NEWS ROUNDUP

Mountain Areas Are Left Hanging Kim Kelley is about to go broke because mudslides have come between her and her business, not to mention her mule, nine donkeys, two horses, 11 cats and three dogs. The slides have stranded U.S. Forest Service firetrucks, five cars and tons of heavy construction equipment that were at Chantry Flat in the San Gabriel Mountains when two major mudslides took out Big Santa Anita Canyon Road, north of Arcadia. More than a month after the last slide, access remains limited to those willing to walk or ride mountain bikes over slide areas, and the best guess is that it will take a year to repair. Even with paths shoveled out, the route still is precarious, and could become more so with rain expected this weekend....
Inquiry on fire begins At the urging of the Weld district attorney, a criminal investigation was launched Thursday into a controlled burn that was whipped out of control by high winds last week. If there is sufficient evidence, U.S. Forest Service employees could be charged with arson. District Attorney Ken Buck said he received several complaints from farmers and ranchers in the Pawnee National Grassland area, where the Forest Service was burning prairie grass last Friday. The callers complained that the fire shouldn't have been set because of high winds in the area and that the spread of the fire endangered farm property....
Opal find prompts closure to protect rare plant The discovery of opal in central Wyoming has prompted the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to close 360 acres to vehicles to protect a threatened plant. The desert yellowhead, a sunflower-like plant, is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The closure was announced Thursday, about three weeks after the Wyoming Geological Survey announced the discovery of opal -- both the common and precious kinds -- in the area. The closed area does not include the opal deposits. But the closure will remain in effect until the plant is no longer at risk from vehicles, according to a BLM release....
Leaders of the pack By restoring the balance of nature in Yellowstone National Park, gray wolves may be providing a buffer against global warming as well. Through their culling of Yellowstone's weakest elk, the gray wolves reintroduced to the park 10 years ago are acting as nature's food distributors, with scavengers such as eagles, bears, coyotes and ravens thriving on the leftovers. And as northern Montana's milder winters lead to fewer elk deaths in the months when meals are hardest to find, a new study suggests, these wolf-generated banquets have made a world of difference....
Feds propose culling Leech Lake cormorant numbers by 80 percent Crews could start shooting thousands of cormorants and sterilizing their eggs on Leech Lake this summer as state and federal wildlife agencies try to mitigate the effect of the birds on the walleye population. Lee Pfannmuller, director of ecological services for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said efforts could include rubbing vegetable oil on eggs. Adults will continue to sit on the eggs and won't try to re-nest, but the eggs never hatch. A proposal to thin the population of the lake by thousands of birds was made in January and on Wednesday the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its environmental assessment of it....
Area's growth forces sale of last working ranch The last working ranch in the Glenwood Springs area may soon be a memory. "It's like murder," said John Bershenyi, whose ranch along Four Mile Road has been in the family for most of a century. "But I'm too old to handle it." His son and daughter-in-law, Jim and McKeaver, want to continue the family's ranching tradition. But the family realizes that the Glenwood Springs area is no longer the place to do that. The Bershenyi family settled the property in 1904, and it has been in the family almost all of that time....
Ag Department appeals ruling on Canadian cattle The Agriculture Department on Thursday appealed the decision of a federal judge in Montana to maintain an almost two-year ban on importing Canadian cattle, a ban that arose from mad cow disease north of the United States. Agriculture officials had planned to lift the import ban on Canadian cows March 7, but U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull had granted a request from U.S. ranchers five days earlier for a preliminary injunction to continue the prohibitions. The department asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Cebull's ruling....
Mustangs: Evolution And History When Columbus discovered America in 1492, there were no horses in the Western Hemisphere. Some people, recalling the vivid picture of American Indians mounted on horses, may suppose that great herds of mustangs, or feral horses, were native to America, and that American Indians had domesticated them and developed horsemanship on their own, but that is not the case. Only the small camelline animals of the Andes--llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos--were available to be ridden, and they can bear only very light loads. In the late 1530's and early 1540's, two Spanish explorers, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto conducted expeditions in what is now the United States. Coronado explored New Mexico and Arizona, seeking El Dorado, a mythical city of gold, which, of course, he never found. Soto explored Florida and the Southeast generally, and is credited with the discovery of the Mississippi River, which he sailed from an inland point southwards to the bayous. Several horses escaped or were abandoned on each of these expeditions, and it was from these strays that the great herds of mustangs that ranged the West sprang....
150-year-old Ware Ranch honored A 150-year-old Cooke County ranch is scheduled to be honored in Austin Friday by the State of Texas. The Ware Ranch, founded in 1854, is one of 142 Texas farms and ranches from 89 counties being honored during the 30th annual Family Land and Heritage ceremony. The ceremony, scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Auditorium at the University of Texas, recognizes families who have kept their farms or ranches in continuous agricultural production by the same family for a hundred years or more. The Ware Ranch received a plaque for its first hundred years in September 1974. "We just have a small operation. That was one of the things I promised my late husband - that I'd keep it going," said Faye Ware, owner of the Ware Ranch....
Most Expensive Ranches In America 2005 The ranch market, like the rest of the real estate industry, is certainly hot. The prices on our list of the most expensive, for example, topped out at a startling $55 million. Still, that's practically a bargain compared with the most costly apartment on the New York City market. And while a $70 million penthouse triplex might be very nice indeed, it doesn't come with 3,000 acres, glistening trout streams, private cross-country trails, vast wildflower meadows and--lest we forget--cows. Many moguls and movie stars have seen the benefits of owning ranches and have been buying land to pass on to their children, to live out their Wild West fantasies (though perhaps wearing handmade boots and driving gleaming luxury pickups), or to take on the challenge or running a ranch for real....
Reflecting on a way of life: Rancher, 82, recalls work as a cowboy It wasn't a sport for Blaine Ramey. Riding a bucking horse was just how you survived. "Back when I started, it was more a way of life. We done it every day," Ramey said. "If you couldn't ride a bucking horse or rope, you couldn't get a job." Ramey, now 82, is a rancher in Blackfoot and will be inducted into the DNCFR Cowboy Hall of Fame during the Saturday rodeo performance along with Fort Hall cowboy Rusty Houtz....

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