NEWS ROUNDUP

Report: Cities' Water Needs Will Dry Up Farmland About 10 percent of irrigated farmland statewide is expected to disappear by 2030 as thirsty cities try to buy their water, according to a new state study. That amounts to as much as 300,000 acres, an area bigger than Rocky Mountain National Park, the study said. The findings come from the $2.7 million Statewide Water Supply Initiative, sponsored by the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The study, launched 14 months ago in response to the drought, is to be completed in November. It is designed to show policymakers how much water the state uses, how much it will need and where supplies will come from....
Landowners deride new proposal The Wyoming Surface Owner Coordination Act offers a way for landowners to resolve conflicts with the owners of the mineral rights underneath the surface, a coalition of energy and agriculture groups told the 11-member Joint Executive Legislative Committee on Split Estates. But some landowners, many of whom are ranchers or inherited ranch land, told the committee at the hearing at the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that the proposal favors the energy industry and will do nothing to solve their problems of ruined property values....
Appalachian Trail is vulnerable to new forest rules About one of every 13 miles of the Appalachian Trail between Maine and Georgia passes through national forests where a Bush administration plan could allow clear cutting of wooded areas, an environmental group said Tuesday. The Campaign to Protect America's Lands said it found that 163 of the popular trail's 2,174 miles fall within the 58 million acres where the Bush administration proposed lifting a ban on logging, road-building, and other development....
Unhappy campers protest Bush plans A dozen lovers of backcountry pitched tents at the U.S. Forest Service regional office Tuesday to protest President Bush's plans to open roadless areas. "Public lands don't just belong to the Bush administration," said Rebecca Dickson of the Sierra Club. "They don't just belong to the mining or logging industry."....
Report details global warming's role in wildfire risk Of all the Western states, Montana's wildfire season could be most affected by the warmer temperatures associated with global climate change, according to a new report. Published in Conservation Biology magazine, the research suggests the acreage burned each summer in Montana could increase five-fold by the end of the century. And more frequent, more extensive wildfires would likely reduce the number and size of the state's already patchy old-growth forests, in turn threatening the existence of old growth-dependent species, said researchers at the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Ore., and the Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. Overall, the area burned by wildfires in 11 Western states could double by 2100 if the summertime climate warms by 1.6 degrees, the scientists said....
Interior encourages BLM land sales In August, Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett, who oversees the BLM, wrote to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., asking for legislative amendments to FLTFA that would encourage the BLM to sell off more land. She has asked Congress to make the identification and selling of disposable land an ongoing process, rather than one limited to land identified before the July 2000 cutoff date. Twenty percent of any revenue would still go to the BLM’s administrative costs, but under Scarlett’s proposal, only 60 percent of the money would go toward land acquisition. The other 20 percent would go toward "conservation enhancement projects," to fund local projects such as riparian improvement or removing invasive weeds....
Proposals target invasive weeds The U.S. Forest Service wants to change procedures it uses to control invasive weeds in Northwest forests. In a draft environmental impact statement, the agency is proposing to kill weeds through hand pulling and applying an expanded roster of herbicides; and, it wants to require logging contractors to wash their heavy equipment and tour guides to feed their horses weed-free feed - both to prevent the spread of seeds. Aggressive weeds have invaded 420,000 acres of 24 million acres of federal forest land in Washington and Oregon, agency statistics show....
Billings County officials at odds with Forest Service Billings County officials say Forest Service firefighting methods in the grasslands are a waste of money. In one fire, elite smoke jumpers dropped onto a hay field, jumped into a van and were driven to fight a fire on the Little Missouri National Grasslands northeast of Medora. "The smoke jumpers never jumped on the line. They could have driven to anywhere on the fire," said Billings County fire chief Don Heiser....
Second Timber Sale Approved Since Overturning of Roadless Rule Last week, the U.S. Forest Service approved another timber sale in an area previously protected from logging by the controversial Clinton-era "roadless rule." Both of the new timber sales are to take place in Southeast Alaska, where dwindling natural resources and a sluggish economy have conspired to drive unemployment rates to unprecedented highs. This latest sale under the new plan is scheduled to take place on Gravina Island, across Tongass Narrows from Ketchikan, and would yield 38 million board feet of timber from approximately 1,800 acres. The first sale since overturning the roadless rule—a 665-acre harvest on Kuiu Island nearby—was approved last month....
Director of off-road vehicle group cited for unlicensed outfitting The director of the BlueRibbon Coalition has been placed on indefinite administrative leave after being cited earlier this month for outfitting without a license in the Sawtooth National Forest. Bill Dart was placed on leave without pay pending resolution of the charge against him, said Clark Collins, former director of the off-road vehicle group who is serving as acting director in the interim....
Spotted owl habitat plan ruffles feathers The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated more than 8.6 million acres of forests in Arizona and three other states as critical habitat for the Mexican spotted owl, a plan critics say could actually speed the demise of the threatened bird. Federal officials said Tuesday the proposal complies with a court order to designate habitat for the owl, but environmental groups accuse the agency of ignoring science and favoring the timber industry. The groups say they will ask a judge to reject this plan as he did the last one....
U.S. Says It Won't Remove Dams The Bush administration announced Tuesday that it will not remove dams on the Columbia and Snake river system to save endangered salmon. The announcement rules out what the federal government had once described as the most scientifically sound -- if politically problematic -- method for saving salmon in the heavily dammed river system....
Column: Poisons with purpose This may sound harsh, but it's true: Environmentalists tend not to see, handle or understand fish, to distrust agencies dedicated to their recovery and to set up mental spam-filters for facts about short-lived fish poisons. Usually, these poisons are the only tools managers have for saving native trout from being eaten, outcompeted or hybridized out of existence by alien species. During the 70 years that fish managers have used the fish poison rotenone - derived from derris root - there is not one documented case of human injury....
EPA appears set to relax standards for toxic metal Over the objections of several federal scientists, the Bush administration is preparing to relax national standards for selenium - a toxic metal that caused mass deformities of waterfowl in California's Central Valley during the 1980s. The revised U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards are outlined in an EPA draft notice obtained by The Sacramento Bee. Critics say the proposed standards are based on a study that even its author says was interpreted improperly. The standards follow years of lobbying by power companies, farming interests and mining officials, all of whom say the current federal standards are overly restrictive....
Group deems brucellosis goal too rosy Wyoming wildlife officials say 2010 is an unrealistic goal for an interagency committee to eliminate brucellosis in the Yellowstone region. The goal of the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee (GYIBC) is to wipe out the contagious disease by 2010, but that date set a decade ago was too optimistic, members said....
Enzi mulls Mormon Trail fees While there are instances where fees paid for public land use are necessary, U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has not yet decided on a proposal to waive fees on a portion of Wyoming's historic trails. Enzi said last week he has been approached by members of the Mormon Church to waive a proposed $4 fee per person per night for use of the historic Mormon Trail on Bureau of Land Management property west of Casper....
Agency raises offer for Fallon water rights A state agency trying to settle a water dispute by buying and retiring thousands of acre-feet of water rights from willing Fallon-area farmers has sweetened its offer by $600 per acre-foot. The Carson Water Subconservancy District said it will pay $2,200 per water right acre on the Carson River and $3,800 per acre-foot for Truckee River water rights in the Newlands Project. The subconservancy district is hoping to purchase and retire 6,500 acre-feet of water rights in the Newlands Project by July 2006. It’s an attempt to settle more than 2,000 protests of Newlands Project water rights claims filed by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe....
Editorial: Washoe County land grab Evans Creek proceeded to jump through all the proper regulatory hoops -- no matter how Byzantine -- in order to proceed with the peaceful and orderly development of its land. But it soon became obvious (according to Timothy Nelson, an officer for the firm) that the county was pursuing a "sometimes-deceptive agenda" actually designed not to help the owners meet local zoning ordinances, but to in fact prevent any development of the land at all, squeezing Evans Creek into selling off a property thus rendered worthless by regulation, at a lowball price. Sure enough, Washoe County officials last Friday filed a lawsuit seeking to "condemn" the 1,019-acre Ballardini Ranch and "preserve the land as public open space." Environmentalists hailed this complete disregard for private property rights....
Judge orders cattlemen to pay $70,000 for Tyson attorneys' fees A federal judge ordered cattlemen who sued Tyson Fresh Meats Inc. to pay the company $70,000 in attorneys' fees after a verdict in the cattlemen's favor was thrown out for a lack of evidence. Six cattlemen, claiming to represent thousands more, sued in 1994 claiming Tyson had used contracts with a select few ranchers to drive down the price of cattle on the open, or cash, market....