NEWS ROUNDUP

Indian ranchers battling over grazing rates American Indian ranchers are involved in a long legal battle over reservation grazing rates. The disputes usually have centered on whether the Bureau of Indian Affairs illegally tried to increase rates in the middle of contracts. the BIA sent out a notice of a rate increase to members of the Fort Berthold Land and Livestock Association in 1999. Solly Danks said the BIA proposed raising the $4.30 per animal unit lease rate to $6.92 per animal unit. Attorney Sarah Vogel calls it "torture of the Native American rancher by the BIA.'" "They don't know what their rates will be, don't know if they have a half-million dollars liability for prior years, don't know whether to sell their cows or whether they should breed. It's outrageous mismanagement by the federal government," she said....
Critics say new BLM rules won't save wild horses from slaughter Safeguards adopted by the Bureau of Land Management last week to protect wild horses removed from federal lands in the West are not strict enough to keep the mustangs out of slaughterhouses, critics said Tuesday. "The protections are very weak, surprisingly weak," said Nancy Perry, vice president of the Humane Society of the United States. "They will not stop horses from being sold for slaughter." Advocacy groups want the Senate to approve a measure passed by the House last week to reinstate full protection for the horses under a 1971 law - prohibiting sales outside the BLM's adoption program....
Tiller huckleberries get special status American Indians once spent late summer and fall gathering huckleberries near Tiller. They'd camp until the first frost, drying the berries on a flat, hot rock to provide food for winter. Over the years, fire repression has allowed conifers to begin encroaching in the open old growth forests and around the perimeter of meadows where the berries thrive. Left alone, young trees could eventually shade out native plants. To preserve the "Huckleberry Patch" area, the U.S. Forest Service is in the process of designating as a special interest area a 9,500-acre swath of land that straddles the Tiller Ranger District and Prospect Ranger District, part of the Rogue River National Forest. The designation will allow land managers to conduct projects that benefit huckleberries, such as prescribed burning or thinning to create meadows, which would also benefit wildlife that need open areas, such as deer, elk and songbirds. The agency could also install interpretive signs to inform visitors of the huckleberry tradition in the area....
BLM report calls for restoring marbled murrelet population An effort to revamp the bird's population is the mainstay of a report released today by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Coos Bay office. The draft outlines a multi-million-dollar proposal aimed at restoring natural resources to levels existing before more than 70,000 gallons of oil spewed from the 660-foot cargo ship. With about $4 million in funds reaped from a lawsuit settlement with the New Carissa owners, Green Atlas Shipping S.A., and its insurance company, along with an as-yet undetermined sum of federal money earmarked for oil spill recovery, the plan calls for acquisition of almost 1,300 acres of private timberland from willing sellers. But the acreage figure is likely to end up being three to five times greater, Mangan said, because the plan calls for purchase land surrounding murrelet habitat. He said that's a measure to avoid the creation of island parcels, which are likely to be surrounded by access roads....
Riders hosting lecture on land access, forest trails Horse trail riders plan to hold an informational lecture tonight in Goreville about the controversy over private land access to public trails in the Shawnee National Forest. Scott said many private lots in Southern Illinois border the Shawnee National Forest, and a good portion of them are used by horse riders, who pay top dollar in property taxes to have that proximity. Riders fear the forest service is considering a policy that restricts private-path access to the public trails and would have some horse riders hauling their trailers and trucks miles to the starting point of the trails, even though forest land may sit adjacent to their back yards. Scott said the U.S. Forest Service has been particularly heavy-handed in addressing trail riders' concerns, which he plans to address in his lecture....

Western Coalition Defeats Another Major Endangered Species Listing A Western coalition of agriculture, small business, industry, recreation, local government and property right advocates are applauding Friday's decision by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service not to add the Pygmy Rabbit to the federal Endangered Species list. The pygmy rabbit decision is the second major defeat for environmental activists on endangered species listings this year, following the refusal by federal officials in January to place the Greater Sage-grouse on the endangered list. The Partnership for the West spearheaded campaigns in both cases to convince federal officials that the listings would be harmful to the species because they would chill state and local conservation efforts. "This is first and foremost a victory for the pygmy rabbit," said Diane Hoppe, Chair of the Partnership for the West grassroots alliance and a Colorado State legislator. "Given that less than one percent of all species that get placed on the federal Endangered Species list actually recover to biological health, a listing for pygmy rabbit would probably have spelled doom for this species....
Western governors to meet in Breckenridge Governors from 18 western states and three Pacific territories will descend on Breckenridge June 12-14 for the annual Western Governors Association conference. Colorado is host because Gov. Bill Owens' is chairman of the group. The conference focus is on the Western economy and the role it plays in the U. S. economy, energy and the West's role in international trade, according to the Western Governors Web site. Mexico President Vincente Fox is invited, but the keynote speaker is unconfirmed, according to a preliminary agenda posted on the Web site. The agenda also lists U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, who oversees the National Forest Service, as a speaker....
Water, anger rise as a result of flow test The Bureau of Reclamation has begun a flow test experiment at Flaming Gorge Dam to assess endangered fish species in conditions designed to mimic the natural flow of the Green River downstream from the dam. But the high-water conditions are also creating something else downstream: anger. With flows increased to a maximum 4,600 cubic feet per second out of the dam and as high as 19,500 cfs at Jensen, Uintah County officials say farms along the Green River are being flooded, and crops are being ruined, and that their pleas to reduce the higher flows have gone unheeded....
Column: $30-Million & Counting The Stupidity The US Bureau of Reclamation now estimates that removal of Savage Rapids Dam, located on the Rogue River in Southern Oregon, will cost an astonishing $30-Million. With BoR's foreknowledge that this dam does not kill the very salmon and steelhead its removal is supposedly going to protect, this dam removal project is a testimonial to the corruption of environmentalism. This dam removal project is also a testimonial to the infinite stupidity of the US Government, and to the environmental complicity of the media. Removing Savage Rapids Dam was the brainchild of Bob Hunter, founder and former executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon. Hunter is now just a staff attorney for this environmental law firm that he founded. Hunter personally led the efforts of radical enviros who wanted to remove Savage Rapids Dam. I know Hunter personally, and I have complete contempt for him and his "environmental" organization....
Feds reject Utah appeal The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Tuesday rejected Utah's appeal to thwart the stockpiling of spent nuclear fuel rods at an American Indian reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The ruling comes after an appeals hearing in April, when the state argued that radiation could escape from waste casks if an outer protective shield was breached -- even if the interior lead-lined canister holding the fuel rods remained fully intact. The Goshute tribe is trying to build a waste station for spent rods at the tribe's reservation in Skull Valley....
GAO finds room for improvement in FWS science The US Fish and Wildlife Service must do more to integrate new research into ongoing species management decisions, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. Despite its conclusion, the congressional watchdog office found that the agency generally used the best available information in making such decisions. The GAO cites an instance when the Bureau of Land Management eliminated sheep grazing on tortoise habitat in California, but neither the bureau nor FWS ensured that necessary research was conducted to assess if this action actually benefited the tortoise. “Unless managers link research findings to recovery actions, they cannot develop a scientific basis to make decisions about whether land use restrictions—such as limiting grazing or other activities in tortoise habitat—should remain unchanged, be strengthened, or whether alternative actions are more appropriate,” the report states....
Editorial: High court errs on beef checkoff But the ruling in our view makes it all too easy for government to compel support for a type of advertising, and drown out any dissent. Is it any wonder dairy farmers who object to the "Got Milk?" promotion, also paid with fees, filed a brief in the case? The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled in favor of the ranchers, following a 2001 Supreme Court case that invalidated a very similar promotional plan for mushroom growers. But the beef checkoff is different, the high court said, because the beef promotion program was created by Congress, and its content is entirely under the control of the Department of Agriculture. Therefore, whatever is being said to promote generic beef is government speech, and thus immune to the First Amendment argument. Why, who knew? The ads don't say they're brought to you by the U.S. government. And as Justice David Souter said in his dissent, why would anyone even think to look? "No one hearing a commercial for Pepsi or Levi's thinks Uncle Sam is the man talking behind the curtain," Justice David Souter wrote. As long as the government's role is so obscured, Souter said, the ranchers should not be compelled to pay for spreading a message they don't want to be associated with. We agree....
Japan Gov't Asks Food Commission to Rule on U.S. Beef Trade Japan's agriculture and health ministries have asked the country's Food Safety Commission to rule whether it is safe to import and consume U.S. beef, a decision that could lead to the end of Japan's 17-monthlong ban on the meat. ``We have asked the Food Safety Commission to determine if resuming U.S. beef imports under certain conditions can endanger Japan's food safety,'' Kazuhiro Yoshida, a food safety official at the agriculture ministry, said today in Tokyo. The commission's agreement that U.S. beef poses no health risk to Japanese consumers is one of the steps necessary before Japan will resume imports of beef from the U.S....
Vampire bats plague cattle, cheer scientists Cattleman Francisco Oliva was on a roundup - of vampire bats. After a swarm of the blood-slurping creatures dive-bombed his herd and drank their fill one recent night, he corralled several dozen of them in special contraptions that look like giant badminton nets. He put each bat in a cage and then applied a poison called vampirin to their backs with a brush before releasing them. Back in the bat roost, the animals would be groomed by as many as 20 other bats, causing their deaths. (Or so Oliva hoped.) "We have to look for answers, because this little animal is very stubborn," Oliva said days after the capture, surveying his 300-head herd, most of them bearing bat-fang markings and red stains from the nightly bloodletting. Oliva said he would exterminate every single bat if he could....
Rare white bison born in B.C. A buffalo rancher near Fort St. John in northeastern B.C. is bracing for scores of visitors following the recent birth of a rare white calf. It's only been a few days since the birth was announced, but rancher Karen Blatz says people are already dropping by to take a look. And Blatz says she expects those numbers will grow as word gets out. "This is the first white calf that was born in Canada. I know there was a few in the States but not too many." When a white bison was born in Wisconsin in 1994, half a million people turned out to see it. Aboriginal legend holds that the white bison is a harbinger of peace and unity. And in that spirit, Blatz says she has named the male calf Spirit of Peace. "To them a white buffalo is a symbol of hope, rebirth or unity and also peace. And because he was born north of Peace River, we thought Peace would be a good name."....
Hyde to sign his new book Dayton O. Hyde will kick-off his book signing tour of his new novel from Arcade Publishing, "The Pastures of Beyond, An Old Cowboy Looks Back At The Old West" on Saturday, May 28 from 12 noon to 2 p.m. at the Black Hills Books & Treasures in Hot Springs. The Old West lives in Dayton Hyde, an authentic American original whose colorful tales of cowboys, Indians, and the horses they rode have the grace of poetry and the power of myth....
Rodeo fans mourn loss of cowboy Dick Hemsted, 81 The rodeo was Dick Hemsted's life. He was, simply put, a cowboy's cowboy. And he came from good stock. The 81-year-old Hemsted died Friday at his Anderson ranch. He was a Redding native and a well-known rodeo stock contractor. Hemsted was a longtime central figure in the annual Redding Rodeo and the Red Bluff Round-Up, among other rodeos. "He was a real legend around these parts," said Jan Mikkelson, Hemsted's niece. A touching tribute was paid to Hemsted during this weekend's Redding Rodeo as a riderless horse was escorted around the arena. More tributes are planned during rodeos throughout the West....

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