05/12/08 Coyote Trouble & Wild Sky Reality

Coyote Trouble & Wild Sky Reality plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Nearly six years after it was first introduced, a bill to create a Wild Sky Wilderness northeast of Seattle has become law. President Bush signed a bill last Thursday making Wild Sky the first new wilderness area in Washington State in nearly a quarter-century. Wild Sky, first introduced in 2002, covers approximately 106,000 acres of low-elevation forest on the west slope of the Cascades. The wilderness designation will block development and other economic activity in a sprawling area north of U.S. Highway 2 that includes habitat for bears, bald eagles and other wildlife, as well as streams, hiking trails and other recreation. Coyotes have long captured the spirit of the American West. Their lonely, haunting howl reflects the loner existence of the cowboys. But the coyote is becoming a problem for some Southern California residents. They have been threatening small children, even to the point of trying to drag several toddlers off while their mothers try to scare the animals away. Chris Powell with the National Park Service. POWELL: People have lost the wisdom of how to live with this wildlife and so when they do see wildlife, they stop, they want to pose their family with them, they give them food as a handout and those are the types of behaviors that really get us in trouble with wildlife. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. Me thinks they doth protest too much. In other words, the one squealing the loudest usually has the most to lose. The Federal Reserve's proposal to regulate the nation's credit card industry has been met with nothing less than scorn and resentment by the banking industry stating that the ones who would be hurt the most by the proposed regulations would be consumers themselves. Yeah, right. But it was worth a try, it sounded sincere. Well, almost. The new rules would create a baseline for fairness in credit card operations, making it more difficult for lenders to raise interest rates and put a stop to the double cycle billing which so many lenders practice. Years back the industry was under greater control but banks complained that the controls were hurting their profits and the government removed the regulations. The key phrase here is "their profits". Credit card companies are in the business of making money, that's what they do, don't be fooled. I'm afraid for most of us the cavalry will be coming too late to save the fort. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.