NEWS ROUNDUP

Rancher's attorney challenges report A report by the U.S. Interior Department's inspector general about a controversial settlement between a Thermopolis rancher and the Bureau of Land Management has been harshly criticized by a conservative Wyoming lawyer and an environmental advocacy group. This criticism of the Inspector General Earl Devaney's report has also led to calls for an investigation into whether federal appeals court nominee William G. Myers III lied when he said he was not aware of the terms of the settlement until months after the deal. Cheyenne-based lawyer Karen Budd-Falen wrote that Devaney's report was "extremely biased and intentionally or negligently fails to report the relevant facts." She represents rancher Frank Robbins in his long-running legal battles with the BLM's Worland office. Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Ethics, said Budd-Falen's report has provided "a much more nuanced understanding" of how the Robbins settlement was reached. Budd-Falen's report also firmly establishes that the settlement was not crafted by "a runaway staffer," Ruch said, but by Robert Comer, a politically appointed subordinate to Myers who kept Interior's top leadership "fully in the loop."....
Toad habitat designated The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated more than 11,000 acres of critical habitat for the endangered Southwestern arroyo toad, but the $1.8 billion plan excludes land along the Santa Clara River and San Francisquito Creek. The service's formal report was released Wednesday, the same day the Santa Clara River was listed by a national environmental group as one of 10 waterways threatened by development. The service's plan calls for 11,695 acres stretching from Santa Barbara to San Bernardino counties to be designated as critical habitat, a reduction from its originally proposed plan to designate 95,655 acres that included San Diego. Local environmentalists say the scaled-back acreage is due to pressure from the building industries....
Wolf bill loses free radio receiver requirement A proposed law requiring gray wolves to be radio collared is moving forward without a controversial amendment forcing the state to provide free radio receivers to landowners who want them. Senate Bill 461 would require wildlife managers to equip one wolf from every wolf pack near a population or livestock center with a radio collar so the pack can be tracked. That's all it did in its original form, but the House later amended it to require Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to also give radio receivers to any landowners living in an area frequented by wolves, if the property owners asked for them. The amendment significantly raised the bill's cost and could have bankrupted the agency's budget to implement its wolf management plan, which is required by the federal government before it will delist the wolf as an endangered species....
Snacking sea lions scarfing up sparse Columbia chinook run At the Bonneville Dam, more than 140 miles from the Pacific Ocean, spring has emerged as the season of the sea lion. Dozens of bewhiskered bulls congregate in pursuit of prized Columbia River chinook that this year, so far, are in acutely short supply. As of late Tuesday, about 200 of the spring chinook, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, had gone through the dam's fish passage, compared with the 10-year average of 3,085 for the same date. It's the worst early showing in decades, with biologists unsure whether this run of hatchery and threatened wild salmon is very late, very weak or some combination of the two. To protect those salmon milling below the dam, the biologists are preparing a sea-lion battle strategy that includes noisemakers, sonar and eventually grates to keep them out of the fish ladders, an effort reminiscent of the Seattle campaign in the 1980s and '90s to keep sea lions away from steelhead moving through the Ballard Locks....
Bears with us Two years after Treadwell’s death, he is coming back to life in many forms. Werner Herzog’s documentary about him, Grizzly Man, premiered in Whitefish the first weekend of April after turning heads earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Superior author Mike Lapinski’s in-depth look into Treadwell’s life and death, Death in the Grizzly Maze, is fresh on bookstore shelves. Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company has purchased the rights to Treadwell’s story, with Leo himself expected to star in an upcoming Hollywood version of Treadwell’s life. This focus on Treadwell, which many bear biologists and officials fear will lead to an escalation of behavior dangerous to both humans and bears, comes at a time when human-bear conflicts are a growing issue. Last year, a record 31 grizzlies were killed due to human interaction in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The grizzly population, estimated at just over 1,000 in the Lower 48, hasn’t taken a hit like that since 1974, the year before grizzlies were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Black bears, too, are feeling the squeeze as communities like Missoula continue to edge into the hills and forests. This year, warm spring days are about to draw bears out of their dens, hungry and seeking forage that’s dwindled in the face of several years’ drought. At the same time, the growing pressure on bears is being met by a handful of innovators intent on improving human-bear relations, and new research, new products and new management styles are seeking to undo the damage done by the Treadwells of the world....
Life in Death Valley Thanks to record rain — more than 6 inches instead of the less than 2 inch average — no one alive has ever seen a wildflower bloom in Death Valley like this one. When the television networks got the word they sent camera crews, and you know how it is. If one media outlet has a story, all media outlets need the story. The response has been part religious pilgrimage, part Woodstock nation. Thousands upon thousands of people — some days up to 10,000 more visitors than is typical — descending on a desert valley with a few narrow, two-lane strips of asphalt running through it. Never mind that motels are booked solid within and outside park boundaries. They are camping in every imaginable type of rig and tent. And when the wind is too strong to pitch a tent, they sleep in their cars or on the ground under bushes, scorpions be damned. No hardship seems too great to see the acres and acres of desert gold sunflowers and purple phacelia sweeping across the desert floor and up the alluvial fans — what the National Park Service is calling "one of the best wildflower blooms in modern history."....
Legislators vow help for park resident At age 82, Betty Dick figures she doesn't have many more years to live at her seasonal home inside Rocky Mountain National Park. Some members of Congress don't believe that - not from the energy she showed during subcommittee testimony Thursday. Still, they expressed sympathy for her fight against the National Park Service and pledged to push through special legislation blocking her planned eviction this summer. "We don't want to kick Ms. Dick out of her house," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on national parks. "We'll try to expedite this as quickly as we can." Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., brought Dick's cause to Capitol Hill, pushing for legislation to prevent her eviction after a 25-year-old agreement ends July 16. Seated next to a skeptical Park Service official, Dick told the panel about a complicated legal dispute dating to the 1970s that put her in her current predicament....
Baucus seeks buyout of Front leases Montana's congressional Republicans won't sign a letter in which Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., tells owners of Rocky Mountain Front petroleum leases that compensation will be sought if they surrender those leases so the area's natural environment is not disturbed. Baucus on Thursday sent a draft of the letter to the other two members of the state's congressional delegation, Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg, and asked them to sign it. The letter discourages leaseholders from wasting ‘‘years and millions fighting to explore for uncertain — and likely limited — oil and gas reserves'' on federal lands along the Front, a wildlife-rich area where the mountains meet the Plains in western Montana....
Bureau of Land Management takes site down In the latest move related to a long-running dispute over the security of information about the Indian Trust Fund, the Interior Department recently shut down the Bureau of Land Management Web site after an inspector general identified vulnerabilities. Bureau officials took the site off-line April 8, two days after the release of a report from Interior's inspector general, whose investigators found that because of poor network security and weak access controls, "we could have easily compromised the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the identified Indian Trust data residing on such systems." Agency officials said the inspector general’s report prompted the Web site shutdown. Cobell v. Norton is a class-action lawsuit filed almost nine years ago. It involves Interior's oversight of the Indian Trust fund. Plaintiffs have accused Interior officials of doing a poor job of protecting trust data from hackers....
EPA Nominee Blocked Over 'Clear Skies' Test President Bush's widely praised nomination of Stephen L. Johnson to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency hit a roadblock yesterday when a lone Democratic senator placed a hold on the career scientist's confirmation. Johnson had received an enthusiastic welcome from environmentalists, industry advocates and both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill even as his confirmation faced some obstacles. Yesterday's hold was placed by Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), who has long demanded that the EPA conduct scientific reviews of two legislative plans introduced in recent years as alternatives to President Bush's signature air pollution proposal, the "Clear Skies" initiative. Carper said he would not lift the hold until the EPA gave him an "ironclad" guarantee it would evaluate the other plans....
Column: Texans turning to Legislature for protection of private property Embedded in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a fundamental protection for landowners and homeowners: Private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. Public entities are entitled to take property when there is a demonstrable public good — such as condemning property for use as road right of ways, new schools and flood control. If private property is taken this way, people who own the land are guaranteed a just compensation. In 1995, we passed SB 14 to accomplish that purpose. As environmental regulations in some parts of our state have grown more stringent over the past two decades or so, the definition of what constitutes "takings" has blurred. We are at a critical point where some types of environmental regulations are, in effect, takings because they cause dramatic devaluation of private property. If such regulations are for the betterment of the general public, then the landowner who pays a dear price in loss of value should, under both state and federal constitutions, be compensated fairly. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Austin....
U.S. denies having 2 BSE cases in 1997 The U.S. Department of Agriculture admits there were problems with the samples taken from two cows in 1997, but insists the animals did not have mad cow disease. Ron DeHaven, administrator of the USDA's Animal and Plant Inspection Service, said that while key parts of the animals' brains needed to make an accurate diagnosis were missing and not tested, it was better to test what they had. "We had two choices: run the tests with the samples that we had, or not run them at all," DeHaven said "If we had something to hide, we could make an argument for not running the samples at all. "In this case, we chose to run the samples with the tissues that we had and subject them to three different tests to compensate for the fact that we may not have the perfect tissues."....
Cattlemen Tip Their Hats to the President in Oval Office Meeting Cattle industry leaders representing the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) met with President Bush today in the White House’s Oval Office and presented him with a sand-colored beaver cowboy hat as thanks for the president’s support of America’s cattlemen. NCBA President Jim McAdams, President-Elect Mike John, Vice President John Queen, along with CEO Terry Stokes, Vice President of Government Affairs Jay Truitt and Executive Director of Legislative Affairs Bryan Dierlam joined the president for a rare Oval Office meeting this afternoon. “We supported the president during his campaign and we celebrated when he won a second term in office,” says McAdams, who – like the president – hails from Texas. “We wanted to present him with this hat as an inauguration gift and thank him for all he’s done for cattle ranchers across the country.” Included in the cattlemen’s delegation were Trent and Melissa Johnson of Greeley Hat Works in Greeley, Colo., who made the president’s cowboy hat. Johnson says the president’s hat is truly one-of-a-kind with a solid gold "W" etched on a custom silver buckle and featuring Bush's name embroidered on the inside of a multi-colored sweatband....
Inaugural Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo The rough and tumble world of ranch rodeo takes on a softer side as the inaugural Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo makes its debut at the 2005 Cowboy Roundup USA at the Tri-State Fairgrounds in Amarillo, Texas, June 4. "Cowboy Roundup USA has a tremendous 18-year history of celebrating the cowboy spirit," said CRR chair Phyllis Payne. "The Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo will take that celebration to the next another, recognizing the tremendous contributions of women to our region's ranching heritage and Western culture." The Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo is designed to showcase the ranch work skills of women in five events - sorting, branding, doctoring, team tying and a ranch horse competition - similar to their male counterparts who compete in the Coors Ranch Rodeo, which is the anchor event of Cowboy Roundup USA weekend. Each team of four women will earn points toward bragging rights of being named the championship team, plus championship buckles and other awards from sponsors. Cowgirl Ranch Rodeo is open to women who live on a ranch, work on a ranch, or who are ranch-raised and spend extra time working on a family ranching operation....
Cowboy Era Lives Again in Lavish Festival Near Edgewood Who says the Wild West is dead? The rough-and-tumble days of yesteryear will come to life from April 28 to May 1 when more than 2,000 authentically dressed cowboys, mountain men, 19th-century soldiers and pioneers descend on the Edgewood area for the World Championships in Cowboy Action Shooting. No need to worry about random bullets flying, however. The 24th annual End of Trail championships and Wild West Jubilee is a civilized affair the whole family can enjoy. Sponsored by the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), the four-day event is making its debut on SASS' new 480-acre Founders Ranch southwest of Edgewood. The ranch, purchased in January 2004, will become the permanent home of the event. With a theme of "Enchanted West: The History of Old West New Mexico," visitors and participants alike will get a full-scale immersion in the cowboy lifestyle of the late 1800s. Activities include historical re-enactments, equestrian events, cavalry encampments, cowboy music and poetry, gunfighter stunt shows, educational seminars, stagecoach and buggy rides, chuckwagon cooking competitions and trick roping....

Don't forget to send every damn thing you made last year to the IRS!

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