NEWS ROUNDUP

Judge blocks part of new grazing rules for ranchers using federal land A judge blocked new grazing rules for ranchers using federal land Friday, saying the regulations would exclude public input. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction while environmental groups sue against the federal rules. Environmental groups claim the new rules give ranchers more water rights and control over public lands while cutting the public out of the decision-making process. Federal officials say the regulations, the first overhaul of rules since 1995, will make management of public lands more efficient - in part by limiting public comment on day-to-day rangeland management decisions. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 262 million acres, mostly in 12 Western states. About 160 million acres are used for grazing livestock. Winmill allowed the agency to overturn the Clinton-era regulations that kept ranchers from applying for private ownership of new water rights on federal land. But he said there was no evidence that cutting the public out of decision making was more efficient. ''The changes would appear to substantially affect both the amount and quality of public input,'' the judge wrote in a 19-page ruling....
Army wages a range war This quiet corner of southeast Colorado has met an unlikely enemy: the U.S. Army. The military branch wants to expand an existing weapons training site onto many of the parched cattle ranches that have sustained the fragile economies of nearby towns and villages. But the emerging opponents go far beyond the area's longtime ranchers. They seem to include just about everyone in this particular town - from a waitress at the local watering hole to a bank president to a veterinarian who performs C-sections on pregnant cows. "It's not a good thing for us," said La Junta City Manager Rick Klein, who grew up in this town of about 7,500 residents. "There's zero positive impact." When the Army wanted to build the existing Piñon Canyon maneuver site in the early 1980s, it condemned ranches south of the town to get the roughly 250,000 acres it said it needed to train soldiers for war. It has drawn a big circle around the current site in hopes it will find enough willing sellers to more than double the size of its holdings if it gets approval to do so....
Montana Ranchers criticize state over wolf management State wildlife officials take too long to authorize the killing of problem wolves, ranchers and others said Friday at a meeting of the agency oversight committee of the Environmental Quality Council. "It's like a guy's robbing a bank and you have to go get an arrest warrant," committee member Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense." More than 50 people attended the meeting that drew Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Jeff Hagener, agency biologists and several state legislators. People from Idaho and Wyoming and members of anti-wolf groups pushing for indiscriminate killing of the predators also attended. A few members of conservation groups praised FWP for the job it has done since it took over wolf management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year. However, the majority complained that FWP's reluctance to decide to kill a wolf has let too many problem animals get away. Others say the state has at times made it difficult for federal trappers to kill wolves on state land. Shockley said when ranchers were dealing directly with federal officials, problem wolves could be taken care of quickly. But since the state has taken over, things take too long....
Ranchers say livestock are losing weight from fear of wolves Consequences of the federal wolf reintroduction program in the Northern Rockies may be visible on the dinner table soon, in the form of skimpier lamb chops and porterhouse steaks that expose more bone than beef. For years, cattle ranchers and wool growers have fretted over wolves that kill dozens of cows and sheep each year. But the steepest price might be the declining weight of livestock terrified by the howls and footsteps of the predators. Currently, calves fetch $1.45 per pound on the market. So if wolves cause just a few lost pounds on each head of cattle, that quickly mounts into big losses, said Lloyd Knight, the executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association. “When the cows are scared, they bunch together, they don't spread out like they're used to. They don't eat and drink — you can just tell they're losing weight,” he said. “The loss of weight from the whole herd could cost far more than the depredation of a few calves. It's something we've been afraid of since the reintroduction program began.”....
Christo 'Over the River' proposal rolls slowly on course One year after the Over the River project moved back into the spotlight, it is still very much a proposal. Over the River, which began in 1992, next will be the subject of an exhaustive environmental impact statement, to be filed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The bottom line: Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude want to hang 750 polypropylene panels in eight sections over 6.9 miles of the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City. They estimate 250,000 people would visit the valley to view the work. "We're being very cautious," said Roy L. Masinton, manager of the BLM's Royal Gorge Field Office. "The ball primarily is in their court. They need to get us the complete proposal."....
Four killed in chopper crash on fire lines Four people are dead after a helicopter crash in Valley County just after 5 p.m. Sunday. A spokesperson for the Payette National Forest tells NewsChannel 7 the chopper went down off South Fork Salmon Road in the Krassel Ranger district - that's about 20 miles west of Yellow Pine. The helicopter was ferrying three Forest Service employees to a guard station when it went down. The pilot and those three employees died. The spokesperson says the crew was part of the fire suppression effort but wouldn't say which fire they were working. The names of those aboard have not yet been released, while officials work to identify the family of those killed. The helicopter is owned by Evergreen Aviation out of McMinnville, Oregon. Calls to Evergreen late Sunday evening were not immediately returned....
Property owners sue over Colo. wildfire The owners of four properties sued the Forest Service Friday for damages sustained in the state's 2002 record-setting wildfire, saying the agency's missteps allowed the blaze to grow out of control. The federal lawsuit claims the Forest Service is responsible for the actions of a former forestry worker who pleaded guilty to starting the fire that burned 215 square miles in central Colorado about 55 miles southwest of Denver. The plaintiffs fault the agency for allowing Terry Lynn Barton to patrol the forest alone the day she set the fire, for clogging radio channels with a weather report when she tried to report the fire, and failing to properly train Barton. The suit lists plaintiffs Wallace White; Laurie Glauth and the Zelma L. Worden Trust; Charles and Marcia Phillips and the Phillips Family Trust; and Gary and Sandra Bieske. It does not specify how much of their property burned or what financial losses they suffered....
Judge halts 49 gold mining operations A federal judge ordered the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to suspend 49 gold mining operations, citing violations of clean water laws. The mines are along the North Fork of the Burnt River near Unity in Baker County. Gold mining in the region is characterized by small-scale operations. The decision last week from Magistrate Judge Paul Papak of Portland said a Forest Service decision allowed mining that could further degrade streams that don't meet federal standards, a violation of the Clean Water Act. ''The Forest Service may not ignore or defer its responsibility to remedy existing water pollution in the project area based on a misguided notion that the right to mine trumps federal and state environmental laws,'' Papak wrote....
Opinions split on ancient footprints Plenty of southern New Mexico sun reflected off jumbles of rock and cascaded a host of colors toward the 10 hikers trekking through a canyon in the Robledo Mountains west of Las Cruces last week. Hues of gray, black, and brown — each representing a slice of the area's geologic past — were visible on slopes rising up from the canyon floor as the group progressed. But the color hikers were most interested in was red, which marks a 290-million-year-old rock layer known for containing fossilized footprints of animals. The layer has prompted contention recently because of a proposal by two New Mexico senators to create a 5,370-acre national monument (about 8.4 square miles) north of Picacho Peak to preserve fossils. The trekkers were members of an off-road vehicle group and were leading a staff member from the office of U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., on a tour. Several contended there's not enough fossil rock exposed to merit a national monument and said an existing designation by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is enough to keep the area's fossils safe. The proposed monument boundaries contain trails that are popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts....
Drilling rules proposed Voters here might get a chance in November to decide whether the city should have its own regulations for energy development in its watershed. The city clerk Thursday certified that 2,635 signatures of registered voters out of the 4,270 on petitions turned in by the group Concerned Citizens Alliance for the proposal were valid. Only 1,580 were needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. The Grand Junction City Council is expected to decide Wednesday whether to put the measure on the ballot or consider passing the proposal itself. The alliance, the local chapter of the conservation group Western Colorado Congress, launched the initiative drive after federal oil and gas leases were sold in areas supplying drinking water for Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade. "The incredible outpouring of support this issue received from the business community, churches and from citizens of every background proves that protection of our water supply is a truly a matter of common sense," said Janet Magoon, a local school teacher....
Supplier of habitat funds receives own chunk of money Officials managing money supplied by EnCana Oil and Gas, Inc., for habitat improvement work near the Jonah Field tapped the first grant winners this week. A major winner? EnCana. The Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office, established in the wake of huge energy development plans for the Jonah Field 35 miles southeast of Pinedale, awarded seven grants for mitigation work from 19 applications. Each project is designed to offset the major habitat impacts projected for the Jonah Field. EnCana Oil and Gas, the main development company for the Jonah Field, was awarded up to $499,000 for a habitat improvement project that repairs the existing John Arambel Reservoir dam, provides fencing to exclude livestock from portions of the reservoir, and treats several five-acre tracts of sagebrush with an aerator. The next highest grant awarded was $76,500 for well development. In the Bureau of Land Management's decision earlier this year to allow high levels of development on the Jonah Field, EnCana agreed to give $24.5 million for mitigation work. No more than 20 percent of that can be spent in a given year....
BLM defers 16 drilling lease sales The Utah office of the federal Bureau of Land Management has decided not to include nearly 20,000 acres in an upcoming oil and gas lease sale in light of a court ruling that found the agency acted illegally when selling similar parcels. State BLM spokeswoman Christine Tincher on Friday said 16 parcels that were to be part of a 334,000-acre Aug. 15 lease sale share characteristics with those U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball on Aug. 2 said the BLM had improperly evaluated for wilderness potential. The 16 parcels are controlled by the Moab, Price and Richfield field offices of the BLM. They include land on a flank of Boulder Mountain near Bicknell, an area near Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River, an area west of Moab near the Dolores River and parcels in the Dome Plateau proposed wilderness area east of Arches National Park. For now, the sale of those parcels is deferred, but the BLM hasn't made a decision yet whether they will reappear on later lease-sale lists, Tincher said....
Burning Man celebration returns for 21st year, with more than 35,000 expected to show As if it were not hot enough, it's time for the annual Burning Man event Aug. 28-Sept. 4. Burning Man is a celebration of alternate lifestyles, and takes place on the playa of the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach. The party comes to a climax at the end of the week, when the 35,000-plus guests gather to watch the towering man erected atop of a wooden building go up in flames - the Burning Man. Onlookers make a gigantic circle around the man, many grabbing front-row seats as early as mid-Saturday afternoon. All agree it's a marvelous climax to a week of outrageous living. The whole affair takes place on the barren, flat playa about seven miles from Gerlach. It's not an inexpensive affair; tickets cost $280 until this Sunday. After that, the price goes up - how high has not been announced as yet. Tickets at the gate are sold through Aug. 31 - after that you're out of luck....
SPRING VALLEY: Water rights, riches If good fences make good neighbors, the Southern Nevada Water Authority should fit in nicely at its new spread in White Pine County. The patchwork of ranch property the authority bought last month came complete with improved fencing installed just a few years ago by the previous owner, Vidler Water Company. But new fences alone cannot explain the tremendous profit Vidler made on the deal. The Nevada-based water development company paid $4.5 million cash for the 7,150-acre ranch and its water rights during a court-ordered bankruptcy sale in 2000. Three appraisals performed between 1994 and 1999 placed the value of the ranch, one of the largest in the vast and sparsely populated Spring Valley, at $10 million to $14 million. Vidler fixed the fences and the irrigation system at the ranch, then sold the whole thing after six years to the water authority for $22 million....
Animals disappear when rivers die The water sliding down the San Pedro River near Picnic Wash won't green up many front yards in the subdivisions under construction back in town, but it is enough for a colony of beavers to build a dam. The dam, the javelina tracks, the mountain lion scat, the croaking bullfrog, the hawk soaring overhead, the chattering songbirds in the cottonwood trees, all bear witness to the power of water barely ankle deep. And yet the San Pedro can't muster even that much along lengthening stretches of its 140-mile course. Depleted by groundwater pumping, the river dries up for longer periods each year, weakening wildlife habitat until the habitat can no longer function. The jaguar, grizzly bear, river otter, gray wolf and other large mammals have gone extinct or prowl the river corridor only rarely. Only two of the San Pedro's 13 native fish survive, the rest shoved aside by as many as 14 non-natives. At increasing risk is the river's greatest treasure, its 400 species of nesting and migratory birds....
Water-spouting tree has owner scratching head Is it an artesian spring, a broken water pipe or an abandoned well? Lucille Pope's red oak tree has gurgled water for about three months, and experts can't seem to get to the root of the problem. Pope, 65, has sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries. They have taken pictures and conducted studies, but none have arrived at a firm answer. ''I got a mystery tree,'' Pope said in Friday editions of the San Antonio-Express News. ''What kind of mystery do I have where water comes out of a tree?''. Her son, Lloyd, 47, discovered water leaking from the tree in April. He said it was cool, like it came from the tap. Mark Peterson from the Texas Forest Service said he believes it could be a spring, but pointed out that would be rare with the drought conditions this summer....
Conservationists believe Ogallala Aquifer recharged through playa lakes Birds dart toward the edge of the great saucer-shaped depression and disappear in a patch of yellowed grass. John Wood stands in the middle of his concave field, and observes the flurry, amused. Some seasons, his field fills with water. This summer, a drought has caked the root-beer dirt, driven fissures through it. Mint-green sage and sporadic reeds cover its bottom, like camouflage. Despite its appearance, this is no ordinary field, but a wetland. Wood owns one of the largest playa lakes in Curry County. The depression spans 154 acres. A good rain — of 3 inches or more — will transform it into an oasis....
Jurassic Park Mundy visited Spring Creek in 2000 and saw the dinosaur bones and the Native American sites. "The ranch was just gargantuan," Mundy recalled. "I told Allen, 'In my opinion you don't have a ranch, you have a natural science laboratory.' And besides that, there's this huge history in the region." Which might make the property even more attractive. Besides its history of Tom Horn and the Swan ranch, Spring Creek is next door to what is left of Wilcox, Wyo., where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed the Union Pacific, triggering the manhunt that eventually forced them to flee to Bolivia. The Union Pacific still whistles past the Cook ranch today on the original track bed of the transcontinental railroad, barreling through cities and towns known to generations of Western history buffs -- Cheyenne, Laramie, Wilcox and Medicine Bow, the setting for Owen Wister's 1902 novel, The Virginian, whose laconic hero was the central character in two movies and a TV show. Mundy appraised Spring Creek at $8 million and offered a suggestion. His boyhood friend Alec Stewart served as dean of the University of Pittsburgh's Honors College, which might be interested in buying Spring Creek. The Honors College ran a student summer camp outside Yellowstone Park to study natural science. Mundy telephoned Stewart in the autumn of 2000 and told him how "you stumble all over the dinosaurs" at Spring Creek and how it was "a national treasure. What better way to oversee it than to associate it with a university?"....
Only 1 Japan Food Co Plans To Use US Beef After Ban Only one Japanese food company said in a survey that it plans to use U.S. beef following the lifting of a ban on U.S. imports, a news report said Saturday. Sales of U.S. beef resumed this week for the first time since January, after Tokyo announced on July 27 that it was easing its ban on imports of U.S. beef over mad-cow disease fears. While the decision renewed U.S. access to what was once the most lucrative export market for U.S. ranchers, Kyodo News agency cited a survey that suggests winning back market share will be difficult. In the survey, conducted last month by the Consumers Union of Japan and Food Safety Citizens' Watch, questionnaires were sent to major food industry companies such as supermarkets and fast food restaurants. Of the 21 companies that replied, only beef bowl chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. said it would use U.S. beef, the report said. Seven companies - including McDonald's Holdings Co. and Zensho Co., which also sells beef bowl dishes - said they had no plans to use U.S. beef, while seven others indicated they won't use U.S. beef "for the time being," Kyodo News reported....
Processor seeks OK for own cow testing After another futile visit to the nation's capital, John Stewart faced a tough decision. Give up, or let the courts decide. So Stewart, founder and CEO of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the right to test every animal slaughtered at his plant for mad cow disease. The lawsuit has placed Creekstone -- a cutting-edge meat packer 25 miles north of Ponca City -- in the national spotlight. Stewart has appeared on National Public Radio to plead his case. Other media have interviewed him, and interest groups and lawmakers have joined the fray with their opinions. The USDA says it has legal jurisdiction over mad cow testing. But Stewart says the agency isn't taking the mad cow threat seriously enough....
No Man's Land: Life in the wide-open spaces No Man's Land. That's what Oklahoma's far western counties were called before statehood. A century later, the region is largely empty and getting emptier. The northwest corridor of Oklahoma is home to six counties -- Cimarron, Roger Mills, Beaver, Harper, Ellis and Dewey -- with such small population densities that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies them in its most remote category: Frontier status. That means there's six or fewer people per square mile. Census reports show the Oklahoma frontier counties reached their population peaks in the 1930s and have dwindled gradually since then, drying up like a dusty stream bed in the Oklahoma summer. But for some people, this frontier is home, and they couldn't care less about the opinions of folk from the more populous world....
Where trains once roamed A railroad section house used to sit close to Lower River Road, just across from Allen Way and catawampus from the entrance to the Chaparral subdivision. Precursor to the tavern, the first Woody Creek Store also used to be in that neighborhood, on land owned by my family, and consisted of old motel rooms and a hodgepodge of hastily built architecture that served the Rio Grande Railroad. In later years, the store used those old rooms for storage, and had a few chickens and rabbits stashed behind closed doors, ostensibly safe from the prying teeth of predators. When I was a kid, the train didn't stop at Woody Creek much, yet an employee named Blough, his wife and three kids kept the section house alive with the tasks of daily life. There were stockyards for cattle, sheep and horses, and a huge water tank, solely for the purpose of replenishing the coal-car tanks on the chuf-chuffing steam engines. The D&RG (Denver & Rio Grande Railway), as we called it, would drop off rail cars for the rancher's use, mostly in the autumn. There would be cars for shipping cattle to the packing houses in Denver, cars to be loaded with potatoes, picked from local ranches, and sometimes, a carload or two of grapes would arrive, solely for the making of wine from European recipes salvaged by our ancestors. Imagine the thrill of a kid, 8 or 9, being allowed for the first time to accompany his dad and granddad on a cattle drive to the Woody Creek stockyards, in preparation for the long haul to Denver....