NEWS ROUNDUP

Input sought on forest wells Citizens for Better Payson Government (CBPG), a watchdog organization originally formed during Payson Mayor Ken Murphy's first days in office, is asking Payson residents to counter a campaign launched by residents of Star Valley and Diamond Point Shadows urging the Forest Service to deny the proposal by the town of Payson to drill up to 15 exploratory wells and 13 secondary test wells to determine the presence or absence of a significant aquifer system beneath the Diamond Rim project area northeast of Payson and Star Valley. The proposal, which is currently under consideration following several modifications requested by the Forest Service, is based on the premise that the aquifer the town is interested in is deeper than and unrelated to the aquifer(s) that the wells in the areas opposing the project draw from.... Forest Service To Move 400 Jobs To Albuquerque The U.S. Forest Service plans to move 300 to 400 financial services workers to Albuquerque. New Mexico's largest city beat out 18 other communities for the Forest Service's consolidated financial services center. The center will provide budget and accounting services for the agency in one place and is expected to be operating in Albuquerque by fall.... Firefighting agencies contract for 100 new aircraft The heads of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service on Tuesday announced their agencies would acquire more than 100 additional aircraft to battle this summer's wildfires after ending contracts for 33 aging air tankers last month. Under attack from western congressmen for cutting the old planes, BLM Director Kathleen Clarke and Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said earlier in the day they couldn't justify using the old tankers because of safety risks.... Federal agencies defend decision to suspend air tankers The heads of the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are defending their decision to suspend the use of air tankers to fight wildfires. BLM Director Kathleen Clarke and Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said they could not justify endangering the lives of air tanker crews when, for now, fires can be fought from the ground. The joint statement released Tuesday came in response to pledges some lawmakers made last month to get the 33-tanker fleet back in the air right away.... Split Biscuit Fire salvage plan gets mixed reviews The FEIS preferred alternative protects communities and habitats by building 300 miles of fuel management zones, reforesting 31,000 acres, restoring 700 acres of meadows, implementing 83,000 acres of prescribed burns, and completing 70 miles of road work including closure, decommissioning, and stabilization. The proposal calls for removing 370 million board feet of fire-killed wood, which is enough to build 24,000 homes. The proposal to remove fire-killed wood is restricted to 4% of the project area. Helicopters will be used to minimize impacts and reduce temporary road construction (5 miles). No permanent roads will be built. The preferred alternative also includes a research plan for a Landscape Management Experiment on Restoring Late-Successional Forest Habitat. The management experiment was developed to provide scientific information for producing late-successional forest habitat as part of restoration after a fire. This would be the largest replicated experiment in the Northwest at 36,000 acres and allows comparisons at the scale used in forest management. Little scientific information currently exists on this topic or at this scale.... Rancher embraces new role as an environmental steward Tim Koopman sees himself as the caretaker of 850 acres of oak-studded grassland in the hills between Pleasanton and Sunol. The property is home to California tiger salamanders, golden eagles and other protected species. But it's not a public park or wildlife preserve -- it's a cattle ranch that has been in the Koopman family since 1918. Much has changed since then, including the completion of Interstate 680 in 1967, which served as a catalyst for growth in the region. Today, Koopman's property is hemmed in not only by the freeway, but also by five-acre "ranchettes" and an 18-hole municipal golf course that the city of Pleasanton is building.... Experts remain puzzled over beak deformities in Alaska's birds Captured 15 months ago in South Anchorage, with a bill three times longer than normal, the adult male chickadee has become part of a scientific investigation into a mysterious epidemic of beak deformities that surfaced in the 1990s and continues. Through February, 1,211 individual chickadees and 195 birds of 27 other species have been found in Alaska with crossed, curled or malformed mandibles. The reports stretch from Bristol Bay to Fairbanks, from Juneau to the Matanuska and Susitna valleys. They include 42 northwestern crows in Southeast as well as 37 black-billed magpies, 28 Steller's jays, 21 downy woodpeckers, plus robins, ravens, nuthatches and others.... Learning to keep cool in a wildfire's flames Ed Pulaski pulled back the hammer on his six-gun and ordered his panicking fire crew into a mine tunnel. That bold maneuver saved 39 men from being consumed by the deadly wildfire known as the 1910 "Blowup" in northern Idaho and Montana. It also cemented Pulaski's name in the annals of wildland-firefighting lore. Instructors at the Utah Wildfire Academy don't pack sidearms. But they are steeped in the rugged tradition of wildland firefighting, which has been punctuated by deadly tragedies such as the 1990 blaze that claimed two volunteer firefighters in Heber Valley.... Court Rules EPA Snowmobile Regulations Insufficient A federal appeals court has ordered EPA to review and clarify regulations that would allow thousands of new snowmobiles to be sold with outdated, inadequate pollution controls, even after new EPA rules take full effect in 2012. “Over and over, EPA has argued that its 2002 emissions standards for snowmobiles are as protective as they can possibly be,” said Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew, who represented Bluewater Network and Environmental Defense. “The court has disagreed, and sent EPA back to the drawing board.”.... Developer Unearths Burial Ground and Stirs Up Anger Among Indians With the precision of a watchmaker, an archaeologist clasped a small paintbrush and gently swept the brown, sandy dirt off the spine of a Native American woman buried some 200 years ago. From the condition of the bones, the archaeologist, Penny Minturn, deduced that the woman was 30 to 40 years old when she died, had suffered from arthritis and had recently given birth, and that her diet had probably consisted of shellfish, native plants, nuts and berries. But many Native Americans are outraged that the bones of their ancestors are being dug up from the ancient burial ground, known to the Tongva tribe as Saa'angna and filled with the skeletal remains of people whose predecessors hunted and roamed across Southern California 7,000 years ago or more. Archaeologists here believe it is the largest excavation now going on in the country.... Where Butterflies Rest, Damage Runs Rampant The illegal loggers smeared mud on their faces to hide their identities. Then they smashed a camera they feared would expose their pillaging. The evidence, however, was everywhere. Two trucks rumbled down the mountain with illegally cut wood. The mud-smeared loggers had fresh blood under their fingernails from loading. In a federally protected forest that is a winter haven for the monarch butterfly, the landscape was as barren as the moon. This is Mexico's most famous national park, a 10,000-year-old evergreen forest set aside by presidential decree and supported by millions of dollars in international aid for colonies of orange and gold butterflies that migrate annually from the United States and Canada, in clouds that look like fire in the sky.... Eco Rules May Ease In Oil Pinch With pump prices soaring, the Bush administration is considering easing environmental regulations and the permit process for new and expanding refineries to lift gasoline production, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said. Evans told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that the Bush administration is prepared to "take all the steps we can" to increase supplies. Options under consideration, he said, include easing environmental requirements to use different gasoline blends for to reduce air pollution and easing the permit process for building new refineries or expanding old ones.... Conservative Opposition Leaves U.N. Accord in Dry Dock The Defense and State departments both want it. So do the oil and mining industries. Environmental groups are clamoring for it. Yet three months after the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea won the unanimous approval of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it is languishing in the Senate, with scant chance of ratification this year. The comprehensive accord, covering the use of the oceans for shipping, mining, fishing and naval operations, has become the victim of an all-out assault by conservative groups, such as Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, that oppose multinational agreements on principle. The treaty's chief Senate advocate, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), has warned the Bush administration that its failure to speed ratification tells the world that the United States rejects multilateralism even as it tries to rally support for Iraq's recovery and for the war against terrorism.... Colorado Springs' Cloud Seeding Future Up In The Air The future of could-seeding efforts by the city is uncertain after budget cuts and a season that saw fewer clouds than normal. Fewer clouds and less moisture translated to fewer opportunities to seed clouds this winter. Some experts agree that under ideal conditions, cloud seeding can increase precipitation by about 10 percent. But conditions last winter were less than ideal.... Rancher dies after bee attack, tractor fall Authorities believe bees attacked an area rancher, causing him to fall off a tractor and die over the weekend. Ranch owner Bruce Harrison, 54, was found lying on the ground next to the tractor. He had spoken on the telephone an hour before being found, Jeannie Gage, a spokeswoman for the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office, said Tuesday....