NEWS ROUNDUP

Multiple use group's injunction denied District Judge Richard Roberts held a hearing Monday in Washington, D.C., on the request for a preliminary injunction, which was associated with a lawsuit filed by Montanans for Multiple Use and 13 co-plaintiffs in June 2003. While the lawsuit was aimed at the Flathead National Forest in particular, the injunction request applied to all national forests. Montanans for Multiple Use, a group based in the Flathead Valley, contends that road closures, obliterated roads and improperly executed forest plan amendments have combined to create an unacceptable fire risk to national forests and surrounding communities....
Forest Service OKs logging 1,800 formerly roadless acres on Gravina Island The U.S. Forest Service has approved a timber sale in a roadless area of the Tongass National Forest. The logging would take place on Gravina Island, across Tongass Narrows from Ketchikan, and would yield 38 million board feet of timber from approximately 1,800 acres. It's the second harvest in a roadless area of a national forest since a Clinton-era rule banning such logging was lifted earlier this year. Last month the Forest Service approved a 665-acre harvest in a roadless area called Threemile on Kuiu Island in Southeast....
Alaska marks worst fire season on record Alaska on Wednesday set a new record for acres burned by wildfires during this hot, dry summer, and fire managers said the numbers will increase before the season is over. With 101 wildfires still burning across the state, the season total was at 602 wildfires and 5.05 million acres of scorched earth, surpassing the 1957 record by more than 3,000 acres, according to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center at Fort Wainwright near Fairbanks....
Forest Service aids cleanup of old mines For decades, the abandoned Dinero Mine spat out acidic runoff laden with zinc and manganese that devastated aquatic life in the Lake Fork of the Arkansas River. But a private cleanup effort has created a series of man- made ponds and limestone channels that capture the syrupy orange runoff and reduce acidity before it flows into the river....
Editorial: Court Helps Fish Because salmon often turn into river-kill when pushed through turbines, spill water is thought to be one of our greatest countermeasures against endangered and threatened fish runs on dammed rivers. That is why Friday's decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is so encouraging. It backed a lower court decision that requires continued water release at dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers to aid migrating salmon. The case made by the Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration to reduce the amount of water released by at least 39 percent this summer was compelling only in dollar signs....
Ducks Unlimited to Manage Federal Duck Stamps Ducks Unlimited (DU) will manage how Federal Duck Stamp images are licensed to manufacturers who place the images on a wide variety of consumer products. Under the agreement, DU will use its expertise to expand and manage the licensing program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Federal Duck Stamp Program. "We're excited to have DU manage our Duck Stamp licensing program and the potential it will have to provide even more money for wetlands conservation," said Service Director Steve Williams....
Alberta grizzlies 'barely hanging on' Grizzly bears in southwestern Alberta are in danger of dying out, says a study that estimates there are fewer than 40 bears in that corner of the province. Unless immediate action is taken to improve bear habitat, the Calgary scientist who produced the report says, grizzlies will become extinct in the region....
In hot pursuit of polluters An answer may come as soon as this fall as legions of scientists, possibly including Magnuson, are summoned to appear as expert witnesses in a groundbreaking case that will test the limits of environmental law and the science undergirding climate-change theory. In a complaint filed last month in federal district court in New York, eight states (Wisconsin, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Iowa, Connecticut, and California) claimed that global warming is damaging crops, tourism, beaches, citizens' health, forests, and fish - and threatening coastal communities as sea levels rise....
Column: In Bush Grazing Decision, Politics, Secrecy Win Again The Bush administration has proposed easing environmental controls on cattle and sheep grazing on public lands, marking the latest example of politics and secrecy trumping professional judgment and transparency. An internal analysis, written by experts at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and later leaked to me and others, warned that this action would damage watersheds and wildlife, but political appointees suppressed and overrode it....
Wild About Wilderness: Celebrities Shine Spotlight on Nation's Wild Lands Musicians Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris, actor Christopher Reeve, and artist Maya Lin are lending their faces and voices to a new public service announcement effort by the Campaign for America's Wilderness to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, which was signed into law September 3, 1964. "When I'm not on the road doing concerts, there's nothing I like more than getting out into the wilderness," says Raitt in a radio PSA....
Craigsville's mystery animal slinks into myth No one has seen the big cat in 10 days. Maybe it has moved on, or maybe it settled in Showker's Flats. Craigsville residents are still talking about the big cat Joe Rowland spotted on his property July 19, but no one has seen it lately. Exposed film taken this week from motion-sensitive cameras on Rowland's 70-acre property documented groundhogs, deer and rabbits, but no felines, said Capt. Mike Clark with Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries....
U.S. releases new snowmobile plan for Yellowstone, Grand Teton Snowmobiles could continue using Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks for at least the next three winters under a federal proposal to be released today. The plan by the National Park Service is meant to buy time until a more permanent solution to snowmobiling use at those parks can be found, said Al Nash, a Park Service spokesman in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo. "What we're trying to do is come up with an appropriate plan for up to three winters that will allow people to know what to expect and will allow us some time to gather some more information," Nash told The Associated Press....
FBI agent is silenced on Flats The FBI ordered a special agent who investigated environmental crimes at Rocky Flats in the 1980s not to talk Wednesday at a news conference organized by anti-nuclear activists, the agent said. Jon Lipsky, now assigned to an FBI field office in California, took vacation time to travel to Denver, he said. The FBI called him en route Tuesday, he said. "I received a call from the FBI ordering me not to talk about the Rocky Flats case, so I can't tell you what I came here to tell you," he said at a news conference in Denver....
State stashes big share of water underground What Salt River Project and the Central Arizona Project did, and continue to do, is called water recharge or water banking. It helps shore up long-term water supplies, allowing Arizona to collect its full share of the Colorado River, even when it doesn't use it, and shields the water from the pressures of growth or a long dry spell. Think of a water-recharge project as an underground storage reservoir at a time when the above-ground kind, like Roosevelt Lake or Lake Powell, are too expensive and too environmentally unpopular to build....
Dismantling of dam approved A federal commission has approved the dismantling of the American Fork Dam, a project intended to benefit the state's trout population. Electric utility PacifiCorp said last summer it would tear down the dam under an agreement with state and federal agencies and conservation group Trout Unlimited. Final removal is expected by 2007. PacifiCorp will dismantle the 97-year-old hydropower dam and surrender water rights to improve habitat for brown and rainbow trout and help Bonneville cutthroat trout recover....
Judge issues restraining order against farmer A judge has issued a restraining order against a farmer who allegedly refused to stop diverting irrigation water from the Bear River. The order was issued Friday against Jerry Charles Simmonds and his mother, Thelma, by 1st District Court Judge Gordon B. Low at the request of the Utah Attorney General's Office. Along with other members of the Utah Small Pumpers Association, Simmonds was ordered two weeks ago by the state Division of Water Rights to stop diverting water from the river....
Good Samaritans help cowboy buck odds The rodeo trail can be cruel. But assistance can sometimes come from the most unknown source. Just ask Eric Swenson, a bareback rider from Bonham, Texas. Because of some good Samaritans in Illinois, he was able to win the bareback riding title at the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo in Colorado Springs, Colo., last Sunday....
"The continuing saga of a cowboy" Cyclone, along with the rest of the cowboys he was working with, had moved the cattle to the Comanche Indian reservation near Fort Sill in what is now Oklahoma, without any Indian scares. They camped on Dead Man’s Creek for several days because there was plenty of grass and water. Several of the cowboys saddled up and rode towards Fort Sill when they came upon a pow-wow for one of the dead chiefs. So, being cowboys, they settled in to watch, which didn’t set too well with the Comanche people. But it turned out one of the boys could speak the language, and then they were welcomed....