NEWS ROUNDUP

Interior rancher leading the fight against prairie dogs They might look innocent enough, but for rancher Charles Kruse, prairie dogs are anything but harmless. “I've sold a third of my herd, my neighbor Jerry Heinrichs has had to sell 100% of his herd, my brother Daniel had all of his cows shipped up to Pierre last year.” 650 acres of Kruse's land in the Conata Basin is overrun by prairie dogs, turning once green pasture into a barren wasteland in just three short years. “When you have 70,000 acres of prairie dog town next to you and they are all coming off onto your property it's really frustrating to be a farm rancher.” Kruse says recent poisoning efforts on federal land is not enough. Now, he is suing the Secretary of South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks, and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture for mis–managing the federal lands. “In 41–11–15 it says there were supposed to set up a fund to compensate landowners for lost income and it hasn't been done and we would like the secretaries to obey the laws.”....
Drilling's effects on landowners at issue A lawmaker is taking a growing property-rights fight between ranchers and oil and gas companies to the Capitol. Rep. Kathleen Curry is proposing legislation that would force the companies to negotiate how they do business on private land where they have obtained subsurface property rights. By building roads, drilling and placing pumps on once-productive agricultural land, the companies are affecting landowners' property values, said Curry, D-Gunnison. Curry wants to create an "incentive to negotiate," she said Tuesday. "The goal is to minimize decreases in property rights."....
Judge denies logging halt of Biscuit fire-killed trees A federal judge has denied a request to halt logging within the area burned by the massive 2002 Biscuit fire. The request was brought by environmentalists who claim the US Forest Service failed to protect hundreds of dead trees that should have been left standing for salmon habitat. US District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene ruled that the claims brought by the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics were not serious, and they were unlikely to win in a trial....
Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange slated for reintroduction Key Arizona members of Congress will try, again, to push through a complicated land swap bill that would allow Flagstaff to expand Pulliam Airport. The Yavapai Ranch Land Exchange bill is set to be reintroduced in the Senate and House of Representatives this week. The bill died during Congress' last session that ended in early December, prompting ranch owner Fred Ruskin to begin dropping strong hints that he didn't plan to wait for another try in Washington, D.C. All told, the legislation would have allowed the Forest Service to exchange 21,236 acres of land near Flagstaff, Williams, Camp Verde, Clarkdale and Cottonwood for approximately 35,000 acres of the private ranch land....
Editorial: Federal agencies need consolidation Today, three federal agencies manage the vast majority of public lands in the United States. The Forest Service, under the Department of Agriculture, manages nearly 200 million acres. The National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, both under the Department of Interior, manage 84 million and 262 million acres, respectively. And that’s one agency too many. How these agencies and their missions evolved is a long story. The National Park Service is the only one of the three with the strictly preservationist role — to protect the "crown jewels" of America’s natural wonders. But at this point we don’t need both a Forest Service and a BLM, which have come to serve very similar purposes. Given the compatibility and redundancy of their missions, they should be combined into a single agency. Ideally, this would improve consistency and predictability in how federal lands are managed and help reduce public confusion about agency missions....
Hunter ordered to pay $15,000 after grizzly shooting, cover-up A Kentucky bow hunter who killed a federally protected grizzly bear near Island Park, Idaho, and then tried to cover it up, has been ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution. Dan Walters, 46, of Dry Ridge, Ky., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court this week to a misdemeanor charge of killing the bear, a 300-pound, 7-year-old sow that was part of efforts to restore the grizzly, a threatened species protected under the Endangered Species Act. Walters also will be forbidden from hunting for two years....
Column: Bison management: time to sink or swim Indecision is usually a fatal disease. The ongoing Yellowstone National Park bison saga is a perfect example of treading water. The National Park Service has demonstrated over the past 3½ decades that it is no longer capable of making tough decisions or executing a plan of action. Enter Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Schweitzer has proposed temporarily depopulating Yellowstone National Park of bison over a period of a few years. Bison would be rounded up, tested for brucellosis, and those testing positive would be sent to the slaughter house. Bison that test negative would be held on various ranches until the brucellosis-free bison can be returned to Yellowstone. Already there are howls of protest....
New wells officially on tap at Padre With crews poised to start drilling this week, the National Park Service has approved a controversial plan to allow five more natural gas wells at Padre Island National Seashore. The move angered environmentalists, who are calling for the federal government to buy the private mineral rights under the seashore. However, the decision was not unexpected. In its environmental assessment of the plan released in November, the Park Service recommended allowing the drilling, saying the environmental impact was minimal and the federal government could not deny access to private mineral rights on the property. The Park Service's regional office in Denver made that position official Wednesday....
Animal rights group wants to give doomed horses to tribes An animal rights group hopes to muster support to defeat legislation that they say would result in thousands of wild horses being used as food for Europeans. Rather, the group would like to give those horses to Indian tribes. The controversy started when Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., sponsored legislation that reversed a longstanding Bureau of Land Management law. For years the BLM required people adopting wild horses to prove over the course of a year that they could adequately care for them before the agency would grant legal ownership. Burns’ legislation allows the bureau to sell horses that are 10 or older, or that have been unsuccessfully offered for adoption three times, without the waiting period. The law outraged many who worried that the horses could end up in countries like France and Belgium where horse steaks are considered a delicacy....
Utah, Interior OK plan to clear air in parks The Interior Department and Utah agreed Wednesday to a plan aimed at helping to reduce haze in Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion national parks. The agreement, two years in the making, helps implement the National Parks Service's plan to wipe out haze in national parks across the country, restoring "natural visibility" by 2018. "It says we'll play nicely with one another," said Cheryl Heying, planning branch manager at the Utah Division of Air Quality. Restoring visibility to its natural condition in the national parks is something we're committed to in the state of Utah." The memorandum sets up a process for the Park Service to notify the state to address major pollution sources, such as power plants, if progress is not being made toward clearing the air....

Environmentalists threaten legal action to stop rechanneling of river A national environmental group has threatened legal action to block the rechanneling of the Virgin River, but city officials said the work is needed to protect public infrastructure and private property following damaging floods earlier this month. Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Denver-based Center for Biological Research, said Mesquite officials are doing work beyond what is necessary and could affect habitats along the river. “They need to slow down and talk to some biologists and everyone else with an interest in the river,” Patterson said, adding that federal law should require the halt to the rechanneling efforts....
Survey finds Oregon farmers depend on irrigation "Many people think irrigation is not a big issue in Oregon because of how wet the state appears to be," says Jim Johnson, land use and water planning coordinator for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "However, irrigation is really a key to Oregon agriculture. Nearly 45 percent of all farms and ranches in the state do some type of irrigation totaling about 1.9 million acres." The latest figures show 17,776 of Oregon's 40,033 farms irrigate some or all of their land. The number of farms is up slightly from the 1997 irrigation survey, but the number of acres irrigated is down by 55,850 acres. Reasons vary for the relatively small drop in acreage, according to Johnson....
U.S. threat aimed at NAFTA Frustrated by legal challenges and stalled talks, the U.S. lumber industry is threatening an unprecedented constitutional challenge of NAFTA that could risk unravelling the decade-old free trade deal completely. The U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports yesterday confirmed statements by Sen. Michael Crapo of Idaho that it may file a lawsuit challenging the wide-ranging trade deal's authority over U.S. law. "The grounds would be that it is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and it violates our rights," said Harry Clark, a lawyer for the coalition. Trade experts said last night the constitutional challenge, if successful, could seriously undermine the free trade pact between Canada, Mexico and the United States....

Pilot animal ID program tracks cattle on trucks using GPS, cellular technology On any given day on the remote roads of Kansas, hundreds of tractor-trailers are hauling cattle across the state's vast rangelands, headed for feedlots and slaughterhouses. And in an era of mad cow disease and the threat of agroterrorism, federal agriculture regulators want to be able to locate within 48 hours - or sooner - the whereabouts of each of the nation's 100 million-plus head of cattle. Enter a Kansas proposal that would combine GPS, cellular and radio frequency technologies to track cattle as they are in transit. It is one of the ideas the U.S. Department of Agriculture is testing and one that could shape the nation's emerging animal identification system....
Wagon journey ends in Austin A group of El Paso-area students landed on the Capitol steps Tuesday better acquainted with history and proud of their part in retracing the southern gold rush using horse-drawn wagons to cover the 650-mile journey. Fourteen Socorro Independent School District students participated in the project that replicated -- in reverse -- the mid-1800s route taken by adventurer William P. Huff, whose 300,000-word diary guided the group along the way. Slider history teacher Victor Gonzalez, who accompanied the students, said the firsthand experience of hitching the horses, feeding them and living along the trail amplified what they learn from textbooks....
Magdalena agency gathering stockyard histories A project to preserve and improve Magdalena's Stock Driveway and Shipping Yards as a national historical site and to attract tourism is plodding along. The Magdalena Area Community Development Corp. has recently entered into an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to gather and record oral histories throughout Socorro and Catron counties. Built in 1885 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed its branch line to Magdalena, the stock driveway began being utilized by cattle and sheep drivers to ship their stock, according to a chamber of commerce publication. The Magdalena Stock Driveway is one of only three original and historic cattle and sheep herding stockyards in existence in the country today....