NEWS ROUNDUP

Bipartisan effort for Oregon wilderness Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith on Thursday proposed a large increase in the acreage the House approved last month for the first wilderness expansion on Mount Hood and along the Columbia River Gorge in more than 20 years. Wyden, a Democrat, joined his Republican colleague Smith to ask that 125,000 acres be designated wilderness. That would amount to about 195 square miles and represent a 70 percent increase from the areas currently protected as wilderness. In July, the House approved 77,000 acres, or 120 square miles, of new wilderness area. The House bill had similar bipartisan backing from Republican Greg Walden and Democrat Earl Blumenauer. The senators also proposed adding nearly 80 miles of river for wild and scenic rivers protection — more than triple the 25 miles approved by the House....
Editorial - Blaming wolves: Ranchers' claims need further proof Most ranchers and sheepherders don't like wolves. You might even say they are the predators' natural enemies. That, of course, is because wolves occasionally dine on a calf or lamb and sometimes even on an adult animal, and that means a financial loss to the rancher. Advocates for the reintroduction of wolves in the West don't dispute that ranchers can prove some wolf depredation. But their claims that range animals are failing to gain weight because wolves are lurking seem implausible and in need of further study. Ingrained and often overblown animosity toward wolves resulted in their eradication from the West by cattlemen, sheepmen and their hired guns, who trapped the animals, shot them and poisoned them until the last wolf was killed off in the early 20th century. More than a decade ago, wolves were reintroduced to rebalance the ecosystems that were upset when the species at the top of the food chain was eliminated. Conservationists and biologists predicted that wolves would reorder natural, beneficial relationships among plants and animals. Studies have proven them right....
Church wary of Nevada water deal The LDS Church has waded into the battle over a controversial groundwater pumping project in Nevada. The church, which owns a 4,000-acre cattle ranch in eastern Nevada's White Pine County and is a senior water rights holder in the Spring Valley, has through its attorneys asked the state engineer to delay awarding a project permit to the Southern Nevada Water Authority until an ongoing U.S. Geological Survey study of the region's groundwater resources is completed next year. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies water to Las Vegas and Clark County, has proposed taking groundwater out of Spring Valley and surrounding areas - including the Snake Valley, which straddles the Nevada-Utah border - and pumping it to Las Vegas via a 200-mile pipeline network to meet that area's growing water needs. Ranchers on both sides of the state line, and environmental groups, have dug in against the project, fearing it will dry up water tables and destroy the area's ecosystem and ranching industry....
Huge Marijuana Operation Linked to Mexican Mafia The Mexican Mafia in Utah's Garfield County? Authorities say illegal immigrants, working as drug runners grew a huge marijuana garden on federal land in Utah. And two men, both Mexican nationals and in the United States illegally, are in jail without bail tonight. Sheriff's deputies caught them yesterday in Panguitch. Augustine Tesco and Juan Carlos Garcia face federal drug charges. Investigators say both men may have ties to the Mexican Mafia. They say their job was simple, grow the marijuana plants then guard the pot with guns. Authorities seized more than five thousand plants this week near Bryce Canyon. Many people who visit Garfield County in southern Utah do so for the relative peace and quiet. Those same qualities also appeal to those up to go good. We've all heard of marijuana busts before, but very few are as big as this one. Even Keith Millet, with the Iron County/Garfield County drug task force has never seen this much pot all at once. When he was first told about it, he had to see it to believe it....
Squatter numbers drop, Forest Service announces For years, local officials have been grappling with the issue of unauthorized long-term camping on national forest land. Along with the potential fire danger, so-called squatters sometimes cause a disproportionate impact to natural resources, including concentrations of human waste and garbage. A couple of years ago, for example, rangers and volunteers hauled truckloads of trash from favored squatter sites along Montezuma Road, including mattresses and miscellaneous pieces of furniture. But Dillon District Ranger Rick Newton said recently that the Forest Service has been diligently enforcing camping regulations and education public land users to tackle the problem. Those ongoing management efforts have made a difference....
Where there's fire, there's global warming Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony Westerling began obsessively poring over the meticulously detailed invoices that U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service land managers use to itemize firefighting expenses. "These things will have 170-plus fields," says Westerling - including information on when a fire was first reported, when firefighters finally controlled it, and how many acres were burned. Westerling, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (which also studies climate and earth sciences) in La Jolla, Calif., didn't aspire to be an accountant, nor was he searching for fraud in government spending. He was hoping to answer a question that had not been seriously asked before: How do rising global temperatures affect wildfire behavior? Along with fellow researchers in La Jolla and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Westerling wove the information in the invoices together with data from streamflow gauges, soil moisture measures, and temperature and precipitation records to form a comprehensive picture of the driving forces behind the West's fires. The group will present its findings in the journal Science next month; a preliminary article appeared in the July 6 issue of Science Express. The basic conclusion may not startle: Large forest fires increased beginning in the mid-1980s - particularly in the Northern Rockies, the Sierra Nevada and the southern Cascades - and the changes closely correlated with an increase in spring and summer temperatures during the same time period....
Record energy pace With about four months left in 2006, Colorado's booming energy industry is on track to surpass an earlier estimate and log yet another record year. The state issued 3,022 permits to drill oil and gas wells from Jan. 1 through Aug. 1, according to a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission report released this week. At that pace, Colorado is projected to issue a record 5,178 permits by year's end, higher than the commission's April estimate of 4,650 permits. The new estimate would be a 19 percent jump from the record 4,363 permits approved in 2005. And last year was nearly 50 percent higher than the 2,917 permits approved in 2004. "That's pretty big," said Ken Wonstolen, a senior vice president for the Colorado Oil & Gas Association. "Even though there has been some moderation in natural gas prices, there has been no reduction in the activity levels."....
BLM sells Utah drilling leases Oil-and-gas players bid up to $475 an acre for drilling rights on public land Tuesday, but some were still angry over a judge's decision two weeks ago that they say robbed them of parcels they'd already won in areas of Utah considered worthy of wilderness protection. At a fast clip, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned 226,471 acres of federal land, much of it in central Utah where a wildcat gusher has intensified interest, for $8 million -- half of which goes to the state. The auction, however, did not include nearly 20,000 acres of land the bureau held back in response to a court ruling that found it had acted illegally in leasing similar wilderness-quality lands three years ago. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball reversed the lease of 16 parcels in an Aug. 2 decision, angering exploration companies like Denver-based Tidewater Oil and Gas Co., which stands to lose drilling rights on a half-dozen of those parcels. Tidewater's leases are in the wild Book Cliffs region of eastern Utah. "We don't want our money back. We want our leases," said Tidewater manager James S. Jones, who was bidding Tuesday for more drilling rights to add to the company's portfolio of about 470,000 acres in Utah....
BLM notices increase in vandalism on public lands An increase in vandalism on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management has led the agency to authorize reward money for information resulting in the identification and prosecution of suspects. “Overall, we're seeing an increase in vandalism and graffiti,” said Mike Marquart, chief area ranger for law enforcement with the BLM. While it is not uncommon for BLM signs and property to be vandalized, the vandalism has recently been spreading beyond signs and buildings to the protected lands themselves. At the Trona Pinnacles, one of the rock formations itself was recently defaced with graffiti. “This particular incident was actually of the national natural landmark itself,” said Marquart. “It's a tragedy to see something like this happen to such a landmark.”....
Prairie Dogs Causing Trouble for Golfers Golfers in Cedar City are facing an unusual hazard on the course, prairie dogs. Instead of manicured lawns, dirt mounds spot the fairways at Cedar Ridge Golf Course. The Utah Prairie Dog is on the endangered species list, so the golf course can't remove the animals. The course managers say the biggest problem is the holes the prairie dogs create. John Evans, Director of Golf, Cedar Ridge Golf Course: "The danger is of people stepping in the holes and the balls getting lost in the holes. I have a hard time running golf tournaments because I have to have so many special rules because of lost balls." Ralph Mortensen, Parawon Resident: "It is a big problem. I like to see the little critters, but they tear up the fairways and things."....
"Ride Around the World": Tracing the trail of the modern cowboy So this is what IMAX was made for: 70mm, six-story-high images of horses and their riders thundering through grassy plains. That iconic American vision is captured in the spectacular documentary "Ride Around the World," a new, supersized IMAX production that celebrates horse culture in the West — not just in the U.S., but also in Canada and all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The full story of the working collaboration between people and horses — herding cattle, roping calves, capturing feisty bulls — begins, the film tells us, 1,200 years ago in Morocco. There, Moorish horsemen rode through deserts on light, fast horses, the same animals that helped them conquer Spain. Hopping to Spain, "Ride" explains how cattle herders crossed Moroccan horses with native breeds and came up with an ideal hybrid for managing livestock. The men who rode these horses became the first cowboys. Conquistadors brought horse culture to the New World; director Harry Lynch captures, with great energy and beauty, the hard work of modern gauchos in Argentina and Mexico, baqueanos riding on the icy slopes of Patagonia and ranchers in Texas and British Columbia....