NEWS

Unprecedented Move by APS Improves Natural Environment Arizona's first commercial hydroelectric power plants ceased operation today as part of a unique endeavor between APS, government agencies, Native American tribes, conservation groups and academia. By closing the Childs and Irving hydroelectric power plants in central Arizona, full water flow was restored to Fossil Creek after nearly a century of restricted flows. The Childs and Irving power plants, located in a remote area between Strawberry and Camp Verde, were considered an engineering and logistical marvel when constructed almost 100 years ago. The small hydroelectric power plants provided energy essential to Arizona's growth, powering the booming mining operations in Jerome and the Bradshaw Mountains, and later energized the growing communities of Prescott and Phoenix. In 1999 and in concert with the Yavapai-Apache Nation, American Rivers, Arizona Riparian Council, Center for Biological Diversity, The Nature Conservancy and Northern Arizona Audubon Society, APS decided to decommission the Childs and Irving plants and restore full flow to Fossil Creek at the cost to APS of about $13 million. Despite the cost of decommissioning and lost revenue from plant operations, APS determined that restoring Fossil Creek to its natural flow outweighed the business benefits provided by the facility....
Air tankers OK, but pilots grounded Air tanker pilots working under a new contract with the U.S. Forest Service this summer are being asked to complete a security questionnaire that may keep some of them out of the cockpit. Wildfire News of Prescott, Ariz., stated Tuesday that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which reviews the questionnaires, has had "issues" with flight pilots already and temporarily disqualified them from flying. Some of them work for Chico-based Aero Union Corp. Ron Hunter, director of flight operations for the company, confirmed that four pilots were brought under scrutiny because of answers they gave on the forms. He said the company wasn't able to find out what the agency was questioning. "All we were told is they can't fly," Hunter said. In recent days Hunter said two of the pilots have been cleared, but two others haven't yet satisfied the reviewers....
Editorial: Is mining or recreation more important? Idaho is a state approaching a fork in the road. Will we choose to depend on industry and mining to bring money into the state, or should we work to expand the state's healthy tourism industry? Truth is, we need both. Last week, the U.S. Forest Service gave the Simplot company a green light to explore phosphate deposits in a 400-acre parcel in Caribou County when it denied the final appeal of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, which had attempted to stop the exploration. Geologists speculate some 4.5 million tons of phosphate ore lie beneath the earth in the area to be explored. That equates to about three years of work for Simplot and 200 jobs at the mine and 350 additional jobs at the plant. It also is a vital source of fertilizer for farmers. Even so, Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor statistics show that mining, including hard rock and phosphate mining, ranks as the sixth largest industry in the state. Recreation and tourism, including fishing and hunting, rank third....
Editorial: Sound science, not extremism, will help forests, rural economies Bryan Bird of the self-proclaimed "Forest Guardians" makes several phony claims in his flawed attempt elsewhere on this page to challenge our June 12 editorial that suggested the timber industry should be allowed back into our Western forests. The editorial, "Reversing a blunder: Reopening forests to industry the right way to aid rural communities," pointed out that taxpayers have sent $2 billion to rural counties in the West to help compensate for the devastating loss of jobs and tax revenues caused by overzealous enforcement of environmental regulations. The Tribune long has opposed such extremism and has supported proposals to involve timber companies in thinning operations that are now desperately needed to return our overgrown and diseased forests to health. Bird and the "Forest Guardians" will have none of that. He declares that the real issue is whether taxpayers should subsidize rural counties or the timber industry. Taxpayers should subsidize neither. The timber industry doesn’t need to be subsidized if it is not overregulated to the point of unprofitability. Timber companies operating on Arizona’s Indian reservations — under strict harvesting guidelines — not only turn a healthy profit but provide income to the tribes and keep the forests from becoming overgrown tinder boxes....
Elite crew often babysits blazes but lets them burn to improve forest health At some point while clearing fallen branches from trails to fire lookouts, training to climb trees and burning massive piles of fallen tree limbs, an elite Montana fire crew will be dispatched to their first big blaze of the season. When the call comes, the crew members' responsibilities will be different than they often are. This time, their job will be to watch the fire burn. It might sound odd, firefighters promoting fire, but in much of the Western wilderness, fire is being put to work. The Lewis and Clark Fire Use Module, a collection of highly skilled fire personnel based in Choteau, is one of 12 teams in the nation who are experts in allowing fires to burn in wild areas when the time is right....
Rare fern is discovered on Park Service land An Iowa State University botanist working for the U.S. Forest Service has discovered a rare plant in Wind Cave National Park. Botanists have been trying to locate a rare form of moonwort fern called Botrychium campestre in the Black Hills since a single plant was collected in 1973. Donald Farrar was hired to find the plant in Black Hills National Forest, but he wound up locating it on National Park Service land at Wind Cave, according to the park. Botrychium campestre is commonly found on prairie remnants in Iowa and Minnesota and east through the Great Lakes region. The only other place it has been found this far west is a single site in eastern Colorado....
Technology center's tank full of ideas lets loose for celebration Missoula's Technology and Development Center, run by the U.S. Forest Service, is not just a think tank. It's a think-and-solve-the-problem tank, where inventions become solutions for real-life forestry problems. On Saturday, the center's work is on display for the public, with tour guides to show and explain the details, history and use of many of its important inventions, from fire shelters to better parachutes to ways of keeping bears from stealing food in the backcountry. It's all part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Forest Service, and involves open houses and public tours at several locations, including the Museum of Mountain Flying, the National Museum of Forest Service History, the Technology and Development Center, and the Missoula Smokejumper Center. Missoula's technology center is one of two run by the Forest Service; the other is in California. Proposals come in from the field, a steering committee screens the requests, Washington funds the projects, and Forest Service engineers and experts tackle the problems and test the solutions....
Landmark law on environment to be scrutinized Power outages in Nogales and traffic backups around Las Vegas are just a few of the hassles critics of a federal environmental law say residents of the Southwest face because the law needs to be changed. But environmentalists and others say the law helps ensure people can protect the air, land and water on public lands from potentially destructive projects. Congressional leaders on a task force charged with giving the landmark National Environmental Policy Act a "hard look" will hear about those concerns and more at a hearing Saturday morning in Pinetop-Lakeside. Critics, including many Republicans, contend the law has spawned a nightmare of lawsuits designed to block proposed roads, power lines and other projects....
Guest opinion: Legislation offers logical plan for wild bison In the past two decades, millions of dollars have been allocated to eradicate brucellosis by hazing and slaughtering the Yellowstone buffalo. Common sense tells us the Interagency Bison Management Plan isn't working. Now Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the federal animal and plant health inspection agencies want to spend more of our hard-earned money. They want to expand facilities for bison quarantine experiments that, according to scientists, may take upward of 10 years to establish brucellosis-free buffalo herds. To all Montanans, I ask you, how much more do you want to spend before enough is enough? To go the direction the IBMP continues to take will only result in rising costs for taxpayers and endless controversy and hyperbole. On May 18, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and Rep. Charles Bass, R-N.H., introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives HR 2428, the Yellowstone Buffalo Preservation Act. The purpose of this act is to provide protection for the last wild and genetically pure Yellowstone buffalo. It addresses temporal/spatial separation of livestock from the buffalo herd, continued cattle vaccination and fencing as more practical ways of reducing the blatant misuse of our state and federal money....
Plans to save grouse lack pecking order A chicken-sized bird has hundreds of heads scratching. The Gunnison sage grouse, which lives only in western Colorado and one Utah county, has declined so much in recent years that wildlife officials estimate just 3,200 of the birds exist. The continuous drop in the bird’s numbers has led to a host of conservation strategies, stretching from the local level all the way to federal public lands managers. Last week during the annual conference of the Western Governor’s Association in Breckenridge, Gov. Bill Owens announced the creation of the Sagebrush Conservation Council....
Environmental group argues to support spill Attorneys representing the National Wildlife Federation say a federal judge was right to order four Snake and Columbia River dams to spill water this summer to save endangered salmon runs. Attorneys Todd True of Seattle and Daniel Rohlf of Portland, Ore., represented the group in a filing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The filing came in response to the federal government's request to halt an order issued last month by U.S. District Judge James Redden. The order is intended to provide water to help float millions of endangered salmon and steelhead down the mainstem rivers to the Pacific Ocean....
Ferret program may take hit A federal program that raises and releases the endangered black-footed ferret may itself be endangered if budget squeezes proceed in a way some wildlife managers fear. Mike Lockhart, Laramie-based recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's black-footed ferret program, called the expected budget crunch "pretty dire." "To me it's pretty frightening," he said. "We've made some very substantial progress. We can see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel if we can keep it going. If this really happens, this will set the program back a long ways." Mary Henry, Denver-based assistant regional director for the Ecological Service arm of the Fish and Wildlife Service -- which oversees the endangered species program -- said there are "financial difficulties" across the Ecological Service program as a whole. She said it is not clear if funding will be cut entirely, but unless new money is added to the ferret program, it is in jeopardy....
Column: The Northwest Salmon Win an Upstream Fight The Bush administration's plan to protect endangered salmon stocks in the Northwest is shaping up as a battle between a neoconservative political agenda that seeks to roll back landmark environmental protections and the scientific exigencies of the Endangered Species Act. Last month, U.S. District Judge James Redden ruled that Bush's plan violated the Endangered Species Act. Then on June 10, Redden, still steaming from the administration's "exercise in cynicism," dropped a judicial bomb he had held in reserve. Despite a projected $69 million in lost revenue, he ordered the Bonneville Power Administration to execute a "summer spill" from four dams to help juvenile salmon reach the sea. After noting that the government's best salmon-recovery efforts have brought native fish stocks to the brink of extinction, Redden challenged the stakeholders — the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Bonneville Power Administration, Indian tribes, conservation organizations and scientists — "to take advantage of this moment" and solve the problem....
A mouse and a man: researcher finds himself in uncomfortable spotlight after asking that mouse be removed from endangered list Biologist Rob Roy Ramey figures he has risked his life many times for endangered species — scaling cliffs to help with peregrine falcons and California condors, challenging sheep poachers in Mongolia, being chased by elephants in Africa. His toughest encounter, though, could be with a mouse thought to exist only in a narrow corridor along the east face of the Rockies. His conclusion that the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse isn’t unique has made it the poster animal for critics of the Endangered Species Act and outraged fellow scientists and environmentalists who accuse him of faulty science. The study by Ramey and his colleagues says the Preble’s mouse is the same as the more common Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse and shouldn’t be listed as a threatened subspecies....
Project aims to rebuild kit fox habitat You could call the program Habitat for Kit Foxes. It involves burying 35 igloo- shaped "dog houses" and laying 70 tunnels in the sagebrush desert to protect one of the state's endangered species. The joint effort between the Center for Native Ecosystems, a Denver-based environmental organization, and the Bureau of Land Management launches Tuesday northwest of Grand Junction. "The installation of dens and escape tunnels are a critical first step to recovering the kit fox in Colorado," the Center for Native Ecosystems said in a statement. The tunnels, made of 8-inch pipe laid just below the ground surface, are intended to give foxes an emergency escape from predators. The manmade dens will be buried about five feet in the ground....
Nevada oil, gas exploration expected to pick up after record sale High gasoline prices helped spur a record quarterly sale of oil and gas leases on federal land in Nevada, Bureau of Land Management officials said. Last week's sale at the BLM state office in Reno netted nearly $3.1 million in bids, by far the most in 14 years of competitive oil and gas lease sales in the state, they said. It also resulted in the highest number of total bids and acres sold. The BLM sold 163 of 344 parcels available for leasing across central and northern Nevada - or 335,537 acres of 710,215 acres....
BLM, church limit use to protect trail The wagon wheel ruts are still visible in places. Even after 150 years, they mark the toiled struggles of thousands of pioneers who settled the West. And while they are well off modern highways, these parallel grooves in the sand and clay are again attracting tens of thousands of pioneers from around the world who seek to relive the experiences of their ancestors. But in a twist of history, the new trekkers -- mostly members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- are making their own tracks and endangering parts of the original trail. Some areas of the trail started "looking more like a road than a historic trail," said Jack Kelly, manager of the Bureau of Land Management office in Lander....
Montana's meat label law illegal, group says As the fight continues in Congress over mandatory meat labels, one also may be brewing in Montana over the state's labeling law. The American Meat Institute, a meatpackers' trade group, contends federal law — namely, the federal Meat Inspection Act — prohibits the state from requiring country of origin meat labels. ‘‘No state may impose a labeling requirement that is different than or in addition to what's allowed under federal law,'' Mark Dopp, AMI senior vice president for regulatory affairs and general counsel, said in a recent interview. The Montana law, set to take effect next year, requires placards denoting the country of origin of beef, lamb, pork and poultry products sold at grocery stores and other retails outlets. Products whose origin is not known would be labeled as such....

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