NEWS ROUNDUP

Montana legislator disagrees with Wyoming A Montana legislator is taking exception to the opposition by Wyoming's congressional delegation to new standards for handling water from coal-bed methane drilling - standards backed by many state lawmakers. "Wyoming needs to understand that we have the right to have a clean and healthful environment and clean water," Rep. Norma Bixby, D-Lame Deer, said Tuesday. "We don't want to be like them. They're already destroying their water, and they're already destroying their land." Wyoming's congressional delegates sent a letter last week to the Montana Board of Environmental Review, arguing that the proposed regulations have no significant environmental benefit and would harm the methane industry in northeast Wyoming. The Northern Plains Resource Council, an agriculture and conservation group that proposed the rules, also criticized the letter from Wyoming's delegates. "We do not need a permission slip from Wyoming politicians to protect our own water," said Northern Plains Chairman Mark Fix, a Tongue River rancher....
Ediltorial: Cattleman-conservationist alliance is needed If cattle ranching is to remain a way of life for anyone in the Intermountain West, then the destructive battle between grazing and environmental protection must give way to an alliance to fight the common enemy of both communities. A recent ruling by a federal administrative law judge giving the conservationists at the Grand Canyon Trust the right to buy, manage and, maybe, retire grazing allotments in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument should be seized as a means to such an end. Because, despite what has been argued by such misguided participants as the governments of Kane and Garfield counties, the real enemy of responsible ranching in the West is not the Grand Canyon Trust or any other environmental group. The enemies of sustainable ranching in the West are the agribusiness giants - Swift, Tyson and Excel - who have exploited their unchecked market power to turn a time-honored life-cycle lifestyle into a destructively efficient industry....
Wolves may drop off endangered list The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue a proposal Thursday to remove gray wolves in the northern Rockies from the Endangered Species List, a decade after they returned to the region. However, a dispute over Wyoming's plan to manage its wolves once federal protection is removed may keep the proposal in limbo. Ed Bangs, head of the government's wolf recovery program, said Wednesday that the animals have recovered so well that the agency is no longer equipped to manage so many — about 1,000 gray wolves in parts of six states. Bangs said the proposal cannot go forward until Wyoming revises its plan for managing the 225 wolves in the state once protection is lifted. Wyoming's plan would allow unlimited killing of wolves in areas outside the northwest corner of the state. Bangs calls that "unregulated human persecution." Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal said the state does not intend to change its plan. He said today's announcement is "political blackmail" to pressure the state. Plans in Idaho and Montana, where most of the other wolves live, are in place. Freudenthal said Bangs "is simplifying the issue quite a bit." He said federal officials refuse to take responsibility for managing wolves in Yellowstone once they are off the endangered list....
Csonka Pleads Guilty To Filming On Federal Land Without Permits Former NFL star Larry Csonka, the host of a cable television outdoors show, pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegal filming on national forest lands. As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Csonka pleaded guilty to knowingly conducting work activity in a national forest without obtaining a special use permit. Csonka agreed to pay $3,887 in restitution for filming about 10 shows on U.S. Forest Service land, said assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Goeke. At sentencing April 19, Goeke said, prosecutors will request a sentence of probation for one year and a $5,000 fine. Csonka is host of "NAPA's North to Alaska," billed as a show on fishing, hunting, history and customs that explores a new area of Alaska each week. The show appears on the Outdoor Life Network....
Does Post-Fire Logging Make Ecological or Economic Sense? It’s rare to find two diametrically opposed sides using the same exact posterchild to support their views. However, that’s essentially what’s developed over the past few years as the logging industry have locked horns with conservation groups and scientists in a battle over so-called “healthy forests” policy and the future of America’s public lands following wildfires. That “same exact posterchild” is the 2002 Biscuit Fire that burned nearly 500,000 acres in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area of southwestern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest and the U.S. Forest Service’s subsequent Biscuit “Fire Recovery Project” that approved cutting down 19,000 acres of ancient forest reserves and roadless wildlands in a forest of global ecological significance....
Wildlife Service Promotes Promoter of Fraudulent Science The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) last week announced that it had elevated an official long criticized for his attempts to remove Florida panthers from the Endangered Species List. The promotion came even as FWS admitted earlier this week that the panthers are being crowded out by development. Friday, the agency announced it was awarding James "Jay" Slack, the previous field supervisor for the FWS in Southern Florida, to the deputy director's post of a mid-Western regional office. Slack has worked for the FWS for fourteen years, eight of which he spent as the head of the Southern Florida office. During his tenure there, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and other environmental groups sought to derail his efforts to open more protected habitats to developers....
Wildlife officials propose moving Florida panthers out of state Florida panthers should be moved to other locations in the Southeast in an effort to increase the population of the endangered cat, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report said. The report includes a recovery plan that presents ways to help panthers thrive as their southern Florida habitat becomes more limited because of urban sprawl, agricultural development and road building. The only breeding population is located in southern Florida, where roughly 80 panthers remain in the wild, the wildlife service said. "There is insufficient habitat in South Florida to sustain a viable panther population," states the report released Tuesday. "The prospects for population expansion into south-central Florida are questionable at this time."....
New Report Details Environmental Damage From Illegal Immigration, Border Enforcement Activities In The American Southwest Some of the Southwest's most beautiful wildlife habitat and wilderness areas are suffering needless damage as increased border enforcement activities in urban areas drives illegal immigrant traffic into environmentally sensitive areas along the U.S. Mexico border, according to a report released today by Defenders of Wildlife. Compounding the problem is the accompanying Border Patrol enforcement activities, including road and wall construction, off-road vehicle patrols, and low-level helicopter flights. The report spells out several options for policy makers seeking to secure our borders while also protecting national parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges. The report focuses largely on the damage done to the Arizona borderlands, in particular Arizona's two largest wilderness areas: the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. These areas encompass more than one million acres of desert wilderness and are home to a stunning array of imperiled wildlife including the Sonoran pronghorn, jaguar, desert bighorn sheep, Gila monster, tropical kingbird, and desert tortoise....go here to view the report.
Dark Elves: The FBI takes down the Earth Liberation Front Earlier this month, after a nine-year FBI investigation, federal prosecutors handed down a 65-count indictment against 11 people--including J.P., Seattle, and Dog--involving 16 acts of sabotage and arson. Arrests were made across the country. The indictments and arrests may have broken the back of the Earth Liberation Front--which the FBI has concluded is our most serious domestic terrorism threat. They estimate that the group's members have caused $100 million in damages since the mid-1990s. The indictments reveal the extreme enviro movement's hapless clumsiness, its paint-thin philosophy, and its dangerousness. THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT originated in Great Britain, where in the early 1990s several Earth First! activists decided their organization--with its lobbying and organizing and pamphleteering--was too passive. Direct action--their term for setting fires and tree spiking, which is also called monkey-wrenching--was needed. Judi Bari, an Earth First! leader, wrote, "It's time to leave the night work to the elves in the woods." A 1993 ELF communiqué declared solidarity with the Animal Liberation Front--known for freeing minks--and now acts jointly with the ALF. Earth Liberation Fronters call themselves elves. On October 28, 1996 the elves set fire to the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in Marion County, Oregon, their first act of arson in the United States. The Earth Liberation Front's philosophy is a mix of Marx, Unibomber, and Beavis and Butthead....
Of Rocks, Creeks and Broom-Tailed Horses A plan was in place and, one day in 2003, the contractor from Utah who makes his living rounding up wild horses on public lands all over the West arrived with his team, his truck, his chopper and his portable corral and chute and set the trap. Up went the corridor through which the horses would make their last run, the channel that would lead them to a dead end, the metal fencing that would form the small pen into which thousands of mustangs had been chased before and thousands were going to follow. From outside the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the chopper took off and flew into the park, sweeping across the boulders and cholla and ocotillo until it spotted the horses, in Coyote Canyon, their home, a stunning and rugged riparian region cut by a rare and sparkling desert treasure — a stream. The chopper dropped altitude and slowed and began harrying the wild horses out of the canyon, up the ancient path used by Indians, Spanish explorers, cattlemen, wildlife, hikers, drivers of jeeps and ATVs. As the band neared the trap, the chopper peeled off and there came the dispatch of the contractor’s Judas horse — a sad name for the sad gig that was this animal’s lot in life — and it galloped before the oncoming band, leading it toward the trap, peeling off like the chopper just before the mustangs ran into the dead-end makeshift corral....
Mexico Opens Market To U.S. Bone-In Beef Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns today announced that Mexico has resumed trade in U.S. bone-in beef from animals under 30 months of age. "Mexico’s decision to further open its market to U.S. beef is a testament to the safety of U.S. beef and a clear expression of confidence in the U.S. safeguards to prevent BSE," said Johanns. "As a NAFTA partner and our second largest export market, the normalization of beef trade with Mexico is great news for our farmers and ranchers. This action demonstrates Mexico’s commitment to trade based on internationally accepted scientific standards for human and animal health."....
Idaho rethinking traditional "spud break" With machines doing more of the potato-harvest work, some parents and educators want to rethink the tradition of the "spud break" — an annual vacation in early fall that lets kids help bring in the state's signature crop. But the half-dozen districts that still have the break want to hang on to it. "It's good for the kids," said Lon Harrington, chairman of a Snake River School Board committee that has been studying the matter for the past several months. Harrington, who picked potatoes himself as a child, said it also helps farmers. "At that time of year they need extra help," he said. "Even the large corporate farms don't have enough personnel to man the system."....