President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet picks for the Departments of Agriculture and Interior will have big implications in the West.

Obama himself today called former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack (agriculture) and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar (interior) "guardians" of the nation's land -- land we're sort of attached to here in Rockies.

Today, there's much abuzz across the Web about the picks, so here is a lineup of some of the most interesting and timely information and commentary about the region's new "land lords."
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FIRST AND ONLY ON NEWWEST.NET

Environmentalists see the Blue Tide as more of a Green Tide, and they not only have their hopes up, but their sleeves rolled up.

A huge coalition of green groups, 98 in all, has just finished a massive analysis of the current regulatory situation governing the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service amd prepared a lengthy quick fix list to President-elect Obama's transition team.

Based on this action-packed letter, Obama's choices for Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Agriculture will have a lot of homework to do long before they start work in January. [more]

BROTHERS MAKING THEIR MARK FOR COLORADO

The Denver Post is reporting this morning that Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) is now the leading candidate for Secretary of the Interior. If so, he has bypassed early leaders Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Interior Deputy Secretary John Berry.

The Post also reports that Congressman John Salazar (D-CO.), Ken's older brother, has been on the short list for Secretary of Agriculture, but now he is more likely to be appointed to his brother's job in the U.S. Senate by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, also a Democrat [more]

NEW WEST BOOK REVIEW

How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America
By Carl Abbott
University of New Mexico Press, 357 pages, $34.95

The view of the West as a vast expanse of untrammeled nature is an old and popular one, but it is also a mythic one. Urbanization in the region is nothing new. Cities conquered the American West long ago.

It’s a myth that Carl Abbott, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, takes on in his book How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America.

“In our popular understanding,” writes Abbott, “the West used to be a place of isolated individuals and small groups in scarcely formed communities – mountain men, prospectors, Oregon Trail families, and homesteaders living in very little houses on a very big prairie.”

Abbott challenges the view of the rugged frontier and replaces it with an image of a metropolitan West at the center of a changing region, then and now. [more]

Winter's here; grab your gear

Bogus Basin Ski Resort, Boise's local ski hill, will open for the 2008-2009 winter season Wednesday, December 17. Recent storms have delivered enough snow for the front of the mountain to open. Chairlifts 1, 2, 4, 7 and Easy Rider will run.

Steve Shake, V.P. of mountain operations, said, “We’ll open more of the mountain, including night skiing and riding, as we receive more snow.”

Since the weather outside is frightful, the potential for full mountain skiing soon looks delightful.

Operating hours for Wednesday thru Friday will be: 10:00am-4:30 pm.

The J.R. Simplot, Pioneer and Frontier Point lodges will be open. Bogus Basin Ski & Snowboard School will offer its full complement of lessons. [more]

snowblog

The Northern Rockies' extended autumn is about to be buried in snow.

The National Weather Service forecasts a strong winter storm and an arctic cold front moving into the region this weekend, potentially dumping up to 20 inches of snow in some spots and driving temperatures well below zero. High winds, too. [more]

News brief

President-elect Barack Obama today announced former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle as his pick for secretary of health and human services and Nobel prize-winning Steven Chu as his energy secretary.

Chu, who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has done extensive work with alternative energy and is a champion of reducing energy use. He has limited experience in both the private and political arenas, which some experts say is a great thing for the administration.

Lisa P. Jackson, chief of staff for New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine will be the head of the EPA and Carol M. Browner (EPA head under Bill Clinton) is apparently poised to take on a new environment/climate change/energy White House job.

Up next are the two biggies for the West: Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Agriculture (or as NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof would have it, the "Secretary of Food")

According to the Associated Press, the short list for Interior includes: Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz.; Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif. and John Berry, National Zoo director, former executive director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

And, for Agriculture: Dennis Wolff, Pennsylvania agriculture secretary; Tom Buis, president of National Farmers Union; Former Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas; Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo.; Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D. and Former Rep. Jill Long Thompson, D-Ind. And no, Michael Pollan doesn't want the gig. [more]

Lame Duck Loopholes

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today announced the final version of a sweeping rule change to the Endangered Species Act that would make it easier to go through with federal projects regardless of their impact on endangered or threatened species. [more]

SOME OVERSIGHT NEEDED

I warn you upfront. This is going to be a bit of rant that I usually try to avoid in this column, but with this subject, I can't resist.

I don't know how many readers watch hunting shows on the cable channels. I watch them, but I'll be doing a lot less of it going forward unless somebody steps up and kills these "Chumming TV" programs that give hunting a bad image, even among hunters.

And anti-hunting groups must love watching these distasteful programs and see hunters desecrate their own image. It makes their job easier. [more]

Canyon County, Idaho

Canyon County Commissioner Steve Rule used his government email account to distribute an email on Dec. 2 comparing Michelle Obama to a poisonous black widow spider.

NewWest.Net/Boise obtained a paper copy of the email and has confirmed it was sent electronically. According to its header, Rule received the email as a forward, then used his official county email address to forward it to 26 people, including many at their Canyon County government email accounts.

The email has two photographs: one of a black widow spider, and one of Michelle Obama holding her older daughter’s hand, taken on Nov. 4 at President-elect Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago.

Mrs. Obama’s dress has a distinctive red pattern on its front. The spider’s red mark resembles that pattern.

The email reads (emphasis, punctuation and capitalization reproduced exactly): [more]