NEWS ROUNDUP

Column: The mouse that roared Rob Roy Ramey's distinguished career at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science began its death spiral not long after he released research questioning whether a Front Range mouse is a unique subspecies and therefore worthy of federal protection. Coincidence? Ramey, the former chairman of the museum's zoology department, doesn't think so, and he has documents to back him up. Ramey's conclusions, first announced in December 2003 and refined until their publication last year in Animal Conservation, a journal of the Zoological Society of London, startled and upset many of those involved in endangered species protection and environmental activism. Among those most irate, evidently, was an official in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, whose complaints became so vocal by September 2004, according to Ramey, that museum executives met with him to smooth his feathers. But he remained unappeased - or so it seems based upon a letter the museum's chief curator and another top official sent to him on Oct. 26, 2004....
As the chinook go, so go the orcas The killer whales that chase salmon in this region's inland waters feed almost exclusively on chinook, to the extent that the orca population ebbs and flows right along with that of the West Coast's largest and longest-lived salmon, researchers said Tuesday. The whales settle for chum salmon for six to eight weeks in the fall, when most of the chinook are gone, John Ford of Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans said at the 2006 Symposium on Southern Resident Killer Whales, a joint effort of his agency and the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. Between 1996 and 2001, Ford said, sharp drops in the region's chinook runs correlated with declines in the northern and southern resident orca populations, as the inland killer whales of Canada and the United States are called. Orca mortality was 300 percent higher than expected, Ford said, and difficult to link to other known stressors. "It was a bit of a surprise to us," he said....
U.S. to Auction Drilling Leases in Utah Bidding by oil-and-gas players could intensify at a government auction next month when drilling leases will be offered on 440,000 acres of public land in Utah. The auction set for May 16 will rank as the largest government lease sale ever in Utah. The stepped-up leasing reflects a soaring market demand for oil and gas, new technology that makes it easier to find and drill deeper for petroleum, and a rich oil find in central Utah that's driving speculative bidding. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance accused the Bush administration of rushing to open more public lands for drilling to buoy domestic energy supplies. The Utah Petroleum Association counters that drilling can be done in a responsible manner. The previous largest BLM auction in Utah was a quarterly lease sale in September 2004, when 357,000 acres were put out to bid....
Company proposes pipeline for liquids from natural gas A company is proposing a 750-mile pipeline that would carry liquid forms of natural gas - such as propane, butane and natural gasoline - from Wyoming to Kansas. The liquids are separated from gas produced in the Green River Basin. As gas production in the basin increases, pipeline companies worry that pipelines for liquids derived from natural gas may be reaching full capacity. The Williams Co. is seeking permission from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to build the Overland Pass Pipeline at a cost of $460 million to $500 million. "This is another project that supports the economic growth that's happening in Wyoming," Williams spokesman Kelly Swan said. The pipeline would begin at Williams' existing plant in Opal, cross southern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado, and end at a Williams processing plant and storage facilities at Conway, Kan., according to the company....
Coos County wants to buy back forest land — at Civil War prices Prompted by a retired forester, Coos County commissioners are trying to see whether they could buy 59,000 acres of federal forest at Civil War prices — $2.50 an acre. Their goal is to cut timber to replace the money the federal government has been giving to counties in the wake of cutbacks in logging on federal lands, aid that some people think could be in jeopardy. But a federal official says such a purchase would require an act of Congress and isn’t likely. Don Gurney of Myrtle Point says the federal government gave land grants to investors in the 1860s to build wagon roads in Oregon to move soldiers, mail and goods. The investors sold it to settlers at $2.50 an acre. One road was the Coos Bay Wagon road, 65 miles long. Completed in the early 1870s, it connected Roseburg and Coos Bay through some of the most rugged country in Southern Oregon. Complaints about the condition of the road and charges of crooked deals spurred lawsuits, and in 1918 Congress bought the land back....
Vandalism chips away pioneer heritage Vandals are burning down homestead cabins and destroying historic windmills in the sagebrush plains of northern Lake County. The federal government this month joined private livestock groups to offer up to $4,000 for information that could help an investigation into the crimes. Last year, vandals hit five historic sites, including a 100-year-old wooden windmill near Fort Rock that they pulled over with their truck, said Lynn Miracle, district ranger for the Lakeview district of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Beeler Well and other damaged sites date to homestead days of the early 20th century, when dryland wheat farmers settled the Christmas Valley and Fort Rock regions. The well's windmill had a rare wooden flywheel and was one of the last standing in Central Oregon....
Environmental groups angry over possible use of roadless areas Several Colorado environmental groups are crying foul that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) could allow mineral development in roadless areas in the state's national forests before the Roadless Area Task Force makes a recommendation later this year about how those areas should be managed. The task force is holding meetings around the state to gather public opinion about roadless area management so the state can recommend to the USDA a management strategy for the state's unroaded wild areas on Forest Service land. The task force will meet in Glenwood Springs on June 21. Environmentalists are saying the Forest Service is acting against a statement USDA Undersecretary Mark Rey's wrote in a New York Times editorial last year saying that the USDA is "providing interim protection to roadless areas, pending the development of state-specific rules provided for in our 2005 rulemaking."....
Column: The new landgrab: A return to the king's domain The push to privatize the commons is as old as our Constitution. Commoners fleeing the King's Domain across the Atlantic rejoiced in a vast public domain here, where they could freely hunt and fish, while profiteers sought control of valuable assets. Laws gradually attempted a balance between commonwealth and commerce. Today, however, the scales tip toward privatization, as evidenced in President Bush's controversial 2007 budget proposal to fund the Secure Rural Schools Act (SRS) reauthorization by selling off the public domain. The Bush proposal offsets $800 million in lost timber sales, receipts that would flow to county coffers for schools and roads, by selling 304,000 national forest acres, 2,900 parcels within 31 states, and some half a million acres of unspecified public lands managed by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM)....
Taking it to the people Executives of two natural gas producers and three natural gas consumers said March 28 that the American public needs to hear that the government’s policy of locking up access to natural gas resources is one of the reasons for high natural gas prices. Jim Hackett, Anadarko Petroleum’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, told a press briefing in Washington, D.C., that the group has been going to Congress and the administration with these issues for five years. “We’re now taking this to the American people,” he said. The United States has “vast untapped” natural gas resources, Hackett said, with estimates by government agencies putting the supply at 177 years of gas for home heating. But industry can’t get access to many areas because of government restrictions, he said....
Koch gift lifts Tallgrass preserve A $1 million donation from the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation will help secure future preservation of the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve at Strong City and boost other projects, state and conservation officials said Tuesday. "This is a major step. We've reached $7 million in an $11 million campaign," said Kenneth Baum, chairman of the Kansas Prairie Legacy Campaign. "We're well on the road and this is, I think, the push that will make us get there," he said. Liz Koch, foundation president and wife of Koch Industries chief executive Charles Koch, was on hand to formally present the check at the Kansas State Historical Society Museum. Fred Koch founded the businesses that eventually became Koch Industries. The 11,000-acre tallgrass prairie preserve, on the site of the former Z Bar Ranch, is the only privately owned unit of the National Park Service. Two years ago, the nonprofit Kansas Park Trust was established to raise money to buy the preserve from the National Park Trust, which owned it for 10 years but faced financial difficulties....
Lost in American West? You may be billed for rescue Last October, avid mountaineer Tim Dopp and his teenage son set out for what they expected would be a day's climb of the highest peak in central Idaho's rugged Sawtooth Range. It was the beginning of a two-day ordeal in which the Boise man and his son would be stranded on a narrow ledge near the summit of the 10,751-foot (3,277-metre) peak wondering if they would survive sub-freezing temperatures. Summoned by a call from Dopp on his cell phone, five government agencies, 60 people and a high-altitude helicopter ended up being needed to lift the Dopps to safety. While Dopp expected to be haunted by his errors in judgment that imperiled his son's life, he was taken by surprise last month when Custer County Sheriff Tim Eikens, the official overseeing the operation, sent him a bill for nearly $15,000....
A Sound Resolution There are few places left in the world where you can pitch a tent under the stars and drift off to the haunting sound of howling wolves. It’s a healing, restorative experience to be so grounded in nature. But the scene changes dramatically when a car alarm goes off in the distance, or an airplane rumbles overhead. In that jarring moment, our connection to wilderness sputters and wanes, and we lose a little piece of the pristine experience. As the world grows noisier, park soundscapes become polluted, just as water becomes polluted with mercury, or air with carbon emissions. Several years ago, the Park Service recognized that natural sound was a resource in need of protection. So in 2001, the Natural Sounds Program was born. Its mission: to help parks protect soundscapes by monitoring sounds, both appropriate and intrusive—establishing ambient baselines, and assessing potential impacts. But a natural soundscape doesn’t necessarily mean complete silence all the time....
Wildlife officials investigate two eagle shootings The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the shooting deaths of two bald eagles in southwestern Dickey County in late March or early April. Agents were notified on Saturday by a landowner near Forbes that he had found a dead bald eagle in a harvested field near a county road. A second dead eagle was found about 200 yards away. The investigation revealed that both had been shot, probably within the past 10 days. A necropsy is being done on both eagles, said Ken Torkelson, a USFWS spokesman in Bismarck. "Hopefully it will tell us something more than we know now," he said. Bald eagles are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. The willful and blatant killing of any eagle is considered a violation of those acts, and the maximum penalty for killing an eagle is a $100,000 fine and one year in jail....
Idaho seeks authority to kill wolves Idaho wildlife officials on Tuesday formally asked the federal government for authority to kill most of the gray wolves in a pack roaming along the Montana border. Idaho believes the pack is decimating an elk herd. The state submitted a proposal to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that seeks permission to kill as many as 43 of the estimated 58 wolves in a pack roaming the Lolo Pass and Clearwater River Basin area of northcentral Idaho. After eliminating that many wolves in the first year of the plan, state game managers would continue to kill more wolves over the next four years to keep the Lolo pack no larger than 14 to 23 wolves. Jim Unsworth, the Idaho Fish and Game Department’s wildlife bureau chief, said killing the wolves is critical to rescuing the dwindling wild elk herd in the popular Lolo hunting zone. “The current predation rate on adult cow elk by wolves is not allowing the herd to bounce back to previous population levels,” he said. “We believe the habitat conditions would allow for higher elk populations if the wolf population was not at its current level.” Federal officials said they would immediately begin a scientific review of the state’s proposal to determine if the first lethal control of an animal classified under the Endangered Species Act was warranted....
Court rejects Wyo wolf appeal A federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of Wyoming's lawsuit against the federal government over how wolves should be managed in the state after their removal from Endangered Species Act protection. Wyoming filed suit after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected its plan for managing wolves in 2004. The agency is requiring Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to submit acceptable plans for managing the animals before it will remove them from the endangered species list. The Montana and Idaho plans were accepted. Wyoming's was rejected in part because it would classify wolves as a potential nuisance that could be shot on sight outside the Yellowstone area....
Scientists dig out a beaky dino in S. Utah Talk about a big, bad bird. It stood 7 feet high and weighed 100 pounds with a toothless beak, powerful arms and menacing claws. It roamed what is now southern Utah about 75 million years ago, devouring plants and munching meat. Today, the feathered raptor is known as Hagryphus giganteus - or "giant four-footed, birdlike god of the Western desert" - and marks the latest dinosaur discovery from the fossil-rich Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Scientists from the University of Utah and the Utah Museum of Natural History unveiled the new dinosaur species Monday at the Bureau of Land Management's visitor center in Escalante....
Plan to kill deer protested Nibbling placidly at the edge of a verdant meadow, the dappled brown and ghostly white deer with outsized, moose-like antlers are so popular they rival the spectacular bluffs and coastal valleys as a tourist draw. But the National Park Service says the estimated 1,100 fallow deer, native to the Mediterranean and Asia Minor, and their exotic brethren the spotted axis deer, originally from India and Sri Lanka, are unwelcome pests that must be eradicated to protect Point Reyes' herd of native blacktail deer and tule elk. The voracious deer are consuming so much forage, officials say, that they threaten eventually to starve the native animals. A park service draft plan calls for hiring sharpshooters to kill male and female deer and using an experimental contraceptive drug on some females. Officials say they expect to eliminate all the fallow and axis deer by 2020....
Devastated, right down to the barbed wire Politicians may talk about mending fences after disasters, but on a recent day when 40-mph wind gusts scooped up fire-loosened soil and spit it into swirling brownouts, Burl Scroggs was the man in the middle of the grunt work. "I've never seen this many fences needing to be built in all my years in the business," he said watching one of his crews plunge posthole diggers into scorched earth a few miles south of Dumas. Blackened fence posts stretched into the distance, tilting out of the ground like rotten teeth. The fires that ripped across the Texas Panhandle last month devoured nearly a million acres of grassland and several hundred structures. Eleven people died, and uncountable lesser tragedies still require immediate attention. That includes the loss of literally thousands of miles of barbed-wire fence. "You can get on a hill and look all the way to Oklahoma, 40 miles away, and there isn't a fence standing," says Delbert Trew, who owns a 5,000-acre ranch west of McLean . "It's the saddest thing you ever saw."....