NEWS ROUNDUP

Judge bars shrill Navy sonar The Navy is forbidden to use an intense form of sonar -- known to have spooked Puget Sound orcas in the past -- during combat exercises this month in the Pacific, a federal judge ruled Monday. Environmentalists suing to halt the sonar use offered "considerable convincing scientific evidence" that the exercise would harm or even kill whales, porpoises and other marine creatures, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled in Los Angeles in granting a temporary restraining order. Among the areas the Navy had previously obtained permission to use the midfrequency sonar were the biologically rich waters of the northwest Hawaiian Islands. Last month, President Bush proposed creating the largest marine sanctuary on the planet there. "Whales and other marine species shouldn't have to die for practice. The Navy can accomplish its national security mission in a manner that's consistent with environmental protection," said Joel Reynolds, a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer involved in the case. "It simply makes no sense for the Navy not to incorporate the full range of practical, common-sense measures available to it to reduce the harm to whales, porpoises and other marine creatures." The Navy was preparing a statement in response to the ruling, Navy spokesman Lt. John Gay said, but it was not available by late Monday. In the past, though, the service has said a new generation of super-quiet submarines is being developed by nations such as Iran and North Korea. "Without active sonar, our young men and women serving aboard ships are blind and vulnerable to attack from submarines," the Navy said in a 2003 statement responding to a study in the science journal Nature that said naval sonar kills whales....
Boom life Spurred by energy prices that have more than tripled in the past three years, a drilling boom has swept the Rocky Mountain West. Last year, more than 29 million acres in federal land in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico were leased to energy companies. The four states also issued almost 20,000 drilling permits. As drilling rigs and pumpjacks fleck the region's landscape, the energy boom also is tugging at the West's social fabric and transforming lives. From a New Mexico rancher fighting to preserve his cultural heritage to a 19-year-old Colorado roughneck enjoying the cash windfall, Westerners are living in a changing land. A New Mexico rancher says he won't give up the battle to keep land his ancestors settled in the 1860s. Gilbert Armenta - New Mexico rancher, coal miner and descendant of Mexican settlers - watched the whitecap-filled San Juan River as it cut across his land. "The river out there, the river does what it wants," said Armenta, a gray-felt cowboy hat shielding the midday glare. "And now I'm suddenly responsible for it flooding?" he asked. "It's intimidation." Armenta, 59, is locked in a legal fight with XTO Energy Inc., which operates 12 natural-gas wells on his 144-acre ranch. The Houston-based company sued Armenta in January, claiming he cost them more than $300,000 by refusing to allow them access to the property....
Profiting From an Oil Boom, but Keeping a Cautious Eye The 100-year-old Clear Creek Ranch has largely been skipped over by the periodic oil booms that have swept this state since a gusher prompted the first bout of oil fever in the early 1900's. This time, though, is different. Surging oil and gas prices have ignited a drilling frenzy. Every two weeks, crews punch a new well into a field that includes Clear Creek and a neighboring ranch. The pace would be much faster if the drillers could bring in a second moveable rig, but they cannot get one. With national oil production at a high pitch for the first time in more than a quarter-century, oil rigs are in short supply. The drilling surge is producing a tidy income for Clear Creek, even though the ranch owns only a tiny percentage of the oil and gas rights in the field, said Rob Hendry, who owns the ranch with his wife and two sons. Royalties are about $4,000 a month, or roughly what it costs Clear Creek to cover higher prices for gasoline and diesel fuel used to raise cattle on the 180,000-acre spread. A second, larger revenue stream comes from another oil-related business that Mr. Hendry created, a construction company that uses earth movers, bulldozers and other heavy equipment to level sections of ranch land to accommodate a moveable drilling rig that is as tall as a 15-story building. Each well site his construction unit builds earns $20,000 for the ranch, Mr. Hendry said....
Rehberg opposes drilling ban on Front Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg is breaking with fellow GOP Sen. Conrad Burns and a recent poll by a Republican firm to oppose a moratorium on drilling on the Rocky Mountain Front. In a statement released to Lee Newspapers Monday, Rehberg said it would be "unwise to summarily close off areas that could be part of an energy solution for our country." Rehberg's statement came less than a week after Burns changed his earlier position and pushed new federal legislation that forbids any new oil and gas development along the Front - the celebrated stretch from near Lincoln to Glacier National Park where the Rocky Mountains jut out above the high plains. Burns' legislation would also retire any existing oil and gas drilling permits should they expire or be acquired by non-drilling outfits. Burns had previously opposed a permanent moratorium for drilling permits along the Front. Rehberg struck a middle ground in his statement....
Conservation groups fear oil, gas rigs will hurt Utah forest land For decades, the plundering hooves of cattle and sheep ruined trout streams and habitat around this 17,000-acre reservoir. Stream channeling and the deliberate poisoning of willows that protect their banks only made things worse. Much of the damage has been turned around, but a new threat from oil and gas development could reverse progress made in this mountainous patch of national forest 60 miles southeast of Salt Lake City famous for its trout streams, big-game habitat and roadless stretches. A water user's group that gave up all but the water and mineral rights to land around here is awarding exploration leases to oil and gas companies. The Uinta National Forest is doing an impact study on opening up to 778,000 more acres for energy leasing. What's more, a federally designated “energy corridor” running just south of Strawberry Reservoir could hasten oil and gas development by laying pipelines in the ground....
Expert touts wolf changes Increased vigilance and denser livestock herds grazing on public land could help reduce losses to wolves, a wolf researcher says. Biologists made some erroneous assumptions about wolf behavior around cattle and sheep during the wolf reintroduction planning process in the late 1980s, Timm Kaminski told an audience at the AMK Ranch in Grand Teton National Park. Kaminski worked on those plans as a biologist with the Mountain Livestock Cooperative. He said researchers thought most wolf packs would remain deep in wilderness areas in Yellowstone and central Idaho. "Most packs moved out to the boundary areas where there is grazing," he said. "We didn't anticipate that. There's been a fair amount of conflict. Reconciling the conflict has been torturous for some." Early planners also thought that wolves wouldn't eat livestock as long as they lived near an abundance of natural prey. "Wrong, wrong, wrong," he said. Wolf predation on livestock has increased dramatically since 2003. In the Yellowstone area, 20 of 27 packs that overlapped grazing lands killed livestock in 2004. That year, wolf control officials killed seven packs. By 2005, 32 packs killed livestock, and officials had to kill 10 packs....
Trust land's future on ballot Get ready for a showdown. Two plans to overhaul the State Land Department, Arizona's biggest landowner, will be on November's ballot. Voters will have to slog through pages of proposals to make their decision on how the state agency should preserve, develop and permit grazing on its 9 million acres. If history repeats itself and confused voters say no to both, efforts to preserve land in urban areas would be halted. Revenue to public schools, the beneficiary of state land sales, could slow. And development near cities could be hampered. "People recognize by reforming the laws the State Land Department must operate under, there's the potential to make more money for Arizona and education," said Mark Winkleman, commissioner of the state agency. "But there is the possibility voters will get confused and nothing will come out of this." If voters approve both plans, the one with the most votes wins. But parts of the losing plan could wind up winning if the measure selected by voters doesn't have a similar provision. For example, one plan would form a board of trustees. If that one were to lose, a board still likely would be created because the other proposal has no plan for one. The Land Department is one of Arizona's biggest real estate players, but it must still operate by the laws that created it more than 100 years ago....
Judge listens to arguments in forest suit The fate of Montana's first hazardous fuels project under the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Restoration Act was debated Friday before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula. Missoula's Wildwest Institute and Ravalli County-based Friends of the Bitterroot want a preliminary injunction to stop the Forest Service from moving forward with its Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction project. The Forest Service wants to offer the timber for sale this month, with actual work starting near the end of summer or early fall. Following a two-hour hearing, Molloy promised his decision on the injunction would come soon....
Clean Water Act Sanity on the Horizon? The June 19 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in the double cases of Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was another slow step in the long overdue reform of the application of the Clean Water Act’s Section 404 and the rediscovery of the 5th Amendment. The court agreed in principle that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers had vastly overreached in their interpretation and application of the CWA. Unfortunately, the ruling was not as clear cut as it might have been because of the wavering of Justice Anthony Kennedy. But, nonetheless, it should lead to improvements in the administration of the law. Section 404 of the CWA gave the government authority to protect the “navigable waters” of the United States, by having the sole authority to grant permits to allow the discharge of dredged or fill material into navigable waters. This was then extended to the tributaries of navigable waters and eventually even to completely isolated intrastate non-navigable waters. The latter included isolated small ponds or prairie “potholes” on farm and ranchland in the Great Plains which might support a pair of nesting ducks, vernal pools on a rancher’s land in California’s Central Valley which might fill with water for a few months after winter rains, a man-made stock-watering pond or a borrow pit or a quarry, or even a low area in a field that had been farmed for corn for a century, but which, following heavy rains, might hold water for a few weeks -- totally isolated, sometimes by scores of miles, from any stream, let alone a navigable stream. The Wall Street Journal’s Max Boot has referred to this CWA-EPA-Army Corps axis as “The Wetlands Gestapo” for very good reason....
Oregon school tests junipers' thirst level The anecdotal wisdom in eastern Oregon is that juniper trees suck the water out of country that's parched to start with. Now an Oregon State University test that will compare two 300-acre plots aims to pin down the effect of the gnarled trees on high desert environments that characterize much of the land east of the Cascade Range. Junipers are native to the territory, but not in large numbers. They have spread rapidly along with livestock grazing and fire suppression. Rancher Lynee Breese of Prineville remembers that her husband's grandmother kept a garden fed by groundwater. "But as the juniper came in, it utilized the water," Breese said. "The well went dry." The two 300-acre plots are an outdoor laboratory to document that sort of observation....
Low flows on Big Hole cause concerns for fish The Big Hole Watershed Committee is asking irrigators to quit pulling water from the upper Big Hole River because low flows could harm a threatened fish in the river. A dry May and June and increased demand for irrigation have caused the river to drop dramatically in recent days. "Nobody thought it was going to go this fast," said Randy Smith, a cattle rancher near Glen and a member of the committee, which works to keep water in the river to keep fluvial arctic grayling off the federal endangered species list. Committee members are trying to get the word out to ranchers in the upper Big Hole to cut back on irrigation if possible, said committee director Noorjahan Parwana....
A look at one family who went to bat for the land Bouncing down the gravel road that runs through his family's land, Randy Rusk steers his dusty Ford pickup with one hand and alternates shifting gears and pointing with the other. There, to the north, is the ranch that once belonged to Frank Kennicott, who registered the state's first cattle brand, back when this still was the Colorado Territory. There's the old house where Rusk grew up and where his parents, now 86, still live, and the once-grand Beckwith Ranch, where Rusk and other young ranchers gathered back in the day to dance, tell stories and "get all pie-eyed and fall over." And to the west, carved into a dark slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, are the light green veins that Rusk's wife, Claricy, calls "the scar." It was there that developers in the late 1970s cleared trees to open a ski area called Conquistador. To hear Rusk tell it, Conquistador was the beginning of the end for the Wet Mountain Valley, about 80 miles southwest of Colorado Springs....
Ranchers find silver lining in conservation cloud Darrell Wood drove slowly across his land near Chico in Northern California, a battered cowboy hat pulled down over his forehead, his eyes darting back and forth as he sized up the Black Angus cattle grazing nearby. In the back of his truck, three border collies stood at attention, ready to work. The cattle looked in prime shape as they stood in lush pasturage dotted with sapphire vernal pools. Large flocks of northern pintails dabbled in the water, while white-tailed kites hovered overhead and red-winged blackbirds called from the sedges along the pools. "This ecosystem is like anything else," said Wood, gesturing across the gently rolling plain that stretches all the way to the foothills of the Sierra. "Properly managed, it flourishes. Improperly managed, things start falling apart. We're doing everything we can to manage it properly." Not too many years ago, that kind of talk might have sounded strange coming from a cattleman. But Wood represents a new breed of rancher. He and hundreds of other ranchers and farmers in California and across the nation are part of a growing private initiative that "embeds" wildlife habitat into the working agricultural landscape....
Kunzler to stand trial in fall Benson rancher Darrell Kunzler will stand trial on manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges in November, after his attorney announced that he couldn’t reach a plea bargain agreement with prosecutors on Monday. Kunzler, 70, faces the charges that stem from a November 2004 incident when a Washington woman was killed after crashing into one of his Black Angus cows on state Road 30 west of Logan. Kimberly Dawn Johnson, a 40-year-old mother of six, was killed, while several of her children who were in the vehicle with her survived. When Kunzler was bound over on the charges last year, Utah Highway Patrol officials testified that Kunzler exhibited a 30-year pattern of failing to contain his livestock, despite repeated requests by law enforcement....
Steps being taken to reduce roaming cattle A cow was hit and killed shortly after 8:30 p.m. Monday, June 26. The cow was walking along the East Frontage Road of I-19 in the Rio Rico Industrial Park. Rio Rico residents have long complained about cattle roaming the streets and yards of the community. Arizona is an open range state and the law protects the rights of cattle owners and does not require ranches to be fenced. Now, one of several area ranchers, Milo DeWitt, working with his landlord, Rio Rico Properties, is taking steps to reduce the problem. DeWitt leases about 3,200 acres from Rio Rico Properties. He is installing more fences, while reducing the number of cattle he runs, said Guy Tobin, president of Rio Rico Properties. In recent weeks he has sold 100 head of cattle, Tobin said. Another 100 head are leaving in the next week. "In approximately a year, he's going to phase out the cattle and concentrate on his horses and agricultural projects," Tobin said....
Cowgirl spirit Rose Cambra Freitas said she and her daughter wanted to provide a western activity for the youth of Maui when they began the "Maui All-Girls and Junior Boys And Girls Rodeo" in 1974. "My family all love the rodeo. It's our way of life," she said. "It teaches them discipline and sportsmanship." Because of her efforts, Freitas will become the first woman from Hawaii to be inducted in the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, this fall. Some inducted in the past include Annie Oakley, Dale Evans and Sacagawea. Freitas, 74, a rancher and still a rodeo competitor, is being inducted with four others, including the late Esther Morris, who successfully fought for women's right to vote in the Wyoming Territory in 1869. The museum plans to fly Freitas to Texas in October for the induction ceremonies....
NFSR finds new home in New Mexico The 2006 National Finals Steer Roping, scheduled for Nov. 3-4, will move to the Lea County Events Center near Hobbs, N.M., after five years in Amarillo, Texas. This year's event will mark the first time the NFSR has been held in the state of New Mexico since 1960. "Our expectations are to put on the best National Finals Steer Roping that has ever been," said Randy McCormick, Lea County Commissioner. "It's an exciting time in Lea County, and we have a lot of growth going on. We're going to shine up our best boots, and hopefully people will want to come back to Lea County again." The first National Finals Steer Roping was held in 1959 in Clayton, N.M., in the northeastern corner of New Mexico about 350 miles north of Hobbs. It remained in Clayton for two years before moving to Laramie, Wyo., for a year. In 1962, the NFSR moved to Douglas, Wyo., and then spent the next two years in Pawhuska, Okla. The event remained in the state of Oklahoma until 1969 with Vinita hosting the event from 1965-66 and McAlester from 1967-68....
Tall in the Saddle Jerry Croft is a cowboy, and he can prove it. “I’ve chased wild horses, chased wild cows, I’ve been in shootouts and I’ve lived with Indians,” he says like someone describing their summer vacation. “I shot a guy in the leg in Wyoming once, but we won’t get into that... then one of the big outfits I worked for was called Uncle Sam and went to Vietnam for a couple of years.” Croft tends to take things easier nowadays, content to make a living by crafting some of the highest-quality saddles in the country in his workshop just south of Deadwood. Despite the commercial success of Croft’s Saddelry, Croft can’t help but think back to his early years working on the range. “I’m really proud that I was a real, true cowboy,” he says. “I’m prouder that I rode bad country, I rode bad horses, I chased wild cows, than anything else.” Standing in his workshop, the smell of oiled leather and fresh wood permeating the air, listening to the rough tenor of his throaty voice, it’s hard to imagine that Croft has been anything but a cowboy....
Trew:Texas politics has history of confusion If you are one of the many Texans who consider the current Texas political scene ridiculous, "whoa-up" and listen. It’s not the first time. In fact, it might be considered about normal. Excerpts from the book "Texas Boundaries"by Luke Gournay explains the evolution of our state from a Spanish conquest to an American state. It’s no wonder we find it all so confusing. Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, combining the early states of Texas and Coahuila. “Heated politics” eventually divided these two states into three departments lasting from 1824 to 1834. "Political unrest" began in 1832, leading to the formation of counties within the department to allow more local governance. “Political differences” grew heated again as larger towns and communities demanded more local power within their boundaries. More "political unhappiness"finally allowed precincts to operate as subdivisions within municipalities. Are you confused yet? In 1836, at the convention at Washington on the Brazos, 23 municipalities voted to call themselves governmental districts and declared their independence from Mexico....
It’s The Pitts: Better Safe Than Sore For those of you who believe it is better to be safe than stylish comes word that a firm is making air bags for horses. Well, not for horses actually, but for the people who ride them. The Hit-Air Vest attaches by a cord to your saddle and when your horse tries to send you into the funeral parlor the cord pulls the plug on your air vest which then inflates to protect your spine, neck and internal organs upon impact. Next thing you know they’ll be putting seat belts on saddles. Oh wait a minute, they already do. If companies really want to take all the “fun” out of being a cowboy why not have saddles with ejection seats so that when a horse sends the rider on an unscheduled flight into outer space he or she would come floating back to earth for a soft landing? Bureaucrats won’t be satisfied until they take all the risk out of everything. That is a problem for cowboys because they are engaged in a very dangerous career. In the future I can see OSHA mandating that panels be padded and horseshoers be made to wear bulletproof vests. Needles will be made dull, like restaurant steak knives that won’t even cut gravy. Trees and rocks on ranches will have to have plastic barrels filled with sand around them like you see on freeways and we’ll have to place red safety cones around all construction areas. Horses will have to have expensive anti-kick-back devices like they put on chain saws and all machinery will have to have automatic shut off devices, like my lawn mower, so that when a mechanically impaired cowboy tries to run any piece of equipment it will automatically shut off. The thought occurs to me that there are other potentially profitable safety ideas that could be applied to the cowboy trade....