NEWS ROUNDUP

Record $135 million land purchase in north Phoenix Two homebuilders paid a record $135 million Thursday for 502 acres of state trust land in north Phoenix. Pulte Homes and Toll Brothers Homes, two companies that usually compete for land and homebuyers, teamed up to bid on a parcel in the Desert Ridge community north of Loop 101. The previous record for a single trust land sale was set in May 2004, when Pulte paid $100.5 million for 276 acres, also in Desert Ridge. The per-acre price of $270,000 was not a record; in 2004, Gray Development paid more than $780,000 per acre for a 41-acre parcel also in the Desert Ridge community. The company planned to build a multi-family project on the land....
Plague found in reservation prairie dog colony Sylvatic plague has been found in a huge prairie dog colony on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the second such case in South Dakota in a year. Plague was confirmed in two prairie dogs after ranchers and others noticed a drop in prairie dog numbers, said Diane Mann-Klager, regional wildlife biologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. One carcass tested positive for sylvatic plague on July 28 and the other last week, Mann-Klager said. They were found about 10 miles northwest of Oglala. The colony is one of the largest prairie dog complexes in the world....
Pneumonia kills more endangered bighorns Pneumonia has killed two more Peninsular bighorn sheep and scientists say they fear an epidemic is brewing that could wipe out the endangered species. The sheep, one a yearling, were found Saturday and Monday in the northern Santa Rosa Mountains, said Jim DeForge, director of the nonprofit Bighorn Institute. That makes seven deaths in less than three weeks among a population of just 705 animals. "Our big concern is that, with this relatively large number of deaths due to pneumonia, we're at the beginning of an epidemic," said Walter Boyce, director of the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center....
Mission: To protect and preserve Ward, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, is leading the group's campaign to get 265,000 acres of public forest land designated as wilderness, removing key recreation and roadless areas from potential timber harvests. The 1.1 million-acre national forest includes 189,000 acres of designated wilderness, which makes it off limits to timber harvesting. Logging on public and private land is a major problem for the Pacific Crest Trail as it winds 2,650 miles through California, Oregon and Washington. Its designation as a national scenic trail does nothing officially to protect the land around it. Some 300 miles of the trail go through private land, and government funds to purchase those properties or buy adjacent land have been severely cut since 2000. Logging in Northern California, Southern Oregon and southern Washington has taken a toll on the trail, forcing advocacy groups and land managers to relocate or re-establish its path through clearcuts....
Agencies target overgrown juniper The federal Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and four northeastern California counties are planning to restore 6.5 million acres of sagebrush-steppe impacted by western juniper, which has expanded out of its natural habitat. Juniper stands, normally confined to rocky hillsides, have increased 15-fold over the past century, spreading into rangeland and reducing its productivity for livestock grazing, said Rob Jeffers, project manager for the Modoc National Forest. Left unmanaged, these encroaching juniper stands will crowd out plant species that are important to deer, antelope, sage grouse and other wildlife, BLM officials said. After more than a year of study, the agencies are developing a management plan that uses fire and mechanical treatments to encourage more diverse vegetation....
White Mountain Apaches lauded for conservation work The White Mountain Apache Tribe has been selected as an outstanding example of conservation partnerships and will give a presentation at the upcoming White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation. The tribe, which has 1.6 million acres in eastern Arizona, was chosen for its stewardship and efforts to preserve rare fish and wildlife. Matt Hogan, acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, praised the tribe for its thriving economy based on logging, ranching, world-class elk hunts and endangered species conservation....
Uproar Over Grizzlies' Likely Loss of Endangered Status The rebounding grizzly bears of Yellowstone may be taken off the U.S. endangered species list as early as next month. Should the move be cheered as a conservation triumph? Or will it spur a slide back into endangerment? And is there an ulterior motive—to open bear habitats to the oil, gas, and timber industries? It depends who you ask. The proposed lifting of U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for grizzlies in the so-called Greater Yellowstone Area follows a 30-year period of recovery. In that time Yellowstone grizzly numbers have grown from 200 to more than 600 today. The Greater Yellowstone Area crosses the borders of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Its 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) encompass Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, six national forests, two national wildlife refuges, Native American reservations, and assorted private properties....
With Fresh Blood, Inbred Florida Panthers Rebound A controversial breeding program has improved the genetic diversity of inbred Florida panthers and the endangered animals are on the rebound, scientists announced today. Yet while the hybrid cats are spreading their range, they're not out of the woods yet. As few as 30 wild panthers roamed the Florida Everglades in the early 1990s. Abnormalities such as low sperm counts and heart defects were becoming common, studies found, and the kittens had low survival rates. In 1995, researchers outfitted some female Texas panthers with radio collars and introduced them into four sections of the Florida Everglades. Some Florida panthers were also tagged. Researchers monitored the cats and kittens and found that the hybrids had better survival rates, presumably because they were more genetically diverse. By 2003, three of the Texas panthers were still alive, and they were removed -- scientists figured enough fresh blood had been injected into the Florida population and they wanted to keep outside genetic exposure to a minimum. Today, there are at least 87 wild panthers in Florida....
Partnership helps ferret program Conservationists and members of the oil and gas industry teamed up this week to fund a reintroduction program for black-footed ferrets in the Shirley Basin. Biodiversity Conservation Alliance of Laramie and the Bill Barrett Corp. of Denver are putting $25,000 toward a project to release about 50 ferrets into the area this fall. The release is spearheaded by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Prairie Wildlife Research of Wall, S.D. The money comes from a 2004 settlement on the Big Porcupine coal-bed methane project on the Thunder Basin National Grassland. That settlement, also involving the Wyoming Outdoor Council, arranged for Bill Barrett to engage in voluntary conservation measures while the groups dropped their lawsuit. Money was paid to the conservation groups to be used for on-the-ground conservation measures in Wyoming....
Land swap's aim: better access The exchange between the federal Bureau of Land Management and adjacent ranch owner Paul Tudor Jones II, a multimillionaire commodities trader, has taken five years of planning to reach its public debut, and feelings are decidedly mixed on what the public will get - and what it will lose. "This is one of the pieces that definitely is one of the toughest to give up, and we acknowledge that," Adam Poe of the Western Land Group, which is pushing for the trade on behalf of Jones, said about Parcel I. "But it is an exchange." The proposed deal would swap 1,773 acres of public land for 2,015 acres of private land in the lower Blue Valley, cleaning up property boundaries, opening up landlocked chunks of public property, disposing of inaccessible land, providing new access to a pristine canyon and preserving natural areas such as Green Mountain....
Column: A mighty wind Witness the current fight in Cape Cod over an effort to build wind farms just offshore. It features sanctimonious environmentalists, super-rich property owners, and super-rich, property-owning, sanctimonious environmentalists feeding on each other like big hungry sharks in a small tank. The basic situation is that some environmentalists and a company called Cape Wind want to build 130 windmills way out in the ocean to help offset energy costs in the region — and to satisfy all those demands that we find substitutes for evil fossil fuels. Meanwhile, other environmentalists and conservationists are eager to stop the wind farm from being built, largely because it will mar the view from their extravagant coastal homes. Leading this charge is Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose famous compound would have a nice view of the turbines....
Rider rambles through on cross-country trip He's 35 years old for the second time, he laughs, as his suntanned face peeks out from underneath his cowboy hat. Thumbs in his blue jeans pockets, 70-year-old Gene Glasscock kicks up a little gravel as his horses stand calmly at his side. It must be the cowboy in him. "Forty-eight state capitals, 20,000 miles on horseback!" reads the side of one of his packs as Glasscock points to where the grain feed is kept for his horses. His clothes - three outfits, to be exact - are stuffed in the other. "This makes 43," Glasscock said, explaining how Wisconsin will be the 43rd state of his journey, which entirely has been ridden on horses....
Pink Higgins: Bringing Peace To The Frontier Of course, those less honest would get out on the range early and go to branding calves with their own brand, regardless of the mother's mark. Many a gunfight occurred when a cow and her calf were found to be wearing different brands. The Horrell brothers were willing to take those chances in order to build up their herd. They thought they were plenty tough enough to deal with any arguments from their neighbors. They figured without Pink Higgins. Some say that the Horrell-Higgins Feud started when Pink drove some of his cows to the Horrell's pens and paired them up with a bunch of calves that were longing to taste their mothers' milk. In ranch country that's usually proof enough, but a trial jury decided that while the calves obviously belonged to Higgins, the Horrells were not guilty of a crime. For his part Higgins decided that the jury didn't know how to properly deal with cow thieves. He vowed to just skip this jury business if any more cattle thefts occurred. In about 1877 Pink again found that someone was tampering with his cattle. It didn't take much investigation for Pink to decide that Merritt Horrell was the guilty party. Pink checked the loads in his ever-present Winchester Model 73 carbine, probably in .44-40 caliber, and went hunting for Horrell. He found his man in the Matador Saloon in Lampasas and shot him four times as quick as anyone had ever seen a lever-action rifle fired. His laconic remark just before firing was, "Mr. Horrell, this is to settle some cow business."....

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