NEWS ROUNDUP


Oregon ranchers, water trust strike deal for fish A deal between local ranchers and the Oregon Water Trust will mean more water for Spring chinook and summer steelhead in the Middle Fork John Day River. Pat and Hedy Voigt are third-generation ranchers on the Middle Fork John Day River. They own the Austin Ranch, for which this project was named. The river winds through the property and provides habitat for waterfowl and is a critical spawning ground for spring chinook. The Voigts use water from the Middle Fork and surrounding streams to irrigate 640 acres for cattle. The Voigts and the trust made a deal that shortens the Voigt's irrigation season and keeps water in the Middle Fork for fish. The trust paid the Voights an undisclosed sum to stop irrigating on July 20 each year in perpetuity....
Legislative Victory for Land Conservation New land conservation tax benefits for family farmers and ranchers are included in just-passed pension reform legislation, now awaiting the President's signature. The new law will combine an adjusted tax incentive for land conservation with common sense reforms to ensure the public benefit of conservation donations. "This law will help landowners and land trusts protect important lands across America," said Land Trust Alliance President Rand Wentworth. "We want to thank Senators Charles Grassley, Max Baucus and Rick Santorum, who all worked hard to get this through, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, and the many other leaders who helped make this happen." The new law extends the carry-forward period for tax deductions for voluntary conservation agreements from 5 to 15 years and raises the cap on those deductions from 30 percent of a donor's adjusted gross income to 50 percent -- and to 100 percent for qualifying farmers and ranchers. This allows ranchers, farmers and other modest-income landowners to get a much larger benefit for donating very valuable development rights to their land....
Enviros await Thursday's lease auction Atop an unnamed ridge on the western fringe of the White River National Forest, the twin peaks of Mount Sopris rose to the east, knobby Haystack Mountain to the west. Two national forests, two river valleys and three counties come together here. It's a critical juncture, environmentalists say -- a crossroads for wildlife that joins isolated valleys on this treeless crest. The aspen grove below may be the largest in the country, they say; the spruce and fir make up the White River National Forest's largest old-growth stand. It's a place where energy companies are considering drilling, and where environmentalists hope to block them....
Column: Nighttime limits on anglers may be grizzly mistake Here we go again. To make the Russian River safe for people, federal officials have decided to give it to the grizzly bears. Well, only at night, they say, as if the bears all had clocks. I understand the thinking. If we give the bears the evening hours alone to feed, they'll eat all those salmon carcasses and then go sleep the day away, safely removed from thousands of anglers. Unless, of course, one of the bears who now considers the river home gets a Cheetos craving and decides to go looking for backpacks with tasty treats inside, as happened last week. Or someone's 8-year-old has to make a potty trip into the bushes and steps on the bear. No good can come of this. The last time one of these nighttime closures was imposed was the summer of 2003 after a bear passing through the area grabbed then-25-year-old Daniel Bigley by the face and nearly killed him....
Motor vehicle fans drawing line in the sand around Little Belts Motor vehicle enthusiasts across Montana are revving up efforts to retain the roads and trails on public lands that they've used for years. Those who ride motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and other machines worry that new National Forest travel plans could shut them out of large chunks of the state's forests. They're drawing a line in the sand. And, for now, that line is in the Little Belt Mountains, putting the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the hot seat. "There is no question we are being closed out. If we don't stand up and say 'whoa,' they will shut us out of everything," said Bruce Butler, state representative for the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council....
Burning for information For Jack de Golia, the idea of issuing updates on wildfires by fax seems almost quaint. These days, the Forest Service spokesman prefers using the Web to post maps, fact sheets and anything else he thinks will help explain - as quickly and as often as possible - what a wildfire is doing and how firefighters are responding. "There's been an evolution of information, and you have to keep up," said de Golia, who, from assignments in Montana and Wyoming this summer, has posted frequently to a new, experimental government fire information Web site, www.inciweb.org. "There's a need for people to have ready access to information on fires," he added. "I think it's important, when people are very frightened or concerned, that they have as much information on an event as they need to make decisions. "Once they hear there's a Web site, our phones stop ringing." The demands of today's information-now culture are changing how news about wildfires spreads....
Bend-area fire managers ponder let-it-burn strategy Lightning sparked the Black Crater Fire that spread across more than 9,000 acres this summer, forcing evacuations and threatening houses west of Sisters. But if lightning ignites a fire next summer on a specific parcel of land in Central Oregon, fire managers might let it burn. The U.S. Forest Service’s Deschutes National Forest and the Prineville District of the Bureau of Land Management are developing a wildland fire-use plan that would allow blazes to burn in specific areas east of Bend, saying it could help the ecosystem. Agency staff are now working with landowners to identify which areas within a 400,000-acre parcel of land, on the east side of the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District and west of Glass Buttes, that need to be protected. They are also mapping out areas where the fires could be used to naturally thin trees and bring more diversity to a landscape, as burns have done historically. “We know that all of our ecosystems, forest ecosystems from the shrubs clear up to the top of the Cascades, they’re fire-dependent ecosystems,’’ said Leslie Weldon, Deschutes forest supervisor....
Village would cut off wildlife, critics say Flying over the pass that connects Southwest Colorado to points east, the mountains seem to go on forever, their green expanse interrupted only by U.S. Highway 160 and Forest Service roads. This meadow, site of the proposed Village at Wolf Creek, and Alberta Park Reservoir are seen Friday during a flight over the area with the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project. "Let’s talk about traffic, wetlands and fens - how to make the development the least bad." But the pass, at 10,800 feet, is under stress, according to an environmental group. It is the wildlife link between the Weminuche and the South San Juan wilderness areas. "The (proposed) Village at Wolf Creek sits right in the middle of the wildlife corridor," Monique DiGiorgio, of the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project, said Friday during an aerial inspection for the news media. "We're trying to restore fragmented areas to help wildlife." Wolf Creek Pass, one of 12 areas statewide surveyed by DiGiorgio's group, is the most important corridor for Canada lynx, which are being reintroduced into the national forest near Creede by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. At least one-third of the radio collar-bearing lynx cross Highway 160, she said. But the Village at Wolf Creek, sitting just east of the Continental Divide on 288 acres, threatens to bring year-round habitation by humans and enormous increases in traffic that would effectively destroy habitat for the lynx and other wildlife, Village critics say. The Village could contain as many as 2,000 individual living units, a hotel and commercial zones....
Endangered cacti threatening off-road terrain For off-roaders, few places are as good as the badlands around Factory Butte, where the terrain seems perfectly suited for a knobby rubber tire. "If ever there was a place God created for off-road recreation, Factory Butte is it," said Michael Swenson, executive director of the Utah Shared Access Alliance. This Wild West of off-road travel may not last long, however. The Bureau of Land Management is moving to impose regulations as early as September, the start of riding season, on some of the baddest of the West's badlands, about 180 miles south of Salt Lake City. The decision chips away at Utah's standing as one of the last Western states where BLM lands are still largely open to cross-country travel. "Times have changed," Cornell Christensen, a bureau field manager, who has been watching all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes crawl over the nearly 200,000-acre Factory Butte district like an army of ants. "We've had open areas for so long, people can just go and go." It wasn't noise, traffic, ruts or erosion that forced BLM, after years of pressure from conservation groups, to take a hard look at drawing boundaries here on off-road travel. Instead, it's two little-known, delicate species of cacti classified years ago as threatened or endangered and only recently discovered around Factory Butte....
BLM making big bucks on leases Not too long ago, the Bureau of Land Management was lucky to get $10 an acre at its Utah lease auctions. Today, against a backdrop of skyrocketing energy prices and the push to drill for more oil and natural gas, those same lands are capturing 10 times more money on average, with some bids commanding as much as $3,000 an acre. In May, the federal agency's Salt Lake City office raised $54.1 million in its quarterly land-lease auction, a more than 300 percent increase from $13.5 million raised during the same quarter in 2005 and nearly 450 percent more than $10 million raised in second quarter 2004. But the rush to develop new energy in Utah is bringing controversy as proposed leases encroach on some of Utah's most scenic landscapes....
Palisade May Accept Offer To Sue BLM Over Drilling Officials in the agricultural community of Palisade, Colorado, said they may go to court to block government oil and gas leases in the city's watershed. Mayor Doug Edwards said several lawyers have offered free representation if the city decides to battle the Bureau of Land Management's ruling. The BLM is approving drilling in the watersheds of Palisades and neighboring Grand Junction on Colorado's Western Slope. The government is suspending the leases to Genesis Gas and Oil for a year, urging the cities and the Kansas City, Missouri, company to work out a compromise. Mayor Edwards said he will meet with residents, Grand Junction officials and state and local leaders before accepting legal representation. A city statement said protecting the area's drinking water is the number one priority....
Will court's ruling slow oil, gas lease? The Bureau of Land Management is uncertain whether a court ruling this week will affect an oil- and gas-lease sale that the agency has scheduled for Aug. 15. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball said that the BLM in Utah violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not considering new information about the wilderness values and characteristics of 16 lease tracts offered in a February 2005 sale. The tracts were not in wilderness areas, and the state and the Department of Interior had agreed in April 2003 that there would be no further BLM wilderness designations in Utah. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Wilderness Society. Those groups celebrated Kimball's ruling. "This decision is reverberating loudly throughout the West because in Colorado and other states, the BLM also has controversially sold off land that the agency itself had acknowledged was wilderness quality," said Suzanne Jones, director of The Wilderness Society's Four Corners Office in Denver. But Adrienne Babbitt, public-affairs officer for the BLM's state headquarters in Salt Lake City, said Thursday that the agency was considering what recourse it has after the ruling. "We've been reviewing the decision with our solicitors and determining what steps we will take," she said. "We cannot say at this time if this is going to affect the August sale or not."....
Editorial - Sound judgment: BLM must follow law on selling drilling leases The Bureau of Land Management ignored its own research and new information about wilderness-quality lands when it sold 16 leases for oil and gas development on some of Utah's most spectacular public lands. In short, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled emphatically this week, the BLM acted illegally. He rightly remanded the leases and reversed the BLM's decision, ordering the agency to fully comply with federal environmental laws that protect places valued for their archaeology, naturalness and opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation. The judge's decision will immediately stop energy companies from bulldozing roads and erecting noisy and unsightly rigs where such things would destroy the natural beauty of the 16 parcels addressed in the lawsuit. But the decision should have more far-reaching consequences. The unequivocal and uncompromising tone of the 32-page ruling should put the brakes on the BLM's headlong rush to allow drilling on Americans' public lands with little regard for the threat, not only to the pristine nature of the land but also to invaluable watersheds and the industries of tourism, hunting, fishing and non-motorized recreation....
Ensign, Reid introduce White Pine lands bill Nevada senators have formed a new bill that reshapes the federal government's land holdings in White Pine County, declaring a half million acres of protected wilderness while freeing other land for development and multiple uses. The bill, introduced late Tuesday by Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., is patterned after successful land management bills that Congress approved in recent years for Clark County and Lincoln County. The broad measure would declare 13 new wilderness areas in White Pine County, while expanding two other protected areas set aside in 1989. It would shield certain lands adjacent to Great Basin National Park from most uses, add property to two state parks, convey 1,500 acres for expansion of the Ely airport, and enlarge the county's industrial park. At the same time, the measure would make up to 45,000 acres of land in White Pine County available for controlled development through auction by the Bureau of Land Management, while removing 68,000 acres from wilderness study and made available for multiple uses. Profits from the land auctions would be divided, with 5 percent going to the Nevada education fund, 10 percent for White Pine law enforcement, fire protection and transportation planning, and 85 percent for further wilderness protection in the county....
Senate opposes military hunting plan on Southern California island The Senate is opposing a House Republican's plan to allow military veterans to hunt nonnative game on an island that is part of a Southern California national park. Senators passed a resolution against the plan by voice vote late Thursday before leaving for their August recess. Private trophy hunts now run on 53,000-acre Santa Rosa Island, part of Channel Islands National Park, are supposed to end in 2011. A federal court settlement over the government's purchase of the island 40 miles off Santa Barbara requires the herds of deer and elk to be removed by that year. Legislation by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., would overturn the settlement and keep the game on the island indefinitely. The National Park Service opposes the plan, saying the hunts restrict public access and interfere with native species....
A chuckwagon adventure offers an Old West dinner, on the range Yellowstone Style Wildlife and geysers get all the attention at the world's first national park, but there is also a human element with a long history at this tri-state wonderland. American Indians known as Sheepeaters eked out a living in what would become Yellowstone more than two centuries ago, and mountain men wandered the park in wonder, much like today's tourists, not long after. But for many current Yellowstone visitors, particularly those who do not live on the left-hand side of the nation, the park epitomizes the lore of the historic West. It is little surprise, then, that one of the most popular, if not the most popular, paying activities at Yellowstone National Park involves cowboys, horses, campfires and beans. Welcome to the Old West dinner cookout held from early June to Labor Day at Roosevelt Lodge in the north-central part of the park and offered by Yellowstone concessionaire Xanterra Parks & Resorts....
Park Service worker may have exploited 11-year-old Prosecutors said yesterday they are probing whether a former National Park Service supervisor already accused of raping and pimping out a teen-age girl from Port Richmond also sexually exploited an 11-year-old girl. "I'm confident that something was in the making," Assistant District Attorney Wanda DeOliveira alleged at Angel Nazario's bail hearing in state Supreme Court, St. George. Nazario, 60, is accused of raping the teen, then 13, in his apartment in Fort Wadsworth more than 90 times over the course of nearly two years. The incidents began in September 2004 and ended in June 2006, prosecutors said. He also allegedly arranged for at least 10 different men to have oral sex with her on separate occasions at the Victory Motor Inn, a Willowbrook motel, and the Swan Motel in Linden, N.J....
Woodpecker mapping gets chain saws buzzing The sharp chirps of the endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and the whine of chain saws sound discordantly in this coastal community of old pine forests. Since word got around this spring that owners could face problems selling land or building houses where the birds lived, people have been rushing to clear undeveloped lots of pine trees and yanking the woodpecker welcome mat. More than anywhere else in North Carolina, Boiling Spring Lakes is a place where the coastal development boom and the federal Endangered Species Act have collided. "People are just afraid a bird might fly in and make a nest and their property is worth nothing," said Joan Kinney, mayor of Boiling Spring Lakes in Brunswick County. "It is causing a tremendous amount of clear-cutting."....
Enviros in green lawsuits In recent years, the environmental activist community in the U.S. has developed and perfected a very productive tactic of suing the federal government and settling their claims for substantial attorneys' fees and litigation costs. Nowhere has this been more successful than the recent settlement of the Washington Toxics Coalition vs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This complaint filed in January 2001 in Washington state charged that EPA had not complied with provisions of the Endangered Species Act by failing to carry out consultations with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Services. Such consultations are triggered whenever a federal government entity like the EPA undertakes a "final action." In this case, the court found EPA had not fully consulted when registering certain pesticides and decided in favor of the plaintiffs. Then, matters get interesting. After other legal issues were dispensed with, the WTC played their trump card... they filed for an award of the costs of litigation and attorneys' fees, in the amount of -- get this -- $728,142.16. As an intervenor in this case, I can attest that our legal fees for this action aren't anywhere close to this amount. Amazingly, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to settle with WTC in the amount of $625,602.40, roughly 86 percent of the amount claimed, well above the average award percentage. The full amount of $625,600 and change was sent by electronic transfer to Earthjustice, an environmental activist group based in Seattle. Obviously, these monies used to settle the claim came from the U.S. Treasury, provided from tax dollars from you and me. Of course, we had no voice in the award decision....
Major Alaskan Oil Field Shutting Down In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line. BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel. Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The shutdown comes at an already worrisome time for the oil industry, with supply concerns stemming both from the hurricane season and instability in the Middle East....
‘Dead Zone’ Reappears Off the Oregon Coast For the fifth year in a row, unusual wind patterns off the coast of Oregon have produced a large “dead zone,” an area so low in oxygen that fish and crabs suffocate. This dead zone is unlike those in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, which result from fertilizer, sewage or runoff from hog or poultry operations carried by rivers. The Oregon zone appears when the wind generates strong currents carrying nutrient-rich but oxygen-poor water from the deep sea to the surface near shore, a process called upwelling. The nutrients encourage the growth of plankton, which eventually dies and falls to the ocean floor. Bacteria there consume the plankton, using up oxygen. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, said the phenomenon did not appear to be linked to recurring El Niño or La Niña currents or to long-term cycles of ocean movements. That made Dr. Lubchenco wonder if climate change might be a factor, she said, adding, “There is no other cause, as far as we can determine.” The dead zone, which appears in late spring and lasts a matter of weeks, has quadrupled in size since it first appeared in 2002 and this year covers about 1,235 square miles, an area about as large as Rhode Island, Dr. Lubchenco said....
Angler speared by a giant fish When he saw a companion on his boat hook a giant fish during a sea angling contest, Ian Card was delighted. Next second, the scene of triumph turned to horror - as the 14ft blue marlin leapt out of the water across the vessel and speared Mr Card through the chest with its spiked bill. The impact of the 800lb fish knocked him overboard into the Atlantic off Bermuda. Then, with a thrash of its tail and with the 32-year-old still impaled and bleeding profusely, it dragged him underwater. Terribly injured, he somehow stayed conscious as he struggled to pull himself free of the marlin's 3ft razor-sharp spike before he drowned. Finally, he wrenched himself away and was rescued by his companions on the boat - who included his 58-year-old father Alan....
Selling their livelihood Herman Schumacher, owner and operator of Herried Livestock Market, can't escape the heartbreak as cattlemen unload trailer after trailer of cattle to be sold at auction. "I tell people to put on their grimmest face and watch these people having to sell all their cattle. They're selling their livelihood," said Schumacher, "We knew there was a problem with the drought back in May when people started selling off a lot of their cow-calf pairs." This summer he has seen cattle sales rise 90 percent. Closer to home, Dennis Hanson of the Ft. Pierre Livestock Auction stated that he normally has a couple hundred cows at his weekly auctions, but this summer he has seen up to 4,000 cows come through the auction weekly. Because of the severity of this drought, and because it comes just four years after the drought of 2002, Gov. Mike Rounds recently requested that the head of the U.S. Treasury consider granting a two-year extension to the time period for purchasing replacement livestock. Currently a four-year deferment is allowed for claiming revenue from cattle sold in 2002. And with that deferment, revenue claimed from cattle sold in 2002 would need to be claimed this year....
Get along, buckeye dogies The Dickinson Cattle Co. ranch just off I-70 in Belmont County bears a striking resemblance to certain parts of Texas. The ranch — with rolling hills, scrubby meadows and, not least, hundreds of longhorn cattle — is almost a double for the Texas hill country just west of Austin. Don’t brag about it in the Lone Star State (unless you’re itchin’ for a fight), but some of the world’s most impressive Texas longhorn cattle are actually from the Buckeye State. Dickinson Cattle is one of the world’s leading suppliers of high-quality registered Texas longhorns. "We tell people we’re the major exporter of Texas longhorns — to Texas," said Darol Dickinson, who, with his wife and adult children, owns and runs the operation....
From Maley to Willcox It is said that when cattlemen first arrived in the Sulphur Springs Valley — “Sufferin’ Springs” to local wags — in the 1870s, the lush grasses were hip high. It was considered by many to be the finest cattle country in the West. But by the turn of the century, drought conditions and overgrazing rendered the valley a bleak desert. Nevertheless, the cattlemen stayed on, and by the mid 1930s, upwards of 50,000 heads of cattle were shipped annually from Willcox. On July 30, 1880, the Arizona Daily Star reported that the “next terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad will be called Sulphur Valley, 39.9 miles from Benson, and will be open to business some time next month.” Three weeks later, a follow-up report announced that “a new city is started 40 miles east of Benson which is to be called Maley. In a few days they will have a post office.” In fact, for a brief time the town was called Maley, in recognition of an early rancher. But when the first locomotive roared across the newly laid track, Gen. Orlando B. Willcox, commander of the Department of Arizona, was onboard. He so charmed the handful of early Maley residents that the town’s name was immediately changed to Willcox....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Llamas lead to unexpected lessons Tom never intended to become a llama raiser. Otherwise he'd have built higher fences. They were a gift - like someone leaving a box of kittens on your porch while yer out. First thing the two llamas did was to determine the boundaries of Tom's small Wisconsin farm. Turns out the west boundary was down the road, around the corner and up the valley on the other side of the neighbor's place! Tom was a cowboy at heart and had bought a used rope at the feed store. It came with lessons from a 6-year-old girl who kept shouting "Jerk yer slack!" every time he roped a post. For reasons known only to himself, Tom decided to rope his llamas and lead them into the pen. He convinced his daughter to haze the young stud llama down the fence as he raced alongside afoot swinging his loop. The third try was magic!....