NEWS ROUNDUP

Oregon wolf plan won't be able to allow ranchers to kill wolves Oregon will not be able to allow ranchers to shoot gray wolves that attack livestock under a federal court ruling that changed the federal Endangered Species Act status for wolves migrating into the state. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will be looking for other ways to control wolves that attack livestock when it votes Feb. 11 on a management plan for wolves moving into the state from Idaho, commission spokeswoman Ann Pressentin Young said Tuesday. If non-lethal means do not work, that will likely mean calling on federal wildlife agents to shoot or trap wolves that kill livestock, Young said. A federal judge in Portland threw out a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule imposed in April 2003 that reduced Endangered Species Act protection from endangered to threatened for wolves migrating into neighboring states from thriving experimental populations in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho....
Dispute continues between private landowners and game wardens Venture uninvited onto private ranchland, and you'll likely get a cool reception. That's exactly what game wardens have been doing for years. Now, lawmakers are working to make asking permission not just proper manners, but a matter of law. In legislation, almost identical to the open fields doctrine that failed just last year, this afternoon, Senate Bill 122 passed out of the Agriculture and Natural Resource Committee by a vote of seven to two. For Harding County rancher Linda Gilbert, the on–going dispute between private landowners and conservation officers isn't that complicated. “The whole thing comes down to Game, Fish and Parks working together with landowners.” Something Gilbert says hasn't been happening for well over a year now, causing almost two million acres in western South Dakota to be closed off to hunters....
Unlimited land easements approved(South Dakota) State law should make it clear that conservation easements can be for any length of time, the House Agriculture Committee decided unanimously Tuesday. The panel sent the full House a bill that says those easements can be determined by agreement of both parties. Rep. Roger Hunt, R-Brandon, said he offered HB1098 because some people believe that conservation easements tie up land forever. "If you want to do a short-term, medium-term, forever kind of easements, you have that flexibility," he said. "The parties can establish the terms of the conservation easements."....
Column: Federal government selling land it promised to 'protect' Prospects don't look good for Prospect Island. The island, located in the Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta, used to be thriving farmland, offering homes for the tricolored blackbird, giant garter snake, great blue heron and other wildlife while producing high-quality California rice. Today, a 1,300-acre portion of the island symbolizes a government farmland-conversion program that has gone terribly wrong--one that has cost taxpayers millions of dollars on a project supposedly designed to "protect" the land forever. Now, part of Prospect Island is for sale. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is asking permission from Congress to sell the land it owns on Prospect Island--a place it claimed would be "protected" in order to provide habitat for numerous fish and wildlife species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. There were big, and costly, dreams for it....
Column: The mud puddle preservation plan When I was a boy growing up in California we called them "mud puddles." If they grew large enough, grown ups called it "flooding." But now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which enforces the Endangered Species Act, has adopted the bogus poetry of the environmentalist left, calling them "vernal pools." The question for the immediate future is whether a federal government controlled by Republicans will allow either bureaucrats or un-elected judges to use these "vernal pools" to shutdown development on vast stretches of private property and thus help push the American dream beyond the grasp of some aspiring homeowners in our nation's most populous state. What we are talking about is the stagnant water that often collects in small ditches or low patches of land in California after winter rains. By summer, these puddles and flooded areas revert to clumps of yellowed grass....
California, Others Sue Over Sierra Plan California's attorney general joined environmental groups Tuesday in suing the federal government to block its plan to manage 11.5 million acres of Sierra National Forest, which calls for increased logging. The lawsuits argue there is no scientific justification for the Forest Service to change a plan for managing the forest that was approved in the final days of the Clinton administration. "Their plan will increase harvesting between 470 percent (in the first decade of the plan) and 640 percent (in the second decade). I think that's their goal," Attorney General Bill Lockyer alleged....
Judge upholds climbing ban at Tahoe's Cave Rock A federal judge in Reno has upheld a climbing ban at Cave Rock on Lake Tahoe's east shore. The Jan. 28 ruling by U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben upholds a management plan adopted by the U.S. Forest Service in 2003 to prohibit rock climbing on the landmark that is held sacred by the Washoe Tribe. McKibben rejected a lawsuit filed last year by The Access Fund, a Colorado-based advocacy group for climbers....
Endangered listing sought for tiger beetle More than two years after saying the Salt Creek tiger beetle needed emergency federal protection, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday announced its intention to list the insect as an endangered species. In a 17-page proposed rule published in the Federal Register, the service said the known populations of tiger beetles north of Lincoln are highly threatened by possible habitat destruction. Beetle advocates greeted the news with satisfaction that the protection process is moving forward. But they also sounded exasperated that the agency could take so long to protect what may be the rarest insect in North America....
Southern Arizona bird could be taken off endangered list The federal government is considering taking Arizona's cactus ferruginous pygmy owls off the endangered species list, Justice Department officials said. The owl has been in legal limbo since August 2003, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that its 1997 listing as endangered had been arbitrary and capricious. The court said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hadn't proved that the Arizona owls, whose known population is about 30, are "significantly distinct" from a much larger population in Mexico....
Developer out $3 million in mouse costs A housing development company says it probably can't recoup the $3 million it spent on preserving habitat for a mouse once thought to be a threatened subspecies, even though federal wildlife managers are removing the protection. La Plata Investments said it set aside 155 acres in its 7,600-acre Briargate development for the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, land that couldn't be used even for trails. Concerns about the mouse also delayed the extension of a street. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said last week it has begun the process of removing the mouse from the threatened species list amid DNA evidence that it isn't a distinct subspecies as previously thought....
Proximity to park confuses power proposal Electrical power developers in northeastern Wyoming are unsure how much room they have under clean air standards to produce more power. The National Park Service appealed plans for a new 500-megawatt coal-fired plant, known as WyGen No. 2, even though the Department of Environmental Quality said the plant would be one of the cleanest-burning plants in the nation. There has been no action on the case in nearly six months. The area is subject to tougher emissions standards because of its proximity to national parks in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. Under the federal Clean Air Act, the area around the park is a Class 1 airshed, meaning it is held to the highest standards for air quality....
Christie Whitman Rides to the Defense of Her Grand Old Party hristie Whitman emerged from her first meeting with President-elect George Bush in 2000 full of optimism and convinced of his determination to build a positive environmental "legacy" - a belief reinforced moments later when Karl Rove took her aside and confided, flatteringly, that as the boss of the Environmental Protection Agency, she would be one of just three cabinet-level officers who would help determine whether the president would be re-elected in 2004. This she took to mean that "the work I would do in building a strong record on the environment would help the president build on his base by attracting moderate voters." "As it turned out," she now concedes in her just-published political memoir, "It's My Party Too," "I don't seem to have understood Karl correctly." In fact, she misunderstood him completely. Why she did so is one of the many puzzles in this interesting but often disingenuous and frustrating book. A cursory check would have revealed that Mr. Rove had no use for environmentalists and, indeed, had long believed that Mr. Bush's father lost the 1992 election partly because he was too squishy on environmental issues, offending the conservative base on which Mr. Rove pins his political strategy....
Britain: U.S. Must Help Avert Climate Catastrophe Britain, arguing that climate change is now unstoppable, urged the United States on Tuesday to sign up to life-saving cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as environmentalists warned of approaching Armageddon. Opening a three-day scientific meeting to assess the threat of global warming, environment minister Margaret Beckett said it was vital Washington become more involved. "A significant impact is already inevitable -- we need to act now to limit the scale of warming in the future and avoid even worse effects," she said. "We would like America to engage more fully with these discussions about where we might go."....
1880 Train headed to small screen A Black Hills landmark will hit the road for New Mexico Wednesday to make an appearance in a television miniseries about the Old West. The 1880 Train's Engine No. 7, one of the oldest operating steam engines in the country, will be featured in the six-part TNT series, "Into the West." The six-part series, produced by TNT in association with Steven Spielberg, portrays the American wilderness, the clash of two cultures, the rush to riches and the building of a new civilization, according to the network. The series, to air starting in June, will feature Sean Astin, Tom Berenger, Beau Bridges and Keri Russell. Crews will use the Hill City train in two episodes....