NEWS ROUNDUP

S.D. governor announces agreement to control prairie dogs State and federal agencies have reached agreement to control prairie dogs that are moving from federal land onto private land in western South Dakota, Gov. Mike Rounds said Friday. Under the agreement announced Friday, the state will continue an emergency poisoning program it started last month on private land next to federal lands. The state is spending $120,000 in the short term to kill prairie dogs based on landowners' complaints. Federal agencies will use another $120,000 to begin poisoning prairie dogs after the new federal budget year starts Oct. 1. That program also will be based on landowners' complaints, and it will generally allow the poisoning of prairie dogs on federal land in a one-mile buffer zone from private land. State and federal agencies also will once again allow the shooting of prairie dogs in some areas....
Veneman to attend Pine Nursery transfer ceremony U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman will be among the dignitaries on hand next week as the U.S. Forest Service officially transfers the 185-acre former Bend Pine Nursery to the Bend Metro Park and Recreation District, completing a deal that was four tough years in the making. In 2000, Congress passed legislation by Walden, and Sens. Wyden and Gordon Smith, authorizing the Forest Service to sell the land to the park district, which was given a right of first refusal. But the asking price kept escalating, prompting subsequent legislation earlier this year that set the price at $3.5 million....
Butler planes remain grounded The United States Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that three air tankers owned and operated by Redmond-based Butler Aircraft failed a recent emergency inspection and will not be allowed to fight fires on federal land for the foreseeable future. The Forest Service cancelled contracts with Butler air tankers in May, citing doubts about the airworthiness of the planes, which must fly under high-stress conditions....
Grizzly bear protection plan criticized The U.S. Forest Service is doing too little to protect grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone National Park area, environmentalists and a grizzly researcher have charged. This week, the Forest Service released a draft environmental impact statement that outlines where grizzlies would get top priority for protection and where they'd get less protection. A map of the "core recovery area" includes all of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, plus parts of six national forests in the three states around the parks....
Shasta-area fire burns 5,000 acres, 67 homes The Bear fire, sparked Wednesday by a lawn mower and buffeted by 106-degree temperatures and afternoon winds, had burned more than 5,000 acres and 67 homes by late Thursday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. More houses were threatened for a time, but a shift in the wind turned the fire away from subdivisions and into the Shasta National Forest....
Forest Service to ground tankers The U.S. Forest Service said Thursday that it cannot guarantee the safety of one-third of its firefighting tankers and will ground the entire fleet this season. In announcing the Department of Interior's decision to keep the tankers on the ground, Undersecretaries Mark Rey and Rebecca Watson said they just don't have enough information about the planes to allow them back in the air....
Feds skeptical about piecemeal wolf delisting The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is willing to discuss delisting the gray wolf on a state-by-state basis in the Northern Rockies, but is skeptical such a move is possible under federal law, an official said Friday. Ed Bangs, Rocky Mountain wolf coordinator for the agency, said the service is concerned about the precedent that could be set for other endangered species recovery efforts around the country. Bangs' comments came in response to Montana's threat to sue the agency unless it agrees to discuss possible ways to delist the wolf in Montana without waiting for Wyoming to develop an acceptable wolf management plan....
Editorial: Colorado needs plan for wolf reintroduction Goofy decisions by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service increase the urgency of Colorado's effort to a craft a science-based plan to manage wolves if the wild canines fully return to our state. The Colorado Division of Wildlife started working on such a plan months before a lone wolf was killed on Interstate 70 this summer. But the state's effort will take on new importance if a federal decision to end protection for the endangered species endures legal challenges....
Ninth Circuit Upholds Lower Court Injunction to Protect Salmon Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused the government's emergency request to stay an order from U.S. District Court Judge James Redden that requires the Army Corps of Engineers to continue releasing water at dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers during August for the benefit of migrating salmon. In his opinion, Judge Redden highlighted the failure of the administration to implement the current Federal Salmon Plan and to meet juvenile salmon performance standards for the last three years as major reasons not to do less for salmon now. He stated that he was acting "to preserve the status quo" in light of the current "deficit situation" faced by salmon. Specifically, he stated that '[g]iven that we are working from a deficit situation, we should not be cutting back on an effective mitigation tool."....
Today's ranchers rely on horse sense and Palm Pilots Only an authentic cowboy could live by himself for weeks at a time on a rocky and remote patch of ground in central Owyhee County, a stretch of the interior West where cattle outnumber people by an untold margin. At age 29, Jeremy Mink is the real deal -- a buckaroo with a handlebar mustache, a .38-caliber revolver strapped to his side and a familial commitment to the herd of 1,400 cattle he lives with year-round....
NCBA PAC Endorses President George W. Bush The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Policy Division Board of Directors has approved a directive instructing the NCBA PAC to formally endorse and financially support the candidacy of George W. Bush for President of the United States. This historic decision was made because the policies of President Bush and those of his Administration most closely match the policies of the NCBA. NCBA President and Kansas cattle producer Jan Lyons notified the Bush campaign that this directive was agreed to at NCBA’s Board of Directors meeting this morning in Denver....