NEWS ROUNDUP

Home again, but it's changed Wearing gray stubble and a sweat-soaked ball cap, 72-year-old Buddy Lobato rambles up a rough dirt road in a faded sky- blue Toyota pickup, leaving a thick cloud of dust in his wake. He brings the truck to an abrupt stop in front of a padlocked gate and hops out. With calloused hands, he pulls a silver key from the pocket of his work jeans and swings the metal gate open. The mountainous land he calls la merced, meaning "the gift" in Spanish, spreads for 124 square miles before him. He's home again after 45 years. "I never expected to be back. But I never gave up hope," he says. Lobato, a fifth-generation Hispanic rancher who began grazing 20 head of cattle on the land last summer, is one of 519 descendants of San Luis Valley homesteaders given legal permission in the past year - including 410 on July 26 - to return to a land that had been off limits for more than 40 years. Up to 1,000 settlers' descendants may eventually be given keys to the property....
Lawsuit says government erred in allowing wolf kills A federal agency didn't follow required procedures when giving Michigan and Wisconsin permission to kill wolves that attack livestock or pets, an animal protection group says. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued permits allowing the two states to use lethal control measures against problem wolves. Michigan's permit, received in April, says the state can kill up to 20 per year. In a lawsuit filed last week, the Humane Society of the United States and 11 other organizations said the agency failed to notify the public and take comments before issuing the permits, steps required under the Endangered Species Act....
Spotted owl is on a dangerous decline In Washington, the plan to save the spotted owl is not working. The little-seen bird that launched the gut-wrenching timber wars of the early 1990s is declining in this state at nearly twice the rate predicted by federal scientists. And the pace at which the bird is spiraling toward extinction is quickening, researchers say. Some of the steepest declines are in the Cascades just east of Seattle. Two-thirds of the owl nesting sites known in Washington a dec-ade ago have been abandoned, according to state researchers. Some of those forests on private land already have been cut, meaning it will be many decades before those lands shelter spotted owls again -- if ever....
Study aims to protect rare plant A study this summer of the rare blowout penstemon - a plant that was considered extinct for 20 years until it was rediscovered in Nebraska in 1968 - is expected to help protect the species and its sand dune habitat. The plant was found in shifting sand dunes in central Wyoming in 1996 by Frank Blomquist, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist. This summer, that population was studied by BLM staff, two university professors, a botanist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and an intern with the Chicago Botanic Gardens....
Ferret release scheduled State and federal wildlife officials plan to reintroduce a group of black-footed ferrets north of here in an effort to expand the range of the first reintroduced colony. Martin Grenier, a biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said about 50 captive ferrets from the department's Sybille Canyon facility - and possibly wild-born ferrets from South Dakota's Conata Basin - would be released this fall both north and south of the Shirley Basin site where the nation's first black-footed ferret reintroduction was a success. "Both areas are as good as any potential black-footed ferret habitat in North America," Grenier said. "By releasing more black-footed ferrets close to the established populations, it helps ensure the long-term viability of the species in the area," he said. "Ultimately we hope these successful reintroductions will serve to get the animal removed from the endangered species list."....
Otters to get federal standing Sea otters that live from southwestern Cook Inlet to the tip of the Aleutian Chain will now get more federal protection and a biological investigation into why their population has crashed by more than two-thirds since 1980. Alaska's southwest stock of northern sea otters will be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, officials with the local office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. If published today in the Federal Register as scheduled, the decision will take effect Sept. 8. Within a few months, officials hope to appoint a team that will find out what, if anything, people can do to help the animals recover, said biologist Doug Burn, sea otter team leader for the agency in Anchorage....
A new push for elusive oil shale A series of tight deadlines set forth in the nation's new energy bill will force the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to lease lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for oil-shale and tar sands development within 2 1/2 years. One of the key provisions for Utah is the language backed by the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Orrin Hatch, aimed at reviving the U.S. oil shale and tar sands development, which went bust in the 1980s. In the run-up to the bill's Aug. 1 passage, Hatch said that while it would be years before the oil shale resource could be on the market, the bill would send a message "to everyone, including [the Department of the] Interior, that we're tired of messing around."....
Safe treatment of wild horses urged during federal roundup Advocates for wild horses Monday urged humane treatment for the 90 or so animals of the Spring Creek herd that the Bureau of Land Management says it will round up Aug. 21 from the battered desert rangeland of Disappointment Valley. The BLM intends to cut the herd from just over 100 horses to about 35 in an effort to restore some health to the range, which also supports a few hundred head of cattle as well as elk and other wildlife. The area also is being considered for oil and gas development. BLM officials held a hearing Monday in Dolores on their plans to ultimately cull 58 adults and 15 foals from the Spring Creek herd, the smallest of four wild federally managed herds in the state....
Wilderness deal no longer OK with judge A federal judge on Monday at least temporarily withdrew his 2003 approval of the controversial "No More Wilderness" settlement between Utah and the Interior Department, saying he did not want the court to become part of what is essentially a policy dispute over how the federal government manages public lands in the state. At the same time, U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson emphasized that the settlement itself remains valid and in place. During a motion hearing at the Frank Moss Federal Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City, Benson said that he never intended for his approval of the settlement to be considered a consent decree - and thus binding in perpetuity. He feared that such a reading of the agreement would tie the hands of future administrations in their ability to manage public lands as they see fit....
Dinosaur discovery Eyes pinned to the ground, fossil hunters Greg Kovalchuk and Mike Kelly were searching Central Oregon's dusty crevices for mollusk fossils late last summer when Kelly saw it. On a spot on Bureau of Land Management land near Prineville was a jagged rock marked with a white triangle. Kelly instantly knew it was a tooth. Nearby, he found a black and bone-colored cone-shaped tooth with striations and enamel. Twenty feet away on a slope, Kovalchuk spotted a piece of jawbone sticking out of the dirt. The earth was spilling 100 million-year-old secrets from a time when dinosaurs prowled on land and reptiles slithered in and out of oceans. The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest....
It's bug versus weed in eastern Idaho pest battle Federal land managers are hoping a half-million beetles released last month in eastern Idaho will help them combat an outbreak of noxious weeds. Bureau of Land Management officials near Medicine Lodge released black dot spurge flea beetles and brown-legged spurge flea beetles to eat leafy spurge. They've resorted to so-called biological controls because they can't spray chemicals everywhere. Leafy spurge is feared because it can produce allergic reactions or blindness in humans and lesions on cattle....
USDA wants faster elk-feeding phase-out A federal agriculture agency is pushing a plan to quickly phase out supplemental feeding of elk here in order to best protect against the disease brucellosis. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, outlined its position in a May letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- the agency charged with examining how to eradicate the disease and manage elk and bison in the Jackson Hole area. The Casper Star-Tribune received a copy of the letter this week. Written by John R. Clifford, deputy administrator for veterinary services for APHIS, the letter supports elimination of supplemental feeding of elk and bison on the National Elk Refuge within five years -- Alternative 6 in a recently released draft bison and elk management plan. With the most aggressive timeline of any of the six alternatives, it also calls for fewer elk on the National Elk Refuge than "preferred alternative" of Fish and Wildlife....
Adult grizzly bear moved An adult male grizzly bear was relocated to the North Fork of the Shoshone River drainage this weekend after killing a sheep on public land. Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trapped the bear Saturday in the Upper Green River drainage on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, where it had killed a sheep on a grazing allotment. The bear was relocated five miles east of Yellowstone National Park. The release site is northwest of Cody on the Shoshone National Forest and falls within the Grizzly Bear Recovery Zone....
Study: Wolves may help control wasting disease Predation by wolves may be an effective way to stop a deadly brain disease of deer and elk in Colorado, according to a recent study. A modeling study based on conditions at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado shows wolves could have "potent effects" on the rate of chronic wasting disease in the park's overabundant elk herds, according to three researchers. Existing control efforts, which focus on intensive culling to reduce herd numbers, have been expensive and, so far, ineffective....
Public lands are seeing an explosion in pot growing, and not by hippies FAMED for the biggest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is now No. 1 in another flora department: marijuana growing, with more land carved up by pot growers than any other park. Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage and areas off Mineral King Road, are no-go zones for visitors and park rangers during the April-to-October growing season, when drug lords cultivate pot on an agribusiness-scale fit for the Central Valley. "It's so big that we have to focus our resources on one or two areas at a time, because otherwise it's beyond our scope," says Sequoia's lone special agent assigned to the marijuana war, who, for his own safety, can't be identified....
Remains may return to Sand Creek site With the coming creation of a national historic site where militiamen killed more than 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women and children in a surprise attack in November 1864, tribal officials plan to return some of their ancestors' remains to the location. President Bush last week signed a bill authorizing the National Park Service to take over land to create the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near this Eastern Plains town. Tribal officials know of the remains of seven people killed in the attack and have already taken possession of three sets, said Steve Brady, a co-chairman of the Northern Cheyenne's Sand Creek Massacre Committee....
Trading green for green If you own a home in Las Vegas and want to make a buck, your most likely bet is to grab a shovel and attack your lawn. Homeowners there have been ripping out their grass feverishly in the name of water conservation, pulling up enough in the past few years to cover 900 football fields. The sod killers get $1 from the local water district for every square foot of green they remove. Now Flagstaff is following suit with its own one-time $500 rebate for households that remove at least 1,500 square feet of grass and replace it with rock or, ideally, hardy, native plants that don't need much water....
Anti-phone town not willing to change Ana Maria Spagna has to think hard about how long it's been since she talked on a telephone. Two months, she figures, maybe longer. It's not that Spagna is anti-social or suffering from some weird phone phobia. It's just that she, like nearly everyone else here in this remote mountain village, doesn't have a phone. And she'd like to keep it that way. More than a century after telephones came to towns like Seattle, a small company called WeavTel is pushing to connect Stehekin to the outside world. But instead of embracing the idea, many of the town's 100 or so year-round residents are fighting hard to keep WeavTel and the telephones out....
It's All Trew: Wild and woolly tales of animal encounters A neighbor working on a harvest crew in Rocky Ford, Colo., recalled waiting in line, sitting in a loaded grain truck at an elevator. He watched a string of dairy cows pass by alongside the fence across the road. Following close behind came a border collie faithfully bringing his herd in for the evening milking. About 15 minutes later, the dog returned in a long run barking at every leap. After another 15 minutes, he appeared again driving one cow he had missed. It figures that the dog's owner taught the dog to fetch the cows but needed to teach him how to count. A traveler near Miami, Texas, became sleepy and stiff from sitting. He stopped at a roadside windmill where some sheep were grazing nearby. Stepping over the fence, he stretched his back and started jogging toward the windmill to get a drink of cool water....

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