NEWS ROUNDUP

Mexico creates border nature reserve that could help discourage illegal crossings Mexico is creating an environmental reserve about 30 feet wide and 600 miles long on the Texas border, a "green wall" to protect the Rio Grande from the roads and staging areas that smugglers use to ferry drugs and migrants across the frontier. Much of this border zone is remote and inhospitable - generally too rough to hike through unless you’re a black bear or a pronghorn sheep, species that have flourished in the area’s deserts and mountains. And that’s the way Mexico wants to keep it. While the proposed Rio Bravo del Norte Natural Monument is only about 30 feet wide, it will connect two large protected areas south of the river. When a third nature reserve, known as Ocampo, is created this year, the protected areas in Mexico will form a "wall" of millions of acres of wilderness, matching Texas’ Big Bend parks foot-by-foot along the border....
Eyes in the West Are on Federal Land Sale Its mild climate, stunning scenery and proximity to several national parks have helped make Washington County one of the five fastest-growing counties in the nation. But like many rural Western counties, it has little room to expand: 87% of its land is owned by the federal government. Now, Utah's congressional delegation has a plan to remedy the problem, one that is being closely watched by nearly a dozen Western counties with similar growing pains. The plan is also being scrutinized by conservationists who warn that it would set a dangerous precedent, making thousands of acres of public land available for private development as well as offering a windfall for local agencies and special deals for politically influential officials and property owners. The proposed Washington County Growth and Conservation Act would sell up to 40 square miles of federal land and use the proceeds to finance a multimillion-dollar water pipeline and other local projects. Utah Republican Sen. Robert F. Bennett and Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson are expected to introduce the bill in coming weeks. Waiting in the wings are nearly a dozen similar bills for counties in Utah, Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico where population pressure is fueling the demand for more developable land. The Washington County plan and others like it highlight the growing tension between growth advocates and others who fear that the West's unique legacy of protected public land is in jeopardy along with the wildlife, clean air and water that go with it....
Feds put finishing touch on 50-year timber harvest plan Federal wildlife officials gave their blessing Monday to a 50-year forestry plan aimed at saving Washington state's salmon runs while shielding timber companies from costly Endangered Species Act lawsuits. The sweeping deal, which covers about 9.3 million acres of private forestland and more than 60,000 miles of streams, is believed the biggest of its kind in the country. It requires wider buffers of trees along streams and rivers, reduces the amount of logging on unstable slopes, and establishes new rules for logging roads to reduce the amount of sediment runoff. In return, foresters who follow its provisions are assured by federal fish and wildlife managers that they are not violating endangered species protections for fish and other species. The blueprint, known formally as a Habitat Conservation Plan, and its organizers were praised by officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service....
Hottest technology deployed in fight against wildfires As firefighters brace for the worst wildfire season in six years, they're hoping satellites and digital technology will keep them ahead of the blazes. A wildfire technology consultant says crews across the nation will be watching to see whether these cutting-edge tools, being tested in the West, give firefighters a leg up this season. One team in Moreno Valley, Calif., has been using handheld personal digital assistants in the field and satellite-linked computers in their fire engines since spring to fight fires for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The combination allows the team to track a fire's movement, pinpoint firefighters on the scene and predict how a fire spreads, fire management officer Ron Woychak said. "It allows us to make better decisions on the ground and safe decisions," Woychak said. "To me, that's the bottom line." With the start of wildfire season this month in the West, the new tools come at a critical time for firefighters nationwide....
Driller seeks OK to share groundwater Fidelity Exploration & Production Co. is seeking state permission to share its coalbed methane water with others to use for watering cattle or suppressing dust. Although Montana water law calls the practice "water marketing," Fidelity is not selling the water, said Bruce Williams, Fidelity's vice president of operations in Sheridan, Wyo. "We understand the word 'marketing' normally implies a sale," Williams said. "However ... we do not receive payment for this water from any user nor do we intend to receive payment in the future." Rumors have been circulating in southeastern Montana, where Fidelity is pumping gas from coal seams, that the company was trying to sell water it is producing, Williams said. "We wanted to make it real public that in fact that's not the intention and that's not what's happening," he said Monday....
Judge gives approval for pre-drilling seismic survey A federal judge has ruled that a controversial oil and gas seismic survey project will be allowed to proceed in the Adobe Town area of southwest Wyoming's scenic Red Desert. Conservationists and Bureau of Land Management officials said a recent ruling by an administrative appeals judge lifted a previous halt of the Cherokee West 3D seismic survey project. Tom Foertsch, a physical scientist with the Bureau of Land Management's Rawlins Field Office, said Monday that the agency is pleased with the ruling. "We're happy. ... All the issues were resolved to our satisfaction," he said. But conservationists decried the decision and said the project could threaten fragile desert landscapes. "We'll be examining all the legal options to get a better solution to the problems posed by this project," said Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with the Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. The project was proposed by Kerr McGee Corp. along with contractor Veritas DGC Land Inc. in March 2005....
New Mexico's Chaco Canyon: A Place of Kings and Palaces? Kings living in palaces may have ruled New Mexico's Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago, causing Pueblo people to reject the brawny, top-down politics in the centuries that followed, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder archaeologist. University of Colorado Museum anthropology Curator Steve Lekson, who has studied Chaco Canyon for several decades, said one argument for royalty comes from the rich, crypt-style burials of two men discovered deep in a Chaco Canyon "great house" known as Pueblo Bonito several decades ago. They were interred about A.D. 1050 with a wealth of burial goods in Pueblo Bonito, a 600-room, four-story structure that was considered to be the center of the Chaco world, he said. Archaeologists have long been in awe of the manpower required to build Chaco's elaborate structures and road systems, which required laborious masonry work, extended excavation and the transport of staggering amounts of lumber from forests 50 miles distant, he said. The scale of the architecture and backbreaking work undertaken for several centuries suggests a powerful centralized authority, said Lekson, curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Museum. "I don't think Chaco was a big happy barn-raising," said Lekson, chief editor of "The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh Century Pueblo Regional Center," published in April 2006 by the School of American Research Press in Santa Fe, N.M. "Things were probably quite a bit grimmer than some have imagined." "Kingship" developed in Mesoamerica about 2,000 years before Chaco, Lekson said, and kings quickly became a constant on the political landscape. "It's not remarkable that there were small-scale kings and states at Chaco in A.D. 1100," he said. "What is remarkable is that it took the Southwest so long to get around to it."....
Debate Over Wind Power Creates Environmental Rift Dan Boone has no doubt that his crusade against wind energy is the right way to protect the Allegheny highlands he loves. Let other environmentalists call him deluded at best, traitorous at worst. He remains undeterred. For four years or more, Mr. Boone has traveled across the mid-Atlantic to make every argument he can muster against local wind-power projects: they kill birds and bats; they are too noisy; they are inefficient, making no more than a symbolic contribution to energy needs. Wind farms on the empty prairies of North Dakota? Fine. But not, Mr. Boone insists, in the mountainous terrain of southwestern Pennsylvania, western Maryland or West Virginia, areas where 15 new projects have been proposed. If all were built, 750 to 1,000 giant turbines would line the hilltops, most producing, on average, enough electricity to power 600 homes. Wind projects are in the midst of a huge growth spurt in many parts of the country, driven by government incentives to promote alternatives to fossil fuels. But Mr. Boone, who wields a botanist's trowel and a debater's knife with equal ease, wants to slow them down with community activism, regulatory action and legal challenges....
`Biopharmed' Rice Reaps Resistance In its quest to genetically engineer rice with human genes to produce a treatment for childhood diarrhea, tiny Ventria Bioscience has made an astonishing number of powerful enemies spanning the political spectrum. Ventria, with 16 employees, practices "biopharming," the most contentious segment of agricultural biotechnology because its adherents essentially operate open-air drug factories by splicing human genes into crops to produce proteins that can be turned into medicines. Ventria's rice produces two human proteins — found in mother's milk, saliva and tears — which help people hydrate and lessen the severity and duration of diarrhea attacks, a top killer of children in developing countries. But farmers, environmentalists and others fear that such medicinal crops could cross-pollinate with conventional crops, making them unsafe to eat....
To Stem Widespread Extinction, Scientists Airlift Frogs in Carry-On Bags Of all the things airport security screeners have discovered as they rifle through travelers' luggage, the suitcases full of frogs were a first. In a race to save amphibians threatened by an encroaching, lethal fungus, two conservationists from Atlanta recently packed their carry-ons with frogs rescued from a Central American rain forest — squeezing some 150 to a suitcase — and requested permission from airlines to travel with them in the cabin of the plane. The frogs, snuggly swaddled in damp moss in vented plastic deli containers big enough for a small fruit salad, were perhaps the last of their kind, collected from a pristine national park that fills the bowl of El Valle, an inactive volcano in Panama. In many parts of the world, habitat loss is thought to be the biggest driver of amphibian extinctions, but the frogs in El Valle are facing a more insidious threat. A waterborne form of chytrid fungus is marching down the spine of the mountain range where they live. Scientists aren't exactly sure how the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, kills, but it seems to break down a protein in the skin called keratin that may be important for respiration. The skin of infected animals sloughs off in layers, and within two weeks, they die....
Conn. City Leaders OK Riverfront Evictions City officials voted to evict two homeowners at the center of an eminent domain battle who refuse to leave their riverfront homes, even after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling that the city can seize the property for a private development project. The City Council voted 5-2 in favor of eviction Monday. An attorney for the residents said they are considering continuing to fight. "You are a disgrace to the city, the state and the nation," one of the residents, Michael Cristofaro, told council members who voted to evict. The city has been trying for a decade to redevelop the once-vibrant neighborhood at the point where the Thames River joins the sea. Seven homeowners challenged the city's plans to seize the property and build a hotel, convention center and upscale condominiums, saying eminent domain can't be used to make way for private development. But the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last year to uphold the city's right to take the homes, saying municipalities have broad power to do so in favor of private development to generate tax revenue. Since then, five of the homeowners have settled with the city and agreed to leave. Two holdouts, Cristofaro and Susette Kelo, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, still refuse to sell. The vote came five days after a settlement deadline. One resident agreed to a settlement just minutes before Monday's meeting began, The Day of New London reported....
Ranchers round up horses to make way for development For 20 years, Claude Miller and Dick Blue have leased 11,000 acres in central Washington's Colockum hills for grazing land for their 250 to 300 horses, which are used in youth camps and resorts across Washington state. The horses might still travel, but their home base will change beginning this week, as scores of volunteers gathered to help Miller and Blue round up their horses from the open land south of Wenatchee to make room for possible housing developments. "It's kind of a sad day," Blue said. "There aren't many of these kinds of places, grazing ranches, like this anymore. They're hard to find. This is the end of cowboying as we know it." Miller-Blue Outfitters opened for business as a small operation in 1970. Today, Miller-Blue partners with at least 12 different youth groups, resorts and churches throughout Washington. "Over the years, I guess we've seen about 1.5 million children ride our horses and by the summer, we'll have about 1,000 children a day on one of our horses," Blue said....
Sheep industry dwindling For the past 80 years, four generations of Allisons have overseen the spring shearing at their 35,000-acre ranch among the rocky arroyos of Terrell County, 140 miles southwest of San Angelo. On his recent 61st birthday, Robert Allison of San Angelo made a dark prediction: "I don't believe we'll be shearing sheep here in 20 years." While he spoke in the shade of his great metal barn, six stocky Mexicans from south of Del Rio — each with green cards identifying them as resident aliens — zipped the heavy woolen fleeces from Allison's 500 Rambouillet ewes. Every four minutes, the shearers neatly delivered fine, heavy coats for shipment to the wool warehouse in Mertzon, about 25 miles west of San Angelo. Top hands can shear 100 sheep a day. The gray-haired Allison recalled younger days when 3,000 Angora goats would occupy shearers for three days or more. Historically, the Edwards Plateau has furnished 90 percent of the nation's mohair and 20 percent of the nation's wool. ..
Putting on a "testicle festival" in Utah's Mormon country takes a lot of ... guts The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways. Take, for instance, the genesis of Utah's own testicle festival. Kalon Downing was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Phoenix, his mind wandering back home to the high country of Utah's northeast corner. Wouldn't it be a ball, he and a companion from Rock Springs, Wyo., dreamed, to get together some ranching friends, fry up some Rocky Mountain oysters and listen to some good country musicians? "I had too much time on my hands, sitting in meetings," recalled the matter-of-fact cowboy, wearing a dusty felt hat, red plaid shirt, jeans and spurs on his boots. Downing came home from Arizona in December 2000, and late the next spring, after he and other Rich County ranchers were finished branding and turning their cattle onto summer range, the first Black Gold Cattle Co. Testicle Festival was born. The 2006 testicle festival, which wound up here Saturday night, has always revolved around the ribald — and old — cowboy practice of eating the testicles of calves that have been neutered and bulls that have been put out to permanent pasture....