NEWS ROUNDUP

Editorial: Congress leans on its shovel Every year about now, the days grow short, the leaves fall and the last flicker of hope for fire legislation dies in Congress. This year should be different. The wildfires that swept Southern California and much of the West this summer were unstoppable, blackening huge swaths of forests, obliterating thousands of homes and killing dozens of people. The public demands action. Congress already has a reasonable forest health and fire plan in its hands. Yet all that was true last year, too. And the year before. And the year before that. Each time, by the November recess, fire legislation in Congress has been a political ember gone cold...A fire dream team: Rehabilitating federal lands Every fire season, leaders are assigned and teams of emergency rehab specialists are assembled to set up Burned Area Emergency Response, or BAER, operations in communities where federal lands have been destroyed by fire. They worked in the aftermath of the Los Alamos fire in New Mexico and they have been to Southern California before. But this year is like no other. As with last month's firefighting effort, the work ahead in the aftermath of Southern California's firestorm may be the most challenging ever...Activists Plan Fight for Marine Mammals The Navy won a backroom congressional victory last week that allows it to get out from under laws that protect whales, dolphins and other marine mammals, but in the process it touched off what could be a bruising battle over the future of one of the nation's most popular environmental measures. Environmental advocates and their congressional allies, including a handful of Republicans, are promising to mount a concerted effort next year to overturn the Navy provisions and to turn protection of the appealing and often endangered marine creatures into an election-year issue...Feds: Grizzly delisting proposal may come in 2004 A proposal to remove grizzly bears from the endangered species list could be released as early as next year, federal officials said. Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he feels all the demographic goals for grizzly bear recovery in the Yellowstone Ecosystem have been met. Servheen made the comments last week at a Yellowstone Ecosystem Grizzly Bear Subcommittee meeting in Bozeman, Mont., where officials discussed progress in delisting and recovery efforts. Servheen said delisting could be proposed as early as late 2004 or early 2005, once a grizzly conservation strategy is signed and management plans in the forests surrounding Yellowstone National Park are updated...Ranchers, feds swap jobs U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists building corrals? Ranchers sifting through wetlands protection paperwork? It may sound odd, but an exchange program through the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to bridge the sometimes-contentious gap between the two groups. Since this summer, ranchers and government officials have been trading places, working in each other's environments to get an idea of their priorities and the obstacles they face...Off-road fans and environmentalists clash on Imperial County battlefield Adrenaline. Beauty. Community. They're the ABC's of off-roading -- the three things that many riders say they come to the sand dunes near the tiny community of Glamis in Imperial County to experience. "I don't go to the (Colorado) River and I don't go to the beach. I don't take trips to Hawaii. This is where I come," said John Baker as he sat inside a 450-horsepower sand buggy Friday. "It's the ultimate E-ticket ride."...Group wants to keep sage grouse off endangered list Hoping to prevent sage grouse from being listed as an endangered species, a citizens' group advising the Bureau of Land Management is asking for more resources to be devoted to the bird. The Northwest Resource Advisory Council decided to ask the bureau to fund and monitor sage grouse habitat and conservation efforts. The council also recommended the federal agency defer to successful local grouse conservation plans in Colorado whenever possible and avoid micromanaging local studies and overriding or conflicting with established local plans...BLM questions conservancy director's use of access road Federal land managers have expressed concern about what appears to be preferential treatment on west-central Idaho's Craig Mountain for supporters of the Nature Conservancy. Bureau of Land Management Field Manager Greg Yuncevich labeled as inappropriate the conservancy's use of a limited-access road on its Cove Gulch property to drive contributors in so they could hunt birds...Open space: For farmers, profit is bottom line If a belt of undeveloped land surrounding Lodi -- especially the area between that city and Stockton -- is going to be preserved, then action is going to have to meet rhetoric in a one-word bottom line: Profit. The drive for preservation can be summed up in three words: Follow the money. It's as simple and complicated as that. Farmers and open space landowners will hold onto their land only while it remains affordable to do so. Once it's not, they will end up selling their land to developers and move on. "You've got to make dirt pay," is how Lodi grower David Phillips puts it...Editorial: EPA owes business owner an explanation for 1999 raid McNabb, owner of American Carolina Stamping, was the target of an EPA raid four years ago. His business, American Carolina Stamping, was targeted with questionable tactics and apparently with questionable cause. Armed agents wearing flak jackets - more than 30 of them - descended on McNabb's Transylvania County business in April of 1999. McNabb says he was handcuffed and held while his business was searched and samples were taken from his business. What was all this about? You could say that's a question that took years to answer. More accurately, you could say it's a question that hasn't been answered...