NEWS ROUNDUP

Reach of Clean Water Act Is at Issue in 2 Supreme Court Cases More than half of the nation's streams and wetlands could be removed from the protections of the federal Clean Water Act if two legal challenges started more than a decade ago by two Michigan developers are supported by a majority of the newly remade Supreme Court. One case involves a developer who wanted to sell a wetland for a shopping center and in preparation filled it with sand without applying for a permit, in defiance of the authorities. The second was brought by a would-be condominium developer who applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to fill a wetland and was denied. Oral arguments in the cases — the first before the newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr. — are scheduled for Tuesday morning. They will pit developers and a phalanx of their industrial, agricultural and ideological allies against both the solicitor general and a who's who of environmental lawyers in an argument over the scope of one of the country's fundamental environmental laws. The central question is where federal authority ends along the network of rivers, streams, canals and ditches. Does it reach all the veins and arterioles of the nation's waters, and all the wetlands that drain into them? Does it end with the waterways that are actually navigable and the wetlands abutting them? Or is it some place in between? Also at issue are who draws those lines — and how — and who decides what the Clean Water Act means by "navigable waters" and "the waters of the United States."....
City kids, ranchers try wolf detente This is Grant County -- a wide open "Dances with Wolves" kind of place. But the sentimental movie treatment isn't what 20 young pro-wolf activists from Portland are getting this week as they visit ranches in Eastern Oregon. The idea for their trek hatched last year after some students from the K-8 Sunnyside Environmental School annoyed anti-wolf ranchers at a public hearing by reciting poetry and singing a rap song while testifying in favor of legal protections for wolves. But instead of nursing a grudge, the ranchers invited them to Grant County for a visit. The students arrived Saturday and are staying in pairs with families scattered around this rugged county. They'll head home Wednesday. Levi Zalman, 13, and Dustin Ables, 12, rose before dawn and braved sub-zero temperatures over the weekend to help ranchers Rusty and David Clark feed 200 cattle on their horse-drawn wagon near Long Creek, population 220. "This definitely is an experience," said Dustin, a sixth-grader, jumping down from the wagon after helping scatter 1,300 pounds of hay....
Tracking Melanie the wolverine The U.S. Forest Service has trapped the first wolverine ever captured and fitted with a radio collar in the Pacific Northwest. Biologists hope to learn more about the habits and range of the elusive creatures known for their ferocious nature. "No one's ever studied them in the Pacific states before," said Keith Aubry, who's heading the pilot study through the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station. Biologists caught their first wolverine just over a week ago in a subalpine forest. It was a 19-pound female, measuring nearly 3 feet from her nose to the tip of her 7- inch tail. She looked much like a small bear cub, only with long ivory-colored claws. While she was tranquilized, biologists weighed Melanie and punched in an ear tag, keeping part of the skin for a DNA sample. They fitted her with a radio collar that will emit a signal so she can be tracked through July 2007. They'll find out how far she travels and what elevation she covers....
Those who bother elk face fines On a starvation diet and approaching her third trimester, this mother is not having a happy pregnancy. And to make matters worse, every once in a while, someone will sneak up on her and chase her around, which stresses her out and wastes the precious energy she's working to preserve. Such is the plight of almost all cow elk this year, said Bill Andree, a district wildlife manager with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The heavy snows have pushed elk down the mountain to where people recreate, and the clash of wildlife and humans is creating a dangerous situation for everyone involved. The elk are forced to burn calories to get away from humans and people run the risk of getting gored by the critters, said David Van Norman with the U.S. Forest Service....
Panel to put off jumping mouse decision The government said Friday it will put off a decision on whether to strip endangered species protection for the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, citing contradictory evidence on whether the rodent is unique enough to warrant special consideration. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will take public comment until April 18. Listed by the government as a threatened species since 1998, the Preble's meadow mouse has been blamed by some developers for getting in the way. Its habitat stretches from Colorado Springs north through Denver and Fort Collins to Laramie, Wyo. A year ago, Interior Secretary Gale Norton proposed removing the mouse from the endangered species list. She cited work done by biologist Rob Roy Ramey of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who said the mouse is not distinct from the more common Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. After the work was questioned, a recent U.S. Geological Survey study commissioned by the Interior Department concluded the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is in fact a unique creature with "distinct evolutionary lineages that merit separate management consideration."....
Nevada mine cleanup languished as regulators bickered, documents show Disagreements and distrust among regulators charged with directing the cleanup of a polluted Nevada copper mine hampered the government agencies' efforts and likely stalled removal of contamination, a process now expected to take at least a decade, records obtained by The Associated Press show. Internal documents the Interior Department mistakenly turned over to a whistleblower suing one of its agencies reveal a turf battle spanning five years between federal and state environmental regulators at one of the most contaminated abandoned mines in the West. In one, an Interior Department lawyer said the cleanup order the state wanted Atlantic Richfield Co. to adopt in 2002 at the former Anaconda copper mine was so weak the Justice Department would forbid federal regulators from accepting it. In another, the head of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection complained that the cleanup approach his agency advocated was "a polar opposite" of one backed by Interior's Bureau of Land Management, which he accused of acting out of its own "self-serving interest" to avoid liability....
Wild horses rounded up in southern Nevada's Red Rock Canyon Bureau of Land Management officials pulled 37 wild horses off the range this week as part of an "emergency gather" in and near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area outside Las Vegas. Officials said 16 of those horses were scheduled to be returned to the wild on Saturday. The rest are destined for a wild horse facility in Ridgecrest, Calif., where some will be put up for adoption and those over 10 years old will go to a long-term holding facility where they could be put up for sale. BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said the round up was necessary because last year's Goodsprings wildfire had wiped out almost 40 percent of the habitat where the herd roamed. She said the BLM has asked U.S. slaughterhouses not to accept freeze-branded wild horses, although such has been the fate of some in the past. Foreign buyers are allowed to purchase horses under the sale authority for long-term holding facilities....
Spaced Out in New Mexico The spaceport, as of this writing, still does not have its required Environmental Impact Statement, as required by the federal government before it can operate on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an arm of the US Department of the Interior. It has been worked on for a number of years, and passed its latest deadline in fall 2005. The ranchers who live on most of the private land needed for the launch site in Sierra County, N.M., have indicated willingness to sell the land, but as yet have not been offered anything. The Cain and Wallin families, among others, have ranched in the area for more than 50 years. It must be an odd and interesting meeting for the Cain family when these people who have lived off the land all of their lives talk with people who want to use that same land to leave the Earth, albeit briefly. And it is a bit ironic that the Cains did not even have phone service until the 1980’s. And now because of the favorable features of the land around them (elevation, desolation and such) they are soon to be part of one of the newest games to be played by the wealthy....
Texas copes with drought Jim Selman normally runs about 300 head of cattle on his ranch near Gonzales, Texas. But in the past month, with continued warm temperatures and no rainfall, he's sold 175 for slaughter and is down to three bales of hay to feed the remaining cows. "If it stays much drier, the rest of them will be gone as well," says the lifelong rancher. "It's a pretty tough situation" - and starting to rival the drought of the 1950s, he adds, when he had to sell his entire herd and leave the business. Forecasters are equally pessimistic. After seeing rainfall decline by 20 inches last year, making 2005 the 12th driest year on record in Texas, they say this year is shaping up to be the driest since 1956. The result has been raging wildfires, skyrocketing hay costs, and billions of dollars in agricultural losses. For the moment, consumers are insulated from the impact because Texas cattlemen are sending more cows to the market in an effort to reduce their herds. But in two to three years, economists warn, a nosedive in cattle numbers in the nation's largest cattle-producing state would be likely to cause the opposite effect: higher beef prices....
It's All Trew: Daily chores were priority during childhood Among the many forgotten words, terms and traditions of the past, chores, chore time and the orders of “better go do your chores before dark,” stand out in my mind. Few below 50 years of age are familiar with these age-old terms. From the time we arose in the mornings, which was always long before daylight, until we quit work that evening, our daily chores had priority. No day work was started until the morning chores were finished. Whether you had an easy day or were so tired you could drop, the evening chores had to be done before going to the house. The most important chore was tending to the milk cows. They don’t wait and must have relief or they will suffer. All other livestock and poultry could wait an hour or so, but not the milk cows. During hot days or during a blowing blizzard, the cows were milked and fed. On our ranches, another chore almost as important as milking cows, or so my dad thought anyway, the horses had to be “whistled-up” and fed whether we were going to ride that day or not. Checking the remuda every morning for injury or whatever came high with my father....