NEWS ROUNDUP

Gator deaths rise to three Two more women were killed by alligators in Florida over the weekend, bringing to three the number of fatal gator encounters in less than a week. When combined with the death of a young college student from Davie killed by a 400-pound gator last week, the number of fatal gator attacks would rise from the 17 confirmed attacks since 1948 to 20. And despite the fearsome reputation of sharks, that's far more than the eight fatal shark attacks in Florida since 1948. An alligator fatally attacked Annemarie Campbell, 23, of Paris, Tenn., Sunday near Lake George, authorities said. Lake George is in the Ocala National Forest in Central Florida. Campbell had been staying at a secluded cabin near a springhead that feeds into the lake, said Marion County Fire-Rescue Capt. Joe Amigliore. ''The people she was staying with came around and found her inside the gator's mouth,'' Amigliore told The Associated Press. ``They jumped into the water and somehow pulled her out of the gator's mouth.'' Campbell was pronounced dead at the scene....
The mines left behind When the Klau and Buena Vista mercury mines west of Paso Robles were added to a federal cleanup list last month, they became a graphic reminder of San Luis Obispo County's mining heritage and the problems it left behind. They are not the only inactive mines in the county that state and federal environmental regulators are keeping tabs on. Three other mercury mines and a cluster of chromite mines near San Luis Obispo are either causing water quality or safety problems, or pose the potential for future troubles. Hundreds of abandoned mines are scattered across the county. The state Office of Mine Reclamation has inventoried 126 of them. Miners dug into the soil of San Luis Obispo County to recover a variety of metals — everything from gold to fool's gold. But mercury and chromite, the base metal for chrome, dominated local mining activity, and were a driving force in the development of the county in the late 1800s. Today these defunct mines can cause a variety of pollution problems, said David Schwartzbart, a geologist with the state Regional Water Quality Control Board. The worst problem is acid mine discharge....
Killing of wolf within law, Idaho says A ranch worker who shot a wolf last week acted within the law, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game has ruled. The rancher reported within 24 hours that the 2- to 3-year-old wolf was chasing cattle on private land when it was shot Monday in southeastern Idaho. "There was nothing the rancher did wrong," Lauri Hanauska-Brown, a wildlife biologist with Fish and Game, told the Standard Journal. "It was very straightforward. The folks involved did everything right. This is a good example of how the process is supposed to work." After investigating, Fish and Game officials notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which declined to do a follow-up investigation....
Mountain lion may be killing pets in Silt area A mountain lion may have killed several domestic animals outside Silt in the past few months, according to area residents. The Colorado Division of Wildlife isn’t convinced, though. Two dogs were found dead about two weeks ago in Mineota Estates, south of Silt, according to the owners’ daughter, Eryn Thistle. One dog had lacerations to its throat and the other a broken back, she said. That’s consistent with an attack by any predator, including a mountain lion or a wolf, DOW spokesman Randy Hampton said Friday. “The only report we have from the Silt area is about the sheep,” he said. Hampton was referring to an incident a few months ago, where the DOW reimbursed a rancher on the north end of Silt after a lion apparently killed two sheep. Residents also reportedly saw a lion on a bike path and think one killed a chicken and an old horse several weeks ago on Silt Mesa....
Cloud seeding remains a controversial cure In 2003 the National Research Council issued a lengthy report that found "no convincing scientific proof of the efficacy of intentional weather modification efforts." That was the first sentence. The second paragraph, however, reported an exception to this sweeping generalization: "strong suggestions" that cloud-seeding in winter - as opposed to summer - works in mountainous areas. Finally, 90 pages later in the appendix, the report explained the basis for the silver lining amid otherwise dark clouds of pessimism: experiments conducted in the 1960s near the Climax Mine, between Leadville and what is now Copper Mountain. Now, even as spring runoff thunders toward Lake Powell and other reservoirs, states in the parched American Southwest are looking more intently at cloud-seeding, wondering if it can forestall the hardest choices of scarcity in the coming years that many climate scientists predict will be hotter and drier....
Does cloud-seeding have side effects? If you manage to wring more snow from clouds as they pass over Vail, does that mean that Breckenridge gets shorted? That and other basic questions about the secondary effects of cloud-seeding have long been asked. In the 1980s, for example, people complained that clouds seeded to benefit the ski slopes of Vail and Beaver Creek were producing snow that was causing them problems. Snow removal costs were escalating, and older people were having a harder time of getting around. Cloud-seeders discount such criticisms. They say they can target areas for seeding. Furthermore, while they claim they can augment snowpacks by 10 percent to 20 percent, they say they take only a tiny amount of overall available precipitation. Arlen Huggins of the Reno, NevadaÐbased Desert Research Institute argues the downwind effect is minor. Only 10 percent of the water vapor in a typical storm is suitable for seeding, he says, and then seeding can only augment by 10 percent to 20 percent. As such, he says, cloud seeding only reduces the water in clouds going downwind by 1 percent or 2 percent. Questions have also been asked about the effects of silver iodide, the most common agent used for seeding. Consider the case of cloud-seeding done in the Steamboat Springs area in the winter of 1978-79....
‘It is our land,’ Army is told More than 400 residents of southeastern Colorado piled into a meeting room designed for half that number Saturday to decry the possible expansion of Fort Carson’s Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Even cattle, which outnumber people on the ranches around the training range northeast of Trinidad, made an appearance. Two of the animals, along with a sign reading “Beef not Bullets,” greeted U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who hosted the meeting at a library in Pueblo. Faced with increasing training demands and responsibility for 10,000 additional soldiers in the next few years, Fort Carson has asked the Army for permission to expand the 23-year-old training area by as much as 750,000 acres, mostly in sparsely populated Las Animas County. The post prepared an expansion study last year that is under consideration at the Pentagon. It was evident Saturday that even if the Army approves the plan, Fort Carson will face an uphill battle against a coalition of ranchers, business owners and local governments, many of which remain bitter about federal land seizures that helped form the training site in the early 1980s....
Ensnared by the law The face of a skinned coyote stares from the hood of the fur cape. Its body and legs hang over trapper Claude Oleyar's shoulders and down his back. "The black-powder, muzzle-loader people love these," Oleyar said, adjusting the $125 novelty. "Dressing up like old mountain men." The coyote cape hangs among the assorted skins collected by a 61-year-old wildlife biologist who has spent most of his life trapping animals. Everything he catches these days is somebody's nuisance: pet-eating coyotes, attic squirrels, backyard raccoons, foxes and skunks, ringtailed cats prowling the bowels of the luxurious Broadmoor hotel. But Oleyar and fellow trappers hope to be skinning some other animals soon. Ten years after voters put a partial trapping ban into the state constitution, the practi tioners of Colorado's oldest trade are calling for a new season on mink, swift fox and other mammals with valued pelts. Their petition to the Colorado Wildlife Commission has reignited a debate between those content to admire wildlife through binoculars and those who see it as something to wear or eat....
Pombo's fishing bill limits power of sanctuaries Deep in a fishing bill before Congress is a clause that would wrest control of fisheries inside marine sanctuaries — such as the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary just west of San Francisco and Marin — away from sanctuary managers. The bill voids the carte blanche managers now have to write rules for fisheries within their waters. Sanctuary managers would still be allowed to develop fishing limits and seasons different from non-protected waters under the new bill, but such regulations would have to comply with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs offshore fishing. Environmentalists warn the switch would hand industry de facto control of the preserves and is akin to letting the U.S. Forest Service write logging plans for the national parks. But the bill's author, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, chairman of the House Resources Committee, calls the measure a middle-ground approach that ensures fisheries within sanctuaries comply with "the most important environmental fisheries law" in the nation, said Melissa Delaney, a spokeswoman for the Resources Committee....
Collaboration on the grassland Several years ago, Roy Liedtke and a partner bought a ranch on Spring Creek north of Gillette. With half deeded and half leased national grassland, some neighbors wondered what the partners were getting into, what with regulatory rules on federal grazing leases and the like. Soon, local Forest Service employees asked to watch as the first truckloads of bison arrived. Liedtke agreed, somewhat skeptically. As it turned out, the Forest Service staff came in handy, helping free a tractor-trailer stuck in the mud and helping corral the anxious buffalo into pens. Their help laid a groundwork for trust to grow between the landowners and the governmental agency, Liedtke said, and that foundation has supported future collaboration that benefits the ranchers, the Forest Service, and most importantly, the land. Farther south in the heart of the Thunder Basin National Grassland, Betty Pellatz and a group of longtime ranchers also discovered that trust is the key element in working with the Forest Service and other governmental partners, she said here Thursday during a panel discussion on coordinated management of national grasslands. “Landowners are very independent,” she said. When the Forest Service started a major overhaul of the grasslands management plan, the ranchers banded together to protect their interests. Of particular concern was the way federal rules for prairie dogs might affect ranchers. The ranchers founded the Thunder Basin Prairie Ecosystem Association, now 25 members strong, including two neighboring coal companies. The association’s goal is to take the lead on conservation using hard science and common sense, in the hope that their work will avoid the necessity of rigid federal rules....
New Mexico "one-ups" Colorado with two fees When I was buying my New Mexico fishing license, the professional behind the counter mentioned the fee for this year had gone up. He didn't know why, and I didn't think much of it. However, that night I decided to read my license and see what made the fee go up. Obviously, anyone who takes time to read the entire fishing license has way too much time on his hands. Anyway, I did notice a required charge of four dollars for a new program called the Habitat Management and Access Validation (HM&AV), and a sometimes-necessary, $5 charge for the Habitat Stamp Program (HSP). My thirst for knowledge sent me to the 2006-2007 New Mexico Fishing Rules and Information pamphlet. In reading the New Mexico pamphlet, I learned the HM&AV fee will be used to lease private land for public use, provide public access to landlocked areas of public land, and provide for the improvement, maintenance, development and operation of property for fish and wildlife habitat management....
Environmental groups sue over roads, winter use Two local environmental groups have filed a lawsuit challenging recent biological opinions related to road management and snowmobiling access on the Flathead National Forest. The Swan View Coalition joined Friends of the Wild Swan in the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Missoula. It involves legal themes similar to those in two other active lawsuits the groups are pursuing against Flathead Forest. At issue in this case, filed against both the Flathead Forest and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are two recently released biological opinions — one related to the Flathead Forest Plan Amendment 19 for road management, and the other for the pending Amendment 24, which will establish rules for winter recreation on the forest. The groups claim the Endangered Species Act has been violated by failing to adequately limit motorized access to the forest....
Most Expensive Ranches In America 2005 Looking to unleash your inner wrangler? Want a place to indulge your youthful cowboy (or cowgirl) fantasies? You can get your own home on the range--for the right price. Rope a high-priced ranch, and you'd be among good--or at least prosperous--company. For generations, wealthy families have sought out the rugged environs of the West. "There's been a long tradition of people from other parts of the country coming out and buying ranches," asserts Doug Hart, a real estate partner with Hall and Hall in Billings, Mont. Even in the pioneer days, rich New Yorkers and Bostonians were acquiring large tracts of land out on the frontier, he says. (In 1883, the 25-year-old Theodore Roosevelt invested in a spread in the Dakota Badlands, where he herded cattle.) More recently, it was common for wealthy vacationers to fall in love with the land while visiting a dude ranch. "Obviously, until the last 20 years it was a much quieter affair," Hart says. "It didn't make the news. People didn't have private jets. It didn't have quite the sizzle it has now." The ranch market, like the rest of the real estate industry, is certainly hot. The prices on our list of the most expensive, for example, topped out at a startling $55 million. Still, that's practically a bargain compared with the most costly apartment on the New York City market. And while a $70 million penthouse triplex might be very nice indeed, it doesn't come with 3,000 acres, glistening trout streams, private cross-country trails, vast wildflower meadows and--lest we forget--cows. Scroll to the end of the article and you can click on a slide show of the ten most expensive ranches.
Flitner family sees value in ranching as a way of life When Arthur Flitner came to Wyoming, he bought 160 acres in the Shell Valley for $30 an acre, and 160 head of cattle for $24 each. He began operating the Diamond Tail Ranch in 1906. His grandson, Stan Flitner, figures the economics of ranching haven't changed much in 100 years, at least by one benchmark. "That's still about what an acre of land is worth for ranching -- around the same as what you'd pay for a cow," said Flitner. But plenty else has changed, with the ranching business seeing cycles of boom and bust, and four new generations of Flitners working the land. In a modern culture that both idealizes and ignores the struggles of the family rancher, the Flitners continue to do what they've done for the past century -- plan for the worst, hope for the best, and work as hard as they can to leave something worthwhile for the next generation. The Diamond Tail ranch has grown to around 4,000 deeded acres, with about 6,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land and 30,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land. Stan, 66, and his wife, Mary, 64, operate the ranch with their son, Tim Flitner. The cow and calf operation has around 340 head of cattle and 60 horses....
Seeking our past A dozen or so men gathered a few miles south of Prescott Wednesday to honor the first non-Indians to set foot in the area. It was exactly 143 years after the Walker Party just might have gathered at the same exact spot on May 10, 1863, to organize the Walker Prospecting and Mining Company and its camp, where the party accurately anticipated that gold would be plentiful. Twenty-six men agreed to stake off 52 mining claims along the Hassayampa River. Joseph Reddeford Walker, a guide who also discovered the Yosemite Valley, led them. Those familiar with the pine forests of the Prescott Basin are likely familiar with the site, without knowing it could have an important place in Prescott's history. It is along the Hassayampa River at the intersection of the Jersey Lilly Mine and Wolf Creek roads. A prestigious but irreverent pack of Prescottonians thought it would be fun and worthwhile to try to locate the site since, after all, the Walker Party arrived nearly a year before Prescott even became the territorial capital. "It's Prescott's history," said Lance Murray, who with fellow history buff Pete Bochat is among a rare group of native Prescottonians....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Lack of good lips keeps cows behind camels So," I asked Rodney, "Did ya hurt yer jaw?" "Yes," he replied, "It's a camel injury." Turns out Rodney had been the victim of camel retribution. The accidental head butt had loosened a few teeth. Rodney had been breaking and training his camel to ride. This led me to ponder on the difficulty of camel training vs. cow training. It appears that camels are considerably smarter than cows. Of course, I thought, because cows don't have prehensile lips! You students of anatomy know that, unlike the camel, the goat, and the average sheepherder, cows' lips are hard and square. They cannot nibble. More importantly, they cannot purse their lips, which is why cows cannot whistle. Oh, sure, you say, but they could put a cloven hoof in their mouth and hail a cab - something a horse could never do. Yet cows haven't figured it out. This anatomical defect has had a direct effect on the bovine's inability to advance up the evolutionary food chain....