NEWS ROUNDUP

Wolves killed in Wollaston Lake area Tests are being done on two wolves killed in the Wollaston Lake area – the same area where the body of an Ontario man was found last week following a suspected attack by animals. According to the Canadian Press, Saskatchewan conservation officers shot the animals and sent the carcasses to Saskatoon to determine if they were the animals that killed 22-year-old Kenton Joel Carnegie. Carnegie, a third-year geological engineering student at the University of Waterloo, had been working at Points North Landing as part of his fall term co-op program. Following an autopsy, RCMP said although they couldn't say for certain he had been killed by wolves, that was the working theory....
Road battle roused commissioner out of his retirement He hounds land managers. He nips at environmentalists. He howls about the federal threat to local rights. But the bulldog that is Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw wasn't unleashed until 1998, when the retired-cop-turned-forest-ranger-turned-rancher quietly raised his hand and volunteered to examine road issues for a conservative group. "I don't know why I did it," he recalls. "But it felt like it was something I should do." Seven years later, Habbeshaw finds himself leading the charge against the Interior Department and environmental groups in the simmering showdown over who controls public lands. "I'll call it a fight," concedes Habbeshaw, sitting in his Kanab office under one of two prints of cowboys tearing across the prairie. And it's a fight in which the 64-year-old commissioner has thrown his share of punches. "He's a little more confrontational than the average guy," explains Stephen Boyden, deputy director for Utah's Public Lands Policy Coordination Office. The current skirmish ratcheted up in 1996, when then-President Clinton created the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, drawing cheers from environmentalists and jeers from many locals....
Local officials provoke BLM over roads in monument The Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s lasted less than a decade as a potent political force. But the sentiment that sparked the backlash over the management of federally owned lands in the West has never really gone away. And nowhere does the movement's heart beat more loudly today than in southern Utah. Specifically, in Kane County. For more than two years, officials in the county, which is home to spectacular redrock vistas enshrined in countless Hollywood films, have been sticking a figurative finger in the eye of the Interior Department, daring it to do something about the federal road signs they have removed and the county road signs they have put up in and around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. All without authorization from the Bureau of Land Management, and in defiance of the BLM's existing transportation plan for the area. County officials frankly admit they are trying to provoke a response from the feds to force a lawsuit or a criminal trespassing charge that will land them in court and give them a chance to make their claim to the roads under an old mining law known as Revised Statute 2477, which granted rights-of-way across federal land....
Forest documentary takes quiet approach If the battles over Northwest logging have become wearisome, then Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Rethinking the Forests" provides an almost peaceful respite. The "Oregon Story" documentary explores the future of Oregon's forests but avoids the loudest voices in the conflict over that future. There are no timber industry big shots, no environmental activists or tree-sitters. The Bush administration and its maneuvers to promote logging are never mentioned. If the battles over Northwest logging have become wearisome, then Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Rethinking the Forests" provides an almost peaceful respite. The "Oregon Story" documentary explores the future of Oregon's forests but avoids the loudest voices in the conflict over that future. There are no timber industry big shots, no environmental activists or tree-sitters. The Bush administration and its maneuvers to promote logging are never mentioned. In their place are Oregonians who are quietly living, working and cutting trees in the forests without fighting. The program is unconventional and already has provoked criticism from environmental activists who say it prescribes logging as the forest cure-all. But it's also provocative. "Rethinking the Forests" makes the case the state's forests are in trouble, especially on the drier east side of the Cascades. Insects and disease are killing them, it says, and court fights are slowing the logging that would help avoid fires such as the ones that scorched Yellowstone National Park in 1988....
U.S. Backs Squeezing Oil From a Stone Tucked into a ravine and hidden behind ridges standing like stony sentinels is the site of Shell Oil Co.'s ultra-experimental, highly anticipated 30-year project to unlock oil from vast underground beds of rock. Here, on this sweeping plateau in western Colorado, the Bush administration has fixed its hopes for the next big energy boom: oil shale, which the U.S. Department of the Interior praises as an "energy resource with staggering potential." Members of Congress have described the region as the Saudi Arabia of oil shale. Legislation recently signed by President Bush instructs the Interior Department to lease 35% of the federal government's oil shale lands within the next year; provides tax breaks to the industry; reduces the ability of states and local communities to influence where projects are located; and compresses multiple, lengthy environmental assessments into a single analysis good for 10 years....
Column: California's calamity in waiting The scenario is as simple as what unfolded in New Orleans. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is below sea level. It is protected by a network of earthen levees dating to the frontier era, many built by Chinese laborers following completion of the trans-Sierra railroad. Through this delta flow the waters of Northern California, which are channeled southward to the semi-arid reaches of Central and Southern California via a network of aqueducts and pipelines representing a multibillion-dollar investment by state and federal government across 75 years of construction. Ringing the delta is a rich empire of agriculture and suburban development. Should a magnitude 6.5 earthquake strike the San Francisco Bay Area — almost a certainty by mid-century, though it could happen today — about 30 major failures can be expected in the earthen levees. About 3,000 homes and 85,000 acres of cropland would be submerged. Saltwater from San Francisco Bay would invade the system, forcing engineers to shut down the pumps that ship water to Central and Southern California while the levees were being repaired. This would cut off water to the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project....
A radical new vision There's not much to see at the United Water and Sanitation District. It consists of a 1-acre patch of grass and thistles in rural Elbert County. No one lives there. There are no buildings - not even a shed - in this special government district. No water or sanitation lines run through it. There is no reservoir or water tank. Nor are there plans for such things. The district has no customers in the county that authorized its creation. Elbert County records list the acre as a helicopter pad site. It's just a piece of ground to meet the legal requirement that special districts have defined boundaries. Yet it serves as the vehicle for an ambitious scheme to create a water network serving future developments throughout Colorado's booming Front Range. "United," Lembke said, "is an animal no one has seen before."....
Decision delayed on proposal to increase Wattenberg drilling The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission decided Friday to postpone a decision on a proposal to increase oil and gas drilling in the Wattenberg Field in northern Colorado. After a two-day hearing, commission members decided to wait until their Dec. 5 meeting in Denver to begin deliberations on the proposal by Kerr-McGee Corp., Encana Corp. and Noble Energy Marketing Inc. The companies have proposed adding three wells per each 160-acre quarter-section in the 2,500-square-mile field, the state's second-largest gas field. To reach the untapped reserves, the companies plan to use directional drilling from the field's existing well pads. The plan has been opposed by local ranchers, developers and landowners who believe the move is a land grab....
Editorial: Reject plan for new mountain village It seems absurd to perch a new city bigger than Alamosa near timberline on one of Colorado's snowiest mountain roads. But that's what the Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture proposes with its controversial Village at Wolf Creek. A key decision is expected soon from the U.S. Forest Service, which ought to reject the inappropriately large-scale project. The development would sit below Wolf Creek Pass (average annual snowfall: 400 inches) along U.S. 160, the highway that crosses the Continental Divide between Durango and the San Luis Valley. The project would be nearly surrounded by national forest and the Wolf Creek Ski Area, which opposes the plan and is tangled in lawsuits over the issue. The project may be built in phases, but government agencies should focus on cumulative effects....
Mining-claim plan worries Westerners Private companies and individuals would be able to buy large tracts of federal land, from sagebrush basins to high-peak hiking trails in Utah and around the West, under the terms of the spending bill that has passed the House of Representatives by a two-vote margin, 217-215. On the surface, the bill reads like the mundane nip and tuck of federal mining law its authors say it is. But lawyers who have parsed its language say the real beneficiaries could be real estate developers, whose business has become a more potent economic engine in the West than mining. Under the existing law, a mining claim is the vehicle that allows for the extraction of so-called hard-rock metals like gold or silver. Under the House bill passed Friday, for the first time in the history of the 133-year-old mining law individuals or companies can file and expand claims even if the land at the heart of a claim has already been stripped of its minerals or could never support a profitable mine. The measure would also lift an 11-year moratorium on the passing of claims into full ownership....
Column: Giving environmentalists a chance to put up or . . . not Something there is about selling off public lands in the West that throws environmental groups into a panic. They invariably prefer the devil they know, which is the perpetual mismanagement of millions of acres by federal agencies who always complain about underfunding. But instead of resisting private sales, they should be invited to get in on them. If political influence corresponds to wealth - and it clearly does - environmentalists individually and collectively could and would outbid the mining, timber and grazing interests for much of the acreage. Then they could manage it the way they want. There would be no more conflicting "multiple use" mandates to worry about. And they wouldn't have to spend millions on lobbying and related nonproductive activities....
New Mexico sees tug-of-war between industry, environmental groups Although New Mexico has been an oil and gas producing state for 80 years, it has recently become a bit of a battleground between environmental groups and the industry. There are several reasons, said Bob Gallagher, president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, why New Mexico has found itself in the spotlight. One is the fact that the state holds the nation's second largest amount of state and federal lands and has a large amount natural resources located on federal lands. Secondly, the state's two senators, Pete Domenici, a Republican, and Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat, are ranking senators on the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and, thirdly, the state's governor, Bill Richardson, is politically active nationally. Two areas, Otero Mesa and Valle Vidal, have become the center of controversy because, Gallagher said, "they hold some of the few new untapped areas of land in the western United States where oil and gas could be developed."....
Fish carcasses rain on forest Helicopters are dropping thousands of salmon carcasses in the Mount Hood National Forest this week, part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife-funded attempt to enhance the food chain for fish and wildlife in the upper Clackamas and Sandy river basins. The fish drop zones total about 10 stream miles. The Forest Service and partners began the drops five years ago to supplement the aquatic food chain, part of the strategy to rebuild depleted fish runs. However, the forested environment prevents all the drops from reaching their intended targets; some of the carcasses fall on land to be consumed by animals. The decaying fish replace some of the nutrients that came from wild salmon after they spawned and died in past generations. After a post-drop survey in 2004 found no significant gain in the simplest forms of aquatic life, the amount dropped for each stream mile was increased, said Burke Strobel, a Forest Service fish biologist based in Estacada....
Editorial: The road to common sense THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE'S new rule for off-road vehicles is a pleasant surprise, or at least a very good beginning. Up to now, using off-road vehicles in the national forests has been legal everywhere except where signs say it's prohibited. The new rule takes the opposite approach: It will be legal to use off-road vehicles only in areas where signs specifically allow it. The change is subtle but profound; the new rule puts the onus on off-roaders, where it belongs, and should make enforcement easier. Knowing which areas allow off-roading will be the driver's responsibility. The rule also ends so-called cross-country riding, in which long-distance trails are forged from one mapped area to another. But its success will depend on what foresters do next. Decisions on off-roading trails will be decided in local planning meetings over the next four years. One thing the Forest Service can do to make that planning a more honest effort is to decide now that illegal routes will remain illegal. Otherwise, off-roaders will be carving up the wilderness with new trails during the next couple of years in hopes of getting as many routes as possible sanctified....
Sacramento River salmon at highest population level in 24 years Wildlife managers expect more than 15,000 endangered winter-run chinook salmon to thrash their way up the Sacramento River this year, the largest number in 24 years thanks to extraordinary and expensive efforts to save the species. But there are a couple of caution flags: An unusually high percentage of the returning fish were born in a hatchery, while an improbably low proportion of dead male fish were found by biologists counting carcasses of the salmon, which die after breeding. An estimated 18 percent are hatchery fish this year, up from the usual 5 percent to 10 percent. Biologists limit the number of hatchery fish to avoid contaminating the wild gene pool, but an unusually large number were released three years ago as an experiment. "It looks like the hatchery fish may have survived a lot better this year. We're not really sure why," said Alice Low, a senior fishery biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game. "It's definitely something we'll keep an eye on."....
Turner says one man can make difference For the past three years, Ted Turner has driven a Toyota Prius that gets up to 50 miles per gallon. He owns a million acres of ranch land in New Mexico; on one ranch, he's knocked down fences and replaced cows with bison. He firmly believes environmental responsibility and profitable business aren't mutually exclusive. Today, Turner will speak at an awards reception sponsored by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center. He and the award winners are a signal that, "unquestionably, one person can still make a difference," he said. Turner founded Turner Enterprises in 1991 specifically to address environmental issues around the globe. He owns 14 ranches totaling 2 million acres, including three in New Mexico....
Northwest Power Council Analysis Suggests Electric Rates Could Rise Due To Salmon Lawsuit Increased water spills over Columbia and Snake river dams and changes in river flows to aid juvenile salmon and steelhead migration in 2006, sought by plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit, would raise the cost of electricity in the Northwest this winter and also could increase the risk of power failures, according to an analysis by the staff of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The net cost of the operations, if they are ordered by the federal court, could range from $125 million to $560 million in 2006, according to the analysis. The matter will be argued December 15 before U.S. District Judge James A. Redden in Portland, where plaintiffs led by the National Wildlife Federation successfully sued the federal government over its 2004 Biological Opinion on Snake and Columbia River hydropower operations to protect threatened and endangered species of salmon and steelhead....
Litigation impacts 800 projects on 1.2 million acres A California woodlands expert this week predicted an “explosive” wildfire season next season if human intervention to clear forest fuels is thwarted by court-mandated bureaucracy. “It is not a question of if, but when the wildfires will ignite,” John Hoffman testified Tuesday before a U.S. House hearing on litigation on U.S. Forest Service firefighting and forest health efforts. “Delays of any extent, extends the time period communities are vulnerable to wildfire,” said Hoffman, natural resources director of the Regional Council of Rural Counties, Sacramento. House Committee on Agriculture Chairman Bob Goodlatte chaired the hearing in Washington, D.C. In September, a California district court ruled in the Earth Island Institute v. Ruthenbeck case that projects proposed by the Forest Service under “Categorical Exclusions” were subject to the notice, comment and appeal provisions of the Appeals Reform Act of 1992. The Earth Island decision could impact roughly 800 projects on over 1.2 million acres of Forest Service land. The ruling applies to timber sales, prescribed burning, forest health, off-highway vehicles and mineral development projects.
Nevada congressman urged to oppose anti-wilderness bill Environmentalists are urging Rep. Jim Gibbons to oppose federal legislation that would potentially open up to development 412,000 acres of wilderness study areas in Nevada and California. Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., introduced on Oct. 28 the bill that would remove protections from 11 U.S. Bureau of Land Management wilderness study areas straddling the Nevada-California border north of Reno. Gibbons' name originally appeared on the bill as its lone co-sponsor, but his aides said it was put there by mistake and that he hasn't decided whether to support it or not. John Wallin, director of the Nevada Wilderness Project, said he and other conservationists are not convinced it was a mistake and they remain concerned the Nevada Republican may end up supporting the measure....
'Grizzly Man' beautifully done but like watching an inevitable train wreck "Grizzly Man" is a strange story about some strange people. Of course, those who know Herzog know his films often are filled with strange people, either real or fictional. In this case, the people are real. The strangest of the lot is Timothy Treadwell, the grizzly man. For 13 years, he traveled to Alaska during the summer to do what he could to protect grizzly bears despite the fact they seemed to need no protection beyond what the National Park Service provided. Treadwell seemed to have no fear of these animals and, was able to get close to them and to talk to them. Treadwell captured a lot of his activities on video, and they are the visuals that make up most of the film. We see Treadwell talking in falsetto to bears as people tend to do with their dogs and their infants. He gives the bears names like Mr. Chocolate and Aunt Melissa and professes his love for them. The bears always seem indifferent to Treadwell and merely tolerate him. Sometimes Treadwell will begin to shout and curse, incoherently, at the National Park Service and whatever else he imagines stands in his way of protecting the bears. Every appearance of Treadwell on camera led me to the conclusion he was a man who was going around the bend and it was happening in an extremely dangerous place....
Bill to aid park resident stalls Legislation to help an elderly woman keep her part-time home in Rocky Mountain National Park was caught in the crossfire of an Iraq war debate in Congress on Friday. The House of Representatives was expected to easily approve legislation helping octogenarian Betty Dick, but first the House erupted in emotional finger-pointing over Iraq policy. Things got so emotional that at one point Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, began objecting to any unrelated action that he thought Republicans wanted. The National Park Service wanted to evict Betty Dick when her lease expired earlier this year. The bill would allow her to remain on her property for the rest of her life....
BEARS GO OFF RELIEF Bears in Yellowstone and other northern national parks are going into winter quarters. They are fat, lazy, good-natured, for they are at the end of another summer of high feeding, and they have thoroughly padded their ribs with the layers of fuel-food that will be needed to keep their low-banked fires of life smoldering while they sleep the long weeks away. "As fat as a bear" is a wholly accurate folk-simile, in the late autumn. But 5 months or so hence, when they will be coming out of their dens, the simile will have to change. Then, it will be "as hungry as a bear," and "as cross as a bear," too. The national park bruins will come out with bunkers empty, ribs lean, stomachs hollow, and fairly yelling for food. Bears are pleasant-enough fellows in the autumn, not quite so nice in the spring. The national park bears will not find their spring breakfasts as easy to get in the future as they and their ancestors for several generations have in the past. For Uncle Sam is taking them off relief, depriving them of their dole of assorted garbage that they have come to take for granted as part of their natural and inalienable rights....
Montana man lives with wolves On a cold November day, Carl Bock entered the double-gated 10-acre enclosure where his pack of 10 wolves lives. Instantly, half the pack is there to investigate the people Bock has brought into their territory. Wizzy, the alpha male who began the kill of another wolf in the pack to ascend to lead status -- the rest of the pack hangs back until a winner is obvious, then moves in to finish off the vanquished -- is first on the scene. "Be careful," Bock cautions. "You'll be 2.5 hours before Wizzy burns out on belly rubs." Indeed, Wizzy seems a lamb in wolf's clothing. The only danger from this wolf appears to be getting licked to death. He loves being petted, loves having his belly rubbed. And if you don't crouch down to eye level for him to lick your face, Wizzy will stand on his hind legs and put his front paws up on a tree to get to your level so he can kiss you. A few feet away, outside the enclosure in an area where the public can view the wolves at the Wolfkeep Wildlife Sanctuary, sits a bowling ball that's been chewed in half. Bock uses it as a visual aid to explain to visitors about the massive crushing power in a wolf's jaw....
Steeped in Greenhouse Gas, Pine Trees Deviate From the air, they look like a cross between unexplained Midwestern crop circles and the megaliths of Stonehenge. But these tall structures loom out of a forest. Arranged in a loop, the 100-foot-high by 100-foot-wide assemblages are releasing carbon dioxide, a colorless, odorless miasma that wafts through the loblolly pines they encircle. The 50-foot-tall pines, natives of the Deep South, are subjects in an experiment by scientists at Duke University who are using this engineered micro-climate as a kind of time machine to find out how these trees are likely to react as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere and temperatures climb....
Seeking Clean Fuel for a Nation, and a Rebirth for Small-Town Montana If the vast, empty plain of eastern Montana is the Saudi Arabia of coal, then Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a prairie populist with a bolo tie and an advanced degree in soil science, may be its Lawrence. Rarely a day goes by that he does not lash out against the "sheiks, dictators, rats and crooks" who control the world oil supply or the people he calls their political handmaidens, "the best Congress that Big Oil can buy." Governor Schweitzer, a Democrat, has a two-fisted idea for energy independence that he carries around with him. In one fist is a shank of Montana coal, black and hard. In the other fist is a vial of nearly odorless clear liquid - a synthetic fuel that came from the coal and could run cars, jets and trucks or heat homes without contributing to global warming or setting off a major fight with environmental groups, he said. "Smell that," Mr. Schweitzer said, thrusting his vial of fuel under the noses of interested observers here in the capital, where he works in jeans with a border collie underfoot. "You hardly smell anything. This is a clean fuel, converted from coal by a chemical process. We can produce enough of this in Montana to power every American car for decades."....
Farming's front and center at talks Amid signs of stalemate, U.S. negotiators are making a final push for a new global trade pact that could usher in the biggest changes in farm policy in decades. U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman last month offered to slash selected agricultural subsidies by up to 60% in return for Europe, Japan and others opening their markets to U.S. farm exports. The European Union responded with a mild tariff-cutting proposal that dashed hopes for a key gathering next month of trade ministers from the 148-nation World Trade Organization. Now, with just three weeks remaining before the make-or-break Hong Kong summit, some trade experts fear another high-profile debacle like two of the WTO's last three ministerial meetings. At the heart of the current deadlock is a high-stakes dispute over farm trade....
Horse sense in Montana How unlikely is it that a Frenchman-turned-U.S.-citizen, the founder of a global power-generation company who makes his home in New York City's eclectic SoHo enclave, is transforming a small college town in southwestern Montana into the horse-whispering capital of the world? Curious ranchers in these parts don't call William Kriegel the "French cowboy" for nothing. Foremost on the receiving end of the rancher's generosity are students from the nearby University of Montana-Western, small in curriculum but, thanks in large part to Mr. Kriegel's grand vision, the only university in the United States to offer degrees (both associate's and bachelor's) in "natural horsemanship."....
Big Lake has gone to the dogs Persisting through three days of dog-eat-dog competition, Pat the border collie and her trainer Robin Penland beat out a "ruff" field of four-legged rivals this past weekend to claim top dog honors and the title of Texas Sheep Dog Association champions at the state tournament in Big Lake. "Everything in this sport emulates actual ranch work," Penland said. "In these trials we're just trying to show the dog that has the best command of the sheep." Rankings of the 98 sheep dogs at the Big Lake tournament were determined by each dog's performance in herding a small flock of sheep down a 300 yard field, through a series of gates and obstacles and into a small pen. Handlers instruct their dogs in this endeavor by voice and whistle commands from a stationary position at the end of the field opposite where the sheep are released at the beginning of each 12 minute run....
Western influence pervades cowboy fellowship They meet in a simple room atop the Livestock Pavilion at the La Plata County Fairgrounds, and their meetings are marked both by high spirits and the spirit of the Lord they come to worship. The Fellowship of Christian Cowboys meets at 7 p.m. Thursdays in the upstairs of the Livestock Pavilion at the La Plata County Fairgrounds. Guests are welcome. Call Jim Bryce, the group’s president, at 259-2562 for information. The Fellowship of Christian Cowboys is in its second incarnation in La Plata County. One basically created for high school rodeo students faltered in the 1990s after a decade of activities. It officially came back in 2002. While the group has the word cowboy in the title, not all members are cattle ranchers, said Jim Bryce, the fellowship president. Some are former ranchers or have deep roots here because their ancestors came as pioneers. Because of that, Bryce said, the fellowship is more about the Western lifestyle....
HIDDEN HISTORY: Crook rancher finds stagecoach stop Pieces of northeast Colorados history are out there, buried six inches to a foot below the grass and weeds along the South Platte River near Tamarack Ranch State Wildlife Area. Crook rancher Bill Condon knew where to look. Decades of running cattle from horseback gave him a knowledge of the land he says you cant get any other way. Hed noticed the dished-out shape where the trail wound its way between the hills and the sometimes swampy river bottoms. Other parts of the landscape reminded him of corrals and mangers for livestock. Hollows and indentations in the ground, visible as shadows, and patches where different types of grasses and weeds grew unmasked the lands historic use. You get interested, Condon said. I think other people would want to know. These were the last sites on the map that I knew about. Condon worked with Jeff Broome, a philosophy instructor at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, with expertise on Gen. George Armstrong Custer and the Plains Indian wars. The historian and his students excavated the site under one rule: No heavy equipment. I told them they could dig as deep as they wanted with a shovel, Condon said. Using narrow shovels and metal detectors, they found bullets and casings, both fired and unfired; shoes for horses, mules and oxen; forks, knives, spoons and other tools; epaulets from the shoulders of a military uniform; tools and other items....