Collide-a-scape

So on the one hand, we see the U.S. military accepting of climate change and coexisting peaceably with endangered species.

On the other hand, there’s Utah: a bastion of inanity, where that ol timey sagebrush mentality never dies.

Last year, evidence from a DNA test was thought to have solved one of Utah’s oldest cold cases: the 1934 disappearance of Everett Ruess.  National Geographic Adventure published a big, splashy exclusive on the 75-year old mystery. But some observers, most notably Kevin Jones, Utah’s state archaeologist, had reason to question the findings in the story, including the genetic analysis that seemed to confirm the identity of the discovered bones.

In this Salt Lake Tribune story last summer, Jones continued to air his doubts:

A lot of people threw aside their skepticism with the announcement of the DNA tests. They don’t realize that DNA is just another line of evidence, and can yield mistakes as well.

That infuriated the scientists at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, who did the DNA analysis. One of them, Dennis Van Gerven shot back:

Genetic evidence is not just another kind of evidence. This is the kind of evidence that puts people on death row and takes people off death row.

That quote is going to haunt Van Gerven for some time.

Kevin Jones turned out to be right. Here’s my short profile of him in the current issue of High Country News.

The Utah legislature is fond of symbolic gestures. The latest is a beaut. It’s a resolution from the chamber’s Natural Resources Committee, urging the EPA not to proceed with plans to regulate greenhouse gases

until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.

Mike Noel, a Republican state legislator, elaborated:

This is absolutely — in my mind, this is in fact a conspiracy to limit population not only in this country but across the globe.

Commenters at the Salt Lake Tribune feasted. Here’s a sampling to whet your appetite. One of my favorites:

I hererby surrender my Utah citizenship. I will continue to reside and pay taxes here, but I want to make it absolutely clear that these sub-literate troglodytes do not represent me.

About all those symbolic, nutty resolutions:

Ok let’s see if we can round this all up. So far, the bills offered include exempting Utah from federal firearms laws, exempting Utah from anticipated healthcare, and now, apparently, exempting Utah from physics. All that’s missing for this group is the big red nose and the floppy shoes.

From someone palpably exasperated:

Even if climate change is a hoax like the deniers claim, so what? What if we develop green technology that cleans up the atmosphere, creates jobs, makes renewable clean energy, and makes the world a better place for our children? Why are you know nothing, right wing conspiracy nuts opposed to that???

In Utah, religion is always part of the discussion:

Mormons believe in the most ridiculous, silly fantasies without needing a shred of evidence, yet these Mormon legislators demand “proof” and then ignore the mountains of evidence presented.

The public health issue connection:

If global warming is a total hoax, we are still choking to death along the Wasatch Front on our own fumes this winter. We need to do something serious to stop this. It is already killing people and making people sick. It does not matter whether the thick air is making the globe warmer or not. How much did the carbon companies pay Noel to stage this circus?

There’s hundreds more. Have a read.

A big reason I’m drawn to the Southwest is for its well preserved archaeology. But that doesn’t mean it’s well protected, much less appreciated by native residents or politicians. That said, a cruel irony is that most new sites on public and state land are only discovered when a highway or shopping center or gas pipeline gets built.

In such cases, archaeologists are often working one step ahead of the bulldozer. Excavations are done quick and dirty. Salvage what you can for posterity.

Occasionally, though, a site is so important that even southwestern archaeologists are united (which is not often) in their conviction that preservation should win out over development.  Such is now the case in Utah, where archaeologists are lobbying to keep a proposed rail station in a Salt Lake City suburb from being built over a 3,000 year old “archaic” village site, which was discovered in 2007.

Usually, Utah archaeologists don’t rock the boat. (More on that in a minute.) But preliminary findings from this ancient site reveal the presence of maize. That’s incredible. Most scientists today believe farming didn’t hit the Great Basin until 2,000 years ago. So I can understand why the site is considered so “rare and unique” by members of the Utah Professional Archaeological Council (UPAC). Matthew Seddon, a UPAC member, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the ruins

could reshape our understanding of the development of agriculture in the West.

So UPAC members, who have mobilized on their listserv, are to be applauded for taking the fight to their state legislature. I just wish they had this kind of fight in them when it became clear that Nine Mile Canyon, another rare Utah archaeological treasure, was being overrun by hundreds of oil and gas trucks a day. (To learn how the BLM allowed that to happen, see my story here in High Country News.)

I guess its easier taking on a suburban developer than the BLM or the oil and gas industry.

Remember those controversial Resource Management Plans in Utah that the BLM rammed through during Bush’s final months? I covered the story here.

The federal land plans must be on increasingly shaky ground because the Utah State Legislature has drafted a resolution expressing its strong support for the way BLM handled them.

My favorite line in the Resolution:

WHEREAS, there was no cutting of corners or abridgement of processes in preparing the resource management plans

Not long after I posted this about a Utah state legislative resolution to keep hydraulic fracturing unregulated, I got wind of a similar effort underway in Wyoming.

What a coincidence:  the separate bills are moving through their respective chambers today.

Could this be the stirrings of another sagebrush rebellion?  Last week, Mike Noel, a Utah state legislator (R-Knab), offered to lead the charge.

This aint the 1970s, though. The demographics and electoral politics of the West are much different today (except in Utah, perhaps). So we’ll have to wait and see if there is any appetite for Son of Sagebrush: the sequel.

The Utah state legislature is getting odder by the day. Recently, it passed a  bill that prohibited wildlife from being injected with birth control substances–except in special circumstances and then only by authorized personnel. I explained the reason here.

Today,  a senate committee of the state legislature  is taking up consideration of a bill that

urges Congress to preserve the exemption for hydraulic fracturing in the Safe Drinking Water Act and to refrain from passing legislation that would remove the hydraulic fracturing exemption.

Now why would Utah pols want to do that, just as evidence is emerging that ground water in the West is being contaminated by mysterious drilling fluids used widely by energy companies?

If the animal rights crowd thought they could skulk around the Utah wilds and sterilize the big game, they better think twice, because the hunters there are on to them: According to the AP:

Some sportsmen have expressed worry that animal rights groups will begin giving birth control to deer so their population levels will reach a point that they can’t be legally hunted.

Not taking any chances, the Utah state Legislature passed this bill today, which allows only authorized persons to inject wildlife with birth control.

Now let’s be clear: the mule deer in Utah are threatened on many fronts, from habitat loss to chronic wasting disease.

But animal rights advocates armed with birth control darts?