NEWS ROUNDUP

Seizing livestock A property-rights group is claiming victory in the latest conflict between ranchers and federal land managers over livestock impoundments on Nevada's public lands. But so far, the feds have shown no sign of admitting defeat. The combative ranchers are welcoming a grand jury report and a new state law that orders federal land managers, for the first time, to obtain a court order before seized cattle changes hands. "The days of paramilitary cattle confiscations are over, I hope," said Ramona Morrison of the Nevada Live Stock Association, a states' rights group that largely disputes federal control of public lands. "I think everybody got their nose bloodied sufficiently and they won't want to do it again," she said. "The end result is BLM isn't confiscating cattle anymore." But the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 48 million acres in Nevada, continues to reiterate its authority under federal regulations to seize cattle administratively -- without a court order or any other judicial review -- after notice and warning requirements are exhausted. The BLM said its lawyers are reviewing the new state law....
Two Types of Sheep, One Woolly Dispute Where the timber ends and granite stands against the clouds, four Sierra Nevada bighorn rams freeze for an instant — noses facing the wind, horns curling from their heads, haunches taut. Then, silently, they vanish among the jagged crags and canyons between Yosemite and Mono Lake. About 15 miles to the north, domestic sheep rancher Fred Fulstone gamely hauls his legs up a steep hillside of bitterbrush and sage. Then, spelling his lungs, the 85-year-old stockman watches somberly as government workers fasten tracking collars to five ewes. The devices are supposed to prevent his sheep from straying off undetected and infecting bighorns with pneumonia. Since the 19th century, the bighorns and Sierra sheepmen have been symbols of the wild and free-ranging Western frontier. But today they are at odds, their fate intertwined in a costly, highly politicized battle over grazing rights on public lands. Fulstone's fight has become a focal point for bighorn-domestic sheep conflicts that sheep industry associations say could affect grazing of 125,000 animals in California, Nevada, Arizona and South Dakota....
State lauds ruling on access to old roads State officials are calling a ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals a victory for the rights of the public to access old road rights of way that cut through federal land in three counties. But one environmental group says the ruling will only throw things into confusion and lead to yet more lawsuits. In a ruling issued Thursday evening, the Denver-based Court of Appeals rejected the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's criteria for defining a road that a lower federal district judge used in her decision. Instead, three appellate judges, including former University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, chose the state's criteria, which makes it easier to designate road rights of way and could open up areas of federal land to public access. Among the BLM's criteria, a qualifying road must be established by "mechanical" construction. The state's criteria allows a right of way for roads that have been in continuous use for 10 years prior to 1976. "This case has been in litigation since 1996, when Kane, Garfield and San Juan counties were accused of trespass for performing maintenance on roads they asserted as their rights of way," said Assistant Utah Attorney General Ralph Finlayson. Calling the appellate ruling a major victory for counties and the state, Finlayson said many people who live in the Salt Lake area take easy access to places for granted. Finlayson said people who live near federal land rely on roads to access their cattle, their farms and each other. "These people absolutely need these roads for their livelihood and for their recreation," he said....
Rancher sent to prison A 69-year-old rancher and rodeo producer was sentenced to five months in federal prison for hiding wastewater leaks that contaminated soil. Michael Eugene Cervi of Roggen also was sentenced Friday to five months of home detention, a $30,000 fine and 50 hours of community service, which he must spend speaking to ranching and rodeo groups about his crime. He previously had pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. Cervi owns several ranches and two companies that provide horses and livestock for rodeos nationwide, as well as a business called Envirocycle, according to court documents. Envirocycle had a state permit to inject wastewater from oil drilling into a deep underground aquifer through a commercial injection well near La Salle, in Weld County. The well was found to be leaking contaminated fluids in March 2001, court documents said....
Mantua ranch owners sell development rights to conservation group for $3.72 million Owners of a Mantua ranch have united with conservationists to preserve some of the last remaining Columbian sharp-tailed grouse habitat in the state. The species has lost 96 percent of its Utah habitat, but thrives in the tall grass and sagebrush covering the 6,700-acre Selman Ranch near Mantua. The bird is listed as a "sensitive species" in need of conservation, as are the Northern goshawks and Bonneville cutthroat trout that inhabit the ranch's fields and streams, said Bill James, habitat section chief of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Nonprofit preservation group The Nature Conservancy plans to purchase the land's development rights for $3.72 million, said Amanda Smith, director of government relations for the organization's Utah chapter....
BLM wants to remove most horses near Muddy Gap Federal wild horse managers plan to remove most of the wild horse population near Whiskey Mountain west and southwest of Muddy Gap this fall. Roy Packer, range management specialist at the Lander Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management, said the roundup operation would be similar to one completed last year in the Antelope Hills area of the Red Desert. John Etchepare, director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, said management of wild horse herds is simply a matter of protecting the resources of the state. He said the wild horse population got away from the BLM for a variety of reasons, at a time when a multiyear drought was hammering the rangeland. Early in Gov. Dave Freudenthal's administration, the state sued the BLM, resulting in a mandate to reduce wild horse numbers....
Washoe Tribe asks Congress for Lake Tahoe shoreline access Two years ago, the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California was ecstatic when President Bush signed legislation preserving 24 acres of prime federal land for it on Lake Tahoe’s east shore. Now, the tribe wants help from Congress after making a discovery: The bill did not provide the shoreline access it had sought at Skunk Harbor north of upscale Glenbrook. Tribal leaders support legislation by Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign that would shift the boundary and provide about 300 feet of sandy beach. The bill would not increase the amount of the tribe’s land....
Seismic tests nixed for hunting Federal forest officials agreed to suspend seismic exploration for natural gas during hunting season in part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in southwestern Wyoming after environmental groups complained that seismic exploration had negative effects on game. In a letter Friday, Catherine L. Beatty, appeal reviewing officer for the U.S. Forest Service's Intermountain Region, told the National Wildlife Federation she would grant the organization's request for a stay of a previous Forest Service decision to allow seismic testing. Seismic exploration is to end today. "We're happy to see activity stopped as of Sept. 11," said Dave Gowdey, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, whose organization was one of many that appealed the Forest Service's decision to allow seismic exploration....
Logging is back on BLM lands Saws may again be buzzing on federal land set aside for northern spotted owls. As the result of an early August settlement of a lawsuit brought by timber interests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing to revise its land use plans for western Oregon where the owls live. Because the spotted owl perches in pines on BLM land managed by the Klamath Falls office, it too will revamp its plan. "There potentially could be a big shift back," said Don Hoffheins, environmental coordinator in the Klamath Falls office. Before the current plan, crafted under President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, went into effect in 1995, 1.2 billion board-feet of timber was taken from the forests. "It basically shut down logging completely in the 1990s," said Jon Raby, manager of the BLM's Klamath Falls office....
NRC ruling won't end fight over nuclear waste Utah officials say they are disappointed but not surprised that the Nuclear Regulation Commission ruled Friday to let a consortium of nuclear power utilities store nuclear waste on Goshute Tribal lands in Tooele County. "I think we gave up on the NRC a long time ago," said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "We could see where they were headed." The timing of the ruling was more surprising. The NRC was set to rule Friday on the last in a long line of appeals by the state, this one over the issue of military over-flights by fighters using the Utah Test and Training Range. The NRC denied that appeal, as expected, but then, in a 3-1 vote, ordered its staff to go ahead and issue Private Fuel Storage a license to store up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in above-ground casks. "Our decision today concludes this protracted adjudication, which has generated more than 40 published board decisions and more than 30 published commission decisions," the commission wrote in its ruling. "The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff's separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that PFS's proposed (storage facility) can be constructed and operated safety."....
Levees Failed Nature Refuge Just as They Did Humans Of all the uneasy compromises New Orleans has presented nature, none was more generous than the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest urban wildernesses in the United States. But though this land east of the city was set aside in the 1980's as a 23,000-acre preserve, an offering to the wild in a place that also defied it, the marsh was enclosed by the same levees that guarded New Orleans, and so it was also vulnerable when they failed. Its ecosystem thrives on fresh water from rainfall, not on the brackish water of Lake Pontchartrain, which came pouring in. "It'll take years to recover," Dan Parker of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service said sadly on Friday, as he surveyed marsh grasses burned brown by salt. The green palmettos and other plants were doomed, he said. The water, the color of root beer, smelled of sewage and petroleum. Mr. Parker said that since the storm, he had not seen any of the wild hogs that used to roam the marsh. Yet he had also not seen one dead bird. Indeed, as leggy, starch-white egrets with a ruthless elegance stalked crawfish and as alligators vanished at the approach of Mr. Parker's airboat, the damage to Bayou Sauvage was far less obvious than the destruction to the human communities beside it....
Cricket watchers say caves may need expanded buffer After staying cooped up in a dark cave all day, crickets are willing to travel far and wide for a good meal. Cave crickets that share living quarters north of San Antonio with more than a dozen other creatures that have landed on the nation's endangered species list — spiders, beetles, psuedoscorpions and daddy long-legs — go twice as far as thought looking for food, according to a new study. And that, the scientist who tracked them says, could require that even more land be set aside to protect those endangered species. A team of researchers led by Steven Taylor, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that the little brown-and-white hoppers travel up to 350 feet from the cave entrance in their nightly search for food....
Column: Bushies Plan to Destroy our National Parks The Bush administration continues its subversive agenda to destroy life as we’ve known it. Although not quite as bad as directing Hurricane Kartrina to kill black people in New Orleans, an official in the National Park Service plots to destroy our national parks, according to New York Times editorial editors. Worse, they say, he wants to promote horrendous secular sins allowing the sale of “religious merchandise” and purging reference to evolution in our parks. Gasp! Just how far will these people go to destroy our history and way of life? Times editors recently uncovered a “secret draft revision” of Park Service policy “circulating within the Interior Department.” Which begs the question: what could be secret about a draft policy spread around in a public land agency? Anyway, this vile person, one Paul Hoffman a deputy assistant secretary, has no credibility with the editors. Mr. Hoffman ran a chamber of commerce office in Cody, Wyoming, he was a congressional aide to the feared and reviled Dick Cheney, and he’s not your basic Parkie; he’s had “no park service experience.” Goodness, how dare anyone suggest public land policy who hasn’t been a sidekick of Smoky Bear, or Ranger Rick? So, how does Mr. Hoffman propose to destroy our national parks? Well, he wants to open the parks for greater use and enjoyment by more people, and he would like to have more commercial services available to them; further, Hoffman’s secret rules would allow state and local officials more say in park management decisions. How out of touch can one be?....
USDA mandates tick inspections for Cameron County livestock Citing a recent spike in the number of fever tick cases in Cameron County, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture has mandated tick inspections for every head of cattle and every horse, mule and donkey in the county. The U.S. Department of Agriculture successfully eradicated disease-causing fever ticks from the United States in the 1930s. The tick, belonging to the genus Boophilus, is a scourge to ranchers because it is known to carry the babesiosis disease, which causes fever and death in infected animals. Unfortunately for Cameron County cattle and horse ranchers, Mexico never eradi-cated the fever tick. A permanent quarantine zone has been drawn up by USDA that extends up to U.S. Highway 281 in Cameron County and runs roughly 2 miles from the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico border, provides a buffer zone between the two nations where fever ticks still make it across the border on stray and smuggled cattle and horses and free-roaming wildlife such as deer....
When Roy, Trigger and Dale ruled the West Treasure is where you find it. Who would have thought that a thick book bristling with facts and written in the monotone, dry-as-dust style of a corporate annual report could turn out to be a delight? Of course, it helps that the subject matter is Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, entertainers themselves treasured by probably a majority of Americans over 50 and likely by a considerable number under that age, too. Even the most jaded of us can manage a smile at the happy reminiscence of decent, honorable Roy biffing -- but never, ever killing -- the bad guys with the assistance of loyal, plucky Dale. "King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West" contains almost everything the most ardent Roy and Dale fan might want to know about their professional careers. If it is not in the narrative history in the first one-fifth of the book, it is certainly in the minutely detailed filmography, discography, etc., that make up the remaining four-fifths. The numerous photos are a treat in themselves. (The cover price is rather steep, but the publisher promises a paperback edition will follow.) What readers won't find is much about the duo's personal lives, beyond the skeletal facts -- no examination of the dynamics, tensions and pressures in their domestic existence. Still, the facts alone have an allure....
Dodge City hosts celebration of 50th anniversary of Gunsmoke There were many Old West cowtowns in Kansas, but it was Gunsmoke with Marshal Dillon, Miss Kitty and all the assorted characters that made Dodge City the cowtown known around the world. This weekend, faithful fans flocked here to pay homage to Gunsmoke on the 50th anniversary of the start of its 20-year run on television. It lives on in reruns, so Matt Dillon never rides off into the sunset and Doc Adams still shuffles into the Long Branch to quaff a brew. "When we learned that nobody was doing anything for the 50th anniversary, we said 'That's crazy.' We said we're not going to let this pass," said Jim Johnson, president of the Dodge City Trail of Fame, which spearheaded the celebration. Set in frontier Dodge City of the late 1800s, Gunsmoke made people aware of the town's real Old West history, which included the likes of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Ranchito motto: Nada es facil - nothing is easy Bow yer neck and keep goin'. That has been the name of the game in farming and ranching since Noah planted the first row of corn. I've watched hard workin' folks push through, around, over and by obstacles, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, third down and ten. Get knocked down - git back up. Little things like runnin' out of staples two hours from the hardware store, or big things like floods, hurricanes, blizzards and Parkinson's disease. We all enjoy seeing fellow humans win the lotto, survive a wreck unscathed, or make a good bronc ride. But it is our resilience, our quiet courage, our persistence in the face of adversity that gets children raised, wars won, and lets good guys finish first now and then....

===