NEWS ROUNDUP

Change in the air, part 4: Heating up the high country Physicist-turned-ecologist John Harte says he's glimpsed the future of Colorado's high country under global warming, and it's not a pretty sight. Sagebrush will drive out wildflowers as the state's prized alpine meadows dry up, the ski industry will founder within 50 years, and property values in mountain resort towns will plummet, Harte predicts. The Berkeley, Calif., researcher has spent the past 14 years using electric heaters to simulate a warmer world on a hillside meadow at 9,600 feet in Gothic. The former mining town is several miles north of Crested Butte, designated the Wildflower Capital of Colorado by the state legislature. Harte's climate-manipulation experiment was the first to use overhead heaters to mimic some of the expected effects of global warming on a natural ecosystem. The heaters have been operating continuously - 24 hours a day, year-round - since January 1991....also see Change in the air, part 1: Pollutants raining down on Rockies , Change in the air, part 2: Going, going, gone?, Change in the air, part 3: Bleak forecast for ski industry
Alliance Starts Plan to Improve Land Trusts A national conservation group announced yesterday that it is launching a $3 million program to improve ethics and governance at the nation's 1,500 land trusts. The Land Trust Alliance, the nation's leading association of conservation organizations, is bankrolling the effort largely through a $1 million challenge grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The grant will help the alliance train and accredit conservation groups, part of a broad effort to improve professionalism and weed out rogue nonprofits. The move comes as some conservation organizations are under attack, especially for practices related to conservation easements and historic facade easements. A congressional committee has recommended doing away entirely with some tax breaks associated with the donation of such easements -- development restrictions placed on property deeds in an effort to preserve open space and protect antique streetscapes....
Drug deaths of eagles spark mystery in Canada Four bald eagles have been found dead and three more sick and motionless in a rash of barbiturate poisonings in Western Canada, and officials fear at least some of the cases may have been caused by waste from illegal drug labs. All the eagles were found poisoned by sedatives in southern Alberta over the past 10 days, including one at a bird sanctuary in downtown Calgary, Clio Smeeton, president of the Cochrane Ecological Institute, said on Tuesday. Poisoning deaths from strychnine are normal at this time of year as farmers and ranchers use the chemical to try to rid their lands of the gophers that eagles feed on. "But barbiturate poisoning has nothing to do with strychnine, nothing to do with the poison you put down for gophers," said Smeeton, whose institute is located just west of Calgary. "So then it raises the question: what is the cause?" When informed of the poisonings, police told her the drugs may have been waste materials from clandestine labs that produce crystal methamphetamine, one of the most widely bought and sold illegal drugs in the area, she said....
Column: Too much caution harms Earth and Earthlings Ever thought environmental extremism--the type practiced for years by various fringe eco-groups--would eventually capture the imagination of "security moms" and other reasonable people? Well, the newest eco-term causing significant political buzz--"the precautionary principle"--might just be the ticket into the mainstream for the "hands off Mother Earth" environmentalists. The passivity and timidity instilled by the precautionary principle are uncalled for, and go beyond the nation's environmental goals we celebrate during Earth Day. A product of Europe, the precautionary principle states that mere existence of a theoretical risk associated with an activity is enough to either prohibit or stringently regulate the activity, even though there is no scientific data documenting the threat or its potential effects on human health or the environment. Bottom line: In the face of uncertainty, the precautionary principle requires that we assume the worst about a threat, and act (or not act) accordingly....
Midland chinchilla ranchers sue PETA over video Robin and Julie Ouderkirk thought they were helping potential chinchilla-ranchers learn the ropes when they allowed the young couple to videotape them feeding, breeding - and killing and skinning - the rodents at their Midland ranch. So when the videotape made a nationwide debut last August at a press conference by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Ouderkirks were quite unprepared for the maelstrom that followed. The video, which was also made available through PETA's Web site, caused the Ouderkirks to be "ridiculed, harassed, threatened by members of the public and thrust into the public spotlight," the couple claims in a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Bay City....
Editorial: A forest policy beyond salvage If you look at the half-million-acre Biscuit fire today, one thing is obvious: There's no good wood at the core of this nation's policy on the salvage of burned public forests. It's not just all the charred trees chewed up by insects. It's all rotten: The millions of dollars and hundreds of hours spent writing plans for salvage and restoration projects, many of which will never happen; the endless lawsuits; the dueling scientists; the cynical politics; the breathless protests. From here, nearly all of it looks like a big waste. If you are on one extreme side or the other in the Northwest forest wars, maybe you like what's going on now in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon, where loggers and protesters are struggling over a few thousand acres of dead, burned trees. But everybody else ought to be disgusted by the waste of time, money and opportunities to create jobs and restore the landscape....
Four more Canada lynx released in Colorado The audience of about 30 people watching four Canada lynx dash from their metal carriers and scamper through knee-deep snow on the edge of the Weminuche wilderness Tuesday included several federal scientists and officials. The Colorado Division of Wildlife, which has released about 190 of the endangered cats since 1999, invited members of a national steering committee working on rebuilding the populations of lynx and wolverines. The scientists' consensus on the division's efforts to restore the cat to Colorado was a big thumbs up. "Colorado ought to be commended for sticking with it," said Kathy McAllister, deputy regional forester with the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula, Mont....
Montana, Idaho ask U.S. to approve wolf plans With Wyoming bogged down in a dispute with the federal government, the governors of Montana and Idaho are asking Interior Secretary Gale Norton to consider handing over management of wolves in their two states. The governors said Montana and Idaho have complied with federal requests to develop acceptable wolf-management plans. With the wolf population in the two states larger than recovery goals, there ought to be discussion about lifting federal restrictions and passing management along to the states, Govs. Brian Schweitzer and Dirk Kempthorne said in a letter to Norton. "It's time to start getting together to talk about what makes sense," said Mike Volesky, natural resource adviser for Schweitzer. Governors of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan also have asked Interior to discuss options for removing wolves from the endangered species list in those states.
West's water troubles getting worse Entering the sixth year of a record dry spell in much of the West is bad enough. But what really worries the head of the federal agency that delivers water to more than 30 million people and 10 million acres of farmland is what happens when the region's precipitation returns to normal. "The biggest fear we have is that when this drought breaks and leaves, we are still short of water," John Keys, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said Tuesday at the opening of a two-day forum on the outlook for Western water supplies. Increases in population and requirements to protect endangered species will make it difficult to balance demands for water in the West this summer, Keys said....
The Natural Hoof: A Sign of the Times Wild horses have captured the public imagination in books and movies for years. But lately, wild horses have stampeded into the intellectual pursuits of many vets and farriers in America, and as far away as Australia.Will the wild horse provide a model for study of what's wrong with our domestic horses' feet? Wild horse feet first found an audience at the 1988 convention of the American Farrier's Association in Lexington, Ky., when author/researcher Les Emery of California shared the stage with farrier/horseman Jaime Jackson of Arkansas. The two presented a mass of data about wild horse feet that glazed the eyes of the assembled farriers. Tables, charts, and graphs filled the screen. Farriers rolled their eyes. Still, the two researchers insisted that they were onto what would become the biggest story in the horse world for years to come. Coincidentally, Emery and Jackson were followed on that 1988 stage by British farrier and lecturer David Duckett, FWCF, who laid down his theory of three-dimensional "balance" of a horse's foot....

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