NEWS ROUNDUP

The Eco-Cowboys: Big land buys signal greens are moving into ranching If you're going to to break into the cowboy business, this is as good a place as any to do it. The historic Kane and Two Mile ranches on the Utah-Arizona border not only take in 850,000 acres - most of it in the form of federal grazing lands - but also some of the most flat-out astonishing scenery in all of the American West. Head south through the pines and meadows of the Kane Ranch and visitors are eventually deposited on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Go north into the twisting canyon country of the Two Mile and it doesn't take long to get to the top of the Vermillion Cliffs, spitting distance from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It's big. It's beautiful. And it now has a pair of new owners: the Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund, which soon will be running nearly 800 head of cattle on their new range. The two environmental organizations last month completed the purchase of the two ranches, and the accompanying Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service grazing allotments, from Californian David Gelbaum for $4.5 million....
Lack of grazing in Grand Staircase irks some locals County officials here and some ranchers have cried foul over a conservation group's acquisition of grazing permits in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and have sued to reverse the transaction. But the Grand Canyon Trust says it played by the rules in gaining the permits, and is confident the law is on its side. In a suit that has already spawned multiple hearings and probably won't be resolved until the end of the year, Kane County has argued that because the Trust, based in Flagstaff, Ariz., bought the permits with the intention of retiring them from grazing, it is not a qualified buyer of the tracts under the requirements of the Taylor Grazing Act. "The very purpose of a grazing allotment is to make substantial use of it for grazing purposes," says Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw. "To acquire the allotment for conservation purposes, we think, violates the grazing act." Those opposed to the Grand Canyon Trust's purchase of the monument permits also are vexed by what they call the supportive roles the Interior Department and Utah Congressman Chris Cannon played in moving the deal along....
Cattlemen take warmly to conservation plan Sandy Webster is a third-generation rancher from Kanarraville who, until this month, had a lot of anxiety about the growth and development occurring between Cedar City and St. George near the Kolob Section of Zion National Park. Not any more. Webster and four other ranchers, including the brother of former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, have signed options with the Utah Nature Conservancy for the environmental organization to purchase conservation easements on their ranch lands. Under terms of the deal, the cattlemen will continue running livestock operations on their property, but the land will be preserved as open space in perpetuity. "I'm a livestock guy," says Webster. "We just wanted to keep the pristine nature of the place and not see it subdivided into a million houses. I love the property the way it is. It's the way it's meant to be." The transaction, which encompasses 2,500 acres, is the initial installment of what Utah Nature Conservancy Director Dave Livermore hopes will be a collection of easement agreements with 17 ranchers who collectively own 11,000 acres in the area - most of it on the Kolob Plateau - effectively serving as a barrier to development next to the park....
Bringing home the bison Antelope Island was home to a dying breed this week - the Western cowboy. While careful wildlife management at the state park has preserved now-thriving populations of bighorn sheep, elk, deer, bobcats, coyotes, birds and American bison, a change in the 19th annual Great Bison Roundup program also inspired hundreds of horsemen and women to abandon modern conveniences in exchange for an authentic experience on the range. Park manager Ron Taylor said the wranglers have always participated in the herd-management roundup, but greater reliance on helicopters in recent years has diminished the role of the volunteer riders. This year, though, Taylor and his park staff turned the roundup, which was always over in a few hours after two helicopters took flight, into a quality, three-day encounter for the volunteers....
Column: Is your private property in jeopardy? In the United States of America, where private property was considered to be sacred by the founders, and where the right to private property is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, your private property is not in jeopardy - unless: (1) your property lies within a municipality; (2) your property lies within a county; or, (3) your property lies within federal land. There was a time when local elected officials created building and zoning ordinances to ensure that structures met minimum safety standards, and to separate residential from commercial properties. These ordinances had to be acceptable to the people governed by them, or the local elected officials would be replaced, by new officials more responsive the will of the governed. This fundamental principle of freedom gives meaning to the idea that government is empowered by the consent of the governed. In recent years, this principle has been replaced by a new idea, advanced by the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Goal number 8, of the PCSD, says: "We need a new collaborative decision process that leads to better decisions; more rapid change; and more sensible use of human, natural, and financial resources in achieving our goals." This new decision process empowers professionals to make the policy decisions which govern how people must live, and empowers bureaucracies to implement and enforce these policies....
Black foot forward A sleek, buff-colored ferret known as José chattered like a back-seat driver as a biologist carried his cage across the windswept sage of northwestern Colorado last week. José was born this spring at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, along with 250 other endangered blackfooted ferrets in breeding facilities across North America. At the zoo, every variable was controlled. Keepers measured the light in José’s cage by the minute, weighed his food to the gram and recorded his feces each day by color and firmness — all in the hopes of giving one of the rarest species in North America a shot at recovering from near extinction. Twenty years ago, 18 black-footed ferrets were known to exist. Now there are almost 1,000. Saving black-footed ferrets from extinction takes two steps: captive breeding and release into the wild. For José, the captive part was about to end. His scolding chatter told the biologists that this young ferret could handle the next step on his own....
Montana outfitter wants bear rules relaxed An outfitter is trying to persuade the U.S. Forest Service to rescind or relax rules requiring backcountry users in this area to keep food away from bears. Allen Schallenberger calls the rules unreasonable and contends they are being pushed by a radical environmental agenda intended to drive people off public lands. "They've gone overboard on these rules, it's just ridiculous," Schallenberger said. "It doesn't make sense when you have such few bears." The requirements took effect last year in the Gravelly, Tobacco Root and Snowcrest mountains of southwestern Montana. Biologists were documenting an increasing number of grizzly bears in the Gravelly and Snowcrest mountains, and the animals will only get in trouble if they come in contact with food intended for humans, said Jack de Golia, spokesman for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. The Tobacco Roots aren't considered grizzly habitat, but have a healthy population of black bears....
What Makes a Forest 'Green'? Private timber companies have been getting "green" certifications for the past decade to boost sales among consumers who want to be assured that forests are not harmed by producing the lumber they buy. Now the U.S. Forest Service, battered by court battles over balancing logging against fish and wildlife habitat, is looking into it. A portion of the Fremont National Forest in southern Oregon and the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania will be the first of several national forests to undergo an audit under the standards of two major systems: the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, developed by the U.S. timber industry, and the Forest Stewardship Council, an international group based in Germany that grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The national forest audit will also include Mount Hood and Siuslaw in Oregon, Medicine Bow in Wyoming, Chequamegon-Nicolet in Wisconsin and all national forests in Florida. The Forest Service said it is following a global trend to have third parties declare forest management as sustainable, and needs the public's confidence as it faces new challenges, such as invasive species, global warming and combating unauthorized off-highway vehicle trails....
Editorial: Forest Service chief undercuts public forest use for political ends It couldn’t have felt very good to local Six Rivers National Forest employees when orders came down from on high to stop issuing popular permits to gather mushrooms, firewood and Christmas trees. U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth opted to interpret a recent federal court ruling to mean that, essentially, blowing one’s nose in our public forests requires a full environmental review. It sounded like poppycock from the beginning. We suspect that the Washington D.C.-based leadership instead saw an opportunity to cast the environmental groups, who sued the Forest Service and won the ruling, in a bad light. Perhaps they thought that it would anger regular people who like to cut a wild Christmas tree or make a few bucks selling mushrooms in the fall, and that those regular people would blame the environmental groups. Instead, there appears to be backlash against Forest Service leadership, and it’s warranted....
Enviros not sure helicopter plan should fly A proposed expansion of military helicopter training over local public lands is shaping up into a conflict between protecting national security and preserving the natural environment. The Colorado Army National Guard is seeking to double operations at its High-Altitude Army Aviation Training Site, based at the Eagle County Airport. The plan would increase annual maximum flight hours from 3,000 to 6,000 over U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. The National Guard has prepared a draft environmental assessment that emphasizes the importance of the training for U.S. forces fighting in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of the Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale, said he is surprised at the draft EA's conclusion that the expansion would have no significant environmental impact, "particularly when it's in violation of the forest plan."....
Frustrated ranchers take over border security For the 100 years that Robert Been's family has been grazing cattle and raising horses on this isolated, scrub-brush desert in New Mexico's southwestern corner, illegal aliens have been crossing into the United States. Mr. Been, whose 2,500-acre ranch straddles a long-established immigration corridor, recalls his parents giving illegals food, water and clothing to guard against the cold desert nights. It was "just a way of life here." "They were respectful of us, and we returned that respect." But things have changed in this remote desert valley and the adjoining Animus Canyon. "The alien smugglers and drug dealers we now face don't care about anything or anybody. They are ruthless" and the "aliens are much different," said Mr. Been, 48. "They're tearing down our fences, destroying our water tanks, breaking into our homes, slaughtering our cattle, stealing our horses and threatening our families," he said as he prepared his horse for a daylong patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border. Outraged by the escalating violence and vandalism and puzzled by the government's inability to confront the problem, Mr. Been has organized the Rough Riders, a group of ranchers and locals who patrol the region on horseback searching for signs of aliens headed north....
Japanese scientists recommend end to US beef import ban A committee of scientists said it has recommended lifting a two-year-old ban on US and Canadian beef imports imposed over mad cow disease fears, confirming earlier reports by news agencies here. The government-appointed panel indicated that imports could resume in December. It said there was little risk from beef of mad cow disease from young US and Canadian cattle if risky body parts are taken out. 'If these conditions are maintained, the risk is very slim,' Yasuhiro Yoshikawa, chairman of the committee, told reporters. With the green light from scientists, the only hurdles to resuming beef imports are public hearings and final government approval. Japanese leaders have already indicated they want to end what has become an increasingly acrimonious dispute with the US by the end of the year. US President George W Bush is due to visit Japan in mid-November....
At the edge of nowhere You'd be surprised what's for sale at the end of nowhere. At least, some people think of the Lysite Store as sitting at edge of nowhere, in this small central Wyoming town ringed with orange wind socks and warning devices in case concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas from nearby natural gas wells and a processing plant imperil the community. The store is a kind of makeshift rural mall, which like all retail outlets from Wal-Mart on down caters to the needs of its customers. There are valves and bolts and nails the size of small swords, and staples of rural life like food and gasoline, ropes and rifle cartridges. In former days, the store catered to ranchers, when Lysite was a major shipping point for livestock. Now many of its customers are natural gas workers. The town post office is located in the store, which consists mostly of a bank of pigeonhole mailboxes that Ralph speculates dates back at least to the 1940s. The store itself has served the area for a century....
Songwriter's Feared Bucking Bull Retiring Little Yellow Jacket is retiring, and for those who don't put on cowboy boots and a hat in the morning and want to know why that's significant, just ask Bernie Taupin. This bull is so good, Taupin may have to write a song about him. "He's maybe the greatest bucking bull of all time," Taupin says. Forgive Taupin for being a little prejudiced. He's part-owner of the 1,600-pound monster who tosses cowboys with disdain and then sometimes struts around the arena enjoying the applause. It's usually not even a fair fight. The average rider lasts only 2.67 seconds before getting a face full of dirt. Little Yellow Jacket won't be bucking much longer. He makes his final appearance next weekend at the Professional Bull Riders championship before heading out to a life at stud on a North Dakota Ranch....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Innovation keeps life convenient 'The greatest thing since sliced bread." This common expression that many of us use represents a milestone in convenience. In the late '20s and early '30s, sliced and wrapped bread became widely available. I'm not a cook, so it is difficult for me to imagine the mechanics of how that inventive someone devised the method to slice a loaf as thin crusted and weak-kneed as Wonder Bread. Did it involve machetes? Table saws, piano wire, laser beams? Can you imagine two bakers and a candlestick maker trying to mash a wad of dough through a harp, or the grill of a '53 Buick, or a window at Alcatraz? Unwrapping nature's goodies always has tested the ingenuity of man, be it coconuts, spuds or watermelons. But there are still several seemingly simple tasks that require considerably more effort than their benefit warrants; dentistry, peeling the shrink-wrap off of CDs, sharpening a paring knife, or house-training a rabbit....

===