NEWS ROUNDUP

Governors' input allowed on roadless areas New guidelines for managing the nation's public forests received wildly mixed reviews Thursday, with industry cheering and conservationists preparing for a fight. The Bush administration's rule, which pulls states into the controversy regarding roadless lands, "represents a better way," said U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey. Rey met with reporters in a Thursday morning teleconference, saying the battle over how best to manage roadless lands dates back some four decades. Several administrations have tackled the issue, he said, trying to determine how to handle lands that have not yet been roaded, logged, mined or drilled, but also have not yet been protected with wilderness designations. Nationwide, he said, some 58 million roadless acres are in administrative limbo, with 97 percent of that land in 12 Western states. The new rule, crafted by the Bush administration and announced by Rey on Thursday, rolled back roadless protections, replacing the Clinton rule with a process allowing individual governors to help design state-specific roadless plans. States have 18 months to petition the federal government with a roadless proposal. If a governor does not make a petition to be involved, the chore will fall to the Forest Service. The new rule also creates "advisory committees," Rey said, to help produce the state-specific management plans....
Labor Unions Support Bush Administration's Final Roadless Rule "The unions of the Forest Products Industry National Labor Management Committee and our 500,000 members applaud the Bush Administration's decision to finalize the so-called Roadless Rule. The previous Rule was an unworkable policy that would have done more harm than good to our national forests. "As announced earlier today, the new Rule returns the decisions that will guide management of the forests to the local level -- to the people who live near the land and know it, and its needs, the best. This is best done through local community involvement in the development of individual forest plans and the new rule will ensure this principle."....
Wolves kill three bear hounds in northern Idaho Wolves from a north Idaho pack have killed three bear hounds in the latest clash between hunters in this rural state and four-legged predators reintroduced into Idaho in the mid 1990s. The number of wolves in the state is expected to exceed 450 with this year's litter of new pups. Travis Reggear, a professional hunter in Orofino, Idaho, said he and nine Walker hounds were with clients Tuesday on the third day of the black bear season north of the Dworshak Reservoir. All nine dogs set off after a bear but only six re-emerged from a steep, heavily wooded slope on land managed by the Idaho Department of Lands, Reggear said Wednesday. Reggear, who said he never saw the wolves, wants federal and state officials to either relocate the wolves or kill them. He believes members of the Chesimia pack killed three of his dogs earlier this year as they were used by another Reggear Outfitters employee to pursue mountain lion in the same area. Disputes over wolves have galvanized ranchers and hunters across Idaho -- and across the West. The battle is often framed as a fight over property rights....
Wildlife panel OKs wolf return The Colorado Wildlife Commission on Thursday set a course toward reconciliation with an old enemy: the wolf. The Wildlife Commission, which sets policy for the state Division of Wildlife, agreed to accept the return of the migrating predators from Yellowstone National Park and to formalize a plan to manage the state's first packs. The vote on the policy, set forth in a report by the Wolf Working Group, a panel of sportsmen, ranchers and conservation groups, was unanimous....
Silver State, feds fight over burning sage grouse habitat State wildlife officials denounced federal land managers’ plans Thursday to burn as much as 2,000 acres of sagebrush-covered rangeland in Northern Nevada that is home to the troubled sage grouse. Nevada Division of Wildlife officials urged U.S. Forest Service officials to postpone plans to set the fires 40 miles northeast of Winnemucca, saying the prescribed burn could harm populations of the dwindling game bird during prime nesting season. “We’re not opposed to prescribed burns, but they should be done in the late winter or early spring, not when birds are on their nests,” Wildlife Division spokesman Chris Healy said Thursday. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists in Nevada share the state’s concerns about the timing of the project, said Jody Brown, the agency’s deputy field director. Most of the area to be burned is in Humboldt County near the Santa Rosa mountains and is high quality sagebrush habitat — much of it favorable to nesting and brood rearing, Healy said. Forest Service officials insist they’ll take care not to burn the birds or their nests and that the fires will improve grouse habitat over time....
FS considers privatizing work of informing public The jobs of Forest Service employees who give information to the public are being scrutinized to see whether they might be better handled by private public relations firms. The evaluation is part of a process that the Bush administration says could "increase the cost-effectiveness of Forest Service work," according to agency memos. But a national government employee watchdog group - Public Employees for Environmental Responsibil-ity - said this is a ploy to manipulate information. "Civil servants are under a legal obligation to tell the public the truth while PR firms specialize in shading it. Outsourcing the public information function risks putting a premium on spin at the expense of candor," said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. Ruch said the plan calls for surveying 700 of the agency's informational positions, with an eye on putting 100 of those jobs out to bid at private public relations firms. The Forest Service would make decisions this fall, and contractors could be in place by January. He said hundreds of other Forest Service positions may be subject to similar privatization in 2006....
Federal land agencies plan to restrict off-road vehicles in West For decades, off-road vehicle enthusiasts have been mostly free to roam federal forests and rangelands at will. But their freewheeling days could be numbered. In a move expected to generate controversy, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are developing plans to restrict the vehicles to designated routes and areas. Federal officials say the proposal is essential to curb environmental damage and ease conflict among users of public lands. Nationally, they cite a sevenfold increase from 1972 to 2000 in the number of off-roaders to 36 million....
BLM orders railroad to halt flood repairs The Bureau of Land Management has ordered Union Pacific Railroad to stop repairs to flood-damaged tracks near the Meadow Valley Wash because construction might threaten wilderness and archaeological sites. The track repair work began after a series of severe winter storms caused flooding earlier this year to portions of Lincoln and Clark counties. The BLM has launched a preliminary investigation into whether the railroad violated the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, all federal laws designed to protect sensitive habitats, species and ancient sites of early humans, said BLM spokesman Chris Hanefeld. Biologists, archaeologists and law enforcement officers were in the remote wash on Monday as part of the investigation, Hanefeld said....
Coalition seeks action against rancher A coalition of environmental groups is pressuring federal authorities to crack down on an eastern Arizona rancher who has failed to pay his grazing fees and maintain the grazing land he has leased from the U.S. government. The groups say that rancher Abelardo Martinez has ignored an August order from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests to remove his cattle from Forest Service land. Martinez was given 30 days to remove the livestock, but he has not done so, nor have forest officials carried through on their threats to impound the cattle, the groups state. This week, the groups gave the required 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as Martinez and his son, Dan, who also grazes cattle on forest land....
Environmental sirens in Delta are screaming The Delta's open-water fish populations are mysteriously collapsing in a crisis that threatens to unravel the food web of the West Coast's largest estuary. Delta smelt, already a threatened species, fell last fall to the lowest level ever measured. Same with young striped bass, according to the results of annual surveys by the California Department of Fish and Game. And the key food source for small fish in the Delta, tiny organisms called copepods, are plummeting as well, with numbers of a key species falling to extremely low levels. The rapid, multispecies decline could trigger measures that might affect water quality and supply from Contra Costa County to Southern California. Scientists say information in a number of different surveys of the Delta and Suisun Marsh revealed an ongoing, sweeping population crash that could not be explained by drought or any other easily identifiable cause....
Bush plan to tap Nevada land sales money resurfaces in Congress A Bush administration plan to divert federal land sale profits out of Nevada has resurfaced in Congress. "We still think it's a fair proposal," said John Scofield, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. The panel on Wednesday directed Interior Secretary Gale Norton to report how the government has spent money from lucrative land sales conducted under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998. President Bush in February asked Congress to change the law requiring all land sale revenues to be spent in Nevada. The administration proposal would instead funnel 70 percent of profits to the U.S. Treasury, leaving Nevada with 30 percent....
Sparse support shown in Las Vegas for big water pipeline plan Just one of more than 100 people raised a hand at a public meeting to show support for a plan to build a $2 billion pipeline to supply water from rural counties to southern Nevada. Others providing public comment Wednesday said that before building the pipeline to White Pine County, the Southern Nevada Water Authority should consider controlling growth, increasing water conservation and making deals to get more water from the Colorado River or by desalinating Pacific Ocean water. Jerald Anderson worried that pumping underground water and piping it 240 miles south to Clark County could wipe out wildlife and family owned ranches and farms....
Soaking up knowledge More than 500 fourth-grade students from every elementary school in Carlsbad are learning all about water at the first Children’s Water Festival. The children gathered Thursday for the start of the two-day event at the Pecos River Village Conference Center, where they learned about water agreements, erosion, conservation, water safety testing, run off and much more. The event was sponsored by the New Mexico Association of Conservation Districts, said Amber Hughes, who wrote a grant to the federal Bureau of Reclamation to fund the event. “Students will negotiate water-sharing agreements and purify water from the Pecos River,” she said. “They’ll look for ‘bugs’ in the water to determine its purity, create a mini-river and use a groundwater model to ‘see’ how water moves underground.”....
Column: Jagged Little Drill When the energy bill sailed through the House of Representatives late last month, the media reported that it was the same old grotesquely corpulent package that the GOP leadership had previously tried -- and failed -- to pass through Congress four times in the last four years. This is true. But what flew under the radar were a few new provisions snuck in at the 11th hour by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chair of the House Resources Committee, which have made the bill even more environmentally threatening than previous versions, many Democrats and environmentalists say. The environmental statute Pombo is targeting this time: the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, long considered a cornerstone of U.S. environmental law. A Pombo-backed amendment sponsored by Rep. John Peterson (R-Penn.) and added to the bill the day before markup would allow energy companies to skirt NEPA requirements in a number of situations, with the aim of speeding energy development on federal land. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee, told Muckraker it would grant the energy industry "carte blanche to conduct drilling and exploration activities on public lands without any kind of meaningful environmental review, and remove the legal grounds for scientists, communities, and local governments to intercede. It is an affront to the American people."....
State mineral rights bill likely to pass Environmentalists say they'll fight a bill that passed in the U.S. House on Thursday and is expected to pass the Senate next week, a measure they fear will open the Gulf Islands National Seashore to oil and gas exploration and drilling. U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., introduced an amendment to a defense and tsunami-relief spending bill that he said clarifies Mississippi's rights to any oil and gas underneath the federal Gulf Islands National Seashore, or Barrier Islands. State leaders pushing to explore and tap the state's offshore oil and gas reserves said Mississippi already had these rights, and asked Cochran to help intervene to prevent any litigation with the National Park Service, which questioned the state's rights to test and drill. Cochran's provision says the state retains the mineral rights to the islands it deeded to the federal park system in the early 1970s, and has the right to perform seismic testing in and around the islands and to extract minerals through "directional drilling," as long as it's done from outside the one-mile protective barrier around the islands....
Will wood help fill US energy needs? Forget corn processing. Don't wait for switch grass. The real key to producing enough ethanol for America's cars and trucks this century is wood. That's the contention of researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY). By revamping the way paper is made, they've found an economical way to extract important energy-rich sugars from the trees and then convert these sugars into ethanol, a gasoline additive, and other useful chemicals. It's a process the researchers call a biorefinery. Installed at the nation's paper mills, biorefineries could produce 2.4 billion gallons of ethanol a year, they estimate, or 80 percent of the nation's projected need this year....
Growers say it with organic flowers To many Americans, Mother's Day means three things: brunch, a card and flowers. But few doting sons and daughters realize that producing those pretty posies is one of the most pesticide- and poison-intensive agricultural endeavors on the planet. Organic flowers don't look or smell any different from non-organic flowers. And there's no good evidence that they're any healthier for the lucky recipient. But they are better for the environment, and especially for the tens of thousands of workers, most of them young women, who work in floral greenhouses in Central and South America, says Martha Olson Jarocki of the Pesticide Action Network. "Flowers are such a high-value crop that it takes a huge amount of pesticides to make them perfect," she says. That includes dousing them with insecticides, fungicides and growth regulators, Jarocki says, and fumigation with toxic methyl bromide....damn, we can't even celebrate Mother's Day without engendering environmental wrath....
'Dean of bootmakers' passes away at 93 A couple of years ago, Schuyler Jones overheard a disgruntled elderly rancher trying to buy boots at a western store. "He had a pile of boots three feet deep lying in front of him, and nothing he tried would fit, according to him," Jones said. "He started swearing and complaining. I was several yards away and heard him say, 'I haven't had a decent pair of books since Carl McDowell retired!' " Such was the reputation of Wichitan Carl McDowell, known as one of the finest bootmakers in the nation and nicknamed "the dean of Kansas bootmakers" by loyal customers, who sought out his hand-shaped soft-leather boots for decades. Mr. McDowell died Saturday at 93. Among his loyal customers were top military and political celebrities. "My father designed a battle boot that (Gen. George) Patton always ordered from us -- and Carl made those. He also made a pair of riding boots for Eleanor Roosevelt," Jones said....

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