NEWS ROUNDUP

Town gets more than money in energy boom This once-quiet cattle town has so much wealth that all fifth-graders get laptops. Teachers here are the highest paid in the state. The unemployment rate is so low that the Subway shop offers $10 an hour to new workers. In the past three years, the county built hockey and riding arenas, a senior center and an addition to the courthouse. Two medical clinics are in the design stage. The source of the wealth that has made Pinedale a modern-day boomtown lies not far outside town, where what was mostly empty sagebrush plains is now home to more than 1,000 natural gas wells. Thousands more are on the way. Pinedale's transformation from ranching and recreation into an energy center is a story as old as the West, where boom-and-bust economies have been a familiar pattern for generations — from the California gold rush in the mid-1800s to Denver's energy industry recession in the 1980s. Similar gas booms are happening elsewhere in the West, including Wyoming's Powder River basin, western Colorado and the San Juan basin bordering New Mexico and Colorado. This town, population about 1,600, also is a cautionary tale about what happens when the government invites full-throttle energy production on the region's vast federal land....
Copper battle brewing in rural Arizona In the valley below a ring of blue-black mountains in southeastern Arizona, a group of townspeople gathered on a recent Sunday after church to stop a copper-mining giant. They sat shoulder to shoulder on wooden benches in a crowded meeting hall, asking one another in hushed voices: "Did you get a letter?" Dozens of certified letters arrived at the small Dragoon post office in mid-January, sent by foreign mining giants BHP Billiton and General Minerals Corp. The companies wrote that they had filed claims on some of the residents' land and reserved the right to enter property beginning last month. With copper surging to record prices on the world market, some analysts say more rural areas across the West can expect to see similar notices. Using a near-century-old law, mining companies are legally allowed to check if some rural residents are sitting on a gold mine. Major mining interests are snatching up many square miles of mineral rights at a time, although mostly for exploration of public lands - not private....
Drilling may hit rare ferrets' turf The prospect of northwestern Colorado's rampant oil and gas drilling moving into the territory of North America's most endangered mammal has rattled wildlife biologists who have worked for five years to reintroduce black-footed ferrets to the state. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, despite a recommendation from its field office to defer a decision, has nominated for oil and gas leasing a large portion of a 20,000-acre area east of Rangely where 189 black- footed ferrets have been released since 2001. Biologists with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who learned of the plan Tuesday voiced strong concern that it could jeopardize the reintroduction program just months after biologists had the first indication of success. A juvenile ferret born in the wild was spotted in the area last fall during a middle-of-the-night survey. It was the first indication that the elusive animals were mating and reproducing in Colorado. "We've spent a lot of effort and time to see something like drilling thrown in the middle of it," said Rick Krueger, a wildlife biologist with the federal wildlife agency. "It is a big concern."....
Nearly 9,000 new gas wells may be coming to Red Desert Two drilling projects proposed in the Red Desert near Wamsutter could result in nearly 9,000 new gas wells over the next four decades. The wells would be drilled on a million acres of public and private land. The federal government is planning an environmental study on the Creston/Blue Gap II natural gas project proposed by Devon Energy and the Continental Divide/Wamsutter II gas project proposed by BP America. The combined projects around Wamsutter call for up to 8,950 new gas wells, including 100 to 500 coal-bed methane wells, over the next 30 to 40 years. Last year, Devon and other leaseholders proposed drilling and developing up to 1,250 wells, while BP America and other operators proposed up to 7,700 wells. Mary Wilson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land management, said the BLM decided to combine the projects and do one environmental study. Energy industry representatives praised the drilling plans Monday....
Oregon: New frontier for energy? It may not be time to rush off to the oil patch yet, but Oregon is seeing its own version of an oil and gas boom. Industry requests have prompted the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, keeper of the government's mineral wealth, to offer 224,516 acres in Eastern Oregon for oil and gas exploration at an auction today. It's a land area equal to about a quarter of the Mount Hood National Forest and the largest amount put up for sale in Oregon in many years. The auction, at which bids will start at $2 an acre, comes as energy companies that have largely ignored Oregon look more closely for precious underground reserves. It also comes amid surging energy development in the West and a drive by the Bush administration to cultivate domestic energy reserves....
BLM relaxes drilling deadlines Bureau of Land Management officials in Colorado have begun giving companies more time to drill under their drilling permits, drawing questions from some environmentalists. Companies that hadn't been able to drill before their leases on federal land expired typically lost their leases. BLM officials in Colorado recently changed their rules to stop the clock for companies that can't find rigs to drill. Some environmentalists say it's inconsistent for the agency to request an extra $27 million from Congress to speed up the processing of permits when drillers can't use all the permits they already have. "The industry is awash in federal drilling permits," said Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society. "They have so many, they don't know what to do with them." BLM officials say most extensions are requested by smaller companies. "Rig availability is a bigger issue for them," said Duane Spencer, who heads the BLM's fluid minerals division in Colorado....
Supreme Court hears arguments over right to clean environment If the state's constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment is to have any meaning, Montanans need to be able to sue companies and fellow citizens over perceived violations, attorneys argued Wednesday before the Montana Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in three lawsuits seeking damages for pollution. The court's decision could set a precedent on the power citizens have under the Montana Constitution's clean and healthful environment provision. "The answers to these questions will constitute a legacy of this sitting court," Cliff Edwards, a lawyer representing ranchers against a mining company, told justices. Attorneys for the landowners said citizens need to have the right to sue under the constitutional provision to make sure their rights are protected. They contend state regulators don't always get the environmental enforcement job done. Industry lawyers have been joined by trade groups, a big group of Republican lawmakers, and others in attempt to fight the lawsuits. They argued that only the Legislature can decide how the environment should be protected, and it has set up the Department of Environmental Quality to be the enforcer. The core of the debate focuses on whether the constitutional right is "self-executing," or whether the Legislature must pass laws to enforce the right and provide remedies for violations....
Column: `Hook and bullet' clubs shooting themselves in the foot n an alliance of odd bedfellows, hunting and angling clubs are joining forces with their natural enemies, environmental groups, in a bid to preserve their happy hunting grounds across the United States. Both groups are lining up behind a Clinton-era plan to create 60 million acres of "roadless" areas in national forests, as this 6-year-old battle shifts to the states. And unless typical Americans stand up and demand the continuation of the multiple use rules that long guided national forest policy, they may soon find their access to public lands severely limited, as these areas become the exclusive playgrounds of ecological or recreational elitists who aren't willing to share. This debate is only nominally about roads: it's actually about who will have access to 60 million acres (or about a third) of national forests, and whether these lands will continue to be managed for multiple uses, balancing ecological, aesthetic and economic goals. That's why this battle has implications for all Americans. I don't do much hunting or fishing, but I don't mind sharing the national forests with those who do. I have a live-and-let-live attitude, believing that there's plenty of room for everybody. But watching hook and bullet clubs joining forces with gang green to support a roadless rule designed to severely limit the people's access to "public" lands has me seeing these clubs in a different light. It seems some hunters and anglers have become just another myopic special interest, which sees the roadless plan as an opportunity to turn federal forests into private game preserves....
PFS chief says foes can't stop nuclear waste A Nuclear Regulatory Commission license in hand, Private Fuel Storage's chairman said Wednesday that the consortium of utilities is moving forward with its plans for a high-level nuclear waste disposal site in Utah's Skull Valley — and he doesn't think opponents can stop it. "Yes, there is hope for our future," John Parkyn said, holding up the license at an NRC conference in Maryland, drawing applause from the crowd. In other developments: • The state of Utah this week filed an updated challenge to the PFS proposal in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. It challenges the NRC's license, issued to PFS last month. • And Time magazine is reporting that PFS would pay the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians up to $100 million over 40 years for the right to operate its proposed repository on the band's reservation. However, neither Skull Valley Band chairman Leon Bear nor PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin would confirm the figure to the Deseret Morning News. In Maryland, Parkyn told the NRC conference he is seeking additional utilities with nuclear plants interested in moving waste to the PFS site, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. And he downplayed any chances Utah's congressional delegation, governor and other opponents have at stopping PFS's plans....
Column: How to save the hunter,fisherman, and trapper Put as succinctly as possible, the threat to hunting, fishing, and trapping is hostility to these pursuits from a small, but active, part of the population organized into well-financed organizations. These organizations are scattered throughout not only the United States, but also all the other "Western" or "First World" nations, as well. They represent mainly affluent, urban factions who are personally unaffected in any way by the anti-everything-rural (hunting, fishing, trapping, ranching, logging, etc.), and anti-gun agendas that they unflinchingly impose on others. These organizations have been both ruthless and successful in influencing and staffing, not only the U.S. federal bureaucracy and lobbying U.S. politicians for power and funding, they have also controlled the explosive growth of United Nations' control of plants and animals, and the U.N. bureaucracy that fuels that growth. These organizations, and their surrogates, have spawned a perpetual monsoon of ballot initiatives, laws, treaties, conventions, regulations, land restrictions, property takings, permits, and closures, based on every sort of bizarre claim, from "invasive" and "native" species definitions, to imaginary "ecosystem benefits," and the "need" for X, Y, and Z to remain protected forever. Ultimately, all of these things constrict, and slowly eliminate, hunting, fishing, and trapping, by eliminating tools (guns, traps, and lead, for instance); species (rainbow and brown trout, pheasants, Great Lakes salmon, etc.); managed populations (elk, moose, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, etc.); area use and access, both public and private, where fishing, hunting, and trapping take place; and indoctrinating the public and the young, in particular, with a steady stream of lies and half-truths, that go unrefuted....
Bones of dinosaur found north of Billings may be new species Chances are, no one's ever seen a mug quite like Ralph's. Uncovered last summer, the long-necked, giant dinosaur with a walnut-size brain appears to be a new species, according to Malta paleontologist Nate Murphy, who led the dig at the foot of the Little Snowy Mountains. The discovery may reveal crucial information about the history of the once-dominant plant-eating giants known as sauropods. The latest find seems to provide a previously undocumented link between two similar types of dinosaurs. "We're bridging a gap here," said Murphy, the curator of paleontology for the Judith River Dinosaur Institute in Malta. Murphy and his team recovered the complete neck, skull, teeth and other bones from the 20-ton dinosaur believed to have roamed the flood plains of ancient Montana 150 million years ago....
Historic 'mail trail' ride to be re-enacted One of the great sagas of the Wild West -- the 52-mile ride along the "mail trail" that ran from Camp Verde to Payson -- will come to life again this fall. At its Thursday evening meeting, the Payson Town Council will consider matching a $3,000 donation from the Camp Verde Town Council to support an annual re-enactment of the historic ride. The mail trail's history reaches back to 1884 when the small frontier settlement of Union Park received its first Post Office. That made it necessary to extend mail service 50 miles east from Camp Verde to the community that would henceforth be known as Payson -- named after the senator who appointed the town's first postmaster. A route was established through formidable terrain with mail stops in the communities of Rutherford, Strawberry and Pine en route to Payson. From 1884 to 1914, a total of 60 riders delivered the mail six days a week over the rugged trail that started at Sutler's Store in Camp Verde. Unlike the pony express, which involved multiple riders relaying the mail along a route, just one rider was used to complete the 104-mile round trip over the first mail trail. "The pony express was altogether a different thing," said Parrish, a longtime horse rancher and member of the Camp Verde Cavalry, the group that is spearheading the effort to re-open the trail. "Each of the riders who rode our trail was under contract. One guy would take the mail from here to Payson, lay over, and then come back," he said. "There was no relay involved." A rider was in the saddle from 11 to 18 hours at a time, changing horses twice in each direction. One change took place at the Diamond S Ranch in the vicinity of Clear Creek today, and the other took place in Pine....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Cunning and practice gelds the stallion "Macho Surgery" There's a practice in a practice of a vet who works on horses/That embodies the machismo of their kind./I was taught this ancient practice, castrating horses standing,/Meaning, both he and I were standing at the time./To cognize the difficulty, the mule-headedness required/To complete this task of surgery and cunning/One must grasp its deeper meaning. It's been favorably compared/To changing fan belts with the engine running/Or standing on a bar stool taking bets from one and all/You can stick your head up through the ceiling fan/And never touch a single blade, or spill a drop of beer....