NEWS ROUNDUP

It’s wolf-eat-wolf as moose herds dwindle Gnawing leisurely on the remains of a moose carcass, the wolf pack’s alpha male seemed unaware that mortal danger was coming ever closer. Suddenly the eight-member rival pack burst into view. The alpha scrambled to his feet, but too late. Howling and barking, the enemy chased him down and mercilessly attacked, killing the hapless victim within a couple of minutes. It’s not unusual for the gray wolves on Isle Royale National Park to target each other, said John Vucetich, a Michigan Technological University wildlife biologist who witnessed the carnage from an airplane in January. But the rival pack’s brazen invasion of another’s territory was a sign – the wolves are hungry. The reason is a steady decline of moose, now at their lowest ebb in the 48 years that scientists have studied the two species in Isle Royale’s closed environment. “One of the ways the wolves struggle through a food shortage is to try and usurp territory from their neighbors,” Vucetich said. He and fellow researcher Rolf Peterson estimated the moose population at 450 this winter, down from 540 last year. Only four years ago, they totaled an abundant 1,100 in the national park, located in northwestern Lake Superior and accessible only by boat or airplane. Meanwhile, the wolf census held at 30 for the second consecutive year. But their numbers are sure to drop because there won’t be enough moose to feed them all, the scientists said. There are about 15 moose for every wolf. The normal ratio is 40 to 50 moose per wolf....
Study: Park's wolves worth millions People who visit Yellowstone National Park to catch a glimpse of its wolves bring $35 million to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming each year, according to a study led by University of Montana economist John Duffield. Those dollars are "direct impact" money spent on "motels and lemon pies," Duffield said. They turn over in local communities, pushing the regional economic impact to around $70 million a year, he said. Wolves are a "public good" and a national asset, said Duffield, who presented his findings during the 18th annual North American Wolf Conference. The study, which ran from December 2004 to February 2006, analyzed written surveys completed by about 1,900 randomly selected park visitors from places other than the three states surrounding the park.* It found that 3.7 percent of the park's 2.8 million annual visitors said they would not have visited Yellowstone if it didn't have wolves. In terms of costs, the increased tourism revenue vastly outstrips any losses suffered by ranchers and the hunting industry, he said, adding that confirmed livestock depredation in the three states has averaged $27,000 yearly over the past decade....
BLM picks oil-shale development contenders The U.S. Bureau of Land Management narrowed the field of oil companies hoping to exploit vast oil-shale reserves in Utah and Colorado, government officials said Monday. In a second elimination round, Exxon Mobil Corp. and a tiny Utah company, Oil-Tech Inc., were knocked out of the running for research and development leases to work 160-acre parcels of BLM land. That leaves four companies in contention out of 16 that originally submitted applications. In Colorado, the surviving nominees are Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Co.; Chevron Shale Oil Co; and EGL Resources Inc. In Utah, Alabama-based Oil Shale Exploration Co. was picked over Oil-Tech to work an abandoned mine. Both companies applied to work the same mine, ensuring one would be eliminated. The companies provided their best and final proposals, said James Kohler, chief of the solid minerals branch for the BLM in Utah....
Forest Service set for summer of work at High Uintas lakes It's shaping up to be an interesting - and unusual - summer in the High Uintas Wilderness. After years of debate, followed by several more years of planning, the Forest Service in June will begin dismantling a series of backcountry reservoirs that date back to the turn of the last century. The purpose: to stabilize and restore the high mountain lakes, which were enlarged by the construction of earthen dams, to something close to their original state. Three lakes on the south slope - Farmers, White Miller and Water Lily - are scheduled to be restored this summer. Further east, a pair of larger reservoirs - Fox and Crescent - are scheduled for repairs. Altogether, the project calls for 13 lakes to be returned to their natural condition over the next few summers. "These are reservoirs that were basically built by the pioneers 80 years ago with primitive tools to provide irrigation water," said Mike Elson, acting district ranger for Ashley National Forest. "They were amazingly well built, but they don't meet current dam standards and they are difficult to maintain, especially with the wilderness designation limiting motorized use. So we began looking for a way to move this water to facilities that are more accessible and modern." Central Utah Project officials, and environmentalists, have long clamored for the High Uintas project....
Group seeks protection for lizard An environmental group on Monday filed a petition with the federal government seeking endangered or threatened status for a desert-dwelling lizard, saying off-roading in wind-sculpted dunes of remote San Bernardino County is leading to the reptile's demise. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generally takes 90 days to decide if such petitions warrant further review, said Al Donner, an agency spokesman in Sacramento. If that's the case, Donner said, it could take another few years to determine if the Mojave fringe-toed lizard should be protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Off-roaders were concerned that another protected species in the desert could lead to riding limits at Dumont Dunes, much like a threatened plant has done at the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area near the Mexican border. "With the amount of closures in the last 10 to 15 years in the desert, we feel strongly that each additional closure needs to be done in a legal and proper way," said Fred Wiley, executive director for the Off-Road Business Association, which has an office in Temecula. Each year, some 140,000 visitors go to the 10,500-acre Dumont Dunes, said Doran Sanchez, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which operates the dunes. The petition for the seven-inch, black-flecked lizard is focused on a specific population of the reptile that lives around the Amargosa River, which meanders through Inyo and San Bernardino counties. The lizard also lives in other parts of Southern California and Arizona....
Resort operators outline visions for future of Mount Hood region The operators of resorts at Mount Hood have a vision that includes huge parking lots that connect with shuttle buses or aerial cable cars to three ski areas. Their vision includes a new road through Clackamas County forests so truckers can transport goods from Portland to the east side of the Cascades and avoid skier-caused traffic jams. Their vision includes widening highways, building sewage treatment systems, using stream water for snowmaking, developing land for housing and parking lots, and a collective marketing strategy that includes the U.S. Forest Service. All the ideas are in a March 13 "memorandum of understanding" drafted by the operators of Timberline, Mt. Hood Meadows and Mt. Hood Skibowl. It's, at most, a wish list of projects the resorts see as necessary to accommodate the building boom under way in Government Camp and the projected increases in the number of skiers making day trips from Portland. Most of what's in the document has yet to be formally proposed....
Allard introduces revised plan to allow forest management Sen. Wayne Allard said Monday that legislation pending in the Senate would allow thinning in national forests as part of a long-term solution to a severe bark beetle infestation in the West. Allard, R-Colo., said the bark beetle has chewed through 7.5 million trees in Colorado, killing or weakening drought-stressed forests. He said 6.3 million acres of hazardous fuels have accumulated, creating a fire danger. His plan would provide $225 million over the next five years to hire companies to thin forests, taking out underbrush along with some small and some larger trees to ensure uniform growth. Allard said his plan would protect water supplies by keeping fire debris out of the runoff and would allow federal land managers to work faster. ‘‘This would be achieved through steady, judicious and effective forest management over time. This represents a better, more cost-effective strategy than having to deal with catastrophic events under emergency circumstances,’’ Allard said....
Column: Selling unused federal land a good idea Isn't it great to sell your junk at a yard sale, ridding your home of the stuff that no longer fits your lifestyle but just takes up space? Yard sales illustrate the beauty of markets: Both partners benefit. The buyer gets something new; the original owner takes the proceeds and uses them for personal goals. The government owns assets, too -- a 600 million-acre federal estate. But it's difficult for this government to hold yard sales. Even a whisper about selling publicly owned assets typically sets off a firestorm of criticism. That happened recently when the Forest Service announced plans to sell off some land. Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, expressed opposition. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., declared the idea dead in the water. But cooler heads may yet prevail. Why? There may be no alternatives, and it's a good idea. The Forest Service proposes to sell off less than one-tenth of a percent of the federal estate, at most about 300,000 acres out of its 192 million acres. These lands provide little benefit to the average American, who pays for their management with taxes....
Column: Big Greens and Beltway Politics As business and environmental groups attempt to influence government environmental decisions, only one side consistently comes out on top. You don't have to dig too deep into campaign contributions to see who hands over more money to candidates and both major political parties. Oil and gas companies hand over millions more dollars to special interest groups and presidential campaigns than do environmental organizations. And their investments pay off quite well. Rarely is there an environmental victory that comes out of Washington. On contrary, big oil companies win time and again. Certainly there are not many policy wonks that keep an eye on Washington who would deny that campaign contributions influence public policy. This may well be the ill fate of the environmental movement--attempting to play ball with the big boys in Washington. Will they ever be on par with the likes of Enron or others who virtually write our environmental and energy legislation year after year? It has long been my belief that the Sierra Club and rest of the big environmental groups, along with the Democratic Party itself, that do the most harm to environmentalism. It's not the Republicans. If anything, the Republicans have been the best mobilizers of environmentalists by rallying people against their policies, even though many of the same policies were present during Democratic administrations....
Milltown Dam's hydroelectric power generating plant shut down for final time By Bill Scarbrough's count, Milltown Dam was a hydroelectric power generating plant for 98 years, two months and 29 days. That ended on Friday sometime shortly after noon. Over the course of an hour or so, Scarbrough and fellow NorthWestern Energy dam operator Mike Haenke flipped switches, turned dials and tracked meters while forever shutting down the four operating turbines and generators inside the dam's powerhouse. NorthWestern shut down the dam's hydroelectric generation as an important first step toward removal of the dam at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers east of Missoula. The shutdown was timed to take place just ahead of the effective date of a consent decree that officially sets the Milltown Dam removal project in motion. On Monday, authority over the dam will shift from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the Environmental Protection Agency. NorthWestern remains the dam's owner. EPA is the lead agency in a $100 million project to dismantle the dam and remove about one-third of the 6.6 million cubic yards of contaminated mud that filled Milltown Reservoir during a flood the same year the dam began producing electricity. The dam was constructed by William Andrews Clark, one of Butte's Copper Kings. It began producing electricity on Jan. 9, 1908....
Column: There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998 For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero). Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate. Does something not strike you as odd here?....
When Phoenix, Tucson merge Phoenix and Tucson are heading for a collision. Arizona's two largest metropolitan areas are on course to meet and merge within a decade, engulfing several small towns along the way. The downtowns of the two major cities are separated by 120 miles. But their suburbs reach much farther along Interstate 10. Planned developments stretch 60 miles south of metropolitan Phoenix, deep into Pinal County. In Tucson, new projects are heading 40 miles north into Pinal, the only county that separates the two regions. That leaves only a 20-mile gap between the two cities' growth. Urban researchers are calling the corridor a megapolitan, or "super-sized" metropolitan area, and see it spanning from Prescott in the north all the way south to Sierra Vista and the Mexico border. The Phoenix-Tucson stretch is the epicenter. Dubbed the Arizona Sun Corridor by researchers, the megapolitan area is one of 10 expected to be the center of most of the nation's growth during the next 35 years. The combined population of metropolitan Phoenix and Tucson today is about 5 million. Forecasts call for the swath's population to top 10 million by 2040....
You don't know jack In a town that gave birth to the mythical "jackalope," a controversy appears to have sprung. Douglas residents, normally brimming with pride over the half-antelope, half-jackrabbit that has come to symbolize the town and its largest tourist draw, are seemingly torn about putting the jackalope, a statue of which graces downtown, out to pasture. The Douglas Budget reports in its April 5 edition that the town is actually debating whether to keep the old jackalope or replace it with one that could be ridden on. No sooner had that decision been reached when people decided they didn't want to see the old jackalope retired to stud just yet. As to whether the new jackalope will replace his older brother, no decision has been made. "We will not make a move without careful analysis of public opinion," Jackalope Square Advisory Committee Chairwoman Bobbe Fitzhugh told the paper....
Traders once used the Old Spanish Trail to head toward California Before it was the land of oil and apples, traders made their way through San Juan County heading toward California along the Old Spanish Trail with mules and goods for trade. The trail, which is currently being studied for deveopment into a designated national park trail, which will bring both awareness and activity to accessible parts of the 2,700-mile long route, is thought to have wound its way through the canyons and mesas of Blanco and Aztec. "This trail has some of the best outdoor recreation in the country," Sarah Schlanger, Bureau of Land Management archeologist with the New Mexico state office, said. "(We are traveling along the route and speaking with area residents) to find a way to connect people to the trail." The main goal of the trail, when it began, was to find a land route to California for the purpose of trading goods, textiles and livestock without having to use the water routes already in use....
It's All Trew: Crocks: The Tupperware of their day The dictionary says, “ A crock is an earthen jar made of baked clay, with a wide mouth and no handles.” Another statement says, “Clay cooking vessels go back to the beginnings of man, even before the discovery of fire, when humans used clay dishes to cook food out in the hot sun.” Clay food storage containers were so common they could be called the Tupperware of their day. As a little boy I can remember crocks, and crock-type bowls that were in everyday use in the Trew homes. My favorite crock story tells of chuck wagon cooks who kept their sourdough batch growing in a small crock with a lid. The thick walls of the crock kept the temperature more even than other vessels, and the wide mouth allowed the cook to work and pinch off biscuit dough when needed. Each day, the cook fed his dough with flour and other ingredients to keep it growing. The saddest thing that could happen to a wagon crew is when for some reason the sourdough died and a new batch had to be started. There were no biscuits until the new dough began producing. If the weather was hot, the sourdough crock was hidden underneath cowboy bedrolls to keep it cool. In cold weather, the cook slept with the crock to keep the dough from freezing....