NEWS ROUNDUP

Wolf pack blamed for cow killing in Idaho A wolf pack that already has killed six hunting dogs likely killed an adult cow last week, officials said. But the dead cow cannot be positively linked to wolves, so federal wildlife officials say no action can be taken against the pack, which is active between Elk River and Dworshak Reservoir. Still, said Carter Niemeyer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, action will be taken if more livestock deaths are linked to the pack. ''That pack was confirmed to be a problem last year. We would probably engage in some incremental removal of the pack if they are confirmed to be a problem this year,'' Niemeyer said. Rancher Suzanne Beale found the dead cow Monday and saw a wolf run from it as she approached. She called Wildlife Services Agent Dave Thomas to investigate, and though Thomas found it probable that wolves killed the cow, the carcass had no tooth puncture marks - which meant it was impossible to say for certain that wolves were responsible. Federal authorities only authorize killing wolves if it can be proved that the animals were responsible for livestock deaths....
Cougar Kill Chris Catania’s five dogs had a confrontation last month in their rural backyard that has become all too familiar to residents in the Foots Creek drainage. About 5:30 p.m., a cougar apparently hopped a four-foot fence in hopes of turning one of Catania’s five dogs into an evening meal. Dexter, an 8-year-old mix, dashed to the porch and tore a nail trying to scratch his way inside. Reba, a Queensland heeler, stood and fought, suffering a side gash as clean as a surgeon’s scalpel. The other dogs eventually scared off the cougar, which Catania and her husband, Bruce, spotted again last week prowling outside their rural Hosmer Lane house. Area landowners have tried to kill the cougar themselves, and at least two houndsmen have been hired to tree and kill the cougar, Maxwell says. One neighbor wears a side-arm just to mow his lawn, and others have stopped jogging until the offending cougar or cougars are found and killed....
'Trespassing cattle' case comes to close According to the Nevada Department of Agriculture, "years of controversy" ended on June 16 when an Esmeralda County Grand Jury issued a finding of "no indictable criminal activity" was conducted by department personnel in the seizure of Esmeralda County rancher Ben Colvin's cows in 2001. The incident was resolved in favor of the agency and was related to the locally debated confiscation of 64 head of Colvin's cattle in 2001. Colvin claimed he had legal access to the public lands on which the cows grazed and the agency's taking had violated the law. Colvin questioned the issuance of a Nevada brand inspection certificate from the Nevada Department of Agriculture to the Bureau of Land Management in the 2001 cattle seizure....
Access takes center stage Once there was enough room for multiple users of public lands to do what they needed to do with very little conflict. They seldom ran into each other. In the last decade, 8.2 million homes were built on the urban-wildlands interface, bringing with them some 32 million people demanding increased recreation on public lands, developed or otherwise. Access, threatened and endangered species, and invasive species are only a few of the issues around which much conflict is appearing. This is particularly true in five interior Western states that saw the fastest population increases in the 1990s: Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Colorado. “It’s tempting to talk about these issues in terms of the Old West vs. the New West. I’m not sure that description is terribly helpful,” said Mark Rey, undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Old vs. new suggests a linear progression and perpetuates some conflicts, making it harder to get beyond them.”....
Vegas Water Wars No-limit poker isn't simply the defining prestige game for Las Vegas, it's also a metaphor for the physical structure of the city. For all practical purposes, Las Vegas has no geographic impediments to expansion. It doesn't have an ocean to run into, or a towering cordillera to abut: just the vast and sere desert on all sides, much of it flat and friendly to sprawling tracts. All this elbow room has combined with an explosive economy to create growth that is positively fungoid in character. Greater Las Vegas now has a population of 1.7 million, with about 80,000 new residents added annually. It far outstrips any other U.S. city in employment growth, generating 76,000 new jobs last year alone....
Push is on to preserve desert After years of failed attempts by Arizona lawmakers to reform state trust land laws, a coalition of conservation, education and business leaders is poised to ask Arizona voters to ratify a plan to save hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin desert before developers plow them under. The agreement has been carefully crafted to ensure that Arizona's public schools and the children they serve, the primary beneficiaries of high-priced public land sales, do not suffer a loss of income, coalition members say. A new statewide initiative would alter the Arizona Constitution and, combined with a congressional amendment to the law that created Arizona in 1912, would make conservation a legitimate use of some of the 9.3 million acres of land Arizona holds in trust to help fund education and other state agencies....
Editorial: Shift to placate ranchers could put resources at risk When cattle and sheep graze on fragile public lands, there is a risk of damaging the ecosystem that supports wild plants and animals as well as clean water. To minimize that risk, regulations in the past gave Bureau of Land Management officers authority to step in and quickly assess potential damage and, if necessary, to take action to uphold the standards for protecting rangeland. Public comments were solicited on grazing decisions that affected these lands that are owned by the taxpayers. Unfortunately, the federal BLM has changed the rules, limiting public comment to grazing plans and reports; those who ostensibly own the land - the public - will not be allowed to question decisions that profoundly affect the land. Under the new regulations, local BLM officers must make detailed analyses before they can do anything to prevent or correct the effects of overgrazing on land, water sources and wildlife....
Federal Officials Echoed Grazing-Rule Warnings Federal wildlife managers across the West warned the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that new livestock grazing regulations were potentially harmful to wildlife and water quality, adding their voices to those of BLM scientists who said similar criticism was excised by Washington policymakers. Wildlife experts for the Fish and Wildlife Service's three Western regions, along with Environmental Protection Agency officials, expressed concerns in written comments to the BLM last year. The bureau solicited the comments as it was finalizing the new grazing rules, which go into effect this month. "The proposed revisions would change fundamentally the way the BLM lands are managed, temporally, spatially, and philosophically,'' stated a 16-page Fish and Wildlife Service report. "These changes could have profound impacts on wildlife resources."....
Rural road-sign rage erupting again Just over a month after the Governor's Office brokered a meeting to tone down the rhetoric in the dispute over Kane County's placement of road signs in and around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a state official and a legislator have turned the heat back up. Speaking at the Farm Bureau's annual midyear conference in Cedar City on Thursday, Utah Assistant Attorney General Mark Ward likened Kane County's defiance of Bureau of Land Management regulations to a fight against tyranny, while Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, called the county's rebellious road signs the "shot heard 'round the world." Ward praised the county for asserting its rights in its conflict with the BLM, which he says are guaranteed by a 19th century law that provides public rights of way across federal land....
Tribes reveal proposalfor land The Klamath Tribes have a new plan for regaining former reservation lands now held by the U.S. Forest Service: Buy them. Tribal leaders floated the idea before the Klamath County Board of Commissioners this week as part of an overall plan to bring together differing stakeholders in the Klamath water issue. A public meeting about the plan is being scheduled for early August. The Tribes gave the commissioners a one-page proposal summary. Its goal is to "unite the people and the economic interest of the Klamath Basin to create a stronger economy and more family wage jobs (through) enhanced local control and careful management of the region's natural resources." It would involve the Tribes paying a fair market price for reservation land....
Grizzly numbers improving: But proposal for delisting still debated Wolves are big business for Pat Phillips' Yellowstone National Park tour company, but nothing compares to spotting a grizzly bear. "It's the top predator in the park. They're really majestic," said Phillips, who spends his summers leading geologic and wildlife tours for Safari Yellowstone. "It's so powerful it's unbelievable." Phillips credits the Endangered Species Act, which has protected grizzly bears since 1975, with helping the grizzly population rebound. But he worries that the federal government's upcoming proposal to delist the bear would reverse that progress. Before the month's end, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release its draft proposal for delisting the grizzly. That will be followed by a 90-day public comment period and public meetings. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming would be expected to release their own plans for management of the grizzlies before control of the animal is handed from the federal government to the states....
Polluting Now to Save Trees in the Future Scientists wearing protective face masks roamed a private, remote 80-acre grove, checking the levels of greenhouse gases being sprayed onto the trees. For the last eight years, researcher David F. Karnosky and dozens of scientists have trucked billions of pounds of ozone and other gases to these woods, where aspen and pine trees blanket the surrounding hills. They have sprayed thousands of trees with the gases to simulate what pollution is expected to be 50 years from now. Their goal is to determine how Wisconsin forests will fare with increased levels of pollution. The $8-million project — Aspen FACE — is the world's largest outdoor climate-change experiment....
USFS prepares to revise water regulations The regional office of the U.S. Forest Service is revising a watershed practices conservation handbook that determines how the agency manages projects with potential impacts to streams and wetlands. Although the final outcome is not expected for months, it will ultimately have implications for management of waters in Summit County waters, along with the rest of the region, so environmental groups, state agencies, the EPA and the ski industry are all keeping a close eye on the process. The stakeholders met in Denver in late June for a line-by-line review of the handbook, and several participants said the agency is taking some encouraging steps to ensure stream health, but also expressed concern about some language in the draft version that could weaken protection for some streams....
Editorial: Salvage logging no threat to grizzlies Since when does yanking the paycheck out of someone's hand help with grizzly bear recovery? That's effectively what's happened with a recent restraining order that stopped a good share of salvage logging planned this summer on the Flathead National Forest. Two environmental groups, Friends of the Wild Swan and the Swan View Coalition, have argued that helicopter logging in so-called "core" grizzly bear security areas presents an "imminent harm" to grizzly bears. We don't think so. Neither does the Forest Service, nor the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Yet U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy stuck by a rather literal interpretation of the Flathead Forest Plan to come up with his ruling. Rather than weigh salient observations about the nature of helicopter logging in areas that used to be prime bear habitat, Molloy agreed with the plaintiffs, for the time being, that "motorized access" is prohibited in core areas during the summer, and that helicopters are indeed motorized. But one should consider that the "core" areas in question were mostly blackened by wildfires in 2003, obviously reducing their attractiveness as hideouts for grizzly bears....
Editorial: Prevention is best cure for forest fires In 1996, during a period of normal snow and rainfall, the Colorado State Forest Service identified only about 13,000 trees statewide that had been killed by mountain pine beetles. But in 2004, with Colorado's woodlands still suffering the aftermath of a seven-year drought, the state forester identified a staggering 1.2 million trees that had been killed by beetles. Bug-killed trees, of course, can feed wildfires. While Colorado's weather returned to a normal pattern this year, what happened a few years ago (the worst drought our region has had in centuries) has left our forests more vulnerable than ever to massive conflagrations....
Plan targets species in need Twelve amphibian, 26 reptile, 40 fish, 19 crustacean, 68 mollusk, 59 bird and 54 mammal species will get a little more conservation attention under a federally mandated plan adopted by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission. The state's "comprehensive wildlife conservation strategy" aims to keep hundreds of those species in the state and their habitat intact and off the federal endangered species list if possible. "The value of this document is that we can use federal dollars to do monitoring (of those species), not hunter and angler monies," Game and Fish Department Director Terry Cleveland said. "We would have no federal money at all earmarked for this unless we have this document." The strategy is a requirement of the federal State Wildlife Grants program....
Spanish Fork highway endangers rare plant One of the world's rarest plants, which grows only along the highway near the ghost town of Thistle in Spanish Fork Canyon, is now the subject of a lawsuit. First discovered in 1909, the Deseret milkvetch, a member of the pea family, was thought to be extinct until BYU botanist Elizabeth Meese stumbled upon it in 1981. Between 5,000 and 10,000 of the plants are believed to exist on about 200 acres, all within 1,000 feet of the highway, said Tony Frates of the Utah Native Plant Society. In 1999, the plant was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Since then, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has done nothing to protect the plant, according to the Utah Native Plant Society and the Center for Native Ecosystems, the two conservation groups that filed the suit....
Endangered Birds Close Beaches Some are worried their businesses will be a wash out this season, not because of the weather, but because of some birds. The park service shut down Cape Point and Hatteras Inlet because of a very small bird called the piping plover. It's on the endangered species list. Both beaches are on Hatteras Island. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore Park Service is serious. When we visited Cape Point a man trying to take a jog was chased down by a park ranger when he accidentally crossed the barricade....
Editorial: Endangered protections Those lawsuits would have less chance of prevailing under draft legislation being circulated by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) that would weaken the act and appease drilling, timber, fishing and development interests. It would make adding species to the list more difficult, narrow the definitions for invasive species and hamper agencies with new paperwork. Its most troubling provision, though, would free the government from the requirement to restore rare species to self-sustaining populations. Simply heading off extinction would suffice. Condors might arguably be considered protected if they existed only in zoos. But less intervention by government actually means more baby-sitting of species. Hardly any plant or animal populations would grow enough to be delisted — the point at which the government no longer needs to intervene on their behalf. With 5,000 or so pairs of bald eagles nesting in the Lower 48 states, robust populations of California gray whales migrating predictably along our shore and peregrine falcons nesting on New York skyscrapers, it can be too easy to forget how poor and empty our world might have been without the Endangered Species Act....
Cheatgrass growing thick this year, raising risks for explosive wildfires It burns like gasoline and awaits a simple spark. Cheatgrass is flourishing across Nevada’s hills, rangeland and beside many homes, growing in thicker concentrations than some experts say they have ever seen before. Native to Eurasia, cheatgrass was introduced to America through contaminated seed in the 1890s and made its first appearance in Nevada in 1906, said Jim Young, a Reno scientist and cheatgrass expert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Cheatgrass — named for its ability to “cheat” water and nutrients from the seeds of native vegetation — can quickly crowd out native grasses and sagebrush. Cheatgrass now dominates about a third of the 48 million acres of Nevada land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and is spreading across the landscape of other states in the Great Basin, including Utah, Idaho and Oregon....
Canada ready to ship cattle, but court date looms Canada is steeling itself for the possibility a Montana court could ban its cattle exports again in a July 27 hearing after a positive ruling from a different court this week, Canada's agriculture minister said on Friday. Andy Mitchell said he was pleased a U.S. appeal court lifted a two-year ban on Canadian cattle on Thursday when it overturned an earlier Montana court injunction against his country's exports, but said Canada's battle was not over. Some cattle and other ruminant livestock like bison, sheep and goats could be exported as early as next week, a Canadian Food Inspection Agency official said. But U.S. rancher group R-CALF will be back in a Montana court on July 27 to argue for a permanent injunction against Canadian cattle -- a ban it wants extended to beef processed in Canada....
More anthrax cases in southeast N. Dakota A spreading anthrax outbreak has killed about 40 cattle so far in southeastern North Dakota, and state animal health officials say ranchers should consider vaccinating their herds. Beth Carlson, the deputy state veterinarian, said Friday that anthrax has been confirmed at 11 locations in Ransom and southern Barnes counties. Possible cases are being investigated in eastern LaMoure and Dickey counties, she said. Infected herds have been quarantined. Most of the affected animals are cattle, but the disease is also hitting bison, farmed elk and horses, she said. Health officials say there is little risk to humans....
Column: Old West violence mostly myth Once again as summer progresses, tourists are trying to recapture the romance of the West. Recalling the violent images fostered by Hollywood, they seek out ghost towns, ride horseback at dude ranches and take part in exciting re-enactments of conflicts among vigilantes, sheriffs, cowboys and Indians. What they don't realize is that the violence of the West is largely a myth. Yes, there were isolated examples of violence, but the true story of the American West is one of cooperation, not conflict. My colleague Terry Anderson and I have been studying the history of the West for nearly 30 years. We found that wherever "people on the ground" got together, they generally found ways to cooperate rather than fight. Let's begin with the mining camps in the Sierra Nevada of California. Several thousand camps sprang up after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848....
Hereford rancher fights high gas prices old-fashioned way When diesel prices went through the roof, truckers went up on their rates. That put ranchers to thinking about ways to save money getting their cattle from one place to another. Guy Walker of Hereford had some cattle grazing on wheat 14 miles away and decided to drive the cattle back home. "We had two obstacles we had to overcome," says Guy."The highway and the railroad. We had to cross U.S. 60, which is a very busy stretch of road. We were driving about 2,500 head of cattle, so we were strung out for a pretty good ways. The highway department helped us with that and got some highway patrolmen to stop traffic while we crossed. "The railroad runs right alongside Highway 60 and we found that the train people were not as cooperative as the highway department. They were not interested in changing their schedule. We got hold of the train schedule and were just hoping we could get there when a train wasn't coming through....Read this article if you want to know how cattle react to trains and mules to helicopters....
Harvey Girls celebrate past A chance for adventure and travel brought Jo Walters and thousands of other proper young women to the still-Wild West as legendary Harvey Girls on the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railway. Eagerly responding to advertisements placed in Eastern newspapers by an enterprising restaurateur named Fred Harvey, throngs of girls in their teens and early 20s boarded trains for scattered railroad towns in the 1880s and 1890s. They came to work as waitresses in busy dining rooms at a chain of depots called Harvey Houses. It's estimated as many as 20,000 young women from New York to Kansas City, Mo., and from some foreign countries, went west to seek their fortunes and husbands....
Cowboys are sacred folk Burl “Booger” Mullins was a trainer of horses. He taught them to do tricks that included jumping over cars. Back around 1934, Booger appeared as an American Indian on his horse in Tucumcari, and was photographed by Gene Autry’s film crew, as an “End of the Trail” photo. “End of the Trail” depicted, in a sense, the last of the noble American Indians. Later, the photo was enlarged and made into a painting. The painting hung in the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City until Autry built a museum in California and then it was placed there. Booger appeared in many rodeos with his horse “Dimples,” a trick horse. At one rodeo in Clovis — around 1946 — professional horse jumpers entertained the crowd between rodeo acts. The horsemen jumped their horses over the hood of a 1940 “wood” station wagon. Booger, on his horse Dimples, did it too, without any adieu, apparently just to show the professionals up. Booger jumped his horse Dimples over the top of the car. It made the professional horse jumpers mad and they called the police. Booger was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace....
Column: Why My Generation Loved Western Movies The Western is uniquely American. Most of the westerns focused on a brief period in American history, 1865–1890. This was also true of western novels. The western has had tremendous appeal outside the United States. There is something about westerns that appeals to the whole world. But what? I think it has to do with the fundamental themes of the western. Most westerns have at least one of these themes. --cowardice vs. honor --the defense of private property (land) --law enforcement --the moral limits of vengeance. The universality of these four themes points to the foundations of civilization. If most men are cowards, if private property is not defended by the law, if the law enforcement system becomes corrupt and unjust, and if there are no limits on personal vengeance, then civilization is at risk. Society loses liberty....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Young rodeo riders make me proud to be a cowboy I went to the Miles City annual buckin' horse sale. I hadn't seen Montana so green since Noah ran aground! It takes one back to when the West was not civilized. Today, when athletes and audiences are coddled, one is reminded that many modern sports have evolved from more primitive survival skills - rock throwing to baseball, sword fighting to pool, spear to javelin, cannibalism to chili cook-off, alligator wrestling to bulldogging. More than 200 broncs and bulls were bucked out over two days. After each ride, rodeo stock contractors bid on the stock. The riders were young men who were competing for a purse....

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