NEWS ROUNDUP

Bull bison killed after mingling with cattle; two dozen cattle to be tested Cattle just north of Yellowstone National Park will be tested for the disease brucellosis after a bull bison was caught among them, the state veterinarian said Tuesday. Tom Linfield said about two dozen cattle that had been vaccinated against brucellosis will be given a blood test, likely this spring. Linfield declined to provide the owner’s name but said that bison have been out among livestock in the area several times already this winter after leaving the park. He said the rancher involved would not have to pay for the testing. Authorities killed the bull bison, which had also gotten in with horses and ‘‘took after’’ state and federal officials who’d tried to chase it, said Marc Bridges, executive director of the state Livestock Department. Blood was taken from the bison to test for brucellosis, Linfield said....
Bison slaughter sets record A record number of bison from Yellowstone National Park have been shipped to slaughter this winter after leaving the park boundaries, a park spokesman said Monday. Al Nash said 52 of the roughly 190 bison captured last week near Yellowstone's northern border were sent to slaughter Monday without first being tested for brucellosis, the disease at the heart of the state-federal management plan that allows for the hazing and capture of wandering bison. All 190 of the animals eventually will be sent to slaughter, Nash said. In just over a month, authorities have shipped 635 captured bison to slaughter, Nash said. That's the highest ever, eclipsing the harsh winter of 1996-97, he said. Though more bison were killed that winter, 1,084, most of those were shot and 512 were sent to slaughter houses, he said. The number of bison, coming into this winter, also was at its highest documented level, an estimated 4,900 animals....
U.S. Forest Service cuts jobs About 110 U.S. Forest Service jobs are leaving Montana, northern Idaho and North Dakota as part of a massive reorganization involving hundreds of positions within the agency, a spokesman said. The cuts are in human resource, budget and finance departments, spokesman Steve Kratville said. In northern Idaho, 16 positions in human resources will be eliminated in Orofino, where employees handled personnel duties for the Clearwater, Nez Perce and Panhandle national forests. "That is quite an impact to a small community," said Kratville. Another 15 Forest Service employees working on budget and finance at locations across northern Idaho will also be cut for a total of 31 jobs lost. Some of the jobs are being relocated to a centralized Forest Service center in Albuquerque, N.M.. Nationwide, the Forest Service has replaced about 1,500 budget and finance positions with 350 jobs at the New Mexico office, Cratville said....
Column: Why are feds pushing leases in Wyoming Range? That’s why a new report - “The Wyoming Range: Wyoming’s Hidden Gem” - published by The Wilderness Society makes so much headway in demonstrating how the maligning portrayal of mainstream environmentalists is off the mark. Creating an argument for protecting the Wyoming Range, the report features positive testimonials from snowmobilers, politically conservative former county commissioners, old guard outfitters, and guest ranchers. They all call into question efforts being advanced by the U.S. Forest Service to open up tens of thousands of acres – and possibly much more – to natural gas drilling akin to what is already occurring in the Jonah Natural Gas Field and soon to sweep across the Pinedale Anticline. Between them, the Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline are home, at various seasons of the year, to 100,000 ungulates, earning it a justifiable comparison to the Serengeti, and yet the Bush administration, under the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, has also made Jonah the poster child of how NOT to sensitively blend full field energy development with wildlife....
BLM withdraws oil and gas leases in southern Utah The Bureau of Land Management state office announced Wednesday that it will at least temporarily withdraw more than two dozen oil and gas leases it was going to offer for sale next week, including parcels along the Green and San Rafael rivers and in the San Rafael Desert in southern Utah. BLM spokesman Don Banks said 30 parcels, encompassing 55,000 acres, were pulled from Tuesday's lease sale to give the agency additional time to analyze the suitability of the areas for energy exploration and development. But he cautioned that if the analysis supported such uses, the leases would be put back up for sale later this year, perhaps by summer. "We need to do more homework on this, frankly," Banks said. The BLM originally put forth 109 parcels on 172,000 acres in its Vernal, Richfield and Price offices for a February lease sale. Banks said about 80 percent of the parcels were protested. The sale now will offer 79 parcels on 117,000 acres following Wednesday's deferment....
‘Walk a Mile in My Boots' program bolstered with new partnerships Making it official with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, the Walk a Mile in My Boots work-exchange program is now expanding to include partnerships with the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The award-winning program was originally launched by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in summer 2003 and for more than two years has provided government employees and cattle producers with on-the-ground work experiences in each other's respective professions. Any cattle producer, NACD member, FWS employee, or NRCS employee can apply for the exchange program. The average length of an actual exchange runs anywhere from 2-10 days....
Fish-seeking researcher looks for effects of coalbed methane in Montana, Wyoming “The Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana is currently undergoing one of the world's largest coalbed natural gas developments with about 12,000 wells in place in 2003, 14,200 in 2005 and up to 70,000 projected over the next 20 to 30 years,” Davis wrote in a project summary. “Because coalbed natural gas development involves production and disposal of large quantities of coalbed ground water that differs from surface waters, potential exists for substantial effects on aquatic ecosystems.” High concentrations of dissolved solids, including sodium and bicarbonate ions, are typically found in water associated with coalbed methane, Davis said. Little is known about their effect on fish in the Powder River Basin, however. She is taking four approaches to find out, Davis said. One compares fish in streams that have coalbed methane development and streams that do not. The second compares fish at various points in a stream. Some of the points are above and some are below the development. The third compares fish before and after development started. The fourth compares fish today with fish surveyed in the mid-1990s. Today's fish would have been exposed to coalbed methane development, and the earlier fish wouldn't have been....
Increase in motorboat permits struck down The U.S. Forest Service improperly tripled the number of day-use motorboat permits on three popular lake chains on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a federal appeals court concluded Wednesday. The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the agency had acted arbitrarily in determining those permit quotas and must recalculate them. The decision affirms a lower court ruling two years ago that the agency was wrong to increase the number of annual day-use motor permits on the Moose, Farm and Saganaga lake chains from 2,376 to 6,892. The agency increased the number in 2002 to give local cabin owners and resorts better access. The agency has since dropped the number of permits to pre-2002 levels....
Off-road riders say they are being shut out When Russ Wolfe first began riding motorcycles around Missoula in the 1970s, the countryside seemed like a wide open place. He could tool his way up the Rattlesnake or Pattee Canyon or Blue Mountain without worry of seeing a closed sign on a trail - and usually without meeting another soul. Back then, there weren't nearly as many dog walkers, horse riders, hikers or people just wanting a quiet place using the trails around town. Those days are gone, and that's left motorcycle and all-terrain-vehicle riders like Wolfe wondering where to turn next. “We're just being pushed out of everywhere around Missoula,” Wolfe said. “Why should we have to go out of town to ride? I don't belong to no club, but I shouldn't have to. There just should be some places left open for me to ride.”....
Snowmobilers want to use road through wilderness A pro-snowmobiling group is trying to reopen an old mining road that bisects the center of the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness Area. The route, known as the Slough Creek Corridor, runs from the old mining town of Independence, about 45 miles south of Big Timber, to Cooke City, at the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park. However, opening the route likely would require a successful lawsuit against the federal government, and previous such efforts have failed. Citizens for Balanced Use, a Bozeman-based group that formed to oppose motorized travel restrictions in the Gallatin National Forest, last week gave the Park County Commission a binder of documents asserting that the commission "has authority" over the road and should exert it. Two commissioners subsequently said that they weren't sure they had authority and weren't eager to engage in a legal fight with the federal government....
Access to Gold Camp trails still limited Access to popular hiking and biking trails on a section of Gold Camp Road will be restricted at least through the weekend while the U.S. Forest Service installs fencing to keep the curious away from a historic railroad tunnel that burned Monday. The 107-year-old Tunnel 3 in the foothills above the Broadmoor area was badly damaged by a fire that investigators believe was arson. Frank Landis of the Forest Service said Wednesday the fire in the 180-foot-long tunnel destroyed the 124 12-footby-12-foot timbers that shored up two-thirds of the tunnel. The other third of the tunnel is solid granite. Landis said an agency investigator has yet to enter the tunnel because the remnants of the beams still are smoldering and because of concern about the stability of the structure....
4,000 acres: Owners will still work the spreads Two Utah families have agreed to preserve for future generations more than 4,000 acres of their ranch property. The announcement came Wednesday from the Trust for Public Lands and Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, which will control the conservation easements. The donors are: The Elaine Adams family, which sold an easement to protect the 1,738-acre Co-Op Valley Ranch started by her family in 1869 in Iron County. The Adamses were paid $1.46 million from the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Legacy Program. The Utah Quality Growth Commission's LeRay McAllister Critical Land Conservation Fund kicked in $400,000. The family also made an in-kind donation of $500,000 worth of property. * Brothers Ross, Todd and David Hinkins of Carbon County's Rainbow Glass Ranch sold a 2,280-acre easement. The commission paid $735,000 and made an in-kind donation of $267,000 worth of property. Under terms of the easements, the families will continue to own and manage the ranches - while the community is ensured that the property will remain forested and undeveloped....
Column: Forest restoration and the Yellowstone myth When a bipartisan group of nearly 100 congressmen proposed speeding up restoration of forests after catastrophic wildfire, the idea drew widespread support from those interested in giving future generations forests to enjoy. The proposal would do two important things: quicken the removal of dead trees that otherwise would provide fuel for future wildfires and accelerate the planting of new trees to restore forests that burned. Those supporting the proposal include Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth; Jim Brown, who served as the top forestry official to four Oregon governors; the Society of American Foresters; the National Association of State Foresters; and the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. With 32 million acres of national forest burned between 2000 and 2004, the need for restoration is clear. However, what is happening - or not happening - in federal forests in California provides a glimpse of the challenge of forest restoration. There, the Forest Service has only replanted 3.8 percent of forests burned in 2001. Most of the remaining burned forest is converting to brush that will dominate the landscape for centuries. Unfortunately, excessive regulation, unnecessary appeals and lawsuits prevent the Forest Service from keeping burned forests from becoming brush fields....
In the Line of Wildfire: Could a western wildfire be the country's next Katrina? At the end of summer in southern Oregon's Cascade foothills, when trees and brush have turned tinder dry and thunderstorms regularly roll overhead, Millie Chatterton and her neighbors start thinking about the lightning strike that could touch off disaster. Chatterton can't forget the afternoon in 1987 when she walked out of a grocery store in her town, Cave Junction, and saw a "big atomic mushroom cloud" of smoke blossoming on the horizon. Later, she watched the lightning-caused wildfire "blowing up trees one after another" on federal property near her own five acres. That fire, which scorched 150,000 acres of land in Oregon and California, came within six miles of Chatterton's house. In 2002, the notorious Biscuit fire, also started by lightning, came even closer, roaring within a mile of her land as it torched 500,000 acres. After each close call, Chatterton -- who is retired and gets by on a set income -- looked for help to reduce the fire threat on her property. This meant thinning Douglas firs and black oaks, and getting rid of excess brush. The work is not easy, or inexpensive: the most recent bill was $3,000. Without grants from Oregon's Department of Forestry and a local nonprofit, Chatterton says she would not have been able to afford that. Most of her neighbors, all longtime residents, face similar financial burdens. In recent years, the federal government has set aside funding for community outreach and hazardous fuels reduction in fire-prone areas. But it may not be reaching the people it's intended to help. A new study by Eugene, Ore.-based Resource Innovations shows that low-income households and communities in wildland areas, typically at the highest risk for wildfire damage, are often overlooked when it comes to funding. Around the West, there is growing concern that poor, at-risk areas are slipping through the cracks....
Babbitt knocks governor's infrastructure measure Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed infrastructure bond measure Wednesday, saying it would encourage sprawl. Instead of doling out billions of dollars for highway improvements with few strings attached, the state should tie funding to smart-growth land-use policies, Babbitt told more than 200 people at a Commonwealth Club of California gathering. Babbitt, who served as secretary of the interior under President Bill Clinton, is on a six-month tour promoting his new book, "Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America." In it, he says nationwide policies and incentives should be created to prompt states and local jurisdictions to plan up to 50 years into the future, ensuring that rivers, open spaces and agricultural lands will be protected....
State seeks change to federal grizzly rule Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Terry Cleveland wants the federal government to make it clear that the state would determine where grizzly bears would be allowed in much of Wyoming once they're removed from federal protection. Because of the potential for conflict with humans, the state has determined that grizzlies likely won't be allowed in the Wyoming and Salt River ranges in western Wyoming, nor in the southern Wind River Mountains. While parts of those areas may be "biologically suitable" for the bears, their presence there wouldn't be "socially acceptable," Game and Fish says. But in its draft delisting rule document, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes in five places that grizzlies will be allowed to expand into suitable habitat, which is defined as having three characteristics: being of adequate habitat quality and quantity to support grizzly bear reproduction and survival; contiguous with the areas where bears are found now; and having low mortality risk for bears as indicated through "reasonable and manageable" levels of grizzly bear/human conflicts....
Hotter issue in red states: global warming Global warming isn't just a "blue state" issue anymore. From the Rocky Mountain West to the Southeast, influential red-state voices are beginning to call for more concerted efforts at local, state, and federal levels to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. And they are prodding Washington to address the challenge of adapting to the effects of global warming, which many scientists say are at work. So far, movement in a handful of red states has been modest when weighed against actions in California or the Northeast. But if this momentum is sustained, it will be harder for congressional and presidential candidates of either party to campaign in these states without backing more aggressive action to reduce emissions than the Bush administration has to date, some political analysts say....
Raising cattle for more than a century The cattle pulled at 4 tons of hay from both sides of the harobed truck as it made its way around the loop of the Settelmeyer's pasture in Northern Minden. Arnold Settelmeyer brought his 6-year-old granddaughter Caitlyn along for the ride in the cab Friday morning as Caitlyn's father James Settelmeyer and ranch employee Lupe Cueva stood in the back and tossed out the bales. The brown, white and black Hereford and Angus cows turned their heads and eyed the small, blue short-bed truck following close behind, then returned to the business of consuming food. Since 1890, five generations of Settelmeyers have made their living ranching the land in Carson Valley. James said they now run about 500 "mother-head" of cattle on their more than 1,000 acres....