This will seem silly to some but I think it’s a legitimate question. I was just reading a short headline from out of Canada this morning stating that a man holds ex-wife hostage with a hunting rifle. There are really no more details than that but my question, which I’ve asked on numerous occasions, is why was it a hunting rifle? Why not just a rifle? Why not a gun? Why not a target rifle?

I guess it could have just as easily been called an assault rifle. After all, the media loves using assault weapon. I would suppose that by definition anything used to assault someone or something has to be declared an assault weapon, although most of us know what is meant when assault weapon is used to describe a gun used in committing a crime.

Now it could very well be that this guy uses that rifle only for hunting and nothing else and so therefore, the media is correct in calling it a hunting rifle. Whether it is intentional or not, does calling every rifle a hunting rifle become as damaging to the sport as calling every gun an assault weapon?

Why hunting rifle? If a man pulled out a jack knife and committed a crime, the press doesn’t refer to that knife as a Boy Scout knife. When someone is beaten to death with a baseball bat, the press doesn’t describe it as one just like Mickey Mantle used to use, or a golf club as like the one Tiger Woods uses.

Is it just an easy thing to say? To refer to it as a hunting rifle? Or is there really more to it?

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Kevin Hassett, a news columnist for Bloomberg, shares his thoughts on how a possible listing of the polar bear could affect us all. Hang on.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

A federal court ordered the Department of Interior to make a decision about whether or not to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act by May 15, 2008. This week it is assumed that will happen. I have written several articles and provided links for you to read and discover on your own about the polar bear, how it is impacted by climate change and how listing the bear could have far reaching, unconsidered ramifications on the U.S. and Canadian economies. Follow this link to find more of those stories.

The following is the abstract portion of a recent study and report completed by Dr. Mitchell Taylor and Dr. Martha Dowsley. For those seriously interested in the condition and future of the polar bear that is based on sound science, please read the entire report (pdf found on the Science and Public Policy Institute’s webite).

Abstract

Although two polar bear subpopulations (Western Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort Sea) no longer appear to be viable due to reduction in sea ice habitat, polar bears as a species do not appear to be threatened by extinction in the foreseeable future from either a demographic or an ecological perspective. Ecological perspectives that suggest the reductions to survival and recruitment rates for two populations (Western Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort Sea) have occurred because of a long-term decline in sea ice due to climate warming. These populations occur where summer ice coverage is seasonal (WH) or divergent (SB). The perspective that the impacts of sea ice reductions experienced in WH and SB subpopulations can be generalized to the remainder of the polar bear subpopulations depends entirely on the IPCC GCMs that predict continued reductions to sea ice due to CO2 driven climate change. Current and historical polar bear subpopulation performance demonstrates that viable polar bear subpopulations have persisted and generally increased throughout the current period of climate warming. The mean generation time of polar bears as defined by the IUCN/SSC Redbook criteria and the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) is 12 not 15 years. The time-frame for three generations for polar bears is 36 not 45 years as indicated by the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialists Group. Based on the assumption of a linear relationship of population numbers to sea ice habitat, extrapolation of IPCC GCM sea ice predictions over a thirty-six year interval does not support the contention that polar bears are threatened with extinction over the next three generations. Extrapolation of IPCC GCM sea ice predictions over a hundred year interval does not support the contention that polar bears are threatened with extinction in the foreseeable future. Population viability analyses (PVA), using demographic estimates from polar bear populations where the data are sufficient, indicate that population status is affected by both anthropogenic removals and vital rates. PVAs that employ current demographic and removal rates indicate that most polar bear populations could sustain the current removal rate indefinitely. Management action for populations where removal rates exceed the estimated sustainable levels has occurred and is ongoing.

The popular notion that polar bears are declining or already expatriated worldwide has been initiated and perpetuated by environmental organizations and individuals who apparently believe that current subpopulation numbers and trends are an insufficient basis for an appropriate status determination. These individuals and organizations suggest that an ecological consideration constitutes more appropriate methodology to assess status of polar bears and presumably all species. Observations of natural mortality, intra-specific aggression, poor condition, and even healthy bears in good condition on ice floes have been
cited as evidence of a population impacts on polar bears due to declining sea ice. Anecdotal information, although useful and interesting, is not equivalent to scientific information based on valid statistical analysis of sample data. Simultaneously, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) from Inuit has been largely ignored because TEK is mostly oral, and because TEK generally does not support the assertion that polar bear populations are in general, or even local decline.

Read the full report here.

Posted by Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Here’s an article in the Washington Post about obsessed people who try most anything to extend the distance they can go on a tank of gas in their cars - whether a conventional or hybrid.

You need to read the entire piece but here are the titles to “techniques” hypermilers use:

1). Driver the Speed Limit

2). Turn off Your Car and Coast (not recommended)

3). Optimize Your Route

4). Watch Your Tire Pressure

5). Change Your Oil (and use thinner oil)

Sound a bit absurd some of it? Don’t tell that to a hypermiler.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

An Earmark + “K Street” Lobbyist = Massive Federal Land Grab

by David A. Ridenour

With his signature on May 8 to S. 2739, the ‘Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008,’ George Bush has now signed on to the establishment of de facto federal zoning along a 175-mile corridor running from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s one of the largest federal land grabs in history.

On April 29, the U.S. House of Representatives passed this massive, pork-laden bill that included a provision creating the Journey Through Hallowed Ground (JTHG) National Heritage Area. Debate was limited to just 40 minutes.

Heritage areas are National Park Service preservation zones in which environmentalists, federal officials and local elitists influence local land-use decisions, frequently in ways that restrict property rights and move property ownership beyond the means of the less well-to-do.

Environmentalists and preservationists love heritage areas, because they can be used to curtail development.

Local elitists like them because they can help keep people they consider to be undesirable out of their communities. Minorities are harmed disproportionately when land-use restrictions cause home prices to soar. (It is perhaps no coincidence that lily-white Waterford, Virginia was at the epicenter of the effort to create the JTHG Heritage Area. Waterford has a rich black history — and history is apparently where the village would like to keep it.)

Politically well-connected developers like heritage areas because they can be used to establish near monopolies on real estate development opportunities. As the Heritage Foundation’s Ron Utt discovered, that’s precisely what the JTHG Heritage Area would do.

And federal bureaucrats love heritage areas because they allow them to get around little inconveniences to their central planning — inconveniences such as local elected officials.

House passage of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area was hailed by its chief sponsor, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), and by the Journey Through Hallowed Ground foundation, the chief lobby organization behind the effort. Both noted the overwhelming vote in the House, 291-117.

The bill received support across party lines. In the House, supporters included Representatives Alan Mollohan (D-WV), Don Young (R-AK), William Jefferson (D-LA), Rick Renzi (R-AZ), and John Doolittle (R-CA). (Now all these gentlemen can say they have a second thing in common.)

But it is unlikely that support for the land grab was as great as the tally might suggest, as it was buried in an omnibus bill of over 60 other proposals — some enjoying wide support.

As Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) noted during the limited debate, “Many of the sections of this bill are unable to stand on their own and have subsequently been bundled into a $300 million brew to avoid individual scrutiny… this omnibus was created with enough prizes that inevitably the bad will be overlooked and everything, the good, the bad and the ugly, will be able to cross the finish line.”

Approval of the JTHG Heritage Area is a case study in what is wrong with American politics.

The JTHG Heritage Area wasn’t approved by Congress due to overwhelming public demand for it. Borrowing from the Beatles, perhaps it got by with a little help from Wolf’s friends — a lot of Ben Franklins, Alexander Hamiltons, Abe Lincolns and George Washingtons.

You see, Congressman Wolf slipped a $1 million dollar earmark in the 2005 federal transportation bill — buried among 6,372 other earmarks — for the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Foundation. This is the very group that has led the lobbying effort for Wolf’s bill. More unusual still is that at the time of the earmark, the foundation had yet to even be incorporated and was operating out of the personal post office box of its executive director, Cate Magennis Wyatt.

It appears as though Congressman Wolf used taxpayer money to fund the lobbying campaign for his own bill. (Read more about his here)

Then there’s the unseemly Wolf-”K Street” lobbyist connection. Wolf’s land grab bill was written by Don Pongrace, who runs the Indian practice (yes, a lobbyist for Indian gaming interests) for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, a large law firm with offices in D.C., London, New York and Moscow.

Not only that, but Pongrace apparently was authorized to speak for Congressman Wolf in meetings about the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area.

It turns out that Pongrace serves on the board of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground foundation — the group receiving Wolf’s earmark largesse — and Pongrace’s wife has served the group as vice president.

Apparently, the concept of a conflict of interest is lost on the mega law firm of Akin Gump.

Interestingly, at the very time Frank Wolf was collaborating with Akin Gump on his bill, he criticized the firm for working for the Chinese government in its bid to acquire Unocal.

Wolf wrote to Akin Gump, “I question the appropriateness of an American firm… being on the payroll of the Chinese government… I immediately thought, ‘Is there no bright line to separate who lobbyists in Washington will and will not represent?’”

Is there no bright line, indeed.

Congressman Wolf introduces a bill written by a “K Street” lobbyist, arranges a $1 million earmark for the group lobbying for that bill — and employing the lobbyist’s wife — and he asks about bright lines?

Congressman Wolf also received help pushing his bill from National Park Service employees, who acted contrary to the Service’s official position, which calls for the creation of no additional heritage areas until a formal NPS program is created through legislation. Nonetheless, the NPS’s Brenda Barrett and Alma Ripps were dispatched to defend creation of the JTHG Heritage Area.

The full extent of the National Park Service’s assistance with the legislative effort is still unknown, as the Service has so far failed to fully comply with a Freedom of Information Act request. In violation of the FOIA law, it provided only incomplete records and documents that obviously had been altered (helpful hint for NPS employees: if you plan to alter documents, you might want to avoid using ruled paper).

Ethical questions surround the process through which this national heritage area was approved. A presidential veto was warranted.

-David A. Ridenour is vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Research that the Department of Interior is using to render a decision on whether to list the polar bear as endangered is critically flawed, according to Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School and others who were part of an audit group formulated by the State of Alaska.

Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit,” is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces.

According to Science Daily, Armstrong says that in order to list a healthy species as endangered, you have to have “valid forecasts”.

“To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.

“These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.”

Armstrong says that his group examined nine U.S. Geological Survey Administrative Reports and found that the most relevant study, “properly applied only 15% of relevant forecasting principles”. They also determined that these same studies showed that 69% of the information was “contravened”, to some degree.

The group further states that the studies failed to substantiate “assumptions” of melting sea ice or the ability of the polar bear to adapt to changing climate patterns.

In short, Armstrong has determined that any ruling, whether to list or not list, cannot be scientifically substantiated using the flawed studies the Department of Interior is using.

Next!

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Dave Kopel of TownHall.com, reveals some interesting statistics about certain gun owners supporting Hillary Clinton’s “pro-gun” position.

Senator Clinton no more deserves gun-owner votes than Lord Voldemort deserves the Muggle vote. In the Senate, she has voted in favoring of abusive lawsuits against law-abiding gun manufacturers, for banning cosmetically incorrect guns which are falsely labeled “assault weapons,” and for allowing federal funds to be used to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens after a natural disaster—as was done following Hurricane Katrina.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Announcement:

My plan was for a live broadcast of Open Air today but with this persistent cough and sneezing from pollen, I am going to cancel the show today. Thank you for your considerations!

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I guess if Black Bear Blog readers had their chance, they would just as soon put Al Gore on an iceberg and set him adrift, somewhere…..anywhere. The latest not-so-scientific Black Bear Blog poll showed 58% of readers (at total of 73) thought Al Gore should be sent sailing.

Just as interesting though is that 39%, a total of 39 readers, want the polar bear listed as endangered - not threatened but endangered. As far as anything in between, there wasn’t a lot of interest.

Here are the results of the Polar Bear Poll!

Should The Polar Bear Be Further Protected With Endangered Species Act?

* List the bear as Endangered.: 31% (39)
* List the bear as Threatened.: 6% (7)
* Leave well enough alone.: 6% (7)
* Put Al Gore on an iceberg and set him adrift.: 58% (73)

Total Votes : 126

Thanks for participating and check out the latest poll to the right.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Pay attention people in San Bernardino County, California, those cute and cuddly little coyotes are playing a little rough with the kids at Alterra Park.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Yup! We already got one guy thinking he can create a giant baggie and sink it beneath the ocean floor and pump this nasty CO2 stuff into it. Now the Department of Energy is wanting to grant $126.6 million to study whether or not we can pump CO2 into empty places beneath the earth.

There’s a lot of empty heads in Washington that could hold decades of this stuff.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I got an email this morning from Gary Inman from Maine and he said the winter was so long this year that he might need a jump start for his car, pictured below.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Remember this photo of a “What is it”?

The photo was taken by Milt Inman at the Andover, Maine Historical Society. Here’s his explanation:

What Is It? The machine was used to safely let a team of horses and a large sled full of logs slowly down from a mountain side to the valley below. The sled, with 4 wheels or pulleys, was taken up to near where the logs were cut and anchored to a large tree. The cable wound around the pulleys in away that it went around each one twice and then back down the mountain to a pulley chained to a tree and then back up to the braking machine. Moving the long levers on the rear of the machine would apply the braking force needed to do its job of snubbing up the load of logs hooked to the cable and going down the mountain. I think it was called a “SNUBBER” or something else. Milt

If you would like, you can return to the original post and read what some of the guesses were.

Posted by Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Idaho is planning a wolf hunt in the fall of 2008. Whether that actually happens remains to be seen as no less than 12 environmental/animal rights groups have filed suit to reverse the decision earlier this year that took the gray wolf in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming off the endangered species list. Couple that with some of the same groups seeking a court injunction to stop all killing and hunting of the wolf immediately, it is probably doubtful there will be a fall hunt.

Regardless of what I think, there are some fuzzy math issues involving the Idaho Fish and Game Department that I can’t quite figure out. For those who don’t know, the IDFG is seeking public comment on rules and regulations concerning a proposed fall wolf hunt. Go to their website and you can register a comment. Preceding the comment box, this is the information IDFG has for you to read.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is seeking comments on proposed 2008 wolf hunting season and rules framework available here.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission approved the Idaho Wolf Population Management Plan, and the gray wolf in the Northern Rocky Mountains was removed from the endangered species list – both in March. The management plan calls for managing wolves at a population level of between 500-700 wolves for the first five years following delisting. The plan includes hunting as part of the methods of maintaining the population levels.

Fish and Game recommendations call for a total mortality quota of 328 wolves in 2008, which includes all reported wolf kills – from natural causes, accidents, wolf predation control actions and hunter kills. Reaching the quota would result in an estimated end-of-year population of 550-600 wolves.

When the statewide quota is reached, all hunting would stop. When quotas in individual zones are reached, hunting in those zones would stop.

Details for the fall 2008 hunting season are scheduled to be set by the commission at the May 21-22 meeting and season and rules brochures should be out to the public in July.

IDFG says that the management plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is to manage a population of gray wolves of between 500 and 700. They propose a kill quota, this includes all forms of mortality on the wolf not just hunting, of 328 wolves, claiming this will result in an estimated population at the end of the year of between 550 and 600 wolves.

I’m no rocket scientist but I figured out from this mathematical equation, IDFG is estimating the population currently, or prior to the fall hunt, at between 878 and 928 wolves.

This seems to disagree with information that IDFG has made available. I did some of my own math using figures available from the IDFG website and other “official” documents. To be as up front and honest as possible, let me say that IDFG has for the most part made it known that their wolf population estimates are in fact just estimates but they feel comfortable enough to use them in official documents, etc. With that said, my calculations are then estimates being that I am using their data.

In 2005, IDFG estimated a wolf population of 512. Using that estimate, I went back to 1995 and 1996 and calculated out that to have that number of wolves after the reintroduction of wolves back in 95 and 96, worked out to a survival and growth rate of right around 33%, give or take a % fraction or two.

Using this same survival and growth rate, 33% and 512 wolves in 2005, that calculates out to an estimated wolf population of 1204.55 wolves by the end of 2008. Whatever anyone choses to factor into this equation - i.e. carrying capacities, current mortalities, etc. - that’s a substantially higher estimate of wolves than the 878-928 IDFG is saying the state currently has.

Once again using IDFG information, they say they want to have a kill number of 328 out of their estimation of between 878 and 928 wolves, leaving a total of 550 and 600 wolves. If we average numbers and say the current wolf population is 903 and the kill quota remains at 328, that’s a reduction of wolves of 36%, average.

If the real wolf population more closely resembles my calculations, 1204, then the reduction rate stands at 27%. Using a continued survival and growth rate of 33%, then the wolf population continues to grow at a rate of 6%. Using IDFG figures, they will for all intent and purposes maintain their wolf population or exact figures say an average reduction rate of 3%.

The fuzziness in the math comes from how and why IDFG opted for a current wolf population of between 878 and 928? Those numbers seem a bit arbitrary. Nearly every report that has come out of Idaho claims the current wolf population in the 1200-1500 range with some reports considerably higher than that.

Whether you’re an Idaho citizen for or against hunting wolves and delisting the animal, it would seem that for IDFG to win support from anyone, they need to do a little bit more to explain their fuzzy math.

Tom Remington

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!