NEWS ROUNDUP

Flames In Calif. Fan New Life Into A Bill That Would Allow Logging On U.S. Land California is burning, and Congress is feeling the heat -- and moving quickly to pass a controversial forestry bill to allow more logging on federal land. The bill looked dead last week, when Senate Democrats blocked a vote on the House version of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. But since then, with Southern California fires raging, leading Republicans and Democrats have reached a compromise that late Wednesday looked likely to pass...California fires show limits of firefighting Fighting wildfires is more than a matter of pointing hoses at the flames and hoping for the best. Just like military generals, fire chiefs study the battlefield, predict the enemy's moves, and deploy troops to vulnerable flanks. It helps that fires tend to follow well-known rules. Still, models based on decades of research are often unable to predict a fire's path when weather conditions get in the way. Fire strategy and high-tech devices haven't been able to stop blazes from wreaking havoc in southern California, pointing to the limits of fighting and forecasting wildfires, especially in a region where gusts of dry winds change direction and speed up with no warning. Case in point: San Diego's mammoth Cedar Fire grew at amazing speeds, allegedly caused by hunter shooting a signal flare into the air east of the city. Whipped by the region's perennial Santa Ana winds, the fire moved too fast to allow firefighters to forecast its path and surround it. "You've got a fire that went from 1,000 acres to 115,000 in 12 hours," says Bob Wolf, president of the California Department of Forestry firefighters' union. "I've been a firefighter for 22 years and I've never seen anything like it."...Forest Service boss urges more prescribed burns The head of the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday that residents of the fire-prone West must reintroduce prescribed burns into their vocabulary to avoid the sort of catastrophic blazes now sweeping Southern California. That applies to homeowners in the lower chaparral regions where fires are consuming homes in Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties, as well as in the forested upper elevations where firestorms threaten drought- and beetle-infested pine forests in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. "We need to get fire back into these fire-dependent ecosystems," Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said in an interview Tuesday before touring the Southern California fires...More drilling rigs than ever punching through Colo. soil More drilling rigs are searching for natural gas in Colorado and Wyoming than at any time in more than 17 years, a reflection of higher natural gas prices and the nation's increasing demand for domestic fuel. And drilling companies are scrambling to get more equipment into the field to meet the demand, even as the price climbs to rent a towering drilling rig and crew to operate it. Across the nation, about 1,115 rigs were operating as of Oct. 17, according to Hughes Christensen's count...Wildfires force evacuations north, south of Denver A fast-moving wildfire forced the evacuation of thousands of upscale homes in rolling grasslands south of Denver on Wednesday as fierce winds fanned a handful of devastating blazes along the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The 100-acre fire chewed through hills of scattered pine and sent smoke pouring over Denver’s far southern suburbs. Evacuation calls, which relied on the 911 system to reach 3,000 homes and businesses, went out less than three hours after the fire was reported. Authorities said 21 busloads of students were evacuated from an elementary school eight miles north of Castle Rock...In Montana, the next Arctic Refuge debate Modern conservationists call this wild country "the American Serengeti." But unlike the African Serengeti, Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, a 100-mile stretch of glacier-sculpted peaks and valleys held by the US Forest Service and the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has only temporary protection against oil and gas drilling. That could change. In a debate starkly reminiscent of the battle over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Montana Front lands are the latest to join America's heated debate over energy production and wildlife. At issue: would an initial development of 11 wells, producing a moderate amount of natural gas, leave a footprint acceptably small to justify drilling in one of the world's most striking and largely unspoiled landscapes? The Bush administration has targeted the Rocky Mountain Front, along with the ANWR, for oil and gas exploration. Last fall, the BLM issued new policies aimed at reducing barriers to oil and gas leasing on its lands and launched an environmental impact study along the Front, to be completed by year's end. Energy firms want to extract gas through existing and new leases on BLM and US Forest lands. If approved, drilling could begin by 2005. In addition, the US Forest Service will reconsider a drilling moratorium it issued six years ago on the Lewis and Clark National Forest, a portion of the Front, when it expires in 2006...Delay in Aerial Water Drops Is Criticized As fire continued to destroy large portions of San Diego County, the dispute between some local officials and the administration of Gov. Gray Davis intensified Tuesday over why aerial tankers and water-laden helicopters were not available in the first two days of the blaze. County supervisors fumed that Davis was too slow in authorizing the use of state "air assets" to douse the fire and too timid in seeking federal assistance. Several had pleaded with the governor's staff last weekend to redirect state resources to San Diego and demand help from the federal government and military. A spokesman for Davis said the supervisors were distorting what he characterized as the governor's long-standing support of fire prevention and fire suppression in Southern California...Until Court Rules, U.S. Wildlife Unit Won't Allow Killing of Endangered Species in Land Exchanges Pending a final court decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has stopped issuing controversial permits that allow landowners to kill endangered species or destroy their habitat in exchange for setting aside land elsewhere. U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan issued a one-page court order Sept. 30 granting a motion by Spirit of the Sage Council and other environmental groups challenging the permits. But he gave no details on exactly what the groups had won, instead saying a final memorandum would follow...