NEWS ROUNDUP

U.S. Rewrites Rules Governing Forests A key wildlife protection that has governed federal forest management for more than two decades will be dropped under new regulations announced Wednesday by the Bush administration, and requirements for public involvement in planning for the country's 192 million acres of national forest will be dramatically altered. U.S. Forest Service officials said the changes, contained in an administrative rewrite of national forest rules expected to take effect next week, would free them from wasteful and time-consuming paperwork and give them the latitude to more quickly respond to evolving forest conditions and scientific research. The 160-page document outlining the new rules contains two major revisions to forest planning regulations. The first drops the 25-year-old requirement that managers prepare environmental impact statements — a cornerstone of public involvement in environmental decisions — when they develop or revise management plans for individual national forests. The second change drops a mandate, adopted during the Reagan administration in 1982, that fish and wildlife habitat in national forests be managed to maintain "viable populations of existing native and desired nonnative vertebrate species." Instead, managers will be directed to provide "ecological conditions to support diversity of native plant and animal species."....
Editorial: Toward an energy policy Everybody says the United States needs a national energy policy, but neither Congress nor President Bush has managed to come up with one. However - drum roll, please - a bipartisan committee of people outside government has done the job. Earlier this month, the privately funded National Commission on Energy Policy issued its report after three years of work. It's an integrated plan that is neither a sell-out to the Texas oiligarchs nor a hippie environmental manifesto. Instead, it's a sensible, balanced approach. For example, it proposes to both expand and diversify international oil supplies while also significantly raising federal fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and appliance efficiency. It would introduce mandatory tradable emissions permits to reduce greenhouse gases and also create incentives for new generations of nuclear reactors, coal-gasification and advanced biomass technologies....
Feinstein: Forest Service may cut state's fire-prevention funds Sen. Dianne Feinstein is sounding an alarm about what she says is a Forest Service proposal to cut $9 million from wildfire prevention efforts in California, just a year after devastating blazes in the state were cited by the Bush administration to justify landmark forest-thinning legislation. The plan would lead to a 90 percent funding reduction for community fire plans and "harm Southern California communities like Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear and the San Diego suburbs," Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to Mark Rey, a top official at the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service. A service spokesman acknowledged that the spending figures cited by Feinstein are accurate, but said they are only part of preliminary discussions about how to deploy fire-prevention resources nationwide....
Defenders of Wildlife Pays Ranchers More than $100,000 for Wolf-related Livestock Losses in 2004 Defenders of Wildlife today announced that compensation payments to ranchers for livestock losses related to wolves exceeded $138,000 in 2004, a new record for Defenders' compensation program. In the 17 years since the program began, The Bailey Wildlife Foundation Wolf Compensation Fund, named in honor of its largest contributor, has reimbursed more than 300 ranchers and livestock owners in the Northern Rockies more than $440,000 in livestock compensation payments. "Partnering with local stakeholders on wolf recovery is absolutely essential to the future of the species and we're pleased to be able to provide this vital assistance to livestock owners in the region," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "The program is highly effective in building tolerance for wolves while helping most ranchers and farmers with the cost of livestock losses to wolf depredation."....
Gas pipeline rupture triggers massive desert cleanup A nasal-penetrating stench still rises from the sand a month after a ruptured pipeline spewed untold amounts of gasoline up to 80 feet high for hours over a patch of the fragile Mojave Desert. The Nov. 22 leak raised concerns among state, federal and county agencies because it occurred in an area known to harbor desert tortoises, a federally threatened species, and where groundwater is used by free-roaming cattle. The potent gas, with cancer-causing ingredients, ate through creosote, salt bush and other desert scrub and sank at least 50 feet below the ground. The cause of the leak remains under investigation and pipeline owner Houston-based Kinder Morgan said it has yet to determine how much gas escaped the pipeline that runs from Colton to Las Vegas....
Congressman Tancredo Mocks Parrot Arrests Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) issued a statement on Tuesday contrasting the government's zeal in preventing parrots from Mexico from illegally entering the country with their efforts to stop illegal immigration in general. Under the headline "Apparently There Are No Jobs Available That American Parrots Won't Do," Tancredo said he was surprised to learn of the "incredible success that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers enjoyed in apprehending smugglers attempting to illegally smuggle 150 Lilac Crowned and Mexican Redhead Amazon Parrots into the United States." The statement points out that ICE, however, has not had the same luck in preventing an estimated 3 million illegal alien human beings from swarming into the U.S. annually unchecked. "It's nice to see that ICE has their priorities in order," quipped Tancredo, head of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. "Now that we appear able to successfully identify and apprehend parrots attempting to enter the U.S. illegally, perhaps doing the same with people is just around the corner."....
Islands in the desert The blue circles on scientist Donald Sada's map are like X's marking treasure. The circles denote springs, and Sada, an aquatic ecologist, has spent much of the past two decades driving Nevada's back roads trying to locate them. Sometimes he finds a green oasis teeming with wildlife -- antelope, deer, rabbits, mountain lions, ringtail cats, all manner of bugs and the tiny aquatic snails he studies for the Desert Research Institute. Other times it's just a dusty puddle trampled by wild horses, or a concrete cistern filling cattle troughs....
Geneva selling water rights; creditors to benefit Vineyard's Geneva Steel is preparing to sell its rights to about 48,500 acre feet of water - a move that should help satisfy the bankrupt company's creditors. Geneva President Ken Johnsen said the sale will take place in two transactions. One transaction is a "pure water rights sale" worth approximately $74 million. The other sale is part of the $19 million transfer of company real estate, water rights and emission credits to Denver's Summit Energy, which is building a $330 million natural gas-fired power plant on 62 acres of the former mill site on the eastern shore of Utah Lake....