NEWS ROUNDUP

Insurer alleges agencies bungled wildfire control Bungling by fire and police agencies here allowed last October's Cedar fire to spread "into a wildfire of epic proportion," one of California's largest insurance companies has charged in a claim filed against three public agencies. Allstate Corp., which expects to pay out $290 million to $330 million to policyholders as a result of last fall's fires, is demanding that the city and county of San Diego as well as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection help it cover the costs because it says they did an incompetent job of fighting the most costly of the blazes, the Cedar fire....
New Canadian aircraft support Idaho firefighters Firefighters battling blazes in the Panhandle this year will look to the northern skies to find help from Canadian air tankers. Three new Air Tractor 802 single-engine air tankers will be based at the Interagency Dispatch Center at the Coeur d'Alene Airport. The sleek planes from New Brunswick have already helped put out some smaller fires earlier this month. The Canadian aircraft are filling gaps in firefighting capability that resulted from a Forest Service decision earlier this year to withdraw contracts from 33 large American-owned fire bombers....
Editorial, Off-road progress: Proposed forest rules a good starting point The U.S. Forest Service, which has caught plenty of flak in recent weeks for its Biscuit Fire salvage plan and the Bush administration's evisceration of the Clinton-era roadless rule, deserves a polite round of applause from environmentalists for its plan to restrict off-road riding in the national forests. While the government needs to do more to protect national forests from the snarling, gouging threat posed by off-road vehicles, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth's new initiative is a welcome, albeit long-overdue, starting point....
Bear bite in John Muir Wilderness closes camping nearby The U-S Forest Service has closed a portion of the John Muir Wilderness to camping after a camper reported being bitten by a bear. The biting of an unidentified camper in the Pothole Lake area near Kearsarge Pass is apparently the first such reported incident in the Inyo National Forest. It's being investigated by the service and the California Department of Fish and Game....
Environmentalists sue over Gardiner-area timber sale Three environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday in federal district court to stop a planned Gallatin National Forest timber sale northeast of Gardiner. The Bear Creek Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystem Council said in a news release the so-called Darroch Eagle sale is a "disaster" -- a poorly planned sale in prime grizzly and elk habitat. R-Y Timber of Livingston has contracted with the Forest Service to harvest the estimated 1.5 million board feet timber....
Officials may relocate fearless bear Wildlife biologists armed with tranquilizer guns are hunting a grizzly bear that has been rocking motor homes in the always packed Russian River Campground and taking salmon from anglers on the nearby river. Problems with the young sow have been building along the popular Kenai Peninsula stream for a week, said Bruce McCurtain of Alaska Recreational Management Inc., the company that contracts with the U.S. Forest Service to run the campground....
New law to let tribes expand tree-thinning Tribal governments will be allowed to thin brush and small trees on federal lands adjacent to their reservations under a new federal law intended to help prevent the spread of wildfires. The legislation, which President Bush signed this week, creates a framework for tribes to work with the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management on proposals to reduce trees and brush along tribal-federal boundaries....
Land trade threatened by rancher The owner of the Yavapai Ranch said Friday that he is moving ahead with plans to possibly scuttle what would be the largest U.S. Forest Service land exchange in state history and build a city "potentially larger than Prescott" on his land south of Seligman. "They (Congress) have until the end of the session to approve this trade or I'm through with this," said Ruskin, who has been pursuing the Northern Arizona National Forest Land Exchange for five years. "I've got an agreement with Yavapai County to develop 25,000 homes on my land, and that's what I'll do."....
Rancher sues over cyanide issue A Blackfoot Valley landowner and environmental group Friday asked the Montana Supreme Court to strike from the Nov. 2 ballot the voter initiative aiming to repeal Montana's ban on cyanide heap-leach gold mines. The petition, also filed in state District Court, said Initiative 147 is unconstitutional because it contains more than one subject and would illegally change contract rights.
Landowners fight for rights Ranchers, farmers and other landowners that form the Landowners Association of Wyoming are working to get an initiative on the ballot for the 2006 election that would protect the property rights of surface landowners during oil and gas development. After working with the Wyoming Legislature for two years, landowners felt that initiating a petition to allow the people to vote on how much legal protection surface owners have a right to was warranted. “There is an absolute inequity between the property rights of a surface owner and the mineral owner,” landowner and member of the Landowners Association of Wyoming, Eric Barlow said....2
Survey assesses elusive Olympic Mountain goats It was the 1920s when a few pairs of snow-white mountain goats were brought to the Olympic Peninsula for the pleasure of hunters. By the 1980s — with a population of more than 1,100 — the billies, nannies and their sprightly kids were so abundant that backpackers in the Olympic Mountains reported them nibbling on their leather boots at night....
Ranch sold to conservation group A 5,636-acre ranch prized for wildlife habitat has been sold to a conservation group, which plans to sell the property to the federal government at no increase in price. Aging siblings Bud and Dolly McMaster have no heirs and last week sold the McMaster Ranch, which has been in their family since the late 1800s, to the Virginia-based Conservation Fund. Plans call for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to oversee the property once it is purchased by the government. The McMasters do not want subdivision of the ranch, which is east of Helena, and the sale is a way to ensure their wish is fulfilled. The property was appraised at $5.8 million....
Haul of the wild A symbol of America's strength and unbreakable spirit is sinking into the mud. Fetlocks flexed and head hung low, the gray stallion stretches down the embankment of a once-dependable watering hole, exposing his rib cage, sunken waist and scrawny hind quarters. He slurps a toxic soup of alkaline silt while two mares and their foals huddle close by. The rest of his harem is some 20 yards away. They'll all take their turn in what has become a futile -- and potentially fatal -- routine that has gone on for days....
Don't Fence Them In Awild black stallion with about 20 mares at his side rears his head and stares intently, his body stiff and alert, ears perked. We rein our mounts and freeze in the saddle. For a few moments nothing stirs; it seems as if even the birds notice the encounter and settle to watch. Suddenly the stallion makes a decision. With a great snort and a whinny he turns and races away, leading his mares in a whirl of dust and pounding hooves. The morning encounter with wild horses is one of many on a two-day ride through the 5,000-acre Wild Horse Sanctuary in Northern California....
Issues remain on wolf question Just one month before a wolf management plan is due to the state wildlife commission, advisory committee members are still howling over some of the most controversial issues. How should livestock owners be compensated for any livestock wolves kill? Will wolves eat too many elk? And should gray wolves be designated as game animals or as an endangered species? The 14 members of the wolf advisory committee — representing everyone from livestock owners to hunters to wolf advocates — spent part of the past two days discussing a compensation plan for livestock killed or injured by wolves....
Task force tours elk feedgrounds Each April, Jensen's cows give birth to calves in his pastures located on the southwest side of a fence that runs through the Muddy feedground near Boulder in western Wyoming. The fence aims to keep cattle and elk apart and decrease the risk of transmission of the disease brucellosis between species. And each April, elk bypass feed set out on the feedground and somehow find their way down into the lower elevation calving pastures. The elk like to feed on the lush, new growth of pasture grass....
Pipeline routes in Nevada challenged A top Bush administration official on Tuesday challenged legislation that maps a corridor to transport water from rural Nevada to Clark County, saying the government should decide where to run the pipeline. Rebecca Watson, Interior Department assistant secretary, said utility corridors outlined in the land bill "may not be in the best interest of the protection of cultural resources, habitat and other resource areas." The utility corridor is a key part of a complex Lincoln County land bill authored by the Nevada congressional delegation, and it is viewed as an important element of a strategy by Southern Nevada planners to provide precious water in coming years to the fast-growing valley population....
California Coastal Commission challenges value of Hearst deal One of the Hearst Corp.'s biggest selling points for its proposal to spare thousands of acres of Hearst Ranch from development is that its $95 million asking price is less than half the deal's appraised value. But as state hearings on the agreement draw closer, one of Hearst's old opponents, the California Coastal Commission, is raising questions about whether the land is really worth the $230 million the state says it is. The appraisal has buttressed arguments that California should seize the chance to protect the prized land surrounding Hearst Castle, which sprawls from rocky shoreline to rolling green mountains. But commission employees' questions have brought a volley of personal criticisms to those on both sides of a debate that once focused on such arcane issues as zoning laws and parcel sizes....
Deaths of 14 bison on Baca preserve raises fear of feud Investigators are perplexed by the recent deaths of 14 bison on a preserve for prairie dogs and other native species in remote Baca County in southeast Colorado. The bison, including eight pregnant cows, may have died of thirst, from eating poisonous weeds - or as the result of a feud between environmentalists and ranchers, said Baca County Sheriff Terry Mullins. Mullins said local ranchers have been concerned that the preserve's prairie dogs will proliferate and spill over to their ranches....
Dino diggers unearth T. rex The discovery of this T. rex specimen - which Chiappe said "is in the top five ever discovered" in terms of completeness and preservation - was made by a local rancher who noticed something different poking out of the gumbo buttes. He asked amateur paleontologist Bob Currie, a history and business teacher at Baker High School, to take a look and try to determine what the fossil might be. "I looked at what he had found, and knew right away it was a T. rex," Currie said. "We weren't sure if it was on private or Bureau of Land Management land, so we did a GPS reading and found out it was just outside the boundary of the private land."....
Drying Up: Coming to terms with Utah's six-year drought In the realm of the high desert, sagebrush and juniper rule. They are hearty, rugged and well-adapted to extreme conditions. They don't die - not easily, anyway, and never in great numbers. But it's happening. The icons are succumbing. In Utah alone, an estimated 600,000 acres of sagebrush - vital for wildlife and soil conservation - are gone. The cause of their demise is the "early 21st century drought," as scientists now call it, that has persisted for six years and is believed to be the worst to strike the Southwest in half a millennium. It is the sort of drought that in another era might have driven the human population away and transformed the Wasatch Front, St. George, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Albuquerque, N.M., into ghost towns....
River's headwaters determined by politicians, not geography The Colorado River starts in the Rocky Mountains, almost two miles above sea level along the Continental Divide in northern Colorado. Doesn't it? Depends on who you ask, it turns out, and the answer, rather answers, are cloaked in the same sort of territorial politics that roil the waters even today....
Interior chief discusses future of West's dwindling water Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Friday that the drought battering much of the West -- possibly the worst in 500 years -- will force such fast-growing states as Nevada and Arizona to scramble even more to conserve water and secure additional supplies. Norton, completing a three-day tour of Colorado, told a crowd of 300 at a Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce luncheon that the five-year drought is a wake-up call for states that rely on the heavily tapped Colorado River....
Tribes win new clout in Arizona A persistent drought could siphon water from Phoenix and Tucson by early next decade. But the real threat to a full urban supply isn't the dry spell, it's an agreement to hand over nearly 200,000 acre-feet of water from the Central Arizona Project to Indian tribes that sued to claim ancestral righs. Arizona officials signed the water deal with the tribes last year after more than a decade of negotiations. In all, Indian communities would control more than 40 percent of the flow in the CAP Canal, which delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. Congress is considering the proposal this year....
Column: Take off blinders or face a parched, dusty future The question Arizonans must ask is not how to deal with the drought, but instead: "What if this is not a drought?" Scientists are speculating that Arizona and the whole Colorado River watershed have experienced a few unusually wet decades, and that weather patterns are now simply returning to their arid norm . . . perhaps forever. From 2001-2003, the Colorado River - the Valley's primary water source - produced less than a third of the water committed to various users, significantly less than what it produced during the disastrous Dust Bowl. In addition, northern Arizona's groundwater supplies and its few remaining rivers are being depleted at an alarming rate....
Column: Lack of cooperation will leave us high, dry There is a history of tension among the states and users of the Colorado River over the distribution and management of its waters. Early on, the concern in Arizona was that California's farmers would fully use the available supplies in the lower part of the basin, leaving little water to meet Arizona's growing needs. More recently, struggles over the river's waters have focused on meeting the needs of plants and wildlife that depend upon its flows, concerns in Mexico that the poor-quality water that reaches its borders would limit farming opportunities, and tribal demands for a share of the overallocated river....
DECIDING A DAM'S FUTURE Battling over Hells Canyon The third hydroelectric dam in Hells Canyon spans the Snake River like a steel and cement temple. Completed in 1967, the 330-foot-tall structure stretches between Oregon and Idaho, a testament to the engineering fervor that drove many conquests of natural resources in the West roughly 50 years ago. The Hells Canyon Dam Complex comprises three major hydroelectric dams and is a crucial component of Idaho Power's hydroelectric energy holdings....
Poor communities better at managing rainforests than governments: study Conservation groups have urged countries meeting from Monday to revise the UN agreement regulating the tropical timber trade to give rainforest communities property rights, because they are better at exploiting and protecting endangered woodland. In the areas where often impoverished indigenous communities have been allowed to own the land they live on, they have invested 1.2 billion to 2.6 billion dollars a year in forest management and conservation, a study by the US group Forest Trends said....
Daschle criticizes USDA Criminal charges should be on the table for U.S. Department of Agriculture officials who allowed Canadian beef into the United States when a ban on such imports was in place, Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Saturday. "I can't for the life of me understand why somebody hasn't been indicted for allowing 33 million pounds of Canadian beef into the United States," the Senate minority leader told a crowd of more than 100 at the New Underwood Community Hall on Saturday....
Groups differ in response to voluntary COOL bill The House Agriculture Committee yesterday passed voluntary country of origin labeling legislation introduced earlier this summer by Ranking Member Charles Stenholm (D-TX) and Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). The Food Promotion Act of 2004 would amend the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to establish the voluntary labeling of produce, meat, and seafood with country of origin information. It's a substitute for the mandatory COOL legislation included in the 2002 Farm Bill, which is currently set to go into full implementation by 2006. 350 groups support the replacement legislation, Goodlatte says. Those groups include the American Meat Institute (AMI) and the National Pork Producers Council....
U.S. ban on Canadian beef putting farmers out of business Canadian farmer Curtis Moxsom likes Americans. But he has nothing good to say about the U.S. ban on imported beef. He says the border closure put in place because of fears over mad cow disease has become a political issue that's endangering his livelihood and that of his fellow Canadian cattlemen. "We're supposed to be two countries that work together. But they're treating us like criminals," Moxsom said as he cut silage on his Nova Scotia farm....
Debate over how to protect farmland from terror Amid the noisy election-year wrangling over how best to prevent terrorism on American soil, researchers and government officials are more quietly debating battle plans designed to protect the nation's farmland. Experts say a biological attack on a Texas cattle ranch or a Kansas wheat farm would kill few, if any, people. But the economic impact of a deliberately introduced disease could prove disastrous, a realization that has prompted a rethinking of how the risk of agricultural bioterrorism -- or agroterrorism -- should be assessed in the United States....
Three Forks Saddlery stays in the family The showroom at Three Forks Saddlery smells like old wood and new leather. The hard heels of broken-in cowboy boots click on the hardwood floor as a few tall horsemen in Wranglers and button-down shirts browse the merchandise: Every piece of tack imaginable. In a back room, Nancy Petersen, 57, studies the saddle she's making for a Judith Gap rancher. Her work is nothing short of artful, which is why her saddles are the envy of horse riders nationwide....
Westward ho! But the "real" West was settled by often forgotten explorers and trappers, prospectors and ranchers who transformed the vast landscape and Native Americans who occupied it in ways still debated today. A fascinating exhibit at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington examines a critical stage of American history through the personal collection of Kenneth W. Rendell. "The Western Pursuit of the American Dream" offers a double-barreled look into overlooked facts and enduring fantasies of 200 years of frontier life....
Drivers circle wagons for Leo You don't have to be a parent or a chuckwagon driver to feel a touch of sorrow for Leo Tournier and his family. After desperately searching for weeks for a cure for their seriously ill son Ty, the Tournier family ran out of time April 1. Ty was just three years old when he died in a Toronto hospital from heart failure. Today, almost four months later, Leo Tournier is at Northlands Park, competing as a chuckwagon driver in the Klondike Derby and putting on a pleasant face while dealing with media questions surrounding his dead son. Almost as impressive is the support that has flowed from the drivers on the World Professional Chuckwagon Association Tour to the Tournier family....
A look back at the deaths of Rogers, Post Wiley Post’s watch stopped shortly before noon our time on Aug. 15, 1935. But it would be the next day before word got back to the United States that Will Rogers and Wiley Post had died in a plane crash in the shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean. A great family man, despite the time his profession kept him from his home, one of Will’s last acts was handing Joe Crosson a telegram to his daughter Mary, who was playing in summer stock in Maine....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: Cows, like oil, not good mix with water If God intended cows to swim, he'd have given them all flippers. You rarely see a mermaid calf or Holstein skinny dippers. But in their battle to survive, I've seen cows come unraveled, and to escape the cowboy's loop, will choose the path less traveled. Now Randy wasn't brilliant, but he was a heavy breather, which helps when chasin' wild cows who aren't that brilliant either! To try and even up the odds, he called his neighbor Steven. One cow versus two cowboys intellectually's 'bout even....