NEWS ROUNDUP

'I Don't Think I'll Ever Be The Same Again' The U. S. Forest Service worker, whom everyone presumed was dead after his plane crashed a month ago, is talking about his story of survival for the first time. To see Matt Ramige, 30, walk out of Harborview Medical Center was considered by many a miracle, even to Ramige himself. "I couldn't believe what had happened. I was just glad I survived and amazed I had survived the crash," he said....
Investigative report cites many errors at Carson City’s Waterfall Fire Inadequate briefings, radio problems, “freelancing” supervisors and confusion over who was in charge led to 21 firefighters being trapped and two people burned by a Nevada wildfire, a report said Wednesday. Firefighters and their supervisors broke a number of rules in the initial attack on the Waterfall Fire that destroyed 17 homes and burned nearly 8,000 acres near Carson City in July, an interagency investigation found....
Scientists, economists oppose Bush plan on forests More than 125 scientists, including chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall and biologist Edward O. Wilson, have a signed a letter opposing the Bush administration's plan to reverse a Clinton-era ban on road building and logging in 58 million acres of remote national forests. And in a separate letter, more than 110 economists, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, also oppose the plan, which would require governors to petition the federal government to block road-building in about a third of national forests where it is now prohibited....
Editorial: Suing over forest fires We're all for holding people accountable, especially those caught purposely setting wildfires. But suing teenagers and Boy Scouts for millions of dollars they don't have seems like a case of bullying to us. It also diverts attention from bigger questions -- like who in the federal government is being held responsible for the short-sighted policy decisions and flawed management practices that turned our national forests into tinderboxes in the first place? And who can the taxpayers sue in order to recover the obscene waste of public resources that resulted from federal mismanagement of the forests? The public shouldn't allow such witch hunts to deflect attention from the wrong-headed policies that helped create such combustible forest conditions in the first place....
Appeals court: Whales have no standing to sue to stop sonar A federal appeals court decided Wednesday that marine mammals have no standing to sue to stop the U.S. Navy from using sonar. In upholding a lower court decision, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the world's cetaceans — whales, porpoises and dolphins — have no standing under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the National Environmental Policy Act. If lawmakers "intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue, they could, and should, have said so plainly," said Judge William A. Fletcher, writing for the panel....
Tentative Alaska Land Swap Raises Drilling Fears U.S. officials on Wednesday announced a tentative land swap that they say would enlarge an Alaska wildlife refuge but that critics charge would open up the area to oil and gas development. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it planned to trade land within the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, an 8.6 million-acre holding in eastern interior Alaska, for wetlands now held by Doyon Ltd., a Fairbanks-based corporation owned by Alaska Athabascan Indians. Doyon, which has drilling operations, seeks 110,000 acres of uplands with potential oil and gas riches and is willing to trade about 150,000 acres of low-lying wetlands for it, the Fish and Wildlife Service said....
Column: Hunting and mental health The Washington Times reports that Earle D. Hightower, chairman of the 27-member Institute for Public Safety — a group concerned with issues such as traffic and air pollution in Rockville, Md. — recently sent out 600 cards to property owners in Garrett County stating that 40 percent of hunters are drug addicts, drunks or mentally unstable. Mr. Hightower, 82, who says he is a former hunter and World War II veteran, was quoted as saying, "My personal opinion is that anybody who goes out and shoots helpless animals has a psychiatric problem." These are the days of fact-checking. As a psychologist, I'd like to report back on my fact-checking....
Mining Royalties: NMA fires back at Edwards National Mining Association is disputing remarks by Elizabeth Edwards during her Elko visit that advertisements saying that Sen. John Kerry wants a mining royalty are a "hoax." At the same time, Kerry's campaign is maintaining that the Democratic presidential hopeful is not planning an 8 percent royalty on mining production. "It's interesting Elizabeth Edwards tried to walk the campaign away from Sen. Kerry's proposal," National Mining Association spokeswoman Carol Raulston said this morning. She said the mining industry based its comments on a proposed Kerry royalty on Kerry's Aug. 9 speech at the Grand Canyon and a speech in April at Georgetown University....
Small diamond found in Montana The bright green rocks jutting through the prairie soil were hard to miss, but Tom Charlton still couldn't believe his eyes. It was kimberlite, the molten rock in which diamonds are found, and preliminary tests had yielded a microscopic diamond. If more are found at the 80-acre site known as the Homestead property, the land could become the state's first-ever commercial diamond operation and the only working diamond mine in the United States, geologists said. Canada currently has the only diamond mines operating in North America....
National Wildlife Federation challenges CRP policy The National Wildlife Federation and six of its state affiliates filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday to stop what they call mismanagement of haying and grazing land included in the nation's Conservation Reserve Program. The wildlife federation alleges that the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the Department of Agriculture division that administers CRP, has violated the program's conservation mandate. The lawsuit accuses the FSA of allowing the haying and grazing of millions of enrolled acres at intervals too frequent to sustain enough grassland cover for nesting birds. The lawsuit also charges the FSA with compromising the program's conservation value in some states by allowing haying and grazing during primary nesting season....
Editorial: How the West is named Congress gave the name "Lake Nighthorse" to the reservoir that will form when the Animas-La Plata project is completed. It is a fitting tribute; no elected official did more to see the water development in southwestern Colorado from idea to construction than Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Colorado's soon-to-retire senior senator. Environmentalists long opposed the Animas-La Plata project, and now some have complained that the naming legislation ignored normal procedures for selecting geographic names - for one thing, the person being honored usually is dead, and Campbell is very much alive. A descendant of a family whose ranch is on the land where the reservoir is planned also objected - he said Campbell had nothing to do with the land. True, but Campbell did have a great deal to do with gaining approval for the water project....
Valley irrigators not backing down from water debt suit Despite the Rio Grande’s watersheds inching toward full capacity, local irrigators who collaboratively filed a suit against the Mexican government say they will not let the healthy water levels deter their cause. The suit, claiming $500 million in economic losses due to the Mexican water debt, will continue and if ignored, the group will file in December for an arbitration hearing, said Gordon Hill, manager for the Bayview Irrigation District — one of the entities backing the suit. Since 1992, Mexico curtailed the amount of water released from its dams on rivers leading into the Rio Grande. Since then, the state estimates that 20,000 agriculture-related jobs were lost due to the scarcity of water, which in turn had a $1 billion impact, according to Hill....
Cattle Killed, Genitals Removed On Western Slope Ranch Authorities are investigating the mutilation and killing of three cows on a small ranch in northwestern Colorado. The two steers and one heifer were killed and had their genitals removed last week but there were no visible marks on the cattle indicating how they were killed, Moffat County sheriff's deputy Courtland Folks said. The state veterinarian has been asked to investigate. "Possibly it could have been done for some type of worship with the organs," Folks said. "It's something that makes livestock owners uncomfortable."....
Oodles of art this weekend in Scottsdale The boots and bandana crowd will be on the streets of Scottsdale tonight and Saturday for the 15th-annual Western ArtWalk Weekend in the area's famed arts district. It celebrates the Western heritage of the "West's Most Western Town," with strolling cowboy musicians such as David Lewis, and artists from the prestigious Cowboys Artists of America who are in town for their annual show on Friday at the Phoenix Art Museum....
In praise of cowboy culture If you were strolling around Sundance Square Wednesday night, you may have thought a rodeo was in town. Natural mistake. The sea of Stetsons, however, belonged to patrons en route to Bass Performance Hall, where The Soul of the West played to a sold-out house. This celebration of the American West was created by singer and cowboy poet Red Steagall, playwright Andy Wilkinson and television actress Anne Lockhart. The one-nighter was a benefit for the Cowboy Heritage Association's fund to provide scholarships for the children of working cowboys. Good causes usually bring out the celebrities, and this lineup was no exception....