6A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY OF DALY KANSAN
MONDAY, MAY 7, 2007
NATION
Cancer survivor climbs North Pole
BY MEGHAN BARR ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — The bone-numbing trek to the North Pole is riddled with enough perils to make a seasoned explorer quake: Frostbite threats, polar bears loom and the ice is constantly shifting beneath frozen feet.
But Barbara Hillary took it all in stride, completing the trek to the world's northernmost point last month at the age of 75. She is one of the oldest people to reach the North Pole, and is believed to be the first African-American woman on record to accomplish the feat.
Hillary, of Averne, N.Y., grew up in Harlem and devoted herself to a nursing career and community activism. At 67 and during retirement, she battled lung cancer. Five years later, she went dog sledding in Quebec and photographed polar bears in Manitoba.
Then she heard that a black woman had never made it to the North Pole.
"I said, 'What's wrong with this picture?' she said. "So I sort of rolled into this, shall we say."
In 1909, Matthew Henson made history as the first black man to reach the Pole, though his accomplishment was not officially recognized for decades—it was overshadowed by the presence of his white colleague, Robert Peary.
Ann Bancroft, a physical education teacher from Minnesota, was the North Pole's first female visitor in 1986 as a member of the Steger Polar Expedition, which arrived unassisted in a re-creation of the 1909 trip. Various scientific organizations said no record exists of a black woman matching Bancroft's feat, although such record-keeping is not perfect.
"It's not like there's a guest book when you get up there and you sign it," said Robert Russell, founder of Eagles Cry Adventures, Inc., the travel company that leads thrill-seekers like Hillary to the furthest corners of the globe. Russell conducted six months' worth of research, interviewing fellow polar
expedition contractors and digging through history books, but failed to find a black woman who had completed the trek.
Russell's paying customers can travel to the North Pole in various ways, from 18-day cross-country ski trips to simply being dropped off at the Pole via helicopter. The trip costs about $21,000 per person.
Hillary insisted on skiing except she had never been on the slopes before.
So she enrolled in cross-country skiing lessons and hired a personal trainer, who finally determined she was physically fit for the voyage.
"She's a headstrong woman. You don't tell her 'no' about too many things," Russell said.
Hillary scraped together thousands of dollars and solicited private donors. On April 18, she arrived in Longyearben, Norway, where it is common for people to carry guns to ward off hungry polar bears.
"Before I arrived, the word was out that soul food was coming," she joked.
The travelers were then flown to the base camp—which is rebuilt each year due to melting ice—and pitched their tents. On April 23 Hillary set off on skis with two trained guides. Russell, fearing for her health, had convinced her to take the daylong ski route to the Pole in lieu of the longer trips.
As the sunlight glinted off the ice, distorting her gaze, Hillary struggled beneath a load of gear and pressed on. In her euphoria at reaching the Pole, she forgot the cold and removed her gloves, causing her fingers to become frostbitten.
Standing at the top of the world, she could have cared less. The enormous expanse of ice and sky left Hillary, for once in her long life, speechless.
While such expeditions serve as major accomplishments, some historians and Arctic experts criticize what they call an over-hyping of being the "first" to do something. For Hillary, the achievement extends beyond race. She hopes her journey will inspire other cancer survivors.
Shrimp on the bungee
Here's to the silver sea
Surfers and canoers surround the memorial service for Hawaiian crooner Don Ho off Walkiki Beach on Saturday in Honolulu. Ho, known for his catchy signature tune "Tiny Bubbles," died April 14 of heart failure at age 76.
Marco Garcia/ASSOCIATED PRESS
FISH AND GAME DEPARTMENT
State seeks funding from tax revenues
BY KATHARINE WEBSTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NORTHWOOD, N.H. — Carl Wallman used to raise prize-winning Black Angus cattle on 211 acres of pastures, woods and swamp in this central New Hampshire town.
Now retired, Wallman has changed his focus' to making Harmony Hill Farm hospitable for everything from bear to butterflies, moose to meadowlarks.
He says hed be hard-pressed to do it all without advice and small grants from the state Fish and Game Department, like one that pays him to mow his fields when the hay is past its prime, so bobolinks and other grassland birds can nest and raise their chicks.
"Farming, you're just managing for one species, and here you're managing for thousands, so you really need their input," he said. "I don't think most people have any idea how much they do."
Whether that help will continue is an open question, however. Like other state fish and wildlife agencies around the country, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department has been hit hard by a national decline in fishing and hunting. That's because it depends on sales of hunting and fishing licenses—and federal grants tied to that income—to fund most of its work.
For the first time in its history, the New Hampshire agency is seeking significant funding from general state tax revenues, arguing it cannot remain self-supporting without drastic cuts in staff and services.
"The history of this department has always been, 'User pays,' Lee Perry, the agency's executive director, said in a recent interview. "When we were primarily dealing with hunters and anglers, it made sense. But ... there are an awful lot of other people using the resource and benefiting from the resource who aren't paving."
"User pays" has fallen short for
state wildlife agencies from Maine to California that were set up to regulate hunting and fishing.
Compounding the financial squeeze are new and expanded missions: protecting endangered species and habitat, leading search and rescue operations, enforcing off-road vehicle laws and helping track diseases that affect wildlife and humans.
Some of those tasks came with new user fees or federal dollars, but others did not. For a while, states bridged the gap by raising license fees, but hunters and anglers have balked at providing the sole financial support for activities that also benefit birdwatchers, hikers, kayakers and wildlife tourists, all of whose numbers are on the rise.
Some states reached the breaking point more than a decade ago—and persuaded voters or legislators to provide more funding. Arizona and Colorado dedicate some lottery and gambling revenues. Texas and Virginia tax sales of outdoor equipment. Minnesota has an incometax checkoff, and other states sell special license plates, according to a University of Minnesota study.
The biggest funding gap is for conservation efforts involving species that aren't hunted or fished and aren't endangered — about 80 percent of all wildlife, said Naomi Edelson, director of Teaming With Wildlife, a coalition of conservation groups and agencies.
Congress passed the State Wildlife Grants program in 2001 to help. But while the federal hunting and fishing grant programs provide $3 for every dollar raised by states, the State Wildlife Grants require a one-to-one match—and states have no obvious user fees they can tap for their share. That's put even more pressure on agencies to develop new funding.
Two states are clear leaders: Arkansas and Missouri. Both have dedicated, 1/8-cent conservation sales taxes, a mechanism that should keep pace with inflation.
》 IRAQ
BY LIBBY QUAID ASSOCIATED PRESS
GOP acknowledges concerns with Bush war plan
WASHINGTON — The House Republican leader said Sunday that GOP support could waver if President Bush's Iraq war policy does not succeed by the fall.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Bush's troop increase deserves a shot and that funding should continue even if benchmarks for success are not met.
A senior Democrat said it would be "ridiculous" not to condition war money upon a troop withdrawal.
"We don't even have all of the 30,000 additional troops in Iraq yet, so we're supporting the president. We want this plan to have a chance of succeeding," Boehner said.
"Over the course of the next
three to four months, we'll have some idea how well the plan's working. Early signs are indicating there is clearly some success on a number of fronts" he said.
But, he added, "By the time we get to September or October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B?"
Thus far, Republicans have stood behind the president's increasingly unpopular war policies, including the troop increase and an opened war commitment.
Yet Boehner's comments were an acknowledgment of the concern expressed by some lawmakers in private that their support could further damage the party, which lost control of Congress in the November elections.
The senior Republican on the
Senate Foreign Relations committee, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, said Boehner is correct.
"General Petraeus will be back. He'll make a report," Lugar said of Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "Some things will go well. Some things will not go so well, but we'll still have an obligation."
The new Democratic leadership is pushing to begin pulling troops out of Iraq, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democratic presidential candidate, said congressional Republicans increasingly seem uneasy about Bush's policies.
"So we may disagree politically here, but remember where the American public is on this issue: They want a change. They think we're getting less secure, far more vulnerable today, than ever before, and they want a change in this policy," he said.
Last week, Bush vetoed a $124 billion bill to provided money for Iraq and Afghanistan operations in part because it required troops to begin returning home by Oct. 1,
"It would be ridiculous to think that we're going to just drop this fight," said Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
saying the fixed date is unworkable.
"This is not our fight. This is the American people's fight. They asked us to send a message to the president."
Top White House aides are negotiating with Democratic leaders on a new war spending bill.
"We've got to shake that White House until the people of the United States are heard," Rangel said. "Sure, we've got to have some restrictions on the money."
BARTONline
Another Democratic presidential candidate, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, argued against negotiating and said lawmakers should keep sending Bush the same Iraq spending bill.
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"I think that America has asked the Democratic leadership in the Congress to stand firm, and that's exactly what I'm saying they should do," he said.
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