NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranchers howl in protest of wolf management plan Jean Stetson already has felt the rake of a wolf’s claws, and the predator officially isn’t even in Colorado. Stetson, a third-generation rancher from Craig, was one of four livestock producers on the 13-person Wolf Management Working Group that painstakingly hammered out a wolf management plan adopted unanimously Thursday by the Colorado Wildlife Commission. The panel was composed of ranchers, sportsmen and conservation groups, and Stetson said the group’s decision to allow migrating wolves to come into the state brought howls of protest from the ranching community, some of whom clawed at Stetson and accused her of selling out by signing off on the group decision. The state plan allows wolves to migrate into Colorado without being harassed. However, once a wolf gets into trouble, including killing livestock, a quick response is urged. That might not be possible, ranchers fear, in the light of an Oregon judge’s recent decision to return the wolves to endangered status....
Gray-wolf releases could be postponed Wildlife officials want to hold off on Mexican gray-wolf introductions in eastern Arizona for a year, drawing criticism that the plan panders to ranchers. "They've bent over backwards to accommodate these ranchers, who are ranching on public land," said Sandy Bahr, conservation director of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club. Wildlife officials don't deny that the moratorium was proposed to answer ranchers' complaints. But they said the one-year break would buy them valuable time to get a clearer count of how many wolves are in the wild, complete a recovery plan for the next five years and determine which practices are best for relocating wolves, among other things. State and federal wildlife officials estimate the current population at 45 to 50. Ranchers paint a different picture, saying there could be as many as 100 wolves between the two states. Their concerns about the wolf program got a receptive ear with U.S. Rep. Stevan Pearce, R-N.M.,who convened a special meeting between ranchers and wildlife officials that resulted in the moratorium proposal. The plan is open for public comment until May 31. A decision is due June 17....
Livestock-killing wolf pack being dissuaded with rubber bullets A wildlife team has been using rubber bullets to drive away a pack of endangered Mexican gray wolves from livestock in the Gila National Forest. The pack - an adult female, male and a yearling - killed two cows, one confirmed Thursday and the other confirmed April 29, said Vicki Fox, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman. The interagency field team has been monitoring and tracking the Francisco pack and will make future decisions about the pack based on what the wolves do, she said. Meanwhile, the Aspen pack - an adult male and female along with three pups - was captured after the animals bit a calf and a dog in Arizona, Fox said....
Editorial: Local control of national forests could harm pristine areas Roadless areas in national forests have been kept off-limits to oil and gas drilling, logging and mining because these largely pristine areas are among the last bastions of wildness in this country. President Bush's order to end federal protection of these areas wrongly takes their management out of the hands of far-sighted federal agencies and gives it to governors, most of them in the West, who are much more open to pressure from potential campaign donors and local industries looking to make a fast buck. The fate of Utah's 4 million acres of remaining roadless forests - some of the most important for water quality, recreation and wildlife habitat - will be left largely in the hands of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., whose overriding concern is economic development....
Brush burn scaled back to protect sage grouse Under fire from state wildlife biologists, the Forest Service agreed Friday to dramatically scale back plans to conduct a prescribed burn this month on northern Nevada rangeland that is home to the sage grouse. The agency still hopes to set fire to about 300 acres of the 2,000-acre project area about 40 miles northeast of Winnemucca if unusually wet weather subsides in the coming weeks, said Bob Vaught, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Biologists for the Nevada Division of Wildlife will accompany Forest Service officials on a visit to the area near the Santa Rosa Mountains to help identify which 300 acres can be burned without threatening any grouse or their nests, Vaught said....
Sheep ranch to become conservation bank for endangered shrimp A sheep ranch is set to become Solano County's first conservation bank for endangered species such as fairy shrimp and tadpole shrimp that live in vernal pools. The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service announced yesterday the creation of the conservation bank on Campbell Ranch. A growing number of landowners are converting their land to conservation banks to protect their property while allowing development to go forward elsewhere....
Judges resign from FREE board Three federal judges have resigned from a Bozeman think tank's board of directors following allegations that their involvement with the group was unethical. Judge Andre Davis of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Baltimore resigned last month from the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment's board of directors. FREE is a libertarian-leaning group that advocates free-market approaches to environmental protection. The resignation came on the heels of ethics complaints filed last year against four judges who sit on FREE's board. The complaints were filed by the Washington, D.C.-based Community Rights Council. In addition, Douglas Ginsburg, chief judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and Judge Jane Roth of the 3rd Circuit Court in Philadelphia resigned from FREE's board Friday. The complaint against FREE board member Danny J. Boggs, chief judge of the 6th Circuit Court in Kentucky, is still pending. CRC alleged last year that corporate interests were trying to influence judges who had environmental lawsuits pending in their courts....
Strange bedfellows unite against Nevada water pipeline Rural Republicans, urban Democrats, ranchers and environmentalists have found something they agree on in northern Nevada: They don't want to give their water to Las Vegas. "It's unanimous," said Bill Kohlmoos, a former Ely rancher. He was among about a 100 people who turned out at a federal public hearing Thursday night to oppose a proposed pipeline to tap groundwater in rural northeast Nevada to meet future growth in southern Nevada. As in previous hearings hosted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, speaker after speaker lashed out against the $2 billion plan to build a network of 345 miles of pipeline across federal land....
Calif. shepherds are without basic amenities Most of California's shepherds are legal migrant workers from Peru, Chile and Mongolia. The few dozen immigrants roam the state's grasslands, deserts and foothills during grazing season. In 2001, lawmakers boosted monthly wages and required that living quarters include toilets, heating, drinking water, regular mail service, transportation to the nearest town and access to a telephone or radio for emergencies. Ranchers such as Dominique Minaberrigarai said California's mandated wage increase, from $900 to $1,200 a month, has hurt an industry that already was facing competition from synthetic fibers and the entry of China and other countries into the wool market....
Northwest has higher risk of mad cow exposure There is still a risk, though slight, of mad cow disease in the United States, and it is greatest in the three Northwestern states bordering Canada, according to Agriculture Department investigators. The investigators, after tracing the history of the four cows with the disease in North America, said the U.S. has minimized the risk by banning cattle remains in feed, the primary way mad cow disease is believed to spread. Three infected Canadian cows, including one from Alberta that turned up in the United States, probably ate feed contaminated with the same infected remains, and a fourth may have as well, investigators said. In its report, the team said the northwestern United States, particularly Washington, Idaho and Montana, could be considered at higher risk of exposure to BSE because it imported a substantial amount of cattle from western Canada along with a small amount of high-risk meat and bone meal. However, they said the feed ban and other measures "have effectively minimized the risk of transmission or amplification of the BSE agent."....
S. Dakota Is Bullish on Idea Of Carving Luxury Beef Niche South Dakota is trying to give this story a happier ending. This spring the legislature passed and the governor signed a first-in-the-nation law that catapults the state into the luxury beef business. The goal is to reinvent South Dakota beef as a gourmet foodstuff for upscale, socially conscious meat lovers. In effect, the state intends to drive a steak -- a homegrown, environmentally correct, premium-priced steak -- through the heart of its demographic decline. If all goes according to plan, increased profits from the steaks will stay home on the farm -- and so will more of the kids. In return, South Dakota is promising something that, so far, at least, no other cow-raising state is willing to match. Enlisting its police and administrative authority, the state guarantees consumers who buy South Dakota Certified Beef that they will be partaking of a computer-tracked cow that was born, fed and butchered inside state borders, using exacting standards of nutrition, with a humane upbringing and walled off from all possible contact with mad cow disease. After a consumer takes home the beef, he or she can use the Internet to find a photograph of the South Dakota family ranch where it came from. And if a rancher or a butcher cheats in caring for cows under the new rules, the state is ready and willing to charge him with a felony and send him to prison for two years....

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