NEWS ROUNDUP

Editorial: Caution on forest land sales The U.S. Forest Service may be getting a green light to sell some properties, but the plan could have disturbing results. The underlying problem is that the Forest Service is short on cash. Its budget has been a mess for years - in fact, its accounting is so convoluted that it has failed past government audits. Congress also chronically shortchanges the agency's operations. Against this backdrop, the U.S. Senate, at the Bush administration's behest, included language in an appropriations bill to let the Forest Service auction off thousands of parcels of national forest. Some of the properties may truly be surplus, but others have important public uses and shouldn't be sold....
Feds seek a better wild horse trap First light of day is just breaking over the sagebrush and juniper-covered scrubland of the Devil's Garden as Rob Jeffers and his crew head out in search of wild horses. By 6 a.m. their work horses are saddled and two helicopters are airborne, and the hunt is on. Scattered somewhere across thousands of acres of rangeland are an estimated 700 wild horses. Federal officials would like to reduce that number by more than half. Jeffers, wild horse manager for the Alturas-based Modoc National Forest and the person in charge of the gather, checks the setup....
Man found in women's outhouse says he lost ring The Maine man police discovered at the bottom of a women's outhouse last month told investigators that he was searching for his wedding ring. Judge Pamela Albee continued bail at $250 personal recognizance and stipulated several bail conditions, including that he stay out of women's restrooms and off U.S. Forest Service property pending his trial on the misdemeanor counts. According to court papers filed by Carroll County Sheriff's Department Capt. Jon Herbert, officers were called to the Lower Falls by a U.S. Forest Service worker on June 26 after a girl entered the restroom and saw a man in the raw sewage vault "looking up at her."....
Officials remove protesters' log cabin A log cabin erected by protesters trying to block logging on a timber sale in southwestern Oregon was removed by logger and U.S. Forest Service officials. Using equipment provided by the loggers, including a skidder and a front-end loader, the Forest Service pushed the logs to one side on Sunday, said Forest Service spokesman Tom Lavagnino. The cabin was erected this past weekend in the middle of the only road leading to the Hobson timber sale in the Siskiyou National Forest, one of the areas burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire, according to Wild Siskiyou Action, the group that undertook the protest....
Report adds up salamander’s effect on real estate A proposal to set aside land for the California tiger salamander could add up to $367 million in lost opportunities to build more houses and businesses over the next 20 years, according to the latest study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But a representative of an environmental group dedicated to saving the amphibian said Friday that the report by Charles Rivers and Associates of Oakland overlooks the economic benefits of saving habitat for rare plants and animals. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing that 382,666 acres of land be named as critical habitat for the salamander, listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act. Service spokesman Al Donner said a critical habitat label doesn’t necessarily prohibit building on these lands, but it does give environmentalists, open-space advocates and political jurisdictions a federal policy to refer to when critiquing environmental reviews for annexation proposals or public works projects. It also gives agencies like the San Joaquin Council of Governments an idea of which lands are best for conservation easements, where the agency buys land or pays landowners to keep them from selling to developers....
Ducks Out of Water? Waterfowlers traditionally spend their summers wondering if the upcoming duck season will bring more, or less: Will the bag limit be higher or lower? Will the season be longer or shorter? Will there be more greenheads or fewer? But some of the nation’s top waterfowl managers suggest that hunters may soon be adding a sobering new factor to their summer equations: Will there even be a next season? What was once unthinkable—closed seasons—is now a valid consideration due to a chain of legal and political decisions that has stripped federal protection from the continent’s most critical waterfowl habitat: the prairie pothole nesting grounds of the northern plains. This region is responsible for most of the ducks that keep seasons open....
Bat Houses Will Prevent Residents From Going ‘Batty’ Over West Nile Want to cut your citronella costs for the summer and still control mosquitoes? Then why not put Nature to work? With the Center for Disease Control warning that the West Nile Virus may be making a resurgence due to the wet and mild winter just passed, many are turning to an unlikely source for relief from summer pests: bats. Bats, or more specifically the Little Brown Bat ( Myotis lucifugus ) which is common throughout the country, are gluttonous little rodents that can each eat 500 or more mosquitoes per hour. Think about a small colony of 250 bats, feeding for eight hours per night, and you’re looking at tons of mosquitoes destroyed over the course of a summer and without the environmental damage done by other methods. “Unfortunately, many people still see bats in the same context as Dracula,” says Dr. Ed Markin of F. Hooker Products ( F.H.P. ). “They are misunderstood, unnecessarily feared and becoming endangered when they could be put to work for our benefit.” F.H.P. makes commercial bat houses and brood boxes for the National Park Service, U.S. Army, several universities, and virtually every vineyard in the world. Bats are instrumental in wine production as they perform as much as 40% of the pollination of grapes. F.H.P. now offers bat domiciles for private use starting at around $40 for a single chamber box that will house 250 or so bats....
Feds want drillers to pay application fee The Bush administration wants to charge oil and gas drillers to process permits to drill on federal land. The proposal comes amid rising federal deficits, a shrinking Bureau of Land Management budget and a boom in drilling on Western public lands. Currently there is no charge for "applications for permits to drill," or APDs. Drillers do pay rent on leases, and royalties on the oil and gas they take out of the ground. But the BLM doesn't charge for the administrative cost of processing permit applications. The proposal is to be published in today's Federal Register. It calls for a $4,000 fee per APD, to be phased in over five years, starting at $1,600....
Editorial: Silly comparisons by Ward, Noel not helpful in lands dispute There have been good-faith attempts to bring all sides to the table to discuss rural road use in Utah and to set the stage for essential compromises. Comments by Assistant Attorney General Mark Ward and Rep. Mike Noel to the Farm Bureau last week aren't among them. Instead, the two seemed bent on wiping out any progress made a month ago when Kane and Garfield county officials met with representatives of the Bureau of Land Management at the governor's office at the invitation of Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert. They discussed a dispute over rights of way in and around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that in 2003 led to Kane County officials destroying BLM signs that restricted access in the area and placing signs welcoming off-road vehicles. The U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating whether there is sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges. Herbert's meeting did not end the conflict, of course, but may have started a healthy dialogue. Thursday's inflammatory pontificating, on the other hand, encouraged defiance....
Governor backs new split estate law Gov. Dave Freudenthal is resisting pressures to exempt federal minerals from Wyoming's new split estate laws, despite Bureau of Land Management pressures to do so. Split estate laws govern the extraction of minerals, which are usually owned separately from the surface land they lie beneath. State and federal laws give companies the right to reasonable use of the surface to extract the new minerals. Freudenthal said the new laws, which went into effect July 1, give landowners increased "procedural protections." They addressed notification of landowners and payment for damages. For example, federal agencies had become lax on enforcing things such as notifying landowners, he said. But BLM Director Kathleen Clarke challenged the new laws in a letter to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission. According to the preemption doctrine, which says federal laws trump state ones, the new rules don't apply to federal minerals since they impede development of that land, she wrote. Freudenthal said he wasn't worried about future court battles between the state and the federal agency. Clarke's comments seemed to be a "for-the-record-letter," not a harbinger of upcoming legal troubles, he said. If litigation does come, it will most likely come from companies, not the federal government, he said....
Column: Drilling the Wild Rod and gun in hand, and backing the Second Amendment right to own firearms, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have won the hearts of America’s sportsmen. Yet the two men have failed to protect outdoor sports on the nation’s public lands. With deep ties to the oil and gas industry, Bush and Cheney have unleashed a national energy plan that has begun to destroy hunting and fishing on millions of federal acres throughout the West, setting back effective wildlife management for decades to come. In his second week in office, President Bush convened a National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Vice President Cheney. Meeting with representatives of the energy industry behind closed doors, it eventually released a National Energy Policy, the goal of which was to “expedite permits and coordinate federal, state, and local actions necessary for energy-related project approvals on a national basis.” Put into practice through a series of executive orders, the policy has prioritized drilling over other uses on federal lands, while relegating long-standing conservation mandates from the 1960s and ’70s to the back burner. For example, in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management has approved over 75 percent of the energy industry’s applications for exemptions to work in critical winter range, heretofore closed to protect wildlife—sage grouse, mule deer, and pronghorns, in particular (the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 gave agencies the means to close critical habitat). The BLM has also continued to issue drilling leases while in the process of writing new resource management plans that still await public comment....
Cattle shipments resume from Canada The first new shipment of Canadian cattle rolled into the United States on Monday, four days after a federal appeals court ended a two-year-old ban originally instituted because of mad cow disease. Thirty-five black Angus cattle crossed the border around noon at Lewiston, N.Y., near Niagara Falls, according to the shipper, Schaus Land and Cattle Co. of Elmwood, Ontario. "We've been waiting for this since the border closed," said company controller Luke Simpson. In the state of Washington, common destination for Canadian cattle, another Canadian shipper has submitted a request to cross the border there....
NHSFR begins week-long run at Gillette Competition at the 57th annual National High School Finals Rodeo enters its second day at the CAM-PLEX with performances at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. today. Rodeo performances continue daily through Sunday. Cowboys and cowgirls from 40 states, five Canadian provinces and Australia are competing for a slot in Sunday's final round that begins at 1 p.m. The top 20 contestants in each event will advance. Called the "World's Largest Rodeo," more than 1,500 contestants are entered in this years' NHSFR....
Casper cowboy leads bull riding Forget waiting around, Clayton Savage was ready. When the draw for the National High School Finals Rodeo was posted on Sunday, Savage knew he would be in the first group of bull riders. He did just that, posting a 76-point ride to win the first performance at the NHSFR at Cam-Plex in Gillette on Monday. Savage wasn't the only one to take advantage of an early draw position in the week-long rodeo. Pole bender Tyler Rose Walton of Raton, N.M., excited the crowd in Morningside Park with a 20.178-second ride, the best of the go so far. Jordan Muncy, Walton's New Mexico teammate, was no slouch either. The Cedarville cowgirl turned in a barrel racing run of 17.64 seconds, which gave her a 0.007-second edge over Shelly Combs of Eltopia, Wash., for the top spot in the first performance....
Six inducted into ProRodeo Hall of Fame The ProRodeo Hall of Fame celebrated its 26th annual induction ceremony on Saturday with six individuals receiving the ultimate honor in professional rodeo. Headlining the Class of 2005 was the late Chris LeDoux of Kaycee, Wyo., who not only won the 1976 world bareback riding title, but also brought attention to rodeo through his music. Joining LeDoux was 1981 World All-Around Champion Jimmie Cooper of Monument, N.M., 1978 World Saddle Bronc Riding Champion Joe Marvel of Battle Mountain, Nev., late team roper Charles Maggini of Hollister, Calif., stock contractor Marvin Brookman of Wolf Point, Mont., and late rodeo clown Slim Pickens of Kingsburg, Calif....
It's All Trew: X-rays once used to ensure the perfect fit for shoes Many readers recalled shoe-buying expeditions of the past where the buyer placed their feet into a machine that showed an X-ray picture of their feet inside the new shoes. This sounded like a pretty-far-out tale to me, but the story is true and here are the facts. The "Shoe-Fitting-Flouroscope" was once a common fixture in better shoe stores from 1930 to 1950. The wooden fixture contained a step near the bottom with a hole in which to insert your feet inside the prospective new pair of shoes. Three viewing ports were located on the top for the customer, the customer's companion or mother and the salesman to see how the shoes fit. A push-button turned the machine on for about 20-second intervals. Inside, the shadowy outline of the bones and shape of the foot could be seen inside the outline of the shoe, thus providing a better fit for the customer....

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