NEWS ROUNDUP

Score One for the Desert In 1997 passions over a reddish, muffin-size bird were beginning to boil over in the Arizona desert. The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, its population in the state down to a dozen and clinging to the last patches of saguaro cactus not yet swallowed up by Tucson's booming suburbs, had just received federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists and developers were already embroiled in a legal battle over the site of a high school to be built on one of the bird's few remaining nesting grounds. Construction was temporarily halted after a pygmy owl was spotted in the vicinity. Leslie Dierauf, then a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist based at the agency's regional headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, could see trouble brewing. The pygmy owl was on the verge of becoming the Southwest's version of the northern spotted owl—whose status as an endangered species briefly brought the Northwest's logging industry to a halt in the early 1990s. She turned to a colleague one day and said, “They [county officials] don't know how difficult this listing is going to be.”....
Can't see the forest for the budget cuts Hikers, bikers, campers and others who enjoy U.S. Forest Service lands in Colorado may lose some of their favorite sites to budget cuts during the next three years. Cuts of 45 percent in facility maintenance and operations are expected in forests nationwide, going from a budget of $214 million this year to $117 million by 2006. "Absolutely, we are looking at the possibility of closing some campgrounds and trails in Colorado and other forests in our region," said Steve Sherwood, Rocky Mountain regional recreation, heritage and wilderness director. The region, which includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, already has a $7.9 million maintenance and operations backlog, Sherwood said. Jim Moe, budget coordinator in the Rocky Mountain regional headquarters in Lakewood, said such funds are expected to drop from $22 million in 2004 to around $11 million in 2006 in the five-state region. Some forest users and environmental groups blame President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, aimed at thinning dry Western forests, for diverting money away from the maintenance of forest facilities....
Report: Wyoming development threatens park air quality Rapid energy development in western Wyoming is the biggest threat to pristine air quality for the larger Yellowstone area, and money for monitoring the pollution may be harder to come by, according to a new report. Air quality in Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding federal lands is still "generally excellent," but emissions from expanding energy development in southwest Wyoming pose concerns for nearby wilderness areas, said the report by a group of federal and state scientists. Aside from finding ways to preserve the monitoring programs, agencies should also put more manpower toward analyzing and tracking the effects of energy development in Wyoming, the report said. Already, staffs are stretched thin trying to respond to fast-paced development in Wyoming and Colorado. The report was prepared by the Greater Yellowstone Clean Air Partnership, which includes scientists from the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey and the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality....
10 more large air tankers returning to duty for wildfire season The government is allowing 10 large air tankers to return to the federal firefighting fleet, and more are possible pending a study on the life expectancy of some of the aircraft, a spokeswoman with the National Interagency Fire Center said Monday. Rose Davis said contracts have been awarded for seven P-3 Orions, as well as a DC-7 and two P-2Vs. But, she said the latter three will have data-gathering devices that will help officials determine the stresses of the firefighting environment. Additional large air tankers may also be cleared for service following the results of a study assessing operational service life of the P-2Vs, she said. The report is expected in June and would affect nine aircraft owned by private companies, Davis said....
Editorial: Biscuit Fire Salvage? - Never - The Radicals Will Win This Fight Environmental activists have a well tested strategy for winning their battles. Debate, Delay, Demonstrate, Litigate. The Biscuit Fire is history...so is any likelihood that useful timber within the 500,000 acre wildfire will ever be harvested. The process of preventing log harvest from the Biscuit Fire has been methodical...as usual. Similar to stuffing the ballot box, the US Forest Service's mailbox has been stuffed with logging protest letters, neatly organized and delivered by environmental activists from Southern Oregon to timbuctoo. While most of Southern Oregon has been gainfully employed, activists arrive from the far reaches of the universe to participate in the latest protest. These people seem to have an excess amount of time on their hands...and a yearning to engage in efforts to disrupt the normal workings of ecosystem stewardship vested in government and private land owners. So...they do their thing....
Old-growth forests gain ground The Northwest's old-growth forests, focus of a national showdown on the environment in the 1980s, are growing back. About 600,000 more acres of older forest now stand on the west sides of Oregon, Washington and California compared with 10 years ago, according to a new federal analysis of forest growth and logging on public lands. Whether all those trees qualify as old growth depends on how it is defined. They are not all the ancient giants dripping with moss often pictured on calendars, but they have grown larger than 20 inches in diameter and begun to offer the kind of habitat preferred by species such as the northern spotted owl. The findings reveal that much larger expanses of the region's prized older forests are growing back than are being cut down or burned in wildfires. The results, already reviewed by independent scientists, will be presented -- and debated -- starting Tuesday at a Portland conference reviewing the first decade of the Northwest Forest Plan, a 1994 compromise between logging and wildlife protection....
Feds endorse Wash. salmon recovery plan Federal authorities endorsed the first formal plan for restoring salmon species in the Columbia River basin — more than a decade after the first runs were declared threatened and endangered. The recovery plan endorsed Monday by the National Marine Fisheries Service calls for restoring salmon species such as chum and chinook as well as steelhead trout in watersheds that drain into the lower Columbia River. The plan includes analyzing fishing, hatchery management and hydroelectric operations to determine how the fish populations were prevented from expanding over the years and strategies for overcoming those obstacles. "This really does mark a turning point in the story of salmon management in the Northwest," said Rob Masonis, regional director for American Rivers, a conservation group. "For a long time, we've been focused on preventing stocks from going extinct. Now we are talking about trying to recover abundant populations that are fishable." Other recovery proposals are expected from Oregon, Idaho and the rest of Washington state by the end of the year. The fisheries service plans to roll those plans into a comprehensive initiative to be finalized next year, officials said....
New Slide May Help Salmon Cross Dams. But Are They Being Taken for a Ride? A giant hunk of steel that creates a slick waterslide for endangered salmon traversing the Ice Harbor Dam here, with a $20 million price tag, is at the center of the latest fight over the Bush administration's salmon recovery plan in the Pacific Northwest. The device, called a removable spillway weir, weighs 1.7 million pounds. This one was barged in February up the Snake River, where endangered species of young salmon and steelhead must cross up to eight federal hydropower dams on their long and potentially deadly journey to the Pacific Ocean. With the administration having decided late last year against removing four dams on the Lower Snake River, including Ice Harbor near this bucolic southeastern Washington town, government scientists and officials say the heavily disputed weir technology holds great hope for easing more fish safely through dams. The weirs also spill less water, saving millions of dollars for the hydropower industry. Spilling water to send salmon over the dams can be expensive for the industry, because that water is not used to produce electricity....
Developers bothered by habitat-protection process Developers on Monday blasted local agencies' handling of a sweeping plan to create 153,000 acres of endangered-species reserves in western Riverside County. The regional habitat conservation plan was supposed to bring clarity and predictability to the complicated process of setting aside land for protecting wildlife, but instead has delivered only confusion, building representatives said at a workshop hosted by the county Board of Supervisors. Many developers had supported the plan's creation because it aimed to clarify where they would be allowed to build and what requirements they would face if building in an environmentally sensitive area. The plan was supposed to speed up the process of getting approvals for building. Ten months after state and federal officials signed off on the $1 billion plan, developers said they are left with more questions than answers. Developers added that processing development plans is taking far more time and costing much more money than anticipated....
Column: Oregon's Coho Salmon Are Partying Tonight - They're Not Going Extinct After All The Ninth District Court of Appeals announced on Tuesday, February 24, 2004, that it is throwing out the Endangered Species Act "threatened" listing of Oregon coastal coho salmon. There's going to be a lot of crow to eat by State and Federal agency operatives, Oregon editorialists and environmentalists who foisted this ESA travesty on the people of Oregon and on the resource based industries of this state. Right at the top of my crow-eating list is former Governor John Kitzhaber. This governor spent eight years in office pushing the radical environmental salmon agenda. What did he gain for the state? Economic disaster. Kitzhaber's fixation with saving un-threatened salmon ushered in a calamitous loss of timber industry jobs, countless costs for litigation expenses by resource based industries and an era of economically threatened Oregon communities....
Register Rock's future may depend on price More than a century ago, wagon train travelers scrawled names, dates, even ''Wife Wanted'' in axle grease on the granite pinnacles lining this popular stopover on the trail to California's gold fields. ''There are thousands of names here,'' pioneer Richard Augustus Keen wrote in an 1852 journal entry. ''I registered mine on a large rock.'' Much of the historic graffiti is preserved in the National Park Service's City of Rocks National Reserve 200 miles southeast of Boise. But a sign reading ''Private Property No Trespassing'' sits in front of Register Rock, the towering gray monolith that contains the best-preserved inscriptions. And a sagging red-and-white ''For Sale'' sign in the sagebrush has been getting much of the attention in the federal park lately....
L.A. Still in a Water Fight State officials and environmentalists are urging a judge to sanction the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for falling behind in its efforts to restore a 62-mile stretch of the Lower Owens River. The restoration project, the largest habitat rehabilitation effort proposed in the West, aims to create a healthy ecosystem in a river channel that now is mostly dry, except for the occasional puddle. The plan calls for a flowing river to support a fishery and extensive wetlands for shorebirds and ducks. The effort is already two years behind schedule. Inyo County Superior Court Judge Lee Cooper on April 25 will consider the lawsuit, which accuses the DWP of placing a higher priority on saving money and water than on meeting its legal obligations....
An auction stop that hits the spot Forget "where's the beef." Harold Bradshaw can tell how much beef just by looking at a cow. It's a skill the Beaver resident has refined after more than 30 years of buying livestock at auctions throughout Utah. But before the bidding begins - every Thursday at 11 a.m. - at the Cedar Livestock Market, Bradshaw gathers with ranchers and other buyers next door for breakfast at the Market Grill, where they talk turkey about the business of selling and buying cattle, goats, sheep and horses....
It's All Trew: State's pioneers waltzed across Texas My unofficial poll shows that about half the people enjoy dancing and the other half do not dance. The reasons, pro and con, number like the leaves on the trees with religious beliefs against dancing numbering the greatest. A bit of research found the following information. According to the book. "Dance Across Texas" by Betty Casey, Texans enjoyed public dancing as early as July 19, 1832, even before there was a Texas. A printed invitation at Brazoria announced a dance and ball honoring "the triumph and cause" of the Constitution with "everybody invited and no one slighted." They wore Sunday dress, homespun and leather, and proceeded to "stomp the splinters off the split-log floors."....

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