NEWS ROUNDUP

Questions surround wild horse sales plan Ranchers may be hesitant to adopt older wild horses, as they have been asked to do by a ranchers' group and a federal agency, because of unclear laws on what they can ultimately do with the horses. Niels Hansen, a Rawlins rancher and chairman of the Wyoming State Grazing Board, said laws are "ambiguous," and it appears ranchers' hands may be tied as to what they can do with any wild horses they buy. "It's so tough that I have no interest in it," he said. Last week the Public Lands Council -- a ranchers' group -- and the Bureau of Land Management sent out 15,000 letters to ranchers who use BLM lands in the West to consider adopting some of the older wild horses now in BLM holding facilities. The BLM says if these horses, numbering about 7,000, are moved, it will make room for more horses to be rounded up from ranges. In November, Congress passed legislation making it illegal to send wild horses to slaughter for human consumption. It did so by shutting down funding for horse inspectors as of March 10 -- a move that would prevent slaughterhouses from slaughtering horses because the animals were not inspected. But last week, the USDA put forth a plan under which slaughterhouses could have their animals checked before slaughter through a "fee-for-service" system. That would allow exporters to meet federal requirements that apply to meat sold for human consumption. As soon as the USDA put forth the plan, animal rights groups sued to block it, calling it a "scheme" that circumvents Congress's intention. They also say it violates the Federal Meat Inspection Act's requirement that the agency, not private parties, pay the cost of inspection in order to ensure that inspectors are not beholden to the industries they are hired to monitor....
Overcoming the urban-rural divide A newborn calf probably owes its life to some city slicker kids from Portland who went to Eastern Oregon to discover what rural life is really all about. Two students from Sunnyside Environmental School found the calf on the ground when they went into a pasture with a rancher from Monument to check on mother cows. The calf couldn't rise in the sub-zero weather, and its mother couldn't seem to help her baby. Maria Chapman, 13, and Maddy Meininger, 12, helped get the freezing calf inside, then they bottle-fed it and named it Blackie. "It made me feel really good inside," Maria said. In fact, she has a new ambition now. She wants to get a job as a cowhand when she's old enough: "To me, being on the ranch is like home. It's so comfortable. I belong there." The two girls were among 22 youngsters from the K-8 school who visited Grant County last week at the invitation of area ranchers hoping to bridge a urban-rural divide. The split opened up last year when some students from Sunnyside testified at a public hearing in favor of wolf protections, reciting poetry and singing a rap song. The display offended some ranchers who say they need to guard their livestock from wolves if the predators establish a population in Oregon. The children were selected from 40 applicants, and priority was given to six who had testified at the hearing last March. The visit went so well that everyone is making plans to do it again....
Editorial: What is reasonable use of scarce water? One of this year's most entertaining pieces of legislation is a bill that pits kayak parks and other recreational users of water against developers who are fearful of future shortages. The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that recreation is a beneficial and legitimate use of water and that enthusiasts are entitled to the minimum flow necessary for a "reasonable recreation experience." Senate Bill 37 is bogged down in a heated debate over how to define "reasonable." Each side accuses the other of wanting too much control over the available water. Recreational users and local governments whose economies revolve around tourism need enough water flowing through their rivers and streams to serve local river rats and tourists who come from all parts of the country. Developers say recreational users are claiming more water than they need. Democratic Sen. Jim Isgar of Hesperus, a rancher, hopes to hammer out a compromise, and we wish him good luck. "I have no problem recognizing a valid recreational amount," he says. "But we need to limit it."....
Forestland on Sale List Not All Bare Mountain property with dramatic views, the headwaters of salmon streams, tall timber and rugged backcountry, even a cave or two — all could be sold as part of a Bush administration proposal to auction roughly 300,000 acres of national forestland to fund rural schools and roads. Administration officials have characterized the land, more than a quarter of which is in California, as isolated parcels that don't belong in the 193-million-acre national forest system because they're expensive to manage and aren't vital to wildlife or recreation. But a closer look at the 85,500 California acres that the U.S. Forest Service listed for possible sale two weeks ago reveals that the tracts aren't all scraggly odds and ends. According to interviews with local forest officials and conservationists, some of the land — most of which lies in Northern California — borders scenic river corridors or has been proposed for possible wilderness protection by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Some has valuable timber. Other acreage provides winter range for deer or habitat for threatened species....
Forest Service Considers Outsourcing Two-Thirds of Workforce The U.S. Forest Service is studying how to contract out more than two-thirds of its total workforce by 2009, according to agency planning documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the national association of workers in natural resources agencies. In addition to Bush administration plans to sell off 300,000 acres of Forest Service land included in the Fiscal Year 2007 budget proposal to Congress, the agency is also seeking to privatize environmental, law enforcement, firefighting, engineering, and research positions. The agency documents say that "in accordance with current USDA direction" 21,350 full-time jobs will soon be under review for possible replacement by private sector firms. The Forest Service has a total of 31,625 full-time jobs, according to Office of Personnel Management figures for FY 2003. During the current fiscal year, 500 fire-fighting jobs in the aviation program, including the smoke-jumpers, will be examined for outplacement to interested contractors; In FY 2007, approximately half of the agency’s law enforcement agents and rangers, 600 positions, the jobs of all of its geologists, 500 jobs, and 1,100 biologists who prepare environmental studies on the impacts of timber sales, oil and gas leasing and other actions on national forest lands may be put out to bid....
Critics say money spent on California delta has produced little Frustrated members of Congress vented their anger at efforts to save California's most crucial water source, saying millions of dollars have been spent to study problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta with little to show for it. Water managers have spent 15 years "spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and billions of dollars in lost economic activity, and none of that has worked," U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, said Monday during a field hearing focused on the delta's problems. Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee and a critic of the federal Endangered Species Act, called the hearing to focus attention on the decline of four key delta fish species. The plight of the fish has raised concerns that the overall health of the vast estuary is being jeopardized by pesticides, agricultural pumping, invasive species and other problems. The delta is the linchpin of California's water supply, draining 42 percent of the state's land mass and providing drinking water to two-thirds of the state. It also is the key water source for one of the nation's most fertile farming regions. Scientific studies cost $2 million last year and are projected to cost $3.7 million this year in an attempt to find a cause for the historic drop in the number of delta smelt, striped bass, longfin smelt and threadfin shad. Implementing steps to save those species could cost millions more, according to state water officials, and could disrupt plans to divert more of the delta's water for Central Valley agriculture and Southern California water agencies....
The Flap Over Wind Power The Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service thought it would be a breeze to get interested parties together earlier this month to work out some kinks in its guidelines on how to build wind turbines with minimal harm to bats and birds. With oil and natural gas prices spiking, wind power is a growth industry. The American Wind Energy Association said some 15,000 turbines in 30 states are generating wind power. Enough units to serve 650,000 homes were installed last year, and wind is expected to provide 6 percent of the nation's electrical needs by 2020. But the towers supporting the giant windmills can reach more than 400 feet above ridgelines, and several wind projects have been linked to the deaths of thousands of bats and a substantial number of birds. Industry says the harm to birds is minimal, compared with damage done by cats, plate-glass windows and pesticides. It estimates that two to three birds per turbine are killed annually, a figure that avian experts dispute as too low....
How an ugly bird came to own a writer Condor: To the Brink and Back is a strange book about a strange bird by a strange writer. It is also an important book about an important bird by an important writer. Lots of species show up on endangered lists as the ever-expanding human species and its demands on the environment push further into territory once considered wild. But perhaps no endangered species has ever gripped the human imagination in quite the way that the condor has. Fascination with the condor is easy to understand. As National Public Radio environmental correspondent John Nielsen explains, "The California condor is a New World vulture with telescopic eyes, a razor-sharp beak and a wingspan of nearly 10 feet. Helicopter pilots says they've seen it soaring well above 10,000 feet. I have seen it glide for miles without ever bothering to flap." The giant birds date back to the dinosaur era. But dinosaurs eventually vanished from the earth. Condors remained - although just barely....
Keeping grasslands intact Eastern Wyoming grasslands are not really suitable for conversion to croplands as on other parts of the Great Plains, which means the state's grasslands still exist across relatively large, intact landscapes. That's why Wyoming plays such a key role in the recovery of endangered, threatened or declining species such as the swift fox, burrowing owls and black-tailed prairie dogs when other Great Plains states don't. Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials recognize, however, this probably will not always be the case. Increased population, rapid and growing coal-bed methane energy development, noxious weeds, more roads, more traffic and urban sprawl from cities such as Cheyenne are slowly taking a bite out of eastern Wyoming's grassland ecosystems. What better time to recognize the potential problems and to draft a grassland management plan that aims to sustain, and perhaps even enhance, those grasslands in the future, Game and Fish commissioners decided earlier this month at a meeting in Cheyenne....
Endangered bats slow runway plans Jackson County Airport's proposed runway project is crossing paths with an unpredictable flight pattern of nature -- the Indiana bat. As part of a $30 million project, the airport is seeking to realign the primary runway while extending its crosswinds landing strip to federal safety standards. However, the 670-acre site's wooded area near wetlands could be a summer roosting area for the endangered bat, according to an environmental assessment prepared to seek project approval. About 34 acres of trees would be removed during construction. The environmental report recommends no trees be toppled between April and September, when the bat migrates north. The stop-gap measure won't stem the species' declining numbers, a Bloomfield Hills-based bat researcher said....
Ag official: energy shortages mean opportunities for farms Energy sources grown on farms offer an exciting rural economic opportunity, a Bush administration agriculture official said Monday, but he urged farmers to find local sources of money, rather than relying on federal subsidies. Tom Dorr, U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary for rural development, said the administration's energy policy encourages less dependence on foreign oil, opening windows of opportunity to farmers who grow crops to make biodiesel, ethanol and other energy fuels. Dorr, an Iowa corn farmer and Federal Reserve Bank board member before his appointment during George W. Bush's second term, told a conference on clean energy here that the federal government can encourage development and provide incentives - but forget about subsidies....
Railroad workers pulling up history as they remove lines Railroad workers hit town this winter, swinging sledgehammers on the Union Pacific tracks. They're removing 60 miles of steel rails between Healy and McCracken, a stretch abandoned more than a year ago. In rural areas, Union Pacific plans to return the land to adjacent property owners. But spokesman Mark Davis said Union Pacific plans to retain its property in Healy and McCracken. "The Union Pacific will research all the line titles and determine how best to use or dispose of the property," Davis said. One option used for other abandoned rail lines involves a rails-to-trails program. Davis said the railroad had no such plan for the Healy- McCracken line but acknowledged the plusses of rails-to-trails....
Cloned Cow Gives Birth Again The University of Georgia is celebrating yet another birth from a cloned cow. Researchers were able to clone a cow from cells about three and half years ago. About two years later, that cow, named KC, delivered a calf. This past December KC gave birth again. This time to a 70 pound calf named Moonshine. What makes this is a neat story is the fact that KC was the first in the world to be cloned from a dead cow. Most come from a Petri dish. "We took the cells from a side of beef in our slaughter house back to our lab at the University and used it in the cloning process. Nine months later we produced KC," explains Steve Stice, a Georgia Research Alliance Scholar and one of the world's top cloning expert....
IT'S OFFICIAL: WHOSLEAVINGWHO IS RETIRED Whosleavingwho, American Quarter Horse racing’s co-world champion in 2002, has been retired. Co-owners Kim Kessinger and Jim Geiler made the announcement following the 8-year-old gelding’s fifth-place finish in Saturday’s Grade 1 Los Alamitos Winter Championship. “This is it for him – he’s taken us for a great ride,” said Kessinger. “We’ll probably send him to Vessels Stallion Farm (in Bonsall, California), and he’ll stay there for a while. We’ll eventually bring him to Colorado.” Bred by Gordon Haslam of Essex Junction, Vermont, Whosleavingwho earned $1,334,842 from 23 wins in 47 starts, and he ranks 15th on the sport’s all-time earnings list. The gelding’s 10 stakes victories include the 2002 Champion of Champions (G1) and six other unrestricted Grade 1 stakes – the Los Alamitos Winter Championship in 2003 and ’05, the Go Man Go Handicap in 2002 and ’05, the 2001 Los Alamitos Winter Derby and the ’03 Vessels Maturity. Whosleavingwho also won the Spencer Childers California Breeders’ Championship (RG1) in 2003, and in 2000 he was one of the few horses to qualify for all three Grade 1 futurities at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico....
From Eastern elite to Wyo ranch living She was a debutante from New Jersey who gave up a life of ease at age 20 to become the wife of a dashing cowboy who trained horses on a Wyoming dude ranch. Now, at 81, Jonesy Smith looks back with pride on her life experiences, knowing she has had the best of both worlds. "It was quite a culture shock when I faced the reality of just how different the two lifestyles were. I guess I thought if I lived here, I could just go riding all the time,” she said with a smile. “Even though that didn’t happen, I was sure I’d be OK as long as I had my horse and a lake where I could go boating.” Smith has come a long way since her precarious entry into the world of luxury as a 2-pound premature baby born in 1922 to Dr. and Mrs. Edgar Ill, who lived in an exclusive suburb of Newark, N.J. She returned to Sandy Jacques' the summer of 1942 after the death of her father and met Tud Smith, the man who would change her life. “Tud was the ranch foreman, and I knew right away he was different from other cowboys,” Smith said. “He didn’t just use a horse -- he trained them. He had a wonderful horse he had trained to jump, and he knew how to change leads. I think I fell in love with him because of his great horsemanship.” Back home in Newark, the riding academy was about to close, so Smith convinced her mother to send Amberkiss out to the dude ranch. “My horse came out by train with her own groom and a private box car,” Smith said, laughing. “And I can tell you the whole thing cost $500, which was quite a bit of money in those days.” Before the summer was over, Smith called her mother to tell her she was going to marry a cowboy she'd met. “You get on a train and you come right home." her mother replied....
Ben Johnson Ben was born in Foracre, Okla., on June 13, 1918. His father, Ben Johnson Sr., had a place on Bird Creek, northwest of Pawhuska. The senior Johnson was a respected rancher and champion roper, and is an honoree in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. And Pawhuska honors Ben Sr. every year with a memorial rodeo named after him. Ben Jr. grew up in the Pawhuska area, cowboyed on the Chapman-Bernard Ranch, and rubbed elbows with some accomplished rodeo cowboys of that time - such names as Ike Rude, Everett Shaw, Louis Brooks and Clark McIntire. Ben liked rodeoing, too, and it is likely that he would have pursued rodeo as a career had it not been for a chance encounter with people who were making a movie for Howard Hughes. It was around 1940, and Hughes was making The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell. His crew bought a load of horses out of Oklahoma, and Johnson was asked to deliver them to the movie location near Flagstaff, Arizona. At the time, Ben was working for $30 a month, and the $300 he was offered was more than he could pass up. After the shoot, he took the horses on to Hollywood, and that's where he stayed. Ben says, "They decided I rodeo a horse pretty good, so they put me in the Screen Actors' Guild, and I went to work as a wrangler, stuntman and as a double for actors like John Wayne, Joel McRae and Jimmy Stewart." Then, in 1949, Ben was offered a 7-year contract with famed director John Ford. The contract was for up to $5,000 per week, and Ben signed immediately "before Ford had a chance to change his mind," Ben explains. Ben went right to work on such films as Wagon Master, Mighty Joe Young, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande. And in Rio Grande, he and fellow actors Claude Jarman Jr. and Harry Carey Jr. did their own stunt work in a spectacular Roman-riding scene that's still a film classic. Anyone who views that scene can easily see that Johnson is a real horseman. Despite his movie success, Johnson still felt he had something to prove to himself, so, in 1953, he took a year off and hit the rodeo circuit. He had been rodeoing all along between movies and, in 1949, had set a calf-roping record at Pendleton, Ore., where he roped and tied in 12.5 seconds with a 60-foot score. "I really thought I was something," says Ben. He continues, "I got in a position where I could afford to travel, so I decided to see just what I could do." He teamed with Buckshot Sorrells, Andy Jauregui and others in the team roping. "That was the year everybody else had hard luck," says Ben, modestly, "and I beat them out and won the world. I came home with a championship, and I didn't have $3. All I had was a wore-out automobile and a mad wife. Fortunately, they let me back in the picture business, and I've stayed there ever since."....
It's All Trew: Ghost towns aplenty in Texas Panhandle During my research, I continue to find more Texas Panhandle ghost towns I didn’t know existed. Ray Carter from Lefors called my attention to Codman, located in Roberts County. The site is located eight miles southwest of Miami, alongside the Santa Fe Railroad tracks. The legend and lore appears to be as follows, based on several different but interesting versions. Codman began as an “end-of-track” tent town used during construction of the tracks. A nearby spring of fresh water helped the town become permanent. The railroad built a section foreman’s house plus a bunkhouse for single crew employees. A post office was established in 1892, closed a year later then opened again in 1901 when additional homes and businesses came to town. Eventually, a general store and two grain elevators operated successfully until the town of Hoover, just up-track to the west, began to grow. Later, when Highway 60 located away from the town, Codman began to fade into the past....