NEWS ROUNDUP

Baucus, Demos balk at forest bill funding levels Montana Sen. Max Baucus and other Democrats on Tuesday said the Bush administration's proposed budget for 2005 does not provide enough money for clearing dead trees and other debris from forests. Last year, Baucus, Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., and a handful of other Democrats joined forces with Republican lawmakers and Bush administration officials to draft the plan, known as the Healthy Forest Initiative, to overhaul management of the nation's forests. At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the Forest Service's budget, Wyden lashed out at Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's under-secretary for natural resources and environment.... Wyoming to sue over wolf impasse Unable to resolve differences at the negotiating table, Wyoming soon will take its fight over wolf management to federal court, a state official said Tuesday. Michael O'Donnell, Wyoming's chief deputy attorney general, said the state would challenge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's rejection in January of the state management plan for wolves. The lawsuit, which will be filed in a federal court in Wyoming, will claim that the federal agency wrongly opposed Wyoming's wolf plan despite a review by a scientific panel in which a majority agreed that the plan would be adequate. "We think we've got a pretty good argument," O'Donnell said. "They acted arbitrarily in rejecting the Wyoming plan." The suit will ask a federal judge to order the Fish and Wildlife Service to accept Wyoming's plan and begin the process of removing the wolves from the endangered species list.... Wolves kill cow, calf near Glenns Ferry Federal Wildlife Service officials have confirmed wolves killed one cow and a calf on a ranch north of Hammet. Rancher John McCallum says he spotted fresh tracks Monday morning. McCallum says it's the first year he's seen traces of wolves on the ranch, which runs 500 head of cattle. George Graves of the agency's office says more than two wolves were involved in the predation.... Column: Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon During the battle to save the pristine salmon and steelhead habitat of Headwaters Forest in 1998, I got a phone call one morning from Mike Sherwood, then the California Director of the Sierra Club. He told me that country legend Merle Haggard and actor Woody Harrelson would be appearing at the State Capitol for a noon time rally. "Please to meet you, Merle," I said as I held out my hand and got a hard, firm shake from the country bard, known for the outspoken lyrics of "Okie from Muskogee," the "Fightin' Side of Me,"and many, many other songs. Haggard explained to me that he was there to stop the logging of redwood and Douglas-fir forests on the North Coast by Pacific Lumber Company. Haggard, a long time angler and hunter who lives on Lake Shasta, was there to urge the Legislature to not fund the Headwaters Forest deal between the federal government and Pacific Lumber unless measures protecting forest watersheds were adopted. He also recommended the removal of state and federal officials responsible for the destruction of forest habitat.... Prop. A loses big Proposition A, the sweeping growth-control initiative, was rejected overwhelmingly by San Diego County voters Tuesday. The measure was trailing by a 64 percent to 36 percent margin, with 62 percent of precincts reporting. "It looks like those numbers are holding up," said Eric Larson, executive director for the San Diego County Farm Bureau, which led the fight to defeat the measure. "We feel very good about that. I have to admit, the numbers are better than we expected." Also celebrating Tuesday night was Matt Adams, spokesman for the Building Industry Association of San Diego County.... Federal agencies talk about protecting minnow, flycatcher Representatives from three federal agencies met with state and local officials for the first of a series of meetings on the fate of the endangered silvery minnow and the Southwestern willow flycatcher. About 50 people, including tribal representatives, city officials and environmentalists, rekindled talks with the representatives Monday about the species and long-term management of the Rio Grande River. "It was a good meeting. I think we got a clear direction on where we needed to go," said Jack Garner, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Albuquerque office. The meeting also drew representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.... Option on wolves considered Too many wolf-related questions and too few satisfactory answers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had the Park County Board of Commissioners exploring their legal options Tuesday. The federal government isn't living up to its side of the 1994 wolf reintroduction plan, said Commissioner Marie Fontaine. "The number of wolves has totally exceeded the number in the plan," Fontaine said. "We need to hold their feet to the fire." Calling for a congressional inquiry into an incident on Feb. 14 - four tranquilized wolves, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and his assistant found on a private ranch in Meeteetse - might be a good place to start, said Commission Chairman Tim Morrison.... County backs rancher County commissioners Tuesday will consider seeking a congressional investigation into the handling of four wolves on a Meeteetse area ranch Feb. 14. Commission chairman Tim Morrison, who is from Meeteetse, said rancher Randy Kreuger called him with information about the incident and asked him to pass documentation of it to the county attorney. "This is a terrible thing for a landowner to have to deal with," Morrison said. He said he has known Kruger for some time, and finds him to be "responsible, calm and reasonable." But coming upon Mike Jimenez and another person on his property near four tranquilized wolves in the same area where his cattle were about to calve deeply upset Kruger, Morrison said. "Nothwithstanding any local charges (the Larsen Ranch Co. may file trespass charges against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Congress needs to look into it," Morrison told fellow commissioners during a special meeting Friday.... Agent: Low fuel forced landing Wolves near Dubois, the Washakie Pack, had mostly evaded attempts to collar them until mid-February, when they were spotted between Thermopolis and Meeteetse. A federal agent boarded a helicopter, darted and retrieved four wolves, processed them and landed with the tranquilized animals while the pilot went off to refuel. The landing site was on a road; the processing site allegedly on adjacent private ranchland. "We do our best not to go on other people's property," said Mike Jimenez, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf project leader for Wyoming. "We sincerely apologize if we do. "Our intention was to focus on collaring wolves.".... Wolves attack cattle in Madison Valley Two wolf packs attacked cattle in four incidents in four days in the Madison Valley and now a federal gunner has orders to kill half of one pack and try to put radio collars on the other pack. It they attack livestock again, they'll all be shot, said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena. "They killed a yearling for us this morning about daylight," rancher Gary Clark said Tuesday afternoon. The attacks started on Friday. Clark said the wolves brought down the steer, which weighed several hundred pounds, about 250 yards from three ranch houses.... Feds may make it easier to kill wolves Federal authorities will propose relaxing rules to allow Idaho officials to kill wolves that threaten big game populations and let pet owners kill wolves threatening their animals. The new rule, which will be announced today, also would make it easier for Idaho and Montana ranchers to kill wolves harassing or killing their livestock on private land. Hunting of wolves will not be allowed. Wyoming´s wolf management will continue unchanged until it rewrites its wolf plan to meet federal requirements.... U.S. Offers California Tribe Water Plan to End Dispute Federal officials presented leaders of the Hoopa Valley Indian tribe with a proposal on Tuesday for resolving a decades-old dispute over the Trinity River, which has been a symbol of the often irreconcilable water demands of farmers and fishing communities in the West. The proposal would set rules on the amount of water diverted for irrigation and create an "emergency water bank" so levels in the river could be adjusted when fish suffer disease or face other problems associated with low water flows. But early reaction from tribal leaders was not favorable. After meeting for more than two hours with federal officials in Sacramento, the Hoopa tribe's director of fisheries, Mike Orcutt, said the government proposal favored the farmers, who are represented by the Westlands irrigation district.... Groups seek to add West Nile virus concerns to coalbed methane suit Conservation groups challenging the Bureau of Land Management's plan to manage coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin are seeking to add concerns about the West Nile virus to their lawsuit. The groups say ponds that store groundwater discharged by drilling for the gas provide prime breeding habitat for mosquitoes, which are the primary carriers of West Nile virus. In the arid and semi-arid basin, they provide one of the only sources of standing water during the summer, they said.... BLM expands virtual firearms training The Bureau of Land Management last week tapped Advanced Interactive Systems Inc. to train land management enforcement officers using the Seattle company’s firearms training simulators. Under the five-year contract, the Seattle company will train more than 300 officers on its Prisim systems. Training is scheduled to begin this month. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract has a ceiling of $500,000, according to the bureau. The simulators can present video scenarios to trainees where they must make quick decisions about which actions to take, said Melissa Milburn, vice president of corporate communications for Advanced Interactive Systems. The systems can train individuals in basic marksmanship, use-of-force options and critical decision-making.... Editorial: Bogus roads U. S. District Judge Tena Campbell began shining some needed light on the murky issue of road claims in Utah with her ruling last week. The judge held that three rural Utah counties do not have legitimate claims on 15 of 16 disputed routes the counties illegally carved on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The 16 roads at issue in Judge Campbell's court were bladed by Kane, Garfield and San Juan counties within the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This was in 1996, not long after President Clinton created the monument and during the BLM's reinventory of Utah land for possible wilderness designation. In addition to denying the counties' road claims, Campbell found that they had violated federal law by grading and realigning the routes without the BLM's consent. Her decisions should make rural county officials stop and think before asserting their "rights" by ignoring the law.... Governor backs Petrified Forest N.P. expansion Gov. Janet Napolitano is urging federal lawmakers to pass legislation that would more than double the size of Petrified Forest National Park by authorizing the sale of about 97,000 acres of private and public land. If approved, the expansion would cost about $15 million for the land. Recently, Napolitano sent a letter to U.S. Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., who is the chairman of the House subcommittee for National Parks. She also sent the letter to U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Flagstaff, and Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, asking for the push on legislation that has been stalled in both the House and Senate for about a year.... Column: THE MAD GAS RUSH In an effort to convert the gas and oil industry's wish list to law, the administration seems to have temporarily shelved its unpopular plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So distracted are the media by this move that they're paying scant attention to the administration's plans for the Rocky Mountain West. And that rankles Tweeti Blancett, a rancher who calls herself a “cowgirl” and sits on New Mexico's Livestock Board and whose husband, Linn, is a director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. Linn's great-grandfather, a scout for the U.S. Army, came into the San Juan Basin with Kit Carson in the 1870s, and the family has run cattle here ever since. “If you want to see what the West will look like, take a good look at this valley,” Tweeti Blancett told me on the morning of December 8, 2003, as she loaded a PowerPoint program at her Aztec, New Mexico, office. Five days earlier she had given the same “preview” to the Sierra Club, the very outfit that has called her profession “welfare ranching” and tried to get cows off public range.... Keeping it open: Family commits ranchland to preservation The DeHaan ranch at the base of the Horseshoe Hills north of Belgrade is a sharp contrast from other parts of the Gallatin Valley, where houses are gradually dotting the landscape. Fields of wheat, barley and alfalfa thrive on the DeHaan's land. Cattle graze in pastures. Wildlife pours out of the hills in winter. And that's the way Frank DeHaan and his family want to keep it. As such, the DeHaans have agreed to sell a 10,456-acre conservation easement to Gallatin County.... State has new water standards to protect fish State and federal environmental-quality experts issued new water-quality standards for every fish-bearing waterway in Oregon Tuesday. The new standards map out optimal water temperatures depending on time of year and waterway and are intended to protect endangered salmon and trout species. “We have essentially redesigned 30 years of water-quality standards,” said Mark Charles of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The standards are the result of a successful lawsuit filed by Northwest Environmental Advocates of Portland that claimed that the old standards did not meet requirements of the federal Endangered Species Act or the federal Clean Water Act. The standards will affect all discharges from pipes and nonpoint pollution sources, such as runoff from agriculture, because those pollution sources affect temperature in rivers.... Ag groups give notice on buffers A national pesticide organization Feb. 18 put the 9th U.S. Circuit Court on alert that it plans to appeal a U.S. district judge’s decision to establish no-spray buffers for 38 pesticides along salmon bearing waterways in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. CropLife America, which includes Monsanto, Bayer and Dow among its members, filed the notice to appeal on behalf of more than 30 agricultural organizations.... Oceans in crisis, will Bush step up? President Bush's oceans advisory panel is about to issue a report calling for a completely new approach to protecting marine life, but already the feeling among some experts is that the president won't have much of an appetite for heeding the advice. What makes this report so special is that it's the biggest government review of oceans policy in 35 years. The last report saw oceans as farmland waiting to be harvested and fish stocks were pretty much managed like cattle.... Cattle tracking faces a maze Soon after the discovery of a mad cow late last year in central Washington, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced meat supply reforms that included a cattle identification system capable of tracking a sick cow and its herd mates nationwide within hours. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture now says it could be several years before a tracking system is in place and operational, despite pressure to act quickly from members of Congress, U.S. trading partners and even the chief executive of McDonald's. Political and logistical hurdles stand in the way:.... Column: How are the fireguards in your township? Did you ever wonder if all those little township roads go anywhere? Well, many don’t. Their purpose was to create fireguards, or as we call them today fuel breaks. The laws from 1939 are still on our books. If a majority present at the annual township meeting, vote for “fireguards” the supervisors are required to plow an area of the section line not more than four rods wide, remove the sod with a “road grader”, and thereafter inspect it and drag it with a “harrow” from July 1 to September 1 to keep the vegetation down. Property within the area surrounded by the fireguards is taxed by a special assessment for the costs.... Rattler roundup draws a crowd There's something about serpents, especially the ones with venom and rattles. Most folks just don't like them. But they're still fascinated with the deadly critters. That's why some 30,000 people swoop down on Sweetwater (pop. 11,000) every year for the World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup. That title is not just West Texas brag, either. The roundup has bagged more than a quarter-million pounds of writhing rattlers in 45 years. The contest is open to anyone. "For the true number of rattlesnakes, no other roundup comes close," said Ken Becker, executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, which puts on the roundup with the Sweetwater Jaycees, raising upward of $85,000 and drawing the likes of "National Geographic Explorer" and ESPN....