NEWS ROUNDUP

Grant county Rancher found slain The Grant County Sheriff's Department is investigating the death of a rancher whose body was found a few miles from his home. John Timothy Edwards, 62, was a community leader who friends said had no enemies and was quick to help people. His body was found Friday on the side of a forest road near his hay-filled truck, and authorities have not released any details other than to say Edwards was slain. Edwards was president of the Grant County Cattle Growers and had worked for more than 25 years as an athletics coach and professor at Central Arizona College before retiring and moving to New Mexico. Ty Bays, southwest regional vice president of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, said Edwards was found by his wife and a neighbor....
Third mountain lion killed A Williston man who was hunting mountain lions killed the third cougar of North Dakota's experimental season. The lion is an adult male that weighed 140 pounds, said Dorothy Fecske, furbearer biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. The skinned and frozen carcass was delivered to Bismarck on Monday afternoon, and Fecske said she will do a necropsy today after it thaws out. Andy Anderson was hunting with dogs Saturday morning west of Grassy Butte when they came across cougar tracks in the snow, put the dogs on the trail and followed on foot. "It went in a hole, and I had to crawl in the hole and shoot it. I had a flashlight, and I saw the snarl of its face," Anderson, the owner of Scenic Sports in Williston, said by telephone Tuesday. He was using a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, but the sequence of events remained foggy even Tuesday morning, he said. He knows the cougar escaped from the hole, injured one of the four dogs and took cover in another hole. He believes he shot the lion three times. "When I got the third hit on it, it was pretty well dead," he said. The wounded dog was "stitched up and is fine," said Anderson, who was accompanied by another lion hunter and a third individual. The cat measured 87 inches - or 7 feet, 3 inches - from nose to tail....
Idaho wants to use copters to track wolves Idaho wants federal permission to land helicopters in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness this winter to put radio collars on wolves that have roamed the remote mountain region since their 1995 reintroduction. The request to the U.S. Forest Service to allow motorized transport into a federally protected wilderness other than at established airstrips coincides with the state taking over management of the endangered predators from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The state was to formally take over management at a Thursday ceremony in Boise with Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Gov. Dirk Kempthorne. Foes of the helicopters are threatening to sue if the Forest Service acquiesces, saying such flights are banned by rules governing the 2.4-million-acre wilderness. They also fear state game managers will use information from the radio collars to eventually track and kill wolves, which now number 500 in Idaho. Wolf managers with the state Department of Fish and Game said using helicopters to collar wolves - the aircraft have been flying since December to count elk - is vastly more effective than trapping them on foot....
Cougar management plan drawing plenty of skepticism A proposed cougar-management plan that would allow for more intensive hunting of cougars in areas where they pose a risk to humans, pets or livestock gets a public airing Thursday before the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission. The draft plan, first unveiled last summer, has drawn less-than-enthusiastic reviews from ranchers who say it doesn't go far enough to protect their livestock and from cougar advocates who say the plan opens the door to unnecessary hunting of the big cats. It's the latest turn in a long-running wildlife debate that's been raging since Oregon voters in 1994 adopted a ballot measure banning the use of dogs in hunting cougars, a practice that the measure's sponsors called cruel....
Wolves' territory could be widened Mexican wolves would continue to roam in parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and their allowable range could be expanded, according to recommendations contained in a five-year review of the reintroduction program. Terry Johnson of Arizona Game & Fish Department, a major participant in the review, said its 37 recommendations will go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for review. By April 2007, Johnson said, he hopes the federal agency will decide on which recommendations will be implemented. Included in the review is a recommended moratorium throughout 2006 on introducing new wolves into the wild. The moratorium would be imposed if six or more breeding pairs are found in a wolf count that is taking place now. Johnson said an estimated 50 to 60 wolves live in the wolf reintroduction area, which comprises the Blue Range, the White Mountain Apache Reservation and the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. If researchers confirm that estimate, it would represent about half of the 100 wolves the original reintroduction plan anticipated. Johnson said the current area is not sufficient for 100 wolves....
Film looks at legacy of FWP wildlife restoration There are still parts of Montana's past lost in a fog of mystery. Tucked away in scrapbooks and filed away beside decades of memories are stories of dedication, effort and heroism that haven't seen the light of day in years. A new DVD released by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks aims to change that, in part, by documenting the rejuvenation of Montana's wildlife and the efforts of the private citizens that made it possible. “Back From the Brink: Montana's Wildlife Legacy” is a two-hour documentary, produced by Media Works in Bozeman, that follows the story of Montana's declining wildlife populations in the 1800s and subsequent restoration. The film, broken into two one-hour parts, shows the concentrated and grassroots efforts of Montana residents to save elk, pheasant, antelope and bear from statewide extirpation....
No Malibu repeat, thanks to land trust Fortunately, that kind of spoiled paradise -- pruned, paved and parking-lotted -- won't be coming to our portion of the California coastline, the one that stretches from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay. At least until the Big One sends the coastline tumbling into the sea, tourists and locals will be able to walk along the beach near Pigeon Point, watch great blue herons off San Gregorio and enjoy miles of ocean views uncluttered by hotels and tract homes. That's because some of our well-heeled neighbors passed the hat and came up with $200 million to preserve more than 20,000 acres of hillside, beachfront and farm land for our eternal enjoyment. On Tuesday, the Peninsula Open Space Trust announced the end of a four-year fundraising campaign to buy up the most vulnerable, rural, open lands of the San Mateo coast. The campaign began with $50 million donations from the families of two high-tech pioneers, Gordon Moore and David Packard. With help from more than 10,000 other donors, POST reached the $200 million goal as 2005 ended....
Roadless areas touted as critical to Colorado Protecting Colorado’s roadless areas is crucial for successful hunting and fishing, and those pastimes are critical to the state’s economy. That was the message sent Wednesday by Trout Unlimited officials, a fly-rod manufacturer and two retired Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists. The advocates of roadless areas held a teleconference to publicize the release of a report by Trout Unlimited on the importance of preserving pristine areas of the state for fish and wildlife. They also criticized a recent Bush administration policy that could allow road building on millions of acres of roadless land in Colorado and across the West controlled by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management....
Researchers look at tracking timber through its scent Timber researchers hope to create wood sniffers that could track lumber from forest to front-room furniture the way bloodhounds track criminals — by their scent. The devices are still in the imagination of their developers. They could allow the timber industry to certify that individual products come from woods managed in an environmentally sound way. They could make it harder to move pirated logs, reducing theft and illegal logging. Or they could help the industry be better at marketing and management. Glen Murphy, a forest-engineering professor at Oregon State University, says he envisions an electronic "wood hound." Lumber would be tagged with scents such as the three perfumery chemicals he's been using on wood samples from cedar, ponderosa pine and hemlock trees....
Will the Environmentalists Find Their Voice? For U.S. environmentalists, 2005 will be remembered harshly, because it marked the clear and undeniable end of U.S. global environmental leadership. For three decades, the United States was the world's environmental trendsetter. But now leadership comes from the European Union, a phenomenon I observed firsthand last spring as a Fulbright scholar teaching comparative environmental law at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. The most prominent example is global warming. Despite a strong scientific consensus that Earth's temperatures are rising because of human activity, the Bush administration clings stubbornly to its opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, most recently evidenced at the Montreal climate change talks. Meanwhile, in 2005 the EU embarked on an aggressive approach to limiting greenhouse gases, modeled after market-based strategies to controlling acid-rain emissions pioneered by the United States. About 12,000 industrial facilities are required to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide (a leading contributor to global warming), but have flexibility in how to achieve these limits....
Pioneering a new skiing concept Call it hardcore, call it radical, call it roots skiing, call it anything but ordinary. Take 1,600 acres of steep mountainous terrain, slather it with some of the nation’s deepest annual snowfall, string up a single second-hand double chairlift and what do you get? The world’s newest concept in downhill skiing — Silverton Mountain. Located just outside of the tiny former mining town of Silverton — an hour north of Durango in the mighty San Juan range — Silverton Mountain is both a nod to skiing’s early days and the most novel concept in the field to come along in decades. While most ski areas make more money today off real estate and retail sales than ski tickets, and tout their food, lodging and grooming machines, Silverton Mountain is all about the skiing and respect for the mountain environment....
Company: Methane water poses no threat Early results from a coal-bed methane pilot project show there should be no problems with plans to pump salty water from drilling operations into Seminoe Reservoir, officials with a Colorado-based company said. The pilot project leads the company to expect that water produced through methane extraction will meet existing drinking water and aquatic life protection standards, officials said. The Bureau of Land Management is taking public comment on its proposal to allow Dudley and Associates LLC of Denver to pump water from its planned Seminoe Road coal-bed methane development into the reservoir on the North Platte River. The company plans to drill up to 1,240 wells over the next 30 to 40 years in the western Hanna Basin....
The gas fire next time From the air, part of New Mexico's Carson National Forest looks like a spider web that's been carved into the landscape. Here on the 33,000-acre Jicarilla District, more than 700 gas wells and a maze of over 400 miles of associated roads crisscross the land. While companies have been leasing this New Mexico forest for gas development since the 1950s, the federal government has doubled the well density in the past five years, from one well every 320 acres, to one well every 160 acres. Over the next 20 years, the number of wells in the area will double, says Mark Linden, the Forest Service's regional geologist. The impact to the land has been significant. Traffic seems constant, with trucks hauling water from gas wells and oil company employees driving to read meters. A fine layer of sandstone dust rises from the dirt roads in a haze; in places, litter covers the ground. This is the landscape of the West's latest energy boom. In the past six years, oil and gas companies have nearly quadrupled the number of drilling permit applications they've submitted to the federal government. That's translated into the Bureau of Land Management issuing an unprecedented number of drilling permits for public lands in Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. In fiscal years 2004 and 2005, the agency handed out over 6,000 new permits each year....
The Niman way His theory is holding up in restaurants and grocery stores across the country. Diners and home cooks pay a premium for beef, pork and lamb bearing the brand of Niman Ranch Inc. The premium varies by the cut but generally runs 10 percent to 30 percent more than the price of conventionally raised meat. Niman Ranch's yearly revenues are approaching $60 million, Niman says. Flavor is just one factor in the Niman success story. Niman also believes that because livestock is on the planet for such a short time, it also deserves the best. Toward that goal, he's assembled a network of like-minded ranchers and farmers who believe they can remain viable by following husbandry practices that take into account the well-being of their land and their livestock as well as the taste buds of consumers. Niman Ranch livestock is raised in the open and fed only natural feeds, free of hormones and growth-promoting antibiotics. The more than 500 family farmers who have joined the Niman Ranch network are urged to raise traditional breeds celebrated for their flavor and to sign affidavits vowing to abide by the company's protocols....
CD continues singer's way West in story and legend For 57 years, this cowboy has been singing about cattle, cowboys and history along the Western trails, writing new songs about old stuff. Earl Gleason, singer and songwriter, finds great love in what he does. "I don't know what it is," Gleason said. "Part of it is the history behind it, and part of it is the joy you know you've brought to someone's life." With the release of his third recording, "The Drovers," Gleason said that seven of the songs on his new CD reflect deeply into history. "They're old in nature," Gleason said. "Some of the songs talk about things that are 80 to 120 years old." Many of Gleason's songs stem from his love of history and his determination to preserve historic places in the West. He wrote a song titled "Magdalena Town" on his "Burnt Biscuits" CD that brought attention to the stockyards that were built in 1885 in Magdalena, saving them from demolition. The stockyards are the only end-of-the-trail rail point in the United State that's left....