NEWS ROUNDUP

Green Acres America's billion acres of agricultural land are an often overlooked but immensely important piece of the country's conservation puzzle—a sort of middle ground between the larger (public lands) and the smaller (backyards). These croplands, pasturelands, and rangelands—what we call “working lands”—which make up nearly half of the country's landmass, are home to a high number of endangered species, including many birds. “In recent years there have been dramatic declines in many grassland species, even those we think of as common, such as bobolinks and both eastern and western meadowlarks,” says Tess Present, Audubon's acting director of science. “Good land-management practices on working lands are critical to restoring populations of these species. Many farmers and ranchers are already taking action to help them, but much more must be done. This is the great promise of the conservation programs offered through the farm bill and other private-land conservation initiatives.”....
Condit Dam removal could hurt fish downstream, state says Fish advocates see the plan to demolish Condit Dam on the White Salmon River as good news for salmon everywhere, but the state Ecology Department says the project could hurt fish downstream and might violate the federal Endangered Species Act. Demolition of the 125-foot-high hydroelectric dam, owned by Portland-based PacifiCorp, is proposed for October 2008. The project would open 33 miles of steelhead habitat and 14 miles of salmon habitat in the area of the river blocked by the dam since 1913. PacifiCorp proposes to tunnel and blast a 12- by 18-foot hole near the dam's base, drain Northwestern Lake and release more than 2 million yards of sediment that has built up behind the dam. The sediment plume could kill fish and other aquatic species below Condit Dam and displace fish in the Columbia River downstream to Bonneville Dam, according to Ecology's draft environmental-impact statement. Officials also fear the sediment could wipe out a population of endangered chum salmon for as long as four or five generations....
Corps plans spring rises for Missouri River to aid pallid sturgeon After a decade of squabbles in the courts and Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers agreed Monday to a spring-rise plan for the Missouri River to help restore the ailing pallid sturgeon. The corps' plan, staunchly opposed by Missouri farmers and barge operators, calls for releases of two pulses of water into the lower Missouri next year - one in March and another in May. But the corps said it won't release the water unless snow and rain this winter relieve drought in the basin. The hope is that recreating periods of high water similar to those that existed before the river was dammed and re-engineered will induce spawning by the sturgeon, which was placed on the government's endangered species list in 1990....
Poachers Looting National Parks of Treasures While the National Park Service does not keep comprehensive statistics on how much poaching occurs in its nearly 400 parks, its 2006 budget request reported that thefts have helped spur the decline of at least 29 wildlife species. "The poaching of wildlife from national parks has been steadily increasing each year for the past several years," the document said. Some of these resources are scarce to begin with, and the toll that poaching takes on the national parks is rising. "If there's something with a dollar amount attached to it in a park, somebody is trying to make a profit off it," said Dennis Barnett, law enforcement administrator for the Park Service....
Group criticizes park donation plan The National Park Service is considering a policy change that would allow top agency officials to solicit donations to parks from concessionaires and other permit holders. The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said the policy would inevitably lead to both perceived and actual conflicts of interests, since Park Service officials might end up soliciting contributions from the very people and businesses they regulate and issue permits to. "Removing the bright-line prohibitions and replacing them with slippery, 'don't get caught' kind of standards forces park managers to wade into ethical swamps with no flashlight," said PEER director Jeff Ruch. "It is inherently troublesome for any federal agency to seek funds from businesses seeking concessions from it."....
Column: Lost in the Woods AS Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continues her talks in Ottawa today, she may find that the most acrimonious disagreement between Canada and the United States is not a question of hard power - issues like Afghanistan, Iraq and nuclear nonproliferation - but of softwood. A quarter-century-old dispute over Canadian lumber exports, which Washington claims are unfairly subsidized, has escalated to the point where it now threatens broader relations between the two countries. If it remains unresolved, the softwood war might also spill over into the December ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization, where Washington and Ottawa have long worked together to expand free trade. What kind of example does it set for the rest of the world if the United States and Canada - close neighbors, each other's largest trading partner and crucial allies - cannot resolve their own trade disputes? American and Canadian lawyers, lobbyists and negotiators have been fighting on and off over Canadian lumber exports to the United States since the 1980's....
Weyerhaeuser to Shut Two Mills in Wash. Calvin O'Brien followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather when he took a job at the sawmill here, earning wages few other jobs could provide in this blue-collar town. The tradition ended Friday when O'Brien, 28, learned that Weyerhaeuser Co. planned to close the mill by year's end. The news came hard in an area that has survived difficult years of decline in the timber industry. "We lived a good life," O'Brien said. "I was hoping to make a good life for my family, but there it is." Weyerhaeuser announced that it will close the 81-year-old sawmill and a 50-year-old pulp mill in neighboring Cosmopolis, eliminating 342 hourly and salaried positions. The company, based in Federal Way, Wash., cited high operating costs and aging machinery among other problems as reasons for the closings and said they were part of broader plans to fine-tune its operations....
Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions The price of gold is higher than it has been in 17 years - pushing $500 an ounce. But much of the gold left to be mined is microscopic and is being wrung from the earth at enormous environmental cost, often in some of the poorest corners of the world. And unlike past gold manias, from the time of the pharoahs to the forty-niners, this one has little to do with girding empires, economies or currencies. It is almost all about the soaring demand for jewelry, which consumes 80 percent or more of the gold mined today. The extravagance of the moment is provoking a storm among environmental groups and communities near the mines, and forcing even some at Tiffany & Company and the world's largest mining companies to confront uncomfortable questions about the real costs of mining gold....
Real-estate values hit by well drilling When Becky Mangnall tried to sell her home in the heart of one of the Piceance Basin's most productive natural-gas fields two years ago, she discovered a problem. Despite her rural location and panoramic views of aspen-draped slopes, Mangnall was forced to drop her asking price by $100,000 to $400,000 because of an EnCana Corp. gas well on her property. Even then, banks wouldn't give the buyers a mortgage, she said, because of two tanks collecting the well's toxic petroleum condensates. "None of them wanted to lend because in the appraisal it mentioned the hazardous materials," she said. So Mangnall was forced to carry the mortgage herself....
Appeals court shelves shutdown of Interior computers An appellate court postponed a federal judge’s order Oct. 21 to disconnect all Interior Department information technology systems that access Indian trust fund data. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said he ordered the shutdown because the systems are vulnerable to hacker attacks. Interior officials then requested an administrative stay to temporarily suspend the shutdown, pending appeal. Lamberth originally granted American Indian plaintiffs a motion for a preliminary injunction to shut down any computers, networks, handheld computers and voice-over-IP equipment that access trust fund data. The injunction, which he issued Oct. 20, prohibits Interior employees, contractors, tribes and other third parties from using those systems....
Potty peeper escapes jail sentence in New Hampshire A Maine man arrested after he was found peering at a teenage girl at a rest-stop outhouse pleaded no contest to criminal trespass, and a judge urged him to seek help for whatever drove him to climb into the waste-filled toilet. Gary J. Moody was given a 30-day sentence that will be suspended if he maintains good behavior for two years. In exchange for his plea, disorderly conduct charges against Moody will be dropped, as well, if he stays out of trouble. Moody, 45, of Pittston, Maine, was arrested on June 26 after a 14-year-old girl reported hearing a noise and then seeing a face looking up at her from the pit toilet on U.S. Forest Service property in Albany....
Soaring prices of water rights push up development costs The escalating cost of water rights in the Truckee Meadows is not unlike a modern-day gold rush, creating instant fortunes for sellers and a buy-at-any price-frenzy among home builders. But the skyrocketing prices are being passed on to home buyers, raising the cost of every other type of development, including businesses, schools and churches. Water rights purchased by the Truckee Meadows Water Authority now average $24,000 an acre-foot, up from $4,000 a year ago. TMWA, the region's largest water purveyor, is routinely outbid by national home builders for water rights....
Pollution makes for more girls Toxic fumes favour the fairer sex, a group of researchers in Brazil has found. Jorge Hallak and his team at the University of Sao Paulo turned up the surprising result by studying babies born in their city. They divided the metropolis of 17 million people into areas of low, medium and high air pollution, using test results from air-quality monitoring stations. They then studied birth registries of children born from 2001 to 2003. The team found that 48.3% of babies were female in the least polluted areas, but 49.3% were female in the dirtiest parts of town. After measuring the ratio of boys to girls born in all the areas, they calculated that 1,180 more babies would have been boys in the polluted areas if they had the same sex ratios as the cleaner areas....
Old-fashioned grain trucks could be history Old-fashion grain trucks that are a fixture on Iowa's fall landscape could become an endangered species because of changing economics of crop production and tougher government regulations. The trucks are increasingly being replaced by semitrailers that hold more grain and can haul crops to more distance markets. "The majority of the grain that comes to us is in semis or in tractors with big wagons," said Jim Magnuson, general manager of Sully Cooperative Exchange in the central Iowa town of Sully. "We've got more and more semis in our area all the time," he said. Another factor is a new state law requiring annual inspections for the traditional farm trucks, which could render some of the old trucks unusable....
It's All Trew: Book about old-time expressions evokes story Some of you might not know that lines of flying geese are called "skeins." Those same geese walking on the ground are called "gaggles." This information comes from the book "The Cracker Barrel" by Eric Sloane a well-known author/expert on old-time expressions. This brings to mind an Old West classic story with this disclaimer. The following story might be more "Trew" than "true." An early settler couple raised two sons to maturity who along with their father worked as cowboys on neighboring ranches. The mother passed away, and sometime later the father married a nearby widow with six children. Along with his new family, the father acquired a large menagerie of poultry including a gaggle of geese. Geese were an important part of frontier life because their down and feathers provided feather mattresses and pillows for more comfortable sleeping....

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