NEWS ROUNDUP

National Forests Fall Victim to Firefighting By 2000, forest fires had reached historic proportions. That year and 2002 rank as two of the worst wild land-fire seasons in 50 years. In 2002 alone, 88,458 fires burned roughly 7 million acres in states including New Mexico, Oregon, Colorado and Arizona, destroying more than 800 structures and killing 23 firefighters. Although the Forest Service has just begun to use its new powers under the act, the agency is pursuing a new forest fire strategy across the country. It estimates that 191 million acres of federal land, out of a total of 800 million, pose a fire risk. This sort of analysis has helped fuel the shift in federal policy in areas beyond the 20 million acres directly subject to the act, and it is alarming environmentalists who are trying to keep national forests off-limits to loggers....
Plan to purge fish released After more than three years in development, the state and the Bonneville Power Administration have rolled out a draft plan for purging non-native fish from 21 alpine lakes in the South Fork Flathead drainage. The state and BPA have released a draft environmental impact statement that lays out details for a project that will involve helicopters, single-engine air tankers and horse packing to deliver fish toxins to the lakes. the plan has been controversial since it was first proposed in 2001....
Forest Service May Use ISO 14001 Instead of Impact Statements The U.S. Forest Service could change a practice that dates back to the early 1980s and forego the environmental impact statement process in the plans required for each of its national forests and grasslands. Instead, the service would require that forest planners would use environmental management systems that conform to the ISO 14001 international EMS standard to address environmental issues and ensure compliance with laws, according to an upcoming article in The Environmental Forum. The article, published by the Environmental Law Institute, is written by the career Forest Service employee in charge of a rulemaking to replace the existing planning regulation....
Column: Risky Business of Fighting Wildfires The 2004 fire season has not yet truly begun in the West, and already three fire-fighting pilots have died in crashes. While investigations into the causes of the accidents are underway, the U.S. Forest Service finds itself crushed between a rock and a hot place. On May 11, with aerial tanker-training in full swing, top-ranking administrators in the Forest Service pulled the rug out from under the agency's tanker contractors and regional fire managers. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth declared all large tanker contracts null and void, leaving a gaping hole in the bag of tools needed to fight wildland fires. The impetus behind his decision was a horrifying video accompanied by a National Transportation Safety Board report on the catastrophic failure of wings on two aerial tankers that crashed in 2002. All crew members aboard the planes died....
Firefighters injured by lightning strike Four firefighters were hospitalized after lightning impacted the ground near the Noon Fire on Thursday afternoon. Forest Service Public Relations Officer Gail Aschenbrenner said Scott Gorman and Jeff Every, both members of the Dalton Interagency Hotshot Crew, were sent to the Mount Graham Regional Medical Center after lightning struck the ground near them. The crew is based in Southern California....
Noah's modern ark: The role of ART in conserving endangered species Killer whales, giant pandas, cheetahs and black-footed ferrets are just some of the endangered species that are benefiting from advances in reproductive technology, the 20th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology will hear tomorrow (Monday 28 June). But, whereas in humans the focus of assisted reproductive technology (ART) is on producing a baby, amongst wildlife conservationists the focus is on the much more basic aim of simply understanding the fundamentals of reproduction in different species....
2 climbers die in rock slides A rock slide that unleashed boulders "the size of trucks" killed a climber and injured two other hikers as they descended Mount McKinley, authorities said. It was one of two deadly rock slides in the United States over the weekend. In Alaska, four climbers were attached by rope at 13,000 feet when giant boulders began raining down on them Sunday. Two men suffered non-life-threatening injuries, while a fourth, a guide, was not injured....
Babbitt, Finley push park politics Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and former Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Mike Finley criticized the Bush administration's stewardship of the national parks on Monday.
"President Bush has broken his promise," said Babbitt, who served during the Clinton administration, during a conference call organized by the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry....
U.S. Park Police Chief Sues To End Limbo Status U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers wants to go back to work. To make that happen, she has filed a complaint before a federal civil service judge, seeking immediate reinstatement to her job, according to a complaint released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Chambers was placed on paid administrative leave in December, after publicly complaining about budget and staffing. National Park Service Deputy Director Don Murphy stripped Chambers of her badge, sidearm and law enforcement credentials. She was also ordered not to give any interviews....
All-Employee Memo to Counter the "Chambers Effect" Even as it seeks to remove its top law enforcement officer for speaking with the Washington Post, the National Park Service has issued an email to all its employees assuring them of their "absolute" right to report "wrongdoing or mismanagement," according to the memo released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)....
California's perilous mining legacy Such accidents underscore the hazardous legacy of some 47,000 abandoned mines throughout California, some dating to the Gold Rush of 1849, state and federal authorities say. Riverside and San Bernardino counties have an estimated 15,000 abandoned mines. The state has started identifying the most hazardous mines and gating, plugging or filling their entrances, but the task is only minimally funded and is expected to take decades to finish....
Editorial: 'Cultural resources' Due to five years of record drought, the level of Lake Mead has dropped 80 feet, bringing into shallow water or right up into view artifacts and ruins that have not been seen since the lake began to fill, decades ago. Sixty miles northeast of Las Vegas, building foundations in the town of St. Thomas -- swallowed by the growing lake in 1938 -- are now high and dry. As a result, there have already been incidents of looting and vandalism in some of the newly exposed areas, according to Rosie Pepito, cultural resources manager for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Relic hunters have been arrested amidst the ruined concrete foundations, according to recreation area archaeologist Steve Daron. "There's been a problem with people using metal detectors and digging stuff up," he says. So the Park Service is preparing a Submerged Cultural Resources Management Plan. What a bunch of bunk. Congress declared Lake Mead is a recreation area, not a protected archaeological site. The government had years to dig up and remove anything it wanted to preserve, 70 years ago -- and did so. If there is no longer any water over St. Thomas to allow swimming or boating, what form of "recreation" other than relic hunting do the rangers now submit it's good for? Druid solstice ceremonies?....
BLM worker’s mistake led to death of 7 horses Seven wild horses died in a remote Northeast Nevada enclosure because of a mistake by a Bureau of Land Management employee, an agency investigation found. In a statement released Monday, BLM officials said a worker failed to install proper gates that would have allowed the animals to leave a fenced weed treatment research area. Instead, the seven horses were trapped inside the enclosed area in May and died because of a lack of water....
White House help sought on N-dump In a letter, Private Fuel Storage Chairman John D. Parkyn asked the White House Task Force on Energy Policy Streamlining to force the Defense Department to complete a study on whether putting the nuclear waste near the sprawling Utah Test and Training Range might hinder the preparedness of the Air Force, which uses the range in Utah's west desert for combat practice. Until the congressionally mandated study is completed, the Interior Department cannot approve Private Fuel Storage's request to build a rail line across federal land to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, where the company plans to store 40,000 tons of radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants....
Greenpeace vacates anti-logging camp, gets federal citation After two protests that temporarily blocked loggers from timber sales, Greenpeace dismantled the base camp for its southern Oregon campaign against old growth logging. The group also received a federal citation for staying too long on public lands. "Today is the last day of the rescue station, but it's just the beginning of our campaign in southern Oregon," Greenpeace campaigner Ginger Cassady told the Grants Pass Daily Courier on Monday....
Nevada leads U.S. in mercury release Nevada mines account for most of the mercury released into the environment in the United States, but the state no longer is No. 1 when it comes to the release of toxic substances, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report. Alaska moved into the No. 1 spot, bumping the Silver State to second after four straight years in which Nevada was first. Metal mining, which churns up to the surface the intrinsic toxic substances in soil and rock, perpetually puts Western states atop the list....