NEWS ROUNDUP

Brown bear mauls woman in Hoonah A Hoonah woman was mauled Friday by a large brown bear in a popular berry-picking area near her Chichagof Island community, a nephew who was the first police officer on the scene reported. Judy Oliver, a teacher and longtime Hoonah resident, was in intensive care late Saturday at Bartlett Regional Hospital, where she was flown to have surgery after the attack, officer Arlen Skaflestad said. "It was completely unprovoked," Skaflestad said. At the hospital in Juneau, Judy Oliver underwent surgery from about midnight to 9 or 10 a.m., Skaflestad said. Her injuries included a broken jaw and a broken clavicle....
Cougar suspected in death of local horse Wendy Chamberlain braked her car and stared -- staring back at her was a full grown cougar, standing in the middle of Callahan Road. "I couldn't believe my eyes," she said Friday, rubbing away the goosebumps on her arm. The sighting occurred Thursday morning, the day after a horse was killed in Parma Township, the victim of a cougar attack. As the Parma Township supervisor watched in stunned silence, the large cat lumbered slowly off the road and disappeared into the weeds. It only added to her concern. "There's a cougar and people need to know," she said. There have been five reported cougar sightings in Jackson County in recent weeks, county animal control officers said....
Group tracks animals thought to be extinct This is the kind of attitude - persistence that runs to the edge of absurdity - needed to look for one of nature's ghosts. It is a common trait among the small group of scientists and environmentalists who are still searching for the 27 creatures, including the eastern cougar, that are classified as "presumed extinct" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. To find them, they have braved 20-inch Hawaiian rainfalls, groped along the bottoms of coffee-colored rivers and spent months vainly broadcasting bird songs through snake-filled swamps. They have faced all the tedium of normal biological research, plus the added burden of not knowing whether it is all a gigantic waste of time....
Groups halt wild horse contraception Objections from two Colorado-based wild horse groups have halted the fertility control program set to begin this month for the Pryor Mountain wild horse herd in northern Wyoming. The Cloud Foundation and the Colorado Wild Horse and Burro Coalition filed an appeal and a petition for a stay last week. The appeal will be heard before the Interior Board of Land Appeals in Arlington, Va. "It means if the board doesn't make a ruling in 45 days, we'll have to shut the program down for this fall because of weather limitations," said Linda Coates-Markle, wild horse and burro specialist for the Bureau of Land Management in Montana. "Or they could lift the stay and let us go forward," and then rule on the appeal at a later date. PZP, or porcine zona pellucida, is an immunocontraceptive the BLM has been using to control wild horse numbers in the Pryor Mountains and delay or eliminate the need for roundups. The fertility control program started in 2001. But critics of the program say PZP has proven to be unpredictable....
Animal groups trying to halt roundup of horses on forest land A trio of animal-conservation groups is trying to stop the roundup of several hundred horses in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, claiming forest officials risk sending wild horses to slaughter. The groups on Friday asked Forest Supervisor Elaine Zieroth to consider capturing only branded horses and letting the unbranded horses continue to run in the eastern Arizona forests. At issue is how many of the horses are wild, which would entitle them to protection under federal law. Zieroth contends the horses are strays that came onto the forest land from the adjoining Fort Apache Reservation when a boundary fence was demolished in the 2002 "Rodeo-Chediski" wildfire. If they are strays, they would be rounded up and sold at auction if the Forest Service were unable to locate their owners....
Congress has the Endangered Species Act in its sights this fall As Congress returns from its August recess, environmentalists and property-rights activists are focused on Rep. Richard Pombo, a California rancher who is chairman of the House Resources Committee. Later this month, Pombo is expected to introduce legislation to overhaul the 32-year-old Endangered Species Act, with House passage expected by year's end. A draft of the bill that leaked earlier this summer "was comprehensive in trying to undo what's been done over the last 30 years" to protect endangered species, said Patti Goldman, Seattle-based lawyer for the Earthjustice law firm. In negotiations with Democratic leaders, Pombo has been able to reach agreement on a number of important points, said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the Resources Committee. "Take a good, close, hard look at this (bill) when it comes out," Kennedy said. "Put the partisan political hyperbole aside and really look." Pombo, he said, "does have all the best interests at heart in trying to make this program work for species and for property owners and communities alike."....
Study rooted in recovery A network of botanical institutions is launching an unprecendented study of endangered native U.S. plants to determine their potential for recovery - and in hopes of preventing their disappearance. Those plants range from the Western lily to the Tennessee coneflower, says the Center for Plant Conservation. The center, a St. Louis-based nonprofit organization comprising more than 30 botanical organizations around the country, was founded in 1984 to stop the extinction of native plants. Center officials said an analysis of this scale has never been performed at a national level. The center estimates that about 2,000 U.S. plant species, or about 10 percent of the nation's native flora, are at risk of extinction. The roughly $500,000 study aims to look at endangered or threatened plants and also those being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act....
Habitat threatened by tree fungus, pine beetles Half of grizzlies' prehibernation diet made up of pine nuts which are being attacked by fungus. Grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park can weigh up to 600 pounds. The whitebark pine nut weighs in at a thin fraction of an ounce. Yet the tiny seeds — embedded in neat, brown cones — can make up more than half of a grizzly's pre-hibernation diet, one Canadian Journal of Zoology study shows. But the fate of the nut is now in doubt. Whitebark pines across the West are getting clobbered by an alien fungus and native beetle. The attack on the whitebarks — by Eurasian blister rust and the mountain pine beetle — comes at the same time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is poised to remove the park's renowned bears from the endangered species list....
Female grizzlies are trackedto study population trends It can be dicey work for those who do it, but keeping 25 female grizzly bears fitted with radio collars along the Northern Continental Divide is considered a priority for determining the status of Montana's largest grizzly population. It is also considered a prerequisite for recovering and delisting the population that ranges more than 8 million acres from the Canadian border south to the Ovando area, said Rick Mace, a research biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Starting last summer, Mace got the collaring operation under way, capturing and fitting seven bears. The effort continued early this summer, with a total of 23 bears being fitted. It's been a challenging endeavor for Mace and a handful of assistants, most of them bear management specialists who cover different parts of the sprawling grizzly bear recovery area. But it has been a relatively low-profile effort compared with the huge grizzly bear population study carried out last summer....
The new old growth For decades, timberland owners have thinned forests to speed growth of the trees. While the practice adds commercial value to the trees that remain, it is increasingly being used to speed young, logged redwood stands toward what resemble old-growth forests. That could happen in our lifetimes. Indeed, to the untrained eye, treated stands only 100 years old in places like the Arcata Community Forest already have the redwood cathedral look that entrances visitors from around the world....
Column: Saddle up the camel, cowpoke When a Cornell professor proposed “re-wilding” America’s Great Plains with African wildlife in the August issue of the journal, Nature, a few collective groans rose from the conservation community. In the various e-mails that flew back and forth among wildlife conservationists after the proposal hit the mass media, one person wrote what all of us were thinking. “Just what we need. A side issue to make us look crazy and get the discussion off track from restoring the Great Plains wildlife that need restoring.” And as a former college professor and Cornell alumnae put it, the scheme “confirms his theory that college professors should not be allowed to publish in journals that non-college professors might read.” It may surprise some people that wildlife advocates aren’t thrilled with the idea of rounding up lions, cheetahs, elephants and camels and fencing them in large wildlife preserves on the Great Plains. After all, we’re the folks that cheered on the return of the wolf in the Northern Rockies, and champion restoring wild bison and prairie dogs to large swaths of the Great Plains. But in our eyes, “re-wilding” the Great Plains with fenced-in, African and Asian animals is merely a proposal to build larger, more exotic zoos in this country and wouldn’t “re-wild” anything....
Column: A Class War Runs Through It JAMES COX KENNEDY, the head of Cox Enterprises, the Atlanta media company, was just doing what lots of modern media moguls do when he bought nearly 4,000 acres in Montana's Ruby Valley: transforming remote Western ranchland into a private hunting and fishing retreat, and doing some commendable habitat conservation and restoration work in the process. Perhaps unwittingly, however, Mr. Kennedy has walked into the middle of two separate but closely related controversies, one having to do with Montana's stream-access laws - that one will be the subject of a mediation session next week - and the other relating to conservation easements. Both issues, ultimately, are about class, and point to the need for new policies (and vigilance) in policing the conservation easement system and defending access to public lands and water. Just as important, though, Mr. Kennedy's Ruby Valley imbroglio underscores the need for a deeper sense of noblesse oblige among the ultra-rich as they buy up great swaths of the American West....
Departing Utah land steward wins praise from friends, foes Sally Wisely waded into a thicket of conflicts when she became the Bureau of Land Management's Utah director six years ago. Now, as she prepares to take her leave this fall, not much has changed. The wilderness debate. Rural road claims by the state and counties. Off-highway vehicle impacts. All were frontline issues when she took the job, and still are. In some ways, the level of acrimony even increased during the course of her tenure. And yet another thorny issue - fast-track oil and gas development - muscled its way into the mix. Yet, few observers lay the continued stalemates at Wisely's feet. Friends and foes alike praise her professionalism and willingness to give all sides a fair hearing. Most recognize she had only a limited ability to solve long-standing disputes. And Wisely says she is departing Utah for the BLM directorship in Colorado feeling she got some important things done....
Artifact is tiny, but ancient find is big The pink stone point, flecked with a rainbow of colored minerals and discovered last spring just lying on the ground, appears to be older than any artifact ever found on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Archaeologists believe the point, thought to have been crafted between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago, represents a significant find and could be representative of the ancient people referred to by the name "Clovis," an appellation given to a group of artifacts discovered in the early 1930s near Clovis, N.M. "Its manufacturing technique appears to be Clovis," said Matthew Zweifel, archaeologist for the monument that is administered by the Bureau of Land Management with headquarters in Kanab. Zweifel plans an excavation at the site - he declined to give a precise location - to see if there are other cultural artifacts identifying the prehistoric people who might have left the point in the area....
Peaceful Burning Man festival ends weeklong run in Nevada Thousands of revelers from around the world began heading home Sunday as the annual Burning Man festival drew to a close on the northern Nevada desert. The counterculture gathering known for offbeat art and games climaxed Saturday night with the traditional torching of a huge neon-and-wooden structure on the Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno. A total of 29,749 revelers remained at the remote camp at noon Sunday, down from a peak crowd of 35,567. The crowd was slightly up over last year's 35,500, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. BLM spokeswoman Jo Simpson said the 20th annual festival ran smoothly, and no major incidents were reported. Drug arrests and citations were down considerably, according to preliminary reports....
Missouri Condemnation No Longer So Imminent When David Wright retired from his factory job in 1997, he poured just about all his savings into a handsome brick house in the Sunset Manor subdivision here. "This was our dream," said David's wife, Lorraine. "We were set here for the rest of our lives." But the dream turned sour when the city council of this St. Louis suburb decided last year to bulldoze all 254 homes in Sunset Manor and turn the land over to a shopping-mall developer. "We cried and we prayed," Lorraine Wright recalled. "And we put a lot of hope into the Supreme Court, because they were supposed to decide whether this kind of thing is legal." So the Wrights were crushed -- at first -- when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 23 that the Constitution does not stop cities from seizing homes to make way for commercial development projects. "What we didn't realize right away," David Wright said, "was that the decision would be a positive development for those of us who don't want to see people's houses taken away." Here in Missouri and all over the country, the court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London has sparked a furious reaction, with politicians of both parties proposing new legislation that would sharply limit the kind of seizure the court's decision validated....
Column: A Friendly Conservation Uncle Sam wants you ... to cooperate on conservation. Not only that, he's willing to listen. At least that's what he says. Earlier this week, St. Louis hosted the White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation. The invitation-only event was modeled after Teddy Roosevelt's 1908 Governors' Conference, which brought all the country's governors, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, and other national leaders to the White House to make conservation a national priority. The purpose this time around was to celebrate what Interior Secretary Gale Norton called a new chapter, built on the four C's: "communication, consultation, and cooperation, in the name of conservation."....
Assessing the environmental damage When environmental officials consider the area devastated by Katrina, they envision waters fouled by oil, chemicals and sewage. They see it flowing into streams, cascading down wellheads. They suspect some barrier islands that protected the coast - however feebly - might not exist any more. With the human tragedy mounting, officials have barely begun to estimate or document the environmental damages. Hans Paerl, a marine and environmental sciences professor at the University of North Carolina who has studied the effects of hurricanes on estuarine systems, said the infusion of saltwater from the storm surge and the subsequent inundation of freshwater from the rain - plus the contaminants - creates "a complex situation" for nature. There may be algae blooms that would exacerbate the oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the gulf just off the coast. Toxins could kill fish outright or stress them, making them susceptible to diseases....
Katrina batters refuges Sixteen federal wildlife refuges in three states, including two refuges in Alabama, have been temporarily closed until further notice due to the impact from Hurricane Katrina. Fourteen refuges are located in Louisiana and Mississippi. Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Gulf Shores and Choctaw NWR in Jackson were the only state refuges affected. Bon Secour is located along the beach and bay side of Alabama 180, also known as Fort Morgan Road. It was battered last autumn by Hurricane Ivan, and last weekend was again pummeled by storm surge from Katrina's Category 4 devastation Choctaw NWR is located in southwest Alabama. A group of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge officials are operating out of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR near Gautier, Miss, north of Biloxi. The refuge is named for a species of crane that migrates specifically to the area each year. Officials released a statement Wednesday about the closings but did not give specific details about refuges. It said "all Service personnel are safe and accounted for," and are "focusing efforts on providing community support and humanitarian relief."....
Agriculture To Feel Storm Effects Long After Katrina Has Passed For the City of New Orleans, most of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina has come after the storm passed. For agriculture, it’s the same story. Sugarcane appears to be the hardest hit row crops, as Katrina’s high winds knocked the cane to the ground in Iberville, Assumption, Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes. The storm surge has likely wiped out the state’s citrus crop in Plaquemines Parish, where thousands of head of livestock roam free, belly deep in salt water. Across the storm’s path ag officials are surveying the damage, trying to get a handle on what may be the greatest assault on Louisiana agriculture since the great flood of 1927....
Kaycee celebrates 'wooly' heritage To the untrained eye, sheep are not easy animals to deal with. Though their soft, wooly coats and soft, gentle eyes give them a cuddly look, they are often stubborn, sometimes totally disregarding the commands of the human in charge. And they stink. On the positive side, sheep have many redeeming factors. Ewes often give birth to two lambs each spring. Sheep produce two cash crops each year (wool and meat), and their wool can be turned into the warmest of warm blankets and quality clothing. They can be taught to lead and often become the favorite pets of children as well as great 4-H projects. Sheep ranchers, sheep lovers and connoisseurs of lamb will be on hand today through Sunday for a celebration of the sheep industry and the work of sheep dogs. The three-day Sheep Industry Festival and the Kaycee Challenge Sheep Dog Trial in this small town on the Middle Fork of the Powder River will focus on every aspect of sheep ranching, including the role of women in the business and the colorful Basque people's unique way with sheep....
Ranches weather drought in guests Still struggling to regain the business they lost after Sept. 11, Colorado's dude ranches are looking in their own backyards for visitors to fill their bunkhouses. "The past three years have been tough, which is why we've been thinking outside of the box," said Karen May, co-owner of the North Fork Ranch in Shawnee, about 50 miles southwest of Denver. "Every dollar helps. You need to change with the times." It's still unclear whether the quest for in-state visitors - and other out-of-the-box revenue-boosting ideas - will solve dude ranches' problems. Three guest ranches are currently for sale, and if mountain land values continue to skyrocket, experts say, more may follow. Colorado dude ranch owners say the "real Western" experience they sell is still a valuable commodity, offering guests the chance to ride horses, fly fish and go on cattle drives. But with an average price of $1,600 per adult per week, the experience is not cheap. The Colorado Dude & Guest Ranch Association's 34 member ranches average 500 acres and have a total bed capacity of 1,600 guests. During the 13-week prime summer tourism season, the association's members gross a total of $21 million. Some are open year-round; others close or offer limited services in the offseason and winter months....
OREGON COWBOY COUNTRY: An Oral History of Rodeo Former Pendletonians Doug and Cathy Jory have found a good formula for telling the story of Oregon’s working and rodeo cowboys. The Jorys traveled the state to find former ranch hands, stock contractors, ranchers and rodeo cowboys, prodded their memories and then stood back and let them tell their tales. The authors don’t get in the way, and the result is a lot of fun to read. Some of these old-timers have great stories to tell and a knack for telling them well. Bud Trowbridge, for example — the very first entry — tells the story of early rodeo great Sonny Tureman. Along the way, he includes much of his own story, the stories of a handful of other colorful characters and a tour of rodeo and ranching in the first half of the 20th century. Some names crop up over and over in the 29 stories that make up this book. Tureman is one, along with the Christensen brothers, Casey Tibbs and others. They’re stories about an earlier era in rodeo, but mostly they’re stories about people and, the storytellers being cowboys, sometimes about animals....
On the Edge of Common Sense: The key to job security is in your hands One sloganistic career suggestion was "Have the key to what they want!" I thought about that and concluded it's not "Have the Key!" but "Be the Key!" For instance, be the only one in the outfit who can or will do some difficult or unpleasant task, like fixing split rim tires. "We can't let Lem go! He's the onlyest one who can patch up a prolapse!" Or the person at the dairy who knows how to take care of scouring calves. I'll bet General Motors fires 50 marketing vice presidents before they let one maintenance man go! Feedlots have a lot more trouble finding a good mill man than they do finding a consulting nutritionist. If you have a cowboy on your outfit that you can send back after a cow or calf that got missed on the gather, he's worth his weight in gold! See, be the key. It often has universal application....

===