NEWS ROUNDUP

Judge blocks Sequoia forest logging A federal judge halted the Bush administration's bid to keep logging 2,000 acres in Giant Sequoia National Monument, saying he "called into question" the scientific analysis used to justify cutting in a preserve that houses two-thirds of the world's largest trees. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, ruling in a lawsuit brought by environmentalists, also questioned whether fire control was the government's real motive for allowing commercial logging in the monument. The so-called "Saddle Project" was approved years ago, but cutting only commenced this summer, when timber prices were high. The government, Breyer wrote late Friday in issuing a preliminary injunction barring further logging, "waited five years to execute this contract because of unfavorable timber prices."....
Pine seeds saved for new trees Workers are collecting a bumper crop of pine cones in San Bernardino and Riverside counties and extracting seeds in an effort to boost reforestation. The San Bernardino National Forest pine cone crop, described as the best in two decades because of heavy winter rain, comes after millions of trees have been killed by wildfires, drought and bark beetle infestation. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Forest Service store the seeds for use statewide. Poor pine cone crops during the past 20 years have diminished reserves of seeds. "The need was huge," said Terri Griffis, who manages the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's cone and seed processing facility in Davis. She said CDF has no sugar pine seed, has a very low level of ponderosa pine seed and needs Jeffrey pine seed. The agencies anticipate collecting up to 1,850 bushels of pine cones from Lake Arrowhead to Idyllwild. The pine cones are bagged and trucked to seed banks in Northern California for reforestation projects statewide.
1.6 million acres safeguarded A mish-mash of cities, counties, government agencies and nonprofit groups preserved 1.6 million acres in Colorado in the past 25 years, according to data collected by a land conservation group. The Colorado Conservation Trust announced the total figure Monday, the first time anyone has taken the laborious step of adding up the efforts of more than 80 public and private entities devoted to protecting the state's rugged vistas, alpine meadows, valley ranches and wildlife-thick forests from development. The 1.6 million acres amounts to 2.4 percent of Colorado's more than 66 million acres, an area about the size of Pueblo County or about five times the size of Rocky Mountain National Park, according to the trust. The organization's report, titled "Colorado Conservation at a Crossroads," also details another 2 million acres important to farming, wildlife and scenery that the organization believes should be a high priority for preservation over the next decade....
Boise Initiates Discussions on Company Policies With Environmental Groups Boise Cascade announced today that the company will proactively fund a scientific review by technical experts in forest restoration to determine the impact on forest health of salvage harvesting and replanting. Tom Stephens, Boise chairman and CEO, made the commitment at a meeting he initiated with the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in San Francisco to get input on Boise's environmental policy. It is Stephens' philosophy to solicit feedback on how the company can improve its wood procurement and environmental methods from a variety of stakeholders. "One of our core values is to manage our businesses to sustain environmental resources for future generations," Stephens said. "To ensure we do so, we feel it is important to seek input from environmental organizations, government agencies, academia, and others on how to sustain and restore forest resources." "Our conversation with RAN made it clear that there is a need for more scientific facts about the impact on forest health of removing dead trees from forests destroyed by wildfires and replanting those forests," Stephens said....
Giving a Hoot for the Spotted Owl Research scientists studying spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest are using a host of technologies to stave off extinction of the birds, which many consider to be a poster child for the plight of the Western forests. Almost every night, researchers scour huge swaths of forest to create a detailed, real-time database of the owls' locations using radio telemetry, global positioning satellite and geographic information systems. Forest managers and agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rely on the database for up-to-the-minute locations of spotted owls, said project leader Dennis Rock. "The Endangered Species Act says they can't cut a tree within 80 acres of a known spotted owl site, so they need to know on a close to real-time basis where the birds are, or may be, before they start thinning or harvesting timber," he said....
Teeny Phones for Tweety Birds Humans may not be the only animals using cell phones in the near future. Ornithologists and engineers at Oregon State University are planning to strap tiny mobile phones to songbirds and monitor the birds' migration with unprecedented accuracy. But the birds will not "phone home" like college kids calling from spring break destinations. Instead, the cellular devices will send simple codes to cell towers along migratory routes. The devices attached to the birds will share unique identification numbers with cell towers as they pass within range. Network service providers will record the ID numbers, the towers contacted and the times when contact was made....
Grouse projects get funding In the Big Horn Basin, they'll do some mosaic sagebrush mowing. In southwest Wyoming, they're concentrating on creating educational displays, including taxidermy mounts and restaurant placemats for youth. And in the Upper Green River Basin, they're going to partner with the oil and gas industry to link all past mapping, research and habitat treatments into a single, accessible database. All of these projects -- and 17 others -- will be funded this year with Wyoming Sage Grouse Conservation Fund money, state Game and Fish commissioners decided last week in Casper. The projects are part of the state's efforts to address the long-term declines of sage grouse numbers over the past 50 years. Gov. Dave Freudenthal and the Legislature appropriated $425,000 for sage grouse projects in Wyoming....
Piece by piece FOR years, hikers in the South Bay have treated Portuguese Bend, hiding on the far side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Donald Trump's Ocean Trails Golf Course, like their own wild, immutable backyard. Miles of unmarked trails, some of them hundreds of years old, wind through tilted fields of coastal sage scrub, up and down empty canyons and around the occasional endangered California gnatcatcher nest. Million-dollar views in this landslide-prone area overlook Abalone Cove, Catalina Island and the Pacific Ocean. But these trails cut through private property in an area that has long been a tug-of-war between conservationists and equally tenacious land developers. To preserve miles of hiking trails and earmark habitat for rare and endangered species, the nonprofit Palos Verdes Land Conservancy has been working to patch together what is poised to be L.A. County's newest nature preserve....
Trollers lose lawsuit but plan to appeal A judge ruled Thursday that salmon trollers in Oregon and California are stuck with the season they have. The Pacific Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit against the federal government in June in U.S. District Court on behalf of the Oregon Trollers Association, Siuslaw Fishermen's Association, and various other organizations, businesses and individuals. The lawsuit claimed the National Marine Fisheries Service violated federal law when managers gutted the salmon season, leaving trollers no opportunity to fish in June, July and August. Their argument centered around three issues: that record numbers of salmon are returning to West Coast rivers and managers ignored that fact; that managers didn't consider hatchery salmon along with wild populations; and that they disregarded the economic and safety impacts of the regulations. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. Coffin disagreed on all counts, completely denying the trollers any relief....
Company plans big drilling project A 184,000-acre area in southern Carbon and Sweetwater counties could become another battleground in the ongoing tussle between industry and environmentalists. The Bureau of Land Management has begun preparing an environmental impact statement on a proposal by Devon Energy Corp. to drill up to 1,250 natural gas wells about 40 miles southwest of Rawlins, the agency said last week. The wells would be drilled over 30 to 40 years from an estimated 1,000 well pads, according to the BLM. They are among a total of close to 9,000 new wells contemplated by the agency in its draft management plan for the Rawlins/Great Divide resource area....
Seismic exploration raises concerns The Bureau of Land Management has approved a seismic exploration project in northern Sweetwater County, raising concern from conservation groups about the level of study on these types of projects. The Pacific Creek three-dimensional geophysical project, which will use "thumper trucks" and helicopters to examine the energy potential of the area, was approved Friday. The BLM approved the project without a full environmental study, calling it a "finding of no significant impact." Darlene Horsey with the BLM Rock Springs field office said the agency determined there would be no "extreme disturbance or impact to the surface." "With the type of vibration trucks that are going to be used and the path they are going to be staying on," the impacts will not be significant, she said. And, the trucks will have single runs over the ground, not double, and will be in straight lines which won't have visual impacts....
Point May Be Oldest Idaho Human Artifact The discovery of a carved obsidian spear point indicates that the earliest humans in what is now Idaho apparently spent time in the area's mountains as well as its canyons. The spear point, believed to be 11,000 years old, was found last year just west of the Idaho-Montana border in the Beaverhead Mountains southeast of Salmon. If proved to be that age, it would be the oldest example of humans in that area, said Lane Allgood, a spokesman for North Wind, a company hired to help the Bureau of Land Management to investigate the cultural resources of the area. Denise Stark, an environmental planner and archaeological technician with North Wind, found the point just below the ridge line of the Continental Divide. Following protocol, she left it on the mountain, and North Wind retrieved it a year later only after analysis and authorization by the BLM....
Scientists study how to clean salty water Scientists from Sandia National Laboratories have started a study to investigate how to best clean salty water to make drinking water. Working with the Bureau of Reclamation and other groups they are hoping to find new ways to improve the water situation in the West. Scientists are trying to lower the costs of reverse osmosis. The costs already have declined from $14 per thousand gallons 15 years ago to about $2 per thousand gallons today. One promising idea is to create a new type of filter that mimics human cells. Such a membrane could selectively filter harmful particles from water while keeping healthy minerals intact. Human cells are about 1,000 times more effective than reverse osmosis filters in pumping water out of saline solution....
Sierra Club Gets Behind the Wheel This weekend, automaker and frequent foil of environmentalists Ford took the unlikely step of debuting an SUV at the Sierra Club's National Environmental Convention and Expo. The 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid offers 50 percent better fuel economy in the city than its gasoline-only counterpart (an increase from 22 to 33 miles per gallon) while enhancing highway mileage from 26 to 29 mpg. The Mariner can run at up to 25 miles per hour without relying on the gasoline engine. Ford also used lighter materials in the chassis and wheels to increase the fuel economy, according to Niel Golightly, director of sustainable business strategies at Ford Motor. The first of the $29,840 Mariner hybrids will be delivered to dealers on Oct. 3, Golightly said. More than 800 were pre-sold online, and Ford plans to make 2,000 for this shortened model year and 4,000 during the next model year....
Gore: Bush to Blame for Katrina Former Vice President Al Gore urged Americans on Friday to hold the Bush administration accountable for failing to adequately prepare for and respond to Hurricane Katrina. "When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic flood waters five days after a hurricane struck, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe, but to hold ... the leaders of our nation accountable," Gore told environmentalists at the Sierra Club's national convention. Gore had been scheduled to give a speech to state insurance commissioners in New Orleans this weekend about the likelihood that global warming will spawn increasingly deadly hurricanes. He decided to take his speech to San Francisco after that conference was canceled. "The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis, it is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences," Gore said....
Officials say levees worse than thought The massive levee system protecting New Orleans has sustained heavy damage well beyond the five breaches that are widely known to have caused flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday. Miles of levees that protected the eastern flank of the region, which borders Lake Borgne, washed away in the storm surge from Katrina, which swept inland and caused deep flooding in St. Bernard Parish and the 9th Ward of New Orleans. Army Corps officials disclosed the destruction of the city's eastern levee system in a detailed helicopter tour of the region Monday....
Mouse Zedong? The communist heirs of Mao Zedong and the capitalist successors of Walt Disney will share the stage in Hong Kong today with a near $1,8-billion monument to globalisation: China's first Disneyland. The meeting of the world's biggest communist party and the planet's best-known entertainment corporation would have been unthinkable to their founders. Walt Disney was a fervent anti-communist; Mao launched deadly purges of rightists and blocked Hollywood films. Disney has had to make only modest concessions to local customs. A feng shui master ensured that Mickey's magical kingdom satisfied traditional views of harmony with nature....
Gallagher Livestock closing after nearly 50 years in bovine business When the last cow leaves Gallagher Livestock auction yard this week, nearly 50 years of Fallon agricultural heritage will come to a close. Wednesday will be the last auction at Gallagher's, which is closing its doors forever following sale of the property, owner Tim Gallagher said. He said he only saw the initials of the buying party, and didn't know what the property would be used for in the future. "It was just time," he said. "I had a good offer on the property." Development has been encroaching on the auction yard for years, surrounding the property with houses, commercial and industrial properties. When the operation was started in the 1950s by his father, Tom, most of the adjacent land was alfalfa fields, Gallagher said....
'The granddaddy of dog trials' Sheepdogs and their handlers from around the United States and the world gathered in Meeker this weekend. Each were hoping to take top honors at gathering, herding and separating the skittish critters that once were an important part of the Western Slope economy. The winner this year was a dog named Pleat, owned by Scott Glenn from New Dayton, Alberta, Canada, followed in second place by Ethel, another Canadian, owned by Amanda Milliken of Kingston, Ontario, and an Easterner, Sly, owned by Tom Wilson of Gordonsville, Va., in third. The Meeker Classic Sheepdog Championship Trials, a five-day annual event in its 19th consecutive year, offered a total of $20,000 in prize money, from the $5,000 that went to the top dog down to $200 to 20th place. Additional special awards added to the cash total of the winners....
It's All Trew: Second income not such a new thing after all Getting by in hard times often required working at odd jobs to make ends meet. My father drove a school bus and played for dances on Saturday nights in addition to farming. A neighbor always took to preaching when his farm income dropped. During the New Deal era of President Roosevelt, many people built Works Projects Administration toilets and laid sewer lines to bring in additional income. Those fortunate enough to live near cedar growth, occurring usually in canyons or river breaks, took ax and saw in hand and cut cedar posts and stays for sale to the public. Hundreds of wagonloads and truckloads of cedar posts were delivered throughout the West for fencing the Great Plains. Palo Duro Canyon and the Canadian River breaks were favorite places for the post cutters of the time trying to make a few dollars on the side....

===