NEWS ROUNDUP

Editorial: Forests at risk While most everyone was scurrying around checking off the last items on their Christmas lists, the Bush administration announced new rules for managing the nation's 155 national forests and 20 grasslands that will ease restrictions on logging, drilling and road-building. The U.S. Forest Service's new regulations will chop years and millions of dollars off the formulation of the 15-year management plans mandated for each forest that now take up to seven years to complete. Local and regional foresters also will have greater authority to respond quickly to the constantly evolving threats of wildfires and invasive species. Regrettably, though, the broad reforms announced Dec. 22 also make it possible for forest planners to skirt the 1976 act because they no longer require environmental impact statements for revised or amended forest plans, but allow less-stringent environmental assessments and reviews, or, in some cases, none at all. They also relax wildlife protections in place since the Reagan administration and reduce public participation in planning decisions....
Bosworth sees some balance in new rules The U.S. Forest Service's new rules streamlining the national forest management process won't mean an open door for the timber industry to increase logging, assured Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, who is spending the holidays at his home in Missoula. "I don't think logging for logging's sake is what the public wants," Bosworth said in an interview Wednesday. "I don't think that's what we need on the national forests." The new forest rules, announced last week, will change aspects of the 1976 National Forest Management Act, which sets guidelines for managing 192 million acres of national forests and grasslands and protecting wildlife. The new rules will make forest planning more open, understandable and timely, according to Bosworth....
Local forest officials back Bush's new regulation Larry Timchak said he is confident a new federal regulation will make Ochoco National Forest more efficient and effective in its long-term planning. Still, Timchak and other Central Oregon forest officials are already raving about the new regulation, which they say represents a needed change to an outdated process. A new 158-page rule changes the way the country's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands draft individualized long-term plans known as "forest plans." "I think updating this (process) is timely," said Mike Johnson, a planner for Deschutes and Ochoco national forests. "This process was unchanged since 1982, and ... forest conditions and our understandings have changed drastically since then."....
Editorial: Slighting the Sierra Two recent moves by the Bush administration and the U.S. Forest Service may leave communities throughout the Sierra at too great a risk from fire. First, the administration altered a management plan for the Sierra's national forests to emphasize more thinning operations deep in the forest and fewer near communities, where the projects are more expensive for loggers. And now the Forest Service is proposing to shift some funds designated to protect those communities and spend them in other states. Maybe that's good politics. But it's bad fire management policy for Sierra communities. With an inadequate budget to start with, the U.S. Forest Service is proposing to shift 15 percent of its "hazardous fuel reduction funding" away from expensive areas to less expensive ones. This may sound like more bang for the buck. But isn't the intent of this program to make communities more secure and as opposed to cutting down the maximum number of trees?....
Tamarack scuttles plans for snowcat skiing on federal land Snowmobile groups have objected to a plan by a new Idaho ski resort to offer snowcat skiing on federal land next door. As a result, Tamarack Resort officials say they're withdrawing an application with the U-S Forest Service to allow the activity. The plan had called for snowcat skiing on twelve-thousand acres of federal land. About 20 percent of it would have been off limits to everyone else. That raised the hackles of snowmobilers....
Crash kills wildlife scientists Wildlife disease researchers across the country were reeling Thursday from the loss of two giants in their field. Edwin "Tom" Thorne, who led a desperate captive breeding program credited with saving the black-footed ferret from extinction, and his wife Elizabeth Williams, the world's foremost expert on chronic wasting disease (CWD), died Wednesday night in a traffic accident on a snowy northern Colorado highway....
Internet database focuses on endangered species The Sun Valley-based Center for Environmental Education is experiencing a growth spurt and is touting its on-line information database as one of the most comprehensive environmental education networks in the U.S. The group's newest site, called Endangered Species Early Warning, was posted here this month after a lengthy logistical delay. The site, first announced in June, features a thorough database of Endangered Species Act listed plants and animals as well as species of concern, like the greater sage grouse, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced would probably not be granted threatened or endangered status....
Butterfly stirs up controversy Don’t schedule that visit anytime soon to Cloudcroft’s butterfly festival. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced in the Federal Register its decision not to list the Sacramento Mountains Checkerspot butterfly as an endangered species, under the Endangered Species Act. When the listing possibility was announced in the Sept. 6, 2001, Federal Register, FWS Ecological Services Field Supervisor Joy Nicholopoulos suggested an endangered listing “may actually increase (tourist) visits” through “endangered species festivals.” The idea did not impress Mayor Dave Venable. “I assure you,” he said, “that there will be a festival all right, and I assure you that the butterfly will not survive.” By then the possibility of a listing was nearly three years old. On Jan. 28, 1999, the Tucson, Ariz.-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the FWS to “emergency list” the butterfly. While an emergency list protects for 240 days, the FWS found such a listing unjustified. However, in July 2001 the U.S. District Court of New Mexico ordered the service to start the consideration process....
BLM axes plan to move horses for gas drilling The federal Bureau of Land Management has withdrawn a plan that could have put a 120-head wild horse herd up for adoption to make room for natural-gas drilling, but horse advocates expect the agency to replace it with a new plan to remove the animals. About 880 gas wells are already operating near the 127,000-acre West Douglas herd area about 50 miles north of Grand Junction, and drilling is expected to move into the West Douglas range soon, said Bob Fowler of the BLM's Meeker office. Barb Flores of Greeley, chairwoman of the Colorado Wild Horse and Burro Coalition, said she expects the new proposal to lead to the removal of horses....
Peabody Energy Buys 324M Tons Of Sulfur Coal Reserves Peabody Energy submitted a winning bid of $299 million to gain the rights to 324 million tons of low sulfur coal reserves in the Powder River Basin. The company's winning bid of about 92 cents per mineable ton was made through its subsidiary BTU Western Resources Inc. during a sealed bid auction on Wednesday....
BLM targets staff thinning First the bad news: Nearly 60 positions are going to be cut on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Medford District. The good news? The plan is to make those staff reductions, required by budget constraints, through attrition over a five-year period. "We’re trying to plan so we can avoid layoffs," explained District Manager Tim Reuwsaat. "But we are planning for a reduced workforce." The 58 positions expected to be lost will be achieved through retirements, he said....
2004 Raised the 'Bar' for Animal Protection Victories in the Nation's Courts As 2004 comes to a close, animal advocates are celebrating a historic year for animals in the courts. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and The Fund for Animals, which plan to merge on January 1st and launch a new Animal Protection Litigation section, have just published an in-depth article about this year's numerous legal victories for animals, available on The HSUS's web site here. "As good as 2004 was for animals in the courts, 2005 promises to be even better," said Wayne Pacelle, president of The HSUS. "Our new Animal Protection Litigation section will boast seven full-time attorneys who will tackle new cases and seek justice for animals, will serve as a training ground for the next generation of animal lawyers and law students, and will lay the foundation for implementation of new strategies to help farm animals, wildlife, and companion animals in the courts."....
Australian wool faces boycott threat Since the early 1950s, historians have credited Australia, with its vast tracts of Outback grazing land and booming wool trade, with riding to economic prosperity "on the sheep's back." Now a debate between farmers and animal rights activists over how to treat the skin on a sheep's backside is threatening to undermine the country's $2.5 billion wool industry. Earlier this year, the U.S.-based animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) launched a campaign to pressure global retailers to boycott Australian wool over the use of a farming practice called mulesing. The procedure - named for the Australian rancher, J.H. Mules, who invented it - involves slicing flesh and wool away from the sheep's rump to prevent blowflies from laying their eggs in the warm, damp skin....
Tribe asks for extension in changing "squaw" place names For years, emissaries from the Confederated Tribe of Warm Springs have been lobbying state officials to make the word "squaw" illegal in official government names and places. But now, with the state deadline for completing the renaming process approaching, the tribes are asking the state Legislature to extend their Jan. 2 deadline, after difficulties agreeing on replacement names. The tribes originally asked for the ban on squaw names because many American Indians consider the "s-word" to be vulgar slang for an Indian woman....
Column: Best fish story of all bubbles to surface University of British Columbia, Vancouver scientists apparently with time on their hands have discovered that herring communicate using a noise they call Fast Repetitive Tick (FRT). Ben Wilson of UBC calls it a "high-pitched raspberry." Newspaper columnist Dave Barry called it breaking wind, but I won’t use that term. Get the picture? No leg or finger pulling here. Canadian scientists have actually learned Pacific herring communicate by expelling gas from the same anatomical location people—mostly male people -- expel gas. At first scientists thought the herring’s noise also came from the same place. However, bubbles broke the surface of the fish tank when the herring made it noise and the keen eyes of scientists discovered the anatomical emission point of those bubbles; thus was born the scientific terms "digestive system venting," "burst pulse sounds," and FRT (Fast Repetitive Tick.)....