NEWS ROUNDUP

Hunter shoots guide Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? One Florida hunter, that's who. Now his fear, and his lead-flinging reaction to it, has left him facing criminal charges for blowing a big hole in his guide's arm with a .300-caliber Magnum rifle in Paradise Valley Tuesday. David Williams, 38, told police that he thought the two men and horses approaching in the dark were wolves coming to get him....
Ranchers take on Canyon Resources One of the hottest fights in the debate over repealing Montana's 1998 ban on open pit cyanide leach mining comes to a head today in a Lewistown courtroom. Lawyers for Canyon Resources Corp., the Colorado-based mining company that has spent almost $3 million promoting Initiative 147, square off against attorneys for Alan and Stephanie Shammel, Lewistown-area ranchers who sued the company in 2001 for polluting their water and also depriving them of it. The Shammels have appeared in television and direct-mail ads opposing I-147, saying Canyon's only other open pit cyanide leach mine in Montana polluted their water....
Politics, Gas Fuel Battle Over New Mexico Forest A Texas energy company may get rights to drill in a pristine swathe of a New Mexico national forest after a White House task force intervened on its behalf, a move that has become a hot issue in the battleground state before next week's presidential election. Oil giant Pennzoil donated the 40,000-acre parcel in northern New Mexico known as Valle Vidal for conservation in 1982, and it has been a protected wildlife and recreation area as part of the Carson National Forest. According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Houston-based oil company El Paso Corp., a large donor to Republican campaigns and candidates, asked the White House's energy task force in 2003 to intervene on its behalf with the Forest Service....
Activists protest plans to change forest Roadless Rule Environmentalists gathered Thursday at a Salt Lake City outdoor recreation store to protest the Bush administration's rollback of the Roadless Rule, designed to protect 60 million acres of national forest land from encroachment. They brought along more than 1 million public comments, piled high in duffel bags on the store's floor, to underscore their main point: They've got a lot of company....
Feds pay visit, launch invasive species attack The U.S. Forest Service chose the town of Prineville Thursday to unveil a national effort to prevent and control the growing threat of invasive species and non-native plants spreading quickly across the country. The step is part of the president's Healthy Forests Initiative to restore forest and rangeland health and protect communities from wildland fire and supports his executive order promoting cooperative conservation. "Millions of acres of public and private lands are at risk from non-native species," said Mary Rey, Department of Agriculture undersecretary for natural resources and environment. "Each year, the United States loses 1.7 million acres to the spread of these invasives, in addition to spending billions of dollars on control measures."....
Column: Wise Use in the White House, Pt. 1 Still, President Bush and many of his top advisors come out of the ranks of the oil, energy, timber, and mining industries that Teddy Roosevelt condemned as "the great special interests." Others, like Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, are veterans of the Wise Use movement these industries helped create and nourish in the 1990s and whose radical agenda has now become White House policy. "I wish we could take credit for that but we can't," admits Wise Use founder Ron Arnold. "Dick Cheney sits on my Board of Directors but we're not pen pals. Sometimes you just put something out there long enough and it gets picked up, despite what you do."....
Column: The Green Backlash, 10 Years On Despite polls showing that 76 percent of Americans considered themselves green, the New York Times environmental reporter was promoting the Wise Use/Property Rights backlash as "the third wave" of environmentalism. "I think that the [Wise Use] movement is maybe one of the most important and interesting movements to arise in environmentalism in a long time," he claimed, "because they are prying into the environmental issues that we've all grappled with for two decades. Is there really global warming? Is there really an ozone problem? Does toxic waste cleanup really represent the best use of public financing?" He went on to portray the anti-enviro backlash as a bottom-up citizen movement. "The Property Rights groups I know have no corporate funding at all. They're mom-and-pop community environmental groups," he claimed, and, because he was from the New York Times, other reporters believed him....
Under the Radar The environment has been a virtual non-issue in this year's election campaign, with even the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- such a hot topic in the 2000 race -- off the radar for now. So, with the public focused on terrorism, war, taxes and healthcare, a small group of government officials and oil executives has seized the moment to close in on a deal to open one of Alaska's biggest wildlife refuges to oil drilling. Government scientists, environmentalists, and Native Americans in the area say the arrangement -- which has the support of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and which won preliminary approval last week from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- will be a precedent-setting erosion of historic environmental protections of Alaska wildlands, and could open the way to widespread oil exploration in the nation's wildest places, starting with the 9 million-acre Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge....
U.S. sat on ecology report, critics say A committee of experts urged the government in March to do much more to preserve biological diversity and ecological integrity in the national parks, but the report has "languished," a panel member says. That member, Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer who is explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society, said she and her colleagues had expected that the National Park Service would distribute the report and take action on its findings. Instead, she said, "it has just languished."...
Feds approve hydro project at Glacier Bay The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted Wednesday to let the diesel-dependent community of Gustavus build a hydroelectric project in designated wilderness in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Residents in the northern Southeast Alaska town pay some of the highest utility bills in Alaska - recently as high as 51 cents per kilowatt hour - in part because of the Gustavus Electric Co.'s dependence on expensive diesel fuel. The project cannot begin until Glacier Bay National Park trades to Alaska about 1,000 acres of designated wilderness along Falls Creek, the proposed site of the project....
Appeals court: BLM must look at cumulative impact The U.S. Bureau of Land Management was ordered Thursday to reassess the environmental effects of four timber sales in Southern Oregon based on their cumulative impact, instead of their individual impact, possibly affecting the way the agency reviews sales across the West. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene after the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildland Center went to court to force the BLM to reconsider its environmental assessment of the four proposed sales in the Little Butte Creek watershed near Mount McLoughlin, in the Cascade Range just east of Medford. Brenna Bell, a Portland attorney for the center, said the ruling may have broad policy implications for the BLM and the Bush administration's Healthy Forest Initiative....
BLM lease for Martin's Cove absent clause allowing sale The Martin's Cove lease does not give the Mormon church a right of first refusal to buy the federal property if it ever came up for sale. In an earlier draft of the lease, the Bureau of Land Management afforded the church "a right of first refusal to purchase, lease or otherwise manage Martin's Cove" if the property were sold or title was transferred to another party. In the lease signed Tuesday, the word "purchase" is excluded. Don Ogaard, BLM's manager for the Martin's Cove site, said that change was made to reflect the original language of the congressional act mandating the lease of the church last year....
BLM rejects lone bid for coal-rich land The Bureau of Land Management rejected the lone bid for 2,813 acres of coal-rich land in the Powder River Basin. The $220 million bid on Wednesday by Ark Land WR Inc., a subsidiary of Arch Coal Inc., did not meet the estimated fair market value of the land, the BLM said. The tract contains an estimated 327 million tons of mineable coal....
Subgroups monitor gas development When the Bureau of Land Management approved the Pinedale Anticline oil and gas development project in 2000, the decision contained the caveat that the agency form a special group to monitor development and evaluate future drilling proposals. Now it's up to about 90 Wyoming residents to formulate those monitoring plans and make recommendations on possible changes to the level and pace of energy development in the gas-rich Anticline, BLM officials say. The volunteers are a part of the recently established Pinedale Anticline Working Group, according to BLM Pinedale Field Office Planning and Environmental Coordinator Carol Kruse. The nine-member working group was appointed earlier this year by Interior Secretary Gale Norton....
Nevada takes over ownership of Carson Lake State and federal officials signed an agreement Thursday to transfer ownership of Carson Lake near Fallon from federal to state control. Gov. Kenny Guinn, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett W. Raley signed the pact during a ceremony in Carson City. The title transfer was authorized under the Truckee River Water Rights Settlement Act of 1990....
Recasting Wilderness as Open for Business The sculpted buttes of Wild Horse Mesa, the vast escarpment of the Book Cliffs and the soaring ramparts of Upper Desolation Canyon near here have become a prime battleground in the Bush administration's campaign to curb wilderness protection throughout the country. In 1999, the federal government acknowledged the unique character of the area, where 150 million years of the earth's geologic history unfolds and the forces of nature continue to shape the rugged landscape. The Bureau of Land Management put more than 440,000 acres off-limits to industrial development. The protection was short-lived. Within four years, the area was opened to oil and gas exploration....
NASA Expert Criticizes Bush on Global Warming Policy A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on global warming plans to criticize the administration's approach to the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and say that a senior administration official told him last year not to discuss dangerous consequences of rising temperatures. The expert, Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, expects to say that the Bush administration has ignored growing evidence that sea levels could rise significantly unless prompt action is taken to reduce heat-trapping emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes....
Column: Michael Leavitt: EPA’s Messenger As several SEJ members remarked, it’s surprising that Leavitt, the former governor of Utah, is not more visible as the Bush administration’s point man on the environment. He comes across as both likable and moderate—qualities in short supply in Bush’s Washington. He’s very folksy, tells reasonably funny jokes and self-effacing stories, and admits candidly that mere days before an election he’s not planning to generate any controversial headlines....
Historic Sopori Ranch sold for $22M One of Southern Arizona's largest and oldest cattle ranches changed hands this week in a $22 million purchase that could lead to its development in a year. The new owners of the Sopori Ranch say they are not sure how they will develop the nearly 12,600 acres they bought Monday from an Illinois-based family that had held the ranch for more than a decade. The cash purchase also includes the ownership of state and federal grazing leases, giving the landowners the ability to run cattle on an additional 45,800 publicly owned acres in the surrounding hills....
94-Year-Old Rancher Spends Night In Jail His family helped settle the town of New Braunfels, but now a 94-year-old rancher is in danger of losing his 200 acre ranch if he doesn't clean up his act. Jerome Schumann spent the night in jail for burning tires Wednesday. He says he was just trying to help clean up his ranch, which is littered with junked cars and scrap metal. Comal County authorities agree it's time for Schumann to clean up his act....
History in the making Mud mixed with straw, poured into wooden molds and left in the sun to bake. Perhaps not the first materials that would spring to mind as the building blocks of the oldest house in Long Beach, but it is thick walls of just such adobe bricks that form the core of Rancho Los Alamitos. Around 1800, laborers in the employ of a retired Spanish soldier named Juan Manuel Perez Nieto built a rough, four-room shelter for the wealthy cattle rancher's vaqueros , or cowboys, and their horses on a hill overlooking vast meadows streaked with orange poppies and blue lupine. Over the next 150 years, generations of American settlers slowly built an 18-room wood-frame ranch house based on East Coast architectural principles around those original walls, a gradual transformation that reflects the historical events that changed California from a remote Spanish territory into the 31st state....
Five cowgirls inducted into hall Meeting Bob Phillips was almost as big a thrill for Sherri Mell as being inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. "My Gosh, Bob Phillips!" gushed a breathless Mell, an expert calf roper and riding instructor. She said she never misses his TV program, Texas Country Reporter. Phillips was the master of ceremonies Thursday as Fort Worth's National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame added five legendary cowgirls to its ranks. Inductees this year included Mell, the late actress Gail Davis, jockey Wantha Davis, late trick rider Connie Griffith and Mary Jo Milner, a cutting horse rider and breeder....