NEWS

Drilling shifts political fault lines in U.S. West Amid the largest natural gas boom ever on public land in the West, a new kind of sagebrush rebellion is stirring. Ranchers, cowboys, small-property owners and local government leaders - the core of the Republican base in the Rocky Mountain West - are chafing at the pace and scope of the Bush administration's push for energy development. The sagebrush rebellion, which started in the late 1970s in the United States, was a backlash against federal restrictions on public land. For the recent drilling, some people are filing lawsuits, challenging federal authority to drill in certain areas. Others are protesting new gas and oil leases. Federal officials say they have received thousands of letters opposed to drilling in areas like the Roan Plateau. One state, Wyoming, has passed legislation giving landowners more say in how mineral rights beneath their property are tapped. The battle cry is the same as in past movements: a call for local control over a distant federal landlord....
Governor praises public land access With summertime fishing and recreation in full bloom, Gov. Brian Schweitzer on Wednesday praised a handful of new laws that protect Montanans' access to state wildlife and waters. "If Montana didn't have 30 million acres of public lands," including wild lands and world-class fisheries, Schweitzer said, we'd be "just like a lot of the other states." The state has some of the best laws in the West guaranteeing access to almost all waters in the state, he said. The 2005 Legislature passed four bills that Schweitzer said makes citizen access to water and wildlife better. Schweitzer cited House Bill 79, by Rep. George Golie, D-Great Falls, which made permanent the state's Habitat Montana program. The program had been scheduled to end. Habitat Montana uses about $4 million a year to work with landowners to conserve game habitat on private land, including purchasing conservation easements....
Most imperiled mammal in North America faces second extermination, conservationists warn The wild-born alpha male of the Francisco Pack of Mexican gray wolves was trapped on Saturday morning in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico and his right front leg was broken as he tried to escape from the steel leghold trap. He underwent initial surgery on Monday and is having his leg amputated today. His mate, the last wolf still alive and in the wild from amongst the first eleven released into the wild in 1998, is due to be shot next week and their pups taken into captivity. All five of her pups from a previous litter died as a result of her being taken captive last year, before she was re-released, according to documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity under authority of the Freedom of Information Act. "We are saddened and outraged by the ongoing destruction of the Francisco Pack," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, New Mexico, at the edge of the Gila National Forest. "Today's headlines sound straight out of the 1920s when the goal was extermination."....
Column: Killing of gray wolves an outdated solution Following two meetings between high-level regional officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and ranchers, the federal agency has proposed a number of measures: a moratorium on releasing Mexican gray wolves from the captive breeding population into the wild, limitations on rereleases of once-wild wolves that have been captured, and an increase in predator control targeted at wolves. The agency is already implementing its proposed policies by attempting to shoot or trap the Gila National Forest's Francisco Pack, which includes the last animal to roam free from among the first 11 lobos released in 1998 at the outset of the reintroduction program....
Authors detail wolf's journey back to Yellowstone When the wild calls, some do more than listen. They find the lure of silent meadows and high mountain streams undeniable and spend their lives finding ways to sing in tune with their music. For Douglas Smith and Gary Ferguson, authors of "Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone," the path to living and working in the wild took different roads. Smith studied animals as a scientist and has spent the past 10 years helping the gray wolf return to Yellowstone National Park. Ferguson has dedicated his life to writing about wild places, bringing them to life in the imaginations of those less agile, less brave, but equally curious about the places and creatures they may never get to see. This collaboration has produced an eloquent record of the wolf's journey back to Yellowstone....
Feds issue kill order for Mexican gray wolf The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a kill order for an endangered Mexican gray wolf. They say the wolf has killed two calves and probably a cow in the Gila National Forest of southwestern New Mexico. The agency has also trapped a wolf believed to be the alpha male of another cattle-killing Pack. He injured his front left leg in the trap and it had to be amputated. A separate lone male wolf was caught Sunday on the Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico, near a calf he killed on private land....
Spot a mountain lion? Here's what to do Arizona Game and Fish officials have started a campaign to teach people how to coexist with mountain lions, even though the agency hasn't trapped one here in three years and has dismissed most recent reports about them this year as unsubstantiated. Workers will post signs about mountain lions at trailheads, stuff informational flyers into bills and take educational material into classrooms. Phoenix firm HMA Public Relations has been hired at a cost of more than $60,000 to handle cougar publicity for Game and Fish. This comes a little more than a year after a controversy in Tucson over plans to kill mountain lions that had been spotted stalking hikers there and after a Southern California hiker was mauled by a cougar....
Battle brewing over BLM's new grazing rules A verbal range war has broken out over new grazing rules that the Bureau of Land Management says it will establish next month. The BLM is promising that ranchers who use this federal land will have a more productive working relationship with the agency while the rangeland will be better cared for. A Utah Cattlemen's Association official likes the new rules, saying they will make grazing permittees more responsible and foster improvements to the range. But the director of an environmental group that has battled BLM policies in Utah, the Western Watersheds Project, says the new regulations are illegal and would reduce public control over the federal range. The group plans to sue....
Nevada lawmakers streamline horse, burro adoption guidelines Nevada lawmakers on Monday proposed to make it easier for wild horses and burros to be removed from government care through private adoptions and sales. Bills introduced in the House and Senate contain waiting periods and penalties that lawmakers said should safeguard the animals from abuse and slaughter. Horse advocates, however, said the measures fall short of being fully protective and they would fight the bills. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., were the main sponsors as Nevadans weighed in on an issue that grew controversial this spring when 41 horses were killed at an Illinois meatpacking plant after being sold by the Bureau of Land Management....
Bush eases land use for ranchers For 70 years, the federal government has regulated - or tried to, anyway - the cow herds that graze across millions of acres of public land in the West. It's been a political struggle between preserving a rural way of life that epitomizes the nation's mythical pioneering history, supporting a slice of a regional economy that's dwindled in comparison to recreation and high-tech corridors, and responding to a growing environmental ethic that cares more about watersheds and biodiversity. As it has done with other social and economic sectors dealing with natural resources, such as mining, oil drilling, and logging, the Bush administration is tugging that difficult balance back toward ranchers. The just-issued federal lands regulations make it easier for cowboys to go about their business. The new rules give ranchers more time, up to five years, to reduce the size of their herds if the cattle are damaging the environment, as well as shared ownership in the water rights and some structures on federal land. The regulations also lessen the current requirements for public input in deciding grazing issues....
Guard has enough troops for fires, leader says The adjutant general of the Montana National Guard says there will be as many soldiers, but not as many aircraft, available to help fight forest fires in Montana this summer. "We can put the same number of troops in the field on a daily basis as we did in 2000," Maj. Gen. Randall Mosley said Tuesday during a lunch with members of the Missoula Kiwanis Club. "Our available aircraft is far less than past years, but we're not the first responder for these things." National Guard troops typically back up U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other agency firefighting teams when those crews get stretched thin....
Sage grouse numbers rise in Wyoming Early indications are that the number of sage grouse in Wyoming is on the rise after drought and other factors reduced bird populations. Preliminary reports from this year's Game and Fish Department survey show sage grouse making a significant comeback in numbers on most leks, or strutting grounds, this spring, Game and Fish sage grouse coordinator Tom Christiansen said. "There's a lot of factors coming together to make for such a good survey," he said. "It really goes back over a year, because it's the chicks that were born and hatched and survived the last year that was the key."....
Conservationists, educators trying again on trust land issue Conservation and education advocates are making a new attempt to put a trust land package before Arizona voters, this time probably skipping the Legislature and instead trying to reach the ballot through an initiative campaign. Efforts this year and last to reach the voters through a legislative referendum failed as lawmakers focused on other issues considered either more pressing or easier to digest. The trust land issue was difficult for lawmakers partly because it is complex and features potentially competing interests -- producing more money for education from the 9.3 million acres of trust land versus setting aside large parcels for conservation as open space....
Column: Hope - prodigal son of the muddled American West The American West, Wallace Stegner once wrote in one of the region's most quoted aphorisms, is ''the native home of hope.'' Having put this very cheerful sentiment on public record, Stegner soon began to wonder what on earth had possessed him. With its extraordinary landscapes, wide horizons and great natural resources, the West might qualify as hope's native home. But the West is also - in large part because of these very assets - the second home of tension, conflict, regret, dismay, gloom and bitterness. Yet for all these miseries, the West has become the return address for my own sense of hope. I have the good luck to be employed as a kind of shuttle diplomat, carrying messages and attempting negotiations among various contending parties in the West today. That work has given me a deep - if perhaps naive and lamblike - faith that these are great times for bridge building, alliance making and solution finding....
US Appeal on Canada Cattle Imports to be Televised A courtroom battle by the US government to restart imports of live Canadian cattle amid claims mad cow disease in that country may pose a risk to US consumers is to be televised next month. The Canadian Broadcast Corporation has been granted permission to televise the proceedings, a clerk for the US Court of Appeals 9th Circuit in San Francisco told Reuters. The US Agriculture Department is appealing a March ruling by a federal court in Montana that halted, at the request of US ranchers group R-CALF USA, a government plan to allow imports of Canadian cattle under 30 months of age....
'Ranchers' relive history Somewhere in the expanse of West Texas, where everything bites, stings or burns, about 20 people have gathered to build a ranching operation from scratch. They don't have pickups or telephones. No air conditioning or flush toilets. They must live like it is 1867. Texas Ranch House is the latest "living history" program from the Public Broadcasting Service. It comes from the makers of both Frontier House and Colonial House. "In Texas Ranch House, we send a group of modern-day people back to the year 1867. It is the era of Western expansion, a time of rounding up and branding free-roaming cattle," the promotional material states. "It is a time of taming wild horses and sleeping under the stars." It was also a time of hard living and long cattle drives. It was a time of "endless, punishing days in the saddle, chowing down on pork and beans, and surviving lonely nights out on the plains."....

===