Land use – Page 8 – CFACT

U.S. court deals smack-down to greens

In a victory of David over Goliath, two powerful, well-funded environmental groups suffered a smack-down at the hands of a rural Utah county, when a U.S. court ruled the environmentalists couldn’t challenge the county’s ownership claims to dozens of roads on federal lands. The 10th U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on January 11 that the Wilderness Society (TWS) and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) did not have standing to file a lawsuit against Kane County. In its 9-to-2 decision, the court stated that, “TWS has taken sides in what is essentially a property rights dispute between two landowners, only one [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2011-01-27T08:28:40-05:00January 27th, 2011|Comments Off

Salazar’s wild lands policy sends shockwaves across the West

This article was featured on Fox News' website! _____________________________________ Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s Dec. 22 announcement directing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to survey its vast holdings with a view towards determining which should be designated as “wild lands” has sent shock waves across the West.Salazar’s move is widely seen as the Obama administration’s way of dealing with a new Congress that is unlikely to create new wilderness areas legislatively. The administration is rebranding wilderness as wild lands so it can make millions of acres of public land off-limits to development through regulatory fiat. Salazar unveiled the plan after Congress [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2011-01-18T13:50:35-05:00January 18th, 2011|Comments Off

Natural resources fuel North Dakota’s economic boom

While the rest of the country suffers through unemployment, foreclosures, bank failures, and budget deficits, North Dakota is on a roll – thanks in large part to its abundant resources of oil and natural gas, almost all of which are on private land.

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2012-10-25T11:27:10-04:00October 14th, 2010|Comments Off

Land war in the West heats up

Faced with their constituents’ soaring unemployment and growing frustration over Washington’s suppression of their region’s once-thriving natural resources industry, members of the Congressional Western Caucus have issued a blistering report excoriating the Obama administration’s policies towards the West.The 25-page report, “The War on Western Jobs,” was released on Sept. 30 and bears the names of the caucus’s co-chairmen: Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah). “This administration’s anti-business, anti-multiple use agenda threatens western communities,” the report says. “It is killing jobs and undermining state and local budgets.”“Washington’s misguided policies,” the report points out, are restricting “access to America’s vast [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-10-12T08:07:50-04:00October 12th, 2010|Comments Off

Greens shackle national security – and renewable energy

“China’s control of a key minerals market has US military thinkers and policy makers worried about access to materials that are essential for 21st-century technology like smartphones – and smart bombs,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Plus stealth fighter jets, digital cameras, computer hard drives – and wind turbine magnets, solar panels, hybrid and electric car batteries, compact fluorescent light bulbs, catalytic converters, and more. China’s dominance in mining and processing 17 “rare earth” metals “has raised alarms in Washington,” says the Journal. These unique metallic elements have powerful magnetic properties that make them sine qua non for high-tech, miniaturized and [...]

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Paul Driessen

|2013-10-04T12:01:09-04:00October 4th, 2010|Comments Off

U.S. reduces dependence on foreign cobalt

Cobalt, a precious metal that has all but disappeared from production in the United States, is on the verge of a big American comeback.After years of clearing one bureaucratic hurdle after another, Formation Minerals, Inc., a Canadian mining company, is moving ahead with plans to open a cobalt mine in east central Idaho, about 40 miles west of Salmon. When the mine opens for business in late summer of 2011, it will produce about 1,500 tons of high-purity cobalt metal per year. The mine, dubbed the Idaho Cobalt Project, is expected to be in operation for at least ten years.Cobalt is [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-10-01T12:25:44-04:00October 1st, 2010|Comments Off

Federal government’s land grab faces growing resistance

Fearful that the federal government’s already pervasive presence in their state could expand dramatically, Montanans are rising up against another looming Washington land grab.Over 200 angry citizens recently gathered in a high school gymnasium in Lewiston, where Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) told them, according to the Great Falls Tribune (Aug. 21): “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I don’t trust ‘em.”The “’em” Rehberg referred to are officials at the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Earlier this year, a 21-page “treasured landscape” memorandum prepared by top BLM officials was leaked to members of the [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-09-27T08:59:35-04:00September 27th, 2010|Comments Off

Renewables are unsustainable

Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session. It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia. First, when exactly is something not sustainable? When known deposits (proven reserves) may be depleted in ten years? 50? 100? What if looming depletion results from government policies that forbid access to lands that might contain new deposits – as [...]

By

Paul Driessen

|2012-11-01T13:58:55-04:00September 21st, 2010|1 Comment

New coal mine approved in Utah

In a victory for the nation’s beleaguered resources industry, Utah officials have approved a permit for a coal strip mine in their state.Rejecting a challenge from four environmental groups, the Utah Board of Oil, Gas & Mining August 2 gave the green light for the strip mine on 440 acres of private land, located near Bryce Canyon National Park. The board upheld an October decision by the Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining, which approved the project after subjecting it to vigorous technical and legal review. In the years to come, the project could be expanded to include several thousand [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-08-11T06:36:58-04:00August 11th, 2010|Comments Off

Rural Georgia blacks demand feds return expropriated land

Descendants of black property owners in Georgia whose land was seized by the federal government at the beginning of World War II are locking horns with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS). The black landowners want the government to give back what it took, and bureaucrats at FWS want to hold on to what they have.At issue is the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, a 2,800-acre preserve in coastal Georgia, about 40 miles south of Savannah. In 1865, a plantation owner deeded the property, known as Harris Neck, to a former slave. Over the years, other former slaves settled in [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-07-19T15:54:16-04:00July 19th, 2010|Comments Off

Alaska lawmakers seek to block new ANWR wilderness areas

Hoping to thwart yet another federal land grab in their state, the Alaska congressional delegation is asking the Interior Department to forego any new wilderness designations in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).In a May 4 letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Senators Lisa Murkowski (R) and Mark Begich (D) and Congressman Don Young (R) expressed their strong opposition to an Interior Department plan to “review” possible new ANWR wilderness designations. The bi-partisan delegation emphasized that only Congress has the authority to designate new areas of ANWR as wilderness.The lawmakers pointed out that Alaska already leads the nation in wilderness areas, [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-06-17T12:16:01-04:00June 17th, 2010|Comments Off

New Congressional initiative to create ‘wildlife corridors’

Two Democratic lawmakers – one from the East, the other from the West – have introduced a bill to create a vast network of wildlife corridors crisscrossing the entire country. Introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) to commemorate Earth Day 2010, the legislation would “protect” wildlife corridors through grants, management plans, and a new federal information program within the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The bill’s sponsors say their legislation will give wildlife the necessary freedom to roam, contribute to the hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation economy, and combat “threats” from urban sprawl and climate change. [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-06-11T08:43:05-04:00June 11th, 2010|Comments Off

Nature Conservancy cashes in on questionable New York land deal

Taxpayers in New York were stunned to find out in early April that the financially-strapped state government in Albany had purchased a 20,000-acre tract of land from the nation’s wealthiest environmental group at a price far above the rural property’s assessed value. According to the New York Post (April 5, 2010), in October 2008 the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) paid the Nature Conservancy (TNC) nearly $10 million for the property in Clinton County. The environmental group had paid just $6.3 million for the Adirondack land in January 2005. Local county and town officials were outraged to learn that the [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-04-20T00:00:00-04:00April 20th, 2010|Comments Off

Environmentalists seek to block BLM land sale for Idaho mine

The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is seriously considering selling over 1,100 acres of public land to accommodate a promising phosphate mining project in southeastern Idaho.Under the plan, BLM would sell at fair market value 1,142 acres of its vast holdings to J.R. Simplot Co. for the mine, located in the mountains about ten miles east of Soda Springs, Idaho. Simplot would use the phosphate to make fertilizer. In addition to the land it would purchase from BLM, the company is considering a land swap with the adjacent Caribu-Targhee National Forest that would add 400 more acres to [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-04-19T00:00:00-04:00April 19th, 2010|Comments Off

Property rights resolution picks up steam in House

Congressman Paul Broun, M.D., (R-GA) celebrated Constitution Day September 18 by introducing H. Res. 748, a resolution upholding the property rights of all Americans. Broun’s initiative came on the 222nd anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution by the Founding Fathers. While celebrating the anniversary of the Constitution, Broun was quick to point out the mounting threats to one of the document’s most cherished provisions. “Unfortunately, government has grown out of control, and it’s far different today from what our Founders established, he pointed out. “As an original-intent constitutionalist, I believe the federal government was not established to direct [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2009-10-04T17:42:41-04:00October 4th, 2009|Comments Off