NEWS ROUNDUP


Mountain lion killing goats When a Red Bluff rancher imported registered South African Boer goats from Argentina, he did not intend them to end up as a mountain lion's dinner. But they are, one after another. Former Tehama County Sheriff Lyle Williams used to advise people on what they could do in situations like this. Now, he's looking for help. Williams raises the chestnut-trimmed, white-bodied goats on Wilder Road just one-half mile from the Red Bluff city limits. The goats make a pretty picture against the green pasture, but the reality is not so pretty. "I had 100 head. I'm at 80 now," Williams said. "I'm having a mountain lion make a kill every 10 days. He got three since Feb. 1."....
Expert: Black-footed ferret recovery not guaranteed While black-footed ferrets have made a strong comeback in South Dakota, their recovery still faces an uphill battle nationwide, a federal official said. Black-footed ferrets were thought to be extinct until 18 of them were discovered near Meeteetse, Wyo., about 20 years ago. Today, nearly 500 of the animals live in the wild, with the majority of them at three sites in South Dakota, said Mike Lockhart, coordinator of the Black-Footed Ferret Recovery program for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service....
Hunting declines across West Across the country, the number of hunters declined by more than 1 million from 1991 to 2001, or 7.3 percent, according to Census Bureau and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The drop was even greater in the West -- 9.6 percent. Hunting has survived through generations by fathers passing it on to their children. Families bonded during hunting trips. Today, many people have given up on hunting, or never tried it at all. "If we think about how the country was explored and developed, it was hunters, it was trappers," said Steve Williams, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "If we lose that, I think in some way we lose part of the American character."....
Time, opportunity, growth drive out hunters Nearly a century after the grizzly bear was hunted to extinction in California, hunters are fast becoming an endangered breed in the nation's most populous state. While states around the West have seen a drop in the number of hunters, no state had a plunge like California, despite enormous population growth. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of hunters dropped 39 percent, from 446,000 to 274,000, according to the U.S. Census. With 36 million residents, its standing as the nation's population leader puts California at the top of many census categories. But Colorado, with only 6 million people, surpassed the Golden State in the total number of hunters, despite losing 19 percent of its own hunters in the same period. Tracing hunting licenses over a lengthier period shows a bigger decline. California license sales fell from 690,790 in 1970 to 248,190 in 2004. The state grew by about 16 million people during that period....
Animal rights activists aim to make hunting extinct The videos they show at the training camp for animal activists aren't for the squeamish. Students grimace and cringe -- some start to sob -- as images of trapped and wounded animals flash on the screen. At the camp sponsored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, would-be activists are taught about the horrors of hunting, trapping and breeding animals for fur. Then, they learn the tools -- from writing letters to the editor to staging rowdy protests -- that PETA uses to try to shut them down. ''If you approach the hunters in a nonconfrontational way and just talk to them in a reasonable and level way, you can really change a lot of minds,'' facilitator Don Shannon said. ''I see it happen all the time.''....
Appraisals called into question In 2001, an appraiser hired by private land broker Scott Gragson valued about 5 acres of publicly owned land near Decatur Boulevard and Russell Road at $275,000. Relying on that figure, Clark County commissioners voted in November 2001 to trade the parcel to Gragson and several partners in exchange for land the appraiser pegged at a similar price. The county deeded the property to Gragson on June 7, 2002. Five days later, he resold it for $1.25 million, or more than 4 1/2 times the appraisal accepted by the county. While the $975,000 return is not the largest profit Gragson has realized by acquiring and selling taxpayer-owned land, it is one of the swiftest...."
Support grows to take funds from Nevada President Bush’s plan to shift millions of dollars from federal land sales from Clark County is receiving some favorable reviews on Capitol Hill, to the dismay of Nevada lawmakers who say it’s an unfair money grab. Republicans who head the appropriations panels that write spending bills are intrigued by the idea, which the Department of Interior outlined for them in recent weeks. “We’ll be taking a close look at the president’s proposal, but it does seem clear that the existing law governing Clark County land sale revenue needs to be re-examined,” said U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont....
Guv insists N-dump battle not over Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. says the battle is not over against storing highly radioactive nuclear rods in Utah's west desert, and he plans to bring up the issue with President Bush on Sunday. A day after the state lost a key battle to keep the Goshute Indian Reservation from obtaining a license to store 44,000 tons of waste on its land 45 miles west of Salt Lake City, Huntsman says he will exhaust every chance Utah has to keep the waste out. And if he can't bend the president's ear? "If not, we will be back in the next two to three weeks to meet with the secretary of the Interior and others and fight this battle with every ounce of energy we can muster," Huntsman told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday....
Attorney worried about tribe's request for land return The McLean County state's attorney says the transfer of land on Lake Sakakawea to the Three Affiliated Tribes could hurt public hunting and fishing in the future. Three Affiliated Tribes wants to get back some 36,000 acres of reservation land taken 50 years ago for construction of Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson said there should be public involvement before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers transfers land to the Three Affiliated Tribes. The corps said it doesn't have to involve the public in an agency-to-agency transfer....
Old photos hold key to environmental changes Kay's photography work in southern Utah started as an assignment to measure the long-term effects of livestock grazing on forest lands. But in the course of the research, new trends revealed themselves. The good news, according to the researchers: Utah's southern rangelands are in considerably better shape than 100 years ago, owing to increased management and better grazing techniques. The bad news: A century of fire suppression has led not only to a buildup of fire fuels, but a reduction in the amount of wildlife habitat and riparian areas. Without regular fires to wipe the slate, "woody" vegetation such as sagebrush, pinyon juniper and conifer have crowded out grasslands and aspen stands - reducing, in the process, habitat that wildlife and even livestock can thrive in....
Thomas takes ESA reform on the road In an effort to boost support for his work reforming the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., canvassed the state last week talking to individuals and groups about the road ahead. One of his hopes, he said, is to incorporate local communities with the decisions made at higher levels on species protection. That will ultimately "strengthen the quality of life in Wyoming," he said. What's more, Thomas said the act needs to work in concert with appropriate management of other species....
Klamath farmers, fish at crossroads Through sickness and health, drought and abundance, Klamath basin farmers have been wedded to dirt-cheap power for nearly nine decades. Electric pumps lift water from an underground aquifer, help pull it from lakes and canals, spray it over some 450,000 acres of crops and then push the agricultural overflow back uphill from Tule Lake to the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, to start the process again. But there's trouble afoot, and this once-happy union of power and water, in the largest battleground over the federal Endangered Species Act in the country, is on the brink of dissolution. Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp, whose vast six-state service area includes the Klamath basin, overlapping southern Oregon and Northern California, wants to end subsidized power rates next year for 1,300 irrigators that have been virtually unchanged since the power started flowing in 1917....
For some, river not worth its salt Ever since the first settlers plowed up the prairie along the Arkansas River, farmers have poured its water on their fields to grow crops. They quickly learned the river was naturally salty and located their towns near river tributaries to find fresh water. Today the Arkansas is slowly poisoning the agricultural economy it helped create. Salt buildup in farm soil has slashed crop yields. High salt loads in the river have forced rural communities to confront huge drinking-water treatment bills, and have provided a potential flash point of litigation between Kansas and Colorado....
Federal subsidies in west damaged rural South Massive federal subsidies that helped move much of America's farm production into Western deserts also contributed substantially to the poverty and economic deprivation that now plague large portions of the rural South. “Irrigated farming in the West was very nearly the death knell of southern agriculture," says Richard McNider, a professor of atmospheric science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). “Alabama alone has lost more than 10 million acres of row-crop farmland since 1950, when the major Western water projects came on line." Federal and state incentives to lure water-intensive portions of that farming away from Western states and back to Alabama and other Southeastern states could reduce rural poverty while providing a cost effective solution to on-going water problems in several western states, according to three scientists from Alabama....
Tribe sees dam plan as cultural genocide A plan to raise Shasta Dam could help ease California's water crisis, but a band of California Indians says the project will obliterate their culture and way of life. The dam proposal is a centerpiece strategy of CalFed, the joint federal and state agency empowered to distribute the state's water to its various stakeholders. The idea is to raise the dam 16 feet or more, vastly increasing the holding capacity of Shasta Lake -- and the state's water supply -- for a relatively small investment. Raising the dam by even 16 feet could boost Shasta's storage capacity by 300,000 acre-feet -- enough to supply 900,000 families with water for a year....
Trappers hope to cash in on fur revival Including the tabletop bundles of ring-tailed cat, the stacks of raccoon and the box freezer half full of jackrabbit, Marion Lindsey figures he has about 4,800 ready-to-ship pelts. That's not counting the piles of bobcat, raccoon and red fox thawing on the concrete floor, their fur awaiting a knife. "This is the skinning room," says Mr. Lindsey, lighting another cigarette, darting around the bodies, a local trapper's latest haul. "We do it the old-timey way. We scrape them by hand."....
Mad Cow's Stubborn Mystery Nearly a decade ago, clusters of young people in Britain started suffering mysterious symptoms. First they became depressed and withdrawn, prone to crying fits, anxiety attacks, and bouts of physical pain. Within months they lost the capacity to remember or speak, then they slipped into comas and died. Autopsies showed brains ravaged by a novel form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which they contracted by eating infected beef. Public health experts feared an epidemic, with some predicting that tens of thousands of people would eventually die. So far the predictions appear overly alarmist. Only 159 people worldwide are known to have died from eating BSE-infected meat -- including a Japanese man whose death from the disease was confirmed on Feb. 3. But each new case is a painful reminder of the unanswered questions that swirl around mad cow and similar scourges in sheep, deer, and elk. Despite a decade of intense investigation, scientists still disagree about how these diseases are transmitted, how long they can incubate without symptoms, if they can be cured, and what steps should be taken to lessen the toll. In recent months scientists have made some startling discoveries. Yet they are dismayed that mad cow is so slow to yield its secrets....
Highway on ice gives way Farmers and merchants were not the only people to use Utah Lake for commercial purposes during the winter. Ranchers and fishermen also used the ice highway to transport cattle and loads of fish. The ice occasionally broke, providing some exciting moments, but no ranchers or commercial fishermen lost their lives on the frozen lake. Utah Valley ranchers sometimes herded their stock across Utah Lake. In the early days of settlement, Henry Zufelt and his family lived on both sides of the lake. They spent the warm season ranching in Cedar Fort and moved to Payson during the winter to provide better schooling for the children. Since the snow was often deep and the road was long and dreadful, Zufelt drove his cattle and sheep to Payson across the ice-covered lake. His family, food and belongings rode in a horse-drawn wagon box mounted on sleigh runners. During the hard winter of 1879-80, hay was scarce, and many ranchers herded their cattle on the open range. Jesse Knight had just bought a large herd of cows, and he hired the Aitken family of Lake Shore to herd his cattle along with theirs....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Judgment is never correct when cows, trucks are involved Some cows you can walk right up to. Others you see and by the time you get there, they're gone. This particular cow was pretty skittish, so Keeler knew something was wrong when she wouldn't get out of the way of his pickup. He decided a shot of long-acting antibiotic would perk her up. He dug his rope out from behind the seat and tied it around her neck. He scanned the grassy meadow for something to snub her up to. Coiled like a snake in the bed of his pickup was a 7.50 x 16 LT, 8-ply truck tire still on the eight-hole rim. Keeler backed up to the cow, lifted the 60-pound wheel and ran the tail of his rope through the axle hole and tied it....