NEWS ROUNDUP

Column: Moving beyond the roadless impasse The debate about the management of 58.5 million acres of national forest inventoried roadless areas has presented the 2001 roadless areas conservation rule and a state petitioning process, proposed in July 2004, as the only options. Both approaches are dead ends and a third option should be developed. An improved forest planning process, energized by strong policy guidance from the chief of the Forest Service, could provide that option. The 2001 roadless rule has been enjoined by the courts for all but three months since it was promulgated and is currently enjoined. The legal issues may not be decided for years. Some of us are not optimistic that the courts will ever uphold the rule....
Logging Teams Take Skills to Cutting Edge When Gina Lopez told her pals in UC Berkeley's "global-environment" residence hall that she had joined the school's logging team, they were aghast. "Gina, I can't believe you'd do that," one of her housemates said. "It's logging!" But here she was at this weekend's California Conclave intercollegiate logging competition, gripping a double-bladed ax with both hands, rearing back and letting it fly at a bull's-eye painted on a round slab of Douglas fir....
Snow-cat trips get skiers off the beaten path In December, the Kirkwood ski resort will crank up a novel snow-cat program that will let many skiers and snowboarders venture into untracked powder in the back country for the first time. You could call it the poor man's helicopter skiing adventure. Skiers and snowboarders will be able to climb aboard a snow cat with guides and motor into virgin snow above the Red Cliffs area. When they disembark in about 20 minutes, they will have about a thousand feet of vertical powder in front of them for the glide down....
Saving Big Sur/Why California's prized coastline is at risk The Gomeses' experience is typical of the problems facing hikers trying to use Big Sur's 200 miles of trails for recreation. Only about 15 percent of the trails are well maintained. The rest are either overgrown or blocked by fallen trees or landslides. Hamstrung by budget constraints, the Forest Service and other agencies are fighting a never-ending battle to keep the sprawling network of trails and campgrounds throughout Big Sur from being wiped off the map by the encroaching forces of nature. This decline is caused by congressional cuts to the Forest Service budget. Recreation budgets have been particularly hard hit, shrinking by 40 percent in the past two decades, said Manny Madrigal, recreation officer for Los Padres National Forest's Monterey Ranger District, which includes Big Sur....
Drilling lease sale stirs roadless-area rage Bird calls echo off the steep, pine-covered ridges of the Thompson Creek valley, the only sounds in this pristine forest, set aside under a special "roadless" designation by the U.S. Forest Service. But amid the buzz of the region's energy boom, the recent sale of three gas-drilling leases here has broken the tranquility....
Editorial: Stiffer penalties for ORV misuse Riders of ATVs and other off-road vehicles (ORVs) compose only 5 percent of the visitors to the national forests, yet cause most of the complaints. ORVs are ripping up stream banks, churning wildflowers into mud, and frightening wildlife. ORV engines aren't just noisy, they're dirty and inefficient, leaving behind oil and gas slicks. In southwest Colorado, ORVs smash ancient Indian artifacts. On alpine tundra, tire marks from one ATV can remain visible for generations. Congress should dramatically increase penalties for wayward ORV drivers. The existing $75 fine is meaningless, but a fine of several hundred dollars and a bill for thousands of dollars to repair damage to public property would have teeth. The money raised could go to hire more rangers....
Forest official denies charges San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman has denied charges made in a federal lawsuit that he abused his authority by halting the construction of a 100-unit condominium development near Big Bear Lake. Zimmerman also defended two U.S. Forest Service scientists, who are accused in the lawsuit of fabricating reports about the status of the area's bald eagle population and otherwise using their positions to derail the project....
Invasive plants creep into Alaska If you saw an orange and blue blimp floating over the Matanuska River this summer, you weren't hallucinating. Scientists launched the 15-foot long, tethered blimp to help them document a growing problem in Alaska - the invasion of non-native plants. Norm Harris has flown blimps all over Alaska to get a bird's-eye view of everything from soils to salmon habitat....
Environmentalists brace for Bush policies Battles continue over the administration's plan to lift the Clinton era prohibitions on logging and road building in 58 million acres of remote national forests unless governors petition to protect them, rebuilding threatened and endangered runs of salmon, and the Northwest Forest Plan, which balances logging against fish and wildlife habitat. One of Rey's top priorities is boosting the acreage treated under Healthy Forests from 4 million acres this year to 8 million acres, which would be on track to treat the 80 million acres most in need every 10 years. Rey said only 270,000 acres of the 4 million treated produced any kind of logs or fuel for biomass generators, which should satisfy environmentalists who feared Healthy Forests would be a license for logging of old growth forests....
A year later, backcountry shows signs of rebirth Her name was F19, and the radio collar the 90-pound mountain lion wore signaled to biologists that she was still on the move after the Cedar fire's worst days. Yet when residents near Julian began complaining about a mountain lion they couldn't scare away from their homes, the animal's unusual behavior was a signal that something was wrong....
Commercial rafting passengers weigh in A new group representing commercial rafting passengers has been formed to lobby for changes in the way the National Park Service is proposing to assign trip slots on the Colorado River. Dwight Sherwood, president of the Grand Canyon River Runners Association, said Friday that his nonprofit organization is stepping up not for corporate or environmental interests but on behalf of paying customers who like the shorter, motorized trips. Sherwood said he fears that pressure from wilderness advocates and private river runners would leave the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon "only to elitist, skills-based river runners" and not the general public....
Grazing decision under fire The rolling foothills near Round Mountain, south of here, are considered ideal pasture land for cattle in the view of federal officials, but private landowners in the area disagree. A decision by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management authorizes up to 221 cows to forage on 18,090 acres administered under the bureau's grazing allotment program, from Dec. 1 through March 31. Property owners and a conservation group said they will appeal the ruling by Roxie Trost, the bureau's Barstow area field manager, on grounds grazing would damage the region's fragile environment....
Project seeks to turn abandoned mine site into scenic vista For the past several months, big trucks, earthmovers and workers have been restoring this stream 30 miles east of Missoula in the hope of returning it to the pristine state it was in before miners blasted a hole in the side of the mountain more than a half-century ago and tumbled down thousands of cubic yards of rocks and heavy metals. It's really not Moore's land, but belongs instead to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which has overseen the $1.9 million reclamation project designed to clear out waste rock larded with lead and zinc and fill a huge cavern left behind by operations at the Blacktail mine....
Grand Canyon due for another flush Nearly nine years later, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is planning another beach party in the Grand Canyon. Pending the completion of an environmental assessment, the bureau next Sunday will commence what it is calling a "high-flow test experiment" at Glen Canyon Dam in a bid to ship sediment down the Colorado River that it hopes will replace sandbars and backwaters in the Grand Canyon that have been lost over the years because of dam-regulated water fluctuations. The goal: to help native fish species, such as the humpback chub, regain a toehold in the river that has been lost over time to non-native species, such as trout, and to restore beaches that have been washed away. It is a bid to restore the bottom of the canyon to something resembling its natural state prior to the dam's opening in 1962....
Oregonians Hold Their Ground But on Nov. 2, Oregon's voters, angered by what they saw as bureaucratic disregard for landowners, staged a revolt. By a vote of 60% to 40%, they approved a process designed to restore property rights stripped from owners by regulations enacted after they bought their land, or to require governments to pay a fair price for taking those rights away. With passage of Measure 37, Oregon has gone further than any other state to protect individual property rights, essentially prohibiting so-called "down-zoning" without just compensation, experts said. Indeed, Oregon has gone beyond what the U.S. Supreme Court has required in so-called "regulatory taking" cases, according to some legal experts....
Private-land access through state program gets easier for hunters The A&H program, as it's called, was created by the 1993 Legislature as an incentive to private landowners to open more of their land to hunting. Each year, hidden in the annual hunting license fee, the department collects a $2 surcharge and sends it to a separate fund that feeds a budget of about $1.5 million each biennium. The program also receives proceeds from state-sponsored raffles and auctions for premium big-game tags. Some of the money pays for habitat projects on private land. Landowners also can get tax breaks or emergency damage funds to help wildlife through other state programs. The rest of the A&H money finances a state access program that has opened -- at one time or other -- approximately 5 million acres of land to public hunters....
Column: Can the West be one? The vast majority of Americans who call themselves environmentalists, 78 percent in one survey, live in urban areas. They are the "New Westerners." Their connection to the land is mostly as observers, recreationists and infrequent visitors. Most of those who oppose the environmental movement actually live and work in the small rural communities of the West and many of them make their living from the land itself. They still represent the Old West. For the urban enviros, there's the rub. In the past three decades, each side of the conflict has so savagely misrepresented the other, so excessively caricatured their opponents, that they have, in the process, turned themselves into pretty laughable cartoon characters as well....
Of Land and Legacy Truocchio eventually would like to pass along her domain of rolling chaparral hills, cottonwood copses and 250 head of cattle to her daughter, Pat Abel, and thus avoid having it developed into 10-acre ranchettes or sold to a corporate ranching enterprise. That's how the American dream is supposed to work, isn't it? The beloved land stays in the family, and the child profits from the parents' labor? The family ranch, that symbol of the pioneer spirit in the West, would live on. If only it were that simple. The Truocchios, like many other families ranching cattle on California's Central Coast, face a vexing dilemma. With profit margins of less than 1%, ranching is a cash-poor business. Yet in terms of assets, notably real estate, ranchers are among California's rich....
Trade Issues Sour U.S.-Canadian Friendships Gerry Duckworth nails posters around his cattle ranch just north of the Montana border warning American hunters to get off his land as long as Canadian cattle are banned in the United States. "NO BEEF = NO HUNTING," the signs scold. Those are fighting words and reflect the deep feelings of chagrin among western Canadians, who normally look kindly on the United States. Mr. Duckworth has printed thousands of the signs, and they are appearing across Canadian prairies, where American hunters were once welcomed with open arms....
Chupacabra Discoverers United It's a relationship that's as wild as the creatures that brought them together. What exactly are these creatures? A dog? A wolf? The chupacabra? WOAI brings together an Elmendorf rancher and an East Texas animal lover, so they can share their fascinating finds. Whatever they are, they're turning up more and more these days. While we can merely speculate, two people have firsthand knowledge of the critters. Elmendorf rancher Devin MacNally started this chupacabra phenomenon months ago when he shot a mysterious animal on his property. East Texas animal lover Stacy Womack made another mysterious discovery under her house....
1888 blizzard struck most vulnerable "The Children's Blizzard," by David Laskin (HarperCollins, 295 pages, $24.95) Anyone who lived through the blizzard of 1888 remembered the morning of Jan. 13 as unusually mild, a break in the subzero weather of the past few days. Men stood outside in shirtsleeves, children went to school in light jackets, without hats or mittens. Then the blizzard hit, in minutes, "rolling toward us with great fury ... and making a loud noise. It looked like a long string of big bales of cotton," wrote a child. A teacher said the sudden wind "struck her with such violence as to bring her head down to her knees, and she knew that if she fell she would not get up again."....
El Pasoans move 'em out at ranch But Bowen and the Ford Dealers Southwestern Livestock Show and Rodeo are trying to keep the ranching tradition alive. Saturday, the two, along with other organizations, hosted a cattle drive featuring about 100 horse riders and dozens of Texas longhorn and whiteface Hereford cattle. The cattle drive also gave El Pasoans and other area residents a chance to catch a glimpse into the ranching lifestyle. After the cattle drive, riders and onlookers ate a barbecue lunch and toured the ranch's headquarters, which featured children's activities and an area to see chickens, pigs, horses, donkeys and other animals....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: When the frost is on the punkin, round up the cows Compared to the other big seasons in the cow business, - i.e., branding, calving, turning out to summer pasture, or pulling the bulls - shipping time is the Super Bowl! Everyone's pumped up. Expectations are high, a year's work, it's like adding up your score at the end of the game. Most businesses accumulate income daily or weekly. But on a ranch or beef cow herd, the only things you accumulate regularly are bills. Christmas comes in the fall for cowmen....