NEWS ROUNDUP

Bear attacks man trying to distract it in Angeles National Forest The injured 39-year-old man, who was not identified, heard the animal rummaging through the family's ice chest at about 2 a.m. while camping with his wife and daughters at the Chilao campground, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. The couple agreed that the man would distract the bear while the wife and two daughters ran for their vehicle. The bear retaliated after the man threw something at him, forest spokeswoman Kathy Peterson said....
Hungry bears forcing safety precautions To battle a growing number of bears rummaging through trash and scouring porches for scraps, tribal wildlife managers have placed 25 new bear-proof garbage containers across the Blackfeet Reservation. A weak berry crop has bears searching for food and causing problems across Montana, but the reservation has been hit particularly hard. Wildlife managers have had to kill at least 15 black bears on the reservation this summer, including at least eight in the St. Mary area....
Two Lynx Moving Through Utah Two radio-collared Canada lynx released in Colorado have been moving through Utah, with one most recently reported in the north and the other in the southwest. One moved through the Book Cliffs, the Strawberry Valley and north along the Wasatch Mountains. On Aug. 22, he was near the mouth of Weber Canyon. The other lynx was last reported around Panguitch....
Homes Burn, Horses Killed In Wildfires Fire fighters were battling wildfires late into the night Friday as gusty winds fanned several blazes across Northern California. In Vacaville, 32 miles southwest of Sacramento, a 30-acre grassfire destroyed a farmhouse and several barns, killing eight horses. And a fire in nearby Davis jumped a highway, burned two homes and injured three people....
Idaho farmers may be asked to dry up 100,000 acres Lawmakers are looking at a federal program that could pay farmers to dry up 100,000 acres of farmland as a way of stabilizing groundwater levels in south central Idaho. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering spending $18 million to expand a successful land conservation program now limited to 800,000 acres of dry farm land to include lands irrigated with water pumped from the Snake River Plain Aquifer....
Mysteries of San Andreas Fault Are Explored by a Drill There is nothing more nerve-racking for many Californians than the unpredictable and irritable San Andreas fault, which leveled much of San Francisco the last time it kicked up a big earthquake in 1906. That might explain one of the more anxious questions commonly posed to several dozen scientists who gathered on a cattle ranch here on Thursday to marvel at a huge drill mounted on an 18-story rig, poking at the fault. Might the drilling not trigger an earthquake? Dubbed by the National Science Foundation as a modern-day journey to the center of the earth, the drilling here is part of a $250 million project called EarthScope that is studying the tectonics of North America. Though the scientists say the project is not intended to devise a way to predict earthquakes, that has been one of the biggest unspoken expectations since a test hole was drilled here two years ago....
Dowser 'can't tell you why' he senses water Joliet rancher Carl Hansen, 82, paces across his barnyard with an L-shaped steel rod in one hand. As he crosses his water line, the rod swings firmly to the left. "I can show you how this works, but I can't tell you why," he said, grinning as he demonstrated the ancient practice of dowsing. Theories about how dowsing works run the gamut from auras to electromagnetic fields. Some doubt that it works at all, while others say it's a normal sensory perception - the same sense that tells birds where to migrate - a sense that allowed early humans to survive....
Riding the Western Trail Scores of wagons and riders are gathering here to embark Monday on a 680-mile trek along a route that millions of steers followed north during frontier-era cattle drives. The 48-day ride, slated to culminate Oct. 23 in Dodge City, Kan., is part of a multi-state publicity campaign for "The Western Trail," the most heavily traveled cattle thoroughfare of the 1800s. The excursion will cover about 16 miles daily — far less demanding than when the route first was blazed in 1874....
A frontier murder mystery, Texas-style About a quarter till nine on the night of May 11, 1752, three men ate their dinner at a rough, wooden table in a small room in a mission out in the wilderness of Spanish Texas. Two were Catholic priests – Miguel de Pinilla and Juan José de Ganzabal. The third was Juan José Ceballos, a hangdog soldier whose pretty wife's illicit affair with his captain had become a scandal. Even the mission Indians knew. Most were Cocos, a band of the sometimes cannibalistic Karankawas....
Bushyhead 101 not your typical ropin’ and racin’ The Bushyhead Pasture Roping and Barrel Racing, which begins Sunday and runs through Monday, could never be an indoor event, even if organizer Clem McSpadden wanted it to be. The roping event, for instance, gives the calf a 101-foot head start, instead of just a few seconds. The ropers have all of a 260-acre pasture to secure the steer, or try to. Barrel racers, meanwhile, must navigate a half-mile, three point course. Winning times approaching 50 seconds are not uncommon. The events are intended to provide a throwback to when roping and excellent horsemanship were necessary to live and work west of the Mississippi River....