NEWS ROUNDUP

Editorial: Feds, Wyoming split over drilling rules The Bush administration's rush to develop oil and gas across the West gives short shrift to the environment and causes anguish among ranchers and farmers whose properties are being overrun by drill rigs. Rather than resolve legitimate complaints, federal officials are trying to sidestep reasonable efforts to restore some balance. Wyoming's legislature this year enacted modest protections for surface owners. The new law calls for landowners to be properly notified when their land is slated for oil or gas drilling and to be reasonably compensated for any loss of their land's value. Last week, Wyoming's oil and gas commission finalized rules to implement the law. Instead of supporting Wyoming's efforts, the feds took the side of the drillers....
Operators worry about split-estate burdens under new law These worries include the necessity of posting a bond to both the federal Bureau of Land Management and the state of Wyoming if the operator cannot reach a surface use agreement with the landowner. In split estate cases regarding federal minerals, operators unable to obtain a signed surface use agreement are already required to post a $1,000 bond per patent of land to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Under the new law, operators in this circumstance will also have to post a $2,000 bond per well site to the state of Wyoming. Operators are also worried about the difficulty of adhering to a deadline requirement stipulated within the law. The law regulates that operators must notify the landowner no later than 30 days and no earlier than 180 days before operations start on the land....
Column: Let science, not politics, help the wolf The Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program is at a critical crossroads. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to restrict further releases of wolves into the wild and plans to trap and shoot more of them. Conservationists have been criticized for only questioning management of the program and have been urged to emphasize the progress that has been made. Unlike its management for other endangered species, the Fish and Wildlife Service pledged to confine wolves to a politically, and not biologically, constricted recovery area. And unlike in the reintroduction of wolves to Idaho and Wyoming, ranchers in the Southwest are allowed to leave out dead cattle and horses that die of non-wolf causes with the knowledge that any wolf that begins killing livestock after scavenging on such carcasses will be removed. Given such constraints, the wolves themselves have proven resilient survivors....
Help! Beetles invading forests in the West The mountain views along Red Stone Road suggest early autumn, with splashes of red, orange and a rusty brown dotting the green hillsides above the homes and condominiums of this Colorado resort town. But this is July and those colors represent hundreds of pine trees that have been killed by beetles. The tree mortality rate around Vail is striking, but it's even worse in other parts of Colorado and around the West. It's a problem that has grown sharply over the past several years: According to Forest Service figures, the acres of forest killed by beetles in 12 Western states jumped from 1.4 million in 1997 to 8.6 million last year. Experts blame the infestations on a series of mild winters, hot summers and drought. These stands of dead trees - from the Apache National Forest in western Arizona to Washington's Olympic National Park and extending into Canada and Mexico - are also prime fuel for catastrophic wildfires....
Grizzly may lose protection The grizzly bear, considered by many as a totem of the American West, may soon lose protection under the Endangered Species Act. Positioned as the "summit" species in the North American food chain, grizzlies fear no other animal. For the past 30 years, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team has been trapping, radio-collaring and studying hundreds of the great bears throughout the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem as their number increased. Their work is evaluated by a committee made up of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey Biological Resources, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana fish and game departments, and Montana State University. With more than 600 grizzlies now in the Yellowstone ecosystem, the committee believes it's time to declare the recovery a success and delist the great bear from Endangered Species protection....
Natural resources also campaign resources When the Bush administration proposed last year to overturn a ban on road construction and other development on 58.5 million acres of national forest, senior officials traveled to Boise for the announcement. Idaho was a logical setting for then-Agriculture secretary Ann Veneman to unveil a new direction in managing the nation's "roadless" forests. The plan, made final in May, gives governors a big say in determining how to use the federal land — whether to open parts for commercial use or keep areas natural. Idaho has 9.3 million acres of undeveloped national forest, second only to Alaska. Idaho also was the first state to challenge the ban on development in roadless forests, which was imposed in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Boise was pertinent for another reason. Idaho's governor, Republican Dirk Kempthorne, helped finance his re-election by receiving about $86,000 — about 8 cents of each dollar — from timber, mining and energy industries that could benefit from greater access to national forests in his state....
Battle over development at rustic ski area set for court hearing With a federal environmental review pending, a contentious proposal for a large resort at the base of one of Colorado's most rustic and remote ski areas faces the more immediate challenge of defending its building permits. Lawsuits by two environmental groups and the operators of the Wolf Creek ski area near South Fork in southwestern Colorado accuse Mineral County of being a rubber stamp for Texas billionaire developer Billy Joe "Red" McCombs. They claim the county violated state laws and its own rules by neither taking public comment nor giving public notice of meetings on the Village at Wolf Creek, which is proposed on nearly 300 acres of private land that's surrounded by national forest. Colorado Wild and the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council will make those arguments during a state district court hearing Tuesday in Creede, an historic mining town and seat of Mineral County. They and Davey Pitcher, president of Wolf Creek Ski Corp., believe the county commissioners caved in to McCombs when they agreed to the $1 billion project that includes 222,100 square feet of commercial space, hotels and homes for up to 10,500 people....
The Mountain vs. The Village Randall "Davey" Pitcher wears Birkenstock sandals. Bob Honts sports tall-Texan cowboy boots. Each regularly leaves footprints atop Wolf Creek Pass, the epicenter of a bitter fight over the proposed Village at Wolf Creek. Pitcher presides over the Wolf Creek Ski Area. Honts is CEO of an idea: the Village, a development under way on an island of private land within the Rio Grande National Forest. Their disagreements are an extension, sometimes philosophical, always economic, of the two powerhouses they represent: skiing patriarch Kingsbury Pitcher and Forbes 400 billionaire Billie Joe "Red" McCombs. And their efforts trigger reactions among activists and observers from Creede to Capitol Hill....
Forest Service to cut down trees that block view of Mt. Shasta U.S. forest officials have agreed to cut down a dozen or more pine trees at the foot of Mount Shasta to restore a historically wide-open meadow where American Indians gather to dance and pray. Coonrod Flat, about 12 miles southeast of the mountain's summit, has always been a gathering point for the ceremonies of the Winnemem band of Wintu Indians. Participants face east to observe the sun rising, then turn toward the mountain while performing cultural dances. An unobstructed line of sight is important because Shasta has special alignment with Coonrod Flat and other sacred sites. But lately encroaching pine trees have blocked the view of the 14-thousand-foot volcano in Shasta-Trinity National Forest....
Forest face-off Three years later, on a September day in 1998, the bearded redhead from Missouri lay curled up on the floor of a Humboldt County forest, rocking and sobbing. Next to him was 24-year-old David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain, his head cracked open from the blow of a tree felled by an enraged logger. Chain had inspired Wilson to disrupt old-growth logging on private land. It was Wilson's first act of civil disobedience. Now, Chain was dead. The legacy of that death, Wilson soon decided, was the weight the Lakota elder had warned of. He vowed to carry it with honor. From that day on, "Shunka" would be his forest name, joining the list of adopted monikers that give Humboldt's logging protesters a blend of anonymity and fairy tale whimsy. Shunka's long struggle to redress Chain's death would depend, more than anything, on a 700-year-old tree the protesters had named "Aradia."....
Column: ESA debate heats up The U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from forcing a citizen to "quarter" a soldier in time of peace. The Endangered Species Act, however, forces any citizen to "quarter" wolves, panthers, bears, or any of more than 1200 other species the government declares to be "endangered." The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from "taking" private property for public use, without just compensation. The Endangered Species Act, however, takes away the use of private property from citizens, without paying any compensation at all. Clearly, the Endangered Species Act ignores the private property rights specifically protected by the U.S. Constitution. This contentious 1973 law is, once again, the subject of heated debate in Washington....
Irrigation district controls dam's fate The removal of Chiloquin dam might be blocked. Tearing out the 91-year-old concrete structure on the Sprague River near Chiloquin has passed through federal hurdles and has the support of legislators, environmental groups and the Klamath Tribes, but now this issue rests with the 86 landowners of the Modoc Point Irrigation District. The district owns the dam and holds its fate. "The board is seeking the membership's approval to go ahead," said Doug Tedrick, manager of the dam's fish passage project for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. "If the district doesn't want us to take it out, then we are not going to take it out."....
Endangered Species Act embroiled in court battles More than three decades after the Endangered Species Act gave the federal government tools and a mandate to protect animals, insects and plants threatened with extinction, the landmark law is facing the most intense efforts ever by White House officials, members of Congress, landowners and industry to limit its reach. More than any time in the law's 32-year history, the obligations it imposes on government — and, indirectly, on landowners — are being challenged in the courts, reworked in the agencies responsible for enforcing it and re-examined in Congress. In some cases, the challenges are broad and sweeping, as when the Bush administration, in a legal battle about the best way to protect endangered salmon, declared western dams to be as much a part of the landscape as the rivers they control. In others, the actions are deep in the realm of regulatory bureaucracy, as when a White House appointee at the Interior Department sought to influence scientific recommendations involving the sage grouse, a bird whose habitat includes areas of likely oil and gas deposits....
Endangered plants focus of new study In a review ranging from the Western lily to the Tennessee coneflower, the Center for Plant Conservation is about to embark on a major study of endangered plants to determine their potential for recovery in the United States. The St. Louis-based nonprofit organization, a network of more than 30 botanical institutions around the country, was founded in 1984 to prevent the extinction of native plants. Center officials said an analysis of this scale has never been performed before at a national level. The Center estimates that about 2,000 U.S. plant species, or about 10 percent of the nation's native flora, are at risk of extinction. The roughly $500,000 study will look at endangered or threatened plants and also those being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act....
Endangered Ferret Needs Its Prey, Furthering Ranchers' Woes Yet the ferret, an obscure member of the weasel family, is behind a longstanding battle between conservationists and ranchers over land use and government-sponsored poisoning and the familiar question of what comes first, working people or little animals. It is not that people who live here have any quarrel with black-footed ferrets. Few have even seen one. It is the animal that the ferrets eat that is the problem, its formal name - Cynomys ludovicianus - surfacing in a recent flurry of back-and-forth lawsuits and government reports: the cute and chubby and insatiable prairie dog. As the area has been struck by drought, prairie dogs have scampered over property lines and occupied neighboring ranches, devouring the vegetation on acres where cattle graze. Last fall, after a ban on killing prairie dogs was lifted, the federal Department of Agriculture poisoned 5,000 acres of the public lands in the Canata Basin. Ranchers applauded, saying prairie dogs threaten their livelihood. Conservationists, though, warned against further poisoning, saying it could mean another threat of extinction for the black-footed ferret....
Research shows grizzlies in backyards a lot more than previously thought Despite economic expansion in western Montana, grizzly bear populations are on the rise and grizzly behavior is becoming less of a mystery. Speaking at the Montanans for Multiple Use meeting last night, Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Grizzly Bear Recovery Program Coordinator, presented newly collected data that showed where and when bears move around their habitat, something that was previously misunderstood. Servheen said USFWS has planted Global Positioning System collars on grizzlies in the Swan Valley and discovered that bears move near roadways and houses at night, a time they have learned is less dangerous. "It tells us what bears do in the dark," he said. "It opens the door to understanding animals." Knowing when and where bears move around allows wildlife managers to create strategies on how to deal with problem bears as well as the interaction between humans and grizzlies....
Environmental groups sue feds over grazing at Glen Canyon Two environmental groups are suing the Bureau of Land Management, the Park Service and Interior Secretary Gale Norton over grazing in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The lawsuit filed Friday has implications for ranching in northern Arizona and southern Utah, including for those who ranch in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Tucson's Center for Biological Diversity and another group that calls itself the Great Old Broads for Wilderness have charged the federal agencies with ignoring their own mission statement to protect natural resources in the parks and with recognizing in 1999 that the cattle were having a negative impact, but doing nothing about it. "The Park Service itself recognized that there was this ecological degradation and they wrote a plan (to mitigate it)," Center for Biological Diversity's Greta Anderson said. "...Now we just want them to follow
it."....
Focus Property Group-Led Consortium Closes on $510 Million Purchase of BLM Auction Parcel in Las Vegas Focus Property Group, along with a consortium of home building companies including KB Home, Kimball Hill Homes, Lennar/US Home, Meritage Homes, Pulte Homes, Ryland Homes, Toll Brothers Homes and Woodside Homes, completed the purchase of the 1,700 acres of land located in the northwest section of the City of Las Vegas for which it was the successful bidder at the Bureau of Land Management auction held last February. The consortium intends to construct a master planned community on the property. The consortium today placed $408 million into escrow for payment to the BLM, which, when added to the $102 million paid on the date of the auction, represents the total price of $510 million it bid for the BLM land. The group simultaneously closed $490 million in acquisition and development financing from a consortium of banks and institutional lenders led by Wachovia Bank and Wachovia Capital Markets, LLC. Located just north of Focus Property Group's 1,200 acre Providence master plan, this new community will be adjacent to the City's Northwest Town Center, north of the Las Vegas Beltway, on both sides of US 95. Focus estimates that builders will be ready to open their first model homes in the new community in late 2007....
Exploration for gold debated Conservation groups are joining historians and archeologists in expressing concern about gold exploration on South Pass. "The exploration in and of itself is ... though not welcome, probably not going to be devastating," said Barbara Dobos of the Alliance for Historic Wyoming. "But you don't explore without the intent to develop." Among the group's concerns are possible effects to sage grouse and historic trails. The trails have been called "areas of critical concern" by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Oregon, California, Pony Express and Mormon Pioneer trails converge in the area proposed for gold exploration....
Column: Huntsman is right to support counties in road dispute Huntsman's support of state and county ownership of these roads is nothing new. The dispute over title to these roads began in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the Utah wilderness debate became a heated national issue. Counties depend on these roads to support their economies and the public's recreation needs. Despite FLPMA's protection of valid existing RS 2477 roads, the BLM has acted as though it can simply ignore these rights. But the BLM is wrong. The BLM, National Park Service and wilderness activists took the issue to the federal courts after mechanical maintenance and improvements were made to the Burr Trail and 16 other roads in Kane, Garfield and San Juan counties. As many decisions were upheld in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, several key RS 2477 points were thought to have been settled, including that it is state law which determines what it takes to establish a right of way and, once established, the rights of way are limited so that the counties cannot take actions that adversely affect adjacent public lands in any significant way....
Shift on MTBE May Clear Way for Energy Bill Congressional negotiators said Sunday they had resolved a dispute over a controversial gasoline additive that had threatened passage of the first overhaul of national energy policy in more than a decade. They said they did not expect the energy bill to include any legal protection for the manufacturers of methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, which helps engines produce less smog but has been blamed for contaminating groundwater supplies across the country. The decision not to shield MTBE manufacturers from environmental lawsuits should clear the way for negotiators to complete work on a final bill, perhaps as early as today, and send it to the House and the Senate for approval by the end of the week....
Congress Approves Far-Reaching Changes in US Geothermal Laws The House-Senate Conference Committee meeting on national energy legislation today approved sweeping changes to the nation's geothermal energy laws. The provisions, titled the John Rishel Geothermal Steam Act Amendments, represent the first major overhaul of the Geothermal Steam Act since 1970. "The geothermal provisions adopted by the Conference Committee are a dramatic improvement in the law," noted Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association. "They will encourage the rapid expansion of geothermal energy use in the West." Pointing to some of the highlights, Gawell added, "This bill streamlines some of the most bureaucratic aspects of the law, provides clear direction for the agencies to make geothermal a priority, gives local governments more funding to mitigate impacts, and ensures that the federal agencies will have the resources needed to implement the new law and quickly work-off a 30 year backlog of unfinished studies and ignored lease applications."....
Animal Rights Extremists Still in Business After the horrific events of Sept. 11, some thought that ecoterrorism might fade away. After all, President Bush made it plain that the government would hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice. It didn’t seem like a good time to be vandalizing university labs and government buildings, trespassing on farms to release animals and setting fire to new housing construction. Animal rights and environmental extremists themselves anticipated a lull as they rethought their tactics, determined how the unconscionable act of Sept. 11 would change public opinion and waited to see if more legal pressure would be brought to bear on them. If anyone expected them to just crawl in a hole and hide, however, it hasn’t happened. Only a month after Sept. 11, the Environmental Liberation Front turned wild horses loose from a Bureau of Land Management facility in Susanville, Calif. They also torched barns, a building and vehicles. To Craig Rosebraugh, author of “Burning Rage of a Dying Planet,” the attack was a relief. It meant the war against mainstream America would continue....
Mormons, ACLU at odds over future of sacred site More accustomed to poolside parties and summer jobs at burger joints, the Colorado teens struggled as they pushed the heavy wooden handcarts across Wyoming's dusty prairie. Leaving the carts at the bottom of a hill, the group of 100 or so youngsters walked the final half-mile up a steep slope to Martin's Cove, where 56 Mormon pioneers are said to have died of exhaustion and hypothermia in 1856 while on their way to Salt Lake City. Amalie Brown, 16, had heard stories of this place over and over again in Mormon Sunday school and at church while growing up. But the moment was more powerful than even she had expected. The problem is that, as one of the most revered sites in the Mormon world, a place considered by church officials to be holy ground, Martin's Cove is on a patch of sagebrush and prairie grass administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management....
USDA challenges governor on state cattle inspections The U.S. Department of Agriculture is questioning the legality of an order by Gov. Brian Schweitzer that would result in a $3 to $5 fee on Canadian cattle crossing the border destined for Montana. Schweitzer said on Thursday that he would require additional checks by veterinarians now that cattle shipments from Canada have resumed, and he estimated the cost would be $3 to $5 a head. He cited lingering concerns about importing cattle from a country that has reported three cases of mad cow disease during the past two years. Terri Teuber, a spokeswoman for the USDA in Washington, said on Friday that agency attorneys had reviewed Schweitzer's order. "We don't believe the state has the authority to charge a fee due to the burden it would cause on foreign commerce," she said. "With that said, we've not yet seen any proposed regulations or guidelines they intend to follow to conduct the inspections." Schweitzer dismissed the legal concerns, saying, "We thank them for their advice, but meanwhile we will protect the interests of consumers and the cattle industry in Montana."....Look at the headlines, USDI challenges Wyo. law on split estates and USDA challenges Montana law on cattle inspections. Gee, I thought the Bush folks were believers in Federalism. Hardly....
Saddle up: Billings saddle maker cinches prestigious Academy of Western Artists award After 30 years of molding leather to rawhide trees, Chas Weldon figures he's only halfway through his saddle-making career. Still, the 500 buckaroo-style saddles the Billings native has crafted for horsemen and collectors were enough to win him the Academy of Western Artists' 2005 Will Rogers Cowboy Award for saddle making for a lifetime of achievement. The award was one of 38 handed out to Western performers and artisans, including three from this area, during a July 12 ceremony in a suburb of Dallas. After receiving honorable mentions for the past two years, the award wasn't a total surprise. But Weldon said what pleased him the most was that the winner is picked mostly by saddle makers who have won before....
Drivers to I-84 cows: moove Hundreds of cattle hit the road Friday morning as a local rancher moved them along Interstate 84 toward their summer grazing grounds in Croydon. Both the sheriff's office and the Utah Highway Patrol were notified of the herding in order to stave off any potential problems. Several vehicles from the sheriff's office followed the herd up the freeway from mile marker 103 in Morgan to mile marker 111 in Croydon. Weber County Dispatch Center received several calls Friday morning from motorists taking issue with the traffic backup. "You have people upset because they want to go 70 miles per hour and it slows to about 10," Frandsen said. However, the cow herding is legal because the rancher owned trail rights before the freeway was built, Peay said. The cattle will travel back down Interstate 84 this fall. The cattle herding occurs every year....
Under Bubba's red glare Geneva Houx grew a little nervous as she hit the high notes at Saturday's singing contest in downtown Portland. The judge, after all, was licking his lips. And swooshing his tail. It's not a typical performance, the 27-year-old Hillsboro gospel singer said, when you're trying to please a 3,000-pound Black Angus bull. But to win a spot singing the national anthem at this year's Washington County Fair & Rodeo, that's what you've got to do. Several hundred people gathered in Pioneer Courthouse Square on Saturday afternoon to see Bubba, as well as a petite rodeo queen, judge the five hopefuls belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner." "We're looking to see some expression from Bubba," said Don Hillman, executive director of the Fair Complex. "Some kind of body movement, tail-twitching."....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Lite comes before enlightenment Dave is a local rancher in the mountain valleys of central California. May 5, he took three of his buddies into the high country to check the summer range. They four-wheeled up into the Alpine zone and finally reached the line camp at Dripping Spring. The snow-covered peaks were melting like ice cream. The spring was beautiful, the willows were budding. It was still coat cold. Dave checked the corrals, the little outhouse, the tool shed and the spring. To his curiosity, he noticed a black bandanna tied high in a birch tree that overhung the spring. He puzzled over its significance; a hiker's souvenir? A hunter's signal? A cowboy's joke? A talisman? A scarecrow to drive off beavers? He stood on his ATV and was able to reach the bandanna and managed to untie it from the limb. It seemed fresh and clean, no doubt, rain and sun had laundered it well. He put it around his neck. It made him feel dashing! Inside the cabin, the larder was checked. It was kept supplied with canned goods, matches, some firewood and blankets. Notes were made on what was needed. Dave found two cans of Miller Lite beer in the sink....

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