GAO REPORT
Great Lakes Initiative: EPA Needs to Better Ensure the Complete and Consistent Implementation of Water Quality Standards. GAO-05-829, July 27.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-829
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d05829high.pdf
Friday, August 26, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
BLM head reasserts priority on energy development Bureau of Land Management Director Kathleen Clarke told Utah mining executives and officials Thursday that the Bush administration would continue to aggressively pursue energy development in the Intermountain West, to maintain the nation's quality of life and to ease its dependence on Middle East oil. Clarke, a Utah native and former director of the state's Department of Natural Resources, spoke at the Utah Mining Association's annual conference at the Canyons Resort. But the BLM director also said the continued health of the U.S. economy must serve as the baseline for the agency's decision-making. In that sense, Clarke said the debate over the management of public lands and natural resources has become muddled. The development of oil, gas and other resources are "essential" if the nation is to maintain some degree of energy independence....
Montana's governor eyes coal to solve U.S. fuel costs Montana's governor wants to solve America's rising energy costs using a technology discovered in Germany 80 years ago that converts coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. The Fischer-Tropsch technology, discovered by German researchers in 1923 and later used by the Nazis to convert coal into wartime fuels, was not economical as long as oil cost less than $30 a barrel. But with U.S. crude oil now hitting more than double that price, Gov. Brian Schweitzer's plan is getting more attention across the country and some analysts are taking him very seriously. Montana is "sitting on more energy than they have in the Middle East," Schweitzer told Reuters in an interview this week. The governor estimated the cost of producing a barrel of oil through the Fischer-Tropsch method at $32, and said that with its 120 billion tons of coal -- a little less than a third of the U.S total -- Montana could supply the entire United States with its aviation, gas and diesel fuel for 40 years without creating environmental damage....
Former forest supervisor urges Western Slopers to take action on energy issues A former U.S. Forest Service supervisor who garnered national attention for placing a moratorium on oil and natural-gas development is making her way across western Colorado. Gloria Flora stopped in Grand Junction on Thursday before heading to Montrose, spreading messages of sustainability on public lands and urging those affected by oil and gas development to take action. “There are so many troubling aspects of that industry,” she said. “It has a profound effect on individuals and communities, but development happens so quickly that sometimes roads and wells are there before you even realize what to do about it.” Flora urges Western Slope residents to educate themselves and push for more local control of issues such as well spacing and water quality restrictions....
Top Official Urged Change in How Parks Are Managed A high-ranking appointee at the Interior Department proposed fundamentally changing the way national parks are managed, putting more emphasis on recreational use and loosening protections against overuse, noise and damage to the air, water, wildlife or scenery. But a group of senior National Park Service employees rejected the proposal at a meeting this month. The 194 pages of revisions to the park service's basic policy document suggested by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the department, could have opened up new opportunities for off-road use of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles throughout the park system, including Yellowstone National Park, whose roads the Interior Department has kept open to snowmobiles. Mr. Hoffman's proposals often involved seemingly minor word changes but their effect was nonetheless sweeping. Illegal uses, Mr. Hoffman proposed, must "irreversibly" harm park resources, instead of just harming them. Instead of obligating managers to eliminate impairments to park resources, he proposed that they should "adequately mitigate or eliminate" the problems. The draft was part of an effort to re-evaluate the park service's core mission and illustrated the continuing tension between the need to preserve park resources and the desire to make them available to the broadest possible public....
Counties try for consensus on wolves Wolves are a problem in Montana, commissioners from several Montana counties agreed in a meeting here Thursday, and the federal government needs to come up with more money to compensate ranchers and control wolf numbers. The goal of the five-hour meeting, organized by Park County Extension Agent Marty Malone, was to come up with a joint resolution calling for tighter management of wolves, a quicker removal from the federal Endangered Species Act list and keeping closer tabs on the big carnivores. Commissioners from Gallatin, Park, Sweet Grass, Stillwater, Carbon and Madison counties attended. Beaverhead County commissioners sent Joe Helle, a prominent sheep rancher, to represent them....
State hoping to take over more wolf management soon State wildlife managers could get more control over Idaho's wolf population soon, including authority to kill wolves that are preying on elk, officials say. Under new rules approved in January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowed wildlife agencies in Idaho and Montana to take a more active role in day-to-day wolf-management decisions. A memorandum establishing that broader authority in Idaho is expected to be approved in the next several days, state Fish and Game Department program director Steve Nadeau said Thursday....
Yellowstone grizzly bear roars back. Now what? Will success spoil the Yellowstone grizzly bear? The national park is bulging to capacity with grizzlies, and the bears are spreading out far beyond the park's borders. Under the protection of the Endangered Species Act for 30 years, the grizzly population has roared back from a low of about 200 in 1980 to more than 600. So now the debate - and it's often contentious - is about what's next. About 60 miles south of Yellowstone's border, Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Herb "Bubba" Haley is skinning a dead calf and checking for bite wounds that indicate a grizzly attack. He finds them. An hour earlier, Haley confirmed that a grizzly killed a cow a couple miles away, likely the same bear that got the calf. In this area far south of the park, wildlife officials have confirmed that grizzlies killed more than a dozen cattle this summer. Haley has trapped eight calf-attacking bears this summer, compared with three last year. After the latest attacks, he set another trap with meat from the dead cow as bait. "This summer just seems like it's chaotic," Haley told rancher Albert Sommers. "There's grizzlies all over the place."....
Urban grizzly attacks man and dog Gary Paterna was walking his dog down an overgrown trail in the woods southeast of his Chugach Foothills neighborhood Tuesday evening when a heart-stopping roar erupted behind him. "I hadn't taken one or two steps when the bear burst out of the brush," he said Wednesday. The bear swatted his chest and knocked him to the ground so fast that Paterna later wasn't quite sure how it happened. But the dog, a 9-year-old Brittany spaniel named Tok, drew the bear's attention. The bear pounced on the dog, giving Paterna time to leap to this feet. Twice more, the bear knocked him down. Twice more the dog's presence seemed to interrupt the attack. The 60-year-old grandfather of five suffered scrapes and a sore hip where he'd fallen -- plus five distinct claw marks and a purple bruise across his chest....
Endangered Salamander Spotlights Risks of Common U.S. Pesticide Endangered salamanders that live in Texas' capital city might get a break from pesticide exposure. Conservation groups achieved a settlement agreement this week that requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on impacts of the pesticide atrazine on the endangered Barton Springs salamander. The Barton Springs salamander, Eurycea sosorum, is found only in Barton Springs, in Austin, Texas. Scientists with the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) have found six pesticides in the Barton Springs aquifer of concern to human health and to salamanders, since amphibians are particularly sensitive to contaminants. Atrazine is the most heavily used herbicide in the United States, according to the EPA....
Pombo moves on fish crisis in the Delta A congressional hearing to explore the possible causes of an ecological crisis in the Delta is likely to be scheduled this fall, Rep. Richard Pombo told the Times editorial board on Wednesday. The Tracy Republican said he wants to hear more about what might be causing the fish decline and why, after $250 million in federal money and far more than that in state funds, the Delta's environmental problems have worsened. "I think there will be a lot of questions about whether the money has done any good," Pombo said. In his first public comments on the Delta fish crisis, Pombo said the situation has the potential to constrict water supplies throughout the state....
Saltwater shark mysteriously turns up at Medina Lake When Jet Smith went out to check his fishing lines on Sunday morning, the Medina Lake angler wasn't expecting to haul in a 3-foot-long shark. All he was really after was enough catfish for supper, but what he brought to the dock an hour later was one catfish and one heck of a fish story. And not just any shark, either, but a 36-inch-long Atlantic sharpnose shark, a saltwater species that is biologically hundreds of miles out of its element in a Hill Country freshwater impoundment. Medina Lake, a 5,000-acre lake northwest of San Antonio, is about four hours from the Texas Coast....
Court action an option if legislators don't like refuge plan The state could mount a "substantial" legal challenge if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bans the use of gasoline-powered boats in parts of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, legislative attorneys said in an opinion released Thursday. Court decisions and provisions of state and federal law dating as far back as the northwest ordinance in 1787 raise fundamental questions about the federal agency's authority to adopt and enforce the proposed regulation, concluded attorney Mark Patronsky. The ban is among controversial recommendations in a 610-page comprehensive conservation plan that would regulate activities in the 240,000-acre refuge during the next 15 years. The agency also wants to ban waterfowl hunting in 21 areas with a total of 42,000 refuge acres. The ban would be in addition to 15 areas closed to hunting since 1958, Hultman said....
Coyotes put the bite on North Shore pets Moments after Amalia Tragos Stachowiak coaxed her 12-week-old German shepherd in from the back yard, where it suddenly had frozen in its tracks, her husband spotted a coyote sniffing their children's toys. It was 8:15 a.m. That was a month ago, but Stachowiak again saw a coyote over the weekend, nosing around her barbecue grill. And though she's glad her puppy, Cali, is safe, other pets have fallen victim to coyotes driven closer to North Shore homes because of this summer's drought. A 15-month-old terrier was killed in late June on a Northfield front lawn, said Northfield Deputy Police Chief Claude Casaletto. Six domestic cats in Glencoe have been attacked and killed by coyotes in the last month, said Katie Sweeney, Glencoe community service officer. She fielded calls Monday about more sightings of normally nocturnal coyotes....
Utah sues BLM over 15-year-old road closures The Attorney General's Office filed suit Thursday against the Department of the Interior over three roads in Juab County, as the state of Utah continues to aggressively pursue road claims in rural counties. The roads in question range from 6.5 to 9 miles long, and are located in the western, largely uninhabited part of the county. They were closed by the Bureau of Land Management in the late 1980s because, according to BLM officials, they extended into a designated wilderness study area. But Assistant Attorney General Ed Ogilvie said the roads met the parameters for what has been defined by Congress as a public road, “and these roads meet those criteria in every way. These roads were closed without public input and contrary to law.” The suit marks the fifth complaint the state has filed against the Interior Department under Revised Statute 2477, an 1866 law that guaranteed public rights of way over federal land. The statute was repealed in 1976, but existing roads were grandfathered in....
Appeals court says herbicide spraying companies not protected from lawsuits Two companies hired to spray herbicide on Bureau of Land Management property are not protected from lawsuits as government employees, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The decision, handed down this week, means that Thomas Helicopters and DeAngelo Brothers may be sued by Mini-Cassia farmers and landowners who claim the businesses were negligent when the herbicide drifted onto privately owned land. The farmers claimed millions of dollars of crop losses. The companies had claimed they were ineligible to be sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which protects government employees from some lawsuits. But a three-judge panel of the appeals court said the companies are considered corporations -- not employees -- under the law, and so are not eligible for immunity under the Tort Claims Act....
Minorities avoid wilderness activities, advocates look for fix It's the same story from New York's Adirondacks to Arizona's canyons: there's a lack of ethnic and racial diversity in the outdoor areas where people hike, camp, mountain bike, paddle and picnic. In a time when minority populations are growing, wilderness advocates and administrators are reaching out to blacks, Hispanics and Asians to change that. The Outdoor Industry Foundation this summer reported that 79 percent of people taking part in outdoor activities like hiking and kayaking last year were Caucasian, 6 percent were black and 4 percent were Hispanic. Blacks and Hispanics combined make up 27 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S. Forest Service found similar trends in Arizona, where whites accounted for 88 percent or more of the visitors to the six national forests in that state, even though Hispanics make up about a quarter of the state's population....
Controlling cattle over the net Australian farmers could soon be using their mobile phone or the internet to open the farm gate from anywhere in the world. Technology developed at the University of New England in NSW will enable farmers to remotely control and monitor livestock movement by using their mobile phone or the internet. It will also eventually allow them to monitor and control the farm gate and water trough levels. The system has been developed to allow in-built alarm systems in the farm gate and water trough to send an automatic mobile phone text message if an unannounced visitor opens the gate or the water levels fall too low. The program, developed by the Institute of Rural Futures (IRF) in conjunction with Telstra, may be expanded in the future to include remote-controlled weighing devices for individual animals....
In Jefferson, snake bites the hand that tries to save it Stephen Sodones spotted it along the edge of Route 23 in Jefferson, a snake just starting its precarious slide to the other side of the highway. So the 62-year-old animal lover picked it up, hoping to carry it to safety. But in doing so, Sodones quickly learned one of nature's more important facts: Snakes bite. What bit Sodones three times on the arm Monday night was a copperhead, which can grow to 4 feet and have fangs like hypodermic needles. No one is quite sure how big this one was....here's your sign....
===
BLM head reasserts priority on energy development Bureau of Land Management Director Kathleen Clarke told Utah mining executives and officials Thursday that the Bush administration would continue to aggressively pursue energy development in the Intermountain West, to maintain the nation's quality of life and to ease its dependence on Middle East oil. Clarke, a Utah native and former director of the state's Department of Natural Resources, spoke at the Utah Mining Association's annual conference at the Canyons Resort. But the BLM director also said the continued health of the U.S. economy must serve as the baseline for the agency's decision-making. In that sense, Clarke said the debate over the management of public lands and natural resources has become muddled. The development of oil, gas and other resources are "essential" if the nation is to maintain some degree of energy independence....
Montana's governor eyes coal to solve U.S. fuel costs Montana's governor wants to solve America's rising energy costs using a technology discovered in Germany 80 years ago that converts coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. The Fischer-Tropsch technology, discovered by German researchers in 1923 and later used by the Nazis to convert coal into wartime fuels, was not economical as long as oil cost less than $30 a barrel. But with U.S. crude oil now hitting more than double that price, Gov. Brian Schweitzer's plan is getting more attention across the country and some analysts are taking him very seriously. Montana is "sitting on more energy than they have in the Middle East," Schweitzer told Reuters in an interview this week. The governor estimated the cost of producing a barrel of oil through the Fischer-Tropsch method at $32, and said that with its 120 billion tons of coal -- a little less than a third of the U.S total -- Montana could supply the entire United States with its aviation, gas and diesel fuel for 40 years without creating environmental damage....
Former forest supervisor urges Western Slopers to take action on energy issues A former U.S. Forest Service supervisor who garnered national attention for placing a moratorium on oil and natural-gas development is making her way across western Colorado. Gloria Flora stopped in Grand Junction on Thursday before heading to Montrose, spreading messages of sustainability on public lands and urging those affected by oil and gas development to take action. “There are so many troubling aspects of that industry,” she said. “It has a profound effect on individuals and communities, but development happens so quickly that sometimes roads and wells are there before you even realize what to do about it.” Flora urges Western Slope residents to educate themselves and push for more local control of issues such as well spacing and water quality restrictions....
Top Official Urged Change in How Parks Are Managed A high-ranking appointee at the Interior Department proposed fundamentally changing the way national parks are managed, putting more emphasis on recreational use and loosening protections against overuse, noise and damage to the air, water, wildlife or scenery. But a group of senior National Park Service employees rejected the proposal at a meeting this month. The 194 pages of revisions to the park service's basic policy document suggested by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the department, could have opened up new opportunities for off-road use of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles throughout the park system, including Yellowstone National Park, whose roads the Interior Department has kept open to snowmobiles. Mr. Hoffman's proposals often involved seemingly minor word changes but their effect was nonetheless sweeping. Illegal uses, Mr. Hoffman proposed, must "irreversibly" harm park resources, instead of just harming them. Instead of obligating managers to eliminate impairments to park resources, he proposed that they should "adequately mitigate or eliminate" the problems. The draft was part of an effort to re-evaluate the park service's core mission and illustrated the continuing tension between the need to preserve park resources and the desire to make them available to the broadest possible public....
Counties try for consensus on wolves Wolves are a problem in Montana, commissioners from several Montana counties agreed in a meeting here Thursday, and the federal government needs to come up with more money to compensate ranchers and control wolf numbers. The goal of the five-hour meeting, organized by Park County Extension Agent Marty Malone, was to come up with a joint resolution calling for tighter management of wolves, a quicker removal from the federal Endangered Species Act list and keeping closer tabs on the big carnivores. Commissioners from Gallatin, Park, Sweet Grass, Stillwater, Carbon and Madison counties attended. Beaverhead County commissioners sent Joe Helle, a prominent sheep rancher, to represent them....
State hoping to take over more wolf management soon State wildlife managers could get more control over Idaho's wolf population soon, including authority to kill wolves that are preying on elk, officials say. Under new rules approved in January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowed wildlife agencies in Idaho and Montana to take a more active role in day-to-day wolf-management decisions. A memorandum establishing that broader authority in Idaho is expected to be approved in the next several days, state Fish and Game Department program director Steve Nadeau said Thursday....
Yellowstone grizzly bear roars back. Now what? Will success spoil the Yellowstone grizzly bear? The national park is bulging to capacity with grizzlies, and the bears are spreading out far beyond the park's borders. Under the protection of the Endangered Species Act for 30 years, the grizzly population has roared back from a low of about 200 in 1980 to more than 600. So now the debate - and it's often contentious - is about what's next. About 60 miles south of Yellowstone's border, Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Herb "Bubba" Haley is skinning a dead calf and checking for bite wounds that indicate a grizzly attack. He finds them. An hour earlier, Haley confirmed that a grizzly killed a cow a couple miles away, likely the same bear that got the calf. In this area far south of the park, wildlife officials have confirmed that grizzlies killed more than a dozen cattle this summer. Haley has trapped eight calf-attacking bears this summer, compared with three last year. After the latest attacks, he set another trap with meat from the dead cow as bait. "This summer just seems like it's chaotic," Haley told rancher Albert Sommers. "There's grizzlies all over the place."....
Urban grizzly attacks man and dog Gary Paterna was walking his dog down an overgrown trail in the woods southeast of his Chugach Foothills neighborhood Tuesday evening when a heart-stopping roar erupted behind him. "I hadn't taken one or two steps when the bear burst out of the brush," he said Wednesday. The bear swatted his chest and knocked him to the ground so fast that Paterna later wasn't quite sure how it happened. But the dog, a 9-year-old Brittany spaniel named Tok, drew the bear's attention. The bear pounced on the dog, giving Paterna time to leap to this feet. Twice more, the bear knocked him down. Twice more the dog's presence seemed to interrupt the attack. The 60-year-old grandfather of five suffered scrapes and a sore hip where he'd fallen -- plus five distinct claw marks and a purple bruise across his chest....
Endangered Salamander Spotlights Risks of Common U.S. Pesticide Endangered salamanders that live in Texas' capital city might get a break from pesticide exposure. Conservation groups achieved a settlement agreement this week that requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on impacts of the pesticide atrazine on the endangered Barton Springs salamander. The Barton Springs salamander, Eurycea sosorum, is found only in Barton Springs, in Austin, Texas. Scientists with the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) have found six pesticides in the Barton Springs aquifer of concern to human health and to salamanders, since amphibians are particularly sensitive to contaminants. Atrazine is the most heavily used herbicide in the United States, according to the EPA....
Pombo moves on fish crisis in the Delta A congressional hearing to explore the possible causes of an ecological crisis in the Delta is likely to be scheduled this fall, Rep. Richard Pombo told the Times editorial board on Wednesday. The Tracy Republican said he wants to hear more about what might be causing the fish decline and why, after $250 million in federal money and far more than that in state funds, the Delta's environmental problems have worsened. "I think there will be a lot of questions about whether the money has done any good," Pombo said. In his first public comments on the Delta fish crisis, Pombo said the situation has the potential to constrict water supplies throughout the state....
Saltwater shark mysteriously turns up at Medina Lake When Jet Smith went out to check his fishing lines on Sunday morning, the Medina Lake angler wasn't expecting to haul in a 3-foot-long shark. All he was really after was enough catfish for supper, but what he brought to the dock an hour later was one catfish and one heck of a fish story. And not just any shark, either, but a 36-inch-long Atlantic sharpnose shark, a saltwater species that is biologically hundreds of miles out of its element in a Hill Country freshwater impoundment. Medina Lake, a 5,000-acre lake northwest of San Antonio, is about four hours from the Texas Coast....
Court action an option if legislators don't like refuge plan The state could mount a "substantial" legal challenge if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bans the use of gasoline-powered boats in parts of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, legislative attorneys said in an opinion released Thursday. Court decisions and provisions of state and federal law dating as far back as the northwest ordinance in 1787 raise fundamental questions about the federal agency's authority to adopt and enforce the proposed regulation, concluded attorney Mark Patronsky. The ban is among controversial recommendations in a 610-page comprehensive conservation plan that would regulate activities in the 240,000-acre refuge during the next 15 years. The agency also wants to ban waterfowl hunting in 21 areas with a total of 42,000 refuge acres. The ban would be in addition to 15 areas closed to hunting since 1958, Hultman said....
Coyotes put the bite on North Shore pets Moments after Amalia Tragos Stachowiak coaxed her 12-week-old German shepherd in from the back yard, where it suddenly had frozen in its tracks, her husband spotted a coyote sniffing their children's toys. It was 8:15 a.m. That was a month ago, but Stachowiak again saw a coyote over the weekend, nosing around her barbecue grill. And though she's glad her puppy, Cali, is safe, other pets have fallen victim to coyotes driven closer to North Shore homes because of this summer's drought. A 15-month-old terrier was killed in late June on a Northfield front lawn, said Northfield Deputy Police Chief Claude Casaletto. Six domestic cats in Glencoe have been attacked and killed by coyotes in the last month, said Katie Sweeney, Glencoe community service officer. She fielded calls Monday about more sightings of normally nocturnal coyotes....
Utah sues BLM over 15-year-old road closures The Attorney General's Office filed suit Thursday against the Department of the Interior over three roads in Juab County, as the state of Utah continues to aggressively pursue road claims in rural counties. The roads in question range from 6.5 to 9 miles long, and are located in the western, largely uninhabited part of the county. They were closed by the Bureau of Land Management in the late 1980s because, according to BLM officials, they extended into a designated wilderness study area. But Assistant Attorney General Ed Ogilvie said the roads met the parameters for what has been defined by Congress as a public road, “and these roads meet those criteria in every way. These roads were closed without public input and contrary to law.” The suit marks the fifth complaint the state has filed against the Interior Department under Revised Statute 2477, an 1866 law that guaranteed public rights of way over federal land. The statute was repealed in 1976, but existing roads were grandfathered in....
Appeals court says herbicide spraying companies not protected from lawsuits Two companies hired to spray herbicide on Bureau of Land Management property are not protected from lawsuits as government employees, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The decision, handed down this week, means that Thomas Helicopters and DeAngelo Brothers may be sued by Mini-Cassia farmers and landowners who claim the businesses were negligent when the herbicide drifted onto privately owned land. The farmers claimed millions of dollars of crop losses. The companies had claimed they were ineligible to be sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which protects government employees from some lawsuits. But a three-judge panel of the appeals court said the companies are considered corporations -- not employees -- under the law, and so are not eligible for immunity under the Tort Claims Act....
Minorities avoid wilderness activities, advocates look for fix It's the same story from New York's Adirondacks to Arizona's canyons: there's a lack of ethnic and racial diversity in the outdoor areas where people hike, camp, mountain bike, paddle and picnic. In a time when minority populations are growing, wilderness advocates and administrators are reaching out to blacks, Hispanics and Asians to change that. The Outdoor Industry Foundation this summer reported that 79 percent of people taking part in outdoor activities like hiking and kayaking last year were Caucasian, 6 percent were black and 4 percent were Hispanic. Blacks and Hispanics combined make up 27 percent of the U.S. population. The U.S. Forest Service found similar trends in Arizona, where whites accounted for 88 percent or more of the visitors to the six national forests in that state, even though Hispanics make up about a quarter of the state's population....
Controlling cattle over the net Australian farmers could soon be using their mobile phone or the internet to open the farm gate from anywhere in the world. Technology developed at the University of New England in NSW will enable farmers to remotely control and monitor livestock movement by using their mobile phone or the internet. It will also eventually allow them to monitor and control the farm gate and water trough levels. The system has been developed to allow in-built alarm systems in the farm gate and water trough to send an automatic mobile phone text message if an unannounced visitor opens the gate or the water levels fall too low. The program, developed by the Institute of Rural Futures (IRF) in conjunction with Telstra, may be expanded in the future to include remote-controlled weighing devices for individual animals....
In Jefferson, snake bites the hand that tries to save it Stephen Sodones spotted it along the edge of Route 23 in Jefferson, a snake just starting its precarious slide to the other side of the highway. So the 62-year-old animal lover picked it up, hoping to carry it to safety. But in doing so, Sodones quickly learned one of nature's more important facts: Snakes bite. What bit Sodones three times on the arm Monday night was a copperhead, which can grow to 4 feet and have fangs like hypodermic needles. No one is quite sure how big this one was....here's your sign....
===
Thursday, August 25, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Agency confirms wolf killed at least one sheep After investigating the death of nearly 30 head of domestic sheep near the Prospect Mountains east of here, federal wildlife officials confirmed a wolf had killed one, while 14 other dead ewes were determined to be "probable" wolf kills. According to Mike Jimenez of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the remaining 19 dead lambs were too decomposed for a determination to be made. Jimenez said USDA Wildlife Services specialists investigating the matter made the determinations based on the evidence at the scene. Estimating that the sheep had been dead at least 10 days, the determination was "very difficult," Jimenez said, but because one sheep was found dead in a creek, it was somewhat preserved, allowing the confirmation as a wolf kill. The sheep, belonging to Wyoming Stock Growers Association executive Jim Magagna, were found dead in their fenced pasture late last week. Magagna said a ranch worker had counted 49 head of ewes and lambs in the pasture on Aug. 2, including 30 ewes and 19 lambs. Last week, the worker found only 16 sheep remaining alive and the carnage on the ground, including whole quarters of carcasses separated from the rest of the bodies....
Feeding grounds receive reprieve A task force seeking to eliminate brucellosis from cattle is holding off on a proposal to phase out elk feedgrounds in western Wyoming. Brucellosis causes cattle to abort. It also occurs in elk and bison and can be transmitted from wildlife to cattle. The disease re-emerged in cattle in Wyoming in 2003 and 2004, prompting other states to require testing and other regulations for Wyoming cattle. Environmentalists say closing some of the 22 feedgrounds where elk congregate each winter would help fight brucellosis by spreading elk out. Last year, the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Task Force presented 28 recommendations for fighting brucellosis, including developing management plans for elk that use the feedgrounds and possibly looking at phasing out some feedgrounds. On Monday, the task force decided to wait on any proposal to phase out feedgrounds until the management plans are written. "It's very premature and shouldn't even be considered at this time," said Terry Pollard, a Pinedale outfitter and task force member....
On the Trail: All about access The tops of mounts Bross, Lincoln, Cameron and Democrat provide brilliant vistas for 100 miles and more, but the view of how to get there is still cloudy. Many climbers assume they are on public land as they strive to add more of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains to their list of accomplishments, unaware they are trespassing on private mining claims. The hikers and the owners of those fourteeners are trying to solve the problem of providing access to those peaks, but they stumble on the crux - how to keep hikers using the trail without putting the landowners in a position to be sued....
Forest Service admits 'serious' logging error The U.S. Forest Service admitted Wednesday to making a "serious" mistake that allowed 17 acres to be logged inside a rare tree reserve as part of the salvage harvest of timber burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire. The logging inside the 350-acre Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area, created in 1966 to protect Brewer spruce and other rare plant species in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, was discovered last week by environmentalists after the Fiddler timber sale was harvested and a forest closure intended to bar protesters was lifted. Forest Service personnel mismarked the border of part of the Fiddler timber sale next to the botanical area - although just who did it or how it happened was not immediately clear, said Illinois Valley District Ranger Pam Bode....
Government Must Pay in Ploy for Redwoods A judge in Houston has ordered the federal government to pay $72 million to a company controlled by financier Charles Hurwitz, after concluding that federal banking officials had filed baseless legal actions against Hurwitz at the behest of California environmentalists. Likening the government's conduct to that of a "cosa nostra," U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes said Tuesday that regulators had a hidden political agenda when they sued Hurwitz and Maxxam Inc. a decade ago over the failure of a Texas thrift. The judge said the move was designed to force Hurwitz into giving up thousands of acres of California redwoods owned by Pacific Lumber Co., which Maxxam had acquired in a takeover. Hurwitz was under fire because Pacific Lumber had been cutting old-growth redwoods at an accelerated rate in Humboldt County along the state's North Coast. Environmental groups urged some politicians and the Clinton administration to push for a lawsuit by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that would set in motion a "debt for nature" deal. Their hope was that the federal government would win a judgment large enough to pressure Hurwitz into turning the redwood forest over to the federal government. The judge's ruling, however, cited evidence indicating that the "debt for nature" idea originated with environmentalists — not Hurwitz — and that it was widely discussed as a legal strategy among several departments and in a meeting with then-Vice President Al Gore. "The Clinton administration was promoting the swap," Hughes wrote. "People from the White House, Forest Service, Interior Department, [Office of Thrift Supervision], FDIC and the vice president's office were now part of the plan to bring actions against Hurwitz and Maxxam to wring the redwoods from them."....
War Over Oil Bubblin’ crude—oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea. The Los Padres National Forest has got it and Congress wants oil companies to have access to it. Last July, the US Forest Service approved a plan that will allow oil drilling to expand across three areas of the Los Padres National Forest. Areas to be leased are located near existing Santa Barbara and Ventura county oil operations in the Cuyama Valley and along the southern boundary of the national forest primarily near the Sespe Oil Fields. Opponents say the decision—nearly a decade in the making—has the potential to cause widespread harm to the forest’s clean water, recreation, wilderness and wildlife....
Alcoa to Grant Conservation Easements to Nature Conservancy In April 2004, Alcoa Power Generating Inc. (APGI) successfully worked with more than 20 national and local organizations (including The Nature Conservancy, National Parks Conservation Association, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the United States Forest Service) to craft a landmark relicensing agreement that, among other things, protects ecologically important lands through the use of permanent and term conservation easements. On August 30, 2005 and as part of the agreement reached, APGI will grant to The Nature Conservancy, at no cost, permanent conservation easements covering approximately 5,900 acres and term conservation easements on an additional 3,975 acres of land. The lands over which the conservation easements will be granted are located in Blount and Monroe counties, Tennessee. More specifically, the land effected sits between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee National Forest. The Nature Conservancy will have the option to buy this land from APGI, ultimately transferring it to the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, or the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, assuring its long-term protection....
Man dives into river to rescue bald eagle Wilson Jimna wasn't expecting anything unusual to happen when he went for a walk Tuesday along the Willamette River in Independence. But soon after arriving, Jimna, 28, ran into the river to rescue a full-sized eagle that appeared to be in trouble, risking gouges from eagle talons and bites from a strong beak. "I jumped into the water because I know eagles are endangered species because I watch the Discovery Channel," he said. "I knew that I had to protect this bird."....
N.D. birds probably flew north Thousands of American white pelicans that abandoned the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in central North Dakota after their chicks mysteriously died appear to have headed across the border to Canada, in southern Manitoba. "Anything that holds water and fish seems have found a pelican, and even places that don't," said Ken DeSmet, an endangered species biologist for the Manitoba Conservation agency. "It's obvious that they are all over the place in areas you wouldn't normally see them." "I'm sure they're Chase Lake birds," said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bismarck. Biologists in both countries are baffled about the influx of the big white birds north of the border, and the exodus from the south....
Governor cheers grouse recovery Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Wednesday cheered the efforts of local working groups to increase or stabilize sage grouse populations and habitat. "Go forth and do good work so I can take the credit," he quipped in a parting comment to grouse advocates gathered here. More seriously, the governor said listing the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act would have profound impacts on agriculture and the burgeoning energy industry, whether the circle zone of concern around each grouse breeding ground was two or five miles. The sage grouse once numbered about 2 million birds in the West. Today, about 250,000 birds inhabit about a quarter-million square miles in 11 states....
More land for toad urged Two conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the federal government's designation of 11,600 acres of protected habitat for the endangered arroyo toad, calling the land area inadequate. The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Christians Caring for Creation, asks a judge to order the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expand its designation of "critical" toad habitat, which was cut from 478,000 acres proposed in 2000 to 11,695 acres designated in April. "The federal government has totally fallen down on the job and its obligation to protect the endangered arroyo toad in California streams and rivers," said David Hogan, the Center for Biological Diversity's urban wild lands director. The Fish and Wildlife Service's 2001 designation of 182,360 acres of critical habitat was itself struck down by a federal judge, after it was challenged by the building industry....
BLM officials blame humans for 5 field fires Fire officials are attempting to determine who sparked fires that raged Wednesday west of Utah Lake. Five separate fires started within a few minutes of each other about 6 p.m. on the west side of Redwood Road between mile markers 12 and 19. "We believe these (fires) were human-caused because of the multiple starts all at the same time," said Ali Knutsen, fire-information officer for the Bureau of Land Management. In addition to arson, human-caused fires can stem from sparks from target shooting, a campfire or a burning cigarette butt, Knutsen said. At least two of the five fires merged as they burned the grass in the fields bordering Redwood Road, Knutsen said. By nightfall, officials said, the fires had consumed about 1,600 acres. The affected land included portions belonging to BLM, the state of Utah and private parties....
Editorial: Front fight centers on unproven potential Given a choice between keeping Montana's Rocky Mountain Front just the way it is and saving a few bucks on the monthly heating bill, it's a good bet that Montanans would choose to pay more for natural gas. Choosing between protecting the Front and providing heat and profits for people elsewhere would be even easier, we suspect. But a recent development suggests no such choice is in the offing. Suncor Energy of Canada recently disclosed that it drilled a 16,000-foot dry hole near Flesher Pass, east of Lincoln, in an area known as the Rogers Pass acreage block. The well is being capped and abandoned, and Suncor is looking for greener pastures for its drill rig, opting not to exercise an option to drill a second test well within a lease held by Denver-based PYN Energy. That makes it 0 for 2 for exploratory wells drilled in the area. Unocal (Union Oil Co. of California) also punched a well 17,000 feet deep that it capped and abandoned as a failure. That was 16 years earlier....
Trust lands paying off big Booming interest in Utah's oil and gas potential is paying dividends for the state's school children. The State Institutional and Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), which manages 3.5 million acres of trust lands scattered around Utah, took in $94 million in gross revenues in the fiscal year that ended June 30. That was $33 million more than the agency collected the previous year, which had been a record. Of the $94 million, $72.5 million went to the trust's primary beneficiary - the Permanent State School Fund. Interest from that $500 million fund is distributed to public schools statewide. A Bush Administration push to increase domestic oil and gas production was partially responsible. But interest in Utah trust lands exploded after Wolverine Gas and Oil Corp. struck oil this spring near Sigurd. The company predicted the subterranean reservoir, which has been yielding 1,500 barrels of oil per day, could hold up to 200 million barrels....
Column: BLM suicide ripples across West You have probably never heard of Marlene Braun. But I hope, after reading this, you don’t forget her. Braun worked for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management at one of the newest and least conspicuous national monuments in the country. She was 46 years old when she committed suicide in May, taking her own life following a rocky professional relationship with her BLM boss. As chief overseer of the 250,000-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument in California, Braun enraged ranching interests by questioning the primacy of cows on the open public range. Carrizo Plain, designated by Bill Clinton in the 11th hour of his presidency, was carved out of the high desert primarily as a wildlife refuge to replenish and bolster native animal and plant populations that had fallen into decline after a century of public land livestock grazing....
VS disease causes closure of recreation area near Laurel The 380-acre Sundance Lodge recreation area south of here has been closed to entry of horses and other livestock because of an outbreak of infectious vesicular stomatitis in the region, the Bureau of Land Management announced Tuesday. Numerous horses in the Billings-Laurel area have tested positive for VS, a viral disease primarily affecting horses, cattle and swine. The BLM said some cattle grazing in part of the recreation area also are infected. The closure applies to horses, cattle, sheep, goats, llamas or any other livestock whether on foot or in a vehicle, the BLM said....
Industry Embeds Its Own In The BLM Employees at the Bureau of Land Management field office in Vernal, Utah, were up to their ears in oil and gas drilling applications. So when an oil and gas trade group approached office manager Bill Stringer last year and offered to pay five consultants to help with the backlog, he thought it was a good idea. Stringer's office had 380 backlogged applications for oil and gas permits last year. That number is projected to grow to nearly 600 next year, with each application taking up to 180 days to process. The so-called "hosted workers," who started in February, are employees of SWCA Inc., an environmental consulting firm. The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States pays the cost of their salaries directly to the consulting firm, but they work in the Vernal office alongside 90 regular BLM employees. "This is about finding a way to accomplish work without asking taxpayers to throw money at it," says Stringer. "We're not doing anything that wouldn't get done anyway, but we're doing it more effectively."....
BLM land up for sale An estimated 10,000 acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management are being considered for sale or disposal in Douglas, Carson City and Lyon counties, according to Tom Crawford, bureau economist and team leader for the Pine Nut Mountains Land Use Plan amendment. A map of the areas under consideration should be released early this fall and areas in Douglas County's Pine Nut Range are under consideration. "The maps (of the designated areas) aren't in a public document yet, but they will be," Crawford said. "Any lands earmarked for disposal will be clearly identified so people will know exactly where the land is located."....
Heroes of Conservation Below the storefront's 30-foot-wide mural of trout, elk, and deer, State Highway 200 winds to the floor of the Blackfoot Valley and meets one of America's most storied rivers. In the 1910s, when the writer Norman Maclean fished it, the Blackfoot River's broad pools and powerful runs produced creels full of enormous bull trout and pristine native Westslope cutthroats. By the time Maclean penned the last sentence of A River Runs Through It in 1973, the fishery was in serious decline. And by the day that Daryl Parker walked into Becky Garland's store in 1987, a lethal combination of mining runoff, overfishing, drought, and years of poor logging, grazing, and irrigation practices on the river's headwater tributaries had brought the Blackfoot to desperate straits. "Several friends had been talking about the problems on the Blackfoot," Parker says. "We all wanted to do something." They did. Sitting around the dining room table at the Parkers' ranch house outside of Lincoln, a group of sportsmen and citizens including Becky Garland, fishing guide Paul Roos, rancher Land Lindberg, logger Mark Gerlach, and Daryl and Sherrie Parker held the first meeting of what is now the Big Blackfoot Chapter of TU....
Landowner goes to court for $1.16M land payment A wetland owner has asked the Superior Court to order the release of some $1.16 million that she said the government owes her for taking her property in 1993. The owner, Victoria S. Nicholas, also accused Attorney General Pamela Brown of discriminating against her claim by blocking the payment. Brown had sued Nicholas and the Marianas Public Lands Authority to prevent the drawdown of funds from the Land Compensation Fund, claiming that compensating Nicholas for an expropriated wetland violated the Land Compensation Act. Former Superior Court presiding judge Edward Manibusan and Diane S. Cabrera, attorneys for Nicholas, said the law is clear that the taking of wetlands for a public purpose is compensable, using funds from the government's land compensation fund. Manibusan and Cabrera said that Brown intentionally filed the lawsuit despite knowing that the taking of wetland is compensable and an amendment to the law had the intent to de-prioritize compensation claims. Originally, the Act prioritized the payment of compensation claims relating to land taken for right-of-way purposes....
USDA declares Missouri a drought disaster area The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared virtually all of Missouri a disaster area because of the severe drought, Sen. Jim Talent said Wednesday. The declaration comes two weeks after Gov. Matt Blunt asked the agency to help the state recover from the Midwest's worst drought in 17 years. Under the designation, qualified farmers in the state are eligible for low-interest emergency loans from the USDA's Farm Service Agency, federal grants, tax relief and other assistance....
Saddle up the cloned sport horses The benefits of cloning animals is far from clear, but there is one novel application that could lead to a revolution, says Henry Nicholls. WHILE reproductive cloning of animals isn't anything like as controversial as the idea of trying to clone humans, it still evokes strong feelings. Cloning livestock promises to bring us better food, but will anyone eat it? Cloning endangered species is an option only if the animal concerned has a closely related farmyard counterpart to supply eggs and act as a surrogate. And cloning pets is just for the sentimental with more money than biological understanding. But one application that has received less attention shows a surprising amount of promise: cloning sport horses. These are the animals that compete in events such as dressage, cross-country and show jumping. The very idea will undoubtedly raise eyebrows, but there are several reasons why this practice could become commonplace sooner than any of the others....(subscription required)
Another Chupacabra? Another Strange Texas Beast It's happened again. Now a farmer in Coleman, Texas may have found a creature some would call a Chupacabra. Reggie Lagow set a trap last week after a number of his chickens and turkeys were killed. What he found in his trap, was an odd-looking animal. It looks like a mix between a hairless dog, a rat and a kangaroo. It looks very similar to an animal killed by a rancher in Elmendorf last year. Some believe the beasts are Chupacabras, of Mexican folklore. Others say they're just dogs with mange. The one found this week in Coleman is now headed to the Texas Parks and Wildlife lab where it may be identified....
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Agency confirms wolf killed at least one sheep After investigating the death of nearly 30 head of domestic sheep near the Prospect Mountains east of here, federal wildlife officials confirmed a wolf had killed one, while 14 other dead ewes were determined to be "probable" wolf kills. According to Mike Jimenez of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the remaining 19 dead lambs were too decomposed for a determination to be made. Jimenez said USDA Wildlife Services specialists investigating the matter made the determinations based on the evidence at the scene. Estimating that the sheep had been dead at least 10 days, the determination was "very difficult," Jimenez said, but because one sheep was found dead in a creek, it was somewhat preserved, allowing the confirmation as a wolf kill. The sheep, belonging to Wyoming Stock Growers Association executive Jim Magagna, were found dead in their fenced pasture late last week. Magagna said a ranch worker had counted 49 head of ewes and lambs in the pasture on Aug. 2, including 30 ewes and 19 lambs. Last week, the worker found only 16 sheep remaining alive and the carnage on the ground, including whole quarters of carcasses separated from the rest of the bodies....
Feeding grounds receive reprieve A task force seeking to eliminate brucellosis from cattle is holding off on a proposal to phase out elk feedgrounds in western Wyoming. Brucellosis causes cattle to abort. It also occurs in elk and bison and can be transmitted from wildlife to cattle. The disease re-emerged in cattle in Wyoming in 2003 and 2004, prompting other states to require testing and other regulations for Wyoming cattle. Environmentalists say closing some of the 22 feedgrounds where elk congregate each winter would help fight brucellosis by spreading elk out. Last year, the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Task Force presented 28 recommendations for fighting brucellosis, including developing management plans for elk that use the feedgrounds and possibly looking at phasing out some feedgrounds. On Monday, the task force decided to wait on any proposal to phase out feedgrounds until the management plans are written. "It's very premature and shouldn't even be considered at this time," said Terry Pollard, a Pinedale outfitter and task force member....
On the Trail: All about access The tops of mounts Bross, Lincoln, Cameron and Democrat provide brilliant vistas for 100 miles and more, but the view of how to get there is still cloudy. Many climbers assume they are on public land as they strive to add more of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains to their list of accomplishments, unaware they are trespassing on private mining claims. The hikers and the owners of those fourteeners are trying to solve the problem of providing access to those peaks, but they stumble on the crux - how to keep hikers using the trail without putting the landowners in a position to be sued....
Forest Service admits 'serious' logging error The U.S. Forest Service admitted Wednesday to making a "serious" mistake that allowed 17 acres to be logged inside a rare tree reserve as part of the salvage harvest of timber burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire. The logging inside the 350-acre Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area, created in 1966 to protect Brewer spruce and other rare plant species in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, was discovered last week by environmentalists after the Fiddler timber sale was harvested and a forest closure intended to bar protesters was lifted. Forest Service personnel mismarked the border of part of the Fiddler timber sale next to the botanical area - although just who did it or how it happened was not immediately clear, said Illinois Valley District Ranger Pam Bode....
Government Must Pay in Ploy for Redwoods A judge in Houston has ordered the federal government to pay $72 million to a company controlled by financier Charles Hurwitz, after concluding that federal banking officials had filed baseless legal actions against Hurwitz at the behest of California environmentalists. Likening the government's conduct to that of a "cosa nostra," U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes said Tuesday that regulators had a hidden political agenda when they sued Hurwitz and Maxxam Inc. a decade ago over the failure of a Texas thrift. The judge said the move was designed to force Hurwitz into giving up thousands of acres of California redwoods owned by Pacific Lumber Co., which Maxxam had acquired in a takeover. Hurwitz was under fire because Pacific Lumber had been cutting old-growth redwoods at an accelerated rate in Humboldt County along the state's North Coast. Environmental groups urged some politicians and the Clinton administration to push for a lawsuit by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that would set in motion a "debt for nature" deal. Their hope was that the federal government would win a judgment large enough to pressure Hurwitz into turning the redwood forest over to the federal government. The judge's ruling, however, cited evidence indicating that the "debt for nature" idea originated with environmentalists — not Hurwitz — and that it was widely discussed as a legal strategy among several departments and in a meeting with then-Vice President Al Gore. "The Clinton administration was promoting the swap," Hughes wrote. "People from the White House, Forest Service, Interior Department, [Office of Thrift Supervision], FDIC and the vice president's office were now part of the plan to bring actions against Hurwitz and Maxxam to wring the redwoods from them."....
War Over Oil Bubblin’ crude—oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea. The Los Padres National Forest has got it and Congress wants oil companies to have access to it. Last July, the US Forest Service approved a plan that will allow oil drilling to expand across three areas of the Los Padres National Forest. Areas to be leased are located near existing Santa Barbara and Ventura county oil operations in the Cuyama Valley and along the southern boundary of the national forest primarily near the Sespe Oil Fields. Opponents say the decision—nearly a decade in the making—has the potential to cause widespread harm to the forest’s clean water, recreation, wilderness and wildlife....
Alcoa to Grant Conservation Easements to Nature Conservancy In April 2004, Alcoa Power Generating Inc. (APGI) successfully worked with more than 20 national and local organizations (including The Nature Conservancy, National Parks Conservation Association, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the United States Forest Service) to craft a landmark relicensing agreement that, among other things, protects ecologically important lands through the use of permanent and term conservation easements. On August 30, 2005 and as part of the agreement reached, APGI will grant to The Nature Conservancy, at no cost, permanent conservation easements covering approximately 5,900 acres and term conservation easements on an additional 3,975 acres of land. The lands over which the conservation easements will be granted are located in Blount and Monroe counties, Tennessee. More specifically, the land effected sits between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cherokee National Forest. The Nature Conservancy will have the option to buy this land from APGI, ultimately transferring it to the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, or the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, assuring its long-term protection....
Man dives into river to rescue bald eagle Wilson Jimna wasn't expecting anything unusual to happen when he went for a walk Tuesday along the Willamette River in Independence. But soon after arriving, Jimna, 28, ran into the river to rescue a full-sized eagle that appeared to be in trouble, risking gouges from eagle talons and bites from a strong beak. "I jumped into the water because I know eagles are endangered species because I watch the Discovery Channel," he said. "I knew that I had to protect this bird."....
N.D. birds probably flew north Thousands of American white pelicans that abandoned the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in central North Dakota after their chicks mysteriously died appear to have headed across the border to Canada, in southern Manitoba. "Anything that holds water and fish seems have found a pelican, and even places that don't," said Ken DeSmet, an endangered species biologist for the Manitoba Conservation agency. "It's obvious that they are all over the place in areas you wouldn't normally see them." "I'm sure they're Chase Lake birds," said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bismarck. Biologists in both countries are baffled about the influx of the big white birds north of the border, and the exodus from the south....
Governor cheers grouse recovery Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Wednesday cheered the efforts of local working groups to increase or stabilize sage grouse populations and habitat. "Go forth and do good work so I can take the credit," he quipped in a parting comment to grouse advocates gathered here. More seriously, the governor said listing the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act would have profound impacts on agriculture and the burgeoning energy industry, whether the circle zone of concern around each grouse breeding ground was two or five miles. The sage grouse once numbered about 2 million birds in the West. Today, about 250,000 birds inhabit about a quarter-million square miles in 11 states....
More land for toad urged Two conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging the federal government's designation of 11,600 acres of protected habitat for the endangered arroyo toad, calling the land area inadequate. The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Christians Caring for Creation, asks a judge to order the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expand its designation of "critical" toad habitat, which was cut from 478,000 acres proposed in 2000 to 11,695 acres designated in April. "The federal government has totally fallen down on the job and its obligation to protect the endangered arroyo toad in California streams and rivers," said David Hogan, the Center for Biological Diversity's urban wild lands director. The Fish and Wildlife Service's 2001 designation of 182,360 acres of critical habitat was itself struck down by a federal judge, after it was challenged by the building industry....
BLM officials blame humans for 5 field fires Fire officials are attempting to determine who sparked fires that raged Wednesday west of Utah Lake. Five separate fires started within a few minutes of each other about 6 p.m. on the west side of Redwood Road between mile markers 12 and 19. "We believe these (fires) were human-caused because of the multiple starts all at the same time," said Ali Knutsen, fire-information officer for the Bureau of Land Management. In addition to arson, human-caused fires can stem from sparks from target shooting, a campfire or a burning cigarette butt, Knutsen said. At least two of the five fires merged as they burned the grass in the fields bordering Redwood Road, Knutsen said. By nightfall, officials said, the fires had consumed about 1,600 acres. The affected land included portions belonging to BLM, the state of Utah and private parties....
Editorial: Front fight centers on unproven potential Given a choice between keeping Montana's Rocky Mountain Front just the way it is and saving a few bucks on the monthly heating bill, it's a good bet that Montanans would choose to pay more for natural gas. Choosing between protecting the Front and providing heat and profits for people elsewhere would be even easier, we suspect. But a recent development suggests no such choice is in the offing. Suncor Energy of Canada recently disclosed that it drilled a 16,000-foot dry hole near Flesher Pass, east of Lincoln, in an area known as the Rogers Pass acreage block. The well is being capped and abandoned, and Suncor is looking for greener pastures for its drill rig, opting not to exercise an option to drill a second test well within a lease held by Denver-based PYN Energy. That makes it 0 for 2 for exploratory wells drilled in the area. Unocal (Union Oil Co. of California) also punched a well 17,000 feet deep that it capped and abandoned as a failure. That was 16 years earlier....
Trust lands paying off big Booming interest in Utah's oil and gas potential is paying dividends for the state's school children. The State Institutional and Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), which manages 3.5 million acres of trust lands scattered around Utah, took in $94 million in gross revenues in the fiscal year that ended June 30. That was $33 million more than the agency collected the previous year, which had been a record. Of the $94 million, $72.5 million went to the trust's primary beneficiary - the Permanent State School Fund. Interest from that $500 million fund is distributed to public schools statewide. A Bush Administration push to increase domestic oil and gas production was partially responsible. But interest in Utah trust lands exploded after Wolverine Gas and Oil Corp. struck oil this spring near Sigurd. The company predicted the subterranean reservoir, which has been yielding 1,500 barrels of oil per day, could hold up to 200 million barrels....
Column: BLM suicide ripples across West You have probably never heard of Marlene Braun. But I hope, after reading this, you don’t forget her. Braun worked for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management at one of the newest and least conspicuous national monuments in the country. She was 46 years old when she committed suicide in May, taking her own life following a rocky professional relationship with her BLM boss. As chief overseer of the 250,000-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument in California, Braun enraged ranching interests by questioning the primacy of cows on the open public range. Carrizo Plain, designated by Bill Clinton in the 11th hour of his presidency, was carved out of the high desert primarily as a wildlife refuge to replenish and bolster native animal and plant populations that had fallen into decline after a century of public land livestock grazing....
VS disease causes closure of recreation area near Laurel The 380-acre Sundance Lodge recreation area south of here has been closed to entry of horses and other livestock because of an outbreak of infectious vesicular stomatitis in the region, the Bureau of Land Management announced Tuesday. Numerous horses in the Billings-Laurel area have tested positive for VS, a viral disease primarily affecting horses, cattle and swine. The BLM said some cattle grazing in part of the recreation area also are infected. The closure applies to horses, cattle, sheep, goats, llamas or any other livestock whether on foot or in a vehicle, the BLM said....
Industry Embeds Its Own In The BLM Employees at the Bureau of Land Management field office in Vernal, Utah, were up to their ears in oil and gas drilling applications. So when an oil and gas trade group approached office manager Bill Stringer last year and offered to pay five consultants to help with the backlog, he thought it was a good idea. Stringer's office had 380 backlogged applications for oil and gas permits last year. That number is projected to grow to nearly 600 next year, with each application taking up to 180 days to process. The so-called "hosted workers," who started in February, are employees of SWCA Inc., an environmental consulting firm. The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States pays the cost of their salaries directly to the consulting firm, but they work in the Vernal office alongside 90 regular BLM employees. "This is about finding a way to accomplish work without asking taxpayers to throw money at it," says Stringer. "We're not doing anything that wouldn't get done anyway, but we're doing it more effectively."....
BLM land up for sale An estimated 10,000 acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management are being considered for sale or disposal in Douglas, Carson City and Lyon counties, according to Tom Crawford, bureau economist and team leader for the Pine Nut Mountains Land Use Plan amendment. A map of the areas under consideration should be released early this fall and areas in Douglas County's Pine Nut Range are under consideration. "The maps (of the designated areas) aren't in a public document yet, but they will be," Crawford said. "Any lands earmarked for disposal will be clearly identified so people will know exactly where the land is located."....
Heroes of Conservation Below the storefront's 30-foot-wide mural of trout, elk, and deer, State Highway 200 winds to the floor of the Blackfoot Valley and meets one of America's most storied rivers. In the 1910s, when the writer Norman Maclean fished it, the Blackfoot River's broad pools and powerful runs produced creels full of enormous bull trout and pristine native Westslope cutthroats. By the time Maclean penned the last sentence of A River Runs Through It in 1973, the fishery was in serious decline. And by the day that Daryl Parker walked into Becky Garland's store in 1987, a lethal combination of mining runoff, overfishing, drought, and years of poor logging, grazing, and irrigation practices on the river's headwater tributaries had brought the Blackfoot to desperate straits. "Several friends had been talking about the problems on the Blackfoot," Parker says. "We all wanted to do something." They did. Sitting around the dining room table at the Parkers' ranch house outside of Lincoln, a group of sportsmen and citizens including Becky Garland, fishing guide Paul Roos, rancher Land Lindberg, logger Mark Gerlach, and Daryl and Sherrie Parker held the first meeting of what is now the Big Blackfoot Chapter of TU....
Landowner goes to court for $1.16M land payment A wetland owner has asked the Superior Court to order the release of some $1.16 million that she said the government owes her for taking her property in 1993. The owner, Victoria S. Nicholas, also accused Attorney General Pamela Brown of discriminating against her claim by blocking the payment. Brown had sued Nicholas and the Marianas Public Lands Authority to prevent the drawdown of funds from the Land Compensation Fund, claiming that compensating Nicholas for an expropriated wetland violated the Land Compensation Act. Former Superior Court presiding judge Edward Manibusan and Diane S. Cabrera, attorneys for Nicholas, said the law is clear that the taking of wetlands for a public purpose is compensable, using funds from the government's land compensation fund. Manibusan and Cabrera said that Brown intentionally filed the lawsuit despite knowing that the taking of wetland is compensable and an amendment to the law had the intent to de-prioritize compensation claims. Originally, the Act prioritized the payment of compensation claims relating to land taken for right-of-way purposes....
USDA declares Missouri a drought disaster area The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared virtually all of Missouri a disaster area because of the severe drought, Sen. Jim Talent said Wednesday. The declaration comes two weeks after Gov. Matt Blunt asked the agency to help the state recover from the Midwest's worst drought in 17 years. Under the designation, qualified farmers in the state are eligible for low-interest emergency loans from the USDA's Farm Service Agency, federal grants, tax relief and other assistance....
Saddle up the cloned sport horses The benefits of cloning animals is far from clear, but there is one novel application that could lead to a revolution, says Henry Nicholls. WHILE reproductive cloning of animals isn't anything like as controversial as the idea of trying to clone humans, it still evokes strong feelings. Cloning livestock promises to bring us better food, but will anyone eat it? Cloning endangered species is an option only if the animal concerned has a closely related farmyard counterpart to supply eggs and act as a surrogate. And cloning pets is just for the sentimental with more money than biological understanding. But one application that has received less attention shows a surprising amount of promise: cloning sport horses. These are the animals that compete in events such as dressage, cross-country and show jumping. The very idea will undoubtedly raise eyebrows, but there are several reasons why this practice could become commonplace sooner than any of the others....(subscription required)
Another Chupacabra? Another Strange Texas Beast It's happened again. Now a farmer in Coleman, Texas may have found a creature some would call a Chupacabra. Reggie Lagow set a trap last week after a number of his chickens and turkeys were killed. What he found in his trap, was an odd-looking animal. It looks like a mix between a hairless dog, a rat and a kangaroo. It looks very similar to an animal killed by a rancher in Elmendorf last year. Some believe the beasts are Chupacabras, of Mexican folklore. Others say they're just dogs with mange. The one found this week in Coleman is now headed to the Texas Parks and Wildlife lab where it may be identified....
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Wednesday, August 24, 2005
NEWS ROUNDUP
Congressional help called for at Rangeland Summit Two to four typewritten pages. That's the amount of space required 35 years ago for a sound environmental review on a topic such as public lands grazing, recalls one state director. Today, the same assessment typically fills 100 to 200 pages, K. Lynn Bennett, Idaho's director of the Bureau of Land Management, told about 30 people Tuesday at the third annual Rangeland Summit. The problem, fueled by litigation and bureaucracy, has led to fewer plans being implemented and less time for agency officials to spend assessing and monitoring the public lands they manage. It's a dilemma that summit participants hope Idaho's congressional delegation will address....
Fate of roadless forest areas in state's hands Gov. Dirk Kempthorne announced in June that Idaho would move forward and develop a management proposal for Idaho's vast array of roadless areas. As a part of that process, he'll nominate portions of the state's roadless areas for continued federal protection from mining, logging and energy development. But the Republican governor isn't spelling out yet how far he'll go in exercising the new role in forest management, which was granted to governors in April by the Bush administration. "For over 30 years the whole issue of roadless lands has been in limbo," Kempthorne said at the press conference announcing his decision. "The Bush administration has provided an opportunity for states to petition the federal government and identify how many of these areas can be resolved ... So, I intend to take them up on that offer." Kempthorne said his plan would rely almost exclusively on public input and involvement to develop recommendations for the roadless areas....
Couple love their land enough to give it to everyone When Dean and Alli Murray listed their 604-acre farm at the foot of northern Utah's Wellsville Mountains, real-estate developers came knocking, offering piles of money for a shot at the land's untrammeled vistas. And when the Murrays decided they were more interested in preserving the land for public use, developers' offers got even more generous. But the couple, who have farmed the land since 1949, were not swayed. According to their agent, Brent Parker, the family's first priority was to keep the farm open. So, with the heftier offers bouncing off their backs, they opted for a $2.35 million deal brokered by the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit conservation agency. Now the farm is part of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest....
Greenpeace to pay restitution for log protest Greenpeace is required to pay restitution to a logging company and the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to settle charges brought against a dozen activists who blocked a logging operation last summer in the Umpqua National Forest. The prosecution and defense reached a plea agreement in Douglas County Circuit Court Monday before Judge William Lasswell. "The message went to the protesters ... that there is a cost to protesting and interfering with lawful logging operations in Douglas County," said the prosecutor, Douglas County Senior Deputy District Attorney Bill Marshall. Greenpeace, through Eugene lawyer Jay Frank, agreed to pay $4,000 in restitution to Myrtle Creek-based James Graf Logging and $3,600 to the sheriff's office. In addition, the environmental organization must pay $10,000, half the cost of some of the items confiscated after the two protests in June 2004, to retrieve a truck, electronics and other miscellaneous items. The county will keep computers, some of the climbing harnesses and the three shipping containers -- 3-ton bright yellow boxes, one with "Ancient Forest Protection Starts Here" painted in green letters, and the other emblazoned with "Bush's Forest Destruction Stops Here." Authorities seized a third container on the back of the truck that had transported containers to the logging sites....
Western lizard species subject of lawsuit Conservation groups sued the federal government yesterday for failing to respond to their petitions to protect two species of salamander from southwestern Oregon and Northern California under the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, claims the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by missing 90-day and 12-month deadlines to respond to petitions to list the Siskiyou Mountains and Scott Bar salamanders as threatened or endangered species. It seeks a court order for Fish and Wildlife to make a preliminary finding within 30 days. Noah Greenwald, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Bush administration has not listed any species as threatened or endangered except when ordered by a federal judge....
Feds shrink acreage set aside for Calif. tiger salamander Federal wildlife officials said they would cut by nearly half the amount of land set aside for the California tiger salamander, saying it would be too costly to restrict development in those areas to protect the threatened amphibian. Home builders applauded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision Tuesday to scale back the number of acres designated as the salamander's critical habitat, but environmentalists said it would hurt the species' recovery and accused the Bush administration of ignoring science to appease developers. The California tiger salamander - a yellow-and-black amphibian that lives in woodlands, grasslands and vernal pools - has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers over the federal Endangered Species Act and its impact on urban development from Fresno to Santa Rosa....
'Condos v. bald eagles' trial begins A trial that could determine the fate of a tiny town atop the San Bernardino Mountains opened Tuesday in federal court. The case before U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real represents the latest, and perhaps final, chapter of a dispute between environmentalists and developers that dates back more than a decade. Real will decide whether the Marina Point condominium development in Fawnskin is detrimental to the area's threatened bald eagles or otherwise violates the federal Endangered Species and Clean Water acts. The project, which includes 133 condos and a 175-slip marina on the north rim of Big Bear Lake, has been repeatedly slowed by bureaucratic and environmental obstacles in recent years. Work is currently stalled by a federal injunction....
N.M. falcon sighting fuels drilling fight Federal workers eating lunch this month on Otero Mesa spotted two endangered aplomado falcons, the first sighting of the rare birds in years and another weapon in a battle by state officials and environmentalists against drilling on the mesa. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed allowing drilling on parts of the mesa in south-central New Mexico. Earlier this year, it approved a plan to guide such development. Otero Mesa contains the nation's largest contiguous patch of rare black gramma grass, which takes decades to re-establish and is not available as commercial seed. In addition, environmentalists have raised concerns about possible water contamination....
U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Service's New Math Q: When does 90 days equal 3,074 days? A:When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing the counting. The FWS recently issued a "90-day finding" on a petition to delist the slackwater darter, or etheostoma boschungi, from the Endangered Species Act's "threatened list." The petition had been filed by the National Wilderness Institute on February 3, 1997. The FWS is supposed to make such 90-day findings within, well, 90 days. It missed the mark by 2,984 days. In other words, it took the FWS more than 34 times the amount of time it was supposed to take. By this standard, President Bush would still have about 136 years left on his second term (or about 269 years left on his two terms combined)....
BLM affirms methane leases The Bureau of Land Management said it was right to issue leases for coalbed methane development, even though no specific study of the environmental impacts of such development had been conducted. "We basically just affirmed the decision to issue those leases in the first place," Paul Beels, project manager for the BLM's Buffalo Field Office, said Monday. The decision approved an environmental assessment of the BLM's past coalbed methane leasing activities - an assessment that was required after both the Interior Board of Land Appeals and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the BLM had fallen short of its own environmental assessment rules. In 1999, protests were filed over three coalbed methane leases, arguing that the BLM had not properly considered the unique environmental impacts of coalbed methane development. The Interior Board of Land Appeals agreed in a 2000 decision....
BLM to restrict off-highway vehicle noise in Bangs Canyon The Environmental Assessment released earlier this week by the Bureau of Land Management Grand Junction Field Office for the Bangs Canyon Recreation Area includes the most stringent noise regulation on BLM land in Colorado. The management document, when implemented, would restrict off-highway vehicle noise in the 58,000-acre area just five miles southwest of Grand Junction. “This is the first rule of its kind on BLM land in Colorado,” said Britta Laub, recreation program manager for the bureau’s Grand Junction Field Office. “We’ve really tried to build in noise controls in this, especially since the recreation area is so close to town.” Older vehicles or vehicles with altered engines produce more noise than newer, factory-made ones. Some enthusiasts of the sport worry the plan could change what models and years of vehicles are allowed on the trail system....
Former official pleads guilty to stealing more than $17,000 A former Bureau of Land Management official has pleaded guilty to stealing more than 17-thousand dollars from the federal government. Fifty-seven-year-old Robert Beehler of Hollister admitted using a government charge card and checks drawn on a government account to steal the money between early 2000 and July 2003, when he was the supervisor and field manager for the bureau in Hollister. Beehler later submitted phony vouchers claiming the expenditures were for legitimate government purposes....
BLM to set boundaries of conservation area The Bureau of Land Management is set to create boundaries for a proposed conservation area in the northern Las Vegas Valley. The area would be off limits to development under a strategy to protect rare plants and prehistoric fossils. The final meeting in a ten-month process that has brought together 13 groups comprised of environmentalists, developers and government agencies is set for tomorrow. At that meeting, the participants are to outline their proposals for the size, scope and boundaries of the conservation area along the Upper Las Vegas Wash....
Ruling shifts water discharge permits to EPA A new federal appeals court ruling strips Arizona of its authority to issue water discharge permits, a move that an attorney for home builders said could paralyze development in the state. In a divided ruling Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was a mistake for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 to cede its authority to issues these permits to the state Department of Environmental Quality. The court agreed with environmental groups that the action failed to consider the effect of giving that responsibility to the state would have on endangered and protected species. The decision, unless overturned, removes the authority of DEQ to issue any more permits for water discharge. That mainly affects the more than 20,000 general permits issued every year every time a developer wants to bulldoze property in any way that it will affect storm water runoff. But DEQ Director Steve Owens said the decision may also invalidate permits already issued by his agency for projects already underway. That would be based on the court's decision that EPA acted illegally in letting the state deal with the issue. "We could have a number of projects just stop," said Norman James, a Phoenix attorney for the National Association of Home Builders....
Ca. Groundwater bill could hit farmers with more costs A farmer's right to pump groundwater is being challenged with state legislation that would impose new regulations and fees on farm water users and would require individual farmers and ranchers to report their groundwater use to the state. "Farmers are at risk for losing their water rights. Some in state government would like to see the state take an active role in limiting the use of groundwater around the state, and this bill is a significant first step," said Tony Francois, California Farm Bureau Federation director of water resources. "Proponents claim this is important for state-level resources planning. But in the four heavily populated Southern California counties where water users already report groundwater use, the data is not used by the state for planning or any other purpose that we are aware of." Senate Bill 820, by Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee Chair Shiela Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, imposes new regulations and fees on farmers by instituting new groundwater reporting rules and new penalties for groundwater violations, including the loss of water rights. The bill is in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, but may be forwarded to the Assembly Floor for action as early as this week. The bill is supported by a coalition of environmental activists such as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, and urban water suppliers like the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Under the bill, individuals that use more than 25 acre-feet of groundwater must report their use to the State Water Resources Control Board....
Cloning prospects multiplying While the idea of human cloning has met with nearly universal abhorrence, prospects for commercial animal cloning are picking up momentum in the Bay Area and elsewhere on the hope that it could result in everything from new vaccines to more nutritious steaks. Geron of Menlo Park just launched a company to license its animal cloning technology to improve livestock, make drugs and develop pig body parts that can be transplanted into humans. Genetic Savings & Clone of Sausalito is cloning pet cats and hopes to clone a dog, similar to the one South Korean researchers created recently. And the FDA is widely expected to soon lift its ban on selling food from cloned cows and other animals, which some people say could lead to a bonanza of consumer products....
===
Congressional help called for at Rangeland Summit Two to four typewritten pages. That's the amount of space required 35 years ago for a sound environmental review on a topic such as public lands grazing, recalls one state director. Today, the same assessment typically fills 100 to 200 pages, K. Lynn Bennett, Idaho's director of the Bureau of Land Management, told about 30 people Tuesday at the third annual Rangeland Summit. The problem, fueled by litigation and bureaucracy, has led to fewer plans being implemented and less time for agency officials to spend assessing and monitoring the public lands they manage. It's a dilemma that summit participants hope Idaho's congressional delegation will address....
Fate of roadless forest areas in state's hands Gov. Dirk Kempthorne announced in June that Idaho would move forward and develop a management proposal for Idaho's vast array of roadless areas. As a part of that process, he'll nominate portions of the state's roadless areas for continued federal protection from mining, logging and energy development. But the Republican governor isn't spelling out yet how far he'll go in exercising the new role in forest management, which was granted to governors in April by the Bush administration. "For over 30 years the whole issue of roadless lands has been in limbo," Kempthorne said at the press conference announcing his decision. "The Bush administration has provided an opportunity for states to petition the federal government and identify how many of these areas can be resolved ... So, I intend to take them up on that offer." Kempthorne said his plan would rely almost exclusively on public input and involvement to develop recommendations for the roadless areas....
Couple love their land enough to give it to everyone When Dean and Alli Murray listed their 604-acre farm at the foot of northern Utah's Wellsville Mountains, real-estate developers came knocking, offering piles of money for a shot at the land's untrammeled vistas. And when the Murrays decided they were more interested in preserving the land for public use, developers' offers got even more generous. But the couple, who have farmed the land since 1949, were not swayed. According to their agent, Brent Parker, the family's first priority was to keep the farm open. So, with the heftier offers bouncing off their backs, they opted for a $2.35 million deal brokered by the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit conservation agency. Now the farm is part of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest....
Greenpeace to pay restitution for log protest Greenpeace is required to pay restitution to a logging company and the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to settle charges brought against a dozen activists who blocked a logging operation last summer in the Umpqua National Forest. The prosecution and defense reached a plea agreement in Douglas County Circuit Court Monday before Judge William Lasswell. "The message went to the protesters ... that there is a cost to protesting and interfering with lawful logging operations in Douglas County," said the prosecutor, Douglas County Senior Deputy District Attorney Bill Marshall. Greenpeace, through Eugene lawyer Jay Frank, agreed to pay $4,000 in restitution to Myrtle Creek-based James Graf Logging and $3,600 to the sheriff's office. In addition, the environmental organization must pay $10,000, half the cost of some of the items confiscated after the two protests in June 2004, to retrieve a truck, electronics and other miscellaneous items. The county will keep computers, some of the climbing harnesses and the three shipping containers -- 3-ton bright yellow boxes, one with "Ancient Forest Protection Starts Here" painted in green letters, and the other emblazoned with "Bush's Forest Destruction Stops Here." Authorities seized a third container on the back of the truck that had transported containers to the logging sites....
Western lizard species subject of lawsuit Conservation groups sued the federal government yesterday for failing to respond to their petitions to protect two species of salamander from southwestern Oregon and Northern California under the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, claims the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by missing 90-day and 12-month deadlines to respond to petitions to list the Siskiyou Mountains and Scott Bar salamanders as threatened or endangered species. It seeks a court order for Fish and Wildlife to make a preliminary finding within 30 days. Noah Greenwald, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Bush administration has not listed any species as threatened or endangered except when ordered by a federal judge....
Feds shrink acreage set aside for Calif. tiger salamander Federal wildlife officials said they would cut by nearly half the amount of land set aside for the California tiger salamander, saying it would be too costly to restrict development in those areas to protect the threatened amphibian. Home builders applauded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision Tuesday to scale back the number of acres designated as the salamander's critical habitat, but environmentalists said it would hurt the species' recovery and accused the Bush administration of ignoring science to appease developers. The California tiger salamander - a yellow-and-black amphibian that lives in woodlands, grasslands and vernal pools - has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers over the federal Endangered Species Act and its impact on urban development from Fresno to Santa Rosa....
'Condos v. bald eagles' trial begins A trial that could determine the fate of a tiny town atop the San Bernardino Mountains opened Tuesday in federal court. The case before U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real represents the latest, and perhaps final, chapter of a dispute between environmentalists and developers that dates back more than a decade. Real will decide whether the Marina Point condominium development in Fawnskin is detrimental to the area's threatened bald eagles or otherwise violates the federal Endangered Species and Clean Water acts. The project, which includes 133 condos and a 175-slip marina on the north rim of Big Bear Lake, has been repeatedly slowed by bureaucratic and environmental obstacles in recent years. Work is currently stalled by a federal injunction....
N.M. falcon sighting fuels drilling fight Federal workers eating lunch this month on Otero Mesa spotted two endangered aplomado falcons, the first sighting of the rare birds in years and another weapon in a battle by state officials and environmentalists against drilling on the mesa. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed allowing drilling on parts of the mesa in south-central New Mexico. Earlier this year, it approved a plan to guide such development. Otero Mesa contains the nation's largest contiguous patch of rare black gramma grass, which takes decades to re-establish and is not available as commercial seed. In addition, environmentalists have raised concerns about possible water contamination....
U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Service's New Math Q: When does 90 days equal 3,074 days? A:When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing the counting. The FWS recently issued a "90-day finding" on a petition to delist the slackwater darter, or etheostoma boschungi, from the Endangered Species Act's "threatened list." The petition had been filed by the National Wilderness Institute on February 3, 1997. The FWS is supposed to make such 90-day findings within, well, 90 days. It missed the mark by 2,984 days. In other words, it took the FWS more than 34 times the amount of time it was supposed to take. By this standard, President Bush would still have about 136 years left on his second term (or about 269 years left on his two terms combined)....
BLM affirms methane leases The Bureau of Land Management said it was right to issue leases for coalbed methane development, even though no specific study of the environmental impacts of such development had been conducted. "We basically just affirmed the decision to issue those leases in the first place," Paul Beels, project manager for the BLM's Buffalo Field Office, said Monday. The decision approved an environmental assessment of the BLM's past coalbed methane leasing activities - an assessment that was required after both the Interior Board of Land Appeals and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the BLM had fallen short of its own environmental assessment rules. In 1999, protests were filed over three coalbed methane leases, arguing that the BLM had not properly considered the unique environmental impacts of coalbed methane development. The Interior Board of Land Appeals agreed in a 2000 decision....
BLM to restrict off-highway vehicle noise in Bangs Canyon The Environmental Assessment released earlier this week by the Bureau of Land Management Grand Junction Field Office for the Bangs Canyon Recreation Area includes the most stringent noise regulation on BLM land in Colorado. The management document, when implemented, would restrict off-highway vehicle noise in the 58,000-acre area just five miles southwest of Grand Junction. “This is the first rule of its kind on BLM land in Colorado,” said Britta Laub, recreation program manager for the bureau’s Grand Junction Field Office. “We’ve really tried to build in noise controls in this, especially since the recreation area is so close to town.” Older vehicles or vehicles with altered engines produce more noise than newer, factory-made ones. Some enthusiasts of the sport worry the plan could change what models and years of vehicles are allowed on the trail system....
Former official pleads guilty to stealing more than $17,000 A former Bureau of Land Management official has pleaded guilty to stealing more than 17-thousand dollars from the federal government. Fifty-seven-year-old Robert Beehler of Hollister admitted using a government charge card and checks drawn on a government account to steal the money between early 2000 and July 2003, when he was the supervisor and field manager for the bureau in Hollister. Beehler later submitted phony vouchers claiming the expenditures were for legitimate government purposes....
BLM to set boundaries of conservation area The Bureau of Land Management is set to create boundaries for a proposed conservation area in the northern Las Vegas Valley. The area would be off limits to development under a strategy to protect rare plants and prehistoric fossils. The final meeting in a ten-month process that has brought together 13 groups comprised of environmentalists, developers and government agencies is set for tomorrow. At that meeting, the participants are to outline their proposals for the size, scope and boundaries of the conservation area along the Upper Las Vegas Wash....
Ruling shifts water discharge permits to EPA A new federal appeals court ruling strips Arizona of its authority to issue water discharge permits, a move that an attorney for home builders said could paralyze development in the state. In a divided ruling Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was a mistake for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 to cede its authority to issues these permits to the state Department of Environmental Quality. The court agreed with environmental groups that the action failed to consider the effect of giving that responsibility to the state would have on endangered and protected species. The decision, unless overturned, removes the authority of DEQ to issue any more permits for water discharge. That mainly affects the more than 20,000 general permits issued every year every time a developer wants to bulldoze property in any way that it will affect storm water runoff. But DEQ Director Steve Owens said the decision may also invalidate permits already issued by his agency for projects already underway. That would be based on the court's decision that EPA acted illegally in letting the state deal with the issue. "We could have a number of projects just stop," said Norman James, a Phoenix attorney for the National Association of Home Builders....
Ca. Groundwater bill could hit farmers with more costs A farmer's right to pump groundwater is being challenged with state legislation that would impose new regulations and fees on farm water users and would require individual farmers and ranchers to report their groundwater use to the state. "Farmers are at risk for losing their water rights. Some in state government would like to see the state take an active role in limiting the use of groundwater around the state, and this bill is a significant first step," said Tony Francois, California Farm Bureau Federation director of water resources. "Proponents claim this is important for state-level resources planning. But in the four heavily populated Southern California counties where water users already report groundwater use, the data is not used by the state for planning or any other purpose that we are aware of." Senate Bill 820, by Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee Chair Shiela Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, imposes new regulations and fees on farmers by instituting new groundwater reporting rules and new penalties for groundwater violations, including the loss of water rights. The bill is in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, but may be forwarded to the Assembly Floor for action as early as this week. The bill is supported by a coalition of environmental activists such as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, and urban water suppliers like the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Under the bill, individuals that use more than 25 acre-feet of groundwater must report their use to the State Water Resources Control Board....
Cloning prospects multiplying While the idea of human cloning has met with nearly universal abhorrence, prospects for commercial animal cloning are picking up momentum in the Bay Area and elsewhere on the hope that it could result in everything from new vaccines to more nutritious steaks. Geron of Menlo Park just launched a company to license its animal cloning technology to improve livestock, make drugs and develop pig body parts that can be transplanted into humans. Genetic Savings & Clone of Sausalito is cloning pet cats and hopes to clone a dog, similar to the one South Korean researchers created recently. And the FDA is widely expected to soon lift its ban on selling food from cloned cows and other animals, which some people say could lead to a bonanza of consumer products....
===
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
========================================================================
FINDLAW DAILY OPINION SUMMARIES - August 22, 2005
U.S. 9TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/courts/9th.html
========================================================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
* Ashley Creek Phosphate Co. v. Norton
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
* Defenders of Wildlife v. EPA
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-/
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Ashley Creek Phosphate Co. v. Norton, No. 04-35640 (9th Cir. August
22, 2005)
Plaintiff does not have standing to challenge a phosphate mining
project since its interests were purely economic, which does not
fall within the zone of interests protected by the National
Environmental Policy Act.
To read the full text of this opinion, go to:
[PDF File]
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0435640p.pdf
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Defenders of Wildlife v. EPA , No. 03-71439 (9th Cir. August 22, 2005)
The Endangered Species Act authorizes the EPA to consider the impact
on endangered species and their habitat when it decides whether to
transfer water pollution permitting authority to state governments.
To read the full text of this opinion, go to:
[PDF File]
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0371439p.pdf
From: "Kraig J. Marton"
Date: August 19, 2005 1:21:49 PM MST
Subject: The Chiltons have a website
Jim Chilton and the Chilton Ranch and Cattle Company have asked us to announce that they created a website which tells their story. You can find the website at this link: www.chiltonranch.com .
.
The site has a wealth of information about the Chiltons, their ranch, the Montana Allotment, their lawsuit against the Center for Biological Diversity, and about cattle grazing in general. We hope you find it informative.
Also, today's Wall Street Journal has an article pertaining to the lawsuit (section B, page 1).
Kraig J. Marton
Jaburg & Wilk, P.C.
3200 North Central #2000
Phoenix, AZ 85012
602 248 1017 (DID)
602 248 0522 (Fax)
www.jaburgwilk.com
A tip of the hat to Rachel Thomas for both items.
===
FINDLAW DAILY OPINION SUMMARIES - August 22, 2005
U.S. 9TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/courts/9th.html
========================================================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
* Ashley Creek Phosphate Co. v. Norton
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
* Defenders of Wildlife v. EPA
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-/
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Ashley Creek Phosphate Co. v. Norton, No. 04-35640 (9th Cir. August
22, 2005)
Plaintiff does not have standing to challenge a phosphate mining
project since its interests were purely economic, which does not
fall within the zone of interests protected by the National
Environmental Policy Act.
To read the full text of this opinion, go to:
[PDF File]
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0435640p.pdf
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
Defenders of Wildlife v. EPA , No. 03-71439 (9th Cir. August 22, 2005)
The Endangered Species Act authorizes the EPA to consider the impact
on endangered species and their habitat when it decides whether to
transfer water pollution permitting authority to state governments.
To read the full text of this opinion, go to:
[PDF File]
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0371439p.pdf
From: "Kraig J. Marton"
Date: August 19, 2005 1:21:49 PM MST
Subject: The Chiltons have a website
Jim Chilton and the Chilton Ranch and Cattle Company have asked us to announce that they created a website which tells their story. You can find the website at this link: www.chiltonranch.com .
.
The site has a wealth of information about the Chiltons, their ranch, the Montana Allotment, their lawsuit against the Center for Biological Diversity, and about cattle grazing in general. We hope you find it informative.
Also, today's Wall Street Journal has an article pertaining to the lawsuit (section B, page 1).
Kraig J. Marton
Jaburg & Wilk, P.C.
3200 North Central #2000
Phoenix, AZ 85012
602 248 1017 (DID)
602 248 0522 (Fax)
www.jaburgwilk.com
A tip of the hat to Rachel Thomas for both items.
===
NEWS ROUNDUP
Rancher suspects wolves killed 28 sheep Federal wildlife officials are investigating a case of nearly 30 head of dead domestic sheep near the Prospect Mountains east of here. Their owner suspects they were killed by wolves. Mike Jimenez of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday that because the sheep carcasses had been in place for up to 10 days, it was proving "very difficult to find out what's going on." Jimenez said, "I have no idea what's going on." USDA Wildlife Services specialists were in the area over the weekend and earlier this week to investigate, but they had not yet made a determination, according to Jimenez. The sheep belong to Wyoming Stock Growers Association executive Jim Magagna....
Group hopes to preserve Wyoming's Western character Morehead isn't alone, said Glenn Pauley of the Wyoming Stock Growers Agricultural Land Trust. Wyoming ranchers and farmers are aging and are facing some serious decisions. "They have all of this equity. Maybe one kid wants to stay on the ranch and the others don't. These ranches have been built up over generations and generations," Pauley said in his talk "Conservation through Ranching: Preserving Wyoming's Agricultural Lands, Wildlife, and Western Character though maintaining working family farms and ranches." Up to 2.6 million acres of Wyoming's most productive ranchlands could disappear by 2020 by residential and recreational development, he said. Five of the West's top 25 counties with "threatened ranchlands" are located in Wyoming. The Wyoming Stock Growers formed the land trust by vote four years ago. It's a controversial issue within the organization, but the members decided they wanted to give people an agriculturally driven, home state conservation option, Pauley said. The group's main focus is overseeing conservation easements that preserve the "Western way of life" by restricting certain types of residential and commercial development. They focus on preserving working farms, Pauley said. "For every dollar agriculture puts into the economy, it takes out 54 cents in services. Residential developments take away $2 for every dollar they put in," Pauley said. "The conventional wisdom was that residential subdivisions brought in money. Now, we're finding out that they cost money"....
Rio Grande Valley havens are preserving nature — and boosting area communities That's the kind of pragmatic view that has made conservation an easy sell in the Valley and helped build a $125-million-a-year ecotourism industry, McAllen Chamber of Commerce Director Nancy Millar said. "In this case, not developing land is an economic strategy," she said. With roughly 500 species of birds calling the area home or using it as a seasonal stopover, the Valley long has been known in birding circles as the best place in the country. Half a dozen ranchers have taken this approach to a new level, outfitting their land with photo blinds for the Valley's growing legion of nature photographers and renting them out for $100 a day. That rent can pay off. The Valley is home to one of the country's most lucrative nature photography contests — the Valley Land Fund's South Texas Shootout, which will offer $100,000 in prize money next year....
For One Family, Front Row Seats to Border Crisis If James Johnson were any closer to Mexico, he would be in it. And if there is a front line in the border crisis stretching from California to Texas, it may be the 14 miles of wide open boundary that the Johnson clan shares with their Mexican counterparts to the south. As many as 500 immigrants a day use their ranch and farmland as a welcome mat, they say, with bandits and smuggling guides making some areas too dangerous to visit. Fences have been torn down, they say, crops pilfered and cattle watering tanks fouled with human waste. Every day, just feet from their property, old school buses and vans with windows blacked out disgorge luggageless passengers who disappear into the derelict Mexican village of Las Chepas and re-emerge on distant hills sloping back down on the American side. "There goes another busload," Mr. Johnson, 30, said as an approaching gray van boiled a cloud of dust on a Mexican gravel road almost within touching distance, then rolled out of sight. "They'll be passing my place tonight."....
USDA official praises open land program The county's open lands program is getting high praise from a top U.S. Department of Agriculture official, who said it is an example of the kind of work the Bush administration is advocating. Mark Rey, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, praised Gallatin County's conservation easement program, which has so far set aside about 25,000 acres of farmland to prevent it from being subdivided in the future. Gallatin County voters have twice approved $10 million in bonds to buy conservation easements from willing sellers. The Natural Resources and Conservation Service has chipped in matching funds, as have other government and private entities. Private groups like the Trust for Public Land help iron out the details....
Forest Service and Industry Dishonesty and Fraud Exposed The Native Forest Council has made available damning aerial photographs of widespread destruction of US publicly owned national forests. Ironically, Commander Eileen Collins of the space shuttle Discovery observed, "Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world." (8/4/05). By viewing the NFC’s landscape aerial photographs, her birdeye’s view of the world and the tattered remains of the critical life-support system of our once great US national forests, can now be seen by all. The Native Forest Council’s stunning aerial views are a clarion call for real change now as they clearly demonstrate that it’s long past time to save what’s left of our forests and trees, soil , air and water, or we too shall perish as have many societies before us. The Native Forest Council’s aerial photographs (which can be seen at http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html) reveal that even our country’s publicly owned forests are a war-torn mosaic of endless logging roads and clearcuts. These photographs portray the startling truth about the dishonesty of corporate logging in the United States....
Commissioners hear both sides of roadless issue Snowmobilers in Ravalli County want to keep running on the same trails, roads and play areas they've always enjoyed. Last week the Bitterroot Ridgerunners snowmobile club invited Ravalli County commissioners, local legislators and the Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor to a meeting to voice their concerns. At the heart of the issue is the Forest Service's forest plan revision process, which has been ongoing for more than a year. But also adding to the mix is the recent decision made by the Bush administration to allow governors of states with Inventoried Roadless Areas to petition the Forest Service about how those lands should be managed. In response to this new rule Gov. Brian Schweitzer has asked county commissioners to give him input on management of these lands within their counties....
Wildcat comeback In 1999, soon after Canada lynx were released into the San Juan Mountains, wildlife biologists were shocked to discover that four lynx had quickly starved to death. Public criticism was withering. Colorado's lynx recovery effort looked to many people like one giant miscalculation and the architects of the reintroduction like heartless scientists run amok. But now, after three straight years of ever-larger numbers of kittens, 101 altogether, wildlife biologists are reporting realizations of their highest hopes. The reproduction shows that there is both sufficient habitat and food for the lynx. They are getting a toehold in the state where they have largely been absent for 30 years....
Roadless petitions will get funding Governors petitioning the federal government to maintain roadless areas in the state will have access to federal monies to conduct research, a Forest Service official said last week. Mark Rey, undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, said there is "a couple million to help states with some degree of assistance" with petitions. While the undersecretary does not expect all 50 states to submit petitions, perhaps a dozen will, he said. "We think that the exercise of going through this process should be something that a state could do for a couple of hundred thousand on the outside," Rey said in a meeting with the Star-Tribune editorial board Thursday. That number does not include expenses a state might incur from conducting additional public involvement or "due diligence," he said. And, governors will likely get an extension past the 18-month deadline for submitting petitions if they ask, Rey said. The rule went into effect in May....
Feds try to save Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies, enviros say not enough Their numbers are at dangerous lows and threaten to fall further due to isolation, fractured habitat and careless humans. A mere 30 to 40 grizzly bears are estimated to be in an area of northwest Montana and northern Idaho known as the Cabinet-Yaak, and the threats they face put the bears at risk of one day going extinct, researchers say. The possibility of losing those bears is driving a new, broader approach to save them, according to Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "In the past," he said, "I don't think we did enough." Federal and state officials are monitoring the number of bear deaths caused by people and looking for public lands that could link the grizzlies with other small, largely-isolated populations near the Canadian border, he said. There are also plans to move some young females, as early as this fall, from the relatively robust population near Glacier National Park. The hope with transplanting bears is that they'll establish home range and eventually have cubs in the nearby Cabinet-Yaak, wildlife officials said....
Activists Seek Injunction Against Wild Pig Hunt Animal rights activists will get another chance to try to persuade a federal judge to halt what they consider the senseless slaughter of thousands of pigs on Santa Cruz Island. Recently rebuffed in their attempt to secure a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service, In Defense of Animals and two individual plaintiffs intend to ask Central District Judge Dickran Tevrizian Jr. on Sept. 26 to reconsider the case and grant an injunction against the feral pig eradication program. Government scientists contend that the wild pigs threaten nine endangered plants and indirectly jeopardize the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox. Santa Barbara businessman Richard M. Feldman, one of the plaintiffs, noted Monday that the standard needed to secure a temporary restraining order was higher than that required for an injunction. A more important distinction, he added, was that the next court ruling could be appealed....
Cool waters finally return to Northwest coast, but concerns linger Upwellings of nutrient-rich cold water have finally arrived off the Pacific Northwest coast, purging the ocean of warmer surface temperatures that earlier in the year disrupted the food chain for seabirds, salmon and other maritime life. Surface temperatures on the Pacific recently have dropped as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which is expected to help produce a rich buffet of zooplankton, tiny creatures that are a staple diet to a host of sea animals. But scientists say it may have come too late for many species, such as murres and coho salmon, that depend on heavy feeding in spring and early summer. Researchers are still trying to better understand what happened this spring, when a lack of northerly winds apparently prevented the upsurges of cold water that usually bring nutrients up from decaying sea life on the ocean bottom. That ocean cycle sparks an explosion of plankton and other zooplankton that feeds many species....
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Rancher suspects wolves killed 28 sheep Federal wildlife officials are investigating a case of nearly 30 head of dead domestic sheep near the Prospect Mountains east of here. Their owner suspects they were killed by wolves. Mike Jimenez of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday that because the sheep carcasses had been in place for up to 10 days, it was proving "very difficult to find out what's going on." Jimenez said, "I have no idea what's going on." USDA Wildlife Services specialists were in the area over the weekend and earlier this week to investigate, but they had not yet made a determination, according to Jimenez. The sheep belong to Wyoming Stock Growers Association executive Jim Magagna....
Group hopes to preserve Wyoming's Western character Morehead isn't alone, said Glenn Pauley of the Wyoming Stock Growers Agricultural Land Trust. Wyoming ranchers and farmers are aging and are facing some serious decisions. "They have all of this equity. Maybe one kid wants to stay on the ranch and the others don't. These ranches have been built up over generations and generations," Pauley said in his talk "Conservation through Ranching: Preserving Wyoming's Agricultural Lands, Wildlife, and Western Character though maintaining working family farms and ranches." Up to 2.6 million acres of Wyoming's most productive ranchlands could disappear by 2020 by residential and recreational development, he said. Five of the West's top 25 counties with "threatened ranchlands" are located in Wyoming. The Wyoming Stock Growers formed the land trust by vote four years ago. It's a controversial issue within the organization, but the members decided they wanted to give people an agriculturally driven, home state conservation option, Pauley said. The group's main focus is overseeing conservation easements that preserve the "Western way of life" by restricting certain types of residential and commercial development. They focus on preserving working farms, Pauley said. "For every dollar agriculture puts into the economy, it takes out 54 cents in services. Residential developments take away $2 for every dollar they put in," Pauley said. "The conventional wisdom was that residential subdivisions brought in money. Now, we're finding out that they cost money"....
Rio Grande Valley havens are preserving nature — and boosting area communities That's the kind of pragmatic view that has made conservation an easy sell in the Valley and helped build a $125-million-a-year ecotourism industry, McAllen Chamber of Commerce Director Nancy Millar said. "In this case, not developing land is an economic strategy," she said. With roughly 500 species of birds calling the area home or using it as a seasonal stopover, the Valley long has been known in birding circles as the best place in the country. Half a dozen ranchers have taken this approach to a new level, outfitting their land with photo blinds for the Valley's growing legion of nature photographers and renting them out for $100 a day. That rent can pay off. The Valley is home to one of the country's most lucrative nature photography contests — the Valley Land Fund's South Texas Shootout, which will offer $100,000 in prize money next year....
For One Family, Front Row Seats to Border Crisis If James Johnson were any closer to Mexico, he would be in it. And if there is a front line in the border crisis stretching from California to Texas, it may be the 14 miles of wide open boundary that the Johnson clan shares with their Mexican counterparts to the south. As many as 500 immigrants a day use their ranch and farmland as a welcome mat, they say, with bandits and smuggling guides making some areas too dangerous to visit. Fences have been torn down, they say, crops pilfered and cattle watering tanks fouled with human waste. Every day, just feet from their property, old school buses and vans with windows blacked out disgorge luggageless passengers who disappear into the derelict Mexican village of Las Chepas and re-emerge on distant hills sloping back down on the American side. "There goes another busload," Mr. Johnson, 30, said as an approaching gray van boiled a cloud of dust on a Mexican gravel road almost within touching distance, then rolled out of sight. "They'll be passing my place tonight."....
USDA official praises open land program The county's open lands program is getting high praise from a top U.S. Department of Agriculture official, who said it is an example of the kind of work the Bush administration is advocating. Mark Rey, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, praised Gallatin County's conservation easement program, which has so far set aside about 25,000 acres of farmland to prevent it from being subdivided in the future. Gallatin County voters have twice approved $10 million in bonds to buy conservation easements from willing sellers. The Natural Resources and Conservation Service has chipped in matching funds, as have other government and private entities. Private groups like the Trust for Public Land help iron out the details....
Forest Service and Industry Dishonesty and Fraud Exposed The Native Forest Council has made available damning aerial photographs of widespread destruction of US publicly owned national forests. Ironically, Commander Eileen Collins of the space shuttle Discovery observed, "Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world." (8/4/05). By viewing the NFC’s landscape aerial photographs, her birdeye’s view of the world and the tattered remains of the critical life-support system of our once great US national forests, can now be seen by all. The Native Forest Council’s stunning aerial views are a clarion call for real change now as they clearly demonstrate that it’s long past time to save what’s left of our forests and trees, soil , air and water, or we too shall perish as have many societies before us. The Native Forest Council’s aerial photographs (which can be seen at http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html) reveal that even our country’s publicly owned forests are a war-torn mosaic of endless logging roads and clearcuts. These photographs portray the startling truth about the dishonesty of corporate logging in the United States....
Commissioners hear both sides of roadless issue Snowmobilers in Ravalli County want to keep running on the same trails, roads and play areas they've always enjoyed. Last week the Bitterroot Ridgerunners snowmobile club invited Ravalli County commissioners, local legislators and the Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor to a meeting to voice their concerns. At the heart of the issue is the Forest Service's forest plan revision process, which has been ongoing for more than a year. But also adding to the mix is the recent decision made by the Bush administration to allow governors of states with Inventoried Roadless Areas to petition the Forest Service about how those lands should be managed. In response to this new rule Gov. Brian Schweitzer has asked county commissioners to give him input on management of these lands within their counties....
Wildcat comeback In 1999, soon after Canada lynx were released into the San Juan Mountains, wildlife biologists were shocked to discover that four lynx had quickly starved to death. Public criticism was withering. Colorado's lynx recovery effort looked to many people like one giant miscalculation and the architects of the reintroduction like heartless scientists run amok. But now, after three straight years of ever-larger numbers of kittens, 101 altogether, wildlife biologists are reporting realizations of their highest hopes. The reproduction shows that there is both sufficient habitat and food for the lynx. They are getting a toehold in the state where they have largely been absent for 30 years....
Roadless petitions will get funding Governors petitioning the federal government to maintain roadless areas in the state will have access to federal monies to conduct research, a Forest Service official said last week. Mark Rey, undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, said there is "a couple million to help states with some degree of assistance" with petitions. While the undersecretary does not expect all 50 states to submit petitions, perhaps a dozen will, he said. "We think that the exercise of going through this process should be something that a state could do for a couple of hundred thousand on the outside," Rey said in a meeting with the Star-Tribune editorial board Thursday. That number does not include expenses a state might incur from conducting additional public involvement or "due diligence," he said. And, governors will likely get an extension past the 18-month deadline for submitting petitions if they ask, Rey said. The rule went into effect in May....
Feds try to save Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies, enviros say not enough Their numbers are at dangerous lows and threaten to fall further due to isolation, fractured habitat and careless humans. A mere 30 to 40 grizzly bears are estimated to be in an area of northwest Montana and northern Idaho known as the Cabinet-Yaak, and the threats they face put the bears at risk of one day going extinct, researchers say. The possibility of losing those bears is driving a new, broader approach to save them, according to Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "In the past," he said, "I don't think we did enough." Federal and state officials are monitoring the number of bear deaths caused by people and looking for public lands that could link the grizzlies with other small, largely-isolated populations near the Canadian border, he said. There are also plans to move some young females, as early as this fall, from the relatively robust population near Glacier National Park. The hope with transplanting bears is that they'll establish home range and eventually have cubs in the nearby Cabinet-Yaak, wildlife officials said....
Activists Seek Injunction Against Wild Pig Hunt Animal rights activists will get another chance to try to persuade a federal judge to halt what they consider the senseless slaughter of thousands of pigs on Santa Cruz Island. Recently rebuffed in their attempt to secure a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service, In Defense of Animals and two individual plaintiffs intend to ask Central District Judge Dickran Tevrizian Jr. on Sept. 26 to reconsider the case and grant an injunction against the feral pig eradication program. Government scientists contend that the wild pigs threaten nine endangered plants and indirectly jeopardize the endangered Santa Cruz Island fox. Santa Barbara businessman Richard M. Feldman, one of the plaintiffs, noted Monday that the standard needed to secure a temporary restraining order was higher than that required for an injunction. A more important distinction, he added, was that the next court ruling could be appealed....
Cool waters finally return to Northwest coast, but concerns linger Upwellings of nutrient-rich cold water have finally arrived off the Pacific Northwest coast, purging the ocean of warmer surface temperatures that earlier in the year disrupted the food chain for seabirds, salmon and other maritime life. Surface temperatures on the Pacific recently have dropped as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which is expected to help produce a rich buffet of zooplankton, tiny creatures that are a staple diet to a host of sea animals. But scientists say it may have come too late for many species, such as murres and coho salmon, that depend on heavy feeding in spring and early summer. Researchers are still trying to better understand what happened this spring, when a lack of northerly winds apparently prevented the upsurges of cold water that usually bring nutrients up from decaying sea life on the ocean bottom. That ocean cycle sparks an explosion of plankton and other zooplankton that feeds many species....
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Monday, August 22, 2005
Beef banned under mad cow rules is recalled
Beef banned under mad cow disease rules was shipped to wholesalers in a half-dozen states and is now being recalled by a Wisconsin beef plant. The 1,856 pounds of beef came from a Canadian cow. Inspectors there determined the cow was eligible for shipment to the United States, but a Canadian audit two weeks later said the cow was too old to be allowed inside the U.S. "There is a minimal chance, given the age of the animal and the health of the animal, that there was any risk whatsoever" to people, Steven Cohen, spokesman for the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said Monday. The U.S. restricts shipments to younger animals because infection levels from mad cow disease are believed to rise with age. The cutoff is 30 months of age. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating and has suspended the veterinarian who certified the cow, said Francine Lord, import-export manager for the agency's animal health division. The agency finished its audit last week and notified U.S. officials on Thursday. Green Bay Dressed Beef of Green Bay, Wis., processed the cow on Aug. 4 and distributed the meat to wholesalers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The department and the company are trying to find out how much beef wound up in retail stores, Cohen said....
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Beef banned under mad cow disease rules was shipped to wholesalers in a half-dozen states and is now being recalled by a Wisconsin beef plant. The 1,856 pounds of beef came from a Canadian cow. Inspectors there determined the cow was eligible for shipment to the United States, but a Canadian audit two weeks later said the cow was too old to be allowed inside the U.S. "There is a minimal chance, given the age of the animal and the health of the animal, that there was any risk whatsoever" to people, Steven Cohen, spokesman for the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said Monday. The U.S. restricts shipments to younger animals because infection levels from mad cow disease are believed to rise with age. The cutoff is 30 months of age. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating and has suspended the veterinarian who certified the cow, said Francine Lord, import-export manager for the agency's animal health division. The agency finished its audit last week and notified U.S. officials on Thursday. Green Bay Dressed Beef of Green Bay, Wis., processed the cow on Aug. 4 and distributed the meat to wholesalers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The department and the company are trying to find out how much beef wound up in retail stores, Cohen said....
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NEWS ROUNDUP
BP's drilling plans anger landowners A day after La Plata County announced a deal with BP on a plan to increase well density, opponents confronted a county staffer at a meeting Wednesday, at times drowning out her presentation in a chorus of criticism. At a forum sponsored by gas industry watchdog San Juan Citizens Alliance, the county's community development director, Nancy Lauro, explained key elements of the deal. But, at several points, she was cut short by angry landowners and anti-drilling advocates. "You've negotiated with this corporation for months with no public meetings, no input from the community and now you recommend in a work session that our commissioners give up the right to protest this application," Pat Cummins said. "It's really outrageous that our local government would operate in this manner." Lauro countered that the county is handcuffed since the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is the body that will decide on BP's proposal to increase the number of wells from one per 160 acres to one per 80 acres....
Drilling turns quiet route into roaring road Piceance Creek meanders more than 40 miles through hayfields and past cattle raised on ranches that have survived many changes over decades, even centuries. Now, hundreds of huge trucks rumble alongside the creek on Rio Blanco County Road 5 each day to reach isolated areas above the steep canyon cliffs where plentiful natural-gas beckons. The nation’s insatiable appetite for energy — and high gas prices — has started to turn this quiet, scenic valley into the latest area of western Colorado to try to deal with the affects of gas drilling, pipelines, compressor stations and the like. Traffic on County Road 5 has increased more than 1,100 percent this year, said county Road and Bridge Coordinator Ron Leeper. In one week in March 2004, 294 vehicles passed a single point on County Road 5, he said. This March, traffic surged to 3,741 vehicles. About 54 percent of those vehicles were large trucks driven by workers for gas operators like ExxonMobil, EnCana Oil and Gas and their subcontractors. The rest were smaller vehicles. Those numbers will increase even more this fall, when about 500 gas pipeline workers arrive....
Road to Chinese rig raises questions A road leading to the drilling site where a Chinese drill rig is at work has created almost as much controversy as the rig itself. The land where Presco Inc. is drilling atop a mountain near Parachute is difficult to reach, and a road had to be constructed for the rig and workers to travel to and from the site. “The land where Presco is located is classified as agricultural land so they were able to build a road without a permit from the county,” said Doug Dennison, oil and gas liaison for Garfield County. “It’s kind of a legal loophole, so some people are looking to see if they had some fill and stuff in the creeks that shouldn’t have happened without a permit from the (U.S. Army) Corps.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has received calls alleging the company filled in portions of Dry Creek and Battlement Creek to construct the road to the drill site....
Varied crowd rallies to protect Valle Vidal In the next year, Oscar Simpson — hunter, horseman and president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation — hopes it will be political suicide for anyone to support oil-and-gas drilling in the lush Valle Vidal of Northern New Mexico. “We’re only halfway there,” Simpson said as he stirred hash browns over a camp stove at McCrystal Creek Campground in Valle Vidal. Nearby stood Gary Fonay, a petroleum engineer and former president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, and Fred Galley, a rancher and retired Forest Service planner who helped broker the deal in 1982, when Penzoil donated the 100,000-acre Valle Vidal to the Carson National Forest. Both men are Republicans, like Simpson. Both support oiland-gas drilling, except when it comes to Valle Vidal. “I think there’s a few special places that should be protected,” Fonay said. “If Valle Vidal doesn’t qualify as special, I don’t know what does.”....
Suicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle First she killed her dogs, shot them in the head with a .38-caliber revolver and covered the two bodies with a quilt. Then Marlene Braun leveled the blue steel muzzle three inches above her right ear and pulled the trigger. "I can't face what appears to be required to continue to live in my world," the meticulous 46-year-old wrote in May in a suicide note. Braun had come to the Carrizo Plain three years earlier, after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management placed her in charge of the new national monument — 250,000 acres of native grasses and Native American sacred sites, embraced by low mountains, traversed by the San Andreas Fault and home to more threatened and endangered animals than any other spot in California. What began as a policy dispute — to graze or not to graze livestock on the fragile Carrizo grasslands — became a morass of environmental politics and office feuding that Braun was convinced threatened both her future and the landscape she loved. A 13-year veteran of the BLM, Braun was torn between the demands of a new boss who she felt favored the region's ranchers, and conservation policies adopted nearly a decade ago to protecting the austere swath of prairie she shared with pronghorn antelope and peregrine falcons, the California condor and the California jewelflower.
Tradition or trap? Out there, on a bottom flat bordered by the Little Missouri River, she uses canes to get around. Her back is bent into a gentle s-curve. Her broken hip still bothers her. Her children check in on her frequently, but otherwise she's alone with her flower garden and her five cats. She can go months without leaving. McCutchan doesn't want to leave for good until she's dead. Then, she wants her children to have the land and buildings. She lives on the money she gets from leasing her place to Jamey Adams, who lives across and down the river. Adams runs 90 head, plus calves, on McCutchan's 2,100 acres, along with another three sections of pasture that belong to the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Little Missouri National Grasslands. The grasslands are leased for grazing to owners of base property, like McCutchan's privately owned ranch acres. The Forest Service planned to end those lease transfers starting July 19 under what it called a "new direction" in its grasslands handbook. Now, because political ears got bent, the agency will decide whether to suspend lease transfers after taking public comments until October....
Unmanned planes aid firefighters on ground Firefighters across the West are getting a high-tech ally in their battle against wildland flames: a remote-controlled spy plane that doesn't mind smoke, can see in the dark and never sleeps. Scientists have been testing whether flocks of the planes - similar to the spy drones the U.S. military flies over Iraq and Afghanistan - can help track the direction and behavior of fast-moving flames. After the experimental flight of three unmanned aerial vehicles this summer, the U.S. Forest Service will launch the first real-life deployment next spring. The plan calls for planes to traverse a dozen Western states, mapping real forest fires 24 hours a day....
Danger lurks in overgrowth Scenic, wooded Lake Tahoe, one of America's natural gems, could easily go up in smoke, speakers at an annual lakeside summit warned Sunday. Much of the attention - and millions of dollars - have gone in recent years to protecting the high alpine lake's fabled clear blue waters, where visibility once penetrated to more than 100 feet and has recently been improving. But it is the forested Sierra Nevada mountains reflected in the lake that could destroy the basin that is home to multimillion-dollar homes, casinos, ski resorts, lodges, restaurants and parks that draw thousands of tourists. Moreover, a fast-moving wildfire on a crowded summer weekend could pose deadly danger to panicked people fleeing over the Tahoe basin's few winding roads....
Corps orders dam's removal A new dam on Tarryall Creek has become the latest flash point between private property rights and public access to Colorado streams and rivers. The earthen dam went up in June, diverting waters off the Pike National Forest and damaging fish habitat along the creek. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered that the barrier be torn down by Sept. 1. The dam cut off a 300-foot meander that provided some of the only public fishing access for miles. The rerouted creek now flows through the private Topaz Mountain Ranch. "I've never experienced a landowner diverting water off the national forest land to this extent," said Sara Mayben, the Forest Service's South Park district ranger....
Column: Recreation use drives the national forest economy This past week Bush administration and Forest Service officials were assailed when they dramatically reduced the government's assessment of how much money recreation on national forest land contributes to the American economy. Their new conclusion is that these activities generate just a 10th of what earlier administrations estimated. But that is not the real story behind the numbers. Instead, headlines across America should have read "Bush administration reaffirms recreation as largest economic driver associated with national forests," for even these new, unrealistically low numbers confirm what the outdoor industry has argued for over 10 years: Recreation deserves significantly more attention and resources in an agency that was originally built around extractive uses. Over the past 50 years and as both Democrat and Republican administration numbers prove, recreation has clearly emerged as the undisputed greatest use of Forest Service lands and the primary driver of the national forest economy....
Forest Service firing official concerned about pesticide misuse A regional U.S. Forest Service official who has complained that some of the agency's managers ignored rules and environmental laws in spraying pesticides on forests in the Southwest will soon be without a job. The Forest Service this week informed Doug Parker, the pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry and forest health for the agency's Southwestern Region, that it plans to fire him within 30 days because he failed to follow instructions. Leonard Lucero, Parker's supervisor and director of forestry and forest health for the region, stated in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that the longtime employee turned in two progress reports that did not follow a specific format. Lucero wrote that he gave Parker instructions but Parker failed to follow them....
Cloned wildcats show ability to reproduce And then there were eight... In a potential breakthrough for bioengineering, three cloned African wildcats living in the United States have produced two healthy litters of kittens, demonstrating for the first time that clones of wild animals can breed. The successful experiment, unveiled by the Audubon Centre for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans, Louisiana, over the weekend, appeared to open the way to bringing severely endangered species back from the brink of extinction, scientists said. "The science which produced these beautiful kittens is nothing short of wondrous," commented Ron Forman, president of the Audubon Nature Institute. "We are thrilled to play a part in a scientific journey holding such enormous potential for the worlds animals."....
Biologists kill predators to protect plover All Lauten and Castelein could do in the past was put a wire cage over the nests and hope for the best. Now they routinely work with federal trappers who kill the ravens, red foxes, and feral cats that prey on plover nests. In the short term, plovers have hatched more chicks. But without more habitat, the long-term prospects for the bird remain precarious, they said. Predator control on behalf of threatened and endangered species has never been greater. Last year Wildlife Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture best known for shooting coyotes that prey on sheep and cattle, spent $3.5 million trapping and killing predators on behalf of 243 different species of plants and animals. That amounts to 19 percent of the 1,267 plants and animals protected by the Endangered Species Act. It is up from just 72 species and $1 million in 1996. Financed largely by cooperative agreements with states, Wildlife Services agents put out poisoned eggs for ravens that poke their beaks into the soft shells of young desert tortoises in California's Mojave Desert, poison and shoot badgers and coyotes that prey on black-footed ferrets in the South Dakota plains, and trap foxes eating the eggs of sea turtles on Florida beaches....
Judges Rebuff Government on Endangered Species Federal judges on opposite sides of the country ruled Friday that the Fish and Wildlife Service had acted arbitrarily and violated the Endangered Species Act when it reversed its own decisions and cut back on protections for two disparate species. The judges - one in San Francisco and one in Brattleboro, Vt. - overturned separate regulations involving California tiger salamanders and gray wolves in New England. In both cases, the Bush administration had combined sparser, distinct populations of a species with larger, robust populations, and then said protections could be reduced. In his ruling striking down the agency's 2003 regulation on gray wolves, Judge J. Garvan Murtha wrote that the agency, after making the scientific determination that a species was endangered, could not change its mind "because it lumps together a core population with a low to nonexistent population."....
Wild horse advocates fear loss of herds' genetic diversity Wild horse advocates are concerned that the roundup of up to 10,000 wild horses and burros across the West this year will lower their populations drastically and threaten the animals' genetic diversity. The roundup includes the removal this month of 1,000 mustangs from two herds in Wyoming's Red Desert. "You cannot preserve this gene pool with such reductions," said Karen Sussman, president of the Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros. "Each herd has a significant historical value." The Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for managing the herds, will hold 57 gathers this year in nine Western states. In the past three years, the agency has removed 10,000 horses each year from federal lands....
UA study: Dangers of drought heightened The Valley's long-term water supplies are less secure than once thought and more vulnerable to drought, according to a study released Thursday. The study found that severe droughts reduced flows both on the upper Colorado River and Arizona's Salt and Verde rivers, weakening the state's most important water sources all at once. That challenges the long-held belief that Arizona could count on the Colorado as a reliable buffer when in-state rivers run low. Researchers from the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research also found that extended droughts are common. The most recent drought in Arizona, which began in 1996, is one of the worst on record, but others of that magnitude have occurred at least eight other times since 1200. For Valley cities, the study's findings mean rethinking water resource plans to take into account a greater risk of drought. The effects of a drought will worsen as population and demand grow, exposing the region to possible shortages....
Immigration battle extends to fences For cattle rancher Joe Johnson, whose property is the southern boundary of the United States for eight miles of Luna County, the battle is to keep the border upright. Immigrants pull the barbed wires apart as they hop over the international boundary. Or they rip the fence out, unstaking steel and wood posts and hours of work by Johnson and his family. Fences on the Mexican side are often made from posts stolen from Johnson's ranch, he said. Immigrants in some areas have driven through the fence, not even bothering to stop and cut it with wire cutters like they used to. "There's absolutely no sense of accomplishment," said Johnson, who estimates that he spends 85 percent of his working hours fixing his fence so his cattle don't get out....
Border crossers receive ranch after suing owner An Arizona ranch once owned by a member of an armed group accused of terrorizing illegal immigrants has been turned over to two of the very people the owner had tried to keep out of the country. The land transfer is being done to satisfy a judgment against Casey Nethercott, who is serving a five-year prison term for firearms possession. Morris Dees Jr., chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the immigrants, said he hoped the ruling would send a message. "When we got into this case, ranchers all along the border were allowing these types to come on their property," Dees said. "Now, they're very leery of it, especially when they see someone losing their ranch because of it."....
Mexican cattle business linked to drug cartels The Treasury Department, trying to block an elaborate money-laundering scheme, has announced that two Mexican cattle companies are fronts for drug-trafficking cartels. The action means that cattle sold by the companies to Texas ranchers after Friday's announcement are subject to seizure by the federal government, said a high-ranking Treasury official who asked not to be named. "Cattle already purchased and owned before the companies were identified as tied to the drug cartels are not going to suddenly be blocked," the official said. The Treasury Department plans to inform cattle associations and other groups later this week of the action taken against the Mexican companies, officials said. The Treasury also will provide other information, such as the brands used by the cattle companies linked to the drug cartels. For now, buyers are expected to practice due diligence when purchasing cattle....
Montana governor: USDA 'bunch of stooges' Montana's governor, who has fought the importation of young Canadian cattle, on Saturday said U.S. states need to oversee federal inspectors of Canadian beef because the U.S. Department of Agriculture is acting in the interest of beef companies. "A few years ago, the four big meat companies, they expanded their role in this country. They bought a U.S. company called the United States Department of Agriculture," Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said in an interview. "They are a bunch of stooges." "The USDA crawled right into bed with them (the meat companies) and they run our internal policy and our international (beef) policy," Schweitzer said. Schweitzer, a Democrat in a majority Republican state, has led a state fight against imports of Canadian cattle under 30 months of age after a federal appeals court lifted a two-year ban on Canadian cattle in July....
Women on the range Ruby Roth, 42, used to make the same assumption. It was only after she left her job as an office manager and started working part-time on a ranch that she realized different. A decade later, she now manages the Zapata Ranch, a private family retreat and cattle ranch east of Santa Margarita where she lives with her three teen-age daughters. With another woman from a neighboring ranch and an assist from her kids, Roth tends the extensive gardens, the main ranch house, five guesthouses, more than an acre of grapes and about 120 head of cattle — plus a few goats, donkeys, chickens, two dogs and several cats. Like Roth, being a woman hasn't held Jean Rotta back. The 68-year-old is well known for her purebred Angus cattle, which she raises on the Huasna Valley ranch she inherited from her parents. In fact, most of her approximately 300 cattle trace their lineage to the original herd her father established in the 1950s. Rotta has lived on the ranch full-time since 1952, except for the years she attended Cal Poly, where she was a member of the college's first coed class. She earned a degree in animal husbandry, then came home to help her father run the ranch. Rotta had no brothers and said people didn't seem to think it odd that a girl would eagerly embrace the hard work of cattle ranching....
The Imus Ranch That’s music to the ears of Don and Deirdre Imus, who dedicate their entire summer to hosting eight one-week sessions at the 4,000-acre cattle ranch for children who have had cancer or blood disorders, or have lost a sibling to sudden infant death syndrome. But make no mistake: this is no frolicking summer camp or serene high-desert day spa. The Imus Ranch is an exhausting, sunrise-to-sunset boot camp for cowboys and cowgirls designed to instill the values of hard work and the Western lifestyle. “We’re straight shooters with these kids,” says Deirdre, 41. “We lay down the rules the first day here: ‘This isn’t Camp Happy Face.’” Soon after the 10 wranglers, ages 11 to 17, are outfitted in blue jeans, cowboy boots and hats compliments of Wrangler, Justin and Resistol, they’re given the rules of the cowboy way. There’s no coddling or whining, and they must clean their rooms, make up their beds, do laundry, clear their plates and say, “Yes ma’am.” And no hats on the bed—not bad manners, just bad luck. “It’s about hard work,” says Brittany Thomas, 12, of Crestview, Fla. “It’s just some place that you can have fun and meet new people and do a bit of work each day.” At least during this week, they are treated like normal, healthy children. In fact, ranch hands aren’t allowed to mention the children’s illnesses. Perhaps for the first time in years, the children are recognized for what’s right with them, instead of what’s wrong with them. It’s their strengths, not their physical weaknesses that set them apart from their peers....
Montana theatre brings Shakespeare to rural West Ranchers from miles away lounge in lawn chairs under a canopy of cottonwoods, munching on Indian tacos and homemade pie, as The Taming of the Shrew, unfolds. Babies sleep on blankets spread in the grass, while older children watch, eyes wide, or dart among the trees with friends. Many have never seen a production such as this, and appreciate the chance to see Shakespearean theatre - or any professional theatre for that matter - performed live in this north-central Montana farming town of about 1,500, surrounded by wheat fields, the chalky bluffs of the Missouri River and not much else....
PRCA terminates sanctioning of CPRA The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has terminated a longtime sanctioning agreement with the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association, per a letter from PRCA Commissioner Troy Ellerman dated August 17. In years past, CPRA rodeos counted toward PRCA world standings and Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualification. (PRCA rodeos do not count toward Canadian Finals Rodeo qualification.) CPRA rodeos will not count toward PRCA world standings or NFR qualification in the 2006 rodeo season, unless they become PRCA-sanctioned rodeos on an individual basis and comply with all PRCA-sanctioning and approval requirements. A revised agreement between the PRCA and CPRA is a possibility, but no agreement has been reached at this time. Under the terms of the existing agreement, the PRCA was not receiving any financial compensation from CPRA events. Every PRCA rodeo held in the United States pays the PRCA five percent of each event's total prize money in return for being an officially sanctioned PRCA rodeo and all the support from PRCA headquarters that goes with that privilege. Canadian rodeos have never paid that sanctioning fee. In addition, CPRA rodeos do not comply with PRCA sponsorship mandates and policies or require their rodeo officials to attend and graduate from the PRCA Pro Officials training program, which is required of all PRCA officials in the U.S....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Differences seem subtle, but are substantial There is a difference between being tough and being strong. A 600-pound Corriente roping steer is tough. A 2,000-pound Angus bull is strong. Wrestling calves this spring at a branding, there were several young men there to help flank calves. They were all good boys and came to lend a hand. The first hour, when they were fresh, it was inspiring to watch those stout young men overpower the calves. As the morning wore on, they began wearin' down. Moving slower, stepping back, leaning on the fence, breathing heavily and lookin' for a break. That's when the tough ones took the lead. Steady, balanced, using leverage, no wasted motion, sure-handed. That's how we finished the day. We see examples around us all the time in sports, in couples we know, and in folks we work with....
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BP's drilling plans anger landowners A day after La Plata County announced a deal with BP on a plan to increase well density, opponents confronted a county staffer at a meeting Wednesday, at times drowning out her presentation in a chorus of criticism. At a forum sponsored by gas industry watchdog San Juan Citizens Alliance, the county's community development director, Nancy Lauro, explained key elements of the deal. But, at several points, she was cut short by angry landowners and anti-drilling advocates. "You've negotiated with this corporation for months with no public meetings, no input from the community and now you recommend in a work session that our commissioners give up the right to protest this application," Pat Cummins said. "It's really outrageous that our local government would operate in this manner." Lauro countered that the county is handcuffed since the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is the body that will decide on BP's proposal to increase the number of wells from one per 160 acres to one per 80 acres....
Drilling turns quiet route into roaring road Piceance Creek meanders more than 40 miles through hayfields and past cattle raised on ranches that have survived many changes over decades, even centuries. Now, hundreds of huge trucks rumble alongside the creek on Rio Blanco County Road 5 each day to reach isolated areas above the steep canyon cliffs where plentiful natural-gas beckons. The nation’s insatiable appetite for energy — and high gas prices — has started to turn this quiet, scenic valley into the latest area of western Colorado to try to deal with the affects of gas drilling, pipelines, compressor stations and the like. Traffic on County Road 5 has increased more than 1,100 percent this year, said county Road and Bridge Coordinator Ron Leeper. In one week in March 2004, 294 vehicles passed a single point on County Road 5, he said. This March, traffic surged to 3,741 vehicles. About 54 percent of those vehicles were large trucks driven by workers for gas operators like ExxonMobil, EnCana Oil and Gas and their subcontractors. The rest were smaller vehicles. Those numbers will increase even more this fall, when about 500 gas pipeline workers arrive....
Road to Chinese rig raises questions A road leading to the drilling site where a Chinese drill rig is at work has created almost as much controversy as the rig itself. The land where Presco Inc. is drilling atop a mountain near Parachute is difficult to reach, and a road had to be constructed for the rig and workers to travel to and from the site. “The land where Presco is located is classified as agricultural land so they were able to build a road without a permit from the county,” said Doug Dennison, oil and gas liaison for Garfield County. “It’s kind of a legal loophole, so some people are looking to see if they had some fill and stuff in the creeks that shouldn’t have happened without a permit from the (U.S. Army) Corps.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has received calls alleging the company filled in portions of Dry Creek and Battlement Creek to construct the road to the drill site....
Varied crowd rallies to protect Valle Vidal In the next year, Oscar Simpson — hunter, horseman and president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation — hopes it will be political suicide for anyone to support oil-and-gas drilling in the lush Valle Vidal of Northern New Mexico. “We’re only halfway there,” Simpson said as he stirred hash browns over a camp stove at McCrystal Creek Campground in Valle Vidal. Nearby stood Gary Fonay, a petroleum engineer and former president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, and Fred Galley, a rancher and retired Forest Service planner who helped broker the deal in 1982, when Penzoil donated the 100,000-acre Valle Vidal to the Carson National Forest. Both men are Republicans, like Simpson. Both support oiland-gas drilling, except when it comes to Valle Vidal. “I think there’s a few special places that should be protected,” Fonay said. “If Valle Vidal doesn’t qualify as special, I don’t know what does.”....
Suicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle First she killed her dogs, shot them in the head with a .38-caliber revolver and covered the two bodies with a quilt. Then Marlene Braun leveled the blue steel muzzle three inches above her right ear and pulled the trigger. "I can't face what appears to be required to continue to live in my world," the meticulous 46-year-old wrote in May in a suicide note. Braun had come to the Carrizo Plain three years earlier, after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management placed her in charge of the new national monument — 250,000 acres of native grasses and Native American sacred sites, embraced by low mountains, traversed by the San Andreas Fault and home to more threatened and endangered animals than any other spot in California. What began as a policy dispute — to graze or not to graze livestock on the fragile Carrizo grasslands — became a morass of environmental politics and office feuding that Braun was convinced threatened both her future and the landscape she loved. A 13-year veteran of the BLM, Braun was torn between the demands of a new boss who she felt favored the region's ranchers, and conservation policies adopted nearly a decade ago to protecting the austere swath of prairie she shared with pronghorn antelope and peregrine falcons, the California condor and the California jewelflower.
Tradition or trap? Out there, on a bottom flat bordered by the Little Missouri River, she uses canes to get around. Her back is bent into a gentle s-curve. Her broken hip still bothers her. Her children check in on her frequently, but otherwise she's alone with her flower garden and her five cats. She can go months without leaving. McCutchan doesn't want to leave for good until she's dead. Then, she wants her children to have the land and buildings. She lives on the money she gets from leasing her place to Jamey Adams, who lives across and down the river. Adams runs 90 head, plus calves, on McCutchan's 2,100 acres, along with another three sections of pasture that belong to the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Little Missouri National Grasslands. The grasslands are leased for grazing to owners of base property, like McCutchan's privately owned ranch acres. The Forest Service planned to end those lease transfers starting July 19 under what it called a "new direction" in its grasslands handbook. Now, because political ears got bent, the agency will decide whether to suspend lease transfers after taking public comments until October....
Unmanned planes aid firefighters on ground Firefighters across the West are getting a high-tech ally in their battle against wildland flames: a remote-controlled spy plane that doesn't mind smoke, can see in the dark and never sleeps. Scientists have been testing whether flocks of the planes - similar to the spy drones the U.S. military flies over Iraq and Afghanistan - can help track the direction and behavior of fast-moving flames. After the experimental flight of three unmanned aerial vehicles this summer, the U.S. Forest Service will launch the first real-life deployment next spring. The plan calls for planes to traverse a dozen Western states, mapping real forest fires 24 hours a day....
Danger lurks in overgrowth Scenic, wooded Lake Tahoe, one of America's natural gems, could easily go up in smoke, speakers at an annual lakeside summit warned Sunday. Much of the attention - and millions of dollars - have gone in recent years to protecting the high alpine lake's fabled clear blue waters, where visibility once penetrated to more than 100 feet and has recently been improving. But it is the forested Sierra Nevada mountains reflected in the lake that could destroy the basin that is home to multimillion-dollar homes, casinos, ski resorts, lodges, restaurants and parks that draw thousands of tourists. Moreover, a fast-moving wildfire on a crowded summer weekend could pose deadly danger to panicked people fleeing over the Tahoe basin's few winding roads....
Corps orders dam's removal A new dam on Tarryall Creek has become the latest flash point between private property rights and public access to Colorado streams and rivers. The earthen dam went up in June, diverting waters off the Pike National Forest and damaging fish habitat along the creek. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered that the barrier be torn down by Sept. 1. The dam cut off a 300-foot meander that provided some of the only public fishing access for miles. The rerouted creek now flows through the private Topaz Mountain Ranch. "I've never experienced a landowner diverting water off the national forest land to this extent," said Sara Mayben, the Forest Service's South Park district ranger....
Column: Recreation use drives the national forest economy This past week Bush administration and Forest Service officials were assailed when they dramatically reduced the government's assessment of how much money recreation on national forest land contributes to the American economy. Their new conclusion is that these activities generate just a 10th of what earlier administrations estimated. But that is not the real story behind the numbers. Instead, headlines across America should have read "Bush administration reaffirms recreation as largest economic driver associated with national forests," for even these new, unrealistically low numbers confirm what the outdoor industry has argued for over 10 years: Recreation deserves significantly more attention and resources in an agency that was originally built around extractive uses. Over the past 50 years and as both Democrat and Republican administration numbers prove, recreation has clearly emerged as the undisputed greatest use of Forest Service lands and the primary driver of the national forest economy....
Forest Service firing official concerned about pesticide misuse A regional U.S. Forest Service official who has complained that some of the agency's managers ignored rules and environmental laws in spraying pesticides on forests in the Southwest will soon be without a job. The Forest Service this week informed Doug Parker, the pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry and forest health for the agency's Southwestern Region, that it plans to fire him within 30 days because he failed to follow instructions. Leonard Lucero, Parker's supervisor and director of forestry and forest health for the region, stated in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that the longtime employee turned in two progress reports that did not follow a specific format. Lucero wrote that he gave Parker instructions but Parker failed to follow them....
Cloned wildcats show ability to reproduce And then there were eight... In a potential breakthrough for bioengineering, three cloned African wildcats living in the United States have produced two healthy litters of kittens, demonstrating for the first time that clones of wild animals can breed. The successful experiment, unveiled by the Audubon Centre for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans, Louisiana, over the weekend, appeared to open the way to bringing severely endangered species back from the brink of extinction, scientists said. "The science which produced these beautiful kittens is nothing short of wondrous," commented Ron Forman, president of the Audubon Nature Institute. "We are thrilled to play a part in a scientific journey holding such enormous potential for the worlds animals."....
Biologists kill predators to protect plover All Lauten and Castelein could do in the past was put a wire cage over the nests and hope for the best. Now they routinely work with federal trappers who kill the ravens, red foxes, and feral cats that prey on plover nests. In the short term, plovers have hatched more chicks. But without more habitat, the long-term prospects for the bird remain precarious, they said. Predator control on behalf of threatened and endangered species has never been greater. Last year Wildlife Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture best known for shooting coyotes that prey on sheep and cattle, spent $3.5 million trapping and killing predators on behalf of 243 different species of plants and animals. That amounts to 19 percent of the 1,267 plants and animals protected by the Endangered Species Act. It is up from just 72 species and $1 million in 1996. Financed largely by cooperative agreements with states, Wildlife Services agents put out poisoned eggs for ravens that poke their beaks into the soft shells of young desert tortoises in California's Mojave Desert, poison and shoot badgers and coyotes that prey on black-footed ferrets in the South Dakota plains, and trap foxes eating the eggs of sea turtles on Florida beaches....
Judges Rebuff Government on Endangered Species Federal judges on opposite sides of the country ruled Friday that the Fish and Wildlife Service had acted arbitrarily and violated the Endangered Species Act when it reversed its own decisions and cut back on protections for two disparate species. The judges - one in San Francisco and one in Brattleboro, Vt. - overturned separate regulations involving California tiger salamanders and gray wolves in New England. In both cases, the Bush administration had combined sparser, distinct populations of a species with larger, robust populations, and then said protections could be reduced. In his ruling striking down the agency's 2003 regulation on gray wolves, Judge J. Garvan Murtha wrote that the agency, after making the scientific determination that a species was endangered, could not change its mind "because it lumps together a core population with a low to nonexistent population."....
Wild horse advocates fear loss of herds' genetic diversity Wild horse advocates are concerned that the roundup of up to 10,000 wild horses and burros across the West this year will lower their populations drastically and threaten the animals' genetic diversity. The roundup includes the removal this month of 1,000 mustangs from two herds in Wyoming's Red Desert. "You cannot preserve this gene pool with such reductions," said Karen Sussman, president of the Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros. "Each herd has a significant historical value." The Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for managing the herds, will hold 57 gathers this year in nine Western states. In the past three years, the agency has removed 10,000 horses each year from federal lands....
UA study: Dangers of drought heightened The Valley's long-term water supplies are less secure than once thought and more vulnerable to drought, according to a study released Thursday. The study found that severe droughts reduced flows both on the upper Colorado River and Arizona's Salt and Verde rivers, weakening the state's most important water sources all at once. That challenges the long-held belief that Arizona could count on the Colorado as a reliable buffer when in-state rivers run low. Researchers from the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research also found that extended droughts are common. The most recent drought in Arizona, which began in 1996, is one of the worst on record, but others of that magnitude have occurred at least eight other times since 1200. For Valley cities, the study's findings mean rethinking water resource plans to take into account a greater risk of drought. The effects of a drought will worsen as population and demand grow, exposing the region to possible shortages....
Immigration battle extends to fences For cattle rancher Joe Johnson, whose property is the southern boundary of the United States for eight miles of Luna County, the battle is to keep the border upright. Immigrants pull the barbed wires apart as they hop over the international boundary. Or they rip the fence out, unstaking steel and wood posts and hours of work by Johnson and his family. Fences on the Mexican side are often made from posts stolen from Johnson's ranch, he said. Immigrants in some areas have driven through the fence, not even bothering to stop and cut it with wire cutters like they used to. "There's absolutely no sense of accomplishment," said Johnson, who estimates that he spends 85 percent of his working hours fixing his fence so his cattle don't get out....
Border crossers receive ranch after suing owner An Arizona ranch once owned by a member of an armed group accused of terrorizing illegal immigrants has been turned over to two of the very people the owner had tried to keep out of the country. The land transfer is being done to satisfy a judgment against Casey Nethercott, who is serving a five-year prison term for firearms possession. Morris Dees Jr., chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the immigrants, said he hoped the ruling would send a message. "When we got into this case, ranchers all along the border were allowing these types to come on their property," Dees said. "Now, they're very leery of it, especially when they see someone losing their ranch because of it."....
Mexican cattle business linked to drug cartels The Treasury Department, trying to block an elaborate money-laundering scheme, has announced that two Mexican cattle companies are fronts for drug-trafficking cartels. The action means that cattle sold by the companies to Texas ranchers after Friday's announcement are subject to seizure by the federal government, said a high-ranking Treasury official who asked not to be named. "Cattle already purchased and owned before the companies were identified as tied to the drug cartels are not going to suddenly be blocked," the official said. The Treasury Department plans to inform cattle associations and other groups later this week of the action taken against the Mexican companies, officials said. The Treasury also will provide other information, such as the brands used by the cattle companies linked to the drug cartels. For now, buyers are expected to practice due diligence when purchasing cattle....
Montana governor: USDA 'bunch of stooges' Montana's governor, who has fought the importation of young Canadian cattle, on Saturday said U.S. states need to oversee federal inspectors of Canadian beef because the U.S. Department of Agriculture is acting in the interest of beef companies. "A few years ago, the four big meat companies, they expanded their role in this country. They bought a U.S. company called the United States Department of Agriculture," Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said in an interview. "They are a bunch of stooges." "The USDA crawled right into bed with them (the meat companies) and they run our internal policy and our international (beef) policy," Schweitzer said. Schweitzer, a Democrat in a majority Republican state, has led a state fight against imports of Canadian cattle under 30 months of age after a federal appeals court lifted a two-year ban on Canadian cattle in July....
Women on the range Ruby Roth, 42, used to make the same assumption. It was only after she left her job as an office manager and started working part-time on a ranch that she realized different. A decade later, she now manages the Zapata Ranch, a private family retreat and cattle ranch east of Santa Margarita where she lives with her three teen-age daughters. With another woman from a neighboring ranch and an assist from her kids, Roth tends the extensive gardens, the main ranch house, five guesthouses, more than an acre of grapes and about 120 head of cattle — plus a few goats, donkeys, chickens, two dogs and several cats. Like Roth, being a woman hasn't held Jean Rotta back. The 68-year-old is well known for her purebred Angus cattle, which she raises on the Huasna Valley ranch she inherited from her parents. In fact, most of her approximately 300 cattle trace their lineage to the original herd her father established in the 1950s. Rotta has lived on the ranch full-time since 1952, except for the years she attended Cal Poly, where she was a member of the college's first coed class. She earned a degree in animal husbandry, then came home to help her father run the ranch. Rotta had no brothers and said people didn't seem to think it odd that a girl would eagerly embrace the hard work of cattle ranching....
The Imus Ranch That’s music to the ears of Don and Deirdre Imus, who dedicate their entire summer to hosting eight one-week sessions at the 4,000-acre cattle ranch for children who have had cancer or blood disorders, or have lost a sibling to sudden infant death syndrome. But make no mistake: this is no frolicking summer camp or serene high-desert day spa. The Imus Ranch is an exhausting, sunrise-to-sunset boot camp for cowboys and cowgirls designed to instill the values of hard work and the Western lifestyle. “We’re straight shooters with these kids,” says Deirdre, 41. “We lay down the rules the first day here: ‘This isn’t Camp Happy Face.’” Soon after the 10 wranglers, ages 11 to 17, are outfitted in blue jeans, cowboy boots and hats compliments of Wrangler, Justin and Resistol, they’re given the rules of the cowboy way. There’s no coddling or whining, and they must clean their rooms, make up their beds, do laundry, clear their plates and say, “Yes ma’am.” And no hats on the bed—not bad manners, just bad luck. “It’s about hard work,” says Brittany Thomas, 12, of Crestview, Fla. “It’s just some place that you can have fun and meet new people and do a bit of work each day.” At least during this week, they are treated like normal, healthy children. In fact, ranch hands aren’t allowed to mention the children’s illnesses. Perhaps for the first time in years, the children are recognized for what’s right with them, instead of what’s wrong with them. It’s their strengths, not their physical weaknesses that set them apart from their peers....
Montana theatre brings Shakespeare to rural West Ranchers from miles away lounge in lawn chairs under a canopy of cottonwoods, munching on Indian tacos and homemade pie, as The Taming of the Shrew, unfolds. Babies sleep on blankets spread in the grass, while older children watch, eyes wide, or dart among the trees with friends. Many have never seen a production such as this, and appreciate the chance to see Shakespearean theatre - or any professional theatre for that matter - performed live in this north-central Montana farming town of about 1,500, surrounded by wheat fields, the chalky bluffs of the Missouri River and not much else....
PRCA terminates sanctioning of CPRA The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has terminated a longtime sanctioning agreement with the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association, per a letter from PRCA Commissioner Troy Ellerman dated August 17. In years past, CPRA rodeos counted toward PRCA world standings and Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualification. (PRCA rodeos do not count toward Canadian Finals Rodeo qualification.) CPRA rodeos will not count toward PRCA world standings or NFR qualification in the 2006 rodeo season, unless they become PRCA-sanctioned rodeos on an individual basis and comply with all PRCA-sanctioning and approval requirements. A revised agreement between the PRCA and CPRA is a possibility, but no agreement has been reached at this time. Under the terms of the existing agreement, the PRCA was not receiving any financial compensation from CPRA events. Every PRCA rodeo held in the United States pays the PRCA five percent of each event's total prize money in return for being an officially sanctioned PRCA rodeo and all the support from PRCA headquarters that goes with that privilege. Canadian rodeos have never paid that sanctioning fee. In addition, CPRA rodeos do not comply with PRCA sponsorship mandates and policies or require their rodeo officials to attend and graduate from the PRCA Pro Officials training program, which is required of all PRCA officials in the U.S....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Differences seem subtle, but are substantial There is a difference between being tough and being strong. A 600-pound Corriente roping steer is tough. A 2,000-pound Angus bull is strong. Wrestling calves this spring at a branding, there were several young men there to help flank calves. They were all good boys and came to lend a hand. The first hour, when they were fresh, it was inspiring to watch those stout young men overpower the calves. As the morning wore on, they began wearin' down. Moving slower, stepping back, leaning on the fence, breathing heavily and lookin' for a break. That's when the tough ones took the lead. Steady, balanced, using leverage, no wasted motion, sure-handed. That's how we finished the day. We see examples around us all the time in sports, in couples we know, and in folks we work with....
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