NEWS ROUNDUP

Buyout plan to retire grazing permits targets ranchers Rancher Darryl Sullivan works several jobs to makes ends meet. He sells horse trailers and livestock equipment in Las Cruces, makes custom hats, levels fields and puts in cement irrigation ditches. His two grown sons aren't interested in taking over the 44-Bar Ranch, south of Socorro, that has been in the family for five generations. That's why Sullivan is eyeing a proposal backed by Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians and other environmental groups to use taxpayer money to buy out and retire federal land grazing leases. The grazing permit buyout proposal has slowly been gaining momentum in Congress and among a growing number of ranchers. Proponents say as many as 50 ranchers in New Mexico, 250 in Arizona and others around the West are coming out to support it....
Drilling Plan OKd for Rare Desert Land Overriding objections by New Mexico's governor, the Interior Department announced a final plan Monday for expanding oil and gas drilling on Otero Mesa, a rare desert grassland and one of a handful of places in the western U.S. where opposition to drilling had united ranchers, property rights advocates, hunters and conservationists. The plan, crafted by the Bureau of Land Management, is smaller in scope than originally contemplated, but much larger than what Gov. Bill Richardson indicated he would support. It allows drilling a maximum of 141 exploratory wells and 84 producing wells on nearly 2 million acres of Chihuahuan grassland in southern New Mexico....Go here for the AP version of the Otero Mesa decision....
Forest Service gets tough on snowmobilers The Flathead National Forest is beefing up patrols and getting tougher on snowmobilers who venture into areas where they're not supposed to. Forest officials say snowmobile trespassing into designated wilderness and other areas where motor vehicles are forbidden is becoming an increasing problem in the region. Forest Service officers plan stepped up patrols from the ground and by air to catch snowmobilers who cross boundaries, and there will be stiffer punishment for those who are caught, Brady said. The Forest Service will pursue mandatory court appearances, as opposed to issuing citations at the scene, in most cases. Past fines have averaged about $200, but Brady said the agency will seek higher fines - up to $500 - and snowmobiles may be impounded until a case is resolved or the fine is paid, Brady said....
Clouds of suspicion persist over reports on Cedar fire Last week, like something out of the "The Twilight Zone," a new twist bubbled to the surface in the ongoing story of the Cedar fire. In a Jan. 18 request for a grand jury probe, its fourth, the committee produced written declarations by two eyewitnesses – Donna Jennings and Lori Munger. On the evening of Oct. 25, 2003, these women had joined a group admiring the sunset. "The evening was clear and we could see for miles," writes Jennings, a geophysicist who worked for Science Applications International Corp. for 18 years but is now a stay-at-home mom. "We were looking to the northwest and my friend Lori Munger called our attention to what she described as a small orange color 'floating in the air' like a parachute. Instantaneously, we all saw a HUGE wall of flame the size of a large building. Prior to this there was no smoke. The smoke was intense and blowing bent over to the southwest, sideways, not straight up. We were in shock. Next, a small fire started UPWIND from the original burst of flame. As we watched, more small fires were set, like someone setting backfires. Each small fire was exactly the same size and spaced the same distance from the last when it started. . . . The vegetation was very thick and we were several miles away, but all of us knew and agreed that this fire was deliberately being set." The group discussed a gunshot they heard before the fires started. They also noticed flashing lights near the fires....
PETA calls on secretary of interior to ban traps After several dogs were left to suffer for more than two days in leghold traps set by National Park Service (NPS) employees at Badlands National Park in Scenic, S.D., PETA appealed to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to ban snares, leghold, and body-gripping traps on all NPS lands. PETA’s letters and calls went unanswered, and the group is now making a public appeal for a ban on these cruel devices. On Tuesday, PETA representatives and Humane Officer Jill Gravley of the Humane Society of the Black Hills—who found the dogs—will hold a news conference in Rapid City to reveal graphic photos of the injured dogs and to urge Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to ban the traps and snares on all NPS lands....
Study: Buy more land, quickly, for Everglades restoration State and federal officials should buy more land, and do so quickly, in order to restore the Everglades before the property becomes developed or too expensive, according to a report released Monday. The report on water storage is the seventh and final in a series by the National Academy of Sciences that gives advice to federal and state agencies and other entities engaged in restoring the greater Everglades. The 30-year, $8.4 billion federal-state restoration program is intended to restore some of the natural water flow through the sensitive ecosystem that once stretched uninterrupted from a chain of lakes near Orlando to Florida Bay. The report also suggested speeding up projects that restore the natural flow of the water and considering the use of Lake Okeechobee for additional water storage....
Scientists call for world panel to combat species loss Scientists called on Monday for the creation of a global panel of experts on species loss, warning that the planet was racing towards a man-made extinction crisis. "Biodiversity is being destroyed irreversibly by human activities," said the appeal, made by leading biologists and environmentalists at the start of a conference in Paris on wildlife loss. The proposal won the immediate endorsement of French President Jacques Chirac, who pledged to promote it at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), an offshoot of the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro....
US lab lists policies capping gas supply A national laboratory managed by the US Department of Energy has identified 40 environmental policy and regulatory constraints on the supply of natural gas. In a study released Jan. 24 by the House Committee on Resources, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) says regulations limit gas supply by restricting access to gas resources, delaying exploration and production (E&P) or transportation, or increasing costs. Also on Jan. 24, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources opened its conference on natural gas....
N.D.'s unique law on property sales challenged by environmentalists The grasslands, tree groves and wetlands, with signs warning hunters to keep out, mark a stretch of rolling prairie near here as a haven for wildlife. Court documents mark it as something else: the focus of a battle over a North Dakota law that conservationists say is unmatched in the nation in limiting their work. The 1985 law requires land buyers to submit their plans to a public review board, and gives the governor final authority to approve or reject any purchases, though denials are rare and the law allows conservation groups already operating in the state to continue buying land. Farm groups and county officials who support the measure say it helps ensure that farmland will not be lost. Conservationists and other critics say it hampers their work and keeps new groups from operating in North Dakota....
Water use reflects thirst to conserve Drought-inspired conservation has reduced metro Denver's water consumption to levels not seen since 1969, despite a 65 percent growth in the number of customers over that span. Denver Water delivered just 59.4 billion gallons last year, 22.6 billion gallons fewer than the utility did before the onset of drought in 2000, new agency numbers show. "It's astonishing," Liz Gardener, Denver Water's conservation manager, said of the 28 percent drop. Similar savings have been noted in Aurora and Colorado Springs, the Front Range's two other municipal giants....
Drug company sued over death of rancher The widow of a Clay County rancher and rodeo rider who was killed by an accidental injection of a cattle antibiotic has filed a lawsuit alleging the drug's manufacturer failed to warn about its dangers. Rourk Erickson, 38, was killed in 2003 when a cow charged and the needle holding the antibiotic punctured his skin, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in North Platte by Erickson's widow, Debra. The drug, Micotil 300, is used to treat respiratory infections in cattle. In animals, Micotil is to be injected only under the skin, and it can be deadly if overdosed or injected into the bloodstream. It also can be fatal to humans....
It's All Trew: In case you were wondering how long a well-rope was During a recent coffee shop session, an elderly gentleman described a certain distance by saying, "It was as long as a well-rope." I had not heard the term since childhood and innocently asked, "Just how long is a well-rope?" Now, so all of us, especially the younger readers, stay on the same page, a well-rope is a long manila rope, some 3/4 to an inch in diameter. It is threaded through a block pulley hanging in the top of a windmill tower, with one end hanging down over the sucker-rod or pipe, and the other end passed through a snatch block at ground level and tied to a power source like a truck. This device allows a water well to be repaired and serviced with simple tools and minimal labor. A second determining factor is most sucker-rods are 10 to 18 feet in length and most pipe is 20 feet in length. Therefore, most windmill towers are a least 30 feet tall to allow removal of the pipe....
What's in a Song? Musgrave's 'Escalante Adios' Hearing such ballads as "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" or "Streets of Laredo," it's easy to think of lonesome cowboys and trail drives frozen in time. And those melancholy laments are likely to be heard in Elko, Nevada at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. But new verses deal with issues facing today's ranchers. Curly Musgrave's "Escalante Adios," tells of the federal government taking grazing lands away from ranchers in southern Utah to make a new national park. With the help of the Western Folklife Center, we look at the story behind the music, as part of our occasional series, "What's in a Song?"....
FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major virus. "Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least, unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease unit. The study was immediately hailed by British officials, who said it will save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up until now we have, quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and mad cow were spread by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick Brown, Britain's Agriculture Minister. "By eliminating it, we can focus our resources elsewhere."....