NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranchers try new avenue Ranchers in this arid, high-plains territory in northeast Wyoming welcome a little bit of extra water. But with limited rangeland and sensitive soils, a lot of extra water can be a detriment. When coal-bed methane producers arrived in the Spotted Horse Creek area, Bill and Marge West were excited at the prospect of having a few extra watering holes for livestock and possibly some water to irrigate their hay meadows. What they got was more than they could use -- a deluge of poor quality groundwater. "The vast majority of the water is flushed down draws and run down ephemeral drainages. It destroys the land," Marge West said. "We had 80 acres of prime hay meadow destroyed, and we lost 200 cottonwood trees." The Wests, and scores of other landowners in Wyoming, say state regulators have allowed the destruction to continue by playing a shell game among agencies regarding water quality and water quantity considerations in permitting discharges for the coal-bed methane industry. They have petitioned the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council to take up the issue and change state rules to force the industry to provide assurances that all the water it discharges is put to measurable beneficial use....
Feds, greens point fingers over beetles Seven years after unusually high winds toppled thousands of trees on 3,000 acres southwest of Glenwood Springs, the U.S. Forest Service is finally launching a timber salvage project. Unfortunately, officials said Thursday, it comes too late to prevent a spruce beetle epidemic that has the potential to alter the look of the White River National Forest from Sunlight Mountain Resort to McClure Pass and into the Aspen area. Large spruce trees on more than 100,000 acres 20 miles southwest of Glenwood could be doomed, according to forestry expert Jim Thinnes, a regional silviculturist at the Forest Service's Lakewood office. The Forest Service completed an environmental impact statement on the project, known as the Baylor Park Blowdown, and approved a timber salvage in August 2001. A coalition of environmental groups made an administrative appeal that October. That appeal was denied, so the coalition filed a lawsuit and acquired an injunction to stop logging after 200 or so acres were "treated." The Forest Service and environmental coalition reached an agreement in February 2003 that required the federal agency to undertake additional studies before resuming most logging projects. "The original treatments were proposed when the beetles were still contained to the blowdown trees," the Forest Service said in a news release. "The settlement was made after the beetles had moved out of the blowdown and were killing healthy spruce."....
Column: An End to Forest Service Abuse on Montana’s Kootenai National Forest? The 2.2 million acre Kootenai National Forest in the extreme northwestern corner of Montana is home to our state’s most biologically unique national forest, containing Montana’s only temperate rainforest ecosystem and providing critical habitat for grizzly bear, gray wolf, Canada lynx, woodland caribou, bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, inland redband trout and over 190 bird species. Unfortunately, crisscrossed by over 8,300 miles of logging roads and fragmented by over 750,000 acres that have been logged at one time or another, the Kootenai is also home to one of Montana’s most overexploited forest ecosystems. Hopefully the Forest Service’s pattern of abuse on the Kootenai National Forest is about to come to an end. Citing past and continuing failures to manage the Kootenai National Forest in accordance with the Kootenai’s own Forest Plan in regards to old-growth forests, old-growth dependent wildlife species, water quality, fish habitat and soil productivity, the Ecology Center has filed a comprehensive lawsuit against the Forest Service in U.S. District Court in Missoula....
The Masters of Black Mountain Bob Stone steps out of his half-ton Ford pickup, slides his hands in his pockets, and surveys the mud with apprehension. “They were here last night,” he says, looking for tracks. “Well, we’ll go out to the east and see.” Yesterday, when Stone had been here in the hilly backcountry roughly 20 miles northeast of San Luis Obispo, he’d seen them — eleven mares, two foals, and one stal-lion — the Black Mountain herd, the only wild mustangs remaining in coastal California. Now it looks like the horses have moved on, maybe to another pasture near here, but just as likely up into Black Mountain. During the drier months the herd can often be found at the only lake in this section of Los Padres National Forest. “In the summer they come in when the lake is smooth,” Stone says. “They all go out, clear up over their knees, and they drink and drink. They drink for like three or four minutes — real slow.” But now, during the winter, when the herd frequents the seasonal streams that run through the numerous canyons dropping away from Black Mountain, it’s harder for Stone to spot them. Stone has special permission to drive here in the foothills of Black Mountain. Only authorized vehicles are allowed; otherwise access is by foot....
Shrub that supports beetle at center of flap An elderberry shrub growing next to Olive Orchard Road will be moved to a new home in a matter of days. That act by a developer carving out a housing subdivision of 5-acre ranchettes may cause some human brows to furrow in consternation at the regional U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Sacramento. Or maybe not. The service cares about elderberry shrubs, because sometimes they provide a home for the valley elderberry longhorn beetle, which is threatened with extinction. This particular shrub near Olive Orchard Road and others growing nearby don't have any beetles living in them, according to a biologist hired by developer Ryan Voorhees of Galt. Still, county officials three months ago ordered Voorhees to stop work on his housing project because road-grading equipment came within 25 feet of a shrub. Thursday, Voorhees appeared before the Calaveras County Planning Commission to ask for permission to transplant several shrubs out of the path of the work....
Lawsuit targets Ariz. dam Five environmental groups on Thursday accused the Interior Department of failing to protect native fish in the Grand Canyon and asked a federal court to order changes in how water flows into the Colorado River from Glen Canyon Dam. Their lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, stopped short of demanding that the government decommission the dam, a drastic solution some activists say is the only way to restore the river's ecosystem. Instead, the groups want the court to enforce an existing plan that calls for operating the dam in a way that will help the fish and other species downstream. The government has ignored that plan, the lawsuit alleges, and allowed some fish species to slide nearer to extinction. The suit could disrupt other attempts to control the river's flow from Glen Canyon Dam, most notably the ongoing drought talks among the seven states that draw water from the Colorado. That plan could clash with some of the measures prescribed to help the native fish, whose populations have declined in the 40 years since the dam was built....
Richard Pombo: Update the Species Act Efforts to update and modernize the Endangered Species Act (ESA) are an emotional topic for many with opinions ranging from completely repealing the act to not changing a single word. Yet, it seems clear that sensible improvements are long overdue. Over more than three decades, nearly 1,300 species have been listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA, but only 10 of those have recovered sufficiently to be removed from the list. During that same period, some 35 species have been found to be extinct. This stunning record of failure can largely be traced to a simple fact. While our successful environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, have frequently been updated and strengthened by Congress over the last 30 years, the ESA has seen no modernization to take advantage of lessons learned. That is why my colleagues and I -- both Republicans and Democrats -- introduced and passed the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (TESRA) in the U.S. House of Representatives last fall. TESRA makes four important changes in how we recover our most vulnerable species....
Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday. The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide. The scientists said they do not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous -- and accelerating: In 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually....
Lawsuit filed on genetically altered alfalfa Environmental groups filed suit Thursday against the federal government, seeking to rescind approval of an alfalfa strain genetically designed to resist the herbicide Roundup. The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, has national implications, but is particularly relevant to Western and Midwestern states that dominate production of the nation's $7 billion annual alfalfa hay crop. Oregon ranks 11th among states in alfalfa hay production, with $231 million a year in sales from alfalfa planted on nearly a half-million acres. Nonprofit groups, including the Center for Food Safety and Sierra Club, are behind the lawsuit, but the lead named plaintiff is an Oregon farmer and alfalfa seed producer, Phillip Geertson of Adrian. Their suit contends that in deregulating Monsanto Co.'s new seed, which was planted in Oregon and elsewhere last fall, the U.S. Agriculture Department didn't adequately weigh threats to the environment....