Untitled Document

Thursday, September 28, 2006

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Total Clips: 12

	Date	Outlet
President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today	09/28/2006	Gainesville Sun
President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today	09/28/2006	Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Bush won't be very visible during area visit: Will travel to Hoover after airport arrival	09/28/2006	Birmingham News
President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today	09/28/2006	Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
Sighting of rare bird in Florida launches controversy	09/28/2006	Ocala Star-Banner
President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today	09/28/2006	Gadsden Times
Anti-terrorism course scheduled for Midwest	09/28/2006	Poultry Today
Rare woodpecker gets the bird from developers	09/28/2006	Miami Herald
Bransby to speak to Bush about alternative energy	09/28/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
Researchers see rare ivory-billed woodpecker in Florida swamps, but fail to get photographs	09/28/2006	ESPN
Auburn President Visits Pike County	09/28/2006	WTVY-TV
Auburn professor will brief president today	09/28/2006	Montgomery Advertiser


President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today 09/28/2006 Gainesville Sun Associated Press		Return to Top
President Bush will discuss energy policy in Hoover this afternoon before heading to Birmingham for a lunchtime fundraiser with Gov. Riley. The President has called for more investment in alternative energy sources. Bush will speak at the Hoover Public Safety Center, where he is expected to highlight the city's use of an ethanol fuel blend to run 137 city vehicles. The fundraiser with Riley will be held at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex. Auburn University agriculture professor David Bransby will brief the President on the potential use of switchgrass for biofuel production. Bush mentioned its use as an alternative fuel source in his State of the Union speech in January.
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President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today 09/28/2006 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Associated Press		Return to Top
BIRMINGHAM -- President Bush will discuss energy policy in Hoover this afternoon before heading to Birmingham for a lunchtime fundraiser with Gov. Riley. The President has called for more investment in alternative energy sources. Bush will speak at the Hoover Public Safety Center, where he is expected to highlight the city's use of an ethanol fuel blend to run 137 city vehicles. The fundraiser with Riley will be held at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex. Auburn University agriculture professor David Bransby will brief the President on the potential use of switchgrass for biofuel production. Bush mentioned its use as an alternative fuel source in his State of the Union speech in January.
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Bush won't be very visible during area visit: Will travel to Hoover after airport arrival 09/28/2006 Birmingham News Dawn Kent, staff writer		Return to Top
Brief road closings, flashes of a passing motorcade and an extra show of police force are likely to be the only evidence most residents will see of President Bush's visit to Birmingham and Hoover today. Officials, citing security concerns, said little about logistical details, but Bush is expected to arrive mid-morning on Air Force One at the Birmingham International Airport. He will be met by Gov. Bob Riley. They will travel to the Hoover Public Safety Center for an 11:10 a.m. briefing on energy, followed by a statement from Bush at 12:05 p.m. At 1:20 p.m., Bush will participate in a fund-raiser for Riley's campaign at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. Neither event is open to the public. The Hoover briefing will highlight the city's use of an ethanol fuel blend to power 137 vehicles, including a Chevrolet Tahoe police fleet. Bush's energy policy includes tax incentives for increased research and production of alternative fuels. Auburn University Professor David Bransby said he is participating in the briefing and plans to speak about efforts to expand ethanol production by using materials such as wood chips and switchgrass. Auburn has a 20-year history of research with switchgrass and other biomass materials for energy and plans to invest an additional $3 million into that work. Bransby, a self-described technical guy, said he was surprised to be tapped for a meeting with Bush, instead of an Auburn administrator. "I'm elated," he said. "I'm obviously going to tell the president about what Auburn University is going to do in terms of his Advanced Energy Initiative and let him know that we're going to play our role." Others participating in the briefing, Bransby said, are Riley, Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos, Hoover Fleet Management Director Dave Lindon and Phillip Wiedmeyer of Central Alabama Clean Cities. Hoover's flex-fuel vehicles fill up at an E85 pumping station built in 2004 with a grant from Central Alabama Clean Cities. E85 is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Birmingham and Hoover police are helping provide security for the president. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office's SWAT team and motor scouts are a part of the detail when any dignitary, especially the president, comes to the county, said sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Randy Christian. Interstate closings also are likely as the president is passing through, but they should be brief, said state trooper Sgt. Tim Sartain. "They move along in that motorcade," he said. Near the Hoover Public Safety Center, Valleydale Road will be closed during the president's arrival and departure, Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said. U.S. 31 is expected to remain open. Derzis could not provide specific times but said the closures would happen sometime after 10 a.m., avoiding the morning rush hour.
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President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today 09/28/2006 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer Associated Press		Return to Top
BIRMINGHAM - President Bush will discuss energy policy in Hoover this afternoon before heading to Birmingham for a lunchtime fundraiser with Gov. Riley. The President has called for more investment in alternative energy sources. Bush will speak at the Hoover Public Safety Center, where he is expected to highlight the city's use of an ethanol fuel blend to run 137 city vehicles. The fundraiser with Riley will be held at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex. Auburn University agriculture professor David Bransby will brief the President on the potential use of switchgrass for biofuel production. Bush mentioned its use as an alternative fuel source in his State of the Union speech in January.
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Sighting of rare bird in Florida launches controversy 09/28/2006 Ocala Star-Banner Craig Pittman, St. Petersburg Times		Return to Top
The news last year that researchers had rediscovered the rare ivory billed woodpecker in the swamps of Arkansas set off a storm of controversy. On Tuesday, researchers led by an Auburn University professor said they have found the elusive ivory bill, too - this time in the swamps along the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle. And once again the news of a possible sighting of the bird believed to be extinct since the 1940s has touched off a flurry of controversy. The wilderness where the Auburn team says it found the birds - at least a pair and possibly three - is near the site of a proposed $300 million airport to be built on 4,000 acres donated by the St. Jose Co., the state's largest private landowner. St. Joe hopes to develop the 70,000 acres of forest and swamp around the site. The Federal Aviation Administration approved the airport last week. Auburn University professor Geoffrey Hill said bloggers already have accused his research team of announcing the discovery just to try to block the airport, which has been opposed by a majority of local voters and by environmental groups. "Honest to God, I didn't even hear about this airport until today," Hill said. "I'm a scientist, not a politician." Hill said researchers saw the birds and have sound recordings, but no pictures. They say they first spotted it by accident in May 2005. Hill and two research assistants, Tyler Hicks and Brian Rolek, were paddling kayaks along the Choctawhatchee when suddenly Rolek saw a flash of wings and blurted out, "What was THAT?" Hill asked Rolek to describe the bird he had seen. As he heard it, Hill was not happy. People who claim to have spotted an ivory bill are sometimes regarded as kooks or frauds. "I knew it could lead to trouble," Hill said. Still, he said, "you have a duty to follow forward and do something about it." The news that the ivory bill might make its home near the airport site electrified the project's opponents. "We certainly need to do everything we can to make sure its habitat is secure," said Melanie Shepherdson of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Until there is better proof, though, federal officials will take no action regarding the airport or anything else. "Somebody will say this is a great way to stop an airport, but at this point it's difficult to speculate" what effect a confirmed discovery might have, said Tom McKenzie of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. St. Joe spokesman Jerry Ray expressed doubt that the discovery would affect the airport, because the site "is clear-cut land or young planted pine plantations, habitat that is not suitable for ivory-billed woodpeckers," he wrote in an e-mail. He did not address the surrounding 70,000 acres. Known as the Holy Grail of dedicated birders, the ivory bill is one of the largest species of woodpecker in the world. It once ranged across the Southeast. Sometimes called the Lord God Bird, the ivory bill was known for the two-note boom of its bill as it ripped into tree bark in search of edible grubs and beetle larvae. The last conclusive sighting in the United States was in 1944 in Louisiana. Prized by American Indians who believed that its chisel-sized bill possessed magical powers, the bird was hunted in the late 1800s for its feathers, popular on ladies hats. Meanwhile logging felled thousands of acres of forest, wiping out most of the old-growth trees where ivory bills like to nest. Florida was the bird's North American stronghold because of the state's warm climate and swampy terrain. But the last confirmed sighting in the state occurred near Orlando in 1924. The last conclusive sighting in the United States was in 1944 in Louisiana. Frequent reports that the bird had been spotted again were usually dismissed because a common relative, the pileated woodpecker, resembles it. The ivory bill is larger, about 20 inches tall with a wingspan of almost a yard and dramatic plumage of red, black and white. Last year, though, Cornell University researchers announced they had video of an ivory bill flying through Arkansas' Big Woods area. But skeptics have questioned the blurry video, and Cornell researchers plan to return to Arkansas to get better evidence. In Florida, Hill led a small team back into the Choctawhatchee's swamps searching for proof. The Auburn group, which included a Canadian expert on bird recordings, searched the Choctawhatchee basin off and on through May of this year. The broad, shallow river, which flows 170 miles from Alabama to Choctawhatchee Bay, is known as one of the best in Florida for canoeing because so much of the land along its banks is still wilderness. The state owns about 60,000 acres of it, and that's where the searchers concentrated their efforts, north of a one-diner town named Bruce. "We moved through the area daily in kayaks and by foot, looking and listening for ivory billed woodpeckers," they wrote this week in the magazine Avian Conservation and Ecology. Rolek camped in the swamp for days on end, Hill said, subsisting on little but spaghetti and hope. Because there were usually no more than two researchers at a time wading through the swamp, they were unable to stake out 100 or so potential nesting sites, Hill said. With better funding from Auburn, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the nearby Nokuse Plantation research center, Hill intends to bring a larger group back this fall and try again for photos or something even more definite. "It's not a phantom," Hill said. "It's a vertebrate animal that lives in the forest. There are eggs, feathers, poop DNA." Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
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President Bush to visit Hoover and Birmingham today 09/28/2006 Gadsden Times Associated Press		Return to Top
President Bush will discuss energy policy in Hoover this afternoon before heading to Birmingham for a lunchtime fundraiser with Gov. Riley. The President has called for more investment in alternative energy sources. Bush will speak at the Hoover Public Safety Center, where he is expected to highlight the city's use of an ethanol fuel blend to run 137 city vehicles. The fundraiser with Riley will be held at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex. Auburn University agriculture professor David Bransby will brief the President on the potential use of switchgrass for biofuel production. Bush mentioned its use as an alternative fuel source in his State of the Union speech in January.
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Anti-terrorism course scheduled for Midwest 09/28/2006 Poultry Today		Return to Top
Dr. Bob Norton, professor of veterinary microbiology and biosecurity in the AU Department of Poultry Science is quoted in this article. ARLINGTON, Va. -- An anti-terrorism training course for the agriculture and food industries will be held Oct. 17-18 in Columbus, Ohio, the first such course scheduled for the Midwest. The course is being presented by the Ohio Livestock Coalition in partnership with the Animal Agriculture Alliance and the Law Enforcement Academic Research Network Inc. The theme of the training is Managing Activist/Terrorist Threats to the Food, Agricultural and Animal Industries: A Common Sense Approach. The course will focus on the threats that both international and domestic terrorists, especially animal rights extremists, pose to animal-related industries and their customers from retail outlets to restaurants to food service companies to animal research facilities. The alliance notes that the FBI estimates damage from eco- and animal rights-extremists at more than $200 million in recent years and currently has more than 150 open cases in this area. "Anyone responsive for securing food and agriculture facilities from internal and external threats along with protecting their workforce and the public should get training that will help them effectively execute this task," said Dr. Bob Norton, professor of veterinary microbiology and biosecurity in the Auburn University Department of Poultry Science.
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Rare woodpecker gets the bird from developers 09/28/2006 Miami Herald Fred Grimm		Return to Top
Heaven knows, Geoffrey Hill was braced for controversy. Professor Hill had witnessed the outburst last year, after Cornell University ornithologists proffered evidence that the supposedly extinct Lord God Bird, aka the Ivory-billed woodpecker, was surviving in the woods of east Arkansas. And, Lord God, a mighty ruckus shook the birding community. Ivory-billed believers and ivory-billed skeptics went at each other like fighting cocks. Bird blogs roiled with charges of lying and deception and fraud -- nasty accusations that jolted the image of folks given to long hours of quiet, contemplative observation. ''I knew it would be controversial,'' Hill said Wednesday, the day after Avian Conservation and Ecology published his evidence that the Lord God Bird, last spotted in Florida in 1924, was alive and nesting in the North Florida woods along the Choctawhatchee River. POWERFUL DEVELOPERS Indeed, all hell broke out. Except it was the nature of the controversy that took the Auburn University professor of biological sciences by surprise. The feathers he ruffled weren't just birders. Hill and his woodpecker commandos had fouled the nest of builders and developers and the mighty St. Joe Co., the state's largest landowner with 1.1 million acres and an outfit not ready to relinquish the title of Lord God to some loony bird. His journal publication came just 11 days after the Federal Aviation Administration had approved a 4,000-acre airport -- 700 acres bigger than Miami International -- too close for comfort to the Choctawhatchee. NEW AIRPORT PLANNED The sudden appearance of the Ivory-billed woodpecker looked like a commie tree-hugger conspiracy to politicians who were having a tough time already defending the notion of spending $300 million to replace the Panama City-Bay County Airport, 30 miles away. Critics were complaining that the Panama City airport has seen a dwindling number of passengers over the last five years. That it was down to just a dozen commercial flights a day. That the new airport would devour 2,000 acres of wetlands and lead to the development of thousands more surrounding acres for new homes and shopping centers. The airport boosters already were fending off charges that the real rationale for the new airport was to serve the interests of the St. Joe Co., with 70,000 acres, thereabouts. Then Hill tossed an endangered, back-from-extinction, federally protected miracle bird into the debate. ''And now I'm being accused of using the Ivory bill to stop the airport,'' Hill said Wednesday. ''Honest to God, I had no knowledge of this. Until yesterday, I was living in an academic world. I read bird journals. I was just a biologist obsessed with finding evidence that this bird still existed.'' Hill and his team said they had come across signs of the Ivory bill along the sleepy Choctawhatchee last year. BRINK OF EXTINCTION One of his bird experts said he made a sighting. They recorded its distinctive ''double-knock'' as it pecked away. One of the largest species of woodpeckers in the world -- if it still exists -- the big bird had been hunted into oblivion for plumes early in the 1900s while timber companies wiped out its cypress habitats. Its range, which once extended from South Florida to Texas, steadily receded until the last known sighting (at least until the Arkansas find last year) was in Louisiana in 1944. The professor said Wednesday the controversy that erupted over the Arkansas report caused him to keep it quiet until this week. After consulting with the beleaguered ornithologists at Cornell, determined to avoid their mistakes, he led other expeditions to the Choctawhatchee and collected more information before going public. ''I knew I was stepping in a hornets nest,'' Hill said. But the biologist had no idea just which species of hornet would be going berserk.
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Bransby to speak to Bush about alternative energy 09/28/2006 Opelika-Auburn News Amy Weaver		Return to Top
Auburn University Professor David Bransby is so well versed on alternative fuels, he can talk about it any time, any place and to anyone. Today, he gets his chance to bend the ear of President George W. Bush. The president is in Alabama to attend a fundraiser in Birmingham for Gov. Bob Riley. At 11 a.m., Bush will hold a private briefing in Hoover with only a handful of Alabama leaders, including Bransby, to discuss alternative fuels. City and state officials are expected to talk about Hoover's use of alternative-fuel vehicles. The city of Hoover uses E85, an ethanol-fuel blend, to power 137 city vehicles. Other vehicles and equipment run on biodiesel. Bransby is going to talk about years of research at Auburn. The briefing is not open to the public and is only expected to last about 30 minutes, but Bransby, a longtime agriculture professor and researcher, is going to take advantage of every moment he has with the president. "I've got it all worked out," he said. "I just want to make it clear to the president that his State of the Union address really turned this country around." Bush mentioned the potential use of switchgrass for biofuel production, such as ethanol, in his January speech to the nation. Bransby is a renowned expert in switchgrass as an alternative fuel source. "Auburn University has been a leader in this kind of research and we plan to continue to be this way," Bransby added. He said research at Auburn in the coming years will be focused on producing ethanol from products like wood, chicken manure and switchgrass. Bransby said the technology being developed at Auburn is close to being finished and commercialized. "I think we can do it within two or three years," he said. This summer, President Ed Richardson committed $3 million specifically to create the new Auburn Alternative Fuels Initiative as of Oct. 1, the start of the 2006-07 fiscal year. The initiative will capitalize on decades of research in AU's forestry, engineering and agricultural areas. Biomass, technology for conversion plus biofuel technology, and switchgrass are key areas of that research, which complement the President’s Advanced Energy Initiative. Bransby estimates about 100 plants produce ethanol in this country using corn grain. That number is growing rapidly, which could have an adverse affect on the farming industry. The demand for corn will push the price up, which will hurt beef and chicken. "It will change agriculture," he said. "That's what it will do." Using alternatives such as wood, chicken manure or switchgrass will ease the burden on corn and with additional plants across the country, will be able to supply it to more people, Bransby said. Such efforts are steps this country needs to take to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. Bransby believes the United States can peacefully break its ties with the Middle East and Venezuela in the next 10 to 20 years. "I have felt this is important for 20 years and now everyone else does," Bransby said. "The president) is on to it. I want to support him and give him some feedback on someone who’s been involved in this for a long time. And tell him that Auburn is committed to this research."
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Researchers see rare ivory-billed woodpecker in Florida swamps, but fail to get photographs 09/28/2006 ESPN Melissa Nelson, AP		Return to Top
Similar AP/UPI stories appeared in the Panama city News Herald, Daily Texan, Examiner-Atlanta, Akron Beacon Journal, Chickasha Daily Express (OK), Perham Enterprise Bulletin and New York Mills Herald (MN), Post Chronicle (NAT), The Olympian (WA), Hastings Star Gazette (MN), Park Rapids Enterprise (MN), Concord Monitor (NH), Wadena Pioneer Journal, Detroit Lakes Tribune, Memphis Flyer, Jamestown Sun (ND), and on WFLX-TV (West Palm Beach, FL), KAIT-TV (AR), KLRT-TV and other print and broadcast outlets. Previous coverage includes: Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Los Angeles Times, Lexington Herald-Leader, Press-Register, Daily Comet, Red Nova, Bradenton Herald, Sun-Herald (Miss.) The Ledger (Fla.), Sarasota Herald Tribune, Citrus County Chronicle, The Day, Jupiter Courier, Belleville News Democrat, Tri-City Herald, New York Post, The Tribune, San Jose Mercury news, Pioneer Press, Santa Maria Times, Boston Globe, Star Telegram, Greenwich Times, Daily Reflector, Baytown Sun, Juneau Empire, Norwalk Advocate, Macon Telegraph, Morning News, Houma Courier, CBS News, ABC News, and other print and broadcast outlets. ** PENSACOLA, Fla. — After spending months in remote northwest Florida swamps searching for the ivory-billed woodpecker, researchers say they have seen and heard the rare bird once believed to be extinct. But Auburn University ornithologists, who published their findings in Canada's Avian Conservation and Ecology journal online Tuesday, failed to capture a picture of the large woodpecker, which makes a distinct double rapping sound. That lack of evidence means doubt about the bird's return remains. The bird was thought to be extinct until 2004 when Cornell University researchers released recordings and an inconclusive grainy video after searching for it in the swamps of eastern Arkansas. The last confirmed ivory-billed sighting was in 1944. Auburn ornithologist Geoffrey Hill headed the four-month Florida search that ended in April. He said his team would return to the Choctawhatchee River basin sometime around November with better equipment to try to get photographs. "On 41 occasions different team members have seen the bird. We heard that double knock, it's a sound the ivory-billed makes that no other bird makes, but we didn't get a clear video of the bird," Hill said. "I think people should be skeptical. I think they should demand clear photographic evidence. I might start to get skeptical myself thinking, 'I've seen this bird,' but how could I have seen a bird that it is impossible to photograph," he said. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is working with the federal government and some private agencies to provide additional funding for Hill's team, agency spokesman Willie Puz said. Puz said funding is in the early stages and he didn't know how much the researchers would receive. Hill's five-member team from Auburn, Ala., conducted its search on a $10,000 budget. Hill said the extra funding should help them deliver the conclusive evidence the world is demanding. "The ultimate prize is finding pairs visiting roost holes and making babies, that would be the holy grail," said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell lab, which consulted with the Auburn team. "Absent that, the intervening step is to get a photograph that allows everyone else to see the evidence and get on board." Florida officials praised the early evidence. "This will be fantastic if we can confirm the woodpeckers are there," conservation commission Chairman Rodney Barreto said in a statement. "Florida is the only state besides Arkansas to come close to confirmation in roughly 40 years."
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Auburn President Visits Pike County 09/28/2006 WTVY-TV Erica Proffer		Return to Top
This story also appeared in the Troy Messagner. Dr. Ed Richardson spoke at Pike County High school and the Brundidge Rotary Program, Wednesday, on the importance of advancement in education. The president of Auburn University was on his old stomping ground: Brundidge, Alabama. Richardson told the high school juniors and seniors in the Finance and Business Academy to choose higher education, even if it's not Auburn, because that is the requirement for the future. "I hope if they see someone that came from rural Pike County who has done reasonably well in a career, it would give them hope to do the same," says Richardson. Richardson is a Brundidge native and went to Pike County High School, which was then called Brundidge High School.
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Auburn professor will brief president today 09/28/2006 Montgomery Advertiser Jamie Kizzire		Return to Top
An Auburn University professor will be among a group briefing President Bush today on alternative fuel sources. David Bransby, an agriculture professor and expert in switchgrass as an alternative fuel, will give his presentation in Hoover, according to Auburn University. Bransby, who was in Hoover rehearsing his presentation, could not be reached for comment. Bush cited switchgrass, an agricultural waste product, as an alternative energy source during his 2006 State of the Union address. "Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years," Bush told the nation. "Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025." In a February interview with National Public Radio, Bransby said that switchgrass is cheap to grow and provides a high yield crop that can make a lot of ethanol at a low cost. According to the American Coalition for Ethanol's Web site, current U.S. ethanol production capacity of 4 billion gallons per year can reduce gasoline imports by more than one-third. Auburn has committed $3 million to developing alternative energy.
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