NEWS ROUNDUP

Wolf plan at crossroads Seven years ago, a trio of wolves bounded across a snowy stretch of Hannagan Meadow, heading toward an uneasy experiment in restoring a wild landscape. At the same time, a group of ranchers gathered in nearby Alpine to protest the return of the wolf, fearing for their livelihoods - and even their lives. Today, wolves and man co-exist precariously in the canyons and hillsides of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, areas that once were the exclusive domain of one, and then the other. That uneasiness is front and center as efforts to restore the wolf, an endangered species, reach a crucial juncture. Program managers are mulling a number of controversial changes, including expansion of the wolves' territory and a one-year moratorium on releasing new wolves. Decisions are due as early as this week....
Column: Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Species There's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the environmental community since Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) pushed his overhaul of the Endangered Species Act through the House of Representatives last week. All eyes are now on the Senate to see whether Pombo's bill -- described as "so toxic it's radioactive" by Jamie Rappaport Clark, who oversaw implementation of the ESA during the Clinton administration -- will make it through that august body and onto the desk of President Bush, who's indicated his support. Despite assumptions that the Senate -- the more deliberative, and generally more eco-friendly, chamber of Congress -- would block an initiative so controversial, enviros worry that Pombo is harrowingly close to getting his way. "I can't remember a time when any major environmental statute was under greater threat," said John Kostyack, senior counsel at the National Wildlife Federation....
The cougar's last stand Deep in the Santa Monica mountains, her exact whereabouts known only to biologists tracking her by GPS, the puma gave birth a year ago to four kittens. Two males and two females, their newborn eyes and ears sealed shut, their tiny bodies making swimming motions against the lapping of their mother's rough tongue. It was a solitary act by a secretive animal in a wilderness her species has roamed for thousands of years. Six weeks later, the cubs were media stars. Photo ops and stories by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News and ABC 7 News put them squarely in the public eye. "Last known Santa Monica Mountain lions become parents" Images of a National Park Service worker cradling a 6-week-old cub, all wide blue eyes and black-spotted fur, round and clumsy as a plush toy, gave the story legs. "It's quadruplets for the last known mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains" The timing could not have been better. Just 10 months earlier, after an investigation showed that the cubs' father, known as Puma 1 or P1, was preying on goats, a rancher had been granted a "kill" permit by the state Department of Fish and Game. News that hunters were about to shoot the last known male lion in the Santa Monica Mountains produced a public uproar. The rancher quickly backed down and the permit expired. Now, with the death sentence lifted and a litter of cubs giving the local mountain lion population a significant boost, there was cause for exultation....
Group identifying forests to remain roadless The task force determining which national forest roadless areas in Colorado should be preserved began its efforts in earnest Friday, but multiple layers of political reviews stand between what citizens want and what they'll get. After a series of public hearings, the 13-member task force will make recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens, who will submit a final state proposal to a national review committee, which then will forward its suggestions to the U.S. secretary of agriculture, who will make a final decision on which lands will be protected. The process will take several years. "We want to see if we can't come to some consensus decisions," said chairman Russell George, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. "But it's a huge task. Every time I talk to my friends in the Forest Service, I walk away more depressed than ever about the enormity of the task."....Then quit talking to the Forest Service, talk to the local citizens and get on with the job....
Tree diameter rule tests timber industry A logging limit known as the “21-inch rule” has changed forest management and the timber industry after what was intended to be a temporary rule to preserve larger trees enters it second decade. The rules adopted in 1994 were also known as the “eastside screens” because proposed timber sales had to be screened to ensure they complied with new environmental regulations that were adopted on a temporary basis. As 2005 draws to a close, loggers say those temporary rules have become permanent. U.S. Forest Service crews hike through timber sales on federal land to spray orange paint onto trees that are 21 inches in diameter, or bigger, measured at chest height, or about 4 ½ feet from the ground. The 21-inch rule is designed to produce stands of mature timber like those that stood before settlers came west. Environmentalists say the larger trees have more benefits for wildlife. But loggers say it is killing the timber industry. Smaller trees are less valuable and yield less lumber, factors that contributed to the closing of sawmills over the last decade....
Resort creator buys more land Montana's Yellowstone Club was billed as the world's first private ski and golf resort. To join the club, located near the Big Sky Resort, located between Bozeman and West Yellowstone in the scenic Gallatin River Valley, members must first prove a net worth of $3 million or more. The initiation fee is $250,000, and $16,000 in annual dues are assessed. The man who created that club, Tim Blixseth, is now in the news in Idaho. He has purchased 180,000 acres of timberland from Boise Cascade. He intends to trade large chunks of that land to the Forest Service, giving the federal agency control over the wonderfully scenic Payette River Canyon between Boise and McCall. But he intends to continue logging other chunks of the property, which is located in the broad region around the Brundage and Tamarack ski areas....
The 'Shovel Brigade' effect While Congress debates the future of the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration's enforcement of the landmark wildlife law is under renewed scrutiny with its designation of critical habitat for a threatened Western trout species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month identified thousands of miles of streams and more than 100,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs from the Pacific Ocean to the Northern Rockies as critical to the survival of the bull trout. But when it came to a relatively small stretch of a river in a remote part of northeast Nevada with a reputation for anti-federal activism, the agency concluded the fish, a native char that is part of the salmonid family, would be just fine there without any additional regulation. Citing a history of "anti-government demonstrations" and other "substantial conflicts" over the fish and a bordering road in a national forest, the agency reversed its proposed action from June 2004 and determined that designating critical habitat along 131 miles of the Jarbidge River would do more harm than good....
Grazing permittees demand federal action The government isn’t doing its paperwork fast enough, a California rancher told a U.S. Senate subcommittee last week. Mike Byrne of Tulelake, Calif., appeared Sept. 28 before the public land and forest subcommittee led by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. “Our understanding is the agencies are not processing enough permits to meet the schedule Congress anticipated,” Byrne said in prepared testimony. Byrne, who with his brother Dan runs cattle in far Northern California’s Modoc National Forest, is president of the Public Lands Council, a trade group representing sheep and cattle permittees. He is also part of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association leadership. He cited the recent Western Watersheds Project suit in Idaho that found the U.S. Bureau of Land Management out of compliance with National Environmental Protection Act assessments. Twenty-eight grazing allotments were closed in a court order. He said environmentalists are using the National Historic Protection Act to block removal of junipers encroaching on the Byrne Ranch federal grazing allotment and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to limit cattle access to streams, he said....
Rancher, county argue road access Cliff and Pam Galli want to be friendly with folks, and are willing to allow those who ask, or who buy easements, to pass through their ranch en route to national forest lands in the Seven Devils Mountains above. Right now, though, they’ve locked a gate across the dirt track known as Race Creek Road. They dispute a ruling by the Idaho County Commission that the 3-mile-long stretch is a public thoroughfare under the provisions of Revised Statute 2477. The disagreement has resulted litigation filed by Galli, leaving Randy Doman, commission chairman, unable to comment on the case beyond stating a few basic facts in the case. “A miner filed a petition asking that the road be declared an RS 2477. We held hearings, looked at the testimony and felt there was evidence a road existed before any land was withdrawn from the public domain and sold as private property. If Mr. Galli proves otherwise, great,” Doman said....
Will Peaks become religious monument? Now Native American tribes of the Southwest have their own version of the Ten Commandments case, but the monument in this case is earthen and a mountain high. Several mountains, actually. Activists and Native American tribes across the country are watching the lawsuit over snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks to see whether the tribes' religious rights trump the Forest Service's ability to allow Snowbowl to make snow there with reclaimed wastewater. If the tribes' religious rights trump the Forest Service's ability to determine land use, that would potentially give more than 550 tribes across the U.S. the right to tell federal agencies how to manage the Grand Canyon, Rainbow Bridge, Bill Williams Mountain, Mount Rushmore and thousands of other sites deemed sacred, Snowbowl argued in legal briefs. "Millions of acres of federal land across the country are at stake here," Snowbowl attorney Janice Schneider told U.S. District Court Judge Paul Rosenblatt on Thursday....
When cows don't matter Chuck Pancost knows he has to leave the ranch he has called home for more than 30 years, but there's still work to do. He revs up his Ford pickup to chase a stray cow that his son, Larry, has been following on horseback up a yucca-covered hill. There's cattle to be fed and watered, calves that need their shots and those troublesome colts. Finding ranch hands is a never- ending problem, but Pancost, a fifth-generation Colorado rancher, is facing his biggest challenge yet. The state wants to evict him from the 22,000 acres he leases just east of the Aurora reservoir. The land is being eyed for a huge development that could one day rival Highlands Ranch, with houses and strip malls and bike trails. Already, a golf course is just over the fence line, and a new mall is under construction nearby. The Pancost ranch is in its final days, something Chuck Pancost knows in his head but can't quite admit in his heart. This is the place he's raised four children, teaching them the intricacies of roping and branding and herding. He remembers when you could herd cattle right up to the edge of Colfax Avenue and drive for miles at night before seeing a light....
Column: Sharing the West’s Liquid Gold Fish get pretty scarce when creeks run out of water. But farms and ranches don’t last long without water to grow their crops, either. That’s why water in the West is more precious than gold—not only is water scarce, it’s also essential for our ecology and economy. Fortunately, a few organizations in western states are employing incentive-based methods to keep creeks flowing and cows growing. An innovative conservation approach to managing water rights within the Prior Appropriation Doctrine has recently emerged: water leasing. Groups like the Montana Water Trust (MWT), a non-profit based in Missoula, Montana, are pioneering new models for water use in the West by applying tools such as water leasing to benefit landowners, streamflows, and communities. “Water is the backbone of a healthy environment, and also the foundation of a successful ranch,” says Montana Water Trust Executive Director and co-founder, John Ferguson....
Cattle without a caretaker A scrappy herd of cattle is on its own once more, foraging for beach rye and other grasses on a solitary, storm-battered Alaska island, surviving much as it has for more than a century -- without a human caretaker. The latest custodian of the feral animals abandoned plans to sell them as livestock. That left the federal government without someone to carry out its own plans to remove the estimated 800 cows from Chirikof Island and establish a haven there for indigenous seabirds. Officials say the cattle have battered former bird nesting grounds. But with new ownership of the cattle in dispute, the herd remains trapped on the 28,000-acre island, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. A long line of adventurers has laid claim to the descendants of the animals first brought to the treeless island in the late 1800s as a meat stock for whaling ship crews and a blue fox industry established by Russian fur traders along the Aleutian Islands to the west....
Dino-lady has life by the horns Montanans know Marion Brandvold as the woman whose keen eye changed the way the world thinks about dinosaurs. Her 1978 discovery of a nest of fossilized baby dinosaurs near Choteau gave renowned paleontologist Jack Horner his first evidence that dinosaurs, like birds, were motherly creatures that tended their young — a once controversial theory that is now widely accepted. The "good mother lizard," or maiasaura as the new dinosaur was named, became Montana's state fossil. The bones, meanwhile, became the subject of a 16-year legal battle that Brandvold won last year — days shy of her 92nd birthday — when the baby dinosaur fossils were returned to Montana after spending more than two decades at Princeton and Yale....
P.I. makes living bringing cows home Detective Charles "Sherman" Boyle does what many private eyes do -- stalks unfaithful spouses, repossesses goods and finds people who'd rather not be found. But that's not the only investigative work that pays his bills. He lives in Vale, an Eastern Oregon crossroads not far from the Idaho border. It's a place where a 49-year-old Mormon with a handlebar mustache, a thirst for frontier justice and a steady horse can earn nearly half his living tracking down cattle rustlers and swiped farm equipment. Rustlers may not get strung up anymore, but they still exist. You'd be surprised, Boyle said, how many combines disappear and how many tractors seem to drive off by themselves. He started Boyle's Investigations Inc. in 2003 out of a doublewide mobile home at the end of a gravel road overlooking dairy pastures speckled with black cows....
RFD* *Roadside Folksy Designs America’s country lanes are lined with tractors, cows, horses and pigs. Not to mention teddy bears, exotic flowers, miniature barns, aging farm equipment and an occasional bald eagle. Colorful, creative, cute – and sometimes even strange – mailboxes are almost as much a part of the rural landscape as the farmland. Drive down just about any country lane in the West to find a handmade or hand-painted mailbox brightening the countryside. Fred Crowe can attest to that. A research scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Crowe has traveled the West in search of the most original folk art mailboxes....
Have sheep, wool travel Two thousand sheep took over Bayfield's Mill Street on Saturday, bleating their way through town as residents lined the street to watch. The running of the sheep was part of the sixth annual Bayfield Heritage Day and Sheep Trailing, which celebrates the arrival of fall and Pine River Valley's ranching history. The sheep, owned by rancher Houston Lasater, 54, spent the summer grazing near Crazy Woman Gulch. The almost 70-mile trip takes the sheep and their Peruvian herders about a week. The woolen horde ran, walked and bounded westbound on U.S. Highway 160B from Eight Corners to Mill Street, then east to Buck Highway (County Road 521), where they continued on County Road 523 to their home. "I try to do this event to keep tradition alive," Lasater said. Two thousand sheep can have a mind all their own....
Award to honor veteran 'cowmen' for hard work, honesty, integrity Recognized more as "true cowmen" than for material success, five men with lifetimes in Texas, New Mexico and South Dakota ranching today will become Foy Proctor Memorial Cowman's Award of Honor winners at the Haley Memorial Library & History Center. Johnnie Burson of Silverton, J.P. Miller Jr. of Coleman, George Meredith "Dogie" Jones of Watrous, N.M., Elliott "Chope" Phillips of Amarillo and Arlan Youngblood of Lamesa will receive medallions and scrolls at 7:30 p.m. The sixth annual "Fall Gatherin' Ranch Storytelling" starts at 3 p.m. with the telling of western ranch histories, continues with a storytelling panel at 5 p.m. and breaks for a chuckwagon supper at 6:30 p.m. in Haley Park behind the 1805 W. Indiana Ave. library. Admission is $40 per person with children under 12 admitted free. The honorees' photo will be taken and their names engraved on a permanently hanging bronze plaque. "They're not necessarily the biggest and most successful ranchers," said Library Director Pat McDaniel. "They best exemplify the hard work, honesty, integrity and spirit of a true cowman."....

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