9-12-09
September Newsletter

4-09
Norfolk Testimony

April Newsletter

9-01-08
Latest Newsletter
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5-14-08
Latest Newsletter
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2-28-08
Latest Newsletter
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11-5-07
Latest Newsletter
Page  1  2  3  4  5

9-13-07
Grand Island Independent Article

6-2007
NEWSLETTER in PDF
Page 1  2  3  4  5

4-2007
LB 701 (AM 872)
Nebraskans First Opposition Testimony
PDF Page 1 2

2-2007
NEWSLETTER in PDF
Page 1 2 3 4 5

9-2006
NEWSLETTER in PDF
Page 1 2 3

5-2006
NEWSLETTER in PDF
Page 1 2 3 4 5

11-2005
NEWSLETTER in PDF
Page 1  2  3  4  5  6

6-16-2005

Latest newsletter (pdf format)

10-28-2004

Don Adams speech from the pro-irrigators rally in Cambridge, NE Aug. 25th.

Page 1  2  3  4  5

Testimony on LB 962

Here is the newsletter from December 2003.
Page 1  2  3  4  5  6  7

Retired US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist
said Nebraskans First is on target
Here is the article which was recently in the GI Independent

Here is the latest current events bulletin.

Here is the 2 page testimony submitted to the House of Representatives Resources Committee
 

"Critical Habitat" Represents Threat

On June 12, 2001, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) published notice that it is proposing to designate major portions of the Platte, Loup and Niobrara rivers as critical habitat for the piping plover.

In its propaganda touting their proposal, the FWS is desperately trying to convince us that a critical habitat designation is no big deal and not to worry. According to the FWS, designating land and water as critical habitat poses no threat to farmers, ranchers and landowners in or near the designated areas. Don't worry -- be happy, they say. Just trust us.

In fact, a critical habitat designation is a major regulatory event which certainly can and has caused serious harm to irrigators and private property owners. A critical habitat designation arms the Department of Interior (DOI) and the FWS with far more regulatory firepower than does an endangered or threatened species listing.  A critical habitat designation allows the DOI and FWS to wield oversight and control over large areas of land and waterways, without having to address specific
actual and direct harm to a species of bird, fish or bug. It allows the FWS to set up a kind of huge biological, hydrological and geophysical laboratory and to fool around with it for however long they want under what they call "adaptive management".

Incredibly, the Endangered Species Act even allows critical habitat to be designated that is outside the area actually occupied by the species. With this open ended standard, it is easy for the FWS to move in and gain control over huge areas. The FWS's current intermeddling into Nebraska irrigation practices in the Central Platte River Basin, (the so-called "Cooperative Agreement" program -- CAP) is being leveraged based on whooping crane critical habitat designated back in 1978. The CAP is seeking massive additional Platte River flows, in large part from the hides of Nebraska irrigators, for habitat recovery. This federal intervention was initiated on a FWS determination that current operation of the Kingsley Dam was jeopardizing the critical habitat of the whooping crane downstream in a corridor basically between Lexington and Grand Island. Because, in fact, only a handful of maverick or confused whooping cranes actually visit the designated critical habitat corridor each migrating season, it would be too much of a scientific stretch for the FWS to say that Kingsley Dam operations were
directly jeopardizing the species. But, it was easy for them to say that critical habitat was being jeopardized. From that determination flows all the federal regulatory intervention. Just the first ten year increment (three are proposed) of the CAP final recovery plan, if adopted, will cost taxpayers somewhere around 140 million dollars while at the same time forcing more regulations and restrictions on Central Platte River Basin irrigators.

In an attempt to allay our fears, The FWS then says that private landowners and water users who do not receive federal funding or require a federal license would not be affected. In fact, The FWS threatened back in May 2000 that individual water users who receive Department of Agriculture funds for farm and conservations programs could be vulnerable under the Endangered Species Act. This expansion of the so-called federal "nexus" test should send chills up and down the spines of all Nebraska farmers and ranchers.

After stressing that no harm will result from a critical habitat designation, The FWS then says "certain areas may be excluded from designation if the economic impacts to such area would be too severe. I guess if economic harm (reduced farm income, lost jobs, etc.) is merely "severe" then the critical habitat designation and its accompanying harm would be o.k.

Why, sixteen years after the piping plover was first listed as threatened, is the FWS now targeting areas as critical habitat? Consider this: By tacking on the plover critical habitat to the existing whooping crane critical habitat, the FWS can gain regulatory control over the entire Platte River, from the Wyoming and Colorado borders all the way to the Missouri River. About seventy miles of the Niobrara River would be impacted, as well as roughly fifty miles of the Loup River.

All Nebraska irrigators, farmers, ranchers, landowners and sand and gravel producers must recognize that the formal designation of critical habitat for the piping plover is, in fact, a big deal that, if adopted, will sooner or later impact their water and private property rights. We must not be lulled into the warm and fuzzy complacency the FWS would like us to believe is real. We know better.