NEWS ROUNDUP

Rocky Mountain National Park says elk thinning to cost $18M A 20-year plan to thin the burgeoning elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park could cost $18 million to kill some animals and disperse others, park officials said. An estimated 2,200 to 3,000 elk live in the park, overgrazing vegetation that is also important to other wildlife including songbirds, beavers and butterflies, biologists say. Elk numbers have escalated because the animals have few predators and no hunting is allowed in the park. The park's goal is a herd of 1,200 to 1,700 elk. Park officials outlined the proposed program and its estimated costs during a public meeting Monday. The park's favored plan would involve killing up to 700 elk annually for four years. After that, an additional 25 to 150 elk would be culled annually for 16 years. The costs would come from hiring extra staff or a contractor to shoot elk, building fences to protect vegetation, transporting carcasses, testing them for disease and processing the meat....
Feds reject petition to list spotted owl The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday rejected a petition to list the California spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act, saying the population is stable and programs that prevent forest wildfires will allow it to thrive. The decision rankled the environmental groups that had requested protection of the speckled, football-sized owl. This was their second effort to list the bird in three years. The petition's denial was based in part on the recommendation of scientists commissioned to study the owl, said Steve Thompson, manager of the agency's California-Nevada operations office. They found that fires that creep through excessive brush and eventually consume the old-growth forests the owls prefer are their main threat, Thompson said, adding that U.S. Forest Service tree thinning programs will prevent the spread of flames and ensure the owls remain off the endangered list. But environmentalists protested, saying the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan, amended in 2004 to allow cutting trees of up to 30 inches in diameter, is logging in disguise and destroys owl habitat....
Study: Oregon Power Plant Spreads Haze A new federal study shows that a coal-burning power plant in Eastern Oregon causes pollution in 10 protected parks and wilderness areas in three states. Haze from the Portland General Electric plant near Boardman clouds views from Hells Canyon on the Idaho border, at Mount Rainier in Washington and Mount Jefferson in Central Oregon, according to the study. Air in wilderness areas is supposed to be protected as the cleanest in the nation. The U.S. Forest Service commissioned the analysis and provided a copy to PGE, the state's largest electric utility, but so far the federal agency has taken no action on it. The Oregonian newspaper obtained it through the Freedom of Information Act. The findings raise the possibility that PGE will have to install millions of dollars worth of pollution controls at the Boardman plant, which was authorized in 1975 _ just in time to avoid overhauled provisions of the federal Clean Air Act. Federal authorities later acknowledged in a court case that the early authorization was a mistake. Boardman is now one of only two major coal plants in the West without modern pollution controls and no immediate commitment to add them, said Patrick Cummins, air quality program manager for the Western Governors Association....
Johanns announces 43% decline in cropland erosion Cropland erosion is on the decline, according to an announcement yesterday from Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. He said that according to USDA's National Resources Inventory (NRI), total soil erosion on cultivated and non-cultivated cropland in the U.S. decreased 43% between 1982 and 2003, sheet and rill erosion decreased 42%, and wind erosion decreased 44%. "This remarkable decrease in soil erosion can be attributed to the extraordinary efforts by America's private landowners to conserve and protect agricultural lands," said Johanns. "This report underscores the value of cooperative conservation through partnerships with our farmers and ranchers, who are among the best stewards of the land." Nationwide, sheet and rill erosion -- which is the removal of layers of soil by rainfall and runoff -- on cropland dropped from 4 tons per acre per year in 1982 to 2.6 tons per acre per year in 2003. Wind erosion rates also dropped from 3.3 to 2.1 tons per acre per year. The data also shows that 72% of the nation's cropland was eroding below soil loss tolerance rates, compared to 60% in 1982. Highly Erodible Land (HEL) being cropped is down to about 100 million acres, compared to 124 million acres in 1982. HEL and non-HEL cropland acreage eroding above soil loss tolerance rates declined 35% and 45%, respectively....
Off-road riders are damaging meadows Deep in the tangle of dirt roads that connects Boca, Prosser and Stampede reservoirs, Susanne Jensen inspects an iridescent green meadow deeply scarred by off-road vehicle tracks. "When people go in and muck up our meadows, it just sets us back," said Jensen, the off-highway vehicle specialist for the Truckee Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest. Fortunately, as three quad runners ripped their tracks back and forth across the narrow green wetland earlier this spring, a passing motorist noticed the unlawful off-roading and reported the incident. The Forest Service found the off-roaders and gave them a decision: Either restore the meadow or face federal charges for the damage. Today the meadow is slowly healing, but only after the off-roaders filled in their tracks and placed boulders next to the meadow to block entry to the sensitive area....
Event devoted to bird monitoring An evening devoted to discovering birds in the Black Hills will be Thursday at the Mystic District Ranger office at 803 Soo San Drive in Rapid City. The free program, beginning at 6 p.m., celebrates International Migratory Bird Day, according to a U.S. Forest Service news release. International Migratory Bird Day is celebrated nationally to support migratory bird conservation throughout North America by various bird conservation groups such as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Forest Service, National Audubon Society and Ducks Unlimited. This year, International Migratory Bird Day will focus on "The Boreal Forest: Bird Nursery of the North," which focuses on the North American Boreal Forest. The Boreal Forest is a mosaic of interconnected habitats that includes forests, lakes, rivers, grasslands and tundra. The Black Hills is an island in a sea of prairie and contains plant communities from the Rocky Mountains, northern coniferous forests, eastern hardwood forests, and the surrounding Great Plains, according to the news release....
Former wolf advocates change their minds A central Idaho couple who favored wolf reintroduction in the 1990s now say they have changed their minds after their dogs were bitten by wolves near their home. "I love animals, I always have," said Jennifer Swigert during a wolf management meeting last week with officials from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "But this is insane. People are at a total risk of getting fanged up." Idaho officials took over day-to-day management of wolves south of Interstate 90 from the federal government in January. Wolves north of I-90 in the Idaho Panhandle are considered to be there naturally. They remain classified as an endangered species and are under the control of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In most instances, Fish and Wildlife Service officials must approve the killing of any wolf in the region. The wolves south of the freeway were reintroduced in central Idaho in 1995 as an "experimental, nonessential population" under the Endangered Species Act. Wolves there can legally be killed under a greater range of circumstances and without first getting permission from the Fish and Wildlife Service. There are an estimated 500 to 600 wolves in Idaho. "There are six times the number of animals required in Idaho for delisting purposes," said Nadeau. "Our goal over the next few years is to delist wolves and manage them as a big game animal while maintaining a minimum of 15 packs of wolves in Idaho forever."....
Platte River plans seeks balance among users The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday released a plan to balance demands among Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming over the Platte River - the drinking water supply for more than 3 million people. The plan calls for increased flows on the Platte and more land set aside for wildlife in Nebraska. It also attempts to deal with needs of the growing cities along the river, agricultural irrigation, and four threatened or endangered species. "Built into this plan is an insurance policy for Colorado water users - these endangered species at Grand Isle, Nebraska have now been taken care of," said Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Don Ament, who helped negotiate the plan. The Platte River is a major migration stop for whooping cranes in central Nebraska and is home to the piping plover, least tern and pallid sturgeon. The final environmental impact statement - which took nine years to complete - recommends acquiring at least 10,000 acres in central Nebraska for wildlife habitat and increasing flows in the Platte at key times by 130,000 acre-feet to 150,000 acre-feet....
Judge tells government to start over on upper Snake River plan The federal government needs to start over on its plan for making the operations of federal irrigation projects in southern Idaho safe for salmon, a federal judge decided. U.S. District Judge James Redden ruled Tuesday that NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must consider the effects a dozen irrigation projects on the upper Snake River have on salmon in conjunction with the operations of hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers - not separately. "Rebuilding salmon to healthy, harvestable levels will come in large part from addressing the impacts of the down-river dam operations that do the most harm to salmon," Redden wrote. "Even so, the water of the upper Snake projects and its uses must be an integral part of the analysis." Members of Idaho's congressional delegation issued a joint statement criticizing the ruling, saying Redden's decision threatened a huge water rights agreement between the state, federal government and the Nez Perce Tribe over water in the Snake River Basin....
Wildlife conservation near Provo River will be preserved A wildlife haven has been saved -- and endowed with a quarter-million dollars. A conservation easement on five miles of the Provo River bottom rife with deer, birds, beaver, wildflowers and an endangered species of frog was given to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources on Tuesday for preservation in perpetuity. Bob Larsen, owner of the land, was overcome with emotion as he made the announcement, weeping so hard he could not speak. "It's an emotional thing for me to be able to say that nothing, nothing will ever be built on this river," he said. "I think this agreement is a model for generations to come and I think this will help Utah immensely. I'm just proud to be able to do this." Larsen's gift totals 600 acres of river bottom in Wasatch and Summit counties extending contiguously upstream from where the Provo River empties into Jordanelle Reservoir. Because only the conservation rights to the property, not the property itself, was gifted to the state, the land will remain private, without public access. The property is part of 2,600 acres that will be preserved within a 5,600-acre upscale development of 749 homes called Victory Ranch, near Francis. Larsen has yet to decide what portion, if any, of the remaining 2,000 acres will be deeded to the state as part of the easement....
Eagle Chick Makes Webcam Debut Through the magic of the Internet and the hard work of the National Park Service and the Ventura Office of Education, a web cam has been installed on Santa Cruz Island to monitor live, streaming images of the first chick to hatch unaided by humans on the Channel Islands in more than 50 years. Eagles have been rare on the Channel Islands because high levels of DDT have worked its way into the food chain and weakened eggshells. The nest was confirmed on Feb. 23 and a video camera was installed. The chick was born March 13. The park service had received many requests to see the chick, but there were complications caused by the need not to disturb the birds, which are an endangered species, though there have been proposals to take them off the list. Schoolchildren have been especially eager to see the bird, she said. Technology came up with a solution, but it still took human sweat to implement it....
Labor protests oil, gas lease Green River resident Mike Burd labors in the soda ash plants west of Green River, but on his days off, he spends most of his time hunting and fishing in the Wyoming Range in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Burd remembers shooting his first elk three decades ago in the Wyoming Range. And he captured the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's coveted "cutt-slam" award a while back by catching four native cutthroat trout species in the range's Piney, LaBarge, North Cottonwood and South Cottonwood creeks. Burd believes that legacy is threatened, however, by another planned oil and gas lease sale next month on public lands in the Wyoming Range. Drilling in the range will put intense pressure on hunting and angling resources, he said Tuesday. Floyd said for the first time in Wyoming State AFL-CIO history, the union has sent a formal protest to the Bureau of Land Management concerning oil and gas leasing. He said the union is asking the BLM to suspend a planned June 6 oil and gas lease sale on about 12,000 acres within the Wyoming Range. The BLM oversees oil and gas lease sales on Forest Service lands. The protested leases are located in the North Cottonwood and South Cottonwood Creek areas of Sublette County and are considered a "valuable resource" to the roughly 6,000 union members who live in southwest Wyoming, Floyd said. Floyd and other union members said it was time for labor to become more vocal on oil and gas leasing issues, particularly in areas such as the Wyoming Range, where they feel their recreation areas are under threat from possible oil and gas development....
Editorial: Protect Mesa Verde's future Colorado is home to a world-class archaeological wonder, the first national park to preserve the works of human beings. But as Mesa Verde National Park celebrates its centennial, it's important that we ask ourselves what people 100 years from now will think of our 21st century efforts to protect the wondrous relics of ancient peoples who inhabited our region from about A.D. 600 to 1300. Sadly, our ancestors may look at us with disdain for our wrong-headed priorities. First Lady Laura Bush, honorary chair for the White House's Preserve America initiative, visited Mesa Verde on Tuesday and praised protection efforts. But in truth, many ancient sites at Mesa Verde and surrounding areas are at risk. President Theodore Roosevelt's generation got it right. The same year he made Mesa Verde a national park, Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which to this day makes it a federal crime to vandalize or remove historic artifacts on public lands. Because of such foresight, we can enjoy cliff dwellings and other visible reminders of the Ancestral Pueblo Indians, forbears of 24 tribes that still live in the Southwest....go here for the text of the First Lady's Remarks
Center deteriorating at Dinosaur monument With no money yet to replace it, the National Park Service can only watch as a visitor center that was built over a dinosaur bone quarry slowly splits apart, making do with patchwork repairs as the building slowly crumbles. It's been a problem at the center at Dinosaur National Monument since it was built in 1957, but officials say the pace of the disintegration is picking up. Gummy, clay soil under the building swells when wet and the concrete basement floor has warped into something like ocean rollers. When the bentonite clay soil dries, it crackles like popcorn and shifts parts of the building again. "It's like a fun house," said Dan Chure, chief paleontologist at the monument. "There's some everyday work that needs to be done to make sure the doors close." The Quarry Visitor Center, about 20 miles east of Vernal, is considered safe — for now. Officials keep it open with stopgap repairs, and keep track of a spider web of cracks on exterior walls....
Editorial: It's time to break the cycle, solve bison problem Rivers dry up or flood; hurricanes pummel coasts; fires scorch forests and grasslands; tornadoes pound the Midwest; politicians pontificate; and bison wander from Yellowstone National Park, often fatally and controversially. With a predictability that rivals any cyclical news event, the continuing dispute over how to deal with Yellowstone's overpopulation of bison spans three decades, and by some measures the issue sometimes seems to get no closer to resolution. The latest cycle of the running story made a bigger blip on the news radar because the number of bison shipped to slaughter this past winter totaled 899. For the bison, that's the deadliest winter since 1,084 were killed nine years ago. We don't have a problem with that. In fact, we'd suggest that if previous range managers' estimates of the optimal herd size are correct, then the number shipped to slaughter should have been closer to 2,500. That's because the park's bison population going into winter was estimated at 4,900, roughly double the size of herd that managers say the range in the park can comfortably support. In any case, Gov. Brian Schweitzer is right to want to convene a meeting of the many state and federal agencies with a stake in the fate of the bison....
Ranchers bullish on beef to Japan Importers, retailers and distributors from Japan and Taiwan visited the Masters family cattle ranch near Cape Girardeau on Monday, the first stop on a "Beef Tour" through Missouri, in anticipation of what state officials hope will be a reopening of the Japanese market to U.S. beef. The tour also will include stops this week in Audrain, Miller and Camden counties. U.S. beef exports to Japan were reopened in December after a two-year hiatus because of concerns about mad cow disease. They were suspended again a month later when a shipment from a Brooklyn company showed up with bone material that Japan considered at risk for the disease. In October, Missouri became the first state to develop and implement a voluntary program that guarantees the source and age of its feeder cattle. The claims by participating Missouri producers are verified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the program known as Quality Systems Assessment (QSA). That was crucial to the Japanese, who would not buy beef from an animal older than 20 months because of their concerns that age increases the potential for mad cow disease....
Homing in on the Range After growing up on a cattle ranch, John Hassell became an electrical engineer specializing in wireless technology. So he feels doubly qualified to offer this warning about the system taking shape to track cattle across America: It won't work. To be sure, he doesn't quibble with the logic of the system. It stems from the Bush administration's plan to give agriculture inspectors the ability to pinpoint the origins of mad cow and other diseases within 48 hours. Livestock facilities and individual animals will get identifying numbers, which owners will use to document the beasts' movements in industry databases. The system isn't expected to be fully online until 2009, but already it's clear that in the sprawling U.S. beef and dairy industries -- home to 100 million cattle -- many producers will automate data gathering with radio-frequency chips attached to cattle ears. And that's what has Hassell worried. He contends most of the radio-frequency chips making their way onto cattle ears are a terrible fit. Those chips -- based on the same radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology being integrated for inventory control by large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- are known as ''passive'' tags that broadcast identifying numbers for only a short range, generally just a few feet. While cattle may be considered docile creatures, they are a lot more mobile and skittish than cases and pallets in Wal-Mart warehouses. Hassell believes only ''active'' tags, which broadcast identification data for up to 300 feet, will consistently work for the multiple owners and many environments that cattle pass through, from pastures to stockyards, feed lots and slaughterhouses. Hassell is so convinced that he's launched his own company, ZigBeef Inc., to sell long-range tags. The name is a play on the ''ZigBee'' wireless standard employed by his tags....
Niman Ranch Cuts Risk From Marketing Beef Online LSF Network, the global integrated lead generation group, today announced that it has signed an exclusive contract with gourmet meat purveyors Niman Ranch to deliver new customers over the web on a pay-for-performance basis. The deal means that Niman Ranch pays only when its online marketing agency delivers new customers who use their credit card to purchase steak, pork or lamb online -- not for web visitors who browse but don't buy. Marketers today are demanding higher ROI for their budgets, and few direct marketing methods provide the targeting, returns and accountability of the Internet. The Niman Ranch-LSF Network deal marks a departure from traditional online lead generating campaigns where marketers pay for each new prospect regardless of whether they convert to paying customers or not. "LSF Network's pay-for-performance model means we reduce both the risk and cost of acquiring new customers on the web because we only pay when we get a sale. There's no risk to us at all -- not even for cash flow management. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than that," said John Wright, Director of Marketing at Niman Ranch. Niman Ranch has been selling direct to its target consumer -- meat lovers who demand the freshest, highest quality meat products -- over the web since 2002....
Underwood, Brooks & Dunn Clean Up at ACM Awards Brooks & Dunn, the most honored artists in the history of the Academy of Country Music's awards show, picked up a record 20th and 21st trophies Tuesday night as country music's elite gathered to perform and compete for honors. Newcomer Carrie Underwood, last year's "American Idol" winner, was also a double winner, taking top new female vocalist and single of the year awards. The latter was for "Jesus Take the Wheel," a song she performed on the show. "I wouldn't be here if God hadn't opened all the doors for me," she told the audience. Kenny Chesney captured the entertainer of the year award....
The world's first equine clone will challenge naturally bred runners next month in Nevada Idaho Gem is a mule created three years ago by cloning DNA taken from a foetus produced by the parents of a champion racer. It will race against another mule clone and a full field of non-clones. The two clones have been separated for two years, so their performances could offer insight into the role of the environment in development. The University of Idaho scientists who cloned Idaho Gem also produced two other cloned mules in 2002 from the same DNA. One of those two, Idaho Star, will compete against Idaho Gem along with naturally-bred mules in Winnemucca, Nevada, and on the California racing circuit this summer. Analysing how the clones perform against each other will give scientists information on how variables like diet and training regimes affect developing racing mules. Those behind the race say that just because they carry the DNA of past champions, there is no guarantee the clones will be successful....