NEWS ROUNDUP

Rancher boots wildlife group off ranch A Paradise Valley sheep rancher has booted a pro-wolf environmental group off his property, accusing it of what he called "pretty much blackmail." Rancher Bob Weber, who lives in the Trail Creek area, has told Defenders of Wildlife it is no longer welcome on his property unless he receives a public apology from the group. He made his statements in a letter printed in Tuesday's Livingston Enterprise and in an interview Wednesday. A Defenders spokeswoman said no apology is planned and that the group had only been trying to help Weber protect his property....
Forest Service worker charged with illegally gathering firewood A U.S. Forest Service maintenance employee who is married to a ranger has been accused of illegally gathering firewood. Federal prosecutors allege Rodney J. Lane of Kooskia gathered enough firewood July 7 to fill a pickup in a prohibited area along U.S. Highway 12, about six miles west of Lowell. The area is within the Middle Fork of the Clearwater Wild and Scenic River portion of the Clearwater National Forest....
Timber groups call for more thinning in Idaho forests The leader of a major forestry organization called for the federal government to increase timber-thinning projects and do more to fight forest fires during the group's annual meeting. Neil Smith, the head of the Western Forestry and Conservation Association, told members that he sent a message to the White House in August urging the president to send federal troops and more resources to fight forest fires. Much of the Inland Northwest is at risk for a repeat of the 1910 fires, which burned more than 3 million acres and killed 85 people, said Jim Peterson, publisher of the forestry journal Evergreen Magazine. Today, trees continue to struggle to regenerate at some of the sites, he said....
Tapping the Bridger-Teton Conservation groups worry that growing demand for natural gas could mean future visitors to the Bridger-Teton National Forest will gaze at a forest of drilling derricks. But forest officials contend that won't happen. True, forest managers recently OK'd more than 100,000 acres in the forest for oil and gas leasing. But those leases, if sold, will likely come with stringent stipulations for environmental protections....
Charges filed in sheep-release case The couple who allegedly released 24 Navajo-Churro sheep in the national forest up Skalkaho Creek in May pled not guilty to misdemeanor charges Monday. Kathryn and Edward Reiff are charged with 24 counts each of abandonment of sheep and animals at large for the incident - one for each sheep that was allegedly released. The news of the released sheep concerned Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks because of the possibility of the rare breed of domestic sheep contaminating the bighorn sheep herd in the area. At least 13 of the released sheep have been killed by FWP officers....
Column: Sneaky Fees Stalk Public Lands Would you still call your town library "public" if a private corporation managed the books your taxes paid for, then charged you a fee to borrow them? Thanks to a provision sneaked into the recently passed federal spending bill, we may face that question about our public lands. Just hours before senators were expected to vote on the $388 billion, 3,000-plus page bill, a rider-- meaning no debate or vote possible -- was inserted, courtesy of Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. The rider to the spending bill authorized federal agencies to extend recreation access fees on most public lands for the next 10 years. The tactic avoided an unwinnable vote on a program opposed by more than 300 organizations, four states and many county governments. Now, access fees can be charged on 600 million acres of our public land -- an area more than six times the size of Montana. These fees are more than a nuisance form of taxation. They undermine the very idea of these lands as publicly owned, and they open a path to unprecedented commercialization....
Conservationists seek to protect Jackson Lake snail A coalition of scientists and conservationists have petitioned for federal protection of a rare freshwater snail living in Jackson Lake. If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the snail as threatened under the Endangered Species Act it could alter how the Bureau of Reclamation manages the lake, which is located in Grand Teton National Park. The bureau would have to account for it when deciding lake levels and water releases from Jackson Lake Dam....
Wyo sues Interior over wolf documents Wolves continue to multiply, and trees continue to die for more paper in yet the newest legal salvo between Wyoming and the federal government over the reintroduction of Canis lupus. The Department of Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service in November rejected the state's wolf management plan, and now Wyoming demands the release of at least 69 undisclosed records or groups of records to explain the decision, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday by Wyoming Attorney General Pat Crank....
Illegal immigration and smuggling continue to wreak environmental havoc in Southern Arizona Conservationist Trevor Hare stands atop a scarred hillside in the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, scoping out another spot of scorched earth in Southern Arizona's ongoing border conflict. Not so long ago, this isolated spot was like most of the surrounding Sonoita Valley countryside about an hour's drive southeast of Tucson, covered with tall grasses and cactus shaded by mesquite, cottonwood and ash trees. Now the hillside, which leads into an area known as The Narrows, is a chewed-up mess of boulders, concrete posts and metal stakes....
Wyo challenges protection of mouse New genetic information on the endangered Preble's meadow jumping mouse led Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Wednesday to petition the U.S. Department of Interior to remove the mouse from federal protection. Researchers at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science conducted DNA research on the Preble's mouse, and concluded it is not genetically different than the campestris mouse commonly found in Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas and Canada. Ironically, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday released a statement that previous petitions to remove the mouse from federal protection were unwarranted, due to insubstantial biological information....
Growers hopeful about proposal for fish habitat Mendocino County Farm Bureau President Peter Bradford is just one of many throughout the state who has been dealing with fisheries issues related to the Endangered Species Act. He said that he is cautiously optimistic about recent news brought by a federal fisheries agency that has scaled down critical habitat boundaries for several species of salmon and steelhead. "We are quite pleased with the reduction in area. That is going to be tremendous for a lot of the landowners here," Bradford said. "The regulatory hammer is always poised to come down. NOAA Fisheries still hasn't adequately proven the science to show that any conditions created by landowners are the cause of the species decline. But any reduction at all in impact areas is very good news." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration filed proposed rules in the Federal Register last week to designate critical habitat areas for species of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. A revised version of previous designations, the plan could exclude more than 80 percent of the critical habitat that the agency previously said was necessary to save and strengthen fish populations....
Column: Sacrificing the Sage Grouse How many E Magazine readers are surprised that, in the wake of what EPA head Michael Leavitt calls a "mandate" for the Bush administration's scorched-earth environmental policies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) would sacrifice the greater sage grouse to protect western oil and gas interests? That's certainly the way it looks after the New York Times revealed December 5 that a Bush Interior Department political appointee with no wildlife background, Julie MacDonald, inserted herself into the decision-making process. The consequence: USFWS is recommending that the highly endangered bird not be listed as such under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)....
USDA is killing marauding wolves Wolf attacks on livestock have become an increasing problem in northern Wisconsin as the wolf population grows, but federal wildlife officials offered hope Tuesday for a solution. David Ruid, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told the state Natural Resources Board that removing predator wolves from an area has helped. "This year we implemented our control program on 19 farms and solved this on 17 of those," Ruid said....
Study: Return of Wolves Changes Ecosystem Scientists studying the broader effects of wolf reintroduction said a growing body of evidence suggests that killing off predators such as wolves and grizzly bears in the last century started a cascade of effects that threw ecosystems out of balance. Researchers from Oregon State University found that a thriving wolf population not only changes where and how elk browse it even reverberates down to the number of willows that grow next to streams. The research, published in the Oct. 25 issue of the journal Forest Ecology and Management, comes as states begin to wrestle with a problem they haven't faced in nearly a century: how to deal with wolves....
Oil and Gas Development Targeted in National Forest Roadless Area A coalition of conservation and outdoor industry groups has formally asked the Forest Service to withdraw plans to lease over 20,000 acres for oil and gas drilling in Utah's Uinta National Forest. The leasing would allow industrial development in roadless areas along the Wasatch Front that provide valuable opportunities for hiking, fishing, and hunting, as well as habitat for wildlife such as the Bonneville cutthroat trout and northern goshawk. The groups sent a letter to the Forest Service yesterday asking the agency to withdraw its consent to leasing based on violations of federal environmental laws....
Conservationists Ask for Public Access to Otero Mesa Development Documents On behalf of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and The Wilderness Society, Earthjustice filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C. to acquire documents explaining the Bush administration's proposal to open up New Mexico's pristine Otero Mesa to private oil and gas exploration. The suit is necessary because the BLM shared documents with oil and gas companies but refuses to share all of them with the public. Before the Bush administration came into office, the federal Bureau of Land Management planned to allow limited oil and gas development in Otero Mesa near existing roads. After the Bush administration took over, the BLM suddenly changed its plan to instead encourage widespread oil and gas development in virtually all parts of the largely unroaded natural area....
Swap fails; rancher says he'll build on prime land A northern Arizona rancher says Congress' failure to approve a huge and controversial exchange of private property for public land before adjourning its two-year legislative session on Wednesday means he will proceed with other options for his ranchland. "It is best for my family to concentrate our efforts on other alternatives for the ranch's future," Yavapai Ranch owner Fred Ruskin said after it became clear a bill including the land deal was dead. The proposed swap would have turned over 35,000 acres of Ruskin's ranch southeast of Seligman to Prescott National Forest in return for about 2,200 acres near Interstate 17 and Arizona 260 in Camp Verde, where Ruskin wanted to build a shopping center and housing development. With the legislation's failure, Ruskin has no option but to push ahead with his Plan B, which is developing homes on his land, according to Kurt Davis, who has been helping Ruskin lobby for the measure....
Congress intervenes in island wilderness debate, allows motorized tours Much to the chagrin of environmentalists, the federal government gave the green light Wednesday to motorized tours of Georgia's Cumberland Island - the largest undeveloped barrier island on the eastern seaboard. The congressional directive ends - at least for now - a bitter legal dispute over whether tourists should be able to more easily travel to some of the island's attractions, including a mansion once owned by the Andrew Carnegie family and the church where John F. Kennedy Jr. was married. Environmentalists warned that allowing motorized vehicles - even in limited numbers - would distract from the ambiance of the wilderness as experienced by those who explore it the old-fashioned way: on foot....
Column: Environmentalists Becoming Less and Less Relevant Environmental activists wanted two things to happen on Election Day -- they wanted President Bush to lose and their cause to be a big reason why. They got neither, and that may bode well for the future of environmental policy reform. Surveys taken before the elections showed that the environment was far down on the list of voters' concerns. For example, a Gallup poll taken earlier in 2004 ranked it 11th in importance among 12 issues. The election-day results bore this out, as the environment was barely on the radar compared to security, the economy, health care, and other issues. Overall, it is safe to say that environmental issues played no role in the outcome, and that probably would have been the case even if Bush had narrowly lost....
An Ad Campaign for Beef Rises to the Supreme Court The government went before the Supreme Court on Wednesday for the third time in recent years to defend an agricultural marketing program that requires producers to pay for advertising that not all of them want, and that some have challenged as compelled speech. "Beef: It's What's for Dinner," an advertising campaign financed by a $1 assessment on every head of cattle sold, was at issue this time. A dissident group of ranchers who believe their own beef to be superior and who see no benefit in generic advertising won a ruling from a federal appeals court that the assessment, usually referred to as a checkoff, violated their rights under the First Amendment....
Two brothels vying for 'Mustang Ranch' name No one really won the name "World Famous Mustang Ranch" at Tuesday's meeting of the Storey County brothel licensing board. The board decided to give the name to both parties jostling for it - at least until a federal court rules otherwise. Storey County Commissioner Greg "Bum" Hess said Tuesday that Lance Gilman and David Burgess, both of whom operate brothels in the county, can use the name until the federal court for the Nevada district decides on the trademark case. That decision should determine who owns the notorious name of Nevada's first legal bordello....