My Page: Nathaniel Hoffman
Where Xutos gets a close up view of commie think too
Chasing Free Marketeers in Havanawww.flickr.com
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Just got back from 10 days in Havana... The Boise Weekly bought me a plane ticket down there to chase Idaho Gov. Butch Otter around as he tried to sell potatoes and other Idaho agricultural goods to Cuba. I wrote a story about the trip last week and have another one coming out on Wednesday.
Click on the banner above to see some pictures from Havana. Here are some impressions of the island...
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Where Xutos goes all elk, all the time
Jones Has Two Weeks to Get Wildlife Off Blackfoot Ranch
Idaho's elk politics are getting heavier as the Legislature fails to bring any more regulation to the growing elk ranching industry and the governor intervenes in a long-standing and well accepted big game management policy.
This story that I just posted to Wild Idaho News, updates the deal that has been reached on Rulon Jones's ranch near Blackfoot. This story is changing on a daily basis, but you can read the latest updates here.
In reporting this story I spoke to four different wildlife biologists in state and federal agencies who all agree that the risk of disease within captive cervid operations is too great to allow wild populations to be exposed. The Idaho elk industry rightly argues that its herds have been largely free of disease, but it is a cost benefit analysis and it is not clear to me that Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has done a thorough risk analysis yet.
In April, Xutos will branch out into other topics, but I have become facinated with elk politics for the moment.
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The plot thickens
Otter Gets Involved in Elk QuagmireAn update on the domestic elk, moose and deer trapped at Rulon Jones' Blackfoot Mountain ranch has been posted at Wild Idaho News.
On Thursday, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter entered the fray, asking state game wardens to stand down and offer alternatives to killing the wildlife that has been behind Jones' fences all winter. Check the link for more details.
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Where Xutos uncovers public records of death
Wild and stock elk face winter threats behind fences
A story I just finished for the Wild Idaho News (WIN) shows that wild ungulates, as well their domestic cousins caught behind high fences during the winter months face the threat of starvation.
East Idaho elk rancher Rulon Jones is wintering at least five domestic bull elk on his ranch, Idaho Department of Fish and Game's Southeast Regional Supervisor Mark Gamblin said, though he appears to be feeding them.
Idaho State Department of Agriculture checked on Jones's domestic elk and determined that they are getting enough feed, said John Chatburn, deputy administrator of animal industries at ISDA.
“If a domestic animal is starved to death that would be a violation of the animal cruelty law,” Chatburn said.
Domestic elk have been left on game farms over winter and not survived, however.
ISDA records examined by WIN show that Sen. Jeff Siddoway, a sheep and elk rancher from Terreton, has lost at least five elk from 2004 to 2006 from starvation over the winter.
In March 2004, ISDA death records show, 4- and 9-year old males starved on Siddoway’s ranch. And in January and February 2006, three more elk starved, including one with pneumonia.
Siddoway said he tried to get the animals out before winter, but could not locate them.
“We couldn’t find them,” he said. “The place is too big and we couldn’t get ‘em in for the winter.”
He said they put out hay, but the animals died anyway.
“The way we found ‘em was the coyotes had got to them. They made tracks to them just like water forms a river,” Siddoway said.
At a cost of $1,000 to $6,000 for each animal, it is in a ranchers best interest to protect his stock, Siddoway added.
Chatburn was not aware of the starved elk on Siddoway’s ranch.
Keep reading for more on the wildlife stuck on Jones's ranch.
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Where Xutos captures the sound of smell
Former Internees Still Out of CAFO Debate
I used to listen to KQED’s Pacific Time on my evening drive over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. It’s a public radio show that takes the issues of the day and explores them from an Asian American perspective. My favorite part of the show was the way the former host, Nguyen Qui Duc, would transition from one segment to the next, mashing two seemingly unrelated stories, say Japanese punk music and Mongolian foreign policy, into a cogent radio program.
So when I heard that a former Japanese internment camp in Idaho is under threat from a 20,000 cow heifer operation planned nearby I thought is was a perfect subject for the show. The story presented a host of seemingly impossible themes inside one basic development conflict.
You can listen to it here.
But the story continues.
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Where Xutos ruminates on a kosher kill
Dead is Not Always Just Dead
A hunter, a rancher and a rabbi walk into a bar.
This may sound like the start of a bad domestic cervidae joke, but it’s not far off from a conversation I had Thursday with Gary Queen, past president of the Idaho Elk Breeders Association.
I spoke to Queen on the fourth floor of the Idaho Statehouse after his industry, the farmed elk industry, staved off new regulations on importation, fencing and the proper use of its animals.
The Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee did pass a bill that lets the Idaho State Department of Agriculture license elk farms and potentially shut them down. Elk farmers supported the licensing measure though it’s a far cry from what they have requested in the past: permission to keep more game species behind fences, watered down penalties and even less regulation.
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State of the Statehouse
Energy Policy Creeps Forward in Idaho
The only committee in Idaho’s Legislature with an assumed expertise in energy policy rehashed global warming and rising sea levels again Wednesday before putting the kibosh on a bipartisan effort to promote green building technology.
The House Environment, Energy and Technology Committee held a resolution brought by Democrats that encouraged policies to decrease the state’s dependence on fossil fuels and move to clean energy sources.
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nose to nose with Idaho elk ranching
Chronic Problems on Elk Ranches
From the dank basement of the Idaho Legislature, regulating elk ranching is a fairly academic activity. Elk farming is a business like any other, in many lawmakers eyes. Even more, it is an agricultural pursuit, subject to the whims of nature and thus deserving of extra support from our society.
But documents obtained by the Wild Idaho News that I have been analyzing point to chronic problems on the large, private elk ranches now cropping up in historic Idaho elk habitat. Inadequate fences and rugged terrain make it nearly impossible to keep wildlife and domestic animals separated. In the eyes of many in the elk industry, this is not such a big deal: their animals are pure elk and have been largely disease free, they argue.
But to the public, and the hunting public in particular, contact between wild and domesticated ungulates is a major disaster. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is extremely concerned about disease risk and genetic deterioration to Idaho's wild elk herds, and with good reason.
As lawmakers debate further restrictions on the elk industry (or loosening restrictions), I have been writing about the debate for the Wild Idaho News, a hunting and fishing paper here in Boise. Check out the first story in the Nose to Nose series here on Blog Xutos.
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Where Xutos psychoanalyzes other cineplex patrons
Watching Borat in Boise
Everyone else has already written about Borat. If you are still wondering how the film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was received in Boise, don't read this. I'm sure it made tons of money.
But if you care what Xutos thinks is funny... if you've read the other stories on this site and are thinking... "where is he going with this project," if you saw the movie and have a little question mark somewhere in your brain, by all means... click.
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