NEWS ROUNDUP

Rancher files libel lawsuit against environmental group A rancher from Arivaca is suing Tucson's Center for Biological Diversity, claiming the environmental group defamed him. Jim Chilton's libel suit seeks unspecified monetary damages. He claims that a news release and photo captions posted on the center's Web site in July 2002 contain "false, unfair, libelous and defamatory statements" about Chilton's management of his 21,500-acre Montana Allotment, northwest of Nogales. Chilton's wife, Sue, was appointed to the state Game and Fish Commission in 2001 over the strenuous objections of environmentalists....
Rancher raps state on methane reservoirs Long before a field inspection was commissioned last year, state regulators should have had some idea that a large number of coal-bed methane water storage ponds were without permits, a Campbell County rancher says. Ed Swartz lives on Wildcat Creek in northern Campbell County. In 2003, the state conducted an aerial survey of Wildcat Creek in gathering information related to Swartz's lawsuit against the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. The Swartz vs. DEQ lawsuit was settled in 2003. On Tuesday, Swartz said the permitting problems on Rawhide Creek exemplify the need for more involvement from the state. "The state of Wyoming is supposed to protect the existing water rights from unpermitted reservoirs that are interfering with (those with water rights), and they have really dropped the ball," Swartz said. "Those of us who could afford to do it, we have to take them to court to try to protect rights that the state of Wyoming should have been protecting for us all along."....
Feds designate 51 miles in Wyoming as butterfly plant habitat Fifty one miles of stream banks in two southeastern Wyoming counties have been designated by the federal government as a protected habitat for a threatened plant. The new critical habitat designation for the Colorado butterfly plant will not result in a loss of access or a change in the way the land can be used for now. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the land may be subject to special management in the future. Conservationists lauded the move Tuesday. The agency originally proposed designating 8,486 acres in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska as critical habitat for the Colorado butterfly plant. But the agency cut that back to 3,538 acres - all in Wyoming's Laramie and Platte counties - after some landowners and local governments implemented conservation measures and research determined the plant no longer existed and could not be grown in other areas....
Reliving reintroduction: Wolves still call park home a decade later The trek through fluffy snow and near-zero temperatures was like walking through a memory. Exactly 10 years earlier, wolf biologists, politicians and others had hiked the same trail through two feet of snow, winding along a nearly frozen creek, through a ravine, and finally to a 1-acre pen tucked against a hillside above Lamar Valley. They carried steel crates that contained young wolves from Canada that would be the foundation of Yellowstone's returning population. On Wednesday morning, about 25 people retraced the route on skis and snowshoes until they reached the Rose Creek pen, a roughly circular enclosure built from tall chain-link panels and topped with an overhang bending inward to prevent any wolf from climbing out....
Aggressive birds blamed for declining fishery at famous walleye lake Now that new walleye regulations will be implemented on Minnesota's famed Leech Lake, anglers are eager to deal with the flying culprits believed to be dragging down the lake's walleye population. About 10,000 doubled-crested cormorants, a fish-eating species, made their home on the lake's Little Pelican Island last year, and local anglers want them controlled. "That's the No. 1 thing people are saying,'' says Roy Huddle, owner of the 75-year-old Huddle's Resort on the lake's south shore. "They're saying, 'We've got to get rid of these cormorants.' " The black, gangly birds are a wildlife paradox. In recent decades, they've rebounded dramatically in Minnesota and other Great Lakes states after DDT and other harmful chemicals were banned 30 years ago. But they're also blamed for decreased walleye and perch populations on Leech Lake as well as other fish species around the country. An adult cormorant eats about 1 pound of fish daily, and the cormorant population on Leech Lake has exploded since 1998, when 73 breeding pairs were surveyed....
Oft-hazed bison killed in park National Park Service rangers shot and killed a female bison in Yellowstone National Park Wednesday morning after repeated hazing failed to keep the animal off private property, a park spokeswoman said. "This is a bison that had been hazed four times," Cheryl Matthews said. Each time the animal was herded off private ranch land north of Gardiner, it became more resistant to hazing, she said. So the Park Service made the decision to kill the animal....
Dead Cow Washes Ashore On SF Beach A dead cow that washed onto San Francisco's Ocean Beach will be buried in the sand where it was found, a National Park Service spokeswoman said Wednesday. The cow washed ashore around sunset Tuesday on Ocean Beach near Noriega Street, said spokeswoman Christine Powell. The park service assessed the situation Tuesday night and decided to bury the animal on the beach. Powell said crews arrived on the beach Wednesday morning with equipment to bury the cow just as they do when dead whales wash ashore. The park service may never know where the cow came from, Powell said, but recent heavy rains might have contributed to the cow ending up in the ocean....
Question stalls wilderness case A case that could determine whether 600,000 acres in Colorado - and millions more nationwide - are eligible for wilderness protection remained on hold Wednesday, when a federal appeals panel questioned whether it even belonged in the 10th Circuit Court. The case involves Interior Secretary Gale Norton's 2003 decision to retroactively yank the Bureau of Land Management's authority to recommend areas for congressional wilderness designation. The three judges on the panel sharply questioned attorneys for Earthjustice and the government as to whether the Denver court was the appropriate venue for the case. That's because there's some confusion about whether a lower court is finished with the case in which Earthjustice and other environmental groups challenged Norton's action. "We are a court of review," said Judge Mary Beck Briscoe of Kansas, "and I am at a loss to find anything to review." She called the uncertainty about the status of the case "a bit bizarre."....Group wants federal panel to nix deal that opened lands to drilling is the Denver Post article on the same topic.
Border bandits Trespass laws are serious business in Colorado. Even wild horses can't get away with the crime. Each winter, wild horses from the Adobe Town herd management area in Wyoming migrate across the state line, often pushed south by harsh weather. The horses settle in the Powder Wash area of Moffat County, where they become the problem of the Bureau of Land Management's Little Snake Field Office. In Adobe Town, the Rawlins Field Office manages the herd. Because of jurisdiction laws, Rawlins BLM staff can't simply cross the state line and gather the horses, said Chuck Reed, a wild horse specialist with the Rawlins Field Office....
Industrial gas users list policy aims A group of US industrial consumers of natural gas will submit to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 24 a long list of incentives to both reduce demand and expand supplies of gas in order to drive down prices. The Consumers Alliance for Affordable Natural Gas (CAANG) claims US natural gas prices are two or three times their historical levels—"the highest in the industrial world"—primarily because of government policies that have encouraged use of the clean-burning fuel while restricting producers' access to domestic reserves. CAANG members say the resulting high energy costs are eroding their abilities to compete....
Column: Do or Dry The residents of Page, Ariz., have seen a steady decline in the nearly 2 million people who visited nearby Lake Powell Reservoir some six years ago. And little wonder, too. Water levels at the reservoir have shrunk gradually, sometimes even alarmingly. For a while last summer, the lake was shrinking at a rate of up to a foot every four days. Currently, water levels at the reservoir are down below 37 percent of what’s normally called “full.” Recent moisture aside, the news does indeed appear grim. The National Park Service has spent millions of dollars extending boat ramps. And for the first time this year, the company that runs concessions at the reservoir will close most of its services during the winter. The Bureau of Reclamation says it will take at least 10 years of merely average river flows to fill the reservoir up again. Water levels haven’t been this low since President Nixon started bringing troops home from Vietnam. And unless wet weather continues well into 2005, the hydroelectric penstocks used to generate electricity at the dam could be shut off as early as the first part of 2006 for lack of water....
Column: Gila water settlement is good for New Mexico It seemed in some ways to be counter to the flow of history when President Bush, in December, signed a bill that allocates a minimum of $66 million and possibly as much as $128 million for water development in Southwest New Mexico. Included in the massive Arizona Water Rights Settlement Act, the funding is for development of up to 14,000 acre-feet per year of new water supplies to meet water supply demands in the Southwest Water Planning Region of New Mexico, including costs associated with planning and environmental compliance activities and environmental mitigation and restoration. Thee has not been a major reclamation project built within New Mexico since the completion of the San Juan-Chama Development Project in the 1970s....
Permit system may protect river The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission is seeking public comment on a special recreation permit system proposed for the Blackfoot River in Western Montana. The new rule would require a permit for commercial use, a competitive event, or an organized group activity on the Blackfoot River. A permit also would be needed for any of those events on Fish, Wildlife and Parks or Bureau of Land Management lands along the river. There would be no limit on the number of permits issued. The purpose of the permit system would be to manage group sizes, ensure compatability with the recreating public, and to protect natural resources in or along the river....
Title holder will defend his ugly truck at festival Mark Godbey is proud enough of his 1975 "ugly truck" that he might even throw a 30th birthday party for it sometime this year. Here's a guy that really gets into the "ugly" business. Mark has that chiseled handsome look, so he isn't automatically the kind of person you would expect to let his pride boil over when he talks about his 30-year-old pickup truck. But, you see, Mark is defending his Ugly Truck title in February when the battered old steel boxes go on parade during the Balde Eagle Festival....