NEWS ROUNDUP

BLM: Drilling will bring haze For the first time, public land officials acknowledged that increased natural gas drilling in Sublette County will possibly reduce visibility in Wyoming's two national parks -- as well as five wilderness areas and a roadless area. The Bureau of Land Management, in a supplemental air quality study for the Jonah Infill Drilling Project released this week, said the cumulative effects of more drilling will likely lead to haze above acceptable threshold levels in the national parks in the early stages of drilling. Haze would be caused by both release of pollutants from drilling and from increased traffic and wood stove smoke. That haze will affect Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the Bridger, Popo Agie, Fitzpatrick, Teton and Washakie wilderness areas, and the Wind River roadless area....
Loggers chase off suspected arsonist A suspected arsonist was thwarted in his attempt to set fire to heavy timber near Missoula by a pair of loggers working in nearby woods Tuesday morning. While deep in the Gold Creek drainage about 17 miles northeast of Missoula, loggers saw the man trying to set Plum Creek Timber Co. property ablaze, Missoula County Sheriff Mike McMeekin confirmed Wednesday night. As the loggers moved toward the man, he fled, leaving behind an active fire, which the workers quickly extinguished. The incident, which authorities hoped to keep quiet while it was under investigation, was aired in frustration by Bob Sandman, incident commander for the Interstate 90 fires, at a community information session in Alberton on Wednesday night....
County purchases conservation easement on land near Three Forks Nearly 10 square miles of farmland and wildlife habitat will be protected as a result of the Gallatin County Commission's decision Tuesday to contribute $300,000 toward a conservation easement. The property belongs to the Dyk family and is 11 miles north of Three Forks near Clarkston, Gallatin County Open Lands Coordinator Mike Harris explained Wednesday. The mix of wheat fields and rolling hills is considered prime antelope and elk habitat by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. For the Dyk ranch easement, several groups pitched in to come up with the $1 million needed, including $200,000 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, $150,000 from the Ted Turner Foundation and $70,000 from the Doris Duke Foundation....
Ensign says Forest Service will expedite Incline Lake purchase The U.S. Forest Service has agreed to help expedite a proposal to purchase more than 775 acres at Incline Lake along the Mount Rose Highway overlooking Lake Tahoe, Sen. John Ensign said Wednesday. The agency's commitment could make it possible for public acquisition of the land to be completed within a year, the Nevada Republican said during a tour of the site. "I have secured a commitment from the U.S. Forest Service that they will start laying the groundwork for this purchase immediately, allowing us to add this property to northern Nevada's must-visit list much faster than usual," Ensign said....
Air pollution increasing in Columbia River Gorge Something about the wind whistling down the Columbia River Gorge defines an image of clean pristine air from the sparsely settled regions east of the Cascades. No longer. "It's a very polluted soup," said Bob Bachman, a meteorologist and air resource specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. "You have very high nitrogen deposition rates," he said. "If you have a nice green yard and over-fertilize it, it turns brown and dies. That's what high levels of nitrogen deposition can do." Deposition rates at the upper levels of the eastern gorge are as high as they are in Southern California, he said....
Logging project is off-limits After three weeks of protests and blockades of the Hobson fire-salvage timber sale near Galice, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management closed public access to the logging project Tuesday. About 5.5 miles of Road 2411 and 4.5 miles of the Hobson Horn Trail, the only entryways to the sale, will remain closed to the public until Oct. 31. "Every other day protesters are throwing logs and boulders on the road to try to stop logging," said Patty Burel, spokeswoman for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "Technically, there has been two structures and one platform (erected by protesters to block logging). "The situation is unsafe for loggers, protesters, contractors and Forest Service and BLM employees, and for that reason, we issued the temporary road closures."....
Who built rural roads and when? Utah officials expected that challenges would be mounted to rural road claims they are making under an agreement signed by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton in 2003. They are getting them. Last year the state was forced to abandon its initial claim to a 99-mile road in Juab County known as the Weiss Highway after research revealed that the road was, in fact, built by federal road crews during the Great Depression. Now an environmental group is challenging two more backcountry roads the state is claiming in Millard County, for many of the same reasons. The Washington D.C.-based Wilderness Society says the Bureau of Land Management should reject Utah's claims to the roads - Alexa Lane and Snake Pass - because it cannot conclusively prove that it constructed the roads....
Top BLM official in Colorado named agency’s new director for Nevada Ron Wenker, the top official for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Colorado who worked 10 years as an agency field manager in Winnemucca, was named Wednesday the BLM’s new state director for Nevada. Wenker is expected to assume the post in October. He succeeds former BLM Nevada Director Bob Abbey, 54, who announced his retirement in June after 25 years with the agency. BLM State Director Kathleen Clarke announced his appointment Wednesday in a statement from Washington D.C., along with the appointment of Sally Wisely, currently BLM’s Utah director, as his replacement in Colorado....
Desert plea: Don't take our water Utah's west desert is one of the most remote and sparsely populated regions in the state, and the nation. So maybe it only seemed like everyone who lives there descended upon downtown Salt Lake City on Wednesday. Dozens of residents, government and education officials from the area - along with neighbors from across the state line in Nevada - arrived at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building following a 220-mile relay run from Baker, Nev., to deliver bundles of letters to congressional and state leaders. Their plea to Utah and its leaders: Reject a proposal by the Southern Nevada Water Authority to tap wells on the Nevada side of the line and transport the water to Las Vegas via a 500-mile network of pipelines....
Wild horses test positive for chronic anemia Two wild horses in remote Ouray, Summit County, have tested positive for equine infectious anemia (EIA), federal and state officials said. Although there is no harm to humans, the chronic condition causes anemia, fever, weight loss and even death in horses. EIA is a contagious disease transmitted by biting insects. The infected horses, captured in a routine roundup of horses and burros by the Bureau of Land Management, were euthanized August 5. The remaining 13 in the group have been quarantined for a minimum of 60 days, until testing proves there are no signs of the virus. Because the location of the animals was so remote (about 55 miles southeast of Vernal), BLM officials and state animal health officials say there is no immediate reason to believe that the virus could spread....
New spotted owl rescue bids get under way "Alarming" studies showing Washington's spotted owl population dropping fast prompted federal and state officials this week to announce two initiatives that could protect the bird and the old-growth forests where it thrives. The focus of the timber wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the spotted owl was supposed to be saved mostly on federal land under a 1994 settlement hammered out by the Clinton administration. But a casualty of that settlement was a plan produced by federal scientists to guide the owl's recovery. It was dropped by the Clinton administration amid the tension of the timber struggle. This week, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the Bush administration has authorized them to write a new owl-rescue blueprint. It's a requirement of the Endangered Species Act, whose protections were extended to the owl 15 years ago....
Take a Bough That's why the first-time author spun a New Yorker essay into the recently published The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed. The book centers on the dark-of-night destruction, in 1997, of a rare Sitka spruce in British Columbia's rugged, outlying Queen Charlotte Islands. The massive, 300-year-old tree -- which sported golden needles in the midst of a verdant forest -- was revered by the local Haida people, protected by the province's otherwise-voracious logging industry, and gawked at by tourists (who could even stay at the Golden Spruce Motel). But all that came to an end when a disgruntled, semi-psychotic timber surveyor cut the tree down. Grant Hadwin's action was intended as a protest against unconscionable old-growth logging in B.C. -- the "Brazil of the North" -- but it was met with outrage across the province, and eventually (thanks in part to Vaillant's magazine coverage in 2002) across the continent. Hadwin upped the fascination and furor when he disappeared in a kayak on his way to stand trial for the arbicide; his gear was discovered several months later on a nearby island, and his whereabouts remain unknown....
Viral disease confirmed in Montana horse A horse in Yellowstone County has tested positive for vesicular stomatitis, a viral disease that affects livestock and causes blister-like lesions similar to those associated with the more serious foot-and-mouth disease, Montana's state veterinarian said Wednesday. The case, involving a horse in the Laurel area, is the first in Montana since 1982, Tom Linfield said. He said the premises, including five horses, is under quarantine. This restricts the movement of the animals and is to remain in effect for three weeks after the lesions in the affected horse have healed, he said. The diagnosis could mean that horses and other livestock considered susceptible to VS, such as cattle and swine, will have to meet import requirements imposed by other states in response, he said....
Images From the Battleground Lyle Robinson's Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the Mexican border. It's a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the brick house and oak trees--bellotas in Spanish--decorate the surrounding landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries. It hardly seems possible that such a peaceful-looking spot could be the scene of anything momentous. But it is. Everyone in America has a stake in what's happening on the Tres Bellotas. Everyone in America should know about the events that play out daily on this remote ground, and on neighboring ranches, because they explain our present and foretell our future. This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground....long but interesting read....
Former Reata chef announces newest venture Cowboy chef Grady Spears, formerly of Reata and Worthington Hotel’s Chisholm Club, announced Wednesday that he is launching a new ranch-house eatery on far west Camp Bowie. Author of Cowboy in the Kitchen and other books, Spears said in a statement that he plans a full-service establishment -- part restaurant, part retail market -- described as the sort of place where locals gather to swap stories, "fill up on unpretentious regional food," or stop by for ice-cold beer. Spears will create a small, focused menu featuring dishes commonly found in any rural Texas market or ranch house, using items supplied by local ranchers and farmers, the statement said....
O'Connor recalls Arizona ranch days An Arizona cowgirl paused in her home state Tuesday to tell an overflow crowd about the life she led on a ranch before heading off to 24 years of riding herd on the nation's laws. O'Connor and her co-author brother, H. Alan Day, shared the podium to talk about their book, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. Asked what their father would say about his daughter's ascension to what many have characterized as "the most powerful woman in America," O'Connor said it would be: "Here I am on this godforsaken ranch and nothing works, and I can't get any help. If you're so darned powerful, why don't you . . . " Her words were drowned out by laughter....
Windmill devotees explain love affair Ray Cirbo, 78, has since 1988 been obsessed with the old-fashioned water pumping devices. After retiring as an electrician at his doctor's behest -- Cirbo had two quadruple-bypass surgeries after having heart attacks -- he started buying junked, torn up windmills and restoring them. Now, more than a dozen, refurbished to near mint condition, dot the front yard of his Weld County home. Another 20, in various states of disrepair, line the fence, waiting to be repaired. "There's something about windmills that fascinates me," said the man who calls himself "Ray the Windmill Man." Cirbo, who repairs the windmills and then sells them to people all over the country, bought his first fixer-upper from a friend in Lafayette....

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