NEWS ROUNDUP

Rules help ranchers reduce wolf kills Starting today, ranchers and others have more power to stop wolves attacking livestock or causing other problems. The new rules by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service apply to wolf populations in Montana and Idaho. They don't apply in Wyoming because a state management plan for wolves has not been approved by federal officials. The new rules are meant as a transition toward passing management of wolves to state authorities and easing rules that govern the treatment of problem rules. The rules, applying to the "experimental" wolf population outside Yellowstone National Park, are not affected by a federal judge's ruling last week that said the Bush administration was wrong for lessening federal protections for some wolves....
Oregon wolf plan critics bite back Opponents of a draft plan for managing wolves that wander into Oregon are posting an 11th-hour attempt to scuttle it, claiming a recent federal court decision re-listing wolves as "endangered" renders the plan toothless and useless. Under Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones, wolves lost their 21-month stay on the threatened species rolls and were returned to the more stringent status as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The ruling means only federal agents can kill wolves that attack livestock. Oregon’s plan includes protocols for allowing ranchers to shoot offending wolves, which can be legal under threatened status....
Forest Service criticized over grazing - About three dozen citizens, many of them angry, showed up at a meeting in Spearfish last week to protest cattle grazing on a 524-acre parcel of Black Hills National Forest. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation helped the U.S. Forest Service buy the land more than a decade ago as habitat for wildlife — including elk, deer and other species. When the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation sold the Gonzales property to the Forest Service in 1994, the agreement to manage it as wildlife habitat was put into writing in a "memorandum of understanding." Two or three years ago, members of the elk foundation began complaining that grass in the Gonzales meadow that had been grazed too short to provide food for wildlife. They also objected to road construction on the property, which included large sediment traps. Elk foundation members were even more upset when they discovered that Forest Service officials at the Northern Hills Ranger District in Spearfish were not even aware of the 1994 memorandum. District Ranger Pam Brown, who came to Spearfish in 1999, said the Forest Service had no mechanism to guarantee that local land managers would see such documents. In fact, the road construction on the Gonzales property was authorized by a timber sale that was approved in the late 1990s, with no mention of the memorandum....
Renzi wants sensitivity, flexibility in beef country Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., says federal land-management agents need to show a little more sensitivity to Arizona's ranchers. To make sure they do, Renzi, a member of the House Resources Committee, has just introduced his "Cattlemen's Bill of Rights," House Resolution 411. Among other things, Renzi's bill requires the secretary of agriculture and the secretary of the interior to develop a "sensitivity" training course so their land-management officers fully understand "the historical uses" of the land they oversee and the impact their decisions have on livestock ranchers. Renzi argues that cattle numbers are being significantly reduced in parts of the state not just by drought, but by a lack of flexibility by the federal government....
Mill closure raises fears over future of program For the past three decades, the Forest Service has been looking out for rural timber towns through a program that sets aside logs for small lumber mills. It wasn't enough, however, to keep Eureka's Owens and Hurst mill alive, and owner Jim Hurst's announcement that he would close has left some in the agency worried about the future of the small-business program. "It's a real concern," said Pat Potter, resource specialist and timber contracting officer on the Kootenai National Forest. "People are worried, and that's really the first time that's happened." The small-business set-aside program started in the mid-1970s, when the industry and the agency got together with the nation's Small Business Administration to guarantee that little guys had access to a slice of the timber pie....
Piecing together bear puzzle project involving bear hunters, antibiotics and barbed wire has provided revealing insights into one of the world's densest populations of black bears, on Kuiu Island in Southeast Alaska. Bear researcher Lily Peacock found that Kuiu Island, about 40 miles west of Petersburg, has three to five bears per square mile. Peacock also found that surprisingly high numbers of bears coexist seasonally on salmon streams on the island. She counted 115 different bears using a one-mile stretch of stream during a two-month period....
Lack of study funding keeps many of Montana's imperiled animals from being delisted Montana's grizzly bears and wolves are on the rise. Black-footed ferrets continue to struggle. They are among the 11 animals in the state listed as threatened or endangered in the federal Endangered Species Act. The act was created in 1973 to slow the gradual extinction of plants and animals. But its implementation is as much about politics as science. And 2005 is likely to see new attempts to change the act. Out in the field, however, biologists and others continue their work to document the various species and manage their habit. But even as the populations of some animals rebound and stabilize, lack of scientific review — more specifically, the money to fund it — hampers the ability to remove animals from the list....
Fighting upstream battle? In November, the Bush administration announced a near-reversal of the environmental policies that were instituted to rebuild salmon runs - the time the fish swim back upriver - in Washington, Oregon and northern California. In a much stricter interpretation of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the administration announced that it will protect as "critical habitat" only rivers and streams currently occupied by salmon, not areas that were once, or might become, part of their habitat. The new interpretation reduces protected territory by 80 percent, federal officials say. The administration also has proposed to stop protecting land on the region's military bases and in federally owned forests. The decision is being challenged in court by environmental groups and will not become final before summer. The decision came within months of the administration's conclusion that the removal of dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, which would have benefited salmon recovery, is no longer an option, and its decision to count hatchery-raised salmon as wild salmon when considering population....
Idaho outlaw set free after 22 years Claude Dallas, Idaho's most infamous outlaw, was released from prison Sunday morning after serving 22 years for the execution-style slayings of two state wildlife officers in 1981. Dallas, 54, gained notoriety as both a callous criminal and a modern-day mountain man at odds with the government. He was released Sunday after his 30-year term was cut by eight years for good behavior. Dallas was convicted of manslaughter in 1982 for the shooting deaths of Conley Elms and Bill Pogue, officers for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game who were investigating reports that Dallas was poaching bobcats in remote southwestern Idaho. The case made national headlines and turned Dallas into an anti-government folk hero for some, a reputation heightened by his 1986 jailbreak. Dallas hid for nearly a year before he was caught in Riverside, Calif. He was charged with escape but was acquitted by a jury after he testified he had to break out because prison guards threatened his life. Dallas has been the subject of a song, a television movie and at least two books....
GOP takes another stab at drilling in Alaska refuge For more than a decade, Republicans in Congress have been frustrated as first President Bill Clinton and then Senate Democrats blocked their efforts to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. But after the November election, which added four new Republican senators -- and ousted several anti-drilling Democrats -- proponents are now bullish they will achieve their goal of opening what they say is America's largest untapped oil reserve. "This is probably our best shot at actually getting it through and to the president's desk," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, the Tracy Republican who has become the House's most vocal advocate for drilling in the refuge....
An Idyllic Scene Polluted With Controversy These rolling grasslands and foothills would seem a hiker's dream. The valleys are deep, the deer docile and the snowy mountain backdrop dazzling. "The wildlife is really abundant here," said Mark Sattelberg, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. "It's been pretty much undisturbed for 40 or 50 years." But critics say the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge site has been disturbed plenty. To them, the land is synonymous with government secrecy, widespread environmental violations and pollution from nuclear weapons production done here throughout the Cold War. They say the soil and water on the 6,000-acre refuge, scheduled to open in two years, remain contaminated and that recent tests found plutonium and uranium in deer living there. Federal officials said the levels were acceptable....
Column: Public may get sold down river But that's where this view of the Blue changes, where this place that BLM is pondering divestment of two key public-access tracts on a major trout stream becomes clouded in a bureaucratic haze comprised of suspicion and mistrust. Part of the suspicion arises from the fact that the proponent of the swap and owner of the ranch is Paul Tudor Jones, who amassed a large fortune as a Wall Street commodities trader and who already has established a track record of leveraging deals with BLM advantageous to his Blue Valley Ranch. The earlier exchange of similar property was completed in 1999, just in time for the ranch to start pressing for the current trade. This information proved one of the few useful tidbits gleaned from a telephone interview with Susan Cassel, realty specialist with the BLM district office in nearby Kremmling....
Committee backs fed-state land swap A major land exchange between the federal government and the state's School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration got the backing Friday of a legislative committee. The House Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee unanimously approved a resolution supporting what would be an 88,000-acre trade between SITLA and the Bureau of Land Management, an agreement that has received preliminary approval from federal and state land managers. Under the proposal, SITLA would swap 48,000 acres of environmentally sensitive lands along the Colorado River and near Dinosaur National Monument in exchange for 40,000 acres of BLM holdings in the gas and oil-rich Uinta Basin. The federal agency also would throw in parcels in the city of Green River and a plot near the Moab Airport as part of the deal....
Landowners oppose proposal for ATV trail in Box Elder Owners of thousands of acres on the east slope of the Wasatch Range in Box Elder County are vowing to put a stop to all-terrain-vehicle enthusiasts who they say have turned their land into a playground. Streambeds and pastures are now mud bogs, signs marking private property have been ripped out of the ground and ATV trails scar hillsides, several landowners said at a meeting here Thursday night. “The non-motorized people could use it and not abuse it,” said rancher Brett Selman, who with his parents, Fred and Laura Selman of Tremonton, owns 7,000 acres in the area south of Mantua. “It's the ATV people who are causing us grief.”....
Stewards of the land Virtually unheard of before 1970, the conservation easement has emerged in the past two decades as a white knight in the battle to save open space and agricultural land. According to the nonprofit Land Trust Alliance, nearly 2.6 million acres nationwide have been protected through easements held by local and regional land trusts, compared to just 450,000 acres in 1990. But what often is overlooked is the tremendous benefit that conservation easements can offer private landowners who want to keep their beloved land in the family and make sure it continues to be used as a retreat, a farm, or a ranch, rather than a golf course or a housing development....
State judge rules in favor of East Texas landowners A state district judge has ruled that hundreds of acres of East Texas land belong to their current owners, rejecting a claim that they were improperly surveyed and should be returned to the state. One of the defendants' lawyers said he hopes Friday's judgment will end the matter, initially one of the largest land disputes in modern Texas history. The case dates back to 2003, when the plaintiffs, rancher W.L. Dixon and former surveyor Barton McDonald, filed paperwork with the Texas General Land Office, alleging a 4,662-acre "vacancy" exists between Gilmer and Longview because of incorrect surveying. A vacancy is land that still belongs to the state, usually found in a gap between surveyed tracts. In a one-page ruling issued late Friday, Judge Paul Banner wrote that Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson's determination of "no vacancy" was correct. Banner wrote that he will likely issue more detailed findings this week....
Arid Arizona Points to Global Warming as Culprit Reese Woodling remembers the mornings when he would walk the grounds of his ranch and come back with his clothes soaked with dew, moisture that fostered enough grass to feed 500 cows and their calves. But by 1993, he says, the dew was disappearing around Cascabel -- his 2,700-acre ranch in the Malpai borderlands straddling New Mexico and Arizona -- and shrubs were taking over the grassland. Five years later Woodling had sold off half his cows, and by 2004 he abandoned the ranch. Dramatic weather changes in the West -- whether it is Arizona's decade-long drought or this winter's torrential rains in Southern California -- have pushed some former skeptics to reevaluate their views on climate change. A number of scientists, and some Westerners, are now convinced that global warming is the best explanation for the higher temperatures, rapid precipitation shifts, and accelerated blooming and breeding patterns that are changing the Southwest, one of the nation's most vulnerable ecosystems....
Green causes called out of step Leaders of the environmental movement were livid last fall when Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, two little-known, itinerant environmentalists in their 30s, presented a 12,000-word thesis arguing that environmentalism was dead. It did not help that the pair first distributed their paper, "The Death of Environmentalism," at the annual meeting of deep-pocketed foundation executives who underwrite the environmental establishment. But few outsiders paid much attention at first. Then came the November elections, into which groups such as the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters poured at least $15 million, much of it to defeat President Bush, whose support for oil drilling and logging and opposition to regulating greenhouse gases have made him anathema to environmental groups. Instead, Bush and congressional champions of his agenda cemented their control in Washington at a time when battles loom over clean air and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge....
Water bill takes aim at limiting state's recreational water rights One of the more contentious water bills to be considered by state lawmakers this session is aimed at limiting water rights claimed for recreation on Colorado's rivers and streams. Sen. Jack Taylor, R-Steamboat Springs, is trying to modify the 2001 Recreation In-Channel Diversion Act, which has led to a proliferation of kayak and canoeing courses throughout the state. He claims the water parks lack controls to ensure water is not being wasted, to the detriment of other water users in violation of Colorado water law. "What we're really trying to do here is protect existing water rights," Taylor said....
Saddle Up In Steamboat Mountain towns love to shake off the winter blues with an annual winter festival. Steamboat Springs hosts the oldest with their Winter Carnival, which begins Wednesday, Feb. 9 and lasts through the weekend, on the 13th. Winter Carnival started back in 1914, as a service to the community. A highlight of Winter Carnival is the street events. Dump trucks load up with tons of snow and fill up Lincoln Avenue, which is the main drag through town. On Saturday and Sunday, local ranchers bring their best horses down to pull the kids down the street. Kids can sign up to compete in ski joring, a street slalom, a donkey jump, and more, all while being pulled behind a horse. Adults can do it while sitting on a shovel....
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo chromosomes roam The rumble from stampeding bison used to shake the earth, as thousands of the majestic animals thundered across these parts centuries ago. That sound has faded almost entirely now, and the fate of one of the last pure herds in North America - begun by famed cattleman Charles Goodnight - rests with a trio of bulls donated by media tycoon and bison rancher Ted Turner. The Texas herd, once 250 strong, has dwindled to 53, and more than a century of inbreeding threatens its survival. The herd's average age has increased by three years - bison typically live between 12 to 15 years - and the number of calves has dropped in recent years. Nine were born last year. With Turner's bulls, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Texas A&M University's College of Veterinarian Medicine hope to strengthen the herd and preserve an animal that symbolizes the American West....
Museum serves up revisionist view of infamous outlaw's fate While most wild west museums and historians don't believe Brushy Bill Roberts' claim of being the real Billy the Kid is true, history professor Jannay Valdez has dedicated his Billy the Kid Outlaw Museum in Canton to proving Brushy is the notorious outlaw. Through the door of the "blood red" building on the south side of Interstate 20, a museum-goer can delve into the opposing history of Billy the Kid. "The museum tells the story of Billy the Kid who died in 1881 and Billy the Kid who died in 1950," Valdez said. As legend has it, Billy the Kid was Henry McCarty, born in New York City to Catherine Antrim. He moved to the West and became a cowboy and was known as William H. Bonney....
Museum celebrating 45th birthday: Remington, 'cowgirls' exhibits featured The Desert Caballeros Western Museum is celebrating its 45th birthday with two new exhibits and a lecture by a Western art authority this weekend. "The works of Frederic Remington, one of America's best-loved artists, is being paired up with a show focusing on some of the state's most notable cowgirls, including Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor," museum director Royce Kardinal said. One of the highlights at Desert Caballeros is considered his last finished work - painted before his death at the age of 48 - which is sometimes referred to as The Cigarette. Consisting of 26 works on loan from the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, N.Y., the exhibition includes 10 pieces from the museum's permanent collection. The show will run through April 24. Complementing the blockbuster Remington show is a new exhibit, "Who Really Wore the Pants in the West: Arizona Cowgirls Now and Then." Highlights include photographs from O'Connor's girlhood on southeastern Arizona's Lazy B Ranch as well as the outfit of former Wickenburg dude ranch owner Vi Wellik, which she wore in the 1969 Tournament of Roses Parade. Sculpture and paintings by Kirkland rancher Cynthia Rigden dramatizes the artistic bent of many Arizona cowgirls....
Paintings look West Which came first, the legends of the Wild West or the art of Charles Russell and Frederic Remington? The impact of the drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures by these two artists is not underestimated in an exhibit that opens Tuesday at Louisville's Speed Art Museum. "Capturing Western Legends: Russell and Remington and the Canadian Frontier" is the first exhibit to explore their Canadian experiences. The dual exposure makes it clear that both men used much from their Canadian exposure to forge the notion of frontier that has informed everything from dime novels and Halloween costumes to John Wayne movies. Russell (1864-1926) and Remington (1861-1909) were contemporaries in time and interest in depicting the far North American West of the late 19th century. However, they met only late in each artist's life, when both were unvarnished successes after forging art careers that recorded and embroidered a vanishing lifestyle....
There's poetry in them thar cowboys - a lot of it The Mongolian herdsmen didn't ride into town this year, but the llaneros from Colombia did. That both would feel at home at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering proves there's nothing provincial about cowboy culture. And the gathering is as much about culture as poetry. One thing it isn't about is nostalgia. The cowboy tradition celebrated is a living one adaptable to change. "We're looking at a contemporary culture rooted in the past, but surviving over time," says Charlie Seemann, executive director of the Western Folklife Center, which hosts the event. "We're concerned primarily with what's [happening] on the land in the West today. The poetry and songs reflect people's lives and experiences working on the ranches now."....
On The Edge Of Common Sense: Some things can't be taught by a book I think of the knowledge required when I send my son to the next ridge to check for cows on the other side. Although I've spent hours on end explaining things to him, words alone can't give him a feel for his horse, a sense of where to cross an arroyo, an ability to spot a cow amidst its mesquite camouflage, a caution of "snaky" places, and the increasing confidence that takes him further from me every day. He continues to increase his cowboy savvy with every ride, every gather and every branding. Every morning when he feeds the horses, the dogs, and the birds, he adds sediment to his sea of knowledge - knowledge accrued by hand....