NEWS ROUNDUP

Forest Service Stops Mining Due To Bat Dwelling The U.S. Forest Service recently ordered a miner to stop his activities in a centuries old mine because it's being used as a roosting habitat by the rare Townsend's Big-eared Bat. The bat, listed as a "species of viability concern," has taken up residence in the Maree Love mine, which is connected to a hot vapor cave, wildlife biologist Phil Nyland said Monday. Robert Congdon, who holds claims to the mine's underground minerals, can no longer explore the cave until the agency performs a historical inventory and bat habitat study, according to Aspen District Ranger Bill Westbrook....
Alliance seeks to stem wild horse births It's birth control for wild horses who prove fertile in their free-roaming lives on the nation's Western countryside. It's developed from pig ovaries and injected in a mare's hips. Called PZP, the contraceptive gave birth to an agreement between a federal agency and the Humane Society of the United States at a meeting late last month in Santa Fe. The Bureau of Land Management and the Humane Society announced they would work together to further development and use of PZP on mares living on federal land in 10 Western states. New Mexico's Socorro County is home to one BLM herd but, at about 70 horses, it's too small to merit use of a contraceptive. The U.S. Forest Service, which manages two larger herds in the Carson National Forest, is intrigued with the idea and sent representatives to the Santa Fe meeting....
Taking the pulse of climate change in the Colorado Rockies The marmot was holding his own until the second coyote blindsided him. The coarse-furred, groundhog-like rodent emerged from his hibernation burrow last April onto a thick crust of snow that blanketed this former mining town several miles north of Crested Butte. A band of coyotes had been hanging around, and one of them pounced on the marmot. The feisty rodent rose to his hind legs and batted at the coyote with his clawed front paws, like a boxer, as he struggled to escape. But a second coyote bounded in from behind and joined the fray. The two canines killed the marmot, then dragged him off. To University of Maryland ecologist David Inouye, this grisly account serves as a cautionary tale about — believe it or not — the potential perils of global climate change....
Efforts to protect orcas may have wide impact What do chemicals you wash down the drain, Navy ships, a proposed Maury Island gravel mine and an international treaty have in common? Each could be affected by the recent protection of Puget Sound killer whales under the Endangered Species Act. Early next year comes the first step in determining how much punch the "endangered" label will carry for the oft-ogled orcas. Federal officials are asking the public to speak up in the next few weeks. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which has released a proposed conservation plan, hopes the new listing will lead to better safeguards against oil spills -- the biggest single extinction threat for the orca. The agency is also raising the prospect of tighter controls on development in sensitive areas and restrictions on emerging chemical threats....
White House pushes Congress on Alaska drilling Bush administration officials on Monday urged Congress to include opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling in a broad budget-cutting bill that could see a vote this week. ANWR drilling is one of several politically sensitive items that will be in play when Senate and House negotiators try to finalize legislation to cut federal government spending by at least $35 billion over five years. The Senate included ANWR in its package of spending cuts. But the House-passed budget bill dropped the ANWR drilling provision after a group of moderate Republicans threatened to vote against the measure if the drilling language was included. The Bush administration stepped up its lobbying efforts to give oil companies access to the refuge....
BLM: PFS can make case for nuke storage in new comment period A federal Bureau of Land Management official said Monday that Sen. Orrin Hatch's assessment that Private Fuel Storage was falling apart played a role in his decision to seek new public comments about the company's plans to build a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in Utah's Skull Valley. Private Fuel Storage, a coalition of eight utilities, plans to use the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation as a temporary way station for nuclear waste pending work at Yucca Mountain, the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest Las Vegas. The BLM must sign off on rights of way to access the Skull Valley site. Hatch, R-Utah, who wants to kill the proposed storage facility, had argued that seven of the eight utilities had agreed to suspend their funding for the project, calling into question the company's future....
Wasted Colo. River water at issue No matter how many pipelines, pumps and dams Western states build along the Colorado River, billions of gallons of water will never make it to the farms and growing cities that need it. That water instead seeps into the ground through unlined canals and ditches, escapes downstream when users can't take it as planned or is sucked up by trees, bushes and other vegetation along the river's 1,450-mile course. To water managers in the seven river states, that is wasted water. With demand growing and the supply limited, or even shrinking in drought years, the states want to reduce the waste as much as they can. They are studying a range of ideas, from pulling weeds to lining canals, as part of a broader plan to deal with future shortages....
Officials to meet about future of Colorado River use Interior Secretary Gale Norton is scheduled to speak at a meeting of Colorado River water users in Las Vegas next week, capping three days of potentially tough interstate discussions on managing the river's resource. The issues to be discussed are dividing the four states of the upper Colorado River basin from the three lower basin states. But Nevada, California and Arizona, the three lower basin states, have their own disagreements. Hanging over next week's meetings and the overall debate is a federal deadline to come up with a way to manage feared shortages of water on the river because of drought. Officials in Nevada and Washington said Norton _ the manager of the critical river system for more than 20 million people in the Southwest _ plans to speak Dec. 16. Listening closely to Norton will be a host of state representatives, water-agency managers, tribal leaders, environmentalists, private sector contractors and others with an interest in the region's water future....
Lake Powell still a glass half-empty Flows into Lake Powell were slightly above average this year, but the giant reservoir in Utah remains far from full, officials with the Bureau of Reclamation say. In 2005, flows into the reservoir were about 105 percent of average. Even with that increase, Lake Powell is only about half- full, holding 12 million acre-feet of water. The drought of 2002 decimated Lake Powell, which acts like a water bank for the upper basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah, releasing water to Lake Mead for distribution to the lower basin as required under the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Flows in Lake Powell in 2002 were 25 percent of average - the lowest they had been since the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963....
'Elvis' woodpecker draws searchers It has starred in a video, been widely recorded and graced the cover of a prestigious magazine. But to dispel any doubt the ivory-billed woodpecker -- the Elvis of the bird world -- is back from extinction, searchers are combing a corner of Arkansas in an intensive six-month hunt. On foot, in canoes and kayaks, even using cherry-picker vehicles that tower over the forest canopy, teams of volunteers and paid workers have been looking for traces of the big bird in the forests and swamps of the White River and Cache River basins, just west of the Mississippi. "The thrust of it is to find out more: find the birds and then learn more about what they do, how they live, where their habitat is, how many there are," said Jon Andrew of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is working with conservation groups and academic experts in the search....
Tribal chairman says water plan overlooks western North Dakota Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall says the tribes and western North Dakota generally are being overlooked in plans to pipe Missouri River water to the Red River Valley in times of drought. ''Nobody's talked to us [about the Red River plan], so we don't know how much water would be diverted,'' Hall said. ''I'm not saying we're against it, I'm just saying we haven't been adequately consulted here,'' he said. ''I'm alarmed that we're not getting consulted on this huge initiative.'' The plan, endorsed by the State Water Commission, would build a pipeline to connect with the McClusky Canal near McClusky and move Missouri River water east to Lake Ashtabula, near Valley City, for storage after treating it. Water would be released as needed into the Sheyenne River, which flows into the Red River north of Fargo. The project, which still must go through federal review, could cost up to $660 million to build. Fargo Mayor Bruce Furness compared it to taking a thimbleful of water out of a five-gallon pail during drought times, with the pail representing the Missouri River....
Teen, horse she helped raise in world championship Boons Cowboy had an attitude problem from the very beginning. Maybe it was his difficult birth. Maybe it was a stubborn streak he inherited from a parent. Maybe it was because he was called a cull and a spitfire. Whatever the reason, there were few who expected Kathryn McMurray's 3-year-old American quarter horse to ever have enough cow sense to be a cutter, a horse trained to single out a cow from its herd. But McMurray, a 16-year-old from Kingsport, and Boons Cowboy are in Fort Worth, Texas, today, having just competed in the 2005 National Cutting Horse Association's World Championship Futurity. Boons Cowboy was Kathryn's first delivery, born May 2, 2002, when Kathryn was 13 years old....
Slow dancin’ It’s a reemerging art of inches and angles. A lowered head; a tilted shoulder; and slow, controlled movements are some of the postures used in traditional hackamore horse training. “A non-horse person quite often looks at some of our training like it’s a dance,” said traditional hackamore horse trainer R.E. Smith. Smith and his wife Laurie run Circle S Ranch in Corning. The couple travels all over the West about 12 weeks out of the year conducting hackamore horse training clinics as well as producing training videos and DVDs with their Circle S Productions. “It’s the way that the old vaquero rode 260 years ago,” said Smith in a phone interview from Descanso where he was giving a presentation during Vaquero Days. The hackamore is a bit-less bridle that includes the hanger, bosal and macate, a 22-foot-long horse-hair rope....
Georgia dairy farmer wins world all-around title Dairy cows don't wait. Not even for world all-around champions. Ryan Jarrett, of Summerville, Ga., runs a 750-acre dairy farm with his father DeJuan in northwest Georgia. The cows will still need tending when Jarrett returns from the National Finals Rodeo. “I can't wait,” said the younger Jarrett of returning home. While the work for the cows remains the same, Jarrett does not. He returns to the farm as the 2005 PRCA world all-around champion. He is the first cowboy from Georgia - and the first from east of the Mississippi River - to win professional rodeo's most prestigious title. Jarrett, who turns 22 on Dec. 28, earned a total of $263,664 for the year in steer wrestling, tie-down roping and as a team roping header. He won $114,717 at the 10-performance National Finals Rodeo that concluded Sunday afternoon. Jarrett was the only two-event qualifier, competing in both steer wrestling and tie-down roping....
Wills Point bull rider wins with record haul Bull rider Matt Austin exceeded even his dreams. Austin, from Wills Point, Texas, said his goal this year was to win the world championship. Well, he accomplished that two days ago before the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo was completed. On Sunday, after riding Razor Sharp out of the Growney Brothers Rodeo for 88.5 points, he scaled another plateau. He finished second in the round and earned the aggregate title to become the all-time one-year earnings leader in pro rodeo, finishing the year with $320,765. That broke Ty Murray's mark of $297,896 in three events in 1983. Austin's record came in only one event, and he's the first cowboy to cross the $300,000 mark in one year. Austin joined four other Texans in the winners circle at the Thomas & Mack Center, with Fred Whitfield of Hockley winning his eighth tie-down roping title, Will Lowe of Canyon and Kelly Kaminski of Bellville winning their second championships in bareback riding and barrel racing, respectively, and Patrick Smith of Midland earning his first world heeling title....
It's All Trew: Problems build character for young I looked back into my early life for a comparable experience. The closest I could come was solving problems associated with building a slingshot. The materials were wood, rubber strips for power, strong twine and a small piece of flexible leather. Simple enough until you got into the technological problems. The first problem came in selecting the proper wood. An old dry tree fork was simple and easy to find. A green fork would be stronger but required some cutting and peeling. Next came the rubber strips. Was red or black rubber the best? Did you cut the strips longwise or crosswise from the inner-tube? Determining the proper length of the rubber strips was probably the most difficult problem I had encountered in my young life. I was always forced to use whatever materials were available, often eliminating the choice problem. Of great importance was the quality, flexibility and strength of the leather used to hold the rock or, as it would be called today, the "missile." Whatever you did, you didn't cut the tongue out of your father's Sunday shoes!! Though perfect in form and flexibility, it just wasn't worth it. I can testify to this from experience....