NEWS ROUNDUP

Wolf predation on the rise The number of cattle and sheep killed by wolves in the West has more than doubled this year. "We did have a good jump" this year, said Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies Representative for Defenders of Wildlife, the group that pays ranchers for confirmed or probable losses. The 2004 rate also is triple what was predicted ten years ago by the federal government. However, wolf numbers are also a lot higher than predicted when the big carnivores first were released in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995....
Sierra Club chapter targets Forest Service undersecretary The local Sierra Club chapter Tuesday gave its Dead Swan Award to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, alleging his forest policies are responsible for floods that spread heavy metals across the Inland Northwest. As undersecretary for natural resources and environment, Rey oversees the U.S. Forest Service. For nearly two decades prior to his appointment, Rey was a lobbyist for the timber industry. Forest Service policies on timber cutting have caused floods that wash toxic mining wastes across the region, the Upper Columbia River Sierra Club chapter contends....
Local national forest management plan cost $7.5 million to complete The federal government spent about $7.5 million to update a management plan for the national forest that surrounds Aspen, Vail and Glenwood Springs, according to estimates by the U.S. Forest Service. The White River National Forest Plan took about seven years to complete and is just now coming to a close. Work on that updated plan, which determines how the forest will be managed for the next 15 years, began in summer 1997. Forest planners had to digest about 14,000 letters and e-mails from concerned citizens, companies and special interest groups. After the plan was released in June 2002, it faced appeals from every direction - from a coalition of environmental groups headed by the locally based Wilderness Workshop to a national lobbying organization for off-road vehicle riders....
Forest official target of probe San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman and two leading biologists are the subjects of an internal U.S. Forest Service misconduct probe, documents show. The investigation, authorized on Dec. 15, follows recent allegations by a developer that the three Forest Service employees misused their positions to block a condominium project in rustic Fawnskin, a community of 400 in the Big Bear area of the San Bernardino Mountains. It was unclear, however, whether the investigation was triggered by the federal racketeering lawsuit filed against them in November by attorneys for the development, or by some other complaint....
Endangered Ferrets Make Comeback in Ariz. Endangered black-footed ferrets are reproducing more and surviving longer in the wild in Arizona than they have since recovery efforts began nearly a decade ago, wildlife biologists say. Biologists found 28 ferrets in the last two years in Arizona that were born in the wild -- more than double the number found during any two-year period since a reintroduction program began in 1996. "The success in Arizona is great," said Mike Lockhart, a ferret recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "If it continues along the same path, it could quickly become a self-sustaining population." While the yellowish-brown, wiry animals appear to be doing well in Arizona, drought and the plague have devastated populations elsewhere in the West....
Media Linking Killer Tsunami to Global Warming With the world's attention focused on the earthquake/tsunami that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in at least ten countries that surround the Indian Ocean, media organizations like Reuters are pinning part of the blame for the catastrophe on "global warming." "A creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in [the] future," wrote Alister Doyle, an environmental correspondent for Reuters, who attributed the opening paragraph of the story to "experts." However, Doyle's story did not contain any quotes directly mentioning the theory of global warming....
Tribes protest off-reservation oil leases Recent oil and gas lease sales in western North Dakota were financial record busters, but the Three Affiliated Tribes at New Town wants to prevent oil development from disturbing religious and cultural sites. The tribes are protesting four oil and gas lease sales on land outside the reservation in McKenzie and Billings counties, claiming aboriginal ties. The land is owned by the U.S. Forest Service and managed as the Little Missouri National Grasslands. The federal oil and gas acres underneath the surface are owned and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. This is the first time any Indian tribe has protested a lease sale in this BLM region....
Forecast for 2005: More fights over water on horizon When the California Legislature reconvened in the final month of 2004, a Kern County lawmaker promptly set the stage for one of California's biggest water dramas of the new year. Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, introduced legislation to block a U.S. court ruling that threatens San Joaquin Valley orange, peach and grape growers with the loss of millions of gallons of irrigation water. Instead of watering 15,000 farms that have depended on it since World War II, some of the water stored behind Friant Dam appears bound instead, by the judge's decision, to rewatering the San Joaquin River and restoring its salmon runs....
Survival by Hunting: Prehistoric Human Predators and Animal Prey George Frison is an original of American archaeology, a towering figure in the field of Plains prehistory. His fascinating and instructive new book, Survival by Hunting, is part personal memoir, part overview of Paleoindian adaptations, and part guide to the hunting of Pleistocene and Holocene mammals on the High Plains and in the Rocky Mountains. How did people who were armed only with weapons of stone, antler, ivory, wood and sinew successfully hunt such beasts as mammoths in the Clovis phase or bison in the subsequent Folsom and Plano periods? How did hardscrabble homesteaders hunt some of the same game, albeit with rifles, in the early 20th century? George Frison knows—and, as a grand culmination of his productive, multifaceted life and career, he tells us in this very personal, yet most didactic volume....
From confined ovals to open plains GOLD Lake did not like his new companions. In fact, he wanted no part of them as he headed rapidly to the most remote part of the corral. "He looked at the roping steers and took off," recalled Robert Gipp. "He was scared of the cows." Herding cattle on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in Fort Yates, North Dakota, is not the expected retirement life for Thoroughbreds such as the now eight-year-old Kentucky-bred son of Meadowlake. The former $130,000 yearling purchased by John Oxley once had a more traditional lifestyle and corresponding promise for the future, particularly as his sale price was double the average of the 1998 Keeneland September yearling auction....
Idaho store frozen in time It is a remote store with a storied history. Like the makeshift urinals that graced the middle of the room. Or the ranch brands burned into the building. Or the signed dollar bills that dot the ceiling. Or the pickled eggs, oysters and potato salad. Welcome to the Bone Store, a 95-year-old fixture in this tiny eastern Idaho community 25 miles southeast of Idaho Falls....