NEWS ROUNDUP

Environmentalists seek more habitat protection for grizzlies The grizzly bear population will not recover unless more habitat is preserved outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, an environmentalist said. True recovery would involve preserving wildlife-movement corridors so that grizzlies in Wyoming could connect with Canadian bears, she said, adding that Yellowstone's grizzly population is not genetically diverse enough to sustain itself. Willcox praised the U.S. Forest Service for proposing uniform habitat standards for grizzly bears across six national forests surrounding the park. The Forest Service is proposing to amend management plans for the forest to include habitat standards, a nuisance bear standard and monitoring requirements for grizzlies....
Grizzly deaths concern managers This week is a big one for grizzly bears. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team meets in Billings, Mont., Thursday and Friday to talk about this year's bear deaths and future issues for the animals. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission meets in Torrington at the same time to talk about where to allow grizzlies in the state. Both meetings come on the heels of a year when the number of female grizzlies killed has spiked, leaving some questioning current management practices to prevent bear deaths....
Editorial: The wilderness battle AS THE most densely populated region in the United States, the East needs the solitude and recreation provided by National Forest wilderness areas, which are kept free of chainsaws and all-terrain vehicles. But, unlike the West, the East has few large forests unbroken by roads, which disqualify them from wilderness designation. To make sure that at least some woods in the East would get this high level of protection, Congress in 1975 set less pristine standards for the East's wooded areas, such as the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and Maine and the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. But for this law to achieve its purpose, US Forest Service officials have to embrace its spirit. Unfortunately, there is a bias among many Forest Service officials in favor of logging and road-building and against wilderness protection. President Clinton tried to ensure a bigger base of wilderness-eligible land with his Roadless Rule, which banned roads for logging and other uses on 58 million acres. Senator John Kerry supports the rule, but President Bush has sought to undo it....
Snow delays removal of memorial in Uintas The group of Salt Lake City policemen who placed a memorial plaque on Kings Peak will have to wait until summer to remove it. Heavy snow has made the 12-mile route to the summit impassible. Members of the Salt Lake City Police Department placed a 14-pound plaque on the mountain on Sept. 11 to honor James Cawley, a police detective and Marine reservist who died in Iraq. But the police were later told by the U.S. Forest Service that the plaque violated wilderness laws. Kings Peak is part of the High Uintas Wilderness Area....
Elk numbers too high in N.D. park Elk are flourishing at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in numbers too great for their habitat and park officials say hundreds of the animals may have to be shot to bring the population down in coming years. Park service officials have started studying a strategy for managing the park's elk. The process could take several years and will include public meetings around the state. "This is not something we take lightly," said Valerie Naylor, the park's superintendent. There are more than 600 elk in the park, but wildlife managers have said the land can only handle about 360....
Do politics decide environmental court cases? Lawyers for the Utah Environmental Congress were surprised when they read that President Bush had a say in U.S. District Judge Dee Benson's ruling against their attempt to stop a coal-mining operation in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. Benson ruled in July that not allowing the mining company to remove 1.9 million tons of coal from the East Fork Box Canyon tract would mean the loss of electricity to 1.5 million citizens for a year. "This is especially adverse to the public's interest in light of the president's energy policy that elevated the public interest in energy resources," Benson wrote in support of the federal Bureau of Land Management....
Ruby Hill gold mine planned for Eureka Barrick Gold Corp. is moving forward with the reopening of the Ruby Hill gold mine at Eureka and intends to begin work next month on a new power plant in Western Nevada. The decision to proceed with the East Archimedes Project at Ruby Hill comes as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management continues preparation of a supplemental environmental impact statement for the project....
What some thought would never happen: CUP on last lap After four decades, the Central Utah Project has reached the beginning of the end. The long quest to move water from the Uinta Mountains to the growing population of the Wasatch Front has entered the final phase with last month's release of an environmental impact statement for a new series of water pipelines that will deliver an additional 60,000 acre-feet of water annually to Salt Lake and Utah counties from Strawberry Reservoir. The project, called the "Utah Lake Drainage Basin Water Delivery System" has been approved by the major local water agencies. Barring unforeseen complications - the study is now being reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency - federal and state water officials expect to receive a final record of decision and congressional approval by the end of the year....
Wyo groups want cattle cleared The case began in July when brucellosis was detected in fluid samples taken from two cows from the Edwards herd. The animals were part of an auction in Pierre, S.D. Agriculture officials in Wyoming became suspicious of the test results even before ruling out brucellosis in any of the 2,500-plus cattle that might have had contact with the two cows here. Many of those animals were tested a second time -- including the Edwards herd -- and still no signs of brucellosis have been found. More puzzling is the fact that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has long considered the free-ranging elk in northeast Wyoming to be brucellosis free....
Rare white rattler finds home It's one in a million. Chris and Denise Alverson, co-owners of New Earth, a private reptile collection, have secured a prized white rattlesnake. The Rapid City couple said their snake is a rarity in the wild - a one in a million find. "It isn't an albino," Chris Alverson said. "It's grayish, off-white color with blue eyes." Alverson, 26, said the snake has no patterned markings on its back like other rattlesnakes. "This is the very first one I've seen caught in the wild," he said....
New Research Casting Early Texas Rangers In A Much Darker Light Back east, for social cachet there is nothing like an ancestor on the Mayflower. In Texas, it is a Texas Ranger in the family tree. Here at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, a shrine to the frontier lawmen who set Lone Star hearts aflutter, some of the most avid visitors come in search of connections to the men who won the West and, it was said, would charge hell with a bucket of water and quell riots single-handedly. But Southern Methodist University in Dallas says new historical accounts are casting the long-revered outlaw and Indian fighters in a decidedly darker light....
Pictures of the past: Old photos share tribe history Though the haunting black-and-white pictures of them dressed in full traditional regalia seem, to most, a reminder of a bygone era to Northern Arapaho tribal members, the images of the people, with surnames like Goes In Lodge, Shavehead, Monroe and Bell, are not nearly so far removed. Many today on the Wind River Indian Reservation sign checks and paperwork with those very names. Thanks to an international effort, 30 long-lost images of the tribe's people now are just as geographically close to the Northern Arapaho Tribe as they are culturally, and through the photos a colorful tale of friendship, travel and show business has been retold....
Cruising El Camino Real El Camino Real, the King's Highway, the Old San Antonio Road. On its various routes, it stretched from the Rio Grande to the state's far eastern boundaries. It followed the paths of buffalo and American Indians, of missionaries and soldiers, entrepreneurs and travelers and dreamers of all types. Formally known as El Camino Real de los Tejas, its twists and turns revealed not only a changing land, but the faces and spirits of its soul. The first highway to cross at least part of Texas, the trail is a network of routes totaling almost 2,600 miles from just below Eagle Pass through San Antonio to Natchitoches, La., a corridor of about 550 miles....