NEWS

Senators Question Conservancy's Practices The Senate Finance Committee issued a report yesterday raising questions about a range of financial practices at the Arlington-based Nature Conservancy and recommending regulatory changes that would affect many of the nation's nonprofit organizations. The report, the result of a two-year investigation into the world's largest environmental organization, questions whether the charity's actions at times may have been "inconsistent" with the policy underlying federal tax laws. The committee raises concerns about the size of tax breaks claimed by the Conservancy's supporters, about the group's shortcomings in monitoring development restrictions on some land under its supervision, and about private "side deals" with Conservancy "insiders." The report refrains from making factual and legal conclusions, stressing a desire to avoid influencing an audit of the Conservancy begun by the Internal Revenue Service in December 2003. But the report spotlights the Conservancy's financial dealings and highlights the organization's failure to fully disclose transactions with Conservancy officials and corporations whose officers sat on the charity's board....
Woman killed by grizzly bear made split-decision to save her life - and lost A woman killed by a grizzly bear Sunday made a split-second decision to climb a tree - a choice that failed to save her life. Isabelle Dube, originally from Cap-St-Ignace near Quebec City, was jogging with two friends Sunday on a popular hiking trail in Canmore, 90 kilometres west of Calgary, when the group came upon the bear. "They came within 20 to 25 metres of the bear when they first saw it," Dave Ealey of Alberta Sustainable Resource Development told reporters. "As they communicated to each other as to 'What do we do?' they started backing up. Isabelle apparently chose to climb a tree. "The other two continued to back up. They backed up out of the area to a point where they were no longer able to see their friend and they said they were going to go get some help because she was basically shouting at the bear because the bear was close to her." The two friends ran almost a kilometre to the clubhouse of the SilverTip Golf Course to get help. A Fish and Wildlife officer responded, and found the bear with Dube....
As rural leaders try to lift a ban on using dogs to track cougars, debate grows over their numbers Oregon lawmakers are maneuvering to let counties roll back a statewide initiative and loose hunting dogs on cougars and black bears, highlighting an escalating question in rural Oregon: Are there too many cougars? Rural legislators say hunting dogs are urgently needed because the big cats are appearing where they never have before, killing pets and livestock and threatening public safety. But conservationists say that no good science proves cougars are multiplying so dramatically, and that fears are exaggerated. State wildlife managers say Oregon now is home to 5,000 to 6,000 cougars, nearly twice as many as a decade ago, despite increased hunting in that time. That's more cougars than ever, they say, and about as many as are believed to roam much larger California, where they are not hunted....
Wyo voices back conservation easements Without conservation easements, the scenic view along Wyoming Highway 22 between Jackson and Wilson likely would not exist today, the director of the Jackson Hole Land Trust told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday. And without tax incentives provided under federal law, the high desert and verdant river valleys of Sublette County could be lost to development, Tim Lindstrom testified before the Senate Finance Committee in Washington, D.C. "Nobody messes with the ranchers of Sublette County, believe me," Lindstrom said. "However, they are dedicated to their land, and they have been permanently conserving it in 1,000-acre and 2,000-acre chunks over the past decade. This conservation is entirely through conservation easements ... Without the tax incentives, this would not be happening." Lindstrom was among those urging senators to make no changes in the law governing tax incentives for conservation easements....
UW scientists launch study on elk deaths University of Wyoming scientists will attempt to identify a toxin in lichen that resulted in 450 elk deaths last year, and possibly determine the safety of eating game that consumed the lichen. A five-member team from UW's Department of Veterinary Sciences launched the study, which will also attempt to determine whether cattle and sheep can safely graze in lichen-infested areas like the Red Rim of south-central Wyoming where the massive die-off occurred. Researchers were alerted to the problem in February 2004 when hunters searching for coyotes discovered two cow elk unable to stand. Eventually, an estimated 450 elk lost strength and coordination and either died or were humanely destroyed....
Forest Service, San Ildefonso Pueblo settle 50-year-old land claim San Ildefonso Pueblo and the U.S. Forest Service have announced the settlement of a land claim the pueblo filed more than 50 years ago. Under the proposal -- which must be approved by Congress and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims -- the Indian pueblo near Santa Fe would get $6.9 million and the right to buy thousands of acres. The case, first brought in 1951, was the last pending litigation under the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, the Forest Service said. That law involved hundreds of tribal claims. Ratifying the settlement would authorize land transactions affecting San Ildefonso and Santa Clara pueblos, Los Alamos County and the Forest Service. The pueblos would be able to add land to their pueblos, and the county would be able to protect its water wells....
Snowbowl gets nod to make snow from treated wastewater The regional forester for the Southwest on Thursday gave a green light to Arizona Snowbowl for snowmaking and other improvements at the ski area. The decision, by Harv Forsgren, director of the U.S. Forest Service's Southwest office in Albuquerque, follows years of protests by Native American tribes, who contend that development on the San Francisco Peaks interferes with their religious practices. But Forsgren said that the snowmaking, which will use treated wastewater pumped to the ski area from Flagstaff, does not violate the First Amendment rights of Native Americans and "does not preclude the continued use of the San Francisco Peaks for religious beliefs and practices."....
Column: Roadless rage Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer came out swinging this week in a strongly worded letter to President Bush, saying Bush’s recently issued roadless rule is “passing the buck” by “shifting responsibility for management of the nation’s roadless areas to the states.” As the governor said at his Tuesday news conference, if Bush wants Montana to do this work, he had better pony up sufficient federal resources, in terms of both funding and personnel, to analyze Montana’s 6.4 million acres of roadless federal lands. A little background might prove useful to those unfamiliar with the long debate over roadless lands. Back in the waning days of the Clinton presidency, a serious effort to protect the country’s dwindling roadless lands was proposed. As Schweitzer noted in his history lesson to Bush: “Montana went through an exhaustive public process conducted by the Forest Service. During that time, a record 1.6 million Americans participated in a nationwide 15-month effort involving 600 hearings and public meetings....
Wyoming's roadless questions linger Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Wednesday Wyoming has "a set of options, none of which are very attractive" on how to deal with roadless areas on national forests and again called the federal government's plan to place roadless responsibilities in the hands of states a "shell game." The governor did not elaborate on the options and said questions remain on whether to wait for local forests to complete their forest plans and then get involved in roadless areas or to spend time and money now to petition the federal government to maintain certain areas as roadless. "I said to the undersecretary (of agriculture Mark Rey), 'If you want to give me control of the land, I'll go to the legislature and I'll get a budget to do this planning, but if I don't get to have any say about the decision, why should I do your job and ask my legislature to fund some unit to go out and plan national forests when in actuality all you're going to do is take the information and run it through your sausage-making system anyway,"' Freudenthal said....
Editorial: Roadless input will be good thing Schweitzer is a Democrat, after all, and he shouldn't be expected to have glowing regards for the Republican president's agenda. In this case, Schweitzer considers the Bush plan to have states petition the Forest Service with recommendations for roadless areas to be an unfunded mandate. Schweitzer wants the feds to pay for a process of gathering input from Montanans, and he wants the Forest Service to pitch in hundreds of resource specialists to help with the process. There's nothing wrong with those wants, but they simply may not be necessary. The governor seems to be under the impression that the state of Montana must produce a new inventory of roadless areas backed up by a colossal environmental impact statement evaluating the ups and downs of every acre recommended for roadless designation. Not so. The Bush administration has given governors an opportunity to gather, in the manner they wish, input from their constituencies regarding roadless areas. The states are not required to provide costly, detailed analysis....
Can ranchers, wolves get along? Wolves will be welcomed back into Utah, providing they don't eat. That was the essence of a plan adopted Thursday by the Utah Wildlife Board at a Salt Lake City meeting that capped a $100,000, 18-month effort designed to bring agriculture, hunting and conservation interests together on wolf management. The plan would allow ranchers to kill wolves that attack livestock; it might even allow hunters, guides and taxidermists also to be compensated for losses....
Groups sue over wolverine status The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was wrong to deny wolverines protection under the Endangered Species Act and now should be required to assess their condition, environmental groups say in a lawsuit. The service fell short in studying the forest-dwelling wolverine, a 3- to 4-foot-long weasel that is in steep decline, the groups said in the suit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Missoula. The suit seeks an order that the agency conduct a 12-month study of the wolverine's status....
Utah part of oil shale project The Bush administration moved Thursday to jump-start oil shale development in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming by offering research sites that could be converted to 5,100-acre production leases if companies prove they can turn rock into fuel. The Bureau of Land Management announced it will accept proposals for 160-acre research projects on federal lands across 16,000 square miles in the three states until Sept. 7. Plans to extract the oil would employ techniques ranging from strip mining to a new on-site heating technique being developed by Shell Oil Co. near Rangely, Colo....
An Old West Saga, Told From Both Sides The first Indian massacre on "Into the West" is committed by a herd of stampeding buffalo, not by vigilantes or the United States cavalry. The first scalping of a frontiersman is the work of a grizzly bear, not of an Indian brave on the warpath. Nature is the most fearsome enemy - and coveted prize - in TNT's six-part miniseries about Western expansion, which begins tonight. And that is not a bad canvas for an epic that seeks to sidestep cowboy-and-Indian clichés and deliver a richer portrait of Manifest Destiny. The taming of the wilderness is the nation's founding paradox; the pioneers' struggle forged the nation's character but their ethnic cleansing of American Indians indelibly stained it. "Into the West" tries to weave that dissonance into an otherwise fairly conventional multigenerational family saga....

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