NEWS ROUNDUP

Scientists help maintain Devil’s Hole pupfish population For three decades, they’ve swum in the 92-degree spring water that biologists channeled from a crevice in the rocks above Lake Mohave to a concrete tank near Hoover Dam. Without much fanfare from the scientists behind this long-term project, the obscure, rectangular tank, smaller than a backyard swimming pool, has been holding a few handfuls of one of the rarest fish on Earth, the endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish....
Drought Unearths a Buried Treasure In the early 1960's, the nation's environmental movement cut its baby teeth on a fierce battle to stop construction of dams along the Colorado River. Two proposed dams were never built, but Glen Canyon dam, located in an unprotected area, was completed in 1963. Over the next 17 years, water backed up for 186 miles, forming Lake Powell and inundating Glen Canyon and hundreds of miles of side canyons. What Mr. Abbey and the Sierra Club couldn't or didn't do nature has now accomplished. A severe Western drought - some say the worst in 500 years - is shrinking Lake Powell at the rate of up to a foot every four days. Since 1999, the vast reservoir has lost more than 60 percent of its water. Glen Canyon is returning. It is open and viewable in much of its former glory. At the confluence of Coyote Creek and Escalante River, where boaters once motored by to see famous rock formations, backpackers now pick their way up a shallow river channel. Fifteen-foot high cottonwoods grow amid thickets of willow, gamble oak and tamarisk. Where fish thrived, mountain lions prowl. The change may be permanent....
Column: Wise Use in the White House, Pt. 3 With the Department of Interior also promoting recreational user fees, corporate sponsorship of park activities, and partnerships for bioprospecting in the parks, one can start to imagine Smokey Bear recast as ComCast Bear, Arches National Park as Golden Arches National Park, and hip ads promoting Yellowstone-washed jeans. Certainly the Wise Use vision of park management given over to private firms "with expertise in people moving such as Walt Disney" seems consistent with Gale Norton's vision. Despite her early portrayal by environmentalists as "James Watt in a skirt," Norton has shown far more political acumen than the man who once bragged of a commission on which he had a black, a woman, "two Jews and a cripple." "She makes Watt look like the one wearing a skirt," Jeff Ruch suggests with a grin. Though not the most gender-sensitive way of putting it, I get his point. Rather than openly attack environmental laws and wilderness protections, Norton has used the regulatory process to ease up on industry, and the administrative process to crack down on agency professionals who disagree with her....
Hellbenders fight extinction after nearly 150 million years The cold, oxygenated water of the White River's North Fork holds some of the last remaining members of an amphibian family that has roamed this planet for 150 million years. The hellbender salamander has survived dinosaurs, tectonic shifts and multiple ice ages - only to nearly disappear in the time it took for bell-bottom jeans to come back in style. "Back in the `70s, on a day like today, we'd have gotten 100 hellbenders," Solis said on this October day, "and today we got four." Solis, a graduate student at the University of Missouri at Rolla, is part of a biological SWAT team aimed at finding out what is hurting the hellbender. Armed with water sampling equipment, electronic tags, laboratory tests and plans for a captive breeding program, a coalition including state and federal agencies, universities and the St. Louis Zoo hopes to arrest the animal's slide into oblivion....
Endangered Species List Growing, Says Green Group The world's list of endangered species is growing at an alarming and unprecedented rate as governments pay less and less attention to green issues, a major global environmental body said on Tuesday. The World Conservation Union, which also goes under the acronym IUCN, said it would release a "red list" of more than 12,000 threatened species at the World Conservation Congress in Thailand, which starts on November 17....
Bears top killers of elk calves in study For the second year in a row, grizzly bears and black bears were responsible for a majority of elk calf deaths in a study group last spring and summer in Yellowstone National Park. Of the 44 calves that were monitored daily this year, 31 died. Of those, grizzly and black bears killed 18, coyotes killed four, wolves killed three and a golden eagle killed one. One was killed either by wolves or bears, two were killed by unknown predators and two died for reasons other than predators. In 2003 during the study's first year, bears killed 19 elk calves, wolves killed five, coyotes killed three, a mountain lion killed one and a wolverine killed one. Two were killed by wolves or bears....
Brothers' idea still rolling Xanterra researched the history of the Bombardier snowcoach and the history of the Bombardier company. Both go back to the winter of 1922 in the town of Valcourt in the Black River Valley of eastern Québec. Joseph-Armand Bombardier, a mechanically gifted 15-year-old, had taken apart the family car so often that his father bought an old Ford he thought beyond repair and gave it to him to keep him occupied. Bombardier and his younger brother Leopold began a secret project that occupied all of their spare time until New Year's Eve, when they unveiled a vehicle consisting of a frame with four skis, the Ford engine and a rear-mounted propeller. The boys took off across the snow, Leopold operating the engine while Joseph-Armand steered the front skis, on a 1-kilometer run. Afterwards, the boys' father made them dismantle the vehicle for fear they would hurt themselves, but it was the beginning of a long and fruitful career in over-snow transportation for Joseph-Armand Bombardier....
Elk numbers too high in Theodore Roosevelt 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. There are more than 600 elk in the park, but wildlife managers have said the land can only handle about 360. The National Park Service has transferred the animals to other states in the past to keep the population down, but fears about chronic wasting disease have halted the practice....
US to Release Draft Colo. Natural Gas Drilling Plan The U.S. government expects to release a draft management plan next week that will detail its plan for natural gas drilling in an environmentally sensitive area in western Colorado known as the Roan Plateau. The Bush administration has marked the Rocky Mountains as an area where it wants to see more oil and gas development to lessen domestic reliance on imported energy, but environmental groups have been fighting the plans in a number of Western states. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management anticipates its draft management plan for the area to be released the week of Nov 8., Duane Spencer, Bureau of Land Management branch chief of fluid minerals, said on Friday. The public will then have an opportunity to comment on the report....
Americans Set to Vote on $4 Billion in New Open Space Funding; LandVote.org will Document Land Conservation Ballot Measures In Tuesday's elections, voters in over 140 communities in 24 states will decide ballot measures to create nearly $25 billion in new public funding, including $4.3 billion specifically to protect land for parks and open space, according to the Trust for Public Land (TPL). TPL will monitor and release results as soon as they are available on Wednesday, November 3. Since 1998, 824 conservation ballot measures have passed in 44 states, raising $22 billion in funding for land conservation -- a rate of passage of approximately 77 percent. In the last presidential election year of 2000, 174 ballot measures passed (an 83 percent passage rate), creating $7.5 billion in funding for land conservation....
New Energy Map Addresses Energy Development Issues in the West Global Energy Decisions (Global Energy) has released a new wall map portraying the energy development issues in the West by clearly defining the production, transmission, consumption and land-use patterns in this critical region. The 2004 Energy Resources, Infrastructure and Federal Lands of the West wall map is unique in that it brings together data showing: oil & gas wells, pipelines, power plants transmission lines and public lands....
Saving fewer fish The crew of federal employees waded Thursday along the A Canal, now empty after the end of another irrigation season in the Klamath Reclamation Project. Equipped with electric wands and dip nets, they were looking for endangered suckers stranded in the canal. The "sucker salvage" has become an annual rite of autumn for the Bureau, which is required to avoid killing the fish that are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act....
Do lead bullets continue to be a hazard after they land? There were 20 million metric tons of lead bullets fired in the United States in the 20th century. Is that lead having an environmental impact? Not at or near the U.S. Forest Service firing range near Blacksburg, Va., according to research by Virginia Tech geological scientists. Donald Rimstidt, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, College of Science at Virginia Tech will report the conclusions of a five-year study at the 116th national meeting of the Geological Sciences of America in Denver Nov. 7-10. There are 9,000 nonmilitary shooting ranges and a lot of military ones in the United States. Some 60,000 metric tons of lead are expended by shooting. (a metric ton or "long ton" is 2,200 lbs.). "So there is lead shot and bullets everywhere," Rimstidt said....
Magazine Calls for National Day of the Cowboy In a move to help rally what it considers some long-overdue recognition, a national magazine is calling on Americans to create a National Day of the Cowboy, to honor that enduring symbol of American courage, chivalry, and can-do spirit. Through the end of this year and into 2005, the magazine is soliciting reader feedback on this matter and sharing their thoughts through its pages. A page of such comments appears in the November/December American Cowboy Magazine, which is due to reach newsstands Nov. 2. More than a quarter-million Americans read the magazine every issue. Meanwhile, the public is invited to explore the issue on a webpage devoted exclusively to this topic. To access it, go to http://cowboyday.cowboy.com....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: Vote or forever hold your peace Sept. 11 radicals attack United States. President Gore treats attack as a crime, not a war. Sends special forces and CIA to find Osama bin Laden, a light version of Homeland Security is established. Neither Afghanistan or Iraq are invaded. Saddam Hussein still rules Iraq. The Taliban still rules Afghanistan. Osama is still in the loose, Libya, North Korea and Iran pose a nuclear threat. The world is a dangerous place. 2004 election pits President Gore against John McCain. So, if you are a U.S. citizen who cares but has been turned off by the acrimony that pervades the 2004 presidential campaign, or you think Washington, D.C., is just politics as usual, take a deep breath and vote. Regardless, we're all part of the mess and all part of the solution. And if you don't care, don't vote. Just don't expect me to listen to your gripes....