NEWS ROUNDUP

Shasta County man shoots mountain lion who mauled pets State Department of Fish and Game officials say a Shasta County man shot and killed a mountain lion in his back yard that had earlier killed the family's pet dog. John Trunnell lives about 15 miles east of Redding. He was clearing brush Thursday when he heard the small dog barking in the bushes. Game warden Daniel Fehr says when the mountain lion emerged with the dog in its mouth, Trunnell threw a rock, causing the big cat to drop the dog and run. The dog's wounds proved fatal. When the family returned to their home, the mountian lion was again in the back yard -- probably to feed on a house cat that it had killed and hidden....
U.S. to suspend wolf-breeding program The federal government will suspend a red wolf breeding program at Bull Island that has played a key role in saving the endangered species from extinction. A family of red wolves that roamed the island will be shipped to other federal preserves because wildlife managers say the animals are needed more at those sites. Since 1987, the government has kept pairs of red wolves on Bull Island so they would breed and raise pups in the wild. Biologists would later move pups from the undeveloped barrier island to the vast Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. The young Bull Island wolves would be adapted to the wild, making it easier for them to survive at Alligator River....
Trapper kills Denali wolf pack's alpha female The alpha female in the Toklat wolf pack, which has delighted visitors to Denali National Park and Preserve for years, was killed by a trapper outside park boundaries. Gordon Haber, an independent wildlife scientist who has studied the pack for 40 years, said the radio-collared wolf was killed Feb. 11 by a trapper on state land on the Savage River within a few hundred feet of the park's northeast boundary and on the outside edge of a wolf buffer zone created in 2001. Haber reported the wolf kill to the National Park Service. An Alaska State Trooper later determined that the trapping site was legal and just outside the wolf buffer zone....
Editorial: Split estate law will help Wyo The passage of Senate File 60, the split estate bill, is a huge step forward for the state's minerals developers and surface landowners. In Wyoming, nearly half of all private land falls in the split estate category. The surface rights are owned by one party, while another party owns the mineral rights. As a result, split estate conflicts have been common in the state for much of its modern history. And because mineral rights holders have primacy over surface rights holders, oil and gas companies and mining companies have held the upper hand in such disputes. Those companies have routinely entered into voluntary agreements with surface owners to compensate for damages to the surface and to coordinate drilling activities. In most cases, industry and landowners cooperated, working together toward a mutual benefit. But in some cases, landowners were left with depleted water resources, rutted roads, scarred landscapes and little or no payment to show for it. Until now, cooperative agreements weren't required, and no standards existed for notification, negotiation, damages or mediation....
Judge said BLM study on coal-bed methane development inadequate A Bureau of Land Management study of the potential environmental effects of coal-bed methane development in the Powder River Basin is inadequate because it failed to analyze a phased-development alternative, a federal magistrate decided Friday. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Anderson said his findings do not automatically mean that all development activities must cease pending further administrative review. Rather, he set an evidentiary hearing for March to determine the extent of relief, if any, to grant in the challenges brought by a conservation group and the Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe. "From the record presently before it, the court cannot determine to what extent, if at all, development should be suspending during the completion of a new environmental impact statement that includes a phased development alternative," he wrote....
Arizona Trust Land Effort Falls Apart A package of state trust land changes to benefit education funding, preservation of open space and planned development around urban areas has foundered at the Legislature. Talks on numerous issues related to the state’s 9.3 million acres held in trust to benefit public schools, universities and other institutions broke off amid disagreements on at least two major issues, lawmakers and interest-group advocates said this week. The development could doom chances for lawmakers to act on the trust land issue this year in any comprehensive or even piecemeal fashion, several participants in the talks said....
Ozone levels rise but don't threaten Yellowstone The world's smog continues to creep into the air over Yellowstone National Park. Ground-level ozone - an invisible gaseous mix mostly of machinery exhaust that's cooked in the sun's rays - is increasing over several national parks in the West, according to a study released by the National Park Service. In Yellowstone, though, the ozone isn't threatening human health or, apparently, even plants that are sensitive to ozone damage. But the trend, which includes other parks in the Rocky Mountains, has piqued the curiosity of air researchers, especially because ozone levels are dropping in many urban areas....
Ranchers, tribes make water deal Ranchers who irrigate out of streams above Upper Klamath Lake have reached an agreement with leaders of the Klamath Tribes over how to resolve a longstanding dispute over water rights. Under the agreement, ranchers and other landowners will drop their opposition to the Tribes' claim for water rights that would maintain high streamflows in the Sprague, Williamson and Wood rivers and their tributaries. In exchange, the tribes have agreed to not exercise their water right in a way that would harm irrigators whose claims to water were established before July 1, 1961. The agreement announced today was described as a modest start to untangling a complex tangle of claims and protests among hundreds of water users in the Klamath Basin....
U.S. officials find no evidence to sway them from dropping cattle ban The U.S. Agriculture Department gave Canada good marks on safety measures to combat mad cow disease Friday, saying there's no impediment to resuming the cattle trade next month. A U.S. technical team that's been looking at Canada's compliance with cattle feed rules released a positive report, affirming the decision to lift the ban March 7. The team arrived in Canada on Jan. 24 after the discovery last month of two new mad cow cases. One of the cows caused particular concern because it was born after new feed regulations to combat mad cow went into effect in August 1997. And some American politicians complained that Canadian feed companies were flouting the laws. But U.S. officials found solid compliance by feed mills and rendering facilities and said Canada, like the United States, is always looking for ways to make it even better....
Animal lobby protests at Campbell Soup The video looped repeatedly, showing scenes of cattle being violently jerked from their hooves in rodeos. Far from entertaining, the film was meant to shock - and it did, slowing traffic Wednesday evening outside Campbell Soup Co.'s headquarters. An animal-rights group launched a protest at the site with a four-sided video truck showing scenes of what they said was cruel and inhumane treatment of some rodeo animals. The group, Showing Animals Respect & Kindness, wants Pace - a Campbell subsidiary that makes salsa and other food products - to withdraw as a sponsor of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association, the largest sanctioning body of professional rodeo. But officials from Campbell and PRCA say the animal-rights group's video doesn't tell the whole story. The company and the rodeo association both claim the animals are maintained well and that very few are injured in events....