NEWS ROUNDUP

In the West, a green ranch movement Capitalizing on growing public concern about food safety, some ranchers now specialize in grass-fed beef. Rather than spending their last months in feedlots shot full of antibiotics, these cattle live more like their 19th century ancestors. A recent tax-code provision (some call it a loophole) encourages ranchers to go organic, to keep grasslands free of herbicides and pesticides – and out of development. In the past, environmental groups have mostly opposed range grazing, a position that, ironically, has put them at odds with the organic, grass-fed beef proponents. But that predisposition may be moderating. In 1997, ranchers formed the nonprofit, rancher-run California Rangeland Trust, primarily to keep rangelands in agriculture. "As California's population continues to grow, ranchers should begin to recognize the value of undisturbed landscapes to those seeking experiences outside of their urban environment," according to a report by the University of California's Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program, which praises the trust – and then adds a twist: Much of the state's native grassland vegetation evolved in the presence of grazing animals – and may be genetically programmed for grazing. "To be sure, cattle are not the same as mastodons, camels, ancient horses and bison that once grazed here, but their use of the land may better reflect that historical use than if they are excluded entirely," according to the report....
Salazar, Reid take Democratic message to `red states' Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was in Colorado Tuesday to spread the Democratic message to "red states," touring the state with fellow Democrat Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar who bucked the trend by winning last year on GOP turf. Salazar and Reid, from Nevada, made stops in Arizona before talking to reporters in Salazar's Denver office. Reid planned to travel without Salazar to Utah, Idaho and Nebraska in what he said will be a continuing effort to win back rural voters for his party. "Democrats lost around the county because we simply had forgotten about rural America," Reid said. "They thought they could win all the elections by campaigning in the big cities." "While the farmers and ranchers are dying on the vine, the Republicans are supporting the banks that are foreclosing on their mortgages," Reid said....
Bison hunt to be halted temporarily State wildlife officials said Tuesday they plan to temporarily halt the hunting of bison that leave Yellowstone National Park's western edge to allow for the hazing of animals that have ventured too far into Montana. The temporary closure is set to take effect after sunset Wednesday. Officials hope to have it lifted before Monday, when the second half of the bison hunting season starts, said Mel Frost, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The closure would apply only to hunting near the park's western side, near West Yellowstone, Mont., where, as of early Tuesday, four bison had been killed as part of the hunt, she said. The hunt began Nov. 15. Hunting would continue uninterrupted near Yellowstone's northern boundary, where 15 bison had been killed in the hunt as of early Tuesday, Frost said. Terms of the hunt allow for a temporary closure if state and federal officials deem it necessary to haze wandering bison....
Idaho may kill wolves to help elk As explorers Lewis and Clark tramped across northcentral Idaho in mid-September 1805, game was so scarce they named one waterway "Hungery Creek" and another "Colt Killed Creek" for a foal they shot and devoured. This paucity of wildlife such as elk in the steep, forested Clearwater Basin persists today, and some are pinning their hopes on an Idaho Fish and Game proposal that could change things. The agency has proposed killing some wolves that hunters believe are devouring the herds at an unsustainable pace. Thirty-five wolves were reintroduced to central Idaho in 1995, and now there are about 600 in the state. An estimated 30 are believed to roam the Clearwater. Last week, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne took the wolf-management baton from U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, giving the state more control over its growing population of predators that have federal protections under the 1973 Endangered Species Act....
Feds put Western oil shale back on front burner A hearing Tuesday on federal plans to unlock oil shale reserves in the Intermountain West was packed by small-time speculators, some of whom questioned whether today's technology would let them squeeze oil out of rock profitably. The Bureau of Land Management is expected within weeks to award experimental leases on 160-acre parcels for oil-shale development while it studies a broader program for commercial operations by late 2007. Tuesday's public hearing was the first in a series on the larger plan to unlock the world's largest oil shale reserves, which stretch across parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. But even among some people who applied for experimental leases there was skepticism that technology had advanced enough since 1982, when Exxon abandoned the last commercial effort....
Selling public land to private mining companies: Crested Butte mine goes before federal appeals court In a closely watched case that could affect similar claims throughout the West, local governments and an environmental group argued before an appellate court Monday that they have a right to challenge the sale of public land to a private mining company. The town of Crested Butte, Gunnison County and the High Country Citizens Alliance are trying to revive their lawsuit claiming the sale of 155 acres on Mount Emmons to the Phelps Dodge Corp. violates federal law. They say the Bureau of Land Management shouldn't have sold the land because Phelps Dodge can't show that the proposed molybdenum mine would be profitable as required by an 1872 mining law. Last year, a federal court sided with the BLM and Phelps Dodge, which said the law prevents third parties from challenging mining patents _ essentially deeds _ on public land. The court ruled that only people with a competing claim to ownership of the land can sue. A spokesman for Phelps Dodge said the company agrees with the ruling even though it is in negotiations to transfer the land to the previous owners....
After the fall On Dec. 19, 1913, the Hetch Hetchy Valley disappeared. With the stroke of a pen, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Congressional bill that authorized the construction of the O'Shaughnessy Dam. Ten years later, the Hetch Hetchy — 7 miles long and up to 1 mile wide, Yosemite's northern twin — started to flood. More than 90 years later, the decision still haunts. In 1987, Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel proposed tearing the dam down, and similar rhetoric could be heard just last fall. Now the Schwarzenegger administration is studying the costs and benefits of restoring the valley. If studies prove correct, tearing down the dam is not complicated, but imagining the outcome is. Novelist Greg Sarris has studied the environmental reports and historical documents, looked at the computer-generated designs and read the journals of one of the valley's earliest chroniclers, John Muir. The result is a short story that takes us to an imagined future, Muir's cathedral, where the law of unintended consequences is slowly unfolding....
Bear Witness Grizzly Man, the most extraordinary documentary of 2005 (yes, better than the penguins), tells the story of a gifted man caught in the grip of a reckless certainty who ventures into a moral wilderness and almost loses sight of his humanity. I refer, of course, to the film's director, Werner Herzog. Though his film is ostensibly about Timothy Treadwell, who spent thirteen summers living among wild grizzlies in Alaska before being killed and eaten by one of them in the fall of 2003, in the end it is also about Herzog himself--something that will come as no surprise to those familiar with his work. In his indispensable The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson writes that the German-born filmmaker "is not the ideal documentarian. You feel he has made his mind up about so many things." This is particularly true of Grizzly Man, which treats Treadwell not only as a subject but as a kind of friendly philosophical adversary. At its most revealing moments, the film takes the form of an argument, between Treadwell's heedless conviction and Herzog's rationalist cynicism, over the nature of nature and the nature of man....
Salmon That Grow Up Fast Elliot Entis doesn't much like to think of himself as a pioneer. And aside from a single framed photo of a salmon hanging on the wall, Entis' tiny office in Waltham, Mass., offers barely a hint of what has been a labor of love since 1992. His company, Aqua Bounty Technologies, has created a breed of salmon that grows twice as fast as normal farmed salmon, because they carry part of the genetic code of another type of fish, the ocean pout. Aqua Bounty is in the final stages of a five-year battle to get the product approved by the Food & Drug Administration, which has yet to approve any transgenic animal for human consumption. If the company succeeds, Entis' salmon could become the first such product on the market. He hopes to achieve that milestone by 2008. Entis' salmon grow so fast because of a change made to one of the roughly 40,000 genes in their DNA. In normal salmon, the gene that controls the production of growth hormone is activated by light, so the fish generally grow only during the sunny summer months. But by attaching what's known as a "promoter sequence" -- part of a specific gene -- from the pout, Aqua Bounty ended up with salmon that make growth hormone all year round....
Sierra Pacific Resources Intends To Build $3 Billion Power Complex Sierra Pacific Resources announced its intention to move forward with development of a coal-fired power complex in White Pine County, located in eastern Nevada, and an approximately 250-mile transmission line that for the first time would provide an electric connection between the northern and southern parts of the state. The power facility, which would be the largest energy development project in the state since Hoover Dam, will serve customers of Sierra Pacific Power Company and Nevada Power Company in northern and southern Nevada, respectively. It initially calls for two 750 megawatt (MW) units utilizing the latest, state-of-the-art, fully-environmental compliant, clean pulverized coal technologies. The plans also provide for expansion with two 500 MW coal gasification units when the technology becomes commercially viable. The company said the facility's initial 750 MW operating unit is expected to become operational during 2011 with the second unit coming on stream within the following three years. The planned transmission line not only will provide the all-important tie between northern and southern Nevada, but also will address the company's and the state's emphasis on development of renewable energy resources....
Column: Corps of Engineers' plan for spring rise is bad for water conservation The Army Corps of Engineers is proposing a Missouri River management plan that includes drought water conservation measures, which is good for the state, as well as a spring rise supposedly to cue the endangered pallid sturgeon to spawn, which is harmful to the state. The spring rise is required by the Endangered Species Act and will be implemented if the storage in dams exceeds 36.5 million acre feet of water, which is likely. These two items are opposed in reference to water conservation. Oahe, Garrison and Fort Peck reservoirs are very low, resulting in water intakes being above the reservoir levels. Even the modest spring rise proposed will lower the water levels. Spring rises, like all flood pulses, increase streambed degradation and increase sedimentation in the reservoirs. The spring rise will make it harder to maintain water levels in the reservoirs during the spring fish spawning season. All of this is especially distasteful because no science has been presented to support the contention that the pallid sturgeons are cued to spawn by flow pulses. Studies on the Marias River in Nebraska, the Missouri River below Fort Peck Dam in Montana, the Yellowstone River in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, and the Missouri River downstream of Gavins Point Dam all indicated that flow is not controlling spawning....
Immigration law changes will cost farmers Law changes growing out of homeland security issues could mean some hardships for U.S. farmers and ranchers, according to the nation’s largest general farm organization. American Farm Bureau Federation figures say that amendments to immigration laws could cost U.S. agriculture as much nine billion dollars a year. Farm Bureau economist Pat O’Brien says 50 percent of the cost of fruit and vegetable production is hired labor, about half of which is migrant. “You affect the supply of that labor available, you’re going to increase the cost of operating in that sector dramatically,” says O’Brien about the consequences of preventing migrant workers from entering the U.S. to work, “you’re going to displace American producers as more competitive production from abroad comes into the U.S.” If migrant workers are kept out, O’Brien says producers will have to draw labor from the higher paid janitorial and construction jobs. O’Brien says wages paid to migrant farm workers have more than doubled in the last twenty years.