NEWS ROUNDUP

AMA OPPOSES SHUTDOWN OF 4 MILLION ACRES TO OHVs The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) has expressed its opposition to a federal court ruling this week that has the potential to shut down an additional 4.1 million acres of the California desert to all off-highway vehicles. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued a ruling that could end all off-highway motorcycling and ATV riding in areas of the desert that are designated critical habitat for the desert tortoise, which is listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Illston's ruling reverses an opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that had allowed activities including cattle grazing and motorized recreation on some tortoise habitat controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management within the 25-million acre desert....
Rainforest Action Network Launches BuyGoodWood.com Rainforest Action Network today launched BuyGoodWood.com, an internet-initiative encouraging more American corporations to purchase environmentally ethical forest products. The site initially profiles Weyerhaeuser (WY), the number one destroyer of old-growth forests in North America, sharing the truth about the logging giant's century-long legacy of destructive forestry practices. BuyGoodWood.com goes behind the eco-messaging and graphically conveys the environmental devastation caused by old growth clear-cuts, genetically manipulated trees and toxic tree farms....
Rare albino finch spotted in Fallon A bird so rare that even seasoned wildlife watchers claim to have never seen one spent Monday lounging in the bushes at the Best Western Fallon Inn. The bird, a house finch, would be common in the Lahontan Valley if it wasn't a complete albino. "Albinos are always rare," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Bill Henry, "especially 100 percent albino."....
Horse, dog lovers worry about losing beach to plovers Barry Stotts remembers riding his horse as a youth on Guadalupe Beach, and for the past eight years has worked to get horses allowed back on the sands - at least on a trial basis. Now his dreams, and those of other horse enthusiasts, are in the hands of the California Coastal Commission which will decide Friday whether this equestrian program will be given the green light or permanently nixed. The program would allow up to 10 horses at a time between October and February, months when the federally protected Western snowy plovers aren't laying eggs in the sand....
Rocky Flats samples may be on hold A Rocky Flats cleanup oversight group might not take additional soil samples from the former nuclear-weapons plant site, saying the process could be too expensive and repetitive. The U.S. Department of Energy and its main cleanup contractor, Kaiser-Hill Co., plan to complete the $7.2 billion cleanup effort by December 2006. At that point, all but 1,000 acres of the roughly 6,300-acre site will be turned over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to create the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge....
Column: Endangered Species Act needs revising It is easy to lose focus when embracing a cause. Even though the protection of vulnerable creatures seems to be a worthy one, the process used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not actually consider the recovery of the species involved. Hundreds of thousands of acres within Stanislaus County have been designated as critical habitat for vernal pools, California tiger salamanders and red-legged frogs, but there is no evidence to suggest that setting aside property (and personal property rights) will do anything toward saving these species. In fact, so far, no data have been offered that show these creatures actually live in the areas designated....
Kerry, at Canyon, says he'd increase money for parks Patrons could pay more to visit national parks under an idea by presidential candidate John Kerry to pay for parks' unmet needs, although he said he would choose other funding sources first. The new money - much of it to come from closing tax credits to businesses that "outsource" employment - would be used to pay for operations at the nation's parks, which Kerry said are $600 million short....
Park Service Fines 3-Year-Old U.S. park ranger confronted Barbara Wells - an American now living with her husband in the Czech Republic - yesterday around 5 p.m. as she watched her child urinate near a wall close to a flower bed. "He tells me he has to go pee-pee," Wells said, recalling her son's struggle to hold it in after an afternoon of sightseeing. "I was afraid he would wet his pants." Then the ranger walked up to Wells, who is in her 40s, demanding to know the tot's name. She identified her son, and the ranger gave her a $75 ticket for "disposing of human waste [urinating] in a developed area." The policeman identified himself on Wells' citation as Park Ranger Saperstein. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Cole, 62, watched the ranger scold Wells from his ninth-floor office window and said he thought the officer had blown things out of proportion. "It was beyond the pale," said Cole, who rushed downstairs to console Wells after watching her ordeal. "People in public service should be using better judgment."....
Editorial: A solution on Platte River fight Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska residents gave federal agencies an earful recently about plans to keep enough water in the Platte River to save whooping cranes and other endangered species. But the feds deserve credit: Habitat loss and conflicts among water users on the central Platte River must be resolved; the question is how much pain any interest group suffers. A plan envisioned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers a sensible, cooperative solution among the states and the feds, and gives some certainty to farmers and towns that use the Platte River. Other options would inflict worse economic pain, take longer to implement and be less effective in saving endangered species....
Drought sapping river water Higher-than-average rainfall this summer has done little to lessen the effects of five years of drought on the North Platte River's reservoir system. Last month, Pathfinder Reservoir stored less water than it had in 35 years and overall water storage in the system fell to its lowest volume in 43 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. At the end of the month, the seven-reservoir system held the lowest amount of water in 30 years. The system's total capacity is 2.78 million acre-feet; the reservoirs held 35 percent that amount....
More farmers lose water; others, defiant, keep pumping The worsening drought has left 350 more Cache Valley farmers without irrigation water and two others threatened with legal action because they refuse to pull their pumps from the Bear River. Utah and Idaho farmers who get their water from the West Cache Canal Co. had used up their summer's allocation by Saturday night, so the headgates to the Bear River were closed, said Joseph G. Larsen, president of the canal company....
The great Divide: Time to rewrite river law? Drought has been shrinking or drying reservoirs throughout the West for so many years that it has rekindled a debate over the basic water rules of the region. The rules are codified in the "law of the river," the Colorado River Compact, which guides distribution of water flowing through seven states and parts of Mexico. The region covers 244,000 square miles, according to a fact sheet posted on the Internet by the group Friends of Lake Powell. The compact, ratified by Congress in 1922, allocates water among the seven states. Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico make up the Upper Basin states, while California, Arizona and Nevada are the Lower Basin....
Column: Water bill would have tribes flush with excess Today, 13 Indian tribes with roughly 1 percent of the state's population control 44 percent of Arizona's annual Colorado River water supply. That control will rise to more than 51 percent if identical bills introduced in Congress by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., are approved....
Column: Legislation is an equitable solution to resolve water claims In recent years, other tribes have also filed claims, now totaling millions of acre-feet of water. The Gila River Indian Community alone claims more than 2.7 million acre-feet a year from various sources, which is approximately twice the average amount of water produced by the Salt, Verde, and Gila rivers combined. If a court were to validate even a fraction of this claim, the community would have the right to shut down upstream water uses, causing great damage to non-Indian economies. Obviously, this situation and others like it create a great deal of uncertainty for everyone involved, and are the principal reason that non-Indian entities have chosen to avoid litigation and settle Indian water right questions by other means....
Logan tells ranchers: Remain calm State Veterinarian Jim Logan told ranchers there is "no need for overreacting and pointing fingers" following the discovery of brucellosis in a Campbell County herd. The two cows that tested positive at a Pierre, S.D., auction a couple weeks ago brought to 40 the number of brucellosis-positive cattle confirmed in Wyoming since last year. But they were the first cases in northeast Wyoming, igniting speculation in the area's ranching community over how the cows got it....
Albertan smuggled bulls to U.S. An Alberta rancher has pleaded guilty to smuggling rodeo bulls across the U.S. border in violation of the current ban on Canadian cattle imports. Greg Kesler, 59, of Magrath, entered guilty pleas in July to two counts of fraudulently importing live ruminants. The maximum penalty for the offence is five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. The veteran Canadian rodeo stock promoter will be sentenced Nov. 5....
GI puts skills as cowboy to work in Iraq GI Justin McCarty was a cowboy in Iraq. He put his ranching skills to good use during his 10-month deployment as part of the Army's Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. McCarty and some of his buddies in uniform could be the first American soldiers since World War Two to brand and graze livestock while under fire. The New Mexico soldier tells the Las Cruces Sun-News that looters were using donkeys to haul booty out of Baghdad. McCarty says the soldiers rounded up the animals and marked them with a homemade branding iron, using the regiment's logo....
It's All Trew: Taking the service out of the station is progress? The carriage became horseless in about 1915 and the automobiles became more common in the early 1920s. At first, gasoline was kept in barrels with the car tanks filled by bucket and funnel. As this infernal machine proliferated, enterprising merchants installed a pump stand on the sidewalk in front of their businesses. The desired amount of gasoline was pumped into an overhead glass tube with gallons measured on the sides. The tube of gas emptied into your gas tank by gravity. Customers made sure they held the sag out of the hose to empty completely as gasoline cost about eight cents a gallon at the time....