NEWS ROUNDUP

The fight for Alaska's forest Stretching as far as the eye can see, the Tongass is the world's largest temperate rainforest - home to eagles, wolves and bears. It is made up of a lush archipelago of 1,000 forested islands and fjords across the panhandle of south-east Alaska. It's called a rainforest because it rains here up to five metres a year....
Foreign weeds growing into a major threat in Colorado With roots in your own backyard, foreign weeds are a growing environmental catastrophe that threatens to permanently change the landscape of the West within a few decades. Think of them as The Killer Bees for a new generation. Fed by wildfires, drought and apathy, the bitter and often poisonous weeds are driving out native plants....
Big Snowy plan under challenge The Forest Service's plan for managing vehicle use in the Big Snowy Mountains south of Lewistown is challenged in a lawsuit by the Central Montana Wildlands Association. The group claims that the proposed travel plan fails to protect the Big Snowies Wilderness Study Area, a 1977 classification that takes in most of the range. "The law is very clear and instructs them to protect the wilderness character," said Tom Woodbury, a lawyer for Forest Defense, which represents the Wildlands Association....
Prairie dog policy revision criticized Lewis and Clark saw their first prairie dogs 200 years ago this Tuesday, and wildlife conservation groups are using the occasion to blast state and federal moves to kill prairie dogs on federal land in South Dakota. On Sept. 7, 1804, the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, came across its first black-tailed prairie dogs in present-day South Dakota, about 25 miles above the Niobrara River. Clark called the animals "barking squirrels" as the expedition continued to see them across the West....
GF&P Commission moves to allow prairie dog shooting An emergency rule adopted by the state Game, Fish & Parks Commission could lead to the shooting of prairie dogs on part of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland in Conata Basin south of Wall. Federal shooting restrictions remain in place for now. The commission's action in a teleconference meeting on Thursday is intended to allow shooting to begin when the federal restriction is lifted. The U.S. Forest Service, which manages Buffalo Gap National Grassland, plans to allow hunting within a one-mile buffer zone on the federal grassland where it lies next to private land....
Editorial: Ski "green" policies genuine? In an age when skiers and other outdoors enthusiasts are keenly aware of the environment, it's good business for ski areas to adopt "green" practices. In fact, Summit County recently nixed a plan to nearly double the size of Copper Mountain's village because of public opposition. But a report by two public-policy scholars, Jorge Rivera of George Washington University and Peter de Leon of the University of Colorado at Denver, raises the possibility that for some facilities, the industry's Sustainable Slopes Program is not much more than a marketing ploy....
Lack of Wildfires Helps Boost West Tourism Tourism officials from Oregon to Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park say this has been one of the best summer seasons in years thanks to a lack of devastating fires, a recovering economy that encouraged more travel and even rain. While pockets of the West still struggling with drought have reported a drop in visitors, most areas have seen steady to higher numbers despite gas prices topping $2 a gallon, the lingering worries about a terrorist attack and the ongoing war with Iraq....
Power company says it needs wilderness site Too far from Southeast Alaska's existing hydroelectric power plants for an affordable link, a Gustavus power company says it needs a slice of federally protected wilderness to build its own. Some question the precedent of taking 1,050 of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve's 2.8 million acres of designated wilderness. It would be like trading Yellowstone National Park's geysers for geothermal-powered cities, they said....
Editorial: Digging a big hole Badly needed repairs and construction at Grand Canyon National Park were supposed to be finished by now. Campgrounds fixed up. Roads restriped. A new entrance station built at Desert View. A waste-water treatment plant constructed on the South Rim. But the work has stopped in midstream. Instead, we've got a management and financial mess. It jeopardizes dozens of subcontractors in Arizona and Utah. It sets back critical maintenance at the crown jewel of Arizona tourism. The story started when the Grand Canyon contracted with Pacific General Inc., a California company, to do millions of dollars of work. But the company abruptly shut down in March, leaving $2.5 million in unpaid bills to almost 50 subcontractors....
'Ritual and party all in one' at Burning Man A terrasphere made of four facing satellite dishes seems to beam and communicate with itself, stories about the universe flash on the ceiling of a dome, a Milky Way installation seems to float and rotate (the wrong way, mind you) in mid air. The northeastern Nevada desert was dotted with lighted art installations, most in keeping with this year's theme for the Burning Man arts festival, the "Vault of Heaven." Then there's the 40-foot man being torched amid much hoopla on Saturday night....
A Rocky Path for Pilgrims The column of young Mormon pilgrims stretched for nearly a mile as the sun set over the glacial peaks of Wyoming's Wind River mountain range. Teenagers clad in 19th-century pioneer outfits strained mightily to pull unwieldy wooden handcarts over rocky terrain while keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes. Nervous broods of sage grouse scattered as the first trekkers approached. Poised on nearby ridgelines, pronghorn antelope kept a wary vigil....
Millions of Tax Payers Dollars are Being Wasted on Wild Horse Eradication, Due to Pressure from Special Interest Groups A team of wild horse experts — under the coalition banner of The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) — is alerting the public to the fact that that America’s wild horses are being eradicated from public lands in violation of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act, which protects wild horses as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.” Special interests have been successful in pressuring the government to systematically remove wild horses from public lands — specifically the cattle industry, which wants the horses replaced with cattle for subsidized grazing. While the aggressive removal policy currently being implemented is costing over thirty million taxpayer dollars annually, in-the-wild management -- as mandated by federal law -- would save millions of taxpayers’ dollars....
Across more of South Dakota, the deer hunt is off "No hunting" signs are sprouting throughout South Dakota, an organized "lock-out" aimed at forcing game officials to honor property rights and share revenue with landowners who help to sustain the wildlife. More than 1.8 million acres have been closed so far by about 1,000 owners, said Betty Olson, a Harding County rancher and lockout organizer. Beard said that landowners should be compensated directly for providing habitat, perhaps by sharing in license revenue collected by the state, or state law should be changed to allow landowners to obtain big-game licenses they could then sell to hunters....
Hikers in East Bay Parks Have a Beef With Cows Danville electrical engineer Greg Schneider has made cow attacks one of the main issues in a personal campaign against cattle grazing on public lands. Schneider, 55, says that while walking his two dogs in the publicly owned Sycamore Valley Open Space near his home, "I was chased by six different cows at different times over about a 20-minute period." With 96,000 acres spread over 65 sites in the seasonally dry valleys and hills east of Oakland, the East Bay Regional Park District is the largest urban park system in the country. But with 8,000 to 10,000 cattle grazing the land, it is also a major working ranch that local cattlemen lease to fatten their herds. Especially during late-summer calving season, the cows and park visitors occasionally collide, adding to concerns about the use of public parklands for cattle operations. Park officials estimate there are four or five serious cow attacks — resulting in injury — each year. Schneider says that the problem is more serious and that dozens more cases involving minor injuries or no injury go unreported....
Beef ranching today a world apart from past practices Cattle ranching may be one of the East Bay's oldest industries, but keeping history alive is not always easy for the families that have run grazing operations for more than 140 years. As cities have paved over huge chunks of open land, an increasing number of ranchers have moved their operations to less expensive land in other regions of Northern California. For instance, operators of the Nielsen Ranch in Dublin have acquired two ranches outside the area, totalling 16,000 acres, one near Chico and the other near the Oregon border....
Reservoir worries spill over The federal government should slash water releases from Lake Powell if the ongoing drought extends through the winter, officials from Colorado and neighboring states said last week. The states' request for the Bureau of Reclamation to make a midyear correction to Lake Powell's operation is an unprecedented reaction to dwindling water supplies, officials with the Upper Colorado River Commission said. In a letter sent Thursday, regional officials also asked that the bureau reduce flows during the winter and spring as a precaution....
Column: It's our water, right? Right as rain But something else is sitting downhill of all that money. Working clockwise from the top, they are the states of Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, a sliver of Oklahoma, New Mexico, the tiniest corner of Arizona, and Utah. You probably already know that the people in these states think Colorado water is pretty neat stuff. Even beyond these states, millions of others benefit from water that makes its start in the world here. Not surprisingly, Colorado has tried to keep as much of what we consider our water as possible. Hey, if it falls on our mountains and runs into our rivers, and puddles in our reservoirs, it's our water, right? Right as rain....
Secret dam talks see light Minutes were made available last week from a secret meeting held in August 2003 over who was responsible for $162 million in cost overruns for the Animas-La Plata Project. The minutes, which a judge recently determined are public record, offer few details of the discussion except that participants, which included Four Corners tribes, water districts and lawyers, were angered and frustrated by the Bureau of Reclamation's attempts to blame all of the overruns on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe....
Reflections on Lewis & Clark: Nez Perce offer alternate look at history As a boy growing up here 60 years ago in the Clearwater River basin, an area the Nez Perce call the "land of the butterflies," Allen Pinkham fished for trout by day and listened at night by lantern light to his aging father's tales of Lewis and Clark. Now a Nez Perce elder himself and a national leader of the Lewis and Clark exploration commemoration, Pinkham, 66, is bringing this unwritten Nez Perce history out of the shadows. He wants tribal children and the world to know the Nez Perce heritage. A descendant of the Nez Perce chiefs Timothy, Lookingglass, Joseph and Red Bear, Pinkham is working to broaden the story of the Corps of Discovery's epic voyage from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River in 1804-1806....