NEWS ROUNDUP

Bush drops 'roadless' forest rule The Bush administration yesterday abandoned a sweeping Clinton-era rule that blocked road access to 56 million acres of national forests, saying the regulation has become bogged down in litigation from states and environmentalists. The Forest Service instead will begin a process that gives the affected 39 states a major role in how "roadless" areas will be conserved and protected....
Beetles Take a Devastating Toll on Western Forests It is a growing problem around the West. Unusually warm temperatures have extended the life and range of this and other bark beetles over the last several years. Trees have been weakened by several years of severe drought. Decades of zero tolerance for forest fires (a policy that is changing) left many forests far too dense with trees, a fertile environment for hungry beetles. All of it has led to an explosion of insect-killed trees in conifer forests. From Alaska to Arizona and South Dakota to California, several kinds of bark beetles are killing large swaths of ponderosa, piñon and lodgepole pines and other trees. Much of the kill is taking place in publicly owned forests, but many private landowners who built homes in the forest are also watching as the trees around them die....
Column: Alaska needs to revitalize dormant timber industry Our federal forest management places a high level of importance on conservation. Under the 1997 Tongass Land Management Plan less than 10 percent of the remaining high-volume coarse canopy old growth would ever be cut. There are 4.1 million acres on the Tongass suitable for timber production. Only 16 percent of the Tongass forest's timberland - a sustainable level - would ever be harvested. We need to revitalize our dormant timber industry. To do this, we need to review history and take advantage of new technologies....
Column: Wilderness dilemma As we near the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act, it becomes more obvious that wilderness designation is not a good way to protect land from the ravages of humanity. The idea was good, to set aside parcels "where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." But it hasn't worked that way; many wilderness areas have become popular destinations and get trammeled hard. This puts federal land management agencies, like the Forest Service and the BLM, in a quandary....
Sick Birds Washing Ashore Puzzle Avian Experts Avian experts are trying to determine why an unusually high number of California brown pelicans are washing up on local shores — weak, dehydrated and near death. Tissue samples from birds that have died have been sent to laboratories run by the state and federal governments and the UC Davis veterinary school....
Jack Morrow Hills plan includes oil, gas development A final management plan for the Jack Morrow Hills will result in oil and gas development, some new jobs and substantial revenues for local communities in southwest Wyoming. But conservationists fear the development will come at the expense of what they believe is one of Wyoming's unique and scenic jewels. They say the plan does little to protect sage grouse strutting grounds, elk migration corridors and thousands of acres of potential wilderness lands....
Idyllwild is home of heavy environmental hitter The strategy room for launching some of the region's biggest confrontations between preservation and development is a cabin in an idyllic mountain setting where a half-dozen environmentalists work with mixed-breed dogs at their feet. "In some ways, it's an emergency room," said Brendan Cummings, one of four attorneys who works in the Center for Biological Diversity's Southern California headquarters in Idyllwild....
Utah Seeks to Save June Sucker Population Wildlife officials may begin removing carp from Utah Lake as early as next spring in an effort to save endangered June sucker populations. Carp are devastating Utah Lake, said Chris Keleher, conservation biologist with the June Sucker Recovery Implementation Program. "All indicators are that the carp population is extremely large," Keleher said. "At this point, we don't see any natural control of that population."....
Battle brewing over sage grouse protection In the heart of the nation's natural gas territory, a bird most Americans have never heard of is threatening a piece of the multibillion-dollar energy industry. The greater sage grouse, looking much like an oversize quail, is declining in numbers, and federal scientists are weighing whether to put it on the endangered species list. If that happens, it's likely to mean significant restrictions on energy development across a huge swath of the West. Much of the bird's habitat overlaps with the nation's prime gas drilling territory, in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado and Utah. Grouse advocates argue that the intensive development threatens nesting areas and is pushing the bird toward extinction — a claim that could significantly disrupt the Bush administration's push for a gas industry boom in the West....
Tribes to stage hearing protest Members of the Klamath Tribes say they will stage a protest Saturday outside a congressional field hearing in Klamath Falls because their tribal chairman isn't being given a turn at the microphone. Tribal officials announced Friday that Allen Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, wasn't included in the list of witnesses set to give testimony regarding the Endangered Species Act at the House Resources Committee field hearing....
Duck Population Drops by 11 Percent The duck population in the United States and Canada dropped 11 percent from a year ago as drought dried up breeding grounds, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service on Monday. This year's duck population of 32.2 million birds was 11 percent less than the 36.2 million birds tallied a year ago....
Everyone has a theory about the missing pelicans The air here this time of year usually is filled with the grunts and squawks of thousands of white pelicans and their chicks. The giant birds have made the refuge their home for at least 100 years. Now their nesting grounds are quiet. The pelicans are gone — and no one knows why. Everybody, from biologists to bartenders, has a theory....
New twist in fight over fly Most cities use community development block grants to construct senior centers, build sidewalks or renovate houses in low-income neighborhoods. But the Colton City Council wants to use $452,000 in federal poverty funds to destroy roads and open a trust fund for a fly. The plan to rip up streets to create insect "flyways" and endow a maintenance fund must first pass muster with the county, which distributes the grants, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Neither is a sure thing. However, Colton's proposal illustrates the lengths to which the city must go to satisfy the federal agency's legal responsibility to establish wildlife preserves for the endangered Delhi Sands flower-loving fly. Safeguarding the shrinking breeding grounds of the only fly to receive federal protection under the Endangered Species Act has cost this blue-collar city an estimated $300 million in lost investments and 700 to 1,000 jobs, city officials say....
Conservationists protest the boundry rule Twenty-eight conservationists from the Silver City area circled the parking lot of the Bayard Community Center on Friday afternoon before a meeting of the Mexican Wolf Adaptive Management Work Group to protest what they deemed mismanagement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Howling and waving signs that read, "Save the Cibola Pack," and "Wolves Can't Read Maps: Repeal the Boundary Rule," protestors responded to the news that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will begin trapping a pack of wolves in the Cibola National Forest today....
Greens snapping up huge swath of land An Arizona-based environmental group is poised to take control of nearly 1 million acres of grazing land north of the Grand Canyon. On Monday, the Grand Canyon Trust signed an option agreement to purchase 1,000 acres of private ranch lands in northern Arizona and more than 900,000 acres of grazing permits on adjacent public lands, including a sliver of southern Utah. The group's ranching operation, however, will not be like your granddad's. "We're going to run as few cows as we possibly can," said trust director Bill Hedden....
Fallon tribe concerned over sacred sites Leaders of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe are asking for more protection of area sites sacred to them that are being desecrated as more people move to Churchill County. The tribe is urging creation of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern on 22,477 acres surrounding the Grimes Point Archaeological Area off U.S. 50, about 11 miles east of Fallon, and on nearly all of the Stillwater Mountain range northeast of there....
Agents scour desert in search of fugitive In the desert valleys where Oregon, California and Nevada come together, residents watch and wonder these days at the planes, helicopters, FBI agents and teams of deputies from various law enforcement agencies. The search is on for a fugitive who has been living in the desert and pillaging remote homes and cabins for supplies. More and more local residents are making the comparison of this modern-day fugitive to the well-known Claude Dallas, who frequented the area while hiding from the law in the 1970s....
Counties gain greater say in governance of state land County boards have new veto power over whether some state land will be classified as environmentally sensitive, under a new law signed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty over the objections of his Department of Natural Resources commissioner. The law could prevent the department from designating new scientific and natural areas, or SNAs. The change, which passed the 2004 Legislature as a five-line amendment to a 74-page bill, requires the DNR to get county board approval for SNA management plans....
Public gets first detailed look at deal to preserve Hearst Ranch The public got its first detailed look Monday at a plan to preserve 80,000 acres of Hearst Ranch, which protects a stunning 18-mile swath of California's coast but does not offer public access through the majority of the land. The plan, which would cost taxpayers $95 million, has been in negotiations for five years. A tentative agreement was reached last month....
Essays on Rio rise above bitter debate and offer wise views Anyone who's really interested in water in New Mexico must pick up a copy of "La Vida Del Rio Grande: Our River - Our Life." Published this year by the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, "La Vida Del Rio Grande" is the most informative collection of essays on contemporary water issues and traditional agricultural practices I've read....
Champion's cabin lives on The event was the culmination of two summers of work for two Casper Kelly Walsh High School teachers, Joe Feiler and Jamie Cordonier, who were hired by Hole-in-the-Wall Ranch owner John Wold to restore the cabin where Champion was attacked. The incident helped lead to the Johnson County War, which pitted homesteaders like Champion, who had been accused of rustling, against the wealthy ranchers who ran the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association. While Champion survived this brush with death, a small army of men hired by the ranchers managed to kill him on April 9, 1892, after setting fire to his cabin at the KC Ranch and riddling his body with more than 24 bullets....
Farrier Considers Teaching John Corkery started at Prince’s right front hoof, moved to the left front then the rear, pulling and discarding the Percheron’s worn shoes, trimming his hooves with nippers, filing them with a rasp, then measuring and fitting the huge horse for new shoes. A licensed farrier, horseshoeing is the only job Corkery has. Corkery recently moved from New Mexico to Fort Smith. He’s shod horses for “some 38 years.” An Illinois native, Corkery started his career at the Chicago stockyards where his father was in the cattle business. He grew up riding horses, and still rides and rodeos — rustles steers....
The Stock Broker The rodeo world remains very much a man’s world. Young men test their strength and skills in a battle against nature as their fathers and grandfathers did. So, when Vold, 31, took over as manager of her father’s legendary rodeo stock company, the Harry Vold Rodeo Co., in 1998, heads turned, rumors flew and even some tempers flared. Vold handled it all the same way she handles an uncooperative bucking horse: with patience, determination and Western moxie. Over the last six years, she’s managed to convince even some stubborn cowboys that there’s a place for a cowgirl in the rodeo world....
It's All Trew: Rodeo booster trips early promotional fare Among my fonder memories experienced as a musician were the rodeo booster trips we participated in down through the years. Most towns celebrated their founding with an annual event of some sort. Usually parades, carnivals, rodeos and public dances were involved. Western bands made good money at the dances so promoters usually conned the bands into making promotional tours to the surrounding towns advertising the upcoming events. No pay was involved but what we missed in money we made up for in fun....