NEWS ROUNDUP

Feds target two Idaho wolves for death Federal wildlife agents plan to shoot two wolves in north-central Idaho in hopes of stopping a cattle-and-dog killing spree that has unnerved ranchers and hunters near Elk River and Dworshak since last winter. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service authorized agents to kill two members of the so-called Chesimia wolf pack that are believed to have killed two cows this month. The predators, reintroduced to Idaho a decade ago, are also blamed for killing six dogs since the start of the year, including three bear hounds in early May in what federal officials believed was a case of the wolves protecting a litter of newborn pups....
Column: Woodpecker Smells Like a Rat In old-timey detective stories, the Bad Guy character would snarl “I smell a rat” when he sensed that something was not right. Maybe there was a hint of scam, or a trap being laid, or a double-cross afoot. Well, people are starting to “smell a rat” in the sudden appearance of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. If this sounds familiar, it is. The same ploy has been used successfully over and over again by environmental organizations and government wildlife agencies that seek to close land to human use, and to transfer ownership title of the land and control of the land to the government. Remember the Spotted Owl fiasco in the Northwest....
Proposed wildlife refuge unpopular with curry county landowners The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to create a 5,900 acre refuge out of a collection of ranch and forest lands on the west side of Highway 101 near Langlois. If the plan goes forward, the agency would try to negotiate with landowners to buy conservation easements – agreements which would involve a promise not to develop the land. The area is a stop on the migratory route of the Aleutian cackling goose, a formerly endangered species. "Kind of looks like a land grab to me," said Mike Knapp, a rancher who owns just over 16 percent of the land being considered for the refuge. "I don't think the federal government needs any more control." "I am totally against it," said Gail Rathbun, who owns one and a half percent of the land. "I will not turn my place into a national refuge ... this land is my land."....
Grazing Rules Ride on Doctored Science When government scientists first reviewed a proposed overhaul of U.S. Bureau of Land Management grazing regulations, the resulting reports read as if they had been written by environmentalists. In separate internal reports written two years ago, scientists from the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warned that the BLM's new rules could or would damage wildlife, water supplies, streamside areas, vegetation and endangered species. The Wildlife Service's report also said that the rules would tend to give grazing a higher priority than other uses, remove the public from the decision-making process, and give away public rights on public land. Erick Campbell, one of about 15 BLM scientists who wrote the original report, says he had expected his work to be rewritten somewhat, but not in this wholesale manner. He quit his job in March after three decades with the agency because, he says, "The Bush administration is just rolling back any advances made in the last 30 years. We are going back to the 19th century." Bill Brookes, a hydrologist who also worked on the original report, resigned in January after 25 years with the BLM, in part out of frustration with the administration's handling of environmental issues....
Environmentalists sue to block grazing rules The lawsuit filed last week by Western Watersheds Project charges that the Bureau of Land Management has violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other federal laws by suppressing scientific information from its own staff, other government agencies and the general public. "The proposed changes to BLM's grazing rules are nothing less than a rollback to the rancher-controlled era of 50 years ago," said Jon Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds Project. BLM attorneys still were reviewing the lawsuit and the agency had no comment yet, spokesman Barry Rose said from the BLM state office in Boise, Idaho....
Biologist recounts his close encounters with brown bears Looking back almost 50 years after his brown-bear roping escapades on Alaska's Kodiak Island, Will Troyer admits it was all a little crazy. "We were really lucky no one got hurt," he said. In Alaska during the 1950s, his lack of experience didn't matter. Troyer was one of only a handful of college-trained wildlife professionals in the state. When the previous refuge manager quit, he was summoned from a job watching a fish weir and offered the opportunity. He took it. And it didn't take long for the fun to start. "That winter at our annual United States Fish and Wildlife Service meeting in Juneau, I announced my intent to capture Kodiak bears," he writes in his newly released book, "Into Brown Bear Country." "The audience reacted with loud laughter." Troyer wasn't deterred....
Joggers may become endangered species at wildlife refuge The section of Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge that is off Monsen Road in Concord is for the birds, especially migrating ones. That's why the US Fish and Wildlife Service banned dogs there as of July 1 and is conducting a study through early December to help decide whether joggers and runners will be next. During the study period, jogging and running are permitted during some weeks and prohibited during others. The federal agency is also taking photos of everyone who enters the refuge near Monsen Road and will use the photos to determine what people do there. The photos are taken automatically as people pass. People accustomed to jogging down the quiet dirt paths with the sound of honking geese rather than honking horns as accompaniment say they hope the study won't result in their permanently losing access to a place that is a refuge for their souls as well as for the wildlife....
Sage grouse numbers on rise The Colorado population of Gunnison sage grouse has almost doubled in the past year, according to a study released Wednesday by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Gary Skiba, a biologist with the DOW, takes the population increase as a good sign. "We counted more birds, period," Skiba said. In the Gunnison Basin alone, the most populous of seven habitat areas, biologists estimated there are more than 4,000 of the birds, up from 2,320 in 2004. The Gunnison sage grouse is listed as a species of special concern in Colorado and therefore cannot be hunted. The bird is being considered for the threatened species list under the Endangered Species Act, according to the DOW....
Wild Species Threatened by Low-Yield Farming, Not Global Warming, Expert Says "Claims that global warming will destroy up to a million wildlife species -- as recently featured on ABC's Nightline -- are willfully misleading," warned Dennis Avery of Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues at the American Society of Animal Science's annual meeting on July 24. Worse, said Avery, TV networks and wildlife biologists ignore the real threat to the world's wildlife: a redoubling of human food demand over the next 50 years that could imperil vast tracts of wildlife habitat. Recognizing the food demand, however, would shift government research funds from climate models to politically incorrect agricultural research stations-our main hope to double crop and livestock yields. "Modern warming is overwhelmingly natural. Ice cores and cave stalagmites tell us the Earth has a moderate, natural 1500-year climate cycle driven by the sun. All our wildlife species have survived 600 of these cyclical warmings in the last million years," said Avery. "Trees and plants are often cold-limited, but rarely heat-limited. The very biologists who warned us in the journal Nature that a million species might be lost to warming have published their own studies showing that wild species are extending their ranges. Warming is making the forests more diverse, not less."....
BLM, Forest Service propose changes to clarify oil and gas order Private property owners whose subsurface minerals are owned by the Bureau of Land Management would be invited to inspect proposed sites of an oil or natural-gas well on their land, under proposed rules changes by the BLM and Forest Service. Such split-estate situations often lead to conflicts between property owners and energy developers. The change would call for those companies to take the initiative to reach a surface-use agreement, said BLM Colorado Chief of Fluid Minerals Duane Spencer. Failing that, the BLM would then invite the property owner to inspect a proposed well site and tell the BLM their concerns. The on-site inspection change is one of several proposed changes to Onshore Oil and Gas Order No. 1 that were announced Wednesday by the BLM and Forest Service....Go here for the BLM press release and here to see the Federal Register notice....
Kebler Pass area targeted for BLM auction Last year, the Bureau of Land Management withdrew a parcel of land near Paonia State Park and Kebler Pass from a federal oil and gas auction “because people spoke out loud and clear to protect this special place,” said Paonia environmental activist Rob Peters. “Now, in spite of overwhelming opposition from nearby residents and communities, the federal government is at it again and looking for another way to open these popular public lands to oil and gas drilling,” said Peters, executive director of the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council. To be auctioned Aug. 11, the parcel includes the junction of McClure Pass and Kebler Pass roads, the confluence of the North Fork of the Gunnison River and Anthracite Creek and land surrounding Crystal Meadows Ranch, a private resort. “People come here from all over the world, to see Western Colorado’s famous scenery, to cast a line into a quiet trout stream, or just to relax and enjoy the peacefulness of a beautiful mountain valley,” said Crystal Meadows Ranch owner Kay Tennison. “We all use energy, and we understand that this activity is appropriate for many of our public lands. But not everywhere and not here. Some places should not be leased for drilling.”....
Oil and gas companies question new fee Local oil and gas companies are questioning the need for a Bureau of Land Management proposal to charge $4,000 to process drilling permit applications. The agency wants to impose the fee to cover costs associated with processing mineral-related permit applications. "It's kind of a wonder to us why we would have to pay for a permit to drill when we already pay lease rentals and royalties from the wells to the BLM," Yates Petroleum consultant Gene George said. On a 10-year lease from the BLM, operators now pay an extra $1.50 rental fee per acre per year for the first five years, and $2 per acre per year during the last five years. The federal government also receives a 12.5 percent royalty on all oil and gas drilled on the leased land....
BLM to gather wild horses from blackened Idaho rangeland The Bureau of Land Management will use wranglers and a helicopter tomorrow morning to begin rounding up 350 wild horses in danger of starving after a wildfire blackened their range in southern Idaho. Since the Clover Fire was put out in mid-July, BLM workers have been working to repair a pipeline to provide water for the Saylor Creek Herd. The horses are feeding on a patchwork of unburned islands of grass in the 300-square-mile blackened area, but officials fear they won't survive....
Major Tahoe land acquisitions on new federal list A 770-acre site in the Lake Tahoe Basin, once a Nevada version of California's Bohemian Club for the rich and powerful, highlights a new list of property being recommended for public acquisition using money from public land sales in the Las Vegas area. The recommendation to pay at least $75 million for the Incline Lake property, a private Sierra retreat set up by Nevada power broker and developer Norman Biltz in the late 1930s, is among numerous proposals for spending $1.1 billion of the public land sale revenue. Norman Biltz Nash of Reno, Biltz' grandson and chairman of Incline Lake Corp. which has owned the 770-acre Tahoe site for more than 60 years, said current owners have mixed emotions about the proposed sale to the Forest Service, but added, "This could be the gemstone of the Tahoe program of conservation."....
Compromise keeps land sales money in Nevada Congressional negotiators have killed a proposal to funnel millions of dollars in profits from federal land sales in Clark County into the federal treasury, said an aide to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The land sales that have netted the state more than $2 billion for parks and land protection went unchallenged in a final bill that sets spending and policy for the Interior Department in fiscal 2006, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Wednesday report. The White House wanted to use about $700 million from the program to reduce the federal deficit, while House Appropriations Committee members considered using the money for other programs....
Short cash, water deal breaks down A lack of federal support has undone what was heralded earlier this year as a milestone agreement between the Klamath Tribes and irrigators above Upper Klamath Lake. The agreement that sought to resolve longstanding disputes over water rights hinged on millions of dollars in federal funding to buy out newer water rights and implement water restoration projects. But federal officials have shown no interest in allocating the funds, said former state Sen. Steve Harper, who helped broker the agreement. "We sure haven't seen action," Harper told the Herald and News earlier this week. Harper, who has been facilitating meetings between water stakeholders for a year, announced the agreement on Feb. 25 with Klamath Tribes Chairman Allen Foreman and Fort Klamath rancher Roger Nicholson....
Fart Science: Cows put in a bubble to measure emissions In a white, tent-like "bio-bubble" on a farm near Davis, eight pregnant Holsteins are eating, chewing and pooping - for science. "The ladies," as they're called by University of California researcher Frank Mitloehner, are doing their part to answer a question plaguing one of California's largest agricultural industries: How much gas does a cow emit? The findings will be used to write the state's first air quality regulations for dairies and could affect regulations nationwide. But before he explains how it works, Mitloehner wants one thing to be clear. "We're not talking about flatulence," he says. He emphasizes the point because his research has been dismissed as "fart science," a label he says doesn't do justice to the seriousness of his work....
68th Annual Freedom Rodeo amd Old Cowhand Reunion It's that time of year again, when the little town of Freedom swells to about twenty-five times its normal size, as "The Biggest Open Rodeo in the West" unfolds August 18-20. Built on long-standing tradition and plain, old volunteer spirit, the Freedom Rodeo and Old Cowhand Reunion continue to draw fans and contestants from throughout the country to this quaint little town nestled along the banks of the Cimarron River. The three-day event combines a unique blend of professional rodeo action with hometown color, style and genuine hospitality into a celebration that has been recognized as one of "Oklahoma's Outstanding Events of the Year."....
'Home on the Range' at Ogden Nature Center For a relaxing night of fun, there's no place like home -- on the range, that is. "Home on the Range," an annual outdoor event at the Ogden Nature Center, gets under way at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 8. "It's a really relaxing summer evening with good food, good music and, of course, the wonderful poetry of Stan Tixier," said Mary McKinley, director of the center. "It really is just a lovely evening." Tixier, who retired from the U.S. Forest Service, donates his time each year to perform cowboy poetry at the event. McKinley says the Ogden Valley man has a loyal following. Coyote Moon, a local group, will add to the Western atmosphere with live music. The menu features Dutch Oven Smothered Beef, Sheepherder Cheese Potatoes, vegetables, rolls and apple crisp....
Rounding up the herd Pete Carmichael and his dog, Hooker, are used to chasing livestock through an obstacle course and ending up in the winner's circle of stock dog trials. However, it was Carmichael, of Timber Lake, S.D., and his dog Nap that took the cattle dog trials by storm Tuesday evening at the North Dakota State Fair Center as part of the North Dakota State Fair. Nap and Carmichael niftily herded a trio of cattle through chutes and gates, around barrels and into a pen in a time of 3:59, tallying 105 points in the process. Murray Ketteler, of Blunt, S.D., and his dog, Freckles, also scored 105 points but took nearly one minute longer to maneuver his cattle through the obstacle course. Carmichael and Buffy finished third with 103 points in 4:14; Roger Halvorson of Tioga was fourth with a score of 99 points in a time of 2:58. Carmichael put on a sheep exhibition before the cattle dog portion of the trials to demonstrate the training techniques for both the cattle dogs and the sheep dogs....

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