NEWS ROUNDUP

Forest Service at crossroads The U.S. Forest Service is in the midst of a midlife crisis as it approaches its centennial year. There is little doubt that the agency, which manages 192 million acres of forest land nationally and 8 million acres in Utah, is struggling to redefine its mission as it embarks on its next century. A Forest Service that spent the past century suppressing wildfires is now grappling with the buildup of undergrowth - fuel for wildfires, in other words - that has accumulated over decades. Complicating the situation further: a six-year drought that robbed soils of moisture and led to insect infestation that is killing large stands of fir throughout the Intermountain region....
Wolves' genetic diversity worryingly low Wolf eradication in the US has had a far more devastating impact on the genetic diversity of remaining populations than previously thought, a new study reveals. Although wolves were systematically eradicated across North America over the last couple of centuries, it had been thought that the human impact on the Canadian wolf population - which is currently a relatively healthy 70,000 - was minor....
Retired park service employees want checkoff to fund maintenance Retired National Park Service workers are supporting legislation allowing people to donate money to the agency through a checkoff on their federal tax return. "I believe there's enough national pride in the park system to make this work," said Bill Wade, former superintendent at Shenandoah National Park and spokesman for the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees. "If the public gets behind this, I think it will pass." The bill, called the National Park Centennial Act of 2004, looks to eliminate a $6 billion maintenance backlog in national parks by 2016 -- the Park Service centennial....
Off-roaders crowd California's Imperial Dunes, but no big trouble Off-road enthusiasts crowded into California's largest sand dunes area on Friday but officials reported there had been no repeat of the mayhem of past Thanksgiving weekends. The throng at Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area was expected to peak at up to 200,000. The annual Thanksgiving ritual more than doubles the population of Imperial County, but in the recent past the mix of fast driving and wild parties has been a recipe for "Mad Max" style chaos....
Wire fences roll up as cattle leave wild Steens Sixteen miles of barbed wire and fence posts have already been pulled out, as officials begin the difficult work of returning Steens Mountain to its natural state. "You can't believe the change in the way it looks without that fence," said federal range rider Lee McConnell. The Steens has been cattle country for at least a century, and 1,700 head plus calves grazed on this western face of the mountain for decades. But that era ended when Congress created the wilderness four years ago. Lawmakers declared that 97,229 acres of rangeland in the 170,080-acre wilderness would close to livestock. They gave ranchers and the Bureau of Land Management until fall 2003 to find a new home for the cattle....
Santa Fe-based group names Norton Toxic Turkey A Santa Fe-based environmental group has named US Interior Secretary Gale Norton this year's Toxic Turkey. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center yesterday accused Norton of weakening environmental laws through deregulation, promoting harmful energy policies and weakening air-quality standards....
Bison DNA study lets early hunters shake the blame Prehistoric big-game hunters may be off the hook in the latest twist of a whodunit that tries to explain why bison populations sharply crashed thousands of years ago. Proponents of the overkill theory blamed the first Americans to cross an ice-free corridor -- connecting what is now Alaska and Siberia -- for hunting bison within a whisper of disappearance. Those super hunters also are faulted for pushing massive mammals, such as woolly mammoths, short-faced bears and North American lions into extinction. A team of 27 scientists used ancient DNA to track the hulking herbivore's boom-and-bust population patterns, adding to growing evidence that climate change was to blame. "The interesting thing that we say about the extinctions is that whatever happened, it wasn't due to humans," said the paper's lead author, Beth Shapiro, a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at Oxford University....
Condit Dam removal to be reviewed A controversial plan to remove Condit Dam from the White Salmon River in the Columbia River Gorge is up for approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. PacifiCorp wants to remove its 91-year-old dam, rather than having to install an expensive fish ladder to renew its federal operating license. Officials of Skamania and Klickitat counties oppose the $17.15 million dam-removal plan, saying it will clog the lower White Salmon with up to 2.3 million cubic yards of sediment that's accumulated for nearly a century in Northwestern Lake. At 125 feet in height, Condit would be the largest dam removed in U.S. history....