NEWS ROUNDUP

Meetings scheduled about Forest Service's plan for roads leading into Hayman fire areas Four-wheel-drive enthusiasts want to dissuade the Forest Service from closing about 52 miles of Pike National Forest roads that were affected by the 2002 Hayman fire. The Forest Service identified about 129 miles of roads in the Pike National Forest that were damaged from the fire or erosion. The plan advocates fixing about half of the roads and permanently closing the other half. No funding source has yet been identified that would pay for fixing the roads, according to Forest Service officials....Report on fire deaths shows shift in attitude: Forest bosses, not firefighters, get the blame U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Jack Troyer looked into the eyes of the parents of two dead firefighters Jan. 6 and placed the blame for the deaths on managers of his agency. “They told us the boys did nothing wrong,” said Jodi Heath, mother of 22-year-old Shane Heath. A report released two weeks ago said Forest Service managers on the fire, in the ranger district office in North Fork and in the supervisor´s office in Salmon all carry responsibility for the deaths of Heath, of Melba and Jeff Allen, 24, of Salmon....A plan for roadless lands: Group wants 37% in Utah forests protected as wilds Proponents of wilderness in Utah's redrock desert country have been seeking 9.1 million acres, and now proponents of wilderness in Utah's high country are adding another 3.3 million acres to the total. Utah Environmental Congress, a grass-roots environmental group, is to unveil today an ambitious and comprehensive initiative to protect 37 percent of "roadless" or undeveloped areas in national forest lands in Utah as wilderness. The initiative marks one of the most significant land-preservation undertakings in the country, said UEC executive director Denise Boggs....U.S. Charges Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small, the secretary of the Smithsonian and an avid collector of Brazilian tribal art, is expected to plead guilty later this week to a misdemeanor violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The charge was filed Jan. 5 in Raleigh, N.C., after Small's art collection was found to contain feathers from several protected species, including the jabiru, roseate spoonbill and crested caracara....Column: Wyoming wolf plan on right track Well, I support Wyoming on this one. Wyoming’s plan is pragmatic. It accepts the presence of wolves in national parks and in wilderness areas, taking steps to keep wolves where they belong while, most importantly, keeping wolves from spreading to areas they don’t belong. That last provision, of course, has environmentalist knickers in a knot. When the government downlisted gray wolves from endangered to threatened last spring, Greens howled because, as Defenders of Wildlife put it in a press release announcing their October lawsuit against the downlisting, the “rule would sharply limit wolf recovery in the West to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and preclude wolf recovery in northern California, Oregon, Washington, northern Colorado, Utah, and the Northeastern United States.” In other words, Defenders and Co. want wolves to spread everywhere across the entire West, colonizing every spot they can possibly survive....Management costs rise with wolf numbers Management costs rose from $37,171 in 2002 to $506,000 last year, Game and Fish directors said in an annual report. Some of the increase was credited to development of a wolf management plan, should the predators be removed from federal protection. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently deemed the plan is not adequate to ensure viability of wolf populations after removal from the Endangered Species List and the agency has asked the department to make changes. The state Game and Fish Department estimated it would cost about $395,000 per year for the state to take over management. Officials estimated 295 wolves, including 22 breeding pairs in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Of those, 240 wolves and 17 breeding pairs are in Wyoming. The report estimated 747 wolves roamed the Northern Rockies in 2003, including 46 breeding pairs, compared to 663 wolves and 43 breeding pairs in 2002....Groups sue Fish and Wildlife Service over lack of protections for cutthroat trout A coalition of conservation groups filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Tuesday, accusing the agency of illegally refusing to extend federal protections to the Yellowstone cutthroat trout. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, alleges the agency refused to list the Yellowstone cutthroat as either endangered or threatened, despite what the conservation groups characterized as "ample scientific data" that the species needs protection. "The Fish and Wildlife Service's finding utterly failed to consider the magnitude of threat facing the Yellowstone cutthroat trout," Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a written statement Tuesday. The center is one of four organizations suing the Fish and Wildlife Service....Column: Permission to Pollute, Sir? The US Military wants to be excused from duty. That is, it's duty to obey the environmental laws of the United States of America. Last year the Defense Department won exemptions from three major environmental laws -- the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty. Now, the military wants to ignore the Clean Air Act and toxic waste laws. To its credit, Congress has already refused to allow these additional exemptions, but the Defense Department is preparing to join the battle once more, according to a report in the LA Times....Column: The powerful push to protect animals Recently a cougar (mountain lion) in Orange County, CA killed one bicyclist and would have killed the second one if her companions had not come to her rescue. Estimates are between 4,000 and 6,000 adult lions roaming California. State law prohibits hunting or killing them. Could this be one way to keep us from camping, horseback riding or walking in parks? Rural cleansing is made much easier if people are intimidated and fearful of living in areas with large predatory animals running loose which are protected. Prior to 1986 there were very few reports of cougar attacks. There has been an average of one attack on a hiker, jogger, or camper a year since that, some fatal....Frog Discovery May Jump-Start Shift in Attitude The discovery of three threatened California red-legged frogs in a rancher's stock pond in western Calaveras County in the fall has triggered a new effort to convince the state's ranchers that the amphibians are important to their long-term economic survival. When the rancher's children stumbled upon the frogs — a male and two females — while playing around a water hole in October, the family's decision to report the find to the Murphys-based Jumping Frog Research Institute was of historic importance. According to Robert Stack, who founded the institute in 1996, it was the first documented sighting of red-legged frogs in Calaveras County in almost 35 years. The frog, the largest native amphibian west of the Rocky Mountains, was once common throughout California, Baja California and other parts of Mexico.... Chambers refused gag deal The National Park Service offered not to press charges against U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers in exchange for a gag order, Chief Chambers' attorney confirmed yesterday. The offer was made Dec. 12, six days before the Park Service announced it wanted to fire Chief Chambers. It was first reported on the Web site of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group that supports her....Californian buys ranch horses for record bids A $90,000 chunk of California cash and two top-of-the-line working ranch horses have swapped hands, notching two new Fort Worth Stock Show auction records. Craig Casner, a custom builder of luxury homes and a horse sportsman/rancher in California, is making a shopping-spree habit of this, now having outbid Texans and other auction competitors for two years to buy the two horses judged best performers in the Invitational Ranch Horse Show. Casner, after two heated auction rounds before an audience of more than 2,000 Sunday in the Will Rogers Coliseum, set new highs of $46,000 and $44,000, respectively, for the 2004 Ranch Horse Champion and Reserve Champion....