NEWS ROUNDUP

Private help comes to public land The U.S. Forest Service once managed and paid the bills for everything concerning the national forests, from timber sales to firefighting to campground and trail maintenance. But increasingly, nonprofit, community-based forestry groups are stepping forward to provide some of those services, using federal dollars from grant programs and private money from foundations and individuals to hire independent contractors. During the past decade, the community-based groups have sprouted in Oregon and throughout the West. They've filled a gap caused by Forest Service budget cuts that followed a decline in timber revenue after logging on national forests was sharply curtailed in the 1990s...Conflict looms over timber It's a new year and new battles are on the horizon between environmentalists and the Bush administration over federal forests in the Pacific Northwest -- but the theme is continuing conflict. Central to the clash are changes the Bush administration is making this year in the Northwest Forest Plan, the document hammered out under President Clinton in 1994 to end the standoff over logging federal old-growth forests. Government officials are expected this month and next to finalize rule changes that will make it easier to carry out timber sales without explicitly protecting salmon, and without extensive surveys to discover whether logging would endanger more than 300 hard-to-find slugs, snails, lichens and other species. Later in the year, officials are expected to finalize reviews of whether the spotted owl and another rare bird, the marbled murrelet, should continue to be protected under the Endangered Species Act...Forest plan a regulatory war There is one thing Colorado's two giant ski resort competitors agree on: the revised White River Forest Plan adopted in 2002 has some provisions that need to be changed. That new plan restricts both the acreage available for ski area expansion and imposes stricter clean water standards for ski areas. Both provisions are being appealed by Vail Resorts, Intrawest and Colorado Ski Country USA, an industry advocacy group... Oil rigs help biologists unlock mystery of ocean life From his office in downtown New Orleans, Dan Allen can see to the bottom of the ocean. Allen, a marine biologist with Chevron Texaco, studies the ocean's depths using images from the remote-controlled vehicles that fix oil pipelines and wells on the sea floor as well as the eyes of hundreds of workers manning offshore platforms. "We just recently discovered a very large shark in the Gulf of Mexico in about 10,000 feet of water. It was the first ever observed in the Gulf," Allen said. "We want to get feedback from people offshore as to what they are seeing when and where." For land-bound academics and the hardcore biologists working for major corporations, oil exploration has become a surrogate for scientific research unlike ever before...Soar subject The 3-month-old bald eaglets huddled like two scared kids while a gaggle of photographers surrounded them at the Barr Lake gazebo. Division of Wildlife raptor expert Jerry Craig had snatched them out of their nest at the edge of the lake and boated to the gazebo so spectators could watch as he weighed the eaglets, drew blood from them and crimped bands on their legs...Bear advocate an enigma in death Timothy Treadwell's death came just the way he had predicted. Treadwell and his girlfriend were mauled by a 1,000-pound grizzly bear last October in a remote section of Alaskan wilderness that Treadwell knew well after years of living among its bear population. He had started an environmental group and received donations from celebrities such as actor Leonardo DiCaprio, in part by saying the bears he loved were in jeopardy. He spun colorful stories about his adventures for the Discovery Channel, David Letterman's late-night audience and the Walt Disney Co. What few knew about Treadwell was that much of his life was an invention...Salton Sea's mud delays dike plan Scientists have uncovered a distressing secret about the lakebed of the Salton Sea: Portions of it are covered with a 50-foot-thick layer of silt the consistency of peanut butter. That revelation is particularly troubling for California's largest lake, a place of promise and despair that has endured three decades of scientific study and political haggling. The latest findings place in jeopardy a proposal by state and federal agencies to build an 81/2-mile dike across the desolate and smelly lake to stave off ecological disaster. Salton Sea Authority officials say the costs of that plan could increase 200 percent, to $3 billion...Lockheed sells rocket test site near Beaumont as preserve Behind a padlocked gate sits thousands of acres filled with stands of cottonwoods and willows, a gentle stream, big granite boulders and abundant wildlife, including deer, bobcat and quail. It's also a spot where aerospace giant Lockheed tested rocket engines for America's space program at the height of the Cold War. On Friday, government agencies and environmentalists announced a $25.5 million land deal for about 9,100 acres that will create a huge nature preserve in southern Beaumont. Outdoor lovers will hike, ride horses and bird watch when it opens in several years... 2 Missing Condors Might Have Perished in October's Piru Blaze Two California condors that were seen in the vicinity of the 64,000-acre Piru fire in October have not been spotted again by wildlife officials, who fear they may have perished. The birds were among the 39 living in a number of wild regions in California, where the species nearly died out in the mid-1980s...Train being proposed to solve traffic jams at Grand Canyon To remedy the traffic congestion at the park's South Rim and on State Route 64, the Grand Canyon's tourist railroad has proposed a $186 million high-speed train. The rail service would begin in 2005 and run from Williams, reducing vehicle traffic on the South Rim by 50 percent, according to Grand Canyon Railway's proposal...Cattle Grazers Welcome New Grazing Rules Livestock interests in the West are welcoming the Interior Department's proposed new federal rules for grazing on public lands, though they could cause some short-term harm to the environment. Olson called the proposed grazing rules a positive step, showing the government is willing to work with ranchers, and the rules could benefit both rancher and range. "If I lease BLM land, I'm supposed to have enough private land to support those cattle when they're not on BLM land. That's one of the reasons we say this helps ranchers prevent urban sprawl," she said. "Because if they don't have the rangeland to run on in the summer, there's a possibility of them selling it for subdivisions."...BLM: No significant impact from methane drilling The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says no significant environmental effects will result from drilling for coal-bed methane near Baggs. The Brown Cow Pod is one of nine pods with up to 200 wells proposed as part of the Atlantic Rim coal-bed methane project...Protecting Utah's open spaces How do we measure 20 years of work by the Utah Nature Conservancy? Do we count the increasing number of conservancy members, volunteers and conservation projects? Do we total the number of acres forever protected? Or evaluate the attitudes toward open space forever changed? Or do we measure whether our civilization is indeed growing to match this state's spectacular scenery? It's a little bit of all of those things, say the people who have watched the organization grow during the past two decades...Cowpuncher brothers' late-life pastime corrals fans of rustic furniture Tom and Jack Musser are bent and bowlegged. Tom's 81-year-old back is permanently out-of-kilter. Jack's 84-year-old joints are a tad awry. These two lifelong cowpunchers are a little too rickety to ride the range or bust broncs anymore. So they have turned to making furniture. It looks a lot like them - rustic and all akimbo, with legs that jut in arthritic angles, arms that crook and backs and tops not even remotely in plum. None of their furniture is like anything anyone would learn to make in a how-to class at Home Depot or buy at the local Furniture Mart. And that's what has caught the eye of ritzy mountain mansion owners and appreciative cabin dwellers, who snap up the Musser brothers' one-of-a-kind pieces almost as fast as they make them. To buyers, the Mussers' creations are folk art - treasured Americana...On The Edge Of Common Sense - Baxterizing: Misinterpreting something obvious Once these changes were made, then we could redistribute the amount of federal lands equally across the 48 states. Which, according to Statistical Abstract, would be 28 percent per state. In Ohio, for instance, under the Federal Lands Equality Act, eminent domain would be inflicted on everything north of Lima. Displaced residents would have six months to leave, then gray wolves, grizzly bears, Florida panthers, spotted owls, condors and snail darter minnows would be reintroduced. In Massachusetts, all the land west of Boston would be reclaimed and turned into a Buffalo Commons. Nevada, which before the new gerrymandering was 83 percent federally owned, would open up private land for homesteaders from states unaccustomed to living under the thumb of the federal government...