NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranger: Trees cut for house move House movers who felled trees to help squeeze their cargo along a narrow mountain road face a citation, and perhaps a claim for damages, a Forest Service ranger said Friday. About four trees on Helena National Forest land were cut down to make way for the house transported over Stemple Pass and limbs were removed from others, Ranger Amber Kamps of the Lincoln Ranger District said. The felling, which apparently happened Tuesday or Wednesday, damaged the tops of some other trees on federal land, Kamps said....
NTSB report on air crash reveals little new U.S. Forest Service dispatchers lost contact with a plane that crashed into a mountain, killing three of five on board, just minutes before its scheduled landing at a grass air strip south of Glacier National Park, a preliminary crash report released Friday says. Contract pilot Jim Long said he was "inbound for Schafer," a guard station in the Great Bear-Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, before dispatchers lost radio communication mid-afternoon on Sept. 20, according to the report by National Transportation Safety Board staff. No engine or mechanical failure was mentioned, and investigators have confirmed that the wreckage shows no signs of it....
Forest not altering grazing practices Proposed revisions to managing Bighorn National Forest contain no new management practices involving grazing permits, according a forest official. What at first glance appears to be a significant change in the plan relates to the number of animal unit months that will be allowed in "suitable rangelands." The 1985 plan allows up to 144,000 animal unit months. The revised forest plan, which is probably at least a year away from being adopted by the Forest Service, calls for a maximum of 118,000. But, Stellingwef said, the reduction in numbers is a paper exercise, nothing more than a recognition that there never have been, and "very likely" never will be, that many cattle, sheep or other domestic livestock in the Big Horns....
Column: A rule to sue by Some people want nearly 59 million acres of public land set aside from additional road building and believe that roughly 400,000 miles of roads in the national forest system is quite enough. Others disagree. Both sides have legitimate arguments to make, but that is not the focus here. Instead, I wish to examine the roadless rulemaking process and how this important decision should not be made. The Bush administration has proposed replacing the original roadless rule with a "petitioning process" that would give governors an opportunity to seek establishment of management requirements for roadless areas within their states....
Town hopes eruption brings tourist dollars When Carol Hubbell heard about the mini-eruption of Mount St. Helens on a Forest Service scanner in the Cougar Store, she ran into the parking lot to watch the plume of steam and ash waft over the mountain 12 miles to the north. Then she hustled back inside; it would be a busy afternoon of selling ice, snacks and beer. The logging community of Cougar is the closest town to the erupting crater of Mount St. Helens. The residents were celebrating the burst of steam that emanated from the mountain around noon on Friday, anticipating a heavy tourist influx over the weekend....
Senate will take a look at mining fees The Senate is poised to overturn a mining fee increase until the government can develop a system to track permits prospectors obtain to extract minerals from public lands. A Department of Interior spending bill awaiting Senate votes rolls back a $125 mining claim fee the Bureau of Land Management implemented this month. The fee would revert back to $100. The bill responds to complaints from mining companies that have resisted new fees so long as delays persist in obtaining permits. "Until we're seeing a better service, we don't think we should be talking about payment," said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association....
Logs to slow streams, build new fish habitat Using a 200-foot-long cable with a claw-like grapple at the end, the helicopter moved logs into place into and over Rock and Threemile creeks in the Fremont-Winema National Forests. The work aims to slow the flow of water through the creeks and to create cool pools of water for spawning and rearing of young fish. "We are building the home for the fish again," said Neil Anderson, fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service....
Brown bear sow charges duck hunter in the Valley Two brown bear sows with cubs are frequenting the Dredge Lakes area and one of the sows charged a duck hunter on Sunday. The hunter was walking on a trail when he surprised a sow with a 3-year-old at point-blank range, said Neil Barten, area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The sow charged the hunter, who discharged two rounds of bird shot at it. The bear ran away and U.S. Forest Service and Alaska State Troopers found no evidence that it had been harmed, Barten said. Wildlife officials are urging Juneau residents to take extra precaution....
Search called off for plane in Alaska After 10 days of searching by air and sea, the Coast Guard has suspended the search for a plane and its five occupants missing near Sitka, Alaska. A Coast Guard spokesman said the search was suspended because no debris or any other sign of the plane has been found. "We found nothing at all," said Coast Guard operations specialist David Foucault. Searchers covered 4,615 square miles and made 42 air and sea searches. In addition to the Coast Guard, searchers included members of the Forest Service, Civil Air Patrol and a local search and rescue team, he said....
Wyoming man pleads guilty to fee tube thefts A Wyoming man pleaded guilty in Great Falls federal court Wednesday to breaking into nearly 100 campsite fee tubes -- many of them in Montana. He also told police he stole about $3,000 from fee tubes, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release. Ernest E. Hartwell, 31, of Rawlins, Wyo., remains in custody after he admitted to destroying government property earlier this year....
Editorial: Forest boondoggle YEAR IN and year out, the politically powerful Alaska congressional delegation encourages the US Forest Service to build, at taxpayer expense, logging roads in the Tongass National Forest for the benefit of the state's dwindling timber business. It is bad enough that Congress goes along with this kind of corporate welfare make-work. Even worse is the fact that taxpayers are financing the destruction of the largest remaining temperate rain forest in the world. Enter Senator John McCain of Arizona, who knows a boondoggle when he sees one. McCain favors an amendment to an appropriations bill that would ban logging subsidies in the Tongass, which was first protected in 1907 by another Republican conservationist, President Theodore Roosevelt. The House passed a similar ban on Tongass road-building in June by a 222-205 vote. Like McCain's, that amendment had the support of a coalition of conservationists, budget balancers, and sportsmen....
Battle heats up over drilling on Alaska's North Slope Federal officials say the marshy tundra around a giant lake on Alaska's North Slope could hold hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil, enough to significantly boost domestic oil production for a nation heavily dependent on foreign imports. To get at the oil, the Bureau of Land Management recently proposed rolling back restrictions imposed in 1998 during the Clinton administration that keep oil explorers out of areas important for migratory geese and other wildlife. Now the BLM is under siege from environmental groups, other federal agencies and Eskimos, all of whom say leasing the protected waters of Teshekpuk Lake and the surrounding tundra is a horrible idea....
Greens say mining not sole threat to 3 Utah rivers An order signed earlier this month by Interior Secretary Gale Norton prohibiting mining along the banks of three rivers in southeastern Utah won't substantially protect the land or water along the rivers from oil and gas development, according to a study by an environmental group. A review of Interior Department land-use records by the Environmental Working Group showed that there is considerably more acreage under lease for oil and gas development than there is for hard-rock mining in the Three Rivers Withdrawal, signed by Norton on Sept. 11. Within five miles of the river, there are eight times as many acres under lease for oil and gas development than for mining, the group found....
On the trail of history From border trails and Hill Country passes, ancient roads in thick pines and river crossings on the Sabine, Texas is connected by a long and diverse path. That disparate route will soon have national attention and protection. Congress passed legislation this week designating El Camino Real de los Tejas as a National Historic Trail. El Camino Real de los Tejas has been described as "a corridor of trails used by settlers, immigrants, Indians and the military." It is a combination of routes totaling almost 2,600 miles from the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and Laredo to Natchitoches, La. It was a pathway known to Davy Crockett and Sam Houston, and equally familiar to Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna....
Park plan would cut boat trips Trying to navigate the choppy waters of rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the National Park Service is proposing a plan that would reduce the season for motorized boats while permitting a 28 percent jump in the number of days passengers of all boats can spend on the river. But the restrictions on motorized boats were criticized Friday by both tour operators and environmentalists....
Coalition disputes economics of drilling Opponents of natural-gas drilling on the Rocky Mountain Front tried to buttress their argument Thursday with a report finding development could cost the Front's Teton County more than it would gain. In a news release, the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front said that given tax breaks for the energy industry and formulas for distributing government money, Teton County stands to gain little from federal royalties and state severance taxes if natural gas is extracted from the Front's Blackleaf area, which is in the county....
Environmental group challenges water project An environmental group has asked the state water court to halt construction on the Animas-La Plata water project in southwest Colorado, which is $162 million over budget and less than 20 percent complete after years of planning. The Citizens Progressive Alliance filed its motion Monday, claiming that water rights owed to the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain Ute Indian tribes were settled by acts of Congress in the 19th century. Animas-La Plata was built largely to settle claims to water rights by the two tribes. "These applications defy the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the 1868 reservation was extinguished in 1880 by an act of Congress. Both the Department of Justice and counsel for the Colorado Ute tribes are fully aware of this Supreme Court ruling yet have brazenly defied it," the group said Thursday....