NEWS ROUNDUP

Agency to Reconsider Protection of Bird The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday it will reconsider its protection of the western snowy plover, a nesting shorebird whose status as a federally threatened species has forced beach closings each spring and summer from southern Washington to southern Baja. The bird was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1993, but a recent lawsuit and petitions contend it is genetically identical to inland populations. Populations must be threatened and a distinct species to qualify for protection. The agency said the argument against protecting the plovers is based primarily on an unpublished 2001 master's thesis that showed no significant genetic difference between the coastal and inland populations. The original threatened designation was based on the fact the populations breed in different locations.... Lawmakers vote to put Colorado back in the presidential horse race Frustrated after being left behind in this year's presidential races, a Senate committee voted Monday to make Colorado's presidential caucus the second in the nation four years from now. Lawmakers said they expect other states to join Colorado as they clamor for attention and move to front-load the presidential selection process. Sen. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, said none of the candidates has addressed issues important to the West this year, such as management of public lands, protection of endangered species and water. "Those issues are not even on their radar screens," Lamborn told his colleagues.... A Mountain Railroad Spells Death for Grizzlies and Cubs Every day, trains climb a steep mountain corridor between the southern boundary of Glacier National Park and the northern boundary of the Great Bear Wilderness. The corridor is at the heart of the continent's wildest landscape, and it is prime bear habitat. In some 24-hour periods, up to 42 milelong trains use the line. Every once in a while, a grizzly runs or wanders onto the tracks and is hit by a locomotive. The threat to the grizzlies has fueled a dispute between the railroad, which says it has done all it can to protect the bears, and some wildlife experts, who say it should try harder. At least 32 bears, including 9 cubs, have been killed by trains since 1980. Three died last year.... Climate Debate Gets Its Icon: Mt. Kilimanjaro Campaigners from Greenpeace, the environmental group, scaled the mountain in November 2002 and held a news conference via satellite with reporters at climate-treaty talks in Morocco. Last October, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is co-author of a bill to curb greenhouse gases, displayed before-and-after photographs of Kilimanjaro during a Senate debate. A British scientist proposed hanging white fabric over the glacier's ragged 10-story-tall edges to block sunlight and stem the erosion. But now the pendulum has swung. This month, the mountain was taken up as a symbol of eco-alarmism by a cluster of scientists and anti-regulation groups. "Snow Fooling!: Mount Kilimanjaro's glacier retreat is not related to global warming," read a newsletter distributed on March 9 by the Greening Earth Society, a private group financed by industries dealing in fossil fuels, the dominant source of the heat-trapping gases. "Media and scientists blame human activity, but a 120-year-old natural climate shift is the cause.".... Column: Alabama has become the site of the largest extinction in United States Sixty-one percent of the nation's mussels live in Alabama. As we're blessed with more waterways than any other state, I guess that's not surprising. Further, more than 40 percent of the nation's snails live in Alabama. More than 350 species of mussels and snails (freshwater) are found in Alabama. So where is this leading? Alabama is the global hotspot for hundreds of aquatic animals. Consequently, as Alabama has progressed, we have become the site of the largest extinction in the history of the United States. According to Paul Hartfield, endangered species biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, we have that lethal distinction because of our incessant practice of damming rivers. In the past few years, nearly 50 snail and mussel species were lost.... Column: The Siege of the Sierra Club In 1998, anti-immigrant activists forced the Sierra Club to put a referendum on immigration on the annual membership ballot. Having been blamed for every other sin under the sun, immigrants were now to be scapegoated for our environmental problems as well. By the time the Club's membership had voted the measure down, a lot of participants were embittered, and the environmental movement was tarnished in the eyes of many onlookers. The 1990s saw the rise of the environmental justice movement, which did address environmental racism -- just who gets poisoned by dumps and incinerators, among other things -- but the mainstream environmental movement is not always so good at the racial politics that lurk within its own priorities and assumptions. Still, this is a long way from the politics of the anti-immigration activists attempting an openly hostile takeover of the Club, with three candidates for the March board elections looking to form a majority with some of the more dubious current board members, and various outside organizations -- some clearly racist and white-supremacist -- encouraging their members to join the Club and sway the vote. "Without a doubt, the Sierra Club is the subject of a hostile takeover attempt by forces allied with ... a variety of right-wing extremists," said the Southern Poverty Law Center in a warning letter. "They hope to use the credibility of the Club as a cover to advance their own extremist views.".... Truth must be ultimate weapon for Sierra Club Mark Twain said, "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." It's astonishing how the media have been stampeded into a feeding frenzy by mostly one-sided stories charging that an army of racist, anti-immigrant, animal-loving vegetarians is about to take over the venerable Sierra Club. As a 35-year member of the club, I am pained to see such distortion. In recent years, the environmental movement has lacked courage to address the root cause of most environmental problems: rapid and apparently endless U.S. population growth. With our high levels of consumption, we Americans are stealing the resources of the world from other species, other peoples and future generations.... Beluga deaths may imperil Cook Inlet subsistence hunt Biologists say so many beluga whales died last year in upper Cook Inlet that Alaska Natives should forgo a subsistence hunt next summer. But representatives of two Cook Inlet Native whale hunting organizations said they have misgivings about suspending the small annual hunt only four years after it resumed.... Park Service jet-setters grounded The National Park Service wants to cut park hours and visitor services to save scarce funding, yet has spent nearly $100 million on travel, including foreign junkets to China, Japan, Africa, France and Russia since 2002. Globe-trotting employees held meetings, attended conferences and gave presentations during their trips, but the practice has angered lawmakers, who say they are pulling the plug on the agency's travel program.... Another 50 bison sent to slaughter The last 50 bison captured in Yellowstone National Park have been shipped to slaughter, spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews said Monday. That work was completed Friday and brought the total number of dead bison this winter up to 264. No more bison were captured over the weekend. The National Park Service is holding another 198 animals that have tested negative for exposure to brucellosis. Those bison will be kept until there is enough green grass inside the park to keep them from wandering toward private land to the north.... Feds swat at West Nile in court The federal government is taking a legal swat at the mosquito-transmitted West Nile Virus. But so far coalbed methane gas drillers are not required to take any swats in the fields where they're constructing hundreds of new ponds -- potential breeding pads for mosquitoes. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys defending the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management's plan for coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin are expected to fight against a motion to add West Nile Virus to a long list of alleged legal deficiencies in the plan.... Ruling upholds claims of Western Shoshone elders A commission dedicated to human rights has issued a favorable ruling in the case of two American Indian elders who have waged a decades-long battle against the United State’s government over treaty rights. Problem is, the ruling has no legal authority in America. Western Shoshone sisters Mary and Carrie Dann are horse ranchers in Nevada. In the early 1970’s, the Bureau of Land Management hit them up for grazing fees and permits. The Dann sisters argued that they are exempt because they are on Western Shoshone territory. The following year they were sued for trespassing.... Anglers fed up with landowners blocking access to rivers in Madison County Anglers fed up with landowners who fence off access to rivers in Madison County said Monday they were equally miffed that county commissioners haven't taken action to enforce Montana's stream access law. More than a dozen members of the Public Lands/Water Access Association said wealthy landowners are using the guise of keeping livestock on their land to block the public from accessing rivers. They brought photos of multiple strands of barbed wire and electric fencing attached to the guardrails of bridges on county roads over the Ruby River, and fences that were painted orange and posted no trespassing within the public right of way.... Politician seeks probe of nuclear plant A Colorado congressman has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to claims that environmental crimes at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant were covered up by the Justice Department. The claims are raised in a new book co-written by the foreman of a grand jury that investigated activities at the site in the late 1980s and early 1990s.... Water crisis warnings date to the 1970s Idaho leaders took less than a week to begin paying a water bill the state has largely ignored for 25 years. Warnings in the 1970s didn´t stop Idaho farmers until 1992 from continuing to sink new wells into the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, a 10,000-square-mile underground reservoir running from Ashton to King Hill. The wells were used to turn desert into potato fields.... Beef industry split over allowing Canadian cattle imports The U.S. beef industry is split over a proposal to let young cattle and beef products from Canada into the United States less than one year after an animal in Alberta tested positive for mad cow disease. Cattle raisers say that allowing Canadian cattle into the country would drive prices down and raise the risk that new cases of mad cow disease could occur in the United States. But feedlot operators, who prepare cattle for slaughter and packaging, say it is time to merge all the markets in North America. Mexico still exports live cattle to the United States, and some U.S. beef and cattle are exported to Mexico and Canada. The dispute stems from a proposal by the U.S. Agriculture Department to list Canada as a "minimum risk region" for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, a brain-destroying illness.... High noon for Hollywood cowboys The western, killed off in the 1980s by expensive flops such as Heaven’s Gate, which bankrupted United Artists in 1980, is back. A decade after the cowboy film was briefly revived with Oscars for Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s revisionist version of the old west, it is high noon in Hollywood, with a rush of epic tales. Some big guns in moviemaking think the western myth — morality tales of brave men cherishing honour in the vast empty spaces of a promised land — may be a necessary, and financially rewarding, antidote to the relentless news of terrorism and conflict. Eastwood is returning with The Last Ride West. Brad Pitt is to play Jesse James in a film that tells of the outlaw’s life through the eyes of Robert Ford, the assassin who shot him in the back....