NEWS ROUNDUP

Western fire season tests politics, ecology As the US moves into what is likely to be another very difficult, drought-driven fire season across the West, the federal government is trying to find the best way to repair, protect, and eventually manage more sustainably those areas that have had massive burns. This week's proposal to address the aftermath of the Biscuit Fire is a prime example. It allows for the logging of thousands of charred trees, but it also includes expansion of a protected wilderness area. It's a Solomonic compromise: Neither environmentalists nor the timber industry is entirely happy with the decision. Officials know they have to tread carefully through both the politics and the ecology of fire restoration if they are to achieve their goal without getting tied up in the lawsuits and partisan sniping that have marked the timber wars of the past. Coincidentally, Greenpeace - the activist group better known for saving whales - set up its first "forest rescue station" nearby this week. With solar-powered satellite communications systems operating from portable dome tents, the group intends to publicize and possibly interfere with logging activities.... BLM Cow Catcher sale temporarily halted Just as timber was beginning to fall, a court-ordered preliminary injunction has halted logging in the 146-acre Cow Catcher sale, located in the Cow Creek drainage on Bureau of Land Management property. The decision follows a lawsuit filed by Stephanie Parent of Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center on behalf of three conservation groups, including Roseburg-based Umpqua Watersheds. The plaintiffs accuse the BLM of violating environmental rules. Conservationists disapprove of the sale, located southwest of Riddle, because six pairs of the threatened northern spotted owl forage there. Red tree voles, which serve as an important food source for the owls, are also found within the sale tract.... N.M. senators push for thinning plan New Mexico senators think it's fine that the U.S. Forest Service has a $66 million plan to make up for the loss of 33 air tankers from this summer's fight against wildfires, but they wish the agency would pay more attention to thinning the forests to prevent massive fires in the first place. Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, said that at $500 per acre the Forest Service could thin 132,000 acres of forest for the cost of the 139 airplanes and helicopters that will be thrown into fighting wildfires. And Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, released a General Accounting Office report detailing how the Forest Service from 1999 to 2003 diverted $73.8 million from thinning projects and other activities in New Mexico and Arizona to pay for firefighting.... Secret maps list fire danger areas San Bernardino County fire chiefs have compiled confidential maps showing dozens of "special hazard areas" that could pose grave danger to firefighters sent in to battle the next large mountaintop blaze. Officials maintain that the areas are not to be interpreted as indefensible against wildfire and have not made the maps public for fear they could be used as a "roadmap for a potential arsonist.".... Elimination of the most Wasteful, Environmentally Harmful Highway Projects would save Billions, According to new Report As lawmakers begin final debate on the federal transportation bill, a new report released today calls for elimination of the nation’s most wasteful and environmentally harmful highway projects, many of which are key factors in bloating the current legislation. Road to Ruin: The 27 Most Wasteful Road Projects in America chronicles the nation’s most wasteful and environmentally harmful highway projects and ranks the ten worst. Eliminating the 27 projects would save federal taxpayers more than $24 billion.... WWF Helps Set Up Amazon Trust Fund; Goal Is Protection of Area Bigger Than U.S. Parks System Over Next 10 Years World Wildlife Fund announced the creation Thursday of a permanent, multi-million dollar endowment to fund conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon in partnership with the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility and the government of Brazil. In a ceremony at the presidential palace in Brasilia, WWF officials presented President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva with a check for $500,000 in seed money for the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) trust fund. The GEF contributed a matching $500,000 grant for the fund's initial capitalization.... Are Museums' Specimen Collections Going Extinct? Natural history collections are facing the same fate as the dodo, the passenger pigeon, and other extinct animals whose remains they preserve, according to scientists in the United States and Britain. The researchers say university and museum collections that catalog past and present life on Earth are at risk because the supply of scientists needed to manage them is drying up. They blame staff shortages on inadequate government funding and a lack of young scientists who want to work in museums.... Huge, Freed Pet Pythons Invade Florida Everglades In February, a group of tourists at the Pa-hay-okee Overlook in Florida's Everglades National Park stumbled upon a battle between an alligator and a python. The stunned onlookers watched as the snake wrapped itself around the alligator, only to see its opponent counter by rolling over and grabbing the snake in its mouth and swimming off with the snake in its jaw. It was not the first such battle. In January of last year, a horde of tourists watched another epic contest between an alligator and a python at the park's Anhinga Trail. After more than 24 hours in the jaws of the alligator, that snake broke free and moved off into the marsh. For now, the alligators in the Florida Everglades are holding their ground against the invading snakes. But the odds may be changing. The park is being overrun with Burmese pythons, one of the world's largest snakes. These pythons can grow to be more than 20 feet (6 meters) long in their natural habitat in Southeast Asia.... Column: Whatever Is Necessary The Yakama Indian Nation put the federal government on notice -- it has an obligation to clean up its mess. The confederation of tribes contends that the federal government has failed to protect the Columbia River from pollution emanating from the Hanford nuclear reservation -- the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation.... Snowmobile fate remains uncertain Expect a sense of deja vu in Yellowstone National Park this winter. Snowmobilers, nearby communities and the general public probably won't know the exact fate of snowmobiling in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks until days before the 2004-05 winter season begins, park officials said Wednesday. Between now and the start of winter, park planners will be working to come up with a temporary plan for winter in Yellowstone - including a decision about whether snowmobiles will be allowed - before embarking on yet another long-term study of the issue.... Ruling protects rare desert plant In a setback for off-roaders, federal wildlife officials on Thursday said a plant that led to closures of the desert's most popular dunes should remain protected under the nation's Endangered Species Act. "I'm extremely disappointed that the ruling went the way it did," said Grant George of Rancho Cucamonga, president of the American Sand Association, a 17,000-member group. In their petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the association and other off-roading groups sought to prove the Peirson's milk-vetch, a spindly member of the pea family that bears purple blossoms, was in fact flourishing at the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, about 100 miles southeast of Palm Springs.... Editorial: The greater good Even if everyone accepted that public lands were to be managed for the public good, there would still be a lot of questions to answer. The United States includes a lot of public and many potential, sometimes conflicting, benefits. But before we can even attempt to think through the rival claims to public benefits -- primarily preservation, recreation and resource extraction -- the Bureau of Land Management must be given the clear mission, and sufficient means, to put the public interest first. Recent reporting by the Associated Press has shown that, at least when it comes to oil and gas leases on BLM land, private interests are coming out ahead.... Senate Backs Redefinition of Atom Waste The Senate voted Thursday to give the Energy Department the authority to reclassify nuclear waste so it could be left in aging tanks, some of them already leaking, rather than be pumped out for disposal elsewhere. The vote would reverse a decision last July by a federal district court judge in Idaho who had ruled, in a suit brought by environmentalists and backed by several states, that the high-level radioactive material must be buried deep beneath the ground.... Ailing Alaska Killer Whales to Get Protection U.S. officials said on Thursday they are granting special protection to a small group of Alaska killer whales that have dwindled in number since some members were seen swimming through oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. The AT-1 killer whales, which bear distinctive black and white markings, make special calls to each other and differ genetically from other whales, have been designated as depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Marine Fisheries Service said.... Editorial: Biscuit and honey In the federal government's final plan for salvage of the Biscuit fire, environmentalists see a full-scale assault on old-growth trees, pristine roadless areas and one of the West's most fragile ecosystems. Logging advocates see a timid plan that will waste tens of millions of board feet of salvageable wood and deny thousands of well-paying jobs to one of the poorest regions in Oregon. We see a flawed and politicized plan that overreaches into roadless areas, but one almost certain to be narrowed by court rulings, wood decay and other factors to provide only a modest level of salvage and more than adequate forest protections.... Levee break threatens water quality Officials hurried to safeguard drinking water for cities as far away as Los Angeles on Thursday after a break in an inland levee allowed saltwater from the San Francisco Bay to rush into a freshwater delta. It was unclear how much saltwater had passed through the breach, which grew to 300 feet by late afternoon, or how deep into the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta the saltwater had traveled, officials said.... Albuquerque gets closer to using San Juan/Chama water The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has given its approval to a water use plan that will ensure that the city of Albuquerque has a stable water supply well into this century. The Bureau gave its OK in an announcement late Wednesday to the city's plan to use its San Juan-Chama water for drinking purposes. The water will be taken out of the Rio Grande through a $250 million diversion and filtration plant project, which the city hopes to have in operation by 2006.... L.A. soon may atone to valley it left high and dry Looking out from the banks of the river that once ran through the rugged Owens Valley beside the Sierra Nevada, Mike Prather sees only stumps, weeds and dried mud. The water is long gone. It's been that way for nearly a century, ever since Los Angeles began quenching its insatiable thirst by buying nearly all the land and building what some folks in Big Pine bitterly call "the big straw," the 233-mile aqueduct that swiped the local water supply and gave the metropolis its life.... Breakthrough procedure draws human antibodies from cow blood Researchers at a Sioux Falls laboratory have developed a way to harvest disease-fighting human antibodies from a cow's blood. What was once a one in 1,000 chance of getting human antibodies from the blood of a cow now is nearly a 100% guarantee. Hematech's research has resulted in another accomplishment: its cloned cattle grazing on a secret tract in northwest Iowa can't contract mad cow disease.... Congressional Vote on Central America FTA ''Unlikely'' Before November Election A congressional vote on the recently signed US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is "unlikely" to take place before the November elections in the US, according to US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. At a recent press conference in Washington announcing the conclusion of a free-trade agreement between the US and Bahrain, Zoellick said that, given time constraints and opposition to the accord, the Bush Administration will probably wait until after the November elections to pursue a vote on the agreement between the US and the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica....