NEWS ROUNDUP

Study suggests lack of environmental oversight Two Wyoming agencies recently recognized the need for more field inspectors and stiffer fines for violations in the burgeoning natural gas fields. Now, a multistate conservation group is suggesting the problem exists throughout the Rockies. The Western Organization of Resource Councils issued its study, "Law and Order in the Oil and Gas Fields," and conducted a media telephone conference on Wednesday. "The level of staffing for enforcement and existing accountability mechanisms are inadequate and outdated for an industry that is rapidly expanding across the western landscape," said Peggy Utesch, member of the Western Colorado Congress. The study showed that 79 percent of the oil and gas activity in the five-state region -- Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado and New Mexico -- occurs within six of the region's Bureau of Land Management field offices. Yet only 26 percent of all BLM's inspectors are located in those field offices....
Dismissal motion filed in racketeering lawsuit Attorneys for an environmental activist from Fawnskin filed a motion Thursday in U.S. District Court seeking the dismissal of the federal racketeering lawsuit against her, according to a statement. Sandy Steers, a member of the activist group Friends of Fawnskin, is accused, along with three U.S. Forest Service employees, of conspiring to illegally block a 133-condomium development slated to be built in the rustic mountain hamlet. The lawsuit against Steers contends that she, San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman and Forest Service biologists Scott and Robin Eliason are violating the federal Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organizations Act....
Bush Seeks $867 Million Budget for Forest Thinning The Bush administration will ask Congress to increase funding to $867 million in fiscal year 2006 for a plan to help reduce the risk of wildfires in federal forests, a senior administration official said on Thursday. The U.S. Agriculture Department's Forest Service division and the Interior Department, which work together to fight forest fires, received $811 million in the current budget year for the forest management plan. Mark Rey, the U.S. Agriculture Department's undersecretary of natural resources, told reporters that about $492 million of the requested $867 million in 2006 would be used to remove hazardous underbrush from more than 4 million acres of land. The rest would be spent to improve the landscape and wildlife habitats....
Editorial: Preble's mouse like canary in coal mine The rodent is still roaring, despite the U.S. Interior Department's push to take the Preble's meadow jumping mouse off the endangered species list. The Front Range is losing streamside wildlife habitat at an alarming rate, putting many native plants and animals at risk. Regardless of whether the Preble's is truly endangered, Colorado should take steps to preserve its key foothills ecosystems. Our region's small streams harbor fish and other aquatic life, while trees, wildflowers and grasses on their banks shelter songbirds, raptors and other wildlife. These riparian ecosystems also provide people with open space, protect drinking water quality and absorb overflows that otherwise might flood towns and cities. Yet Front Range riparian areas, from Denver to the foothills, are being rapidly destroyed by human encroachment....
Cutthroat lawsuit expected Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Thursday demanding the federal government give Endangered Species Act protection to coastal cutthroat trout in the lower Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. Filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, the lawsuit argues that when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied protection in 2002, the agency ignored the conclusions of government scientists. They said the coastal cutthroat from the lower Columbia River basin, which spend part of their lives at sea, were in danger of extinction. "In our opinion that was essentially a political decision,'' said Noah Greenwald, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. "The Bush administration denied coastal cutthroat trout protection, not because the species doesn't need to be protected, but because of hostility to the Endangered Species Act.''....
Conservation Genetics Center Leads Research On Yellowstone Wolves Ten years after the federal government reintroduced gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park, the UCLA Conservation Genetics Resource Center is conducting research that will aid in understanding the dynamics that underlie successful endangered species reintroductions. Under a contract awarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Yellowstone Park Foundation in August 2004, UCLA researchers are analyzing blood samples taken from some 450 wolves to determine mating and migration patterns and secure other key data. Results, which will help determine future wolf management policies, are expected in summer 2005. "This is the most comprehensive genetic analysis of North American carnivores ever undertaken, and involves the most notable U.S. population," said Robert K. Wayne, professor of biology and co-founder of the UCLA Conservation Genetics Resource Center. "Through DNA testing, we can learn so much about the hidden lives of these wolves, such as who is mating with whom and how they move from one place to another, and help determine the conditions necessary for successful reintroductions of other species in the future."....
Scientists take sides in battle over coho State scientists say that coastal coho have bounced back from their low point and no longer need federal protection - putting the state at odds with federal scientists. The federal government listed the salmon as threatened in 1998, but property owners and timber companies promptly filed a lawsuit and got the fish removed from the Endangered Species list. Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is trying to get coastal coho back on the list, after a panel of scientists said that the coho still need federal protection. That attempt runs counter to the Bush administration's desire to return this, and other endangered species listings, to state control. It also runs counter to a plan announced Wednesday by Oregon officials, who have long argued that coastal coho are better managed by the state than by the federal government. This puts the state squarely in line with the Bush administration, and directly opposed to NOAA....
Biologists Planning to Study Pelicans Pelican nesting grounds will be off-limits to the public this year at a refuge in central North Dakota while biologists plan their most extensive study ever of the big birds. Biologists still are baffled about why some 28,000 birds showed up to nest at the refuge in early April but took off in late May and early June, abandoning their chicks and eggs. The 4,385-acre Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge north of Medina had been the site of the largest nesting colony of white pelicans in North America. Biologists are counting on the pelicans to return in April, as they have for at least a century....
Otters take plunge in project to populate river Wednesday may have been Groundhog Day across the nation but Thursday was Otter Day - in Utah, anyway. An adult river otter and her 9-month-old female pup were released into the Escalante River near its confluence with Calf Creek in southern Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument shortly after noon. First mother and then daughter tentatively poked curious snouts out of their cages to sniff the desert air. The furry mammals quickly plunged into the babbling Escalante and swam out of the bright sunshine and into the shadows of the red sandstone cliffs. "It's Otter Day in Utah," said Kevin Bunnell, the mammals-program coordinator for the state Division of Wildlife Resources. "It went very well. This has been seven years in the making."....
Column: Whining Over Wind While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming's Powder River Basin, locals are trying to curb plans to drill as many as 80,000 methane gas wells over the next six years that may damage thousands of private groundwater wells and slice-and-dice the open landscape with roads, gates and waste ponds. Meanwhile, off the coast of Nantucket, citizens are opposing -- get this -- an offshore wind farm. That's right. The Cape Cod set claims the proposed line of 130 windmills 11 miles off the Atlantic coast, would ruin the ocean view, the property values and otherwise bring down the neighborhood....
Activists' new cause: restoring their clout A decade ago, environmental groups dominated the national agenda -- reshaping forest policy, carving out new wildlife protections and winning favor with much of the American public. But today they face the stinging realization that their influence is waning. The public is tuning them out. Their longtime tactics, many admit, are no longer working so well. And they are divided over how to regain the lost ground. Last year's presidential election offered the latest evidence. Conservation groups knocked on thousands of doors in Oregon and other states to tell voters President Bush has an abysmal environmental record. But it did not prevent his re-election. They could scarcely persuade Democrat John Kerry, whom they claim as a political ally, to raise the environment in his race against the president. "They don't nearly have the credibility they did 20 or 30 years ago," said Tim Hibbitts of the Portland public research company Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall Inc. While Oregon's attitude toward environmental groups was once uniformly favorable, he said, today it's neutral to slightly negative at best....
Lawyers claim retaliation in man's firing On the day a lawsuit by a senior federal auditor against energy giant Kerr-McGee Corp. was unsealed, the U.S. Department of the Interior decided to terminate his position, the man's lawyers said Wednesday. Lawyers for Bobby L. Maxwell, who filed the lawsuit against Kerr-McGee alleging that it owed the U.S. government up to $12 million in royalties, said they believe their client's position was eliminated in retaliation for his suit against the oil and gas company. Attorneys Richard C. LaFond and Michael S. Porter said Maxwell has a proven track record as an auditor for Minerals Management Service, an arm of the Interior Department, and has been responsible for collecting a half-billion dollars in unpaid royalties....
The West's New Boomtowns Are Looking Beyond the Drought Water purchases in farm country, meanwhile, are slowing. Aurora signed an agreement last year, in the face of deep hostility from farm community leaders, that when its current round of water purchases is completed, it will buy no more farm water for at least 40 years. For cities like Aurora - part of an archipelago of new urban centers across the West that have never experienced a serious drought until this one - the sense of political limits that came with a change in the weather pattern was as much of a shock as the drought itself. Older cities like Denver and Phoenix grew up nurtured by a huge federal commitment in the 20th century to water the West through dams, reservoirs and irrigation projects. The new places found themselves largely dependent on their own resources, as federal ambitions have retreated and the environmental costs of the old ways have become clearer....
Klamath region grows more desperate California's record-setting storms bypassed the thirsty Klamath River Basin, threatening to incite another farmer rebellion over water deliveries and imperiling a vital salmon fishery and bald eagle habitat. While February and March still hold the possibility of a reprieve, the immediate outlook is grim for the region, which straddles the California-Oregon border from Tule Lake to Klamath Falls. The snowpack is slightly less than half the normal amount, an unsettling contrast to the ample snowfall that buried much of California after Christmas. More than three weeks have passed since the last significant snow fell in the basin, and that was just an inch....
A Wet Spell In Rough Country The cycle runs like clockwork," an old rancher friend had told me. "Here in the Davis Mountains, we live through 20 years of drought, then it rains a bit, then we go back to tough times." Those tough times seem to have lifted in West Texas for now, at least as far as the weather is concerned. Thanks to some steady rains, the country is now carpeted with green grass. All of the succulents are blooming, and the oak, mesquite and juniper trees are thick and heavy with leaves. Riding my old paint horse in the ranch country near Fort Davis, Texas, I've been struck by the incredible beauty of the desert mountains after they've had an opportunity to steep in some moisture. The effect of riding in these mountains during such conditions has been restorative--both for me and my horse....
Ag Department reviews ban on older Canada cows New Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Thursday he is reviewing the continuing U.S. ban of older Canadian cattle, which are more susceptible to mad cow disease, while allowing imported meat from animals of any age. The United States plans to resume imports of Canadian cattle under 30 months old beginning March 7. Last week, meatpackers asked a federal judge for an injunction to resume imports of older cattle, saying the ban has cost their industry more than $1.7 billion in revenues. During a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, Johanns questioned whether it makes sense to allow beef from cattle of any age while restricting live imports to cattle younger than 30 months....