NEWS ROUNDUP

Ancient Indian site caught in development battle A remote Utah canyon that long concealed a string of ancient Indian settlements holds another surprise: The rancher who sold it kept the mineral rights and says he may use them. Waldo Wilcox, who for nearly 50 years kept the ancient Fremont Indian sites remarkably well preserved, said he kept the mineral rights because Utah wouldn't pay what he thought his 4,200-acre ranch was worth. Wilcox wanted $4 million but got $2.5 million for the ranch in remote Range Creek Canyon. The 75-year-old rancher said that before he opens the canyon to any oil-and-gas development, he would offer the mineral rights to the state -- for a price. In the documentary "Secrets of the Lost Canyon," which airs locally Monday, Wilcox bitterly recalled negotiating with the state....
What's killing the elk in Yellowstone? Whodunit? The big, bad wolf? Old Man Winter? A scientific mystery starring wolves, adversarial weather and a declining elk herd is playing out at Yellowstone National Park. Oh, and people — hunters — are possible suspects, too. The elk population in North Yellowstone has dropped to about 8,000 from almost 17,000 in 1995. That was the year wolves were reintroduced into the 2.5-million-acre federal park in Wyoming, which overlaps the border of Montana and Idaho. The northern herd contains just a fraction of the 120,000 elk believed to dwell in the park region, and Yellowstone's Northern Range is just 204,000 acres. But this region is of particular interest to scientists because it has the largest wolf population, about 106 of the park's 171 wolves in 2004, making the elk there the most vulnerable herd....
New Process May Solve Old Coalbed Methane Problem Results should be in by Thanksgiving for the test run of a Montana-based engineering firm’s proposed solution for a major environmental problem from coalbed methane gas drilling. If the packaged water-treatment system successfully purifies brackish water that sometimes comes with the gas, the procedure could help advance the stalled CBM industry, which produces 9% of U.S. domestic natural gas. Drake Engineering Inc., Helena, is testing its new water-treatment technology at a Marathon Oil Corp. site in Wyoming, says Scott Scheffler, a spokesman for Houston-based Marathon. The system allows "resource extraction in an environmentally responsible manner," says co-owner Vivian Drake. Her husband, Ron, invented the new technology. The skid-mounted Drake treatment module measures about 8 x 12 ft. A pickup truck can deliver the 9,000-lb device on a tilt-bed trailer. The transport height, including trailer, is less than 11 ft. Erected, the unit is 14 ft tall and can process about 250 gallons per minute, or 8,500 barrels per day....
'Canary in the Mine' Bruce Peterson, on his hands and knees, claws through a thick pad of peat moss and into the brown muck beneath. "Put your hand in there and feel that," he says over his shoulder. The hole is an icebox chilled by a slab of frozen soil that starts about a foot below the surface and, in places, extends deeper than the length of a football field. The permafrost on Alaska's northern reaches froze thousands of years ago and has acted as a year-round thermostat for the tundra's plants, animals and water systems. But in recent decades, temperatures have warmed in the Arctic and the top layers of the permafrost have thawed. One long-time researcher predicts that half of interior Alaska's permafrost could be gone by the end of the century. In some places, the tundra is already crumbling into itself because of the thawing. In other places, suddenly unstable trees are tilting over in "drunken forests" and coastal villages on eroding land are being relocated....
Hidden hazards for migrant forest workers First in 1980 and again in 1993, Congress expressed shock at the abuse of Latino forest workers in America's woods and the hypocrisy of undocumented workers doing government work. Today, despite the influx of thousands of legal guest workers into reforestation, much of the work force remains undocumented. And the abject living conditions and wage exploitation that outraged Congress endure. And Congress has never examined the most pressing danger to Latino forest workers: the threat of being injured or killed on the job. A nine-month Sacramento Bee investigation has found that reforestation work, the thinning and planting that keeps both public and private forests healthy, is one of the most hazardous occupations in America _ and one of the most overlooked by state and federal regulators. On Forest Service and national park jobs visited by The Bee this year, peril was paramount. Slashing away at dense tangles of trees with chain saws, the pineros _ Spanish for pine workers _ scrambled through the woods in a chaos of cutting and noise....
Vail turns to logging operations to prevent forest fires, beetles The massive machine wrapped its metal arms around the trunk of the dead tree and in one swift move, cleanly ripped it from the ground. Turning into a clearing, it rotated the log and fed it through another part of the multifunctional machine, stripping it of limbs and leaves. The machine then turned again and neatly added the log to a growing pile. Tom Olden, owner of Pine Martin Logging, recently wielded this tract feller processor during a logging operation on Vail Mountain that cut about 600 trees around the top of Born Free Express Lift, also known as Chair 8. "We have a pristine ski area," said Jen Brown, spokeswoman for Vail Mountain, "and we did it to protect our assets along the gondola. It was related to the pine beetle and working on the fire protection along that area." As pine beetles turn Colorado forests into a rusty shade of red, Pine Martin Logging was hired to remove the trees from about 10 acres of U.S. Forest Service land over two weeks....
New home sought for frogs impeding development For at least six years, there's been one tiny thing standing in the way of rebuilding the Skyline Boulevard bridge and making improvements to the Crystal Springs dam directly underneath. It's a colony of red-legged frogs. But officials say they are closer than they have ever been to coming up with an eviction plan that also protects the creatures, listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. The frogs have taken up residence in an area about the size of a large backyard swimming pool. It's not even a pond, just stagnant water that has pooled in between the slabs of concrete on top of the dam. The area is off limits to the public and sealed off by two locked gates....
BLM aims to step up weed fight Federal studies show there are four times as many noxious weeds on public lands in the West as there were a decade ago. And wildfire risks continue to grow each year. So every year, the Bureau of Land Management uses prescribed burns, chemical weed treatments and a variety of other methods to conserve and restore habitat on thousands of acres of public lands across the West, including Wyoming. The agency wants to enlarge those restoration and conservation efforts to include millions more acres in the near future....
Saving the Environment, One Quarterly Earnings Report at a Time A few years ago, scientists at Cargill Inc. learned how to make rigid, transparent plastics from corn sugars. There was just one problem: they cost a lot more than the oil-based plastics they would replace. But that was before the price of oil shot up and companies came under pressure from consumers and investors to find economically sound ways to adopt "green" packaging and other environmentally friendly products and processes. This year, Wal-Mart, Wild Oats Market and many other retailers, as well as food suppliers like Del Monte and Newman's Own Organics, all embraced corn-based packaging for fresh produce. Sales at NatureWorks, the Cargill subsidiary that makes the plastic, grew 200 percent in the first half of this year over the period last year. "The early adopters were more influenced by environmental concerns than costs," said Kathleen M. Bader, chairwoman of NatureWorks. "But now we're competitive with petrochemicals, too." Cargill is one of several companies profiting from the concerns - of shareholders, communities and consumers - about global warming, leaking landfills and other potential environmental hazards. Huge companies like General Electric and Chevron now have separate businesses to market what they are calling environment-friendly products....
Turkeys losing home on the (free) range Since its origin in 1946, Young's Farm has grown from a family lifestyle into a commercial and agricultural venture that has 60 full-time employees in addition to family workers. It's become one of the biggest tourist attractions for Dewey, a community with fewer than 7,000 residents. More than 150,000 people visit the farm during its pumpkin festival in October alone. Her smile is only skin deep. Behind it, Teskey says she's consumed by the thought of losing the family farm to residential development, which has been mandated by state law. If the Youngs don't cease using the land for agriculture by the end of 2006, the property will decrease in value by 4 percent each year because of the mandate, she said. The property is in an area deemed at risk for water availability, and agriculture uses three times that of residential development, according to some state studies....
It's All Trew: Water - then and now
What did people do for water before windmills? This question is significant and brings to mind other questions of like nature. Beware, as the following theories are strictly "Trew." We know beyond doubt there were millions of buffalo, deer, antelope, coyotes, mountain lions, wild turkeys, plus a long list of lesser creatures living on the Great Plains before the white man came. Each had to have water daily to survive. Add the Indians, their horses and livestock water requirements to this and it adds up to a lot of water needed each and every day. How many gallons? A mature buffalo weighing 900 to 1,000 pounds will drink about eight to 10 gallons of water per day. Calculate a like amount, relative to live weight of all the other prairie creatures and dwellers, and the amount of daily water required becomes astronomical. Remember now, this was before windmills, earthen dams and lakes, pipelines and electrical-powered water systems. Where did all the water come from and where was it located?....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Court needs basic wisdom, not legal eagles The latest bone thrown to the voracious mad dogs of the media, including this columnist, is the all-important, job-eternal Supreme Court nomination. The question that has the least influence on confirmation, yet receives the most polarized press coverage is: "Is the nominee qualified to be a Supreme Court judge?" Using my cowboy logic I'm going to dive beneath the poorly disguised whirlpools of pontificating spin and examine the issue that most begs addressing; i.e., why do we limit our choices to lawyers? I have discussed this with judges and lawyers, as well as cowboys and antelope....