NEWS ROUNDUP

Old, New West clash on range It's no surprise then, that the county's latest hero is Kit Laney, a rebel rancher who has spent more than a decade fighting federal managers over his right to graze cattle on national forest land. The fact that Laney violated a federal court order, was found guilty of assaulting a Forest Service employee and served five months in federal prison has, if anything, only burnished his reputation. In this part of New Mexico, where the villains' hats are green, not black, Laney's case is a morality tale about how a New West is encroaching upon an old one. "Not all of us agree with everything he did, but we all admire him," said Laura Schneberger, a New Mexico rancher and one of Laney's neighbors. "So many of us who have been in his position have just walked away. He sent a message and got people to pay attention," she said. Laney's case has made few headlines outside the small towns in southern New Mexico, but for ranchers across the West, it has struck a chord. Michael Martin Murphey, the country-western star, has written a song about Laney that will be featured on his next recording, "Storm Over the Rangelands," meant to portray an industry in trouble because of overregulation....
Cow Mutilation Investigator Says Truth Is Out There Human researchers, not Martians, likely mysteriously mutilated cattle in the Southwest during the 1970s and 1980s. That's what a retired police officer tells Action 7 News. He would like to say more, but he says the topic is too "sensitive." "It's solved. I know who did it," said Gabe Valdez, a retired New Mexico State Police officer. "I don't want to go on too much, because it's so sensitive – the research that we're doing." "It's humans," he said, "not UFOs or Satanic groups or people from Mars – it was humans," Valdez said. "It's taken me 30 years to figure it out," Valdez said. "It has been solved as far as I'm concerned." Valdez said he believes researchers carried out the acts – using helicopters. He won't offer any clues as to who specifically killed the cattle....
Desert blooms This spring, it's a dislocating experience to climb one of the big rises of Interstate 70 overlooking the vast desert badlands of western Colorado and eastern Utah. They aren't there. A brilliant green sheen covers what's usually an endless expanse of perpetually parched tan and gray earth. "I've been looking for a spring like this for 75 years," said Waldo Wilcox, a Book Cliffs rancher who just retired to Green River. "It's never been this green. It's the prettiest I've ever seen."....
Using Cattle for Noxious Weed Control For many years sheep and goats have been used to control noxious weeds in various parts of the West; but is it possible to train cattle to eat noxious weeds without starving them to do so? Dr. Frederick D. Provenza, P.I., at Utah State University (USU) has been researching this possibility for the past 20 years in a livestock behavior modification program. Now, a field test at Grant Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Deer Lodge, Mont., has piqued the curiosity of a number of ranchers in the Deer Lodge Valley. USU project coordinator, Kathy Voth, says research and successful demonstrations in other areas indicate that behavior of livestock can be effectively modified and managed as an economical alternative to chemicals to enhance and maintain biodiversity in rangelands, restore pastures dominated by invasive plants, and improve wildlife habitat....
Charting vegetation with satellite-based system will help firefighters determine area's risk That computer will show with pinpoint accuracy what vegetation and fuel loads the Hotshots and hand crews will find at the fire. And if it's right, the chief can thank a bunch of volunteers who were out here last week filling in some gaps for the satellite-based system. It's called LANDFIRE — a $40 million effort by six federal agencies to figure out the fire risk for every inch of the country and map it. California and the West should be mapped by 2006, the rest of the country by 2009. Under the program, aerial maps covering most of the country will be divided into pixels, or dots, and coded. Each pixel represents a different land type, Jeske said: oak woodland, chaparral, grassland, old-growth forest and so on. And that's where the volunteer crew comes in. They are spending the summer verifying the conditions in individual pixels across the West. The information gets fed into a computer, and the program assigns the same information to similar pixels across the United States. "We're filling in the gaps," said Ron Hassel, LANDFIRE crew director for the Student Conservation Association, which was walking grass-covered hills of Mount Diablo State Park last week. A New Hampshire-based group that focuses on career and youth development through conservation, the SCA has teams working throughout the West to "ground truth" the federal program....
U.N. mulls the protection of Earth's forests The final meeting of the United Nations Forum on Forests, now under way, could result in firm commitments to protect the world's forests or, some environmentalists worry, merely an agreement to continue negotiations. One member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. forum is international environmental policy expert Matthew Auer, who remains guardedly optimistic that the two-week negotiation will conclude with one or more concrete outcomes, such as a fund to help international organizations and countries protect the world's forests. The forum is scheduled to meet May 16 to 27 at U.N. Headquarters in Manhattan. The U.N. Forum on Forests was created by the U.N. Economic and Social Council in 2000. For this key, current meeting, members of the forum were asked to collect information on the state of the world's forests, to review the effectiveness of the current legally non-binding arrangement and, ultimately, to bolster international commitments to sustainable forest management....
Airtanker pilots sound rare warning about fleet From the father of aerial firefighting to pilots who recently flew through tornadoes of fiery debris in Southern California, aviators are saying the U.S. firefighting fleet is undergoing fundamental, long-term changes that may cost extra lives and homes especially in this populous state. The federal agencies' shift from troubled, aging big airtankers toward more helicopters and small, single-engine planes rather than finding new large airtankers is based on faulty fiscal conclusions and flawed accident statistics, according to several pilots breaking a 50-year-old code of silence in the wake of news reports. The Aerial Firefighting Industry Association, which represents 15 firms that supply planes, maintenance and pilots to government agencies, also is touting a decade-old National Air Tanker Study that showed an overwhelming benefit-to-cost ratio for big airtankers and envisioned a fleet of more than 40 modern aircraft by now....
Arctic oil search moves to new turf, new controversies One is a long-protected portion of Arctic Alaska where a vast freshwater lake is edged by marshes that draw migrating birds from as far as Mexico and Russia. The other is a national wildlife refuge straddling the Arctic Circle, a watery haven for moose, furry mammals, and waterfowl. But underneath both lie what may be some of the largest untapped pools of onshore oil and natural gas in the US. As a result, the two sites represent one of the next crucial frontiers in the nation's expanding energy wars. In many respects, the fight quietly emerging over the two areas - Teshekpuk Lake and the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge - parallels the protracted battle over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). It is energy versus the environment, with elements of caribou and molting birds and native American culture mixed in....
Feedground phaseout proposal takes shape A proposal to phase out some of the state's elk feedgrounds is gaining strength through more details and more answers. But state officials still say there are too many unanswered questions, and critics say the pilot project is too much of a gamble for the state's wildlife. At issue is a proposal to phase out the three feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre River drainage east of Jackson Hole. These feedgrounds, said Lloyd Dorsey of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and other supporters, are the most logical because there is winter range in the area for elk and more can be done to enhance that and additional habitat. What's more, a phaseout of these feedgrounds will serve the state, as it examines another management tool to eradicate brucellosis in wildlife and livestock, supporters say. They say the phaseout would work in concert with a pilot project calling for the capture and testing of elk at the Muddy Creek feedground near Pinedale. Elk testing positive for brucellosis will be killed. The combination of the two projects would allow the state to examine two different approaches and determine their effectiveness, they say....
Federal agency will try to shield plants in path of St. George growth The Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to propose protecting critical habitat for two endangered plants that grow in southern Utah - including habitat in the path of a proposed freeway junction - as part of a legal settlement with a pair of environmental groups. The Center for Biological Diversity and Utah Native Plant Society sued the federal agency in September, demanding it designate critical habitat to protect the Holmgren milkvetch and Shivwits milkvetch, which grow almost exclusively near St. George. Tony Frates, a rare-plant coordinator with the Utah Native Plant Society, said both wildflowers are severely threatened by increasing development....
Arizona's roads being redesigned to protect wildlife Transportation officials are considering redesigning some of Arizona's roads to make them more wildlife-friendly. The changes are being aimed not just at preventing roadkills but at preserving connections for wild animals crossing roads from one large block of desert to another. Four major state highways in southern Arizona could be in line for new, wildlife-friendly designs in the next few years because of a grant just obtained by a Flagstaff researcher. That study will focus on how to make those and other roads in the state more hospitable to birds and mammals. Meanwhile, as much as $10 million could be spent over the next 20 years on making roads safer for wildlife under a plan that appears to be headed to the May 2006 ballot....
Kane sign deadline comes, goes The deadline set by the Bureau of Land Management for Kane County to remove its road signs from BLM-administered lands came and went on Monday. In response, BLM State Director Sally Wisely sent a letter to the Interior Department's regional solicitor requesting that it take legal action to compel Kane County to remove the signs and put back any BLM signs that it has taken out. Kane County began posting signs in February designating off-highway-vehicle (OHV) routes across BLM-administered land, and in March designated a new route through an area northeast of Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park that is being studied for potential wilderness designation. Most recently, the county posted an estimated 60 to 80 signs inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument along the Hole in the Rock Road and its vicinity, directing OHV users into areas the BLM had previously closed to off-road use....
Experimental releases scheduled to aid fish Flaming Gorge Dam will be releasing high flows of water into the Green River in the next few weeks to scour sediment below the dam and improve habitat for trout and endangered native fish species. The federal Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program has been working to save native fish in the region. Fish like the Colorado pike-minnow, razorback sucker, humpback chub and bonytail chub are under stress from dams, diversions and barriers, the project said. Also contributing to their decline are the introduction of nonnative competitors, plus fishing, parasites and pollutants, it said. Scientists hope the releases will flood some spots to increase fish habitat....
Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy. The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012....
Atmosphere May Cleanse Itself Better than Previously Thought A research team from Purdue University and the University of California, San Diego has found that the Earth's atmosphere may be more effective at cleansing itself of smog and other damaging hydrocarbons than was once thought. Scientists, including Joseph S. Francisco, have learned that some naturally occurring atmospheric chemicals react with sunlight more effectively than previously thought to produce substances that "scrub" the air of smog. This group of chemicals, after absorbing energy from sunlight, is able to break down smog and other pollutants into far less harmful components. While many such chemicals have long been known to behave in this way - producing natural air cleaners called OH radicals - the chemicals the team studied have for the first time been observed to produce air-scrubbing OH radicals at low ultraviolet wavelengths. This observation has eluded science primarily because photochemistry at these wavelengths has been difficult to study....
It's All Trew: Right lubrication greases squeakiest of wheels Many classic Old West tales are similar in plot but different in location. The following tale has been told many times with the same plot but featuring different ranches, different characters and different tunes. The original story is probably true, but where it happened is anybody's guess. Our version here supposedly happened on the famed XIT Ranch. Among the varied backgrounds of early-day frontier settlers were many gifted musicians. Their talents were much appreciated by entertainment-starved neighbors. Another level of talent, prominent among cowboys and scattered settlers, featured those who ordered both musical instruments and directions of how to play from a catalog or pulp magazine advertisement....

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