NEWS ROUNDUP

Areas 'disaster waiting to happen' Lance Cross, a U.S. Forest Service fire chief, and his crew of 135 firefighters held back the flames that roared up the slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains last week. Now, he wonders, to what end? In Crestline, one of many small neighborhoods Cross fought to save, dozens of wooden houses are jammed together, surrounded by pine trees so dense they are wedged against roofs, eaves, porches. Half are dead. "This is a disaster waiting to happen," Cross says. With such conditions in the forest, it was no surprise that the wildfires that swept through Southern California in the past two weeks became the worst in state history. Once-wild areas are now heavily populated. And the mere presence of people has created fire risks and altered the ways forest fires can be attacked...Just read that article and you will see, not a word about forest management or environmental policy, just us evil humans "ubanizing" the wild...Widespread disaster: A look back at a week that scarred California Something was terribly wrong in the foothills of the parched, brown San Bernardino Mountains. The white smoke blowing down into the city below made that obvious. Hours earlier, a man -- an arsonist, authorities say -- had thrown something from the window of a van, touching off a wildfire in the dry brush. Fierce, hot wind propelled the embers down the hills into Pati Wecker's Del Rosa neighborhood, igniting palm fronds that blew through the air, dropping burning debris onto houses. "Get out! Get out!" neighbors screamed at Wecker, 69, as her house started to burn. A few blocks away fire officials were scrambling to keep up with the fire, which was hopscotching with 70 mph wind gusts through the neighborhood and the foothills, creating a 20-mile fire front...Scientists study effects of fires on wildlife ecosystem Hiding in cool coastal mountain streams from California's Mendocino County north to Canada are odd amphibians that have survived since the days of the dinosaurs -- but are so sensitive they'll die in the heat of a human hand. Tailed frogs and torrent salamanders can't stand temperatures above 85 degrees. Imagine what a forest fire does to their habitat. When people think of raging wildfires, they worry about Bambi, not Kermit. Amphibians, after all, live in or near water or in moist, protected areas. Yet, scientists view amphibians as indicator species to gauge the health of forests and watersheds. And what's unhealthy for frogs and salamanders in upstream headwaters can be deadly to protected wild salmon downstream that drive much of the West Coast's forest management debate. Because of their complex life cycle that requires them to return to mountain rivers and streams to spawn, salmon can be among the hardest-hit by habitat disruptions...Report says forest thinning stymied A report issued by the General Accounting Office - the investigative arm of Congress - found that about a quarter of the U.S. Forest Service's hazardous fuels reducing projects were appealed, halting work on 954,000 acres of forestlands in fiscal years 2001 and 2002. The appeals procedures set out in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 have been a point of contention between a House bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore, and a Senate version of that bill co-sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. The Senate's approval of Wyden's version of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act on Thursday guarantees that the bill will reach a conference committee where debate will likely focus on NEPA appeals and how many alternatives must be provided by a logging company. Under NEPA's current format, general environmental assessments that are made during an appeal require three to six alternatives to the proposed project. The original House bill proposed to cut that to one; the Senate version, three...Volunteers hit snag: Many willing, but unable, to help with disaster relief Volunteering for disaster relief isn't always easy - for the volunteers or for the agencies. Dave Sexton and Jim Harris are retired firefighters; Sexton is 51, Harris, 38. They called numerous agencies, including the San Bernardino County Fire Department and the U.S. Forest Service, offering their services for free. "Our offers fell on deaf ears all the way down the line," Sexton said. "We even offered to work a water tender that we had found available if they would pay the rental, but they just weren't interested." Sexton thinks there are a couple thousand retired firefighters in the region who would have volunteered to help the exhausted crews fighting the big fires. "If you added one of us to each crew, that increases your manpower 20 percent," he said. "San Bernardino Headquarters was my last assignment - I knew the Waterman Canyon area and was there for the Panorama Fire, which was the same scenario." Sexton thinks that retired firefighters and law enforcement could provide the region's agencies with an "inactive reserve" similar to the military's...Blazes renew policy battle The images are nearly as searing as the flames: Neighborhoods obliterated. An area larger than Sacramento County left charred and scarred. A former fireman who helped save his family's home. A fireman who gave his life for others. Given the scope and fury of last week's wildfires, one might presume the mind-set of an entire state has been transformed. Surely, some are suggesting, this will be the disaster that prompts fundamental change in how California builds. This will be the blaze that puts fire on the map. Over the last several days, The Bee asked various experts, as well as people burned out of their homes, if the 2003 fires would prompt a major shift in attitudes. The responses varied...Highway hits tiny bump A highway envisioned as a major economic boost for Williamson County has hit a huge roadblock -- and it's actually a tiny creature. The Texas Department of Transportation uncovered two caves while constructing State Highway 45 North. More critical was the inhabitant of the caves, a blind spiderlike creature called a Bone Cave Harvestman. As a resident of the U.S. Endangered Species list, the Harvestman is protected from disturbances such as highway projects. That has left TxDOT awaiting word from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on how, or whether, to proceed on SH 45, the northern extension of MoPac Expressway...Bear attacks hunter in tree A bear is said to have climbed a tree and attacked a man who was bow hunting deer from an elevated stand on Oct. 22 near Franklin, biting and clawing both of his legs below the knees, according to Hoy Murphy, public information officer for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources...Bear took chunk out of hunter in Montana Facing a charging bear he described as "the size of a washing machine," Enar Rosen had time to get off one shot from his deer rifle. When that didn't stop the animal, the Bozeman man knew he was in trouble. "He was just so powerful, there wasn't much to do but let him chew on me," said Rosen, who spent one night in a Livingston hospital for observation after the Sunday attack. "I was out of options, except to play dead." When the attack was over, Rosen had puncture wounds in his shoulder and a gash in his neck...More drilling proposed on crucial deer winter range Another small, winter-long drilling project within crucial mule deer winter range has been proposed for the Pinedale Anticline in southwest Wyoming. The drilling is part of a multi-year comprehensive study on the effects of oil and gas operations on wintering deer within sensitive viewshed areas of the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field. But conservationists who last year went to court to halt a similar drilling proposal by Questar lashed out at the proposal and said the project sets a "terrible precedent" begun by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management last year...Wyoming hopes to supply growing demand for natural gas The Bush administration is counting on Western states to bridge the gap between shrinking supply and rising demand for natural gas, and Wyoming is the top natural-gas producer in the West. Getting all that gas to market -- as much as a 10-year supply for the entire nation -- is another issue. One problem is that Wyoming's pipelines have been running at or near capacity. Another is environmental wrangling that has all but halted new drilling in the northeastern part of the state...Foiling wildfire A couple hundred acres of sagebrush, juniper, sub-alpine fir and ponderosa pine have been chewed up atop the west end of Casper Mountain -- all part of an ambitious wildfire-control program involving the Bureau of Land Management, the Wyoming State Forestry Division, The Nature Conservancy and four other property owners. The chewing has been done by contractor Don Schroeder of Anoka, Minn., and his massive Brush Buster, a machine that pulverizes or shreds the brush and small trees, with minimal disturbance to the soil. The machinery can chip down an eight-inch tree in less than five seconds, leaving a mulch that returns nutrients to the soil...Kathleen Clarke Column: Public lands can help answer energy wake-up call Americans got a rude wake-up call about their need for dependable energy on Aug. 14, when a power outage cascaded across the Northeast and Midwest – as well as southern Canada – to create the worst blackout in North American history. The August blackout and spot gas shortages – as well as the more recent power outages caused by Hurricane Isabel – underscore something we usually take for granted: namely, the vital role of energy in every facet of American life. That includes transportation, communication, medical services, food production and such basics as air conditioning and heating. Our national security also depends on a reliable supply of energy, as does the U.S. economy, which is literally fueled by energy to create jobs and wealth...Column: Federal energy bill tramples conservation values Energy development on large blocks of this country’s most picturesque and wild public land is being accelerated. Recently, the recognition that demand for natural gas is fast outstripping supplies has driven a new round of efforts to further open America’s public lands, particularly in the Rocky Mountain states, to oil and gas drilling. Reports released by the National Petroleum Council, an industry-based advisory body of the Department of Energy, and the House Republican Task Force For Affordable Natural Gas, have called for streamlining the permitting process and removing “impediments” to drilling on public lands. Many of the recommendations of these reports are making their way into the energy bill now being drafted in Congress. While efforts to expand access and availability to America’s supplies of natural gas may be important, the result could be catastrophic for fish and wildlife. Moreover, Western states rely on the billions of dollars of revenue brought in by hunters and anglers attracted to abundant fish and wildlife resources on their public lands...Column: Two cheers for Ron 'Hot Seat' Wyden Ron Wyden has answered the call, and Oregonians who truly care about the long-term health of public lands here and across the nation should give him his due. Our senator stood up and delivered in brokering Senate passage of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. I feel duty-bound to recognize the Oregon Democrat's deal-making statesmanship and political courage. Twice over the past two years I challenged the senator to break with the extreme-green elements in his Democratic Party and fashion a balanced forest-health compromise. Some of the senator's supporters say I was "calling out" Wyden. I saw it as asking him to rise to the occasion -- the occasion of bug-infested and diseased trees providing fuel buildup for catastrophic forests, the occasion of infernos roaring across millions of acres, the occasion of properties ruined and firefighter lives lost -- and to move beyond partisanship and polarization...Editorial: Energy policy needs balance The debate over national energy policy is usually cast as a polarized battle between environmentalists and developers. It's time to move to middle ground. We can't conserve our way out of an energy crisis. We can't drill our way out either. As of last week, GOP congressional leaders had yet to reveal their final draft of a conference energy bill. Remember the uproar over the secret meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy commission? Well, more recently, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., and Sen. Peter Domenici, R-N.M., have been holding private meetings to craft the conference energy bill. More than two dozen House and Senate conferees were appointed to the committee, but most of them aren't in the room where the majority of energy bill decisions are being made...Plan would sell Texans back their own water Imagine for a moment: water-starved El Paso paying a private company for water belonging to El Pasoans and other Texans. It could happen under a proposal being developed in closed meetings between a Midland-based consortium and state officials at the General Land Office and School Land Board. Rio Nuevo Ltd., consisting mostly of Midland oil and gas investors, wants to lease about 600,000 acres of state land in El Paso and five other West Texas counties. But they've got their sights set on the water underneath that land -- not oil. Rio Nuevo wants to pump at least 16 billion gallons of water a year for sale to whomever can afford it. The idea outrages West Texas community leaders, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs and officials from El Paso...Sales of cloned cattle multiply Cattle are quietly being cloned and sold for high prices as the livestock industry anticipates government approval for letting their offspring into the food chain, industry officials said. Meat or milk derived from healthy cloned farm animals appears safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday in its first attempt at assessing questions about the emerging technology. The FDA is still trying to decide if cloned farm animals will require government approval before being sold as food. That decision is expected to take another year. The cattle industry has voluntarily agreed to keep products from cloned animals out of the food supply. But in the meantime, there already are as many as 300 cloned bulls in existence, said Lisa Dryer of Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington lobbying group. And an Austin-based biotech firm, ViaGen, said Friday that a cow cloned from a prodigious producing animal was auctioned for $170,000 in Iberia, Mo. Some members of Texas' cattle circles have reservations about whether cloning is commercially practical. The cost of a cloned calf currently is estimated at $19,000. And some cloned animals develop health problems...Australian live sheep trade at 12 year low Australia's live sheep exports have plunged to a 12-year low in the wake of the MV Cormo Express affair. Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), in its weekly report on the industry, said exports of sheep dropped more than 55 per cent in September to just 187,116. The number of countries taking Australian sheep also fell, to just six...Japan to ask U.S. to ban Canadian beef bound for Japan via U.S., sources say Japan's Minister of Agriculture, Yukio Hattori, will ask the United States to ban the exportation of Canadian beef bound for Japan via the United States, citing continued concerns over mad cow disease, according to media sources in the Japanese capital. The Japanese request comes in response to the American intention to start importing veal from Canada early next year...