linux distribution (with Windows XP also now available).
The XO's keyboard is a waterproof membrane-style unit, while the Classmate and Eee have more traditional, if small, keyboards.
The left-hand sides of the three notebooks all carry a pair of audio jacks (mic/headphone) and a USB port; the Classmate and Eee add an RJ-45 Ethernet connector and a fan intake — features missing from the wireless-only, passive-cooled OLPC XO. The latter's ear-like antennas cater for 802.11s mesh networking as well as standard 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connectivity (also supported in the Classmate and Eee).
The connector for the XO's 12V AC adapter is also on the left-hand side: the notebook is designed to work with off-grid power sources such as solar panels and car batteries; a human-powered 'yo-yo' pull-cord generator has also been designed, although this is not yet widely available.
Another unusual feature of the XO is its microphone input, which can also be used to measure voltage and resistance, allowing sensors to be plugged in and their output recorded by the included Measure application (or 'activity' in OLPC's terminology).
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.


text:
20 Nov
Clean and Lean Office Lunch! Lettuce tell you about an amazing snack. We promise to leaf the lettuce puns right here. Seriously we should stop because that's just the tip of tREAD MORE
11 Jul
BODYISM NOW ON NET-A-PORTER It's been one of those weeks for Team Bodyism. The 'did that just really happen' kind of week! With the help of the very talenREAD MORE
12 Jun
World Cup Snacks The 2014 World Cup is here! To many people this simply means "I will be tired and uninterested at work for 3-4 weeks". Great moments are made durinREAD MORE
06 Dec
CLEAN & LEAN RECIPES TO KEEP YOUR FOOD FESTIVE, FUN, AND HEALTHY The festive season is getting in full swing now, with parties and social engagements on the calendar what seems like everREAD MORE
01 Dec
PICK YOUR FRUIT AND VEGTABLES WITH A FESTIVE EDGE THIS MONTH December, it is the month of Christmas fun and, for most, there is a lot of focus on food!! We all like to enjoy the festive seasREAD MORE
30 Nov
RAW CHOCOLATE AND COYO MAKES THE WEEKEND A TREAT-LIKE PLACE! Adding in Natural CoYo to your diet is great: as a replacement for natural yoghurt for breakfast or a snack, in smoothies or evenREAD MORE
23 Nov
COYO – THE CLEAN AND LEAN CHOICE TO ADD TO SMOOTHIES TO HELP RESCUE YOUR SKIN THIS WINTER. Its getting cold outside and the heating is going up, so create a skin saviour smoothie withREAD MORE
15 Nov
TREAT YOURSELF THIS EVENING TO A CLEAN & LEAN COYO DESSERT GUILT-FREE! It is finally Friday evening, after a long week at work you're in the process of winding down for the weekendREAD MORE
14 Nov
CREATE OUR SUPERMODEL FAVOURITE SUPER SMOOTHIE! Give your body and mind a catwalk worthy super boost with this excellent Clean & Lean super smoothie. It is packed full of nutrients and hREAD MORE
03 Nov
START THE MONTH OFF WITH A NUTRITIONAL BANG WITH THESE TOP SEASONAL FOODS! November is a great month for British fruits and vegetables, with some really enticing products ready to fill yourREAD MORE
31 Oct
MAKE SURE YOUR CLEAN & LEAN LIFESTYLE IS NOT TRICKED THIS HALLOWEEN WITH OUR USEFUL LITTLE TREAT RECIPE! Get carving those gruesome faces and scary scenes into pumpkins this Halloween asREAD MORE
23 Oct
DESIGNED TO HELP MEN BUILD LEAN MUSCLE, REDUCE BODY FAT AND INCREASE TESTOSTERONE We are now launching one of our most exciting new products- a product designed especially for men: Male TestREAD MORE
21 Oct
GET YOUR DIGESTION ON TRACK AND FEEL GREAT WITH OUR ULTIMATE CLEAN FIBRE Every now and again our busy lives lead us to notice our bodies slowing down and not quite functioning to its best; tREAD MORE
08 Oct
YOU DON'T HAVE TO MISS OUT ON FAVOURITE FOOD WITH THESE GLUTEN FREE OPTIONS! At Bodyism we are often asked how to cut out Gluten on the Clean & Lean diet without feeling deprived oREAD MORE


text:
Greg Dennis is a baseball coach
Photo by Angela Lewis /Chattanooga Times Free Press .
published Friday, May 4th, 2012
Stories this photo appears in:
For the first time in 11 years, the TCCAA and NJCAA Region VII softball tournament is being held on the Chattanooga State campus. That starts at 2 p.m. Sunday with Roane State facing Jackson State and then Motlow College meeting Dyersburg State in play-in games.


text:
Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl, Sr., and Ruth Aalund (b. Rishoff) and he grew up in Texas. After a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University in 1966 (BA) and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm from 1969 to 1970, he worked as an economist and free-lance journalist in New York and in Europe.
Engdahl began writing about oil politics with the first oil shock in the early 1970s.
His first book was called "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order", and discusses the role of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball and of the USA in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, which was meant to manipulate oil prices and to stop Soviet expansion. Engdahl claims that Brzezinski and Ball used the Islamic Balkanization model proposed by Dr Bernard Lewis. In 2007, he completed "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of GMO".
Engdahl is also a frequent contributor to globalresearch.ca, the main website of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
William Engdahl has been married since 1987 and has been living near Frankfurt am Main for more than two decades, Germany.[Link]
He just tells it like it is…
Windows to Russia!
Similar Posts to Read:
- Russia Today: German Author and Economist William Engdahl – Talks to Russia Today About America!
William Engdahl: Why America Does not Want Putin as President…
'Western countries fighting for Libya's oil fields like piranhas'…
Russia Today Interviews Gerald Celente on the Coming Global Depression!


text:
All My Own Work
Australia, 1970 (MIFF 1971, Australian Films)
Director: Ross R. Campbell
New approaches in art education are seen in a typical grade four primary classroom. Through a wide variety of activities, and with a sympathetic and understanding teacher, the children grow in confidence and begin to express themselves creatively.
Silver Award, Australia Film Awards 1970.


text:
*Offer valid through 11/25/14 at 11:59pm EST on ship to home orders only. To redeem, enter code NOVS2H in the promo code box at checkout. Limit one promo code per order. Terms are subject to change.
Canvas, jewelry, gadget cases and photo books ship within 3 business days.All other products and prints ship within 2 business days.
Shipping TimeframesEconomy: 7-10 business days via USPS, UPS, or FedExExpress: 2-5 business days via USPS or FedExSecond Business Day: 2 business days via FedExNext Business Day: 1 business day via FedEx
Six Photo Collage
8x10 Collage Print
11x14 Collage Print
16x20 Collage Print
Photo Only
Mouse Pad
iPhone 3/3GS Slim Case
5.25x5.25 Photo Panel
11x14 Mounted Print
from $34.95


text:
January 26, 2012
The new plant will enable the European coach manufacturer to continue to meet its high quality manufacturing standards to deliver products that offer North American operators consistent long-term pricing and greater scalability, as well as reduced cycle time from order to delivery.
Join the Metro E-Newsletters and receive the latest news in your e-mail inbox once a week. SIGN UP NOW!
View the latest eNews
Express Tuesday | Express Thursday | University Transit
Factors in Transit Bus Ramp Slope and Wheelchair-Seated Passenger Safety Nearly 3 million U.S. adults are wheelchair or scooter users1, and as the population ages this number is expected to rise. Many wheelchair users rely upon public transportation to access work, medical care, school and social activities.
Mass Transit Capital Planning An overview of the world-class best practices for assessing, prioritizing, and funding capital projects to optimize resources and align with the organization's most critical immediate and long-term goals.
The Benefits of Door-to-Door Service in ADA Complementary Paratransit Many U.S. transit agencies continue to struggle with the quality of ADA service, the costs, and the difficulties encountered in contracting the service, which is the method of choice for a significant majority of agencies. One of the most basic policy decisions an agency must make involves whether to provide door-to-door, or only curb-to-curb service.
More white papers
The full contents of Metro Magazine on your computer! The digital edition is an exact replica of the print magazine with enhanced search, multimedia and hyperlink features. View the current issue
Copyright © 2014 Metro Magazine. All Rights Reserved.


text:
In mid-November, 139 brucellosis-free animals were transferred to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana. With bison from a 2012 transfer, Fort Peck's herd of Yellowstone bison will now be almost 200 strong, the largest outside the park. The Fort Peck tribes aim to increase the herd to 1,000, the estimated number needed to restore their historic impact on the landscape. Unlike the 2012 transfer, which ranchers tried to stop in court, this relocation has attracted little vocal opposition, says Defenders of Wildlife's Jonathan Proctor. "It shows the tremendous progress that's been made."
Part of that solution coalesced late last month when the Conservancy announced its $134 million deal to buy 47,921 of Plum Creek Timber Company land in Washington's Yakima River headwaters — an area the size of Tacoma — plus 117,152 acres in Western Montana's Lower Blackfoot River Watershed. The purchase unites entire watersheds that have been under fractured ownership for generations. Having a cohesive plan for those lands will make it easier to do forest thinning or prescribed burns on a scale that could stave off catastrophic wildfires, for example. It should also make managing ecosystems to sustain at-risk species like spotted owls, grizzly bears or lynx less challenging.In addition to improving management options, the purchase marks a new era for those forests and the communities around them. The Plum Creek lands complicate management because they are interspersed with National Forest in a checkerboard pattern that formed in the 1860s, when Congress granted the railroads every other square mile section near their rail lines. As the checkerboard became more valuable to Plum Creek for real estate in the late 1990s and early 2000s, conservationists and communities grew nervous about losing forest access and being overrun with development. Groups like the Blackfoot Challenge and the Trust for Public Land in Montana, and the Nature Conservancy in both states, began buying the checkerboard to conserve it.
The recent deal was the final one needed to resolve 150 years of splintered ownership in Montana's Blackfoot Valley. Now the Conservancy and its partners — other NGOs, community groups, the state and the Forest Service — can continue to look at common management goals. "We'll be working on this for years," says Chris Bryant, the Nature Conservancy's land protection specialist for Western Montana. "This is a big piece of ground so it's a slow, ongoing, almost glacial process." Maintaining public access and biodiversity, and restoring logged parcels will be key to future plans.
The recent deal was the final purchase needed to resolve 150 years of splintered ownership in Montana's Blackfoot Valley.
In Washington, especially, the Conservancy is also interested in trying different ways to thin forests for restoration, while selling timber when possible. That could help finance other restoration projections that don't produce commercial timber. One way of doing that might be to create gaps in a former tree farm to emulate a more wild forest, while harvesting timber in the process. "For us this (purchase) is really a game changer," says Schroeder. "A big piece of what we want to do is show that we can implement some science-based restoration on this landscape that could influence how national forests could be managed in the future."
One benefit of the parcels' massive scale is that the Conservancy can act as a kind of test bed for ideas that are often too risky or cumbersome for the Forest Service, such as trying new techniques for making entire watersheds more resilient to climate change and fire.
The Conservancy's latest big purchase ultimately signifies a move toward more landscape-scale thinking. For example, as much as the spotted owl has driven conservation in Washington's forests, the traditional conservation idea of simply setting aside old-growth reserves isn't enough. "If fire comes through and wipes out those reserves, the spotted owl is left with nothing. So if we can't make the forests more resilient to fire and restore more habitat, then ultimately we will lose," says Schroeder. "In changing climates, it's not enough to have a small amount of land locked away. You need to figure out how to have enough flexibility on the land so that species can persist and move to different places and find suitable habitats. That's an evolution in our way of thinking about conservation."
Sarah Jane Keller is a correspondent for High Country News. She writes from Bozeman, Montana and tweets @sjanekeller.]]>
"Exempt well" laws in most Western states allow domestic wells to be drilled without water rights, or even a permit in some cases ("Death by a thousand wells," HCN, 10/19/09). These wells aren't subject to cutbacks during drought, something that angers surface-water rights holders, who do have to cut back. Developers started exploiting exempt wells in fast-growing, water-short areas like the Gallatin Valley in Montana, which exempts wells that pump less than 35 gallons a minute and 10 acre-feet per year. Rather than drill one well that would serve a subdivision but exceed those limits, they drilled multiple exempt wells. Originally intended to support rural homesteads, the wells were assumed to be too small to impact streamflows — something that is now disputed.
In mid-October, a Montana judge effectively closed that state's loophole, ruling that grouping wells for single developments violates the law's intent. He reinstated an older interpretation that will exempt future subdivisions only if all the wells collectively meet pumping limits. That rule will stand until a state agency or the Legislature comes up with a new one.]]>
Schultz is one of just two large-scale bobcat farmers in North America. For 32 years, he and his wife, Carol, have raised the animals for fur in Arengard, North Dakota — population 115 — a dot on the state's western border, just south of Williston. Schultz is an erstwhile trapper who hated to see skinned beavers go to waste and figured he could raise cats on the recycled meat. He sells his skins to Canadian auction houses, which ship the furs to Russia, China, Japan and Italy. A good fur, speckled with constellations of black spots against a snow-white belly, fetches him up to $1,100.
"I grew up on a farm, and we raised hogs and cattle and sheep and chickens," Schultz, who currently keeps around 130 cats, told me earlier this week. "It's always rewarding when you watch something go from little to big. It's just a different kind of farming, is all it is."
The last thing Schultz ever expected was international infamy. Yet infamy is what's been thrust upon him, brought on by the confluence of an oil boom, an environmental review and a coalition of animal rights activists.
Arnegard sits at the heart of the Bakken region, the sprawling oil patch now yielding a million barrels of crude per day. When production in the Bakken spiked, so did truck traffic past the Schultz Fur Farm. Soon, as many as 25 semis were roaring by his property every hour, raising a racket and kicking up dust. The stressed-out bobcats responded by killing their offspring. (Although Schultz started his farm with wild-caught stock, today all his cats are born in captivity.) Forty percent of his kittens were slain by their mothers.
Schultz decided it was time to flee the Bakken and move to central Montana's Fergus County, far from the tumult of the oil patch. On June 18 of this year, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (MFWP) completed a pro forma environmental assessment and recommended that Schultz receive a license to operate his relocated farm. The state then opened the assessment to a public comment period — and the fur hit the fan.
The comment period quickly turned into a referendum not on the environmental impacts of Larry Schultz's bobcat farm, but on the ethics of farming animals for fur at all. Thousands of comments poured in, some from places as far away as New Zealand. A petition demanding the rejection of Schultz's application garnered 12,000 signatures. The internet howled its disgust. One typical comment, on the website of the Missoula Independent: "This asshole wants to move because the mothers kill their young, basically it hurts his profits, f--- him."
When activists from California called his house to castigate him, he tried to point out that the loss of animal life was inherent to any farming operation. They didn't listen. "They can be an animal rights person, that's their opinion, that's fine," Schultz told me. "Just like I can have an opinion about them being a vegetarian."
Schulz's predicament isn't surprising: Fur farms have long been a favorite target of animal rights activists, and for good reason. Animals at many farms are confined to tiny, wire-floored cages; suffer from self-mutilation; and are sometimes killed via a shudder-inducing process called anal electrocution. (According to the environmental assessment, Schultz's bobcats would be kept in 4x6 wire cages with attached 2x4 nesting boxes. He told me he kills his animals by lethal injection.)
Several countries, including the United Kingdom, have responded to pressure from animal rights campaigners by passing complete or partial bans on fur farming. The U.S., however, has no such law — to the outrage of many activists. This spring, ski mask-wearing vandals destroyed breeding records at a bobcat farm in Ronan, Montana, though their attempts to free the cats were deterred. "Our motives were borne of a fierce love for wildlife," the activists wrote in an email. (Whether bobcats that have been raised in captivity for generations qualify as wildlife is a question the email did not address.)
Schultz hasn't yet experienced that kind of harassment, but his attempts to depart the Bakken have brought his once-anonymous business an unwelcome notoriety. (When I asked him if he would speak with me, his first question was, "Well, that depends — do you eat a hamburger once in a while?") Attacking bobcat farms, however, isn't likely to put a dent in international demand for furs. As long as there's a market, fur farming — and trapping, currently experiencing a boom of its own — will persist.
Meanwhile, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has been sifting through the snowdrift of letters and emails (the comment period closed August 29), though according to game warden Shawn Briggs, there's no timetable for issuing a decision on Schultz's application. For now, then, Larry and Carol are stuck in the Bakken. "We're in the heart of it," Schultz said. "We could stay and bitch about it. Or we could leave."
Ben Goldfarb is a correspondent at High Country News. Follow @ben_a_goldfarb]]>
A study of successful hunters, published this August in the peer-reviewed online journal PLOS ONE, found that "only the presence of guides increased the odds of killing larger prey." Age, personal fitness and the use of camouflage apparel made little difference in taking down a trophy.
The study examined roughly 4,300 online photos of men from western Canadian outdoors forums and outfitter websites, using evident physical characteristics – such as graying hair and paunchy bellies – to determine relative age and fitness. The methods limited the information the researchers could collect, but also guarded against hunters' habits of exaggeration when it comes to talking up exploits.
"A photograph can't lie," says Rosie Child, an undergraduate student who coauthored the paper with her adviser, Chris Darimont, who studies conservation.
Though the study only addresses big-game trophy hunters, it does suggest that while humans have staked themselves atop the food chain as "super-predators," we're not using typical adaptations of other species, such as fitness, strength, or stealth, to successfully hunt prey. And while other animals may guard knowledge of bountiful hunting grounds as a specialized advantage among individuals, in the case of humans and paid guides, there's a strong (read: financial) incentive to share information with others. North American hunters "have overcome many of the physical, but not knowledge-based, challenges of hunting," according to the authors.
Perhaps the most surprising finding is the futility of camouflage – at least for big game. "Even though 80 percent of the hunters that we found were wearing camouflage clothing, they weren't any more likely to be posing with a trophy animal than those without camouflage clothing," Child says. "It didn't make a difference, and being physically fit didn't increase a hunter's chance of getting a trophy animal (either)."
Even though the study suggests that outfitter expertise is the best way to bag game, a quick look at guide numbers in Western states and at gear sales at key retailers suggests that many people don't quite realize this.
In Wyoming, the number of licensed hunting outfitters dipped to its lowest mark in 25 years in 2013 (332 compared with a high of 382 outfitters in 1991 and 1992), but that fluctuation isn't far from the average and may reflect post-recession impacts on trips for out-of-state hunters. Success rates for client deer hunters have hovered around 70 percent or greater, based on figures from the state Board of Outfitters and Professional Guides.
Montana has about 300 active hunting guides, many of whom are aging and "looking for an exit and retirement strategy," as overall hunting numbers decline, says Mac Minard, executive director of the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association. For those guides that remain, high-end, trophy hunting trips are the most in demand. "I think people have less time, and perhaps less skills and less interest, I suppose, and they're willing to spend more money for a high-quality experience," Minard says.
Meanwhile, rapidly expanding big-box outdoors retailers, including Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops and Sportsman's Warehouse, all heavily market camo – and its benefits – for trophy hunters and other big-game seekers. If the clothing isn't working in the field, it's certainly not affecting their sales. Nebraska-based Cabela's, known for its in-store mountains seeded with taxidermied wildlife, generates about $3 billion in annual revenue and operates 59 stores, with plans for steady growth of 13 to 15 new openings per year. Bass Pro Shops, headquartered in Missouri, is also aggressively expanding, building 20 new stores by 2015; an increase in locations by more than a third. The recent opening of a Cabela's megastore in north Denver was also credited with boosting local sales taxes and attracting other retailers to a new shopping area.
Cabela's even offers its own exclusive, temperature-activated ColorPhase camo clothing, which can morph from brown to green to help hunters stay cloaked on sunny or cloudy days, in spring or fall. That may look and sound cool, but it won't provide an edge for hunters, at least according to Child and Darimont. So sportsmen may want to hold off on buying that $80 insulated hoodie – and instead offer their guide an extra-fat tip.
Joshua Zaffos is a contributing editor at High Country News. Follow @jzaffos]]>
Today, despite investigators' best efforts, the bear's fate remains unknown. But its presence in those mountains underscores their importance as a wildlife highway between the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and pristine chunks of habitat to the west and north in Idaho and Montana (the mountains are within the "High Divide," #2 on this map), particularly for Yellowstone's expanding populations of grizzlies and wolves. Livestock don't mix well with hungry predators; once a bear has learned how easy it is to take down a sheep or six, it's likely to come back for more, and wildlife managers must kill it.
Environmental groups like the National Wildlife Federation have long worked with federal agencies and ranchers to head off such conflicts, negotiating the removal of livestock from more than 600,000 acres of federal land around Yellowstone. The Sheep Experiment Station, which grazes sheep on tens of thousands of acres in the Centennials, is something of a last holdout – and as I reported early in 2012, is pretty much working at cross purposes with the stated grizzly recovery goals of the Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and others.
This summer, though, it's begun to look as if the century-old institution might finally shut its doors – not for environmental reasons, but for financial ones. "A prolonged period of declining and flat budgets has resulted in underfunded programs at the (station)," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack wrote in a letter this June, informing a Congressional appropriations subcommittee of the USDA's plans to reassign the facility's budget and employees. "The unit no longer has the critical mass of scientists necessary to address high priority research."
It's a major, if indirect, victory for wildlife, says Tom France, NWF's Northern Rockies senior director of Western wildlife conservation. "In some ways, this may be the reverse of an experience you had growing up – where there was a vacant lot or a woodland where you played, that someone later came and built houses on."
Under the closure, much of the station's nearly $2 million budget will be transferred to other Idaho research facilities, and its genetics research program would go to another federal sheep research facility in Nebraska. But Agricultural Research Service spokeswoman Sandy Miller Hays was uncertain what would happen to its rangeland-related research. Such projects are a key part of why the sheep industry is stumping for the facility to stay open: Without access to high desert and mountain environments where Western ranchers actually run sheep, supporters argue, researchers can't test specialized breeds or ways to improve grazing practices to protect sensitive habitats and species. And the loss of its largest employer (17 people would be reassigned) would be a major blow to rural Dubois, Idaho.
It didn't take long for Idaho and Montana's congressional delegations, along with a couple of conservative lawmakers from Washington and Oregon, to throw their weight behind the station with their own letter in July. Notably, all are Republicans that have in the past attacked federal budgets as being too bloated. In response, the research service held listening sessions and gathered public comments through last Thursday, and will report back to Congress with its findings.
Until then, the station's fate will likely be as murky as bear 726's. But "unless Idaho's congressional delegation passes a rider on some bill that keeps it open," France says, "it's not a matter of if it closes, but of when."
Sarah Gilman is a contributing editor at High Country News. She tweets @Sarah_Gilman. Image courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Yet Huijser, an ecologist who studies wildlife crossings, can't help but imagine ways to improve it. The grass, for example, fails to block the headlights of the Missoula-bound traffic 26 feet below. Huijser's remote cameras once captured a black bear fleeing from an approaching car's glare. "A visual screen would be helpful," he says, thoughtfully stroking the grizzled beard that covers his lean face. "It could just be a wooden fence."
To most people, roads connote progress. But Huijser sees asphalt as a challenge to surmount. One minute he's pointing out brush piles that allow rodents to navigate the overpass, and the next he's describing his vision for modular bridges that can be relocated to accommodate new migration routes as climate change pushes species northward.
Huijser's passion derives from his native Netherlands, where infrastructure is both a threat to wildlife and a tool for conservation. In the Netherlands – a country that has just one-ninth the landmass of Montana, and almost 17 times as many people – preserving wildlife has become an urgent, and necessarily urban, task. The nation boasts over 600 wildlife crossings, including the world's largest, the half-mile long Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailoo, which spans a railway, a sports complex and a business park.
Road ecology was an obvious choice when Huijser sought a wildlife research focus in the '90s in the Netherlands. In a place where bears and wolves have been extinct for centuries, that meant sweating the small stuff: specifically Erinaceus europaeus, the European hedgehog, dying by the hundreds of thousands on Dutch roads. Huijser's research revealed that planners could prevent hog-kill by building crossings at hedgehogs' favorite territory: the margins between forests and grasslands. "One of my statements during my Ph.D. defense was that they're really edgehogs," he says, sheepish at the pun.
In 1998, at a Florida conference on – what else? – road ecology, Huijser met Bethanie Walder, now his wife and, until recently, public lands director for a New Mexico-based conservation group, WildEarth Guardians. In 2002, he relocated to Missoula for a job with Montana State University's Western Transportation Institute (WTI) and discovered that U.S. agencies had different priorities than European ones – primarily reducing collisions with the large, common animals that frequently damage cars and injure people.
That's important, of course: Huijser has shown that wildlife crossings often pay for themselves by reducing crash expenses. But the focus on collisions often neglects the needs of small or rare species. Because deer use underpasses while grizzlies prefer overpasses, for instance, an ungulate-centric approach doesn't help threatened bears. "If you took a conservation perspective," Huijser explains, "you'd design structures of different type, dimensions and location."
The U.S. 93 project takes such a perspective – thanks largely to the tribes, whose legal muscle and concern for wildlife led to crossings being incorporated in state plans to widen the highway through the Flathead Indian Reservation. Huijser's camera-traps and track beds – groomed swaths of dirt that reveal hoof- and paw-prints – suggest the efforts are working. At least 20 different species have used the crossings, including bobcats, badgers and grizzlies. What's more, the structures have reduced crashes by at least 50 percent, suggesting that conservation and safety are compatible goals.
"That research is being used to justify projects across the West, around the country, and internationally," says Rob Ament, WTI's road ecology program manager. Huijser has consulted on Chinese and Mongolian highways, and last year published a study suggesting that Brazil (where he'll teach this fall) could profit from crossings for capybaras, enormous rodents that roam in herds and cause traffic fatalities.
Yet while he calls his cost-benefit studies his most important work, finance isn't his primary motivation. "We have to consider what it's worth to have animals on the landscape," Huijser says. "That hasn't been part of our economic analyses. But our well-being depends on having wildlife around us."
This story was funded by the Solutions Journalism Network.]]>
In the dead of winter, female wolverines dig elaborate, multi-chambered dens to raise their young, choosing sites where snowpack lasts well into the spring. But snowpack in the Northern Rockies is almost certain to decline as the climate warms, jeopardizing their chances for successful reproduction. There are fewer than 300 wolverines in the Lower 48, and models show that they could lose 31 percent of their habitat by 2045 and 63 percent by 2085. And so, in February 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed adding the "mountain devils" to the endangered species list.
The science behind the proposal has not changed, but the agency's position on it has. Mountain-Prairie Regional Director Noreen Walsh advocated against a speculative listing in a memo released by environmentalists in July, citing uncertainty as to exactly why wolverines need a persistent snowpack to reproduce and how its loss would harm the animals. Though scientists recommended listing wolverines as threatened, agency leader Dan Ashe defended her position – a strong indication of which way the final decision, due in early August, will go.
Wolverines would have been the first species in the Lower 48 thrust onto the endangered species list by climate change. A listing would have helped validate the use of climate models to develop strategies to protect animals against future threats. And it would have been unusual because, unlike most of the species the act safeguards, wolverines, though rare, are not thought to be declining.
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – the states that anchor the animal's range in the Lower 48 – dreaded the prospect of a listing and the public-land restrictions it could bring, while environmentalists cheered it on. In practical terms, though, would formal protections really help wolverines? Can a law that was designed to rescue species from discrete, localized threats also protect them from the more diffuse hazards of a warming world?
The Endangered Species Act has helped prevent the extinction of many species of plants and animals by removing specific threats to their survival, often only in areas designated as "critical habitat." Closing forest roads in prime grizzly habitat, for instance, helped keep poachers and stressful traffic at bay. Prohibiting the hunting or poisoning of wolves after they were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies allowed populations to rebuild. Restricting timber harvests in the Pacific Northwest took pressure off the northern spotted owl.
But the Fish and Wildlife Service can't simply rope off high mountain niches, exclude greenhouse gases and preserve the snow that wolverines depend on. Polar bears, bearded seals and ringed seals are already listed due to disappearing sea ice, yet carbon emissions continue to rise, and the Arctic is still melting.
The Center for Biological Diversity, which has sued for greater wolverine protection, wants the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to include specific emissions targets in the plans they create to recover species threatened by climate change "to raise awareness about what these species need," says Shaye Wolf, the center's climate science director. But using the act to reduce greenhouse gases would be politically and practically impossible, argues J.B. Ruhl, a Vanderbilt University professor specializing in endangered species law. Scientists couldn't prove that a particular coal-fired power plant is responsible for the demise of polar bears, for instance. Plus, the idea has never had support in the agencies or the White House.
Still, listing species threatened by climate change isn't pointless. Recovery plans lead to basic conservation measures, such as long-term, range-wide monitoring of endangered populations and their habitats. Such unglamorous science is crucial to understanding what can be done to help at-risk species; it's not being done for wolverines, which are elusive and scarce, thus difficult and expensive to study. Insufficient funding for wolverine research also means that any decline in the population or devastating habitat changes might not be noticed until it's too late.
Additionally, the act includes an allowance for the introduction of "experimental" populations, which carry fewer land-use restrictions than existing populations that are declared endangered or threatened. In Colorado, wildlife managers have discussed introducing an experimental wolverine population for years. Trapping and poisoning wiped out wolverines in Colorado in the early 20th century, but its mountains could provide a snowy stronghold into the future. Now, however, the state is reluctant to reintroduce a species that could later become officially endangered.
Though few species have been listed primarily because of impending climate change, 66 percent of recovery plans now recommend action to cushion the impacts of warming. Of those, about 17 percent mention reducing greenhouse gas emissions, about half recommend monitoring, and most suggest actions to help species adapt, according to Wolf. These are incremental steps, but necessary to maintain the act's relevance in a warming world.
In the future, the Fish and Wildlife Service could take more creative approaches, like setting aside critical habitat that may not be ideal today, but could be essential tomorrow. Another option is to protect corridors that would allow species to move to friendlier climes as their current homes become less hospitable. The Endangered Species Act, explains Ruhl, hasn't solved traditional problems such as urban sprawl or invasive species – but it's helped species survive them. Similarly, the act must be used to address the effects, if not the causes, of a warming planet. "I think fundamentally this is about trying to help species to adapt to climate change," he says. "That's what the Endangered Species Act can help us do best."]]>
New details of drones in the North emerged only recently, thanks to the California-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. Last summer, the organization obtained a cache of documents about drone flights in America in response to its public-interest lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. These documents reveal that the department, through its Customs and Border Protection Division, has deployed at least two Predator B drones to an operating base in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The drones make frequent surveillance flights along the U.S. border with Canada, using advanced radar and video systems to survey the expansive landscape.
The documents also outline the agency's efforts to grow its fleet. The Customs and Border Division, according to a 2010 report, plans to station seven drones along the northern border by the end of 2016. Moreover by 2025, the agency wants a permanent fleet of 10 drones to monitor the border "seven days/week 24 hours/day" from bases in North Dakota, Montana, Washington and elsewhere. The goal, in other words, is non-stop surveillance.
Predator B drones are the same machines our government has used in its bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Operated by deskbound pilots protected in a bunker somewhere, the drones can fly for 27 hours without refueling and reach an altitude of 50,000 feet. With a wingspan of 66 feet, they can carry nearly 4,000 pounds of equipment, from infrared technology to missile systems. Though drones operated by Customs and Border Protection are not yet armed, the "Concept of Operations" report indicates that the agency has considered fitting them with "non-lethal weapons designed to immobilize" enemies.
This growing drone fleet is not used exclusively for border surveillance. Local, state and federal entities, from the Coast Guard to the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, can borrow these machines from border officials to conduct domestic policing. According to flight logs obtained in the lawsuit, the Customs and Border Division performed more than 700 surveillance flights in support of other law enforcement agencies between 2010 and 2012 alone. Where, how and why these drone flights occurred remains a mystery; the flight logs are heavily censored.
Along our Southern border, Predator B drones have been in use since 2004, when our Customs and Border Division first began its experiment with these machines. Today, the agency has stationed at least four drones in Arizona, and it regularly loans them to organizations such as the Arizona Department of Public Safety and numerous county sheriffs' departments across the Southwest. The likelihood of civil liberties violations seems not to concern federal officials.
Drone surveillance in this country started in the West, probably because government security officials view its vast open spaces, remote mountains and dense forests as a weak link in America's armored exterior. It takes invasive technologies to control such unruly terrain, and drones must seem like the perfect tools. These airborne security cameras are able to accomplish in rural America what the standard security camera achieves on the streets of Los Angeles or Chicago.
The problem is that federal security officials have introduced these drones under a fog of secrecy and with little public oversight. They have counted on our ignorance as drones became a tool for warrantless domestic surveillance along our borders. As they plan to expand their fleets, they count now on our apathy.
That doesn't sit well with most Westerners I know.
The people I know respect privacy and individuality. They trust their neighbors and they cherish open land. They maintain a live-and-let-live ethic, or at least that's what they strive for. The surveillance machines polluting our skies threaten these basic values. They further empower national security bureaucrats, while we are forced to foot the bill for this infringement of our own protected liberties.
That's why states like Montana and Oregon have placed stringent limitations on drone surveillance within their jurisdictions. They recognize a threat when they see one.
We should not have to live in a world where spying robots hover above us like hawks and buzzards. Those who value privacy -- from civil libertarians, tribal nations and wilderness advocates, to ranchers and Ron Paul Republicans -- have a major stake in stopping this surveillance from spreading before it becomes the norm.
Jimmy Tobias is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. He is a freelance journalist and former trail worker with the Forest Service in Idaho.]]>
Republicans need to pick off six sitting Democrats to take a majority in the Senate. Only seven Democrats seem vulnerable, and to varying degrees, making races like those in Montana and Alaska – where Republicans have a good shot at victory – crucial to both parties.
Here's a closer look at the candidates facing off in these three states and some of the more intriguing aspects of their campaigns:
First-term Sen. Mark Udall is being challenged by Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, who both establishment and Tea Party conservatives in Colorado seem to be united behind. Climate change and energy look like they'll figure big in this race, and the obligatory attacks are already being lobbed at Udall from outside groups for his support of Obamacare. Gardner is going after Udall for not taking a position on attempts by towns across Colorado to ban fracking within their limits, which Gardner sees as economic drains. The issue is a thorny one for Udall, who risks being labeled a job-killing liberal if he supports the bans, and alienating lefty enclaves like Boulder if he opposes them.
Another sign that the politics of energy are less clearcut in Colorado than in fossil fuel meccas like Wyoming, is Udall's reaction to the carbon rules for existing power plants recently announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The rules, announced just as campaigns were getting revved up, were widely expected to be a political burden for vulnerable Democrats. Udall, however, reacted to the announcement by touting his support for the EPA's plan. Colorado has already transitioned many of its big coal plants to natural gas, as required by a law that Gardner supported when he was in the state legislature. (Though Gardner has also expressed skepticism about manmade climate change.)
Democrat John Walsh was appointed to fill one of Montana's U.S. Senate seats when Max Baucus left to become ambassador to China. Since he didn't win the seat, and has only occupied it since February, he enjoys fewer advantages than most incumbents. And Montana Senate races have lately been hard-fought nail biters, with Democrats eeking out victories by the narrowest of margins. Republican challenger Rep. Steve Daines is apparently running a savvy campaign, modeled in part on Democratic Sen. Jon Tester's successful run against Denny Rehberg in 2012. Early projections favor a Daines victory.
In a state that is bullish on coal – and sits on top of a lot of unmined seams – Daines is rallying against the EPA's carbon rules for their potential to hobble Montana's coal industry. Interestingly, Walsh is making little effort to distance himself from the Obama Administration on the issue, saying he supports gradual efforts to reduce use of fossil fuels and energy consumption.
Republicans have good reason to feel optimistic about their chances of unseating Democrat Mark Begich, who beat incumbent Republican Ted Stevens in 2008 by just a few thousand votes, despite the fact that Stevens became a convicted felon just before the election for lying about and failing to disclose political gifts. Begich's slim margin of victory spoke both to Alaska's unusual loyalty to Stevens, and to the fact that it's a solidly red state, barely inclined to elect Democrats under even extraordinary circumstances.
Begich's Republican challenger won't be decided until an August primary. There are three contenders: Lieutenant Gov. Mead Treadwell, Matt Sullivan, Alaska's attorney general under Sarah Palin and a former assistant U.S. secretary of state, and Joe Miller, the Tea Partier who, riding a Sarah Palin endorsement, nearly took down Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2010.
Sullivan or Treadwell are likely to win the primary, but what might matter more for the election is whether Miller runs as an Independent. If he does, he might siphon enough votes away from the Republican candidate to deliver Begich another unlikely victory.
Cally Carswell is a contributing editor for High Country News. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and tweets @callycarswell.]]>
In Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann, author Joe Ashbrook Nickell provides a glimpse into the psyche of a 95-year-old artist still grappling with his place in the world. Tension is palpable in the oeuvre of this Montana cattleman turned painter and sculptor, whose work portrays both riotous natural beauty and horrific destruction. Ohrmann's unease is particularly apparent in his paintings: In swirling brushstrokes that recall Van Gogh, he depicts centuries of violence against the land and its people, from conquistadors decapitating Indians to Western settlers exterminating bison to modern developers stripping forests bare. The irony is often as thick as the paint. One canvas, titled The Harvest (Paul Bunyan), shows the iconic lumberjack striding through a clear-cut as wildlife scatters in his wake. Tainted Revelations is a journey through a landscape darkened by environmental guilt; it's not necessarily a pleasant trip, but it's always compelling.]]>
Cindy Mernin puts it bluntly: "Paradise isn't for sissies!" she says, recalling the 14 years she spent as a ranger's wife at Yellowstone National Park. In particular, as she tells author Marjane Ambler, the winters weren't for sissies. The couple had moved there in the early 1970s, before the roads to Lake Village, Wyoming, were groomed during winter. Mernin, who grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, learned to fix Ski-Doos and survive "brutal" winters in the park with a handful of rangers, workers and their families, who had to fend for themselves from fall through spring. But it wasn't easy. "I wasn't chained down," she told Ambler. "But at the same time, I was just as confined."
Ambler herself spent nine winters at Lake Village when the park hired her husband, Terry Wehrman, as a snow groomer in 1984. (If Ambler's name seems familiar, it's because she worked as an editor at High Country News from 1974 to 1980, when HCN was based in Lander, Wyoming.) In her memoir, Yellowstone Has Teeth, Ambler doesn't romanticize the isolation of Yellowstone's backcountry in winter. At that time, Lake's winter population consisted of 12 employees and their spouses. With travel by snowmobile the only way in or out of the village – on a route that required crossing avalanche-prone Sylvan Pass – there was plenty of "forced togetherness" and little privacy. The friendships forged in such intimate and interdependent conditions, however, have survived for decades.
Ambler, the kind of third-generation Colorado native who was always handier with a chainsaw than a curling iron, finds herself content on the "fringe of civilization." And unlike the folks she interviews who wintered in the park during earlier decades – before electricity or Ski-Doos – she and Terry had a full-sized refrigerator. With the help of an antenna and booster, they could even listen to NPR.
As much as anything, Yellowstone Has Teeth is a story of beauty – of solo ski treks beneath crystalline skies and the "deep moan" of lake ice freezing. Ambler has consciously penned an ode to those Yellowstone winters now passed. But between the lines, she also shares a love story –– of a husband and wife who weathered adventures together and built a life based not only on affection, but also on real trust.]]>
The team fitted Irene with a radio-collar, packed her onto a truck and drove 150 miles through the night to the Cabinet Mountains, a rugged swath of snow-covered peaks and conifer forests tucked in Montana's northwest corner. The next morning, biologist Wayne Kasworm turned Irene loose near Lost Girl Creek.
Rarely had such great expectations been pinned on a single animal. Irene had been designated one of the involuntary saviors of the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem, a 2,600-square-mile region on the Montana-Idaho border abutting Canada. It's one of six designated recovery zones in the Lower 48 where the federal government aims to protect or boost threatened grizzlies. While some recovery zones, like the lands around Glacier and Yellowstone national parks, supported growing populations, bears in the Cabinet-Yaak were spiraling toward extinction. Kasworm estimated that only 15 bears roamed the Cabinets.
Kasworm believed the only way to save the population was to supplement it with more grizzlies. The strategy, called augmentation, made biological sense, but it was politically contentious. The same year Irene moved to the Cabinet Mountains, a biologist who hoped to transplant bears to Washington's North Cascades was spat on at a public meeting. "Nobody had ever moved bears to bolster a population before the Cabinet-Yaak program," Kasworm recalls. "Obviously, it was a controversial idea."
Today, though, the strategy appears to have paid off: According to a recent DNA study, around 45 grizzlies now reside in the Cabinet-Yaak. Once on the verge of vanishing, the population is nearly halfway to 100 – the threshold at which it would be deemed no longer at risk.
The bears' persistence gives scientists hope that the Cabinet-Yaak could someday serve as a node of connection for isolated pockets of grizzlies throughout the Rockies. Yet that optimism is tempered by serious challenges, none greater than keeping bears alive in a landscape shared with humans.
In 1987, when Kasworm first floated the idea of transplanting bears to the Cabinet Mountains, locals responded with suspicion. Previous recovery efforts had been blamed for the region's floundering timber economy and the closure of backcountry roads. "When I was a kid, people would drive up to our house excited because they'd seen a bear," says Bruce Vincent, a logger whose family has lived around Libby, a town of 2,700 that's the Cabinet-Yaak's largest population center, since 1904. "But attitudes changed. The bears became 'goddamned grizzly bears.' "
Vincent wasn't opposed to augmentation, but he and the USFWS agreed that locals deserved a voice in how it was implemented. He and other community leaders, including elected officials and timber and mining industry representatives, created a committee to guide the plan. Kasworm agreed to delay relocation to hold meetings and modify the program.
Finally, the committee consented to a conservative experiment: Starting in 1990, Fish and Wildlife would relocate four young females over a five-year period. If the bears stuck around and reproduced, the augmentation would proceed. If not, it would be years before the scientists got another shot. "That citizens committee was how we were able to pull this off," Kasworm says.
Initially, though, the bears didn't cooperate: The first shed her radio-collar and disappeared, and the second was found dead just a year after being released. Irene, however, survived and stayed out of trouble. Kasworm gave biweekly updates on her whereabouts on a local radio show.----
Then, in 1995, Irene slipped her collar. She was gone, the augmentation in jeopardy. For several years, scientists tried in vain to recapture Irene and two other introduced bears. Were they still alive? Had they wandered away, or stayed to reproduce? Nobody knew – until 2004, when a barbed-wire snare snagged a clump of hair that DNA analysis identified as Irene's. She was alive, and as later hair-snares revealed, had borne nine cubs. Her cubs in turn gave birth to eight more. By 2012, Kasworm had identified 35 individual bears; 20 were Irene's descendants or mates. Almost singlehandedly, she'd rescued the Cabinet population.
Encouraged by Irene's success, and with the community's cautious blessing, Kasworm and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department began relocating more bears, about one a year. They've now introduced 15 grizzlies altogether, most recently a 3-year-old male in 2013.
Augmentation only works, however, if the bears survive. The Cabinet-Yaak is just a fraction the size of the recovery zones centered around Yellowstone and Glacier, and though its human inhabitants are few in number, the ecosystem has been fractured by nearly 4,000 miles of open roads and scattered pockets of logging and mining. That fragmentation makes fatal conflicts with wide-ranging bears almost inevitable. Grizzlies have been slaughtered by poachers, hit by trains, and shot legally by people who felt threatened. Still more have been mistakenly slain by black bear hunters, or euthanized after developing a taste for human food. Altogether, at least 48 Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies have been killed by humans since 1982, about three times as many as have died from natural causes.
In other words, the Cabinet-Yaak is losing bears as fast as it's gaining them. "The main reason our population hasn't grown much in the last 10 years is human-caused mortality," says Kim Annis, bear management specialist at the Montana wildlife agency.
That mortality, combined with the population's narrow gene pool – granddaughters have bred with their own grandfathers – means augmentation won't cease anytime soon. Though Kasworm predicts that "there will come a point when we can let this population go its own way," he adds, "Right now, I can't tell you when that point will be."
The vague timetable frustrates some locals, who are ready for the recovery process, and resulting road restrictions, to be over. "We need to have a frank discussion about what success looks like," Vincent says. "Living with bears is part of the romance of calling this place home. But it's hard for people to accept the management regime." In a 2008 survey, over 70 percent of locals believed bears should be conserved, but less than half supported the federal goal of 100 grizzlies.
The bears are hardly the sole point at issue: Volatile lumber markets have shuttered sawmills, and road closures have as much to do with maintenance costs as bears. Environmental groups also frustrate locals, especially the Helena-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which often comments on and challenges timber sales that threaten grizzly habitat. Between 2006 and 2008, it filed more lawsuits against the U.S. Forest Service than any other group did during that time – 42 altogether. "The science shows that most grizzlies are killed near roads," explains Executive Director Mike Garrity, who estimates the organization wins 85 percent of its lawsuits and appeals. "You can't keep bringing in bears without protecting their habitat."
Kasworm, who fears the lawsuits are eroding local support for grizzlies, has supported timber projects that he thinks wouldn't harm bears. Some, he says, could even benefit the animals by clearing space for huckleberries, a primary food source. "No bears are dying for lack of huckleberries," retorts Garrity. "The limiting factor for grizzlies is secure habitat."
Ultimately, the most serious problem might be isolation. The Cabinets' bears are cut off from populations that could grow their numbers and diversify their genetic pool. Although bears occasionally wander over from the Selkirk Mountains, the Whitefish Range and Canada, those nomads haven't reproduced. Increasing the exchange of bears between ecosystems, says Chris Servheen, grizzly recovery coordinator for Fish and Wildlife, will help restore the health and resilience of bears throughout the Rockies. "This was all part of their continuous range," he says. "Grizzlies shrank into these small units because of human impacts."
The Cabinet-Yaak population might be small, but its central location between Glacier, the Selkirks, and Canada makes it an important piece in the bigger bear puzzle. Ryan Lutey, director of lands at Vital Ground, a nonprofit that seeks to connect grizzly populations through strategic land acquisitions, dreams of a day when the region is capable of supplying bears to other ecosystems – especially the Bitterroot, a 5,600 square-mile recovery zone 120 miles south. Although the designated wilderness at its core makes it prime habitat, the Bitterroot has no grizzlies, in part because a planned relocation program fell victim to anti-bear politics in 2001.
For now, simply surviving is challenge enough for the Cabinet-Yaak's bears. One casualty occurred in November 2009, when an elk hunter shot an old female he claimed was threatening him. When Kasworm examined the corpse, he noticed small holes in its ears, where tags had once hung. This was one of his bears, and though he hadn't seen her in 16 years, he suspected he knew which one. DNA analysis confirmed it: Irene was dead.
Rather than mourn her death, though, Kasworm chose to celebrate Irene's extraordinary life. "She contributed so much," he says. "I don't know where this population would be without her."]]>
For an additional charge, you can enjoy a traditional Blackfeet dinner that features buffalo, deer or elk meat, campfire entertainment including ceremonial songs and drumming, or a "Blackfeet traditional art workshop." And for $195, a Blackfeet guide will take you on an all-day horseback ride, exploring historical and cultural sites on the reservation.
"I've been doing this for 20 years, and there's nothing else like it in the whole United States," says Darrell Norman, one of the Lodgepole's managers and a Blackfeet tribal member. "I'm probably the only one crazy enough to do it."
That's Norman's way of saying that his Native business is more authentic than others. But it's difficult to evaluate the claim, because there are many others and they can be surprisingly hard to discover, as if they're half-hidden by clouds.
At the Gaynor Ranch and Resort near Whitefish, Mont. – run by Nancy Gaynor, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and her husband – you can rent tipis or cabins, hire a tribal member to guide you on a trail ride, and participate in traditional tribal songs near a medicine wheel. The Gaynors' tipis feature buffalo-hide rugs on wooden floors and nice beds with down comforters – "we call it 'tipi glamping,' " Nancy Gaynor says, using the slang for glamorous camping. Tourists from England, Italy, Poland, Israel, Russia and the Philippines keep her place busy, but when asked, "How do they discover you?" she answers, "I don't know."
GoNativeAmerica.com, aka NDN2rs (for "Indian tours"), sells Native-guided tours on reservations ranging from Canada to Arizona, and attracts international customers without much advertising. "They just find us on the Web, or by word of mouth," says Sarah Mathuin at NDN2rs, which recently moved its headquarters from Billings, Mont., to Jackson, Wyo.
There is no centralized listing of Native tourism operations in the West, according to many sources. Even the leading trade group – the American Indian Alaska Native Travel Association, based in Albuquerque, N.M. – doesn't have a complete list. "The Western American Indian Chamber was the only organization that was attempting to build a comprehensive database of Native American tourism attractions. That effort faltered years ago ... and the Western American Indian Chamber no longer exists," says Ben Sherman, an Oglala Lakota Sioux who was president of the Chamber.
It's ironic, because tourists are increasingly interested in Native American culture, and they can create revenue and jobs on reservations that are short of both. That's why many tribal governments have tourism offices that try to promote local operations, but there are complications with even those efforts. Tribes tend to "start small-scale and build long-term – it takes vision," says Gordon Bronitsky, a Native tourism consultant based in Albuquerque. Natives are often reluctant to exploit their culture for profit, and there's "a tension between tribal members who are tourism entrepreneurs and the tribal government wanting to regulate it without offering dollars to support it," Bronitsky adds.
"We never engage tribal governments, if we can help it," says one manager of a Westwide Native tourism operation, who asked to remain anonymous. "Tribal governments usually change every two years, and the new governments clear out all the deals made by the previous governments. And if a tribal government finds out what we're doing on a reservation, the government usually wants a percentage without passing the money along to needy tribal members. We'd rather work directly with traditional Natives – like tribal elders and artists, who are rarely in governments. For us, it's about putting money directly into the tribal communities."
On top of the difficulty of finding a Native operation, there's a fundamental uncertainty involved: Which enterprises offer a genuine Native experience, and which are superficial, just capitalizing on a trend? "Our customers want to understand Native America rather than the made-up culture," says Mathuin. "Many other companies just offer a drive-by experience, keeping most of the money for the company." Gaynor and Norman also make a point of describing their operations as authentic. Probably the best idea is to check customer reviews on websites like TripAdvisor.com, where Norman's Lodgepole operation gets 14 "excellent" ratings and one "terrible" one, for instance. Assuming, of course, you can even find a review.
This story is part of an April 2014 special issue of the HCN magazine devoted to travel in the West. Ray Ring is an HCN senior editor based in Bozeman, Mont.]]>
In 1985, Bryan came up with the idea for a new kind of travel company that would combine conservation goals with cultural sensitivity. He and his wife, Pam, built their company – Off the Beaten Path, based in Bozeman – into a $5 million-$7 million per year operation, and he helped manage it until 2012. Now he's president of OneMontana, a nonprofit he helped establish to bridge the rural-urban divide, through a high-school student exchange program and other strategies.
Bryan, now 70, talked with HCN senior editor Ray Ring about the relationship of adventure travel, conservation and communities.
High Country News How did you evolve from conservation advocacy to the adventure-travel business?
Bill Bryan One of the challenges in conservation work is people saying, "Well, you don't really understand the real world until you do something in the for-profit world." Both Pam and I had a passion for the Northern Rockies, not just the natural resources but also the people here. Off the Beaten Path offered "custom travel" experiences. By that, I mean we connected with people who were interested in coming to the Northern Rockies, and interviewed them about their tastes and what they might want to experience, and then we put together trips tailored for them and for their budgets. No one else in the travel business back then was doing what we did.
We gave each customer a spiral-bound book that told them everything they needed to know on their trip, as soon as they got off the plane or as soon as they drove into our region. If they needed to go 10 miles down the road and turn left, it was in the book, along with various things along the way that we thought they might have interest in. Condé Nast Traveler called us "the travel shrinks of the West." Eventually, we expanded into Alaska, then the Southwest, the Patagonia region of Chile and Argentina, the Northwest and California, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, New Zealand and Australia. Pam and I led walking trips in Patagonia nearly every year.
HCN And you involved Native Americans pretty much from the beginning?
Bryan I had written a book that came out in 1985, Montana Indians: Yesterday and Today, and updated it in 1996, profiling leaders of each reservation. That helped Off the Beaten Path do trips on the reservations. Beginning in the early 1990s up to 2009 or so, Bill Yellowtail (a member of the Crow tribe who held positions in the Montana Legislature, the Environmental Protection Agency and Montana State University) and I led nine-day trips that began on the Blackfeet Reservation and swung up to the Blood and the North Piegan reservations in Alberta and back down to the Flathead Reservation. We were trying to give (tourists) a sense of hope on the reservations. We met with the tribal college presidents and various human resource people and natural resource people within the tribes; we went to the Heart Butte powwow, the most authentic one around; we once were invited to a Sun Dance, and people did sweats.
But we had a hard time selling the reservation trips. People would go visit tribes in Peru or Bolivia – that was a whole different ballgame, customers were more interested in going there. Another problem with going to reservations here: People don't want to go on a vacation and feel guilty – not that we wanted to make them feel that way, but any (white) American who spends time on an Indian reservation, with the poverty, you've got to fight your feeling of guilt. But good things came out of it. People on our reservation trips later donated money to fund programs at tribal colleges and for other needs on the reservations.
HCN Your trips also included conservation issues. How unusual is that?
Bryan The whole idea that if you're coming out here, you need a guide who isn't just a fishing guide or a hunting guide, was new when we started Off the Beaten Path. We hired local naturalist guides for trips to Yellowstone and Patagonia, and so on.
HCN Were conservation groups selling similar trips?
Bryan The Sierra Club had its own program, and still does – moderately priced trips led by local Sierra Club members who are not necessarily professional experts. Other national groups have travel programs where they contract out to an Off the Beaten Path-type organization – trips mainly for donors or just for their membership. That became a fairly big deal for Off the Beaten Path, running trips for World Wildlife Fund and the National Parks and Conservation Association. A few other companies got into it, too.
Lindblad Expeditions does trips in small boats, maybe 70 to 120 passengers, in Alaska and the Columbia River and Baja whale-watching, and recently it merged with National Geographic so most of their work now is under the banner Lindblad National Geographic. Sven Lindblad, the founder of that company, has a real environmental agenda, so those trips have great naturalist guides; they've even done trips to the Arctic and Antarctica, taking influential people into the ice regions to observe climate change. Natural Habitat Adventures, out of Boulder, Colo., has a relationship with World Wildlife Fund. Backroads, out of Berkeley, Calif., offers conservation-minded biking and hiking trips. Other companies specialize in bird-watching trips. Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, out of Bozeman, helps qualified travelers volunteer to do research in the outdoors. Smaller groups like Montana Audubon offer local trips for their members. There are other companies doing it too, now.
HCN And this is a good trend?
Bryan Yes. In order to deal with these environmental issues, you have to get outdoors, and you can't think just about your own back yard, you have to think about the larger context. Travel helps with that. Most of these conservation-minded travel companies attract customers who, even if they're not members of conservation groups, they're looking for a learning experience. ... You'd be surprised how many people come out here without a clue. They want to come to a dude ranch, and they ask about the ranch's spa program and whether there's a swimming pool, how fancy are the meals, and can they do a bit of horseback riding or fishing in a pond that's stocked? They want their amenities to come with them.
HCN On any conservation-minded trips, you think adventure travel should engage the local cultures respectfully?
Bryan Everywhere we go, travel should be accountable to the local communities, and accountable to the environment. On fishing trips to Patagonia, many American adventure-travel companies bring their fishing guides from this country, instead of hiring local guides in Chile, because the American guides speak English better and know the needs of the American travelers. Companies doing 30 bus trips per year in Yellowstone bring in guides from Santa Barbara and Connecticut, because that's also cheaper and easier than hiring local guides. To encourage more accountability, Off the Beaten Path and Lindblad and a few other companies created the Adventure Collection, an organization advocating for all companies to be "deeply respectful of our travel destinations" (according to the "travel ethic" posted on www.adventurecollection.com) while minimizing our impact. We call for travelers to engage with local communities, to help sustain them, and for educating travelers on the best cultural and ecological practices.
Those that try to be accountable will do it to a certain extent, always with the profit margin in mind. It's easy to develop trips to see polar bears around Churchill (on the shore of Canada's Hudson Bay); lots of people want to do that. It's much more difficult to develop trips to see something like the black-footed ferret, an endangered species on the Northern Plains, where you might not even see one ferret. Or trips to see Yellowstone wolves, you can't guarantee you'll see one wolf. People want certainty. ... The marriage of the adventure travel world and the conservation world has come a long ways in the last 25 years, and it's probably going to get better, but there has to be some accountability to more than the bottom line. My feeling is, you can do both.
This story is part of an April 2014 special issue of the HCN magazine devoted to travel in the West.]]>


text:
For someone not even old enough to drink, Sareena Dominguez sure has accomplished a lot: After signing to the River Jones Music label less than a year and half ago, she's played South by Southwest, released an album (her debut, Moonbeams), and starred in a music video of the same name, directed by L ... More >>
Phoenix is scheduled to perform Monday, April 8, at Marquee Theatre./td>Last week we ran a list of Coachella bands headed to Phoenix around the festival's dates. Well, since then the list has grown, including big name acts like Phoenix, The Postal Service, and Tegan and Sara. So allow us to fill you ... More >>
Lenni RosenblumHanson rockin' out at the Marquee TheatreHanson Marquee Theatre Tuesday, September 13 Hanson is way past "MMMBop." The band of brothers has come a long way since their 1997 debut album Middle of Nowhere. The Hanson boys are all grown up, and their material has matured as both they ... More >>
Brent Cowles, the man behind the You Me and Apollo moniker, has strong connections to Arizona in spite of being a Colorado resident. Cowles spent a year in Phoenix working on an audio engineering degree, writing music, and collaborating with the River Jones Music Label. Cowles is gearing u ... More >>
Peter StorchI listened to more than 3,000 songs in 2010, so I was asked to come up with a list of the best of the year. But you've probably heard "Swim" by Surfer Blood and "Boyfriend" by Best Coast and "Helicopter" by Deerhunter and "Hustle and Cuss" by the Dead Weather, so I came up with a ... More >>
Artist: Neil Young Title: Le Noise Release date: September 28 Label: Reprise Neil Young is a first-rate iconoclast and one of the few successful rock artists who has remained truly uncompromising throughout his long and storied career. Of course, uncompromising can result in inconsistency, ... More >>
Artist: Girl Talk Title: All Day Release date: November 15 Label: Illegal Art Whether sample-happy mash-up act Girl Talk is "good" or "not good" and whether you "like" or "dislike" Girl Talk are completely irrelevant to any discussion regarding Girl Talk. The only things I care about when it ... More >>
Artist: Tierra del Fuego Title: Queen of the Rendezvous Release date: December 11 Label: Scapular Winging Through pure happenstance, I witnessed this local band, Tierra del Fuego, on Saturday night play as they played to a small but appreciative crowd at Trunk Space. It just happened to be t ... More >>
It's amazing how much music is released in a year. I've listened to nearly 270 records in their entirety this year, yet I still have a huge stack of unlistened CDs on my desk, several unlistened digital downloads in my iTunes, and a lengthy list of high-profile stuff I never got a chance to h ... More >>
Artist: Mini Mansions Title: Mini Mansions Release date: November 2 Label: Ipecac One of the biggest musical curveballs of the year has to be the debut record by the Southern California trio Mini Mansions. I say it's a curveball because I wouldn't have guessed such a Beatles-esque display o ... More >>
Artist: Sun City Girls Title: Funeral Mariachi Release date: October 26 Label: Abduction Sun City Girls' last-ever record -- they've made dozens since forming in Phoenix way back in the early days of West Coast punk -- comes off as a more somber affair. And some of it is downright -- odd to ... More >>
Artist: Daft Punk Title: Tron Legacy (Original Soundtrack) Release date: December 7 Label: Walt Disney Records I'm a little surprised by the buzz surrounding the release of a soundtrack to a Disney movie. I understand that the kids love the helmeted French house duo Daft Punk and that said ... More >>
Artist: The Parting Gifts Title: Strychnine Dandelions Release date: November 9 Label: In the Red Last week, I didn't have many good things to say about the new record from Kanye West. This morning, a white co-worker walked into my office and said, "I read what you said about Kanye West. Whe ... More >>
Artist: Kanye West Title: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Release date: November 22 Label: Roc-A-Fella Fitting, perhaps, that Kanye West's new record, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is one of the final 15 or so new records that I'll be listening to before this Nothing Not New project t ... More >>
Artist: Sharon Van Etten Title: Epic Release date: September 21 Label: Ba Da Bing! If you're relatively unknown as a musical artist, as is Sharon Van Etten, and you name your record Epic, you'd better be damn sure your record doesn't suck. The good news for Van Etten is that her seven-song r ... More >>
Artist: OFF! Title: First Four EPs Release date: November 23 Label: Vice Records In 2010, few things seem more ridiculous than a punk supergroup anchored by two guys who made their most indelible marks on American punk rock nearly 30 years ago. But, damn, OFF! pulled off an unlikely feat, ma ... More >>
Artist: Robyn Title: Body Talk Release date: November 22 Label: Interscope The critics sure do love the Swedish dance-pop star Robyn, who's been releasing Body Talk in chunks throughout 2010 and now has finally dropped the entire album as one 15-song compendium. But there seems to be a commo ... More >>
Fresh & Onlys, Play It StrangeArtist: The Fresh & OnlysTitle: Play It StrangeRelease date: October 12Label: In the RedAnd just like that, I find myself a little bored by the sound plied and, possibly, perfected by San Francisco's The Fresh & Onlys. It's the sound that has passed for g ... More >>
Artist: Matt & KimTitle: SidewalksRelease date: November 2Label: FaderI suppose I should mention up front that I didn't like Tears for Fears in 1985 and I still don't 25 years later, even in a nostalgic sense. So it stands to reason that I have little use for Matt & Kim in 2010.It's not t ... More >>
Artist: Gospel Claws Title: C-L-A-W-S Release date: October 26 Label: Common Wall Media Gospel Claws are a local band (Tempe, I've been told) that is currently enjoying a little bit of national exposure, residing in a reasonably high position on some relatively obscure indie-rock-tallying ch ... More >>
Artist: Elvis Costello Title: National Ransom Release date: November 2 Label: Hear Music I really wish it weren't the case, but I'd have to file the new record by Elvis Costello under "For Completists Only" (of which I'm sure there many when it comes to Elvis Costello fans). If you heard hi ... More >>
Artist: Screaming Females Title: Castle Talk Release date: September 14 Label: Don Giovanni Back in the day, I'd hate to miss a good show (I'm still not happy that my parents wouldn't let me drive to Kalamazoo one Monday night to see Scratch Acid and Big Black play, ditto the time I couldn't ... More >>
Artist: Kings of LeonTitle: Come Around SundownRelease date: October 19Label: RCAI think it's funny that people are getting all bent out of shape over the supposed "selling out" of Kings of Leon, saying their new record sucks worse than that sucky one that sold a bajillion copies a few years ago. ... More >>
Artist: Sufjan Stevens Title: The Age of Adz Release date: October 21 Label: Asthmatic Kitty The new record by indie-music deity Sufjan Stevens is an hour-and-12-minute endurance test, one who's raison d'etre is revealed in the closing seconds of the record's final song, "Impossible Soul." A ... More >>
Artist: The Corin Tucker BandTitle: 1,000 YearsRelease date: October 5Label: Kill Rock Stars Who else loves Sleater-Kinney and was disappointed to hear they'd gone on indefinite hiatus after the release of one of their best records, The Woods, in 2006? In my opinion, we're one of the finer bands ... More >>
Artist: GrindermanTitle: Grinderman 2Release date: September 14Label: Anti-Most of the indie rock I've heard this year (well over 200 records and counting, with 11 weeks to go in this series) is really pretty toothless. Even the harder-rocking stuff, with its big drums or wall-of-sound guitars or ... More >>
Welcome to our latest podcast, in which Martin Cizmar and I play some new music and about it, too. On today's program, we discuss the merits of such bands as Wavves, Arcade Fire, The Budos Band, Jimmy Eat World, and local superstars Snake! Snake! Snakes!Here's the playlist:Jaill -- "The Stroller" ... More >>
Holy crap, only five-plus months left of Nothing Not New. I gotta get to a lot more new(-ish) releases. Let's roll . . .Cowboy Junkies -- Remnin Park: Who knew these dour Canadians were even still around? Remnin Park is a concept album inspired the Timmins' family month-long sojourn to China. Out ... More >>
Artist: DevoTitle: Something for EverybodyRelease date: June 15Label: Warner Bros.You may be asking yourself, "Why does Devo have a new record out?" Is it for the money? Doubtful, because how much money could they possibly make by releasing a major-label record in 2010? And, anyway, aren't these ... More >>
Artist: Band of HorsesTitle: Infinite ArmsRelease date: May 18Label: ColumbiaTake a look at the cover art to the right of these words. If you were browsing through the racks at your local record store, this cover is nearly all that you'd need to know about the new of Band of Horses.From the band ... More >>
Artist: The New PornographersTitle: TogetherRelease date: May 4Label: MatadorFor me, the equation's always been real simple when it comes to the indie-pop group The New Pornographers: songs with Neko Case taking the vocal reins = yes; songs with the wanna-be British dude singing = maybe. Wel ... More >>
Artist: GrowingTitle: Pumps!Release date: April 6Label: ViceNo less an authority than Pitchfork.com, the Bible of indie rock, declared the Brooklyn experimental group Growing to be "cruising music for Brian Eno fans." Better watch what you say, Pitchfork, or you're gonna have a lot of pissed-off ... More >>
Artist: She & HimTitle: Volume 2Release date: March 23Label: MergeMy editor has claimed this project a triumph for no other reason than I've chosen the new over the old -- sort of. See, I told Martin Cizmar a while back that I wanted to review tonight's Ray Davies concert. I love the Kinks. T ... More >>


text:
8 June 2010
Senior Judicial Appointments
Following consultation with the Lord Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke QC, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, has appointed Lady Justice Hallett DBE to be Chairman of the Judicial Studies Board. She will take over on 1 July from Lord Justice Maurice Kay who steps down after three years in the position.
Lord Judge also announced that Lord Justice Maurice Kay becomes Vice-President of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) on the retirement of Lord Justice Waller which took effect on 6 May.
The Rt. Hon. Lady Justice Hallett DBE
Lady Justice Hallett's term of appointment as Chairman of the Judicial Studies Board is for three years.
Lady Justice Hallett DBE is currently serving as the Coroner conducting the Inquests into the deaths of those killed in the London bombings on 7 July 2005. She was educated at Brockenhurst Grammar School and St Hugh's College, Oxford. She was called to the Bar at Inner Temple in 1972 and practised on the South Eastern Circuit in general common law for many years, eventually specialising in crime. She was appointed an Assistant Recorder in 1985. In 1989 she was made a Recorder and appointed Queen's Counsel. She was made a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1993. She was elected Leader of the South Eastern Circuit in 1995 and Chairman of the Bar of England and Wales in 1998. In 1999 she was appointed a High Court Judge and Dame Commander of the British Empire. She served as Presiding Judge of the Western Circuit for four years and chaired the Magisterial Committee of the Judicial Studies Board. In 2005 she was appointed to the Court of Appeal and made a Privy Councillor. She is presently Vice-Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission and Reader of the Inner Temple. She will be Treasurer in 2011. She is married with two children.
The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Maurice Kay
Lord Justice Maurice Kay's appointment as Vice-President of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) is for the period of 3 years. He is a member of the Court of Appeal.
Lord Justice Maurice Kay was educated at William Hulme's Grammar School in Manchester and Sheffield University. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1975 and he was made a Bencher in 1995. He was a Lecturer in Law at Hull University between 1967 and 72, at Manchester University during 1972-3 and was a Professor of Law at Keele University between 1973 and 1982. He practised as a barrister in general common law from 1975-1995; was an Assistant Recorder from 1987-88; and a Recorder from 1988-95. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1988 and a High Court Judge in 1995, becoming the lead judge of the Administrative Court between 2002 and 2003. He served as Presiding Judge of the Wales and Chester Circuit. He was knighted in 1995 and made a Lord Justice of Appeal and Privy Counsellor in 2004. He chaired the Judicial Studies Board for three years from July 2007. He is married with four children.
Notes to Editors:
For further information please contact the Judicial Communications Office on 020 7073 4852, or Email press enquiries


text:
We are in the midst of the holiday season, and people are hustling and bustling around town. During this time of the year, it's hard not to get into the spirit of celebration and giving.
Here is a very familiar verse of scripture: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16 KJV)
Yaritza Lewis is relatively new to the ministry, but she is already making an impact on the community. Although Liberty County's Hispanic population is growing rapidly, Lewis' church is one of only a few like it in the area.
Hundreds of people arrived early to the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People on Dec. 3-4. They ignored the chilly weather, formed long lines and waited for the church to open.
Liberty County is in for a treat. Internationally acclaimed Bible teacher, prophet, psalmist, media personality and author, Dr. Juanita Bynum, is coming to town.
I wanted to take time during this Thanksgiving season to thank you for all you do. There are always a few people who do most of the work. Sometimes that happens at work, in a family, in a church or in a community.
So often these days we hear stories about love and hate. In fact, if we look at our own lives and the things going on around us, we can see the impact of love and hate. This love and hate cycle is part of our lives.
This year has been a lean one, that's for sure, and many people have endured hardships like never before. Now the season of giving and thanksgiving is upon us.
We've all heard the old saying, "Give me my flowers while I am living so I can enjoy them." That's what the members of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Fleming did for their pastor Nov. 7.
Six years ago when my wife Judy and I drove into Hinesville on Highway 84, we quickly realized Hinesville is not an ordinary town.
Our community has a friend. Our community has many friends. However, one friend really comes to mind this week. Perhaps the reason for this is that we will soon bid farewell to him and his wife.
First Baptist Church of Hinesville recently began a new ministry program called Stephen Ministry.
It's that time again. November third is coming and you have to decide: Will you go stand in line and navigate the waters of the voting pool? Or will you say, "I just don't have time for this, and what difference does it make anyway? I'm not going." Or, how about this one: "I don't like the choices. I'm not even going to vote this time." I actually had one person say to me in a restaurant this week, "Unless they can give me someone worth voting for, why should I bother?"
It has been an exciting week of celebration for Pleasant Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church. Camp meeting services began last Sunday evening and will culminate today at 3:30 p.m.
Three Long County women, with the help of a few others, are doing their part to help the poor this winter.
Thursday was Thanksgiving Day. For the first time in a few years, my wife and I will be celebrating at home. We have family coming in for dinner, and we are looking forward to a good day.
DeleteLast week, we began studying about the choice each person has to make if they want to go to heaven. The thoughts are continued this week.
In today's society, we have been inclined to live a life of limits that are beneath God's calling.
There is a TV show called "The Walking Dead" that is popular among many. It is about people who die from a virus but come back to life changed individuals - but not for the good of humanity.
They are having snow up north.
Most religious people believe that God loves everyone and wants all to be saved. Yet some fail to understand that he created man to have his own will so he can determine what to do or not do.
It certainly will not be church as usual.
In our recent election between the Democrats and Republicans, the Republicans seized control over the Senate by winning an additional seven seats.
I have a new computer. It is a laptop and literally is the size of the leather binder I carry in my book satchel. It is only a pound or so in weight.
When Elijah the prophet called for Ahab to gather all Israel to Mount Carmel, he started his address with the following words: "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him" (1 Kings 18:21).
When I was growing up in the church, we used to quite often sing a song called, "Count Your Blessings." It goes something like this: "Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your blessings, see what God hath done."
One definition of legacy is something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past, according to Webster's Dictionary.
Page 1 of 1


text:
Thailand CDP (2.6mb pdf)
Whether the drive toward decentralization leads to more sustainable resource use or invites serious environmental degradation will depend to a large extent on whether decentralization goes forward with or without adequate capacity building, environmental regulations, and willingness to enforce them. The greatest short-to-medium-term opportunity created by the decentralization process arises due to the increased proximity of environmental and other decision-making processes to affected communities, and the potential to improve local accountability and integrated planning. Yet, environmental issues often cross not only sectors but also jurisdictional responsibilities. Higher level institutional arrangements, such as provincial/national regulators, river-basin or airshed management agencies, inter-community agreements, and user associations or municipal consortia may be needed to adequately address environmental issues that local agencies are not willing or able to tackle.
Almost all EAP countries are attempting to decentralize the management of the environment and natural resources, to some extent. Examples of World Bank work to support this process include:
ThailandThe World Bank has developed a new, knowledge sharing based, relationship with Thailand and engagement in the environment sector is set out in the Thailand Country Development Partnership - Environment (CDP-E). This document provides a framework for improving environmental quality and developing appropriate environmental management structures. The CDP-E sets out World Bank support for environmental management including an icreasing focus on decentralized management systems in priority watershed areas.
IndonesiaBeginning in January 2001, Indonesia changed from being one of the world's most centralized countries, to one of the world's most decentralized public administrations. Changes of this magnitude are placing unprecedented, new pressures on all aspects of district environmental management. Given the existing weak environmental capacity, lack of clarity regarding roles and responsibilities for environmental management between the different tiers of government, and of adequate incentives for environmental protection, the World Bank is playing a crucial role in developing capacity and management systems in to address environmental concerns in a decentralized way.


text:
Miley Cyrus Can't Let Nick Jonas Goby Hilton Hater at . Comments
Let's hope Liam Hemsworth did not attend his girlfriend's concert in Portugal on Saturday night. He would not have been pleased to hear the song "Full Circle."
Prior to performing this single for fans in Lisbon, Miley told the crowd:
"It's about two people. They're always gonna come back together no matter what anyone says or the bad people that try to keep you apart. Surprise surprise, it's about a Jonas brother."
Ouch. Sorry, Liam. Nick and Miley have a romantic history together, one whose future got a bit brighter after the former broke up with Selena Gomez in April.
The chorus of "Full Circle" reads: "I try to run, but I keep on coming back full circle and I can't jump the track, can't let you go."
That's a pretty clear message to Nick, isn't it? It's also incredibly profound, as Miley likes to tell everyone her music is, more than any other pop star in the business.
** For more of Miley Cyrus in concert, visit our video section of the star.
I love u niley. i hope that u will be back soon . U are the only cutest couple in the world .
I Hope Miley and Nick Can Come Back Together :')) And FUCKING FOR Miley Hater's.. You're So Fool Haters!!
miley cyrus just needs to realize that there is a reson they broke up, so she just needs to move on with her life. and anyway nick jonas can do so much better than miley cyrus.
srry i didnt meant to write that i was playing around lol love u guys
she can't just break up with someone ok if they broke up that means they did work out duh ok so if miley cyrus ask me out i really like nick going to say no and say he only wanna be friends and i like miley is with a good boy so yea i love both of them
u cnt have both of them,u need to choose!!!!
i think u should stay with liam juding 4rm his character he seems to be a nice guy!!!
whatever miley's decision.i will still remain her fan.
miley cyrus find out where nick jonas is in London and ask him to date you again please I'm a big niley fan
Liam....I think your being a "ROBOT" u have to let miles go....and maybe she loves liam and nick at the same time, n can't choose. but Miley you have to listen to your heart. but i do belive true love would always find its way back home.... and nick jonas is your true love you can't change that. your song called STAY is one beautiful song....i'm guessing nick jonas answered that song? but i have hope in NILEY there destined to be together....Have Destiny and Hope in Niley=]