Update on the situation in Duck Valley from Chairman Kyle Prior. What
you can do to help.
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Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)
www.wsdp.org
wsdp@igc.org
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—–Original Message—–
From: priorkyle@att.net [mailto:priorkyle@att.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 12:30 PM
To: wsdp
Subject: RE: Duck Valley Indian Reservation, EMERGENCY HELP NEEDED!
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Hello Julie,
We have some good news. We have partial power restored and the main
power line is being worked on so we will be up and running like normal
soon. Now the focus is on returning the community to normal. We have
received food and water and have enough for a week, so we don’t need
anymore donations of that type. Just in case the generator went down
again we have slowed down food distribution just a bit, but we will
continue to feed our elders and those families with infants twice a day
until Monday, because the most needy and elderly were hit hardest. With
that said, if anyone wanted to make a donation of some item, I think
baby formula or baby diapers would be one thing that comes to mind.
Thanks. Kyle
—
Kyle R. Prior
Chairman
Shoshone – Paiute Tribes
P.O. Box 219
Owyhee, Nevada 89832
208.759.3100
208.631.7077 (cell)
208.759.3103 (fax)
priorkyle@att.net
Author: postMigrator
Please do what you can to help – thank you.
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Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)
www.wsdp.org
wsdp@igc.org
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Begin forwarded message:
Comment:
This is the situation.
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—
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Story:
Emergency declared for Duck Valley Indian reservation
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ELKO — Chairman of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe Chairman Kyle Prior
declared a state of emergency this morning for the Duck Valley Indian
Reservation as fires have burned over 240 power poles in the south Idaho
and northern Nevada region, causing a power outage that has lasted six
days.
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The Tribe is helping its community members by supplying households with
water, dry ice, cubed or block ice, propane, flashlights, batteries,
battery-operated fans and generators for the elderly and those with
medical needs. The tribal fire department is providing water to homes
and filling bathtubs with water for sanitation facilities.
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For more of this story, click on or type the URL below:
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HYPERLINK
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txt”http://www.elkodaily.com/articles/2007/07/24/news/breaking_news/appl
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 <http://www.csmonitor.com/> csmonitor.com – The Christian Science Monitor Online
from the July 25, 2007 edition – http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0725/p02s01-uspo.html
Controversy erupts over Endangered Species Act
Congress and the Interior Department investigate whether the Bush administration
undermined federal protections.
From the day it became law 34 years ago, the federal Endangered Species Act has been
politically hot – a flash point of contention between defenders of nature and
advocates of economic progress. Now, the ESA is embroiled in new controversy.
Two different government entities are investigating decisions by Bush administration
officials related to species recovery. In one, the US Interior Department is
reviewing the scientific integrity of decisions under the law made by a political
appointee, who recently resigned under fire. At the same time, Congress is
investigating evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney interfered with decisions
involving water in California and Oregon that resulted in the killing of tens of
thousands of Klamath River salmon, some of which were listed as “threatened”
species.
Both episodes illustrate what critics say is the Bush administration’s resistance to
the law.
During President Bush’s time in the White House, the listing of endangered and
threatened species has slowed down considerably. It’s a fraction of the number his
father made in four years (58 new listings compared with 231 by the senior Bush),
and most of those were court-ordered.
New funding for protection of such species has been cut as well. As a result, 278
“candidate species” are waiting to join the list of 1,352 plant and animal species
now listed as “endangered” or “threatened.”
Scientists and activists see the ESA as the last chance for preventing extinction of
dwindling plants and animals ranging from the obscure – the rock gnome lichen, for
example – to the grizzly bear and other “charismatic megafauna.”
But to developers, it can be a very costly impediment to business. And to farmers,
ranchers, loggers, and others whose work is land-based, it can threaten a
traditional way of life. Many fights over species protection have ended up in
federal court.
But it is the political pressure on government scientists that is the current focus.
Following a critical report by the inspector general of the Interior Department in
March, Julie MacDonald – the official in charge of fish and wildlife, including
those listed under the ESA – resigned.
Fish and Wildlife Service employees complained that Ms. MacDonald had “bullied,
insulted, and harassed the professional staff . to change documents and alter
biological reporting,” according to the report.
“We confirmed that MacDonald has been heavily involved with editing, commenting on,
and reshaping the endangered species program’s scientific reports from the field,”
the inspector general wrote, also noting that “she has no formal educational
background in natural sciences, such as biology.”
The Interior Department inspector general also found that MacDonald had “disclosed
nonpublic information to private sector sources” – special interests that had a
financial stake in species listing and protection – including the California Farm
Bureau Federation and the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that
specializes in property rights advocacy and litigation.
Government officials moved quickly to fix the political damage.
Last week, the director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (the Interior Department
agency in charge of endangered species programs) announced that eight decisions
MacDonald had made under the ESA would be examined for scientific and legal
discrepancies.
In a phone conference with reporters, Fish and Wildlife Service director H. Dale
Hall called the episode “a blemish . on the scientific integrity” of the agency.
“When I became director, I made scientific integrity my highest priority, and these
reviews underscore our commitment to species conservation,” Mr. Hall said.
Critics welcomed the action. But they want the internal review to include many more
of some 200 species decisions that MacDonald had a hand in, such as those for the
marbled murrelet (a shore bird), the bull trout, and the controversial northern
spotted owl. Also, they say, the problem goes deeper.
“The real culprit here is not a renegade political appointee,” says Francesca Grifo,
director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) scientific integrity program.
“The real culprit is a process where decisions are made behind closed doors.”
In 2005, UCS surveyed about 450 Fish and Wildlife Service scientists. Two-thirds
said they knew of cases where Interior Department political appointees had
interfered with scientific reports and decisions, and 84 said they had been ordered
to remove or change technical information from scientific documents.
Political pressure is alleged to have taken place during a summer drought in 2002
when Klamath River water was allowed to irrigate farmers’ fields rather than provide
adequate passage for salmon headed upstream to spawn as government scientists had
recommended.
As reported in detail recently by The Washington Post, Vice President Cheney
intervened in decisions involving a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River basin,
siding with farmers and ranchers over environmental considerations. Courts later
termed that plan “arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the Endangered
Species Act.”
As a result of the low water flows that summer, which make the water warmer and the
fish more prone to disease, some 70,000 salmon died. Since then, fish runs have
remained low, causing economic hardship for Indian tribes as well as commercial and
sport-fishing businesses along the West Coast.
The House Natural Resources Committee has scheduled a hearing next week to
investigate “political influence . on agency science and decisionmaking.” Cheney has
been invited to testify, but he is not expected to attend the hearing.
 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0725/p02s01-uspo.html> Full HTML version of this
story which may include photos, graphics, and related links
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Science News
Week of June 16, 2007; Vol. 171, No. 24 , p. 382
Trouble for forests of the northern U.S. Rockies?
Sid Perkins
From Acapulco, Mexico, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union
Climate change expected to occur in the coming decades may cause forests in
northern stretches of the U.S. Rockies to stop absorbing carbon dioxide and
even to release some to the atmosphere, exacerbating the planet’s warming.
Trees pull carbon dioxide from the air as they grow. Much of the carbon
from that gas is stored in wood and foliage, but some ends up in material
littering the forest floor and in the underlying soil. From there, it can
make its way back into general circulation, says Céline Boisvenue, an
ecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula.
She and her colleague Steven W. Running used computer models to estimate
how three climate-change scenarios might affect carbon storage at forest
sites in Idaho, western Montana, and northwestern Wyoming.
The good news: By 2089, the growing season in the forests will be at least
3 weeks longer than it was in 1950. The bad news: Over that same period,
higher temperatures will cause the trees to suffer water stress-slowing or
stopping their growth-for an additional 8 weeks each year. Even under a
climate scenario with higher precipitation than at present, trees will have
insufficient water for 54 more days each year in 2089 than they did in 1950.
By the year 2020, under a scenario with reduced precipitation, dieback of
trees and decomposition of leaf litter at three of the six studied sites
will cause the forests to emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb. By the
year 2070, the forests at five of those sites will be net producers of
carbon, says Boisvenue.
—