A bankruptcy settlement finally brings financial and perhaps legal closure to the fiht over cleaning up Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Basin.
The American Smelting and Refining Company, the company that ended up with the Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg, agreed to pay the federal government $1.79 billion to settle the bankruptcy. It [...]
Keith Allred, a former Harvard public policy professor, a cutting horse competitor and native Idahoan is expected to step up to be a Democratic candidate for Idaho governor.
Allred, of Eagle, is the director of the nonpartisan good-government group The Common Interest who is well known in the Idaho Legislature. [...]
The Obama administration has settled a long-standing lawsuit over the federal government’s abysmal record of serving as trustee for its American Indians.
The settlement of the Cobell v. Salazar case that used to be the Cobell v. Kempthrone case and the Cobell v. Babbitt case promises to pay $1.4 billion to [...]
North Idaho’s Scott Brusaw is already looking at the next phase of his solar road dream.
Brusaw, of Sagle’s Solar Roadways is finishing up his prototype of a solar road panel under a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. His next step is to partner with Pennsylvania State University's' [...]
What Climategate has shown is that the science of global warming is not settled in the political world.
No matter why or how the world’s scientific community has come to its conclusions from many different directions, the public remains skeptical that the catastrophe scientists predict will come [...]
The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reports that Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, whose e-mails were at the heart of the so-called climategate scandal, has stepped down.
[...]So what the climategate really mean for the so-called scientific consensus that the earth is warming and that it is because of human activity?
Is it a game changer? Scientifically it appears not says Texas A&M atmospheric and oceanography professor Gerald North in this story in the Washington Post by
Idaho's efforts to become a leader in green technology took a great leap forward Monday when the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality issued a permit to a company with limits to how much carbon dioxide it could emit from its fertilizer plant.
[...]A team of independent scientists expressed concerns that a series of actions proposed in the federal dam and salmon place before a federal judge would help the fish as much as agencies said.
But a memo, obtained by the Idaho Statesman, says the scientists praised the scientific analysis of the Obama [...]
Two articles this month underscore the polarization around climate science these days.
This article in the Times of London gives a good overview of the on-going e-mail scandal that clearly has hurt the credibility of climate science in general.
The future of wind energy development in the United States may rest on the availability of a rare earth element that conveniently is found in Idaho.
The magnets in the giant wind turbine powered electrical generators are made with an alloy that uses neodymium, a rare metal that is most produced [...]
The controversy over the leaked e-mails continues with climate skeptics including Republican Senator Jim Inhofe calling for a full blown congressional investigation.
[...]Don Gillispie and his quest to build a nuclear power somewhere in Idaho or the West got a couple of boosts this week.
More than 250 people showed up for the second time in two years in Payette to speak about a nuclear power plant in their county. Both Gillispie and [...]
U.S. District Judge James Redden has choreographed his Portland hearing Monday on the Obama administration’s salmon and dam plan right down to the introductions.
You might remember that Redden changed the date of the hearing so Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could be there. Hearings like [...]
Would you like some whine with that salmon?
That’s what you will get from both sides of a debate over the building of a copper, gold and molybdenum mine in the mountains of Alaska above Bristol Bay’s rich, productive salmon fisheries. Several Seattle restaurants are serving up a warning [...]
The fight over the slickspot peppergrass underscores the challenge for managing the Endangered Species Act in the 21st Century.
Scientists concluded that grazing on public lands is low on the list of threats to the annual flowering bush that grows in wet areas of Southwest Idaho’s sagebrush steppe desert. Yet its [...]
U.S. District Judge James Redden wrote a letter Thursday that set the stage for his hearing Nov. 23 on the federal government’s biological opinion on the Columbia and Snake River dams.
The opinion is the federal government’s 10-year plan for operating the federal dams an the other measures it plans to [...]
Mercury contamination in lakes is not just an Idaho problem, it’s a national and probably an international problem.
That’s not news but a new report underscores how the pervasive pollutant, which Nevada gold mines and an Oregon concrete plant are sending to Idaho through the sky, is presenting a threat to [...]
The Obama Administration’s stimulus package has pumped millions of dollars into Idaho’s struggling economy and energy development is one of the areas that has benefited.
Micron Technology got $5 million to help jump start its efforts to move into light emitting diode manufacturing, which may get it in on the ground [...]
National Park Service director Jon Jarvis didn’t wait long to reach into his Idaho roots.
Jarvis, who served as superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument, picked the University of Idaho’s Gary Machlis to serve as the first National Park Service science advisor. Machlis, a professor of conservation at the [...]
National Park Service director Jon Jarvis didn’t wait long to reach into his Idaho roots.
Jarvis, who served as superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument, picked the University of Idaho’s Gary Machlis to serve as the first National Park Service science advisor. Machlis, a professor of conservation at the [...]
I sat through Idaho Power’s Integrated Resource Planning meeting last week. That is where the utility lays out its future plans to a group of customers, environmental advocates and Idaho Public Utility Commission staff for their comments. The idea is the company gets feedback for its plans to build or [...]
Just as a U.S. judge has been the primary force for determining the fate of endangered salmon in the Columbia, a judge now will look into why salmon numbers are down in British Columbia’s Fraser River.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Supreme Court Justice Brice Cohen to look into the [...]
The economy has been hurting but that hasn’t kept people away from the world’s first national park.
Yellowstone’s visitation through October already sets a record for annual visits. The park recorded 3,267,683 visitors from January through October this year. That was well above the 3,037,557 recorded for the same ten month [...]
Idaho Power Co. gets a chance at a big chunk of stimulus money but it doesn’t have it yet.
The utility is negotiating with Department of Energy officials the details of the “smart grid proposal” that goes beyond installing smart meters on customers’ homes. If it plays it cards right Idaho [...]
Standing knee deep in the Boise River along the Bethine Church Nature Trail it is easy to forget you are in a city of 200,000 people.
The river in the fall is very different than the river of summer, filled with inner tubes and rafts. The fishing is as good as [...]
Wilderness Society President Bill Meadows proposal for National Climate Trusts has already prompted some great debate that I thought I would share.
[...]Wilderness Society President Bill Meadows proposal for National Climate Trusts likely won’t end up locking away from the timber industry millions of new acres.
The reality nationwide is that the United States gets only 2 percent of our fiber from public lands. The rest comes from private [...]
The census will soon determine how much clout the West has in Congress and how much money it cities states and counties will get in federal funding.
Idaho will need to show it has about 182,000 more people than its estimated population of 1.5 million in 2008 if it wants to [...]
Ed Pulaski was the kind of man traditional Idahoans admire.
The former prospector, miner and ranch foreman demonstrated craftsman skills as a blacksmith, plumber, carpenter and machine repairman. When in 1908 he took the job of ranger of the Wallace District of the recently created Coeur d’Alene National Forest at 40, [...]
This is a fascinating scientific theory. The Higgs boson, an atomic particle that physicists think may create mass in other elementary particles is so dangerous that something from the future is stopping us from producing it.
That right. This force caused Congress to kill the Superconducting Super Collider in the early [...]
What a weekend for the climate change beat.
I didn’t go to the Society of Environmental Journalists meeting in Madison so I missed Al Gore’s talk and his confrontation Friday with Phelim McAleer, the co-director/producer of an independent film Not Evil, Just Wrong. McAleer’s film points out errors [...]
Imagine an Idaho Department of Natural Resources.
That’s essentially what I threw against the wall this morning to see what sticks in my column. Everyone from both sides of the isle loves to talk about government reform.
But when they realize it might gore their ox they quickly [...]
Another river in the Pacific Northwest runs free today.
Construction workers removed the coffer dam from the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River east of Grants Pass, Oregon. The 39 foot dam used to divert water for irrigation but today pumps do that, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports
Idaho’s own “Lion King,” Maurice Hornocker, has been nominated for the $100,000 Indianapolis Prize, the largest in the world for animal conservation.
Hornocker, 78, is to big cats what Jane Goodall is to chimpanzees and Dian Fossey was for gorillas. His pioneering research on cougars in central Idaho in the [...]
The news that Tianwei New Energy Holdings took over Honolulu-based Hoku Scientific is good news for Pocatello and the state of Idaho.
The Chinese company’s takeover of cash-strapped Hoku means it will be able to finish building its Pocatello polysilicon plant and keeps Idaho nascent alternative energy industry moving forward. Hoku [...]
The same week that PBS was celebrating the United States national parks with a wonderful Ken Burns series, the College of Idaho was celebrating one of its own’s efforts to create another American national park.
The College of Idaho awarded Kris Tompkins with an honorary degree for her efforts to create [...]
Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack made waves Tuesday when he said Boise was getting the same urban forestry money that the Senate wants to stop Washington D.C. from using.
[...]T.R. Roosevelt is everywhere this week. And as always, it is very appropriate.
PBS is running Ken Burns powerful series this week, “The National Parks, America’s Best Idea.” Historian Douglas Brinkley’s groundbreaking biography “Wilderness Warrior,” came out earlier this year. National Book Award winning author Timothy Egan of Seattle’s latest book [...]
When I started looking into how climate change already has affected the everyday lives of Idahoans I didn’t even think about the growing wine industry in Idaho.
The gloom and doom predictions that climate change skeptics hate so much dominate our discussion of this issue for obvious reasons. [...]
Long time Idaho conservationist Mike Medberry says the environmental community is wrong to oppose wolf hunting.
Medberry was one of the people in the 1980s and 1990s who were bucking the trend in advocating for more wilderness, better wildlife protection and strong water quality laws. His message wasn’t popular in the [...]
Idaho Power Co. announced plans earlier this month to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 15 percent from 2005 levels.
The announcement comes as President Obama meets with world leaders to discuss a global strategy to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It also comes as Idaho water [...]
Canyon County residents and leaders looking for an easy way out of the valley’s air quality problems just got another major setback this week.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday it is reconsidering the Bush administration’s 2008 air quality standards for ozone or smog pollution. It’s all but certain they [...]
Rep. Doc Hastings of Eastern Washington has become the main voice for protecting the four dams on the Snake River that a wide group of fisheries scientists say must be removed to recover Idaho four stocks of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.
In this video watch him grill NOAA Administrator [...]
The fate of two fish presents the biggest problem to the Obama Administration’s efforts to convince a federal judge to back its Columbia-Snake biological opinions.
The first is the Snake River sockeye salmon, the fish that started it all when it was listed as endangered in 1991. Despite [...]
Later today the Pacific Northwest will hear what the Obama administration has to say about Columbia River Salmon and dams.
Whatever they say it will mark a new chapter in a legal fight that foes back to the beginning of the 1990s. It started when the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe petitioned the federal [...]
If you think your water isn’t as clean as you think it should be it could be because some polluter is breaking the law and the federal government is letting them.
The New York Times ran a series this weekend about the poor record of enforcement of [...]
If you think your water isn’t as clean as you think it should be it could be because some polluter is breaking the law and the federal government is letting them.
The New York Times ran a series this weekend about the poor record of enforcement of [...]
The Obama Administration is expected to roll out its Columbia-Snake River salmon and dam plan Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge James Redden gave the administration another month to seek a consensus on its modifications to the two biological opinions on the dams that was done at the end of the Bush Administration. [...]
The Obama administration today announced Thursday its intention to nominate Harris Sherman, executive director of the Colorado Department Natural Resources, as undersecretary of natural resources and the environment for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The job would place Sherman over the U.S. Forest Service, which administers more than 191 million acres [...]
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula gave the Obama Administration, the states, sportsmen and environmentalists all a partial victory in the Rocky Mountain Wolf case today. Only Wyoming, which has been unwilling to meet the minimum management standards Idaho and Montana did, is a short-term loser.
The fears that Idaho wolf hunters would run into the woods and decimate the Idaho wolf population are proven unfounded.
Those fears have come true almost as much as the fears that wolves would decimate the elk population.
After a week of wolf season only four wolves have been reported killed. The [...]
Here is the latest data that shows the climate is changing and that human activity is causing it.
Greenhouse gas emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities has reversed a 2,000-year cooling trend in the Arctic, Juliet Eilperin reports in the Washington Post.
[...]The heroes of the wilderness movement tended to be people who spent their lives wandering through wild landscapes, wrote historian William Cronon in his introduction to the biography of activist Howard Zahniser, "Wilderness Forever".
These heroes, from Henry David Thoreau to John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Olaus and Mardy Murie, Rachel Carson [...]
Idaho is getting criticized nationally for allowing a wolf hunt.
But only a few angry western voices are talking about the sheep that have been killed by wolves lately including 39 in the last few weeks, at former Idaho Sen. John Peavey’s ranch near Carey recently. The increased killing of livestock [...]
I can’t get the night of March 23, 1995 out of my head these days.
For most of the environmental community the historic day for the return of wolves to Yellowstone was Jan. 11. That was the day the wolves passed through the famous arch into the park that had been [...]
The Bush Administration put natural gas exploration and development first in Wyoming, especially during the President’s first term.
And now the entire region waits to see whether the disturbance in the sagebrush steppe habitat pushed sage grouse over the threshold. The Obama administration will decide by February whether to list sage [...]
The Western Watersheds Project is not limiting its campaign to get sheep off of public lands to Idaho.
It has gone to federal court in Arizona seeking to force sheep ranchers out of bighorn sheep habitat. The debate sounds remarkably familiar according to The Arizona Republic.
Wild sheep advocates [...]
The results of the autopsy of bighorn ram R14 underscore the complexity of the sheep disease issue that has sparked a political firestorm in Idaho.
And it doesn’t resolve the scientific debate that lies at the heart of a dispute that has forced the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and [...]
So if you want to take a wolf in Idaho this year?
You can’t trap, you can’t bait, you can’t use dogs and you can’t hunt around Fish and Game big game feeding sites.
You can shoot members of Ketchum’s celebrity Phantom Hill pack, which love to hang out along Idaho 75. [...]
Gov. Butch Otter turned the tables on me today and put me on the spot.
He said in an interview Wednesday he planned to buy a tag himself and go hunting.Otter the asked me if I was going to buy a wolf tag.
I couldn't argue that it wasn't [...]
If U.S. District Judge Donald Malloy concurs Idahoans will start hunting wolves Sept. 1.
What can we expect? The Idaho Department of Fish and Game convinced the Fish and Game Commission narrowly to follow its recommendation to limit the hunt this year by allowing only 220 wolves to be taken. The [...]
The news seemed so amazing.
“About 85 percent of the Northwest's new power needs over the next 20 years can be achieved through conservation, according to a new plan being developed by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council,” The Associated Press’ Nicholas K. Geranios reported Aug. 10.
The council, appointed by governors' [...]
President Barack Obama made the American pilgrimage to Old Faithful Saturday and found the same joy that John Muir did upon a visit.
"All welcome the show with enthusiasm, and shout 'Oh, how wonderful, beautiful, splendid, majestic!
Obama also went fly fishing with aides.
'" [...]President Barack Obama made the American pilgrimage to Old Faithful Saturday and found the same joy that John Muir did upon a visit.
"All welcome the show with enthusiasm, and shout 'Oh, how wonderful, beautiful, splendid, majestic!
Obama also went fly fishing with aides.
Save Our Wild Salmon, the coalition of environmentalists, fishermen and sporting industries that are pushing for breaching four dams on the Snake River, said in a press release earlier this week that documents that they got using the Freedom of Information Act that showed that the Bonneville Power Administration exaggerated [...]
The way the salmon advocates see it, the Obama Administration decided July 29 how it was going proceed with the salmon and dam plan before U.S. District Judge James Redden.
But instead of sharing their plans with Oregon, the Nez Perce tribes and other groups that had challenged the previous federal [...]
Economist Ray Rasker has put together the costs of protecting houses from wildfire in Montana with predictions based on the warming climate. What he has found is the federal firefighting subsidies lead to poor planning in fire prone areas increase the cost of firefighting.
People move into forested areas and expect [...]
Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. CEO and president Don Gillispie said several Idaho counties and the state have recently offered lands for its proposed nuclear plant following delays in local approval at the current site in Elmore County.
But Idaho Department of Lands Director George Bacon said about the state offer, “Not [...]
President Barack Obama plans to visit Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks next week.
Obama will fly into Bozeman, Mont. and Yellowstone Saturday then fly on to Grand Junction, Colo., Grand Canyon and Phoenix, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.
Obama plans to stop in Grand Junction to talk [...]
Idaho’s Department of Fish and Game has sent letters to all 50 states asking them whether they were interested in taking any of our wolves.
Guess what? Nobody wants them.
Not Vermont. Nor Maine. Nor New Hampshire or New York. California isn’t howling for them either. Not even Colorado appears interested.
Republican Sen. [...]
Game managers from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have proposed a memorandum of understanding about how they will institute grizzly bear hunting in the future.
With the current grizzly deaths by human already higher than they would like, none of them are talking about hunting them soon. But Montana [...]
If you think this summer is hot for you consider the salmon and steelhead making their epic odyssey up the Columbia River heading home to Idaho.
Water temperatures exceeded 73 degrees, far warmer than the 68-70 degrees fishery managers say these cold water fish prefer this time of the year. The [...]
I’ve been hard on Yellow Pine for its dependence on the costly South Fork of the Salmon Road. And they have gotten a bad rap for their attitudes about fires and firefighting.
But the residents of this community on the edge of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness have [...]
CNN’s John King gives a good look at the politics of small town residents of Democratic Rep Walt Minnick’s 1st District. The story looks at health care from St. Maries and shows the fine balancing act Minnick has to make to satisfy Democrats, Republicans and independents in the district.
Embedded video [...]
A group of critics continues to question whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States, though his Hawaii birth certificate and a newspaper birth announcement show he was born in Honolulu in 1961.
So self-described citizen-journalist Mike Stark went to Capitol Hill asking Republican congressmen what they think. In [...]
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission will set its hunting quota for wolves Aug. 17 in Idaho Falls and the world will be watching.
When Montana set its quota at 75 earlier this month even the British newspaper The Guardian, covered the story. Environmentalists are waiting to see [...]
Idaho Statesman reader Bob Barber asked about the Idaho Evening Statesman, which was started in the early 1940s and soon after combined with the Capital News, which the Statesman bought. It ran the evening edition until the 1960s, though I don't known when it ended.
Here's what Barber wrote:
I enjoyed Sunday's' [...]
I don’t know many people who would fault a grizzly bear sow from attacking hunters who she considers a threat to her three cubs. And I don’t know many people who would fault a brother for shooting at a bear mauling his kin.
That was the situation last month when black [...]
The Idaho Association of Industry and Commerce won’t be taking a stand on a petition to begin rulemaking to regulate large mercury polluters.
The organization that represents the state’s largest industries did not join Monsanto Corp and the Idaho Conservation League in pushing for the rules after a meeting Thursday by [...]
NewWest.net has two excellent stories about issues I’ve blogged about recently. Bill Schneider give the details of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. Publisher Jonathan Weber explains the politics of Tim Blixseth’s proposed land trade with the U.S. Forest Service in North Idaho.
[...]The role of the market in environmental regulations remains a complex issue that doesn’t always fit the ideological views of people on all sides of the issues. Simple programs to reward good behavior in the market place are rarely opposed by anyone but many environmentalists want to follow up incentives [...]
To many Idahoans property rights are the ultimate human right. They lie at the heart of liberty and a government’s suggestion it wants to take someone’s property, in Idaho those are often fighting words. Even enacting policies that force people to give up their property are challenged.
Montana environmentalists and the timber industry have worked long and hard on a compromise bill to protect wilderness, help the timber industry and help restore national forests.
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester introduced the plan to Montanans Friday called the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009. The bill would designate more [...]
Today I watched as many of the best in the journalism business honored Walter Cronkite upon the news of his death.
I can’t say any more than they did expect to remind readers how he flew bombing missions over Germany and parachuted into Holland during World War II to get the [...]
