NEWS ROUNDUP

Agents kill last of Lone Bear wolf pack The last two members of the sheep-eating Lone Bear wolf pack have been killed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. The pack, which roamed around the northern part of Paradise Valley, killed 38 sheep over the course of a year on two adjoining ranches along the Old Yellowstone Trail Road. The federal agency said the alpha male and a female were killed this past week. "That completes the control action for the Lone Bear pack," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for Montana....
Bound by a blood bond After a 30-year struggle, grizzlies are multiplying throughout Yellowstone National Park as another top predator — the gray wolf — has helped build the bear population in a surprising way. The numbers tell the success of grizzly bear restoration: About 650 bears roam the Yellowstone region today — up from roughly 200 when the animal was first protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1975 — and bears have expanded their range by 40%, says Chuck Schwartz, federal scientist and head of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. Yet as robust as the recovery has been, new threats could affect the animals in the future. So many grizzlies roam Yellowstone that young bears search for new territory outside the park....
U.S. official axes forest protections for lynx, water Rules designed to protect reintroduced Canada lynx and to keep water in streams and rivers would be stripped from the White River National Forest management plan under a recent decision by an Agriculture Department official. David Tenny, deputy undersecretary for natural resources, sided with ski resorts and off-road-vehicle groups when he ordered the forest to eliminate rules that require the agency to assess potential damage to lynx habitat by ski-area projects, forest health treatments and other activities. Tenny also ordered forest officials to scrap environmental standards that would give them more authority to protect water for fish and recreation in the 2.3-million-acre forest, which stretches between Summit County and Glenwood Springs....
Editorial: Public ignored in forest-plan changes The White River National Forest covers 2.3 million acres of central Colorado and hosts more than 8 million visitors a year. It has more recreational use than any other national forest. For five years starting in the late 1990s, U.S. Forest Service professionals worked on a new management plan to address public concerns and improved science. More than 14,000 citizens commented on the plan, which, when it was adopted in 2002, took a balanced approach to tough policy problems. The plan was upheld last year by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth. Now a political appointee in the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service, has trampled the carefully crafted compromise. David Tenny, deputy undersecretary for natural resources, vetoed parts of the plan designed to preserve clean high-country waters, protect endangered lynx habitat and curb damage from off-road vehicles. The authority to override Forest Service decisions traditionally has been rarely used, but Tenny now has done so in four Colorado cases. Its application in this instance, though, is indefensible....
Column: Want to save giant trees? A chain saw can do wonders John Muir called the giant sequoia ``the noblest of a noble race.'' These massive trees, the largest in the world, grow only in the Sierra Nevada. Huge sugar pine and other large trees surround them. ``They are giants among giants,'' wrote University of California professor Joseph Le Conte when he saw the giant sequoia forest for the first time in 1870. Today, seven times more trees than is natural crowd this irreplaceable forest, and each year it becomes denser. The forest is unhealthy, and the fire hazard is extreme. Yet we have done little to solve the problem. Now some are suing to block a plan by the Forest Service to deal with the wildfire situation in the Giant Sequoia National Monument. This modest plan calls for removing too few trees to offset even the number of new trees that grow each year. To be effective, the plan should remove more trees to halt excess growth and substantially reduce the number of existing trees....
Logging challenged along Klamath River tributary Three environmental groups sued the federal government Monday to block logging along the Salmon River, a major tributary of the northwestern California river that saw one of the nation's largest fish kills in 2002. The groups contend the U.S. Forest Service's proposed timber cuts would further endanger salmon populations in the region by raising water temperatures and adding sediment through erosion. The suit was filed in Sacramento federal court to block logging of 744 acres of old forest along the federally designated wild and scenic river about 55 miles southwest of Yreka near the Klamath Mountains towns of Sawyers Bar, Forks of Salmon, and Cecilville....
Montana Senate kills ‘rails to trails' bill The Montana Senate voted 27-23 to kill Senate Bill 210, which would have set up a special commission to see if a "rails to trails" project might be feasible on the little-used Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway bed. The line runs alongside Prickly Pear Creek and the Missouri River. On the Senate floor, the majority of lawmakers said they worried mostly about landowners' rights. Sen. Dave Lewis, R-Helena, said ranchers and farmers along the line don't want a "Disneyland of the North"-style attraction imposed upon them. The bill was like saying "we're going to take your backyard and turn it into a park," Lewis said. Others said they had concerns about noise, privacy and the spread of weeds. Some said the state could become liable for past contamination or have to pay to fence the route....
Tortoise gives West hope for early spring Southern Nevada's answer to Pennsylvania's prognosticating groundhog emerged Monday from a burrow at a desert preserve, picking Valentine's Day for his earliest seasonal debut. Mojave Max, a desert tortoise that biologists think is 30 to 50 years old, stepped out just before noon on a relatively warm and moist day - raising eyebrows among scientists looking for signs of global warming, and dashing hopes among teachers hoping for a drawn-out countdown to focus the attention of schoolchildren on desert wildlife and conservation....
BLM plan calls for more drilling As many as 3,100 new natural gas wells would be drilled over the next half-century in southwest Wyoming's lucrative Jonah gas field, under a just-released federal management plan for the area. Oil and gas developers in the region are seeking federal permission for an "infill" drilling project that aims to boost production in the existing Jonah field by increasing well density. Producers say the infill drilling method means drilling more wells closer together within the same overall boundary. The standard minimum spacing between wells in Wyoming is 80 acres, but producers in Jonah received permission from the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to drill every 40 acres....
West churns out more fuel to heat disputes The Bush administration's drive to increase energy production in the West is yielding both more natural gas and more controversy. Last year, the federal government approved a record number of drilling permits on federally owned land, most of it in the West, and natural gas production has soared. More than 6,000 oil and gas drilling permits were approved, a 59% increase over 2003. Gas extracted from federal lands jumped more than 40% in the same year, to 3.1 trillion cubic feet. But as exploration and development have spread, so too have legal conflicts with environmentalists and preservationists:...
Mountain biking Alert: Senate Bill Threatens California Trails A U.S. Senate committee will vote this Wednesday, Feb. 16, on a reintroduced Wilderness bill that would ban mountain biking from 170 miles of singletrack trails in Northern California. Mountain bikers nationwide are urged to ask their senators to delay action on the bill until suitable compromises are reached and bicycling is accommodated. Your call is especially important if your senator is a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee listed below. Senate Bill 128 (S. 128), the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act, sponsored by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), would designate more than 300,000 acres as federal Wilderness. Popular trails would be closed such as King's Crest and Lost Coast-Chemise Mountain in the King Range National Conservation Area and the Red Bud and Judge Davis trails near Cache Creek in Lake County....
Tribe Offers Reward for Arson Information A California tribe is offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of the radical environmentalists who firebombed a housing project that the tribe was building Feb. 7. A group claiming to be the Earth Liberation Front used seven firebombs to heavily damage an apartment complex being constructed by the Jackson Rancheria Band of Miwuk Indians. The words "We Will Win-ELF" were discovered spray-painted on a construction trailer at the site in Sutter Creek, Calif, about 40 miles southeast of Sacramento. The tribe is located just outside of Jackson in Amador County, Calif. “It’s a simple as our wanting the perpetrators caught and convicted,” tribal spokesman Rich Hoffman told the Native American Times....
N.C. House bill would give state more say over federally acquired land A 98-year-old law giving the federal government the exclusive right to use land it buys in North Carolina as it wishes would be limited in a bill filed Monday in the state House. Opponents of a military landing field in eastern North Carolina urged the Legislature last year to change the 1907 state law to attempt to block construction of the field. Gov. Mike Easley declined to call a special session to do so, saying the state didn't have the authority to block the Navy's plans for the outlying landing field, or OLF, in Washington and Beaufort counties. Rep. Bill Culpepper, D-Chowan, whose district includes Washington, and Rep. Arthur Williams, D-Beaufort, sponsored a bill that would limit the federal government's exclusive jurisdiction to total land acquisitions of 25 acres or less. For acquisitions of more than 25 acres, Culpepper said he envisions the General Assembly having to act to allow any federal project to move ahead....
Man Continues 13-year battle with State Timothy Jones looks out from his Adirondack cabin along the Raquette River and sees what isn't. It isn't his comfortable retreat. It isn't the font of memories raising his two sons to embrace the river's world. It isn't his retirement home. On Monday, Jones will be in court again to battle New York over what he has argued for 13 years is his right to keep his unfinished cabin on his land. If he loses and refuses to apply for a state permit, the man who said he spent $40,000 in legal bills and paid a much steeper emotional toll faces a fine of $4,500 followed by $1,500 fines each day until he tears down his cabin....
Column: Children's Blood Pollutes Parkway, Greens Outraged On February 4th, while walking to school along the VFW Parkway, four West Roxbury, Massachusetts, high school students were struck by a truck and hospitalized, one in serious condition. The children were walking in the roadway because several feet of plowed snow blocked the sidewalks. Boston had been hit by a major snowstorm nearly two weeks earlier, but most other major roadways in the city had long had their sidewalks cleared. The parkway was different, because several years previous, environmentalists had successfully lobbied to have snow removal on parkways put under the control of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, aka "The Parks Department," rather than the Highway Department. The logic behind this move was that "parkway" contains the word "park." No, that was not my opening joke. As summarized by The Boston Globe, environmentalists argued that "parkways are not highways, but linear parks that happen to have roads in them."....
Market attack on global warming Environmentalists always said there would be a price to pay for all the carbon dioxide being spewed into the atmosphere. Well, now there is. While prized resources such as oil, gold and wheat have been traded for decades, there is a budding market for one of the industrialized world's abundant but unwanted byproducts: carbon dioxide, a gas produced when fossil fuels are burned and which many scientists believe causes global warming. If it succeeds, the new market for carbon emissions will reward businesses that minimize their output of this "greenhouse" gas. It will also benefit the environment and thereby prove, advocates say, that making green and being green are compatible goals....
Feds renew call to idle Basin land With forecasts calling for dry weather and low streamflows this summer, the federal government has put out a second call for farmers in the Upper Klamath Basin who are willing to let their land remain idle this year. "We thought there were a lot of people who hadn't applied before low predictions," said Rae Olsen, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. "We thought we had better give them another opportunity to participate." The agency will also allow those who applied in the first go-round a chance to change their bids after hearing the latest water forecasts....
Tree-ring data reveals multiyear droughts unlike any in recent memory Farmers, hydroelectric power producers, shippers and wildlife managers remember the Columbia River Basin drought of 1992-1993 as a year of misery. Now researchers using tree-ring data have determined six multiyear droughts between 1750 and 1950 that were much more severe than anything in recent memory because they persisted for years, including one that stretched for 12 years. The study, recently published in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, is the first to establish Columbia River flow estimates back 250 years, says lead author Ze'ev Gedalof of the University of Guelph, Ontario. Reliable natural-runoff estimates extend back only about 75 years, he says. Of the six major multiyear droughts researchers detected in the Columbia River Basin, the most severe and persistent started in the 1840s and lasted 12 years in a row....
Gains on the reservations American Indians are better off today than they were a decade ago. Per capita income is up, poverty and unemployment rates have dropped, overcrowding in housing has decreased, education levels have risen. Some of this is tied to casino income. But Harvard researchers, analyzing the most recent census data, find that the economic and social improvements on reservations and other Indian-owned land have occurred in tribes without gambling revenues as well. Along with the economic and social progress, native Americans (who didn't win the right to vote until 1924) have been registering and voting in record numbers....
Home on the Range Clad in boots and cowboy hats, a line of wide-eyed riders on horseback amble along a foothill trail in the Sonoran Desert north of Wickenburg, Ariz. (pop. 5,082). It’s not a scene out of an Old West movie, but rather a day in the life of the town that bills itself as the Dude Ranch Capital of the World. In fact, Wickenburg has been introducing the cowboy way of life to city slickers since the early 1900s when local working ranchers opened their doors to out-of-town guests. One of the first to do so was the Kay El Bar Ranch. Opened to guests in the 1920s, visitors could rent a room there for $8 per day, with the promise of meals and hot and cold running water. Today, the accommodations have improved considerably, and rates average $185 a day. For its 700 guests who visit from October through May, it’s a small price to pay....
88-Year-Old Woman Knows Her Snakes In late winter, 88-year-old Edna McDonald dons a camouflage jacket over her teddy-bear embroidered shirt, grabs her purse and her rattlesnake tongs and heads out on the hunt. January and February are snake-hunting season for Edna. It's been that way since she started handling the creatures as a babe like some Hill Country Hercules. In two weeks she will deposit the snakes into a giant pit at the Oglesby Rattlesnake Roundup, a kind of sensational, old-style carnival where, among other daredevil stunts, one couple will climb into a sleeping bag with dozens of snakes. If Edna's snakes are among the longest, or the shortest, or the heaviest, she will win a cash prize. The state requires any person possessing more than 25 rattlesnakes for commercial sale or trade to buy an $18 nongame permit. "I don't know what's happened to our Texas," she said. "After a while you'll need to have a permit to have sex."....
It's All Trew: 'Company's coming' really meant 'cleaning time' As I recall the past, few things stirred up action at the Trew house like the words "company's coming." A card, letter in the mail or a phone call could totally change our plans, daily routine and our hygiene habits. My ears started hurting and my neck got hot anticipating the scrubbing due. I have never understood why we had to clean up, dress up, clean house, change bedding and prepare for people who were just as poor as we were, had just as little as we did, and usually worked in the same occupation of farming. Why did we need to impress them?....