NEWS ROUNDUP

Planning rules have foresters puzzled Forest planners across the country, including those on the Flathead and Kootenai national forests, are scratching their heads over new regulations for developing long-term strategic forest plans. The Flathead, Kootenai and other forests in the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Region are revising their respective forest plans. It will be up to forest supervisors to decide whether to proceed under the new regulations, which were released Dec. 23 by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth. The new regulations are intended to provide a more flexible, efficient and responsive type of long-range forest plan. But actually implementing the regulations into a forest plan revision process that's already under way raises many questions for forest planners. "Our team is unsure of how this will affect our process," said Jack Zearfoss, acting planner on the Kootenai National Forest, which canceled a public meeting on forest plan revision that was scheduled Thursday. Zearfoss said the forest planning team is waiting for clarification from the agency's national and regional levels in the form of forest planning "directives" that will be included in a revised version of the agency's regulation handbook....
Sides await word on cave bugs case The U.S. Supreme Court could signal as early as today whether it will allow Central Texas cave bugs into its halls of justice, in a case that property rights advocates hope will gut the Endangered Species Act. A decision by the Supreme Court whether to hear the case should signal the final chapter in a dispute over six species of tiny bugs that have held up a housing and commercial development in Travis County for the past 17 years. To those who support the challenge, the bugs found in a handful of caves in Travis and Williamson counties perfectly exemplify how the act is misused to suppress private property rights. Their challenge lies in the origins of the environmental law, instituted in 1973 using the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce....
Grange wins ESA lawsuit on coho salmon “We prevailed,” said Leo Bergeron, president of the Greenhorn Grange. “For seven years, we have maintained that coho salmon should not be listed with the Endangered Species Act.” David has beaten Goliath. It wasn’t easy. And there will still be challenges. But it was the Greenhorn Grange, based in Yreka, which began gathering information to fight the coho listing in 1997, when the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) proposed that 300 feet on each side of streams bearing coho should be subject to federal regulations – including private property. Landowners grew upset that the government would mandate what they could and could not do on their own property. In the ensuing foray, rallies were held with 600 to 1,000 people attending from Yreka to Happy Camp. Strategies for fighting a federal agency were discussed and argued. While options were bantered, officers of the Greenhorn Grange encouraged citizens to sign a petition against the terminology that claimed 300 feet from the high water mark on streambanks was “critical habitat” for coho. “That is dry ground,” reiterates Bergeron....
Land-Use War, Malibu Style This isn't one of those development stories with an easy bad guy. There is no big-box retailer looking to grab a corner of Main Street; no mega homebuilder trying to pave a mountainside. Instead, this is a feud that pits blind kids against a rare fish in a gorgeous canyon of giant oaks and sycamores high above the beach near Malibu. On one side of the canyon is the Foundation for the Junior Blind, which is hoping to renovate and expand its longtime summer camp. On the other side is neighbor Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, a retired screenwriter and director who calls the project a "blueprint for environmental ruin." Kronsberg lives not in Malibu luxury but in a mobile home with his wife, Lynne, an artist. He hunts for wild mushrooms and ponders the comings and goings of coyotes, bobcats and red-shouldered hawks....
Protected since 1889, Goodman Point Pueblo slated for initial mapping in April A 142-acre high-desert parcel a dozen miles northwest of Cortez so impressed federal officials in 1889 that they set it aside and made it off-limits to homesteaders. They gave this protection to the ancient Indian village more than 15 years before the great pueblos of Chaco Canyon and spectacular cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde were so protected. The Goodman Point Pueblo thus escaped the brush clearings, crop plantings and excavations that stripped many other Ancestral Puebloan sites in southwestern Colorado, including a thoroughly ransacked Mesa Verde, archaeologist Kristin Kuckelman said. This spring, for the first time, scientists will begin to comprehensively study Goodman Point. Active from about A.D. 1000 to 1280, it is one of the largest sites in a corner of the state renowned as a treasure trove of pre-Columbian culture....
Rocky Mountain hiker survives 100-foot fall A Colorado man fell about 100 feet at Long's Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park and crawled miles for help, it was reported Saturday. "This man is extremely fortunate to be alive. I am unaware of a fall that has taken place on the Narrows section that did not result in a fatality," Kurt Oliver, of Rocky Mountain National Park, told KMGH-TV, Denver. "The circumstances and teamwork that took place on this rescue were incredible." The 28-year-old hiker from Aurora, Colo., fell Thursday, was knocked unconscious and when he came to, he crawled and pulled himself back to the Keyhole route, park officials said....
San Francisco may charge for grocery bags San Francisco may become the first city in the nation to charge shoppers for grocery bags. The city's environmental commission is expected to ask the mayor and board of supervisors Tuesday to consider a 17-cent per bag charge on paper and plastic grocery bags. Their goal is to reduce plastic bag pollution. Environmentalists say plastic bags jam machinery, pollute waterways and often end up in trees....
Column: Savage Rapids Dam Removal With congressional support from US Senators Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden and Oregon Congressmen Greg Walden and Peter DeFazio, the Savage Rapids Dam removal project has become a full employment opportunity for personnel at the US Bureau of Reclamation and for lobbyists who continue to be the primary beneficiaries of this overflowing pot of gold. The US Bureau of Reclamation has spent $2,115,004 since 1989 and is now funded with another $2.2-million - a total of $4.3-million. Lobbyists employed by the Grants Pass Irrigation District have been paid over $475,000 since 1999 to secure funding for the Bureau of Reclamation....
Strife over new Central Valley water allocation The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has released preliminary 2005 federal water allocation projections for California, and the figures have made many of the stakeholders unhappy. Environmentalists and fisheries advocates claim the agency is ignoring key provisions mandated by federal legislation directing greater flows down the Sacramento River to restore depleted salmon runs. Farmers say the federal Central Valley Project -- which supplies 7 million acre-feet of water to farmers, wildlife refuges, fisheries and cities from the upper Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles -- was built specifically for agriculture, but ongoing diversions to cities and environmental restoration are coming unfairly at the farmers' expense....
Snow in the making: Cloud seeding boosts snowpack for water supply Each winter, Bonnie Moody watches the weather like a hawk from the Eden Valley Irrigation District's small shop here. Moody, the district's manager and water master, is looking for winter days with just the right temperature, just the right wind direction and speed, and just the right kind of clouds in the sky. When conditions are right, Moody makes snow. This year marks the third winter Moody has been working on a cloud-seeding program that aims to increase water in the district's Big Sandy Reservoir by boosting the snowpack in the nearby Wind River Mountains. The Wind Rivers are the main water source for the district's irrigation system. "There is kind of a real art to this," Moody said during a recent demonstration of one of the district's cloud-seeding units. Although Moody has been at it for just three years, the Eden Valley cloud-seeding effort has been under way since the 1960s, a result of research conducted by the University of Wyoming. The effort involves the use of burners to release silver iodide into clouds to enhance the potential for snowfall....
Southeast Kansas farmers taking hit from rustling spree Fred Wheat says he'll be able to recover after having 20 head of cattle stolen from his pasture sometime after Thanksgiving. But if rustlers hit his herd again, that might be enough to send the 63-year-old rancher out of business. Wheat is among a number of southeast Kansas ranchers who have had parts of their cattle herds disappear from their fields. Possibly tempted by high beef prices, modern-day cattle rustlers have stolen about 50 head from the area since November. Kansas ranks No. 2 in the country with 6.65 million head of cattle on ranches and feedyards. And while cattle thefts aren't rare in the state, the numbers of cattle taken from southeast Kansas farms is unusual, cattle experts said....
Spirited cowboys on the trail of an even older profession A few moments later, as she's being handcuffed and realizes that her potential john is actually an undercover police officer, Davis wails in disbelief: "What is this, baby? ... Oh, wrong ... car!" And then she explains: "I was just in town for the stock show." As the National Western Stock Show rolls into Denver every January, retailers and restaurants, hotels and motels all get ready for a boom in business. So do prostitutes. During the two-plus weeks of the stock show, which ends today, prostitutes up their efforts, and so does Denver's vice squad....
Tome on the range: 'Cowboy Logic' column gives birth to second book for rancher For Ryan Taylor, "cowboy logic" isn't just a way of thinking. It's a world view. He defines it as "a way of looking at things that allows you to see the humor in situations that seem devoid of a humorous angle, (like) a look at the lighter side of going broke. It's also a common sense, horse sense kind of an outlook." "Cowboy Logic" also is the title of his self-syndicated weekly newspaper column and of two books collecting those columns, the second of which came out late last year....