NEWS ROUNDUP

Gabriel says state will go ahead with prairie dog poisoning Despite court appeals over a U.S. Forest Service plan to manage prairie dogs, the state intends to move ahead with its own plan to poison the animals on private property, South Dakota Agriculture Secretary Larry Gabriel said. Six counties in South Dakota and Nebraska and several grazing groups are appealing a U.S. Forest Service proposal to manage prairie dogs. They claim the proposal would not kill enough prairie dogs on federal land. Another appeal filed by seven wildlife conservation group claims the Forest Service plan would kill too many prairie dogs and could threaten endangered black-footed ferrets in Conata Basin. Prairie dogs are a main food source for the ferrets....
Feds, state spar over elk refuge management The manager of the National Elk Refuge has invited members of the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission to tour the refuge to clear up what he sees as a misunderstanding about refuge operations. Refuge Manager Barry Reiswig has invited the commissioners to take a tour a get "the straight story" after participating in an Oct. 10 teleconference with them. In the teleconference, the commissioners expressed concern about a proposed management plan for elk on the refuge. The commissioners' comments came after John Emmerich of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Wildlife Division presented staff objections to what he described as a mortality trigger for the refuge's supplemental elk feeding program. The commission voted unanimously to send written comments to the refuge. The commission commented that, "Delaying feeding until elk mortality rates are detectable at the 5 percent level is highly questionable and unacceptable."....
Bill targets lands for mining sales Mining companies would be able to buy public lands without proving there's anything worth mining under a bill approved by the U.S. House Committee on Resources Wednesday. The vote was 24-16 in favor of passage, with U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., voting for the measure. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., also includes opening the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy production, granting more control of off-shore energy production to coastal states including California and Florida, and massive leases for oil shale development in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. While the bill no longer includes language that would allow sale of national parks for mining -- as an earlier version had proposed -- conservationists decried the measure as "a gift to Western developers."....
Column: Lecture Highlights Divided Passions Flushed faces and white knuckles abound, it’s safe to say that the 60 or so attendees at last night’s Northern Rockies Nature Forum “Healthy Forests: An On the Ground Look” lecture care about Montana’s forests, logging, and the political processes synchronizing the two. Unsynchronized, however, and despite equally excited concern, was the four-person panel in the front of the room. Two environmentalists, one logger and one Forest Service employee talked apples and oranges to an audience with little patience for fruit salad. Maggie Pittman, Missoula district Ranger on the Lolo National Forest, spoke briefly of the differences between the Healthy Forest Initiative—federal guidelines, not policy, for administrative action to reduce catastrophic wildfires—and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, which became law in 2003 to streamline lawsuits and environmental review in the name of forest restoration. Her tone and talk was general—generally optimistic and generally characteristic of an agency employee striving for bipartisanship. Jeff Juel, director of the Ecology Center—a local nonprofit seeking to safeguard Northern Rockies ecosystems—similarly played the generalist, albeit permeated with such liberal-ese statements as “we need to throw the bums out in power that make their wealth off of fossil fuel as fast as possible.”....
Freak out friends with the Pombo mask Just in time for tricks and treats, the Sierra Club gives you an idea for the scariest costume of all...the Pombo mask! What's so scary about Richard Pombo? Plenty. For starters, the California Congressman wants to rewrite the 30-year-old Endangered Species Act to eliminate critical habitat designations. He wants to end a 25 year-old moratorium on oil and gas drilling off our coasts, he's working hard to overturn a ban on ozone-destroying pesticides, and he recently proposed selling 15 national parks to generate revenue. No kidding. Grab some scissors and go to town with the Pombo Halloween Mask. Freak out friends by sending them the Pombo Mask....
Groups sue to block canned hunts of endangered antelope The Humane Society of the United States and other groups asked a federal judge here Wednesday to block a Bush administration rule permitting the so-called "canned" hunting of three antelope species that were listed last month as endangered. Canned hunting usually occurs in large fenced areas where the animals cannot escape, and the Humane Society estimates as many as 1,000 such locations are in the United States. The groups, in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, say it's illegal and unprecedented to allow the killing of endangered species, in this case three antelope varieties native to northern Africa....
Handling grizzlies: How much is enough? Grizzly bear researchers begin with a ripe deer or elk carcass, a lure that's hard for any bear to resist. Once the animal takes the bait, it's snared by a front paw or caught in a culvert trap, and then tranquilized. Sometimes it's shot with a tranquilizer dart from a tree stand. Once the bear is unconscious, researchers may slip an oxygen tube up its nose to help it breathe, and dab salve in its eyes to keep them moist. Then they take the bear's temperature, clamp a microchip on its ear, and fasten a radio collar around its neck. They clip a swatch of hair, and measure body weight, total length, paw dimensions and fat level. Sometimes they pull a tooth to determine the animal's age. Then they back off, while the bear wakes up, shakes off its hangover and ambles away. A typical capture and collaring takes less than an hour. But it's a difficult experience, and an increasing number of grizzlies have to endure it. Federal and state scientists have ramped up their efforts to monitor the animals, trying to determine whether the West's two biggest grizzly populations deserve continued protection under the Endangered Species Act....
Suit could follow any delisting of marbled murrelet Environmental groups have vowed to stop a plan by the Bush administration that would eliminate federal Endangered Species Act protections for a secretive seabird that nests in California redwoods. Environmentalists in San Francisco, Garberville, Portland and Tucson said Tuesday that they will sue if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delists the marbled murrelet, a rare dove-size bird living in forests and oceans along the Pacific Coast. Last week, the agency confirmed that by the end of the year, it will propose removing the threatened species status for the marbled murrelets living in California, Oregon and Washington....
White House in final push on ANWR The US administration has launched a final drive to win approval for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, hoping to end a decades-long debate that has pitted the benefits of increased domestic oil production against potential environmental damage to the pristine Arctic plains. In an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday, Gale Norton, interior secretary, said drilling in ANWR would have a minimal environmental impact but would provide a huge boost to domestic oil supplies. "To hear some people discuss it, they make it sound like not there's really not very much there at all," she said. "In a very small area, we have the largest untapped oil resource in the country."....
Pig Eradication To Benefit Island Fox Santa Cruz Islands will be off-limits to the public after this week, to ensure that no visitors are harmed while the National Park Service exterminates roughly 2,500 unwanted swine from the land. NPS restrictions on the island will begin on Nov. 1 and will close off all areas of the island except Scorpion Valley and Prisoner’s Harbor, said Channel Islands National Park Superintendents Russell Galipeau. He said the pigs, which were first introduced to the island by farmers in the 1850s, have since damaged the island’s ecosystem and threatened its endangered fox population, making it necessary to exterminate the pigs. The island should reopen by March 2006, he said. Prohunt Inc. - a New Zealand-based professional hunting firm specializing in the removal of non-native island species - is managing the $5 million pig removal project....
New fees to pay for protected habitats Anyone whos developing property — builders or home owners — soon will be paying higher fees to acquire property for threatened or endangered species. City Council approved the fee increase last week as part of the San Joaquin County Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Open Space Plan. The plan is an agreement between the county, the seven cities in the county and various agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the San Joaquin Council of Governments. In 2001, when the plan was originally adopted, the fee was set at $1,500 an acre for the development of natural habitats — those not being used for any purpose — and agricultural habitats, the two most common habitats developed in Lathrop. The current fee for agricultural and natural habitats is $1,819 per acre. As of Dec. 19, that will increase to $3,145 per acre....
Wild horses displaced by Idaho rangeland fire Wild horses won't return to the nearly 300 square miles burned by this summer's Clover Fire until the spring of 2006, a Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman said, and it will cost nearly $8 million to repair the scorched southern Idaho rangeland. About 350 wild horses were displaced by the July fire. Though the animals escaped the flames — which at one point ripped across the range at 500 acres an hour — they were in danger of starving because all but a few small islands of forage were burned, BLM spokeswoman Sky Buffat said Wednesday. BLM officials rounded up the animals, culling 87 from the herd for adoption and sending the rest to holding facilities in Utah. The older animals will remain in the facilities, Buffat said, while 100 of the wild horses will be returned to the rangeland next spring, once enough forage is restored to support them....
Editorial: EPA steps up to protect air quality Energy development is occurring at such a frenzied pace across the West that projects should be more carefully scrutinized than ever. The Bush administration often puts up roadblocks to such reviews, so it was encouraging to see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency insist that a big natural gas project in southwestern Wyoming must avoid polluting the air. The pristine skies above the Upper Green River Basin offer stunning vistas in the nearby Bridger, Fitzpatrick and Popo Agie Wilderness Areas. That rare purity is at risk. The basin already has about 3,000 natural gas wells, but the U.S. Bureau of Land Management may OK another 10,000. The EPA focused on the Jonah Field, where producers want to add 3,100 wells to the 170 now there and the 497 that have been approved. The expansion could dirty the air because of diesel engines that power drill rigs and other equipment....
Lack of funds hurting BLM best-lands effort The National Landscape Conservation System was established to protect and restore the very best of the nation's public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. But five years after its establishment by then-Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt, management of these premier lands — including the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah — suffers from inadequate funding and insufficient staff, according to a new study released Wednesday by the Wilderness Society and World Resources Institute. "Conversation is supposed to be the priority for these places, but despite the presence of talented and committed staff, the report is dominated nationally by grades of C and D," said the Wilderness Society's Wendy VanAsselt, one of the authors of the report....
Appeals court reverses Park snowmobile ruling A federal judge has reversed a lower court ruling in a case where an inholder in Glacier National Park wants to use his snowmobile to access a remote family cabin in the winter. John McFarland filed suit against the park in February 2000 claiming the park's policy of closing the Inside North Fork Road to snowmobiling violated his right to an easement to his property. McFarland was seeking a special use permit to access a family cabin located in Big Prairie about three miles up the North Fork via snowmobile. That permit was denied by the Park Service, which resulted in the suit. The case weaved its way through U.S. District Court in Missoula and in July, 2003, District Court Judge Donald Molloy ruled that McFarland filed his suit beyond the 12-year statute of limitations and dismissed the suit. McFarland then appealed that ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed Molloy's ruling on Oct. 11....
Dam still injuring Grand Canyon Thirteen years of effort and millions of federal dollars have not been enough to stave off the deterioration of the Colorado River's ecosystem below Glen Canyon Dam, according to a new report released Wednesday. In the most extensive assessment of river conditions in the Grand Canyon since the creation of the Grand Canyon Protection Act in 1992, the U.S. Geological Survey study says endangered native fish species are still struggling, while sandbars and backwaters that serve as habitat for the fish as well as anchors for vegetation, havens for cultural resources and campsites for human visitors continue to decrease. The report, produced by the agency's Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, stopped short of calling federal attempts to restore the river and its shorelines a failure....
Senators unhappy with beef ban threaten trade war with Japan Farm-state senators frustrated with Japan over its ban on U.S. beef exports threatened a trade war Wednesday. Along with leveling a barrage of rhetoric, the senators introduced a bill that would impose tariffs on Japanese imports unless the Asian nation lifts its nearly two-year-old ban on U.S. beef by the end of the year. Japan had slapped the ban on after a mad cow scare in 2003. "I think we're being played for a bunch of suckers," said Sen. Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, chose the word "chumps." Most of the senators supporting the bill are committed to free trade and said they hoped that the threat of sanctions would give U.S. trade negotiators leverage to force the Japanese government's hand....
Lawmakers Postpone Meat Origin Labels Grocery shoppers will have to wait two more years for labels telling where their meat comes from, under a bill moving toward approval in Congress. Originally proposed for 2004, mandatory meat labeling is opposed by meatpackers and supermarkets who say it's a record-keeping nightmare. House-Senate negotiators agreed late Wednesday to postpone it until 2008. Western ranchers have been counting on the labels to help sell their beef. Labeling went into effect last April for fish and shellfish. The delay is part of a $100 billion spending bill for food and farm programs for the budget year that began Oct. 1. The House and Senate passed different versions of the bill, and a conference committee signed off Wednesday on a final version....

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