NEWS ROUNDUP

Moving In for the Kill With Montana's Buffalo Hunters Boots crunching on iced-over snow, Jeff Vader creeps toward two animals from the world's last wild herd of pure buffalo. The normally chatty 50-year-old crouches behind a cluster of juniper trees and puts a finger to his lips. The four men behind him fall mute. Vader lies on his belly, points his rifle at the biggest bull and becomes part of a contentious experiment in controlling an icon of the American West. Vader has one of 50 permits from Montana to kill a buffalo during the state's first legal hunt of the animal in 15 years. The quarry belong to a herd of 4,000 that roams freely in Yellowstone National Park, where hunting is banned. But winter snows chase them across the park boundaries into southern Montana, where they are not welcome. The buffalo can carry brucellosis, a disease that causes cows to miscarry and that Montana views as a threat to its $1-billion cattle industry. The state confines the buffalo to a narrow slice of land, and chases them back to the park by helicopter and snowmobile should they venture too close to the few nearby ranches with cattle....
Big birds at it again In 2004, Ken Andersen noticed that Jay Russ' pasture in Loleta was grazed as short as a golf course. ”If I was a golfer I could have putted a ball,” Andersen said, “except for all the goose poop.” By all accounts, the Aleutian cackling geese that can seen by the thousands in dairy and beef pastures in winter and spring are eating a lot of grass. So much, that it has a surprisingly serious effect on ranchers' bottom lines. Anderson is Humboldt County's University of California Cooperative Extension dairy advisor, and he recently crunched numbers from experiments he launched in 2005. Andersen presented the figures to a group of ranchers at the Humboldt County Agriculture Center. He fenced off areas in strip-grazed fields geese feed in, then calculated the loss of feed and how much beef or milk that food would have produced. According to Andersen's figures, on one 500-acre plot in Arcata, a beef rancher lost $69,400 gross revenue. If it were a dairy pasture, that loss would have reached $181,000 in Andersen's analysis; if it were an organic milk pasture, it would have climbed to $181,000....
Modern techniques help deal with coyotes The coyote - adaptive, secretive, resilient - continues to challenge wildlife management specialists in Wyoming who seek an effective response to "one of the most amazing animals on the face of the planet." That's the opinion of biologist Rod Merrell, a USDA Wildlife Services employee who also has studied mountain lion, wolf and grizzly bear predation on livestock and wildlife in the state. In 2004, coyotes took almost 20,000 of the 30,000 Wyoming sheep and lambs lost to predators and were responsible for 58 percent of total predation on calves and 25 percent of predation on cattle in Wyoming. "Coyotes have saturated all of the landscape. It's not that it's a bad species, but when it causes problems, it needs to be managed," said Merrell, who has been a trapper all his life. The best time to kill coyotes for population reduction in areas where there is historical damage to livestock or wildlife is mid-January through mid-June, when coyotes are breeding and establishing territories, according to Merrell. During this time, there is no major dispersion of movement....
Feds reduce grazing fees Ranchers in Wyoming and elsewhere will pay less to graze livestock on public lands this year. Federal agencies this week announced a decrease in grazing fees, citing a rise in ranchers' production costs as the reason. The Bureau of Land Management, which administers grazing permits on federal lands in Wyoming, dropped the price to $1.56 per animal unit month from $1.79 a year ago. Prices go into effect March 1. An animal unit month, or AUM, is the amount of forage needed to sustain one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. The price is calculated using a formula developed in 1978 with the Public Rangelands Improvement Act and approved by Congress, and has continued under a presidential executive order issued in 1986. Under that order, the grazing fee cannot fall below $1.35 per AUM, and any increase or decrease cannot exceed 25 percent of the previous year's level....
Groups clash over preserving Arizona lands When Arizona became a state almost 100 years ago, managing and preserving millions of acres of pristine desert wasn't a priority. Developers weren't buying up land faster than they could build houses, and conservationists weren't clamoring for the preservation of open spaces. Today, with development extending the Valley's edges a little more every day, managing Arizona's most valuable asset is a top priority. But the agency tasked with that job is still operating under many of the same rules that established the State Land Department in 1912, leaving it struggling to compete in today's fast-paced real estate market, let alone stay ahead of the state's soaring growth. In the past, voters and the Legislature have turned down proposals to reform the Land Department or set aside more state land for open space because of confusion over the proposals or fighting between ranchers and conservationists, both of whom have big plans for the land....
Group seeks anti-wolf initiative An anti-wolf group wants to put an initiative on the ballot to remove wolves from the state "by any means possible." Wolves have been controversial in Idaho since the federal government reintroduced 15 of the animals in 1995, decades after they had been killed off in the state. Some hunters say the wolves diminish deer and elk populations, while some ranchers say wolves put their livestock at risk. The group launching the initiative, the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition, is tired of seeing wolves treated better than humans, Ron Gillett, head of the coalition, told The Spokesman-Review. "This is a mechanism for the people of the state of Idaho to show their voice and flex their muscle and get these wolves out of here," said Gillett. The initiative would also shut down the state's Office of Species Conservation....
Key agreement in water wars After 84 years of bickering, the seven states that share the waters of the Colorado River have agreed on ways to share the pain of future droughts. If embraced in Washington, the deal would help Western states avoid costly court battles and economic uncertainties. Colorado would be allowed to continue using its share of the river's waters. The delicately negotiated deal contains important water protections for both the upper basin states - Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah - and the lower basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California. The agreement still faces a long bureaucratic process before it can be implemented, but it represents a giant stride in settling what had been, until last Wednesday, a seemingly unresolvable interstate feud. The deal wouldn't replace the all-important 1922 interstate compact that governs how much Colorado River water each state can use. Instead, it would improve how the river's limited supplies are managed in drought conditions....
Another attempt to delist wolves With an eye toward recent court rulings and Wyoming politics, the federal government is moving once again to delist wolves in the northern Rocky Mountain region. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday an “advance notice” for delisting wolves in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon and a small part of north-central Utah. The announcement launches a 60-day public comment period, and a formal delisting proposal could come within weeks or months after that, said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery coordinator. Bangs explained that the service’s plan is designed to address issues raised in recent court rulings in Vermont and Oregon. The Oregon ruling determined that the protected status of wolves in the Northern Rockies could not be changed, largely because a reclassification proposal for those wolves applied to a “distinct population segment” stretching across nine western states. “Court rulings from this past year determined that we didn’t do enough analysis and the DPS was too large,” Bangs said. The plan announced Thursday would apply to a much smaller area, with more detailed analysis of suitable habitat and potential threats to wolves, Bangs said....
McCombs' ski development has been focus of lobbying San Antonio billionaire Red McCombs, who wants the U.S. Forest Service to let him build a huge ski village atop a southwestern Colorado mountain pass, lobbied to get the official who oversees the agency appointed. Since then, McCombs and his allies have met repeatedly with the official to discuss the controversial project, records and interviews show. McCombs, a major donor to the University of Texas, and his partner pushed to have Mark Rey, a longtime timber industry lobbyist, appointed undersecretary of agriculture, overseeing the Forest Service. Rey said through a spokeswoman that decisions regarding McCombs' proposed $1 billion development at Colorado's Wolf Creek ski area are being handled by regional Forest Service officials in the state. But documents obtained by The Denver Post show that Rey has met repeatedly with key proponents of McCombs' project, and that Rey's deputy, David Tenny, has kept tabs on it....
Army trains with pack animals in Wyoming Thirty-one soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division spent much of last week in a barn near here, learning the finer points of donkey management. The soldiers plan to pass on their newly acquired skills to soldiers headed to Afghanistan, where pack animals come in handy moving supplies to remote, mountainous areas. The instructors were a group of outdoors and livestock specialists led by Ron Ostrom, a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer in the Shoshone National Forest. Ostrom said the requirements of donkeys and mules in Wyoming aren't much different than in Afghanistan. "You package it up and load it pretty much same way," he said. "In the Forest Service, we use different tools and saws and camping gear, and these guys have got their MREs, water, guns, explosives and their stuff that they need." Friday was the last of five days of training for the soldiers, with Ostrom guiding them into the 7,900-foot McCullough Peaks south of Powell....
Helicopter conflict swirls above Rogue A helicopter company wants permission to fly forest fire training runs inside the federally protected Rogue River canyon near Grants Pass, but river advocates and some recreational groups are lining up against the proposal. Carson Helicopters Inc. of Grants Pass had been training without a permit inside the federally designated Wild and Scenic River corridor for five years without the knowledge of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said Chris Dent, BLM's river manager for the Rogue. "It came to our attention last May, and we asked them to stop and they did," Dent said. "They pleaded ignorance." The BLM oversees the popular recreation area, which hosts more than 100,000 rafters, floaters and fishermen each year, agency statistics show....
Snowmobilers file motion Led by a national recreational advocacy group based out of Pocatello, Idaho, several local snowmobile organizations announced Friday afternoon the filing of a motion to intervene in a lawsuit challenging motorized access to the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The Top of Utah Snowmobile Association, American Council of Snowmobile Associations and Beaver Creek Lodge, in conjunction with Pocatello-based BlueRibbon Coalition, said through a statement that the motion is intended to defend a Forest Service management direction that divided the Franklin Basin and Tony Grove area among motorized and non-motorized recreationalists last July. A lawsuit against the Forest Service decision, which was made following a “mediation-arbitration” process to settle the winter recreation dispute, was filed by a group of organizations in December. The December lawsuit — filed in U.S. District Court and backed by Nordic United, Bear River Watershed Council, Bridgerland Audubon Society and Winter Wildlands Alliance — accused the Forest Service of, among several things, not completing required environmental studies before the July decision, a stance the group led by BlueRibbon contests. “Extensive environmental analysis was conducted during the Revised Forest Service Plan process,” said Brian Hawthorne, public lands director for the BlueRibbon Coalition. “I’ve got a foot-high stack of environmental documentation sitting on my desk for this process alone. My goodness, how much analysis do we need?”....
Environmental plan hopes to end battles over development It's been about 25 years since a tiny lizard living along sand dunes nearly brought the Coachella Valley economy to a crawl. Now an alliance of planners, builders and local leaders wants to make sure history doesn't repeat itself. Backers of the plan say it will add 34 percent more land to a conservation area that already consists of 534,000 acres. Though it would restrict some development, mostly in the hills surrounding the valley, the plan would still enable the desert's population to nearly triple to 1.1million at build-out in 2066. The $1.8 billion plan would link 75 years of home-building, road construction and business development to habitat preservation for 27 species of Coachella Valley wildlife....
Preservation tied to valley development in sweeping habitat plan To create the proposed plan, scientists identified the 11 protected species in the valley and 16 others that could become threatened in the next 75 years. Planners then mapped out habitat for the 27 species and divided it into 21 conservation areas over 747,400 acres of the 1.1 million-acre planning area. About 534,200 acres are already protected because they are public land or owned by conservation groups. Another 180,000 acres designated for conservation - much of it privately owned, including specific habitat - are home to ecological processes like moving sand or are important for preventing genetic isolation of wildlife. To complete the reserve system, the plan ties preservation to development. It would raise about $1.8 billion over 75 years to purchase land from willing sellers and pay for management and administration. About a quarter of the money would come from a fee on new development. The fee is now set at $5,270 per acre for commercial and industrial projects. The residential fee is based on a sliding scale related to density. It works out to about $1,180 for a new, single-family home....
100 landowners say they’ll back program that protects grouse More than 100 landowners from Glade Park to the northern San Luis Valley have expressed an interest in signing a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances in the last year. The program, which is approaching approval by the Fish and Wildlife Service, would encourage landowners to preserve Gunnison sage grouse habitat to keep the chicken-sized bird from being listed. Under the voluntary program, landowners would sign a 20-year contract with the Colorado Division of Wildlife to protect the grouse. The Division of Wildlife would then write a plan and make recommendations on what parts of the property would remain the same and what improvements should be made. According to Gary Skiba, southwest region conservation biologist with the Division of Wildlife, the 100 interested landowners have offered to put about 100,000 acres into the program....
Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) Named "Wildlife Villain" After a year that saw both the first vote ever to effectively dismantle the Endangered Species Act, and a tremendous conservation victory on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund today named eight members of the House of Representatives and four members of the Senate as 2006 "Wildlife Heroes." The selection of these heroes and the naming of Rep. Richard Pombo as the 2006 "Wildlife Villain" were based largely on the leadership the congressional members played on those two paramount issues. In conjunction with the awards, the Defenders Action Fund released its 2005 Conservation Report Card, which evaluates how well members of Congress protected wildlife and wild lands for future generations. This year's report card includes votes on two of the most important conservation and wildlife issues in decades: a vote to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a vote for a substitute bill to counter Rep. Pombo's bill to gut the Endangered Species Act. The eight House members receiving the 2006 "Wildlife Hero" awards are: Representatives Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), John Dingell (D-MI), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Ed Markey (D-MA), George Miller (D-CA), Nick Rahall (D-WV), Jim Saxton (R-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM). Senate awardees are Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and Harry Reid (D-NV)....
Ensign: Deal will keep federal land sale profits in Nevada For the first time in three years, President Bush's budget will not include a plan to funnel millions of dollars in profits from federal land sales around Las Vegas into the federal treasury, Sen. John Ensign said. Ensign, R-Nev., said he has secured a verbal commitment from the Bush administration to keep the proposal out of the 2007 budget as part of a compromise. Nevada's congressional delegation instead wants the money to continue going to recreation and conservation projects across Nevada. "When the president's budget comes out (Monday), it will have no provision in there to go after that money," Ensign told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Under the Southern Nevada Public Management Land Act, profits from the sale of excess Bureau of Land Management property in Clark County are set aside for the public acquisition of sensitive land around Nevada and other specific purposes....
Company: BLM drilling plan 'unfeasible' A Bureau of Land Management plan to allow one well for every 160 acres in the Atlantic Rim area would make development of the natural gas field impractical, the company proposing the project says. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. wants to drill wells every 80 acres, and people who work in the energy industry have joined the company in speaking against the BLM plan. “We believe that is going to render the project technically unfeasible,” Tom Clayson of Anadarko said during a public hearing here Thursday night. Anadarko officials have met with Rawlins business leaders expressing their concern about the 160-acre well spacing and BLM's phased development plans....
Too much too fast? Landowners, environmentalists and western Colorado communities are asking federal land managers to slow the pace of oil and gas lease sales as nearly 168,000 acres of public land are ready to go on the auction block. Some of them are formally protesting leases to be offered Feb. 9 during the Bureau of Land Management's quarterly auction, one of the largest in the past three years. The disputed parcels include 8,500 acres the public has proposed as federal wilderness and more than 16,000 acres in community watersheds. Dave Kearsley, a Grand Junction investment adviser whose land is up for lease, said he doesn't understand why the BLM won't postpone the auction as he and other area residents requested. "We're not going to solve the energy problem overnight, so there's no need to rush," said Kearsley, who owns 50 acres on the Grand Mesa, along Colorado 65 and near the Powderhorn ski area. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., made the same argument last week when he and his brother, Democratic Congressman John Salazar, asked the BLM to delay the sale....
Towns move to protect water from drilling Communities in western Colorado, where energy development is booming, have gained support from the state’s congressional delegation as they try to keep drilling out of areas that supply their drinking water. Palisade and Grand Junction are protesting plans to sell federal oil and gas leases in their watersheds at a Bureau of Land Management auction Thursday. Democrats Sen. Ken Salazar and Rep. John Salazar have asked the bureau to postpone any action so the potential effects on the springs and other water sources can be studied. “We need to take the time to do this the right way,” said John Salazar, whose district includes the two communities. The 10 parcels totaling 16,500 acres on the Grand Mesa include about 70 percent of Palisade’s watershed and are among 167,345 acres the bureau will offer for lease. Most of the land is in western Colorado, where much of the state’s record natural gas production is taking place....
Location, impact of energy corridor remain in question Comments on an effort to designate energy transmission corridors on federal lands throughout Montana and 10 other western states range almost as widely as the terrain they’ll traverse. Not surprisingly, almost half of the 220 written or oral suggestions on what should be looked at in an upcoming study — known as a “Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement” (PEIS) — came from energy producers and distributors. The corridors would be used for oil, gas, and hydrogen pipelines and electricity transmission and distribution facilities. Designating energy corridors is a little-known requirement of the 2005 energy bill signed last August by President Bush. The point of the PEIS is to have the investigation of the impacts of an energy corridor completed so that when a project is proposed in the future, it can be implemented quickly. Four alternatives are being considered, although the actual locations and numbers of the corridors remain in question....
Owens Valley residents battle Los Angeles over water rights The strange daily ritual started after Los Angeles water authorities slapped a chain and a lock on a wheel controlling a diversion gate on Pine Creek -- the lifeblood of a mountain enclave known as 40 Acres. Locals cut the chain and added a lock of their own to keep the gate open. The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power closed the gate once more and installed a heavier chain. Locals used a cutting torch to sever the new chain. Now there are two locks on the chain. Every morning, a group from 40 Acres opens their lock, removes the chain, and turns the wheel to steer water their way. Every afternoon, a Water & Power crew opens its lock to send the water cascading into the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. This has been going on for two years....
Steer garners record stock show bid When bidding at the annual Sale of Champions auction ended Saturday at the Fort Worth stock show, Whitney Holcomb was planning for college, and Cool, her 18-month-old Grand Champion Steer, was headed to the Fort Worth Zoo. Whitney, 16, of Tyler, received a record bid of $160,000 for the steer, money that she said she will use to attend Texas A&M University in two years. The bittersweet backstage farewells, in which teenagers say goodbye to animals destined for the slaughterhouse, were largely absent from this year's auction. The winning bidders, XTO Energy and the Gunsmoke Grill and Saloon, will donate Cool to the Fort Worth Zoo. "I can't wait to come and visit him," Whitney said, "and I know a lot of little kids are going to enjoy seeing him."....
The gun heard 'round the West All gone, all gone, all gone. The gun as family totem, the implied trust between generations, the implicit idea that marksmanship followed by hunting were a way of life to be pursued through the decades, the sense of tradition, respect, self-discipline and bright confidence that Winchester and the American kinship group would march forward to a happy tomorrow -- gone ... if not with the wind, then with the tide of inner-city and nut-case killings that have led America's once-proud and heavily bourgeois gun culture into the wilderness of marginalization. And now Winchester is gone, too, or at least the most interesting parts of it. The traditional company whose symbol was a fringed rider flying across the plains on a pinto, gripping his trusty Model '73, is finally biting the dust. The entity -- now tecBig birds at it againhnically U.S. Repeating Arms, which produces the rifles and shotguns as a licensee of the Olin Corp., which still owns Winchester ammunition -- announced last month that it was closing the plant in New Haven, Conn., where the rifles and shotguns have been fabricated for a century and a half. Some Winchesters will continue to be built overseas, but three guns -- the classic lever-action rifle of western fame, the bolt-action hunting rifle (called the Model 70) and the Model 1300 pump-action shotgun -- will no longer be manufactured....
His spurs are well-earned on the ranch Which is how I ended up at Arizona Cowboy College in Scottsdale one sweltering Sunday in October to begin a six-day course on a working ranch in the Sonoran Desert. The property backs up to the high country of the Tonto National Forest. The McDowell Mountains run jagged across the horizon to the south and all around you are the harsh but beautiful desert flats where the ground is as dry as powder and the landscape dominated by all things prickly, including stately 100-year-old saguaro cactuses and nasty chollas, which are sometimes called jumping chollas because they're said to throw their spiny branches at unsuspecting passersby. When I called Lori Bridwell, whose late husband, Lloyd, founded the cowboy school in 1989, she made sure I knew what I was getting myself into. "This isn't a dude ranch," she said. "There's no luxury involved." No cutesy hay wagons or line-dancing lessons; no morning rides to some pastoral location to eat blueberry pancakes and apple wood-smoked bacon. I'd be sleeping in a dusty bunkhouse with half a dozen other greenhorns, an eclectic group that included a heavy-set sporting goods salesman from Calgary, Canada, and a young fashion reporter from Germany. All of us would be getting up at dawn to spend long days learning to handle, groom, saddle, mount and ride a horse. The only thing Lori would guarantee: We would be sore for days afterward. Rocco Wachman, the head instructor at Cowboy College, was just as blunt: "I'm not the least bit interested in teaching anyone how to play cowboy for a week," he said at 6 o'clock on our first morning. "I'm here to teach you to be a cowboy. Which is demanding, dirty, hard, physical labor. It's also a dying art."....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Pleased to walk in his own boots These are the boots of a salesman, specifically an ag sales rep. And they've taken me a million miles sellin' to people who feed the world. Which makes me part of somethin' good, somethin' bigger than myself. Everybody's good at somethin'; farmers, vets, cowboys, dairymen ... and me? I can sell. I can sell rubber boots to a Bedouin, sunglasses to a mole. I can talk my way up from a C+ to a B-. People buy from people, especially in our business. Which places the obligation on me to deliver what I promise and be there after the sale. My company has to be there for me, too, and it's my duty to ride for the brand....