NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranchers, outfitters crying wolf People claiming wolves have the upper hand in Montana, attacking livestock and wildlife, accused the state wildlife agency Friday of not doing enough to get wolves removed from the list of federally protected species so that Montana will have more control over them. ‘‘We already have more wolves than we need,’’ Sen. Dan McGee, R-Laurel, said at a meeting of the Montana Environmental Quality Council, on which he serves. McGee joined outfitters and ranchers in contending that the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks should be working harder to advance wolves’ removal from the list of animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Outfitter Bill Hoppe of Gardiner, a Yellowstone gateway, said that area of Montana used to be rich with wildlife but has become ‘‘a predator pit.’’ Robert Fanning said his Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd has tried to advance the so-called delisting of wolves. Fanning said he finds ‘‘a greater chance that (Playboy Playmate) Anna Nicole Smith will join a convent,’’ than that Fish, Wildlife and Parks will work vigorously on the wolves’ status....
Ranch troubles highlight feedground debate As a ranch owner outside Jackson is forced to test his cattle for brucellosis after elk and cattle commingled, both sides of the elk feedground debate are pointing to the episode as reason to support their cases. Conservationists said this week the uproar strengthens the call for phasing out feedgrounds; ranchers say the incident shows exactly why feedgrounds are needed. Up the Gros Ventre drainage outside Jackson -- where three elk feedgrounds have existed for decades -- elk came down the valley onto a cattle ranch this winter, forcing the rancher to test his cattle for brucellosis. Those three feedgrounds have been targeted by some conservationists as ones that would possibly be phased out so elk can disburse and forage on native winter range. Albert Sommers, a Pinedale rancher and member of the Upper Green River Cattlemen's Association, said the situation up the Gros Ventre reinforces the need for feedgrounds. "If there were no feedgrounds, what happened to (the rancher) would be a common occurrence," Sommers said....
Schweitzer: Look at buying out leases Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Friday it's time to consider buying out the leases of ranchers who graze cattle near Yellowstone National Park before the state loses its brucellosis free status. Schweitzer made his comments at a meeting of the state Environmental Quality Council. Schweitzer said about 740 cattle graze in what he calls "mixing zones," areas where bison leave the park in winter and cattle later graze. He wants to explore a deal that would pay cattlemen not to graze their animals in those places and suggested federal funding might be available. Schweitzer said the present federal and state management plan, that allows for hazing bison back into the park and slaughtering bison with brucellosis, does not do enough to protect the state livestock industry's brucellosis-free status. Rep. Debby Barrett, R-Dillon, an EQC member, said Schweitzer's proposal matches that of environmental groups, including Ted Turner's Endangered Species Foundation....
Editorial: Reject the 'spoiler' aimed at trust reforms Spoiler. The Legislature's proposed constitutional amendment on state trust land is full of complex legal wording. But it all boils down to one word. This is a spoiler, meant to confuse voters. It aims to shoot down an initiative, Conserving Arizona's Future, that would reform our antiquated system of managing state trust land. Arizona received the trust land from the federal government at statehood as a way to raise money for public services, mostly education. The rules for managing these 9.2 million acres date back almost a century, and they make as much sense for today's Arizona as driving a Wells Fargo stagecoach on Interstate 10. Conserving Arizona's Future is the fast, finely tuned, efficient vehicle we need. A citizen's initiative that is in the process of qualifying for the November ballot, it promotes education, conservation and development. The Arizona Cattlemen's Association, a reluctant partner last year, has been seeking changes that essentially give ranchers a permanent hold on any trust land they lease. The cattlemen are attacking the initiative's conservation components as a giveaway - ignoring the immense value of open space, both for adjoining land and the entire region. Opposition from the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona is more puzzling....
Reclaiming relationships in CBM Using satellite imagery from 400 miles up, artist John Amos noted the distinct changes that coal-bed methane gas activity made in certain areas of the Powder River Basin from 1999 to 2003. A network of fine white lines, or roads, appeared connecting numerous bare patches (well sites) and little blue spots (water ponds) popped up everywhere. "We need to protect the resources and livelihoods, not just the ones we have today, but in the future, too," Amos said. "We have an opportunity to get it right and that's important to the entire nation." Using an illustration a little closer to the ground, Tony Line shared the biggest lesson he'd learned in his experience with coal-bed methane developers on the Padlock Ranch, where he manages operations....
Column: Gale Norton's legacy The resignation of Gale Norton as secretary of the Department of the Interior brought a flood of assessments of her job performance. True to our customs, the critics of departing secretaries of the Interior seldom remember the historical context and political constraints in which these individuals serve and instead often hold them accountable for problems and policies not of their making. Gale Norton and other officials - and her nominated successor, Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne - deserve to be evaluated with a better understanding of what lies within - and what lies beyond - their actual control. Westerners have never been slow to step forward with complaints about the federal government and its oversight of the West's public lands and resources. The Department of Interior in particular, with its supervision of 58 national parks and 262 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands, has taken a lot of heat in recent decades. (The national forests, because of a quirk of history, fall under the Department of Agriculture, but are hardly spared them from contention over federal land management.) A calm, historical appraisal of Interior's intermittent bouts of unpopularity would see their origins not in the actions of any one official but rather in basic contradictions built into the purposes and uses that the United States has assigned to its public lands....
Save a little water for tomorrow One hundred years ago, William Mulholland introduced the citizens of California to a new concept in state politics: the water grab. Charged with securing water supplies for a small, thirsty town in a desert, the baron of the Los Angeles Department of Water hit on an imaginative response. He quietly bought up water rights in the Owens Valley, 230 miles to the north, built an aquifer across the blistering Mojave Desert, and took the water to downtown Los Angeles. When local ranchers protested by dynamiting his aquifer, Mulholland declared war, responding with a massive show of armed force. Nowadays southern Californians fight over water in courts of law. Angelenos have some of America's greenest lawns and biggest swimming pools, not to mention a desert that blooms with cotton and fruit. Keeping it that way means piping in water from hundreds of miles away and draining a Colorado River so depleted that it barely reaches the sea. And it means disputing every drop of the Colorado with Arizona....
Forest Service will track fewer species If you're wondering about the health of our national forests, ask an elk. The U.S. Forest Service and some environmentalists agree on that much, but differ over the agency's decision to cut back on what animals and plants it monitors to track the health of the White River National Forest, which stretches from Summit County and Vail to Aspen and west of Glenwood Springs. Forest Supervisor Maribeth Gustafson has decided to more than halve the number of species the Forest Service tracks to measure how well the forest is being managed. There are now seven so-called "management indicator species" on the forest's list. "That's not good, and we'll have to consider challenging that," said Rocky Smith, forest watch coordinator for the environmental group Colorado Wild....
Tribal hatchery raises sturgeon Each year, endangered white sturgeon lay millions of fertilized eggs on the silty bed of the Kootenai River where it curls across the top of Idaho. Yet experts estimate perhaps only 10 of the baby sturgeon hatched from those millions of eggs survive. The white sturgeon, the largest freshwater fish in North America, has not successfully reproduced in the Kootenai since Libby Dam was completed in Montana in 1974, reducing the river velocity and trapping critical nutrients upstream. Downstream, however, pools at a hatchery run by the Kootenai Indian Tribe teem with thousands of year-old sturgeon, inch-long miniature replicas of the two armor-plated wild adults in another tank, each measuring six-to-seven feet long. Another tank holds the medium-sized fish raised at the hatchery since birth, including a striking all-white sturgeon, a ghost of a prehistoric past. Bred from captured wild sturgeon, the young sturgeon may represent the last hope biologists have of preventing the extinction of the species....
How many bears are there? No one, not federal biologists or conservation activists, knows how many grizzly bears there are in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. That could be a problem, because federal and state officials have seized upon the number of 588 grizzly bears in the drive to remove the animal's protection under the Endangered Species Act. The number used to justify delisting the grizzly was generated in 2004, based on the sightings of 49 bear sows with cubs, then processed through a much-tweaked formula to come up with 588 -- a widely mentioned number that some say “proves” the species is recovered in the Yellowstone area. Yet in 2005, there were only 31 sow/cub sightings -- a 40 percent decline -- the lowest number of female-with-cubs-of-the-year sightings since 1997. If that sightings number is processed exactly as it had been the year before, it would produce a population number of roughly 350 bears. While U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Interior Department officials have repeatedly trumpeted the 588 figure, there has been no public discussion of the 350-bear figure....
For Interior, a collaborative conservative Dirk Kempthorne, President Bush's nominee to the head the Interior Department, has both the experience and the record of collaboration that could help smooth the way in the often-contentious position. As governor of Idaho, a former US senator, and mayor of Boise before that, Mr. Kempthorne is known to work in concert with those who don't agree with him. He believes that the level of government closest to a problem is the best place to find a solution. And though his environmental record - according to those who score such things - is a pale shade of green, he is not a fire-breathing ideologue likely to dismiss endangered species in the name of corporate ranching or a new highway. "I've been dealing with this guy for years," says Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League. "He's not overtly anti-environment. He is overtly states' rights." The West, for all its wide-open spaces where most of Interior's 500 million acres of responsibility lie, in fact is becoming the most urban region of the country. Cities like Boise, growing rapidly, are more conservation-minded than in the past, says Mr. Johnson. As a result, many newcomers to the West value environmental quality - something reflected in some of Kempthorne's policies....
Editorial: Interior designs President Bush's nominee to be secretary of Interior, Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, brings a Northwest sensibility to the job. Or at least that is our wishfully determinedly optimistic view. The president had lots of Gale Norton clones to choose among for her replacement, but he picked a Western governor and former senator who knows the region and has worked cooperatively with his elected colleagues in Oregon, Washington and Montana. Kempthorne's sound-bite résumé is full of dismaying quotes and politically opportune moments, such as the time he was "on the verge of inviting the EPA to leave Idaho" over cleanup plans for a toxic Superfund site. He successfully fought plans to reintroduce grizzlies into the Bitterroot Range. He has grumbled about the Endangered Species Act and opposed expanded roadless protection in the national forests. Yet Kempthorne cannot be boss of federal lands, national parks and resource extraction without the legacy of his own state in the back of his mind. Mining trashed parts of Idaho and put more than the environment in harm's way. There are consequences to fire-sale practices at Interior....
Pick for Interior Said to Show More Charm Than Substance He rides motorcycles, battles a bad back, does a killer impersonation of fellow Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and sometimes forgets to balance his checkbook. Even those who don't like his politics call him "Dirk," the way he prefers to be addressed. And they speak of him like he's the guy next door who just happens to be governor. But the ready smile and neighborly style of Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne don't always get the job done, some supporters and critics say. They contend that the man President Bush has picked to succeed Gale A. Norton as secretary of the Interior often exhibits more charm than substance. Fellow Republicans and business leaders say Kempthorne, 54, knows how to create consensus but is too politically cautious. Local Democrats and environmentalists say that he is gifted at making people feel heard but that, at the end of the day, his loyalties lie squarely with development and corporate interests. If confirmed, what kind of Interior secretary will Kempthorne be?....
Editorial: America the bulldozed GALE NORTON resigned earlier this month as secretary of the Interior Department amid charges of uncollected royalties from oil drillers and questions about her connections with Jack Abramoff and his lobbying on behalf of Indian tribes. But she was supported by the industries -- including mining, timber, and energy -- that enjoyed the carte blanche she gave them to exploit the nation's public lands. Dirk Kempthorne, the Idaho governor nominated by President Bush to succeed Norton, is clear-cut from the same cloth. His one term of service in the Senate and his sympathy for the antienvironmental views of its Republican majority should guarantee him an easy confirmation. But senators should use the hearing process to grill him closely on the missing royalties, lobbyist influence in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and proposed new policies for the National Park Service that would encourage use of the parks by off-road-vehicle riders. So far, he has taken no position on a Bush administration plan to sell thousands of acres from the Bureau of Land Management, which Interior controls, and the Forest Service. Senators should get his view on this and also try to extract a commitment from him to fight for funding to defray the national parks' maintenance backlog, which the Congressional Research Service recently pegged as high as $9.7 billion. Also, has this month's biggest-ever oil spill on Alaska's North Slope weakened his support for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, as it should?....
Editorial: The West and the next Interior chief If Dirk Kempthorne becomes the next U.S. Interior secretary, he's expected to continue the Bush administration's pro-development policies on the West's public lands. Even so, we hope the Idaho governor and former U.S. senator also brings to the job a sense of the modern West, a region that cherishes its wildlife and pristine lands. The key quality for a good interior secretary is a keen understanding of the need to balance development with environmental protection. Kempthorne is expected to be confirmed, but senators still should use his hearings to quiz him about that balance. For example, Kempthorne has harshly criticized the Endangered Species Act, yet as interior secretary he would oversee the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the law. He should explain how he plans to administer the law....
Rare pair of falcons find a home at San Jose building The upper floors of San Jose's 18-story City Hall tower are abuzz over a couple of visitors who might be involved in a romance. And there may be a family come spring. A pair of peregrine falcons have found a perch outside the glass offices at City Hall, generating excitement and creating a new crop of bird-watchers. "It just makes everyone's day when they see them," said Nancy Price, who has a clear view of the raptors from her San Jose Redevelopment Agency office on the 14th floor. Mayor Ron Gonzales and then-City Manager Del Borgsdorf discovered the falcons a few months ago while they were in a meeting in the mayor's 18th floor office. All at once they saw feathers floating down outside the large window: One of the falcons apparently was shredding a pigeon on the roof. There are only about two dozen pairs of falcons in the greater Bay Area, said Glenn Stewart of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, and 200 to 300 pairs in California, where the birds are on the endangered species list....
Plan to protect Florida panthers creates identity complex But now a new plan for saving the vaunted predator is reopening awkward questions for the animal's admirers: What, exactly, is a Florida panther? Scientists believe there are only about 80 left in Florida. And given the shortage of habitat in the cat's rapidly developing namesake state, the draft recovery plan for the Florida panther, issued recently by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, proposes to export some of the predators out of state -- and names potential sites in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. The Florida panther roamed those states long ago, wildlife biologists said, and reintroducing it in those areas could enable it to establish populations large enough to ward off extinction. But the proposal to expand the range of the predator, which is being met warily from officials in other states -- where farmers fear attacks on livestock -- is also restarting debates about whether the Florida panther, officially considered an endangered subspecies, is for all practical purposes identical to the cougar, a far more common animal that lives in much of western North America. ''I'm not even sure at this point that a Florida panther, as a subspecies, exists," said David Goad, deputy director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, who opposes bringing the animal to Arkansas. Crossbreeding between Texas cougars and Florida panthers, combined with modern genetic testing showing fewer distinctions between the two than previously believed, has led many to question the unique identity of Florida's fearsome mascot....
Habitat of Newly Discovered Salamander Slated for Logging The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild), and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed suit today against the California Departments of Forestry and Fish and Game for approving logging of crucial habitat for the newly discovered Scott Bar salamander. The species was first described in May of 2005 and has one of the smallest ranges of any salamander. “In Arkansas, hundreds of volunteers and scientists are combing the woods trying to confirm the location of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which was driven to near extinction by careless logging of its habitat,” states Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Meanwhile, in California, the Departments of Forestry and Fish and Game are putting the newly discovered Scott Bar salamander on the road to extinction by approving logging of its habitat.” The Scott Bar salamander was previously considered the same species as the Siskiyou Mountains salamander, but was recently discovered to be a separate species by researchers who published their findings last May in the journal Herpetologica. The Siskiyou Mountains salamander is listed as “threatened” under California’s Endangered Species Act, giving it a measure of protection from logging....
Marsh rules would ban bridges, halt development along SC coast Homebuilder Ted Mamunes wants to build a bridge to span nearly 300 feet of marsh onto his unnamed Beaufort County island, but proposed state rules on bridges to these tiny parcels are one of a couple obstacles preventing him from getting the go-ahead. His struggle is part of an ongoing dispute between developers along the coast and conservationists who want to protect South Carolina's pristine salt-water marshes and habitats. Mamunes' island is one of roughly 3,400 small marsh islands along the South Carolina coast. He says the rules meant to prevent major development are keeping him from building a single-family home. "It's useless to me if I can't get to it," Mamunes said. Mamunes, 63, agrees that the coast is overcrowded, but he wants only to build, and eventually sell, one home on this 9-acre island, which has distant views of thick salt marsh, oyster beds and shrimp boats....
Court rules government must keep counting fish A federal appeals court ordered the government late Friday to continue funding an agency that counts young salmon crossing dams in the West. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not rule on the merits of two challenges environmentalists brought against a move to discontinue funding the Portland, Ore.-based Fish Passage Center, whose $1.3 million budget was to expire Sunday. Instead, the court said funding for the center's 11 employees should be continued until the litigation is resolved. The lawsuits, by the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Indian Nation, Northwest Environmental Defense Center, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, challenged a legislative move by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, directing the Bonneville Power Administration to eliminate the center's budget. Craig's move came after U.S. District Judge James Redden of Oregon took control of dam operations along the Columbia and Snake rivers after concluding the Bush administration offered an inadequate plan for protecting salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act....
Fence fight And then, a wire fence stretches bank-to-bank. Choked with debris and limbs, with no way through, the fence requires a portage around it for a kayaker to continue downstream. For decades, cattlemen and other large landowners have treated the 31-mile-long Peace Creek -- referred to in some sections as the Peace Creek Canal -- as if they owned it, stringing barbed-wire fences across the water's flow and hanging "No Trespassing" signs wherever they pleased. In fact, some contend they do own the creek. And the state says they may own parts of it. No matter, it's theoretically illegal to obstruct the water in a canal like the Peace Creek Canal under state law. Accusations of favoritism and sweetheart deals allowing people to ignore the law have been tossed around, and formal complaints against the local state attorney have been filed with the Florida attorney general. It seems this little tributary of the Peace River has sparked more than its share of strife....
Lack of ID registry thwarts mad cow data hunt Investigators may never figure out where the Alabama cow with mad cow disease was born and raised, in part because the United States lacks a livestock tracking system that the Bush administration had promised two years ago. After the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in December 2003, the government pledged to get a nationwide program into place quickly so officials could track cows, pigs and chickens from their birth to the dinner table. Today, however, the system is a long way off. Alabama officials saw the need firsthand last week as they tried to determine where the infected cow came from. The animal had no ear tags, tattoos or brands, and spent less than a year on the farm where she died. The trail seems to have gone cold at an auction where she was sold last year....
Column: Government's idea of 'tracking' animals Reaction to the National Animal Identification System is shining a light on a growing problem that independent producers believe is threatening the entire livestock industry. Vertical marketing practices in the meat processing industry, combined with the industry's access to and influence on the Department of Agriculture and Congress, has the small producer against the ropes. The NAIS may be the final blow that puts independent ranchers and small farmers down for the count. The goal of the NAIS is to create a national system that would enable the federal government to trace, within 48 hours, the origin of any animal in the food chain found to be infected, either by disease or by terrorists. To achieve this objective, a massive database has been proposed that would contain the location of all premises where animals are kept, identification of every individual animal, as well as a method of tracking any movement from the premises' location. Some people fear that a system capable of tracking the movement of every animal in America is a very small step away from applying a similar system to track the movement of every American....
Navajo film to hold casting calls Actors are needed to audition this week for a film slated for production on the Navajo Nation by a local family. Ray Baldwin Louis, aka "Razor Saltboy," is teaming up with his sons' production company, Saltboy Films, to produce a film based on his published play "Butterfly of Hope." Hondo Baldwin Louis is producing the project, while brother Kumen is working as the project's casting director. Ray Baldwin Louis is known throughout Native American communities as a singer and songwriter who has released three albums. He also has extensive experience as an actor and playwright. According to a statement released by Hondo Baldwin Louis, the play is set in the 1860s when Native American tribes were being displaced from their homelands onto reservations....
History in its adobe walls Walking up to the Felipe Chavez Hacienda on Lala Street in Belen, it's hard to imagine what life was like in the mid-1800s when the home was built. But as you step through the front door and into this grand home, a rush of history and culture sweeps through your mind. The three-foot-wide adobe walls and the original wooden floors take you back in time to the days when Belen was a pivotal stop along the Camino Real. The Felipe Chavez house, which is was placed on the State and National Historical Registers in 1980, was built in 1860 by a pioneer merchant, trader and rancher. Felipe Chavez made his fortune with business interests ranging from the New York Stock Exchange to mining in Mexico. Although there were several haciendas in the area, the Chavez estate was the largest. It included cornfields, extensive pasture, cottonwood groves, a mercantile and, eventually, a school for girls. Chavez was, for a time, a judge in Belen and even built a small adobe jailhouse in the courtyard behind his home. As the legend goes, he would sentence cattle rustlers and other criminals to death and walk them a few steps from the jail to a large cottonwood tree where they were hanged for their crimes. Both the jail and the tree remain on the property....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Careful who you camp with on hunting trip Hunting with a companion who enjoys it as much as you do is one of life's greatest gifts. It's like two horse people or two pilots finding each other in a crowded room. You finally have someone who will actually listen to your stories! Doug went by Phil's house right after lunch to pick him up. They had a trip planned to go chukker hunting near Gerlach. Unfortunately, Doug walked in on the middle of a family spat; doors were slamming, plates were flying, tension was twanging and the air was blue. Phil grabbed his shotgun and shooting vest, ducked a gravy boat and scrambled out the door. That night on the high desert the boys cooked over an open fire and taste-tested a six-pack of Night Train Express, a subtle wine (mixed fruit, 17 percent alcohol and bottled in Modesto). Since Phil had no coat, bedroll, blanket, long johns or earmuffs, they scrounged him up some bedding. It consisted of rubber floor mats, Doug's canvas fender cover, a seat cushion and a blue plastic tarp....