NEWS ROUNDUP

Scientists believe a disease they haven’t identified is killing the area’s aspen trees While mountain pine beetles continue to ravage large swaths of forests in the West, the region’s aspen groves are falling prey to an unknown disease that could wipe out 10 percent or more of the iconic trees. Dale Bartos, an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Logan, Utah, said it’s not clear what’s causing the problem with the aspens, although unlike the beetles killing the pines, the aspens are likely being attacked by some kind of disease. “It’s something we don’t understand,” Bartos said. “I could speculate, but I’d probably be wrong. It’s something we need to address.” Unlike many trees and plants, aspens don’t reproduce sexually but, rather, through cloning from new shoots — called “suckers” — emerging from within their interconnected root systems. Bartos said researchers are seeing the trees’ clones dying off completely so that stands can’t regenerate themselves....
Environmental coalition recommends drilling changes A coalition of environmental organizations and sportsmen's groups are urging federal land managers to step up protections for wildlife in the face of an unprecedented boom in natural gas drilling in western Colorado they fear could have a devastating effect on wildlife habitat. "We're now talking about drilling wells from horizon to horizon -- literally as far as you can see," said Bob Elderkin, with the Colorado Mule Deer Foundation. "All of a sudden, the habitat fragmentation is going to become bigger than anything we've ever dreamt of in the past." Some 25 groups have signed on to a list of recommendations they plan to take to state and federal regulators and legislators, urging less dense, more careful development in areas where drilling rigs and wildlife may collide. It's part of a growing alliance between outdoor interests that have at times been at odds. Recently, conservationists have found allies among hunters, anglers and others in the outdoor industry as they find common ground in what they perceive as threats to wildlife and wild places....
Unexpected environmentalists Child doesn’t look like an environmentalist. He doesn’t wear Birkenstocks, tie-dye shirts or a peace sign tied around his neck with a length of hemp rope. He looks and talks more like a rancher, with a cowboy hat and a weathered face. Child doesn’t really act like an environmentalist either. Instead of ambushing mink coats with cans of spray paint, Child makes a living leading hunters into the woods to kill elk, deer, moose, antelope and mountain lions. It’s July 27, five days before the BLM will lease roughly 12,000 acres of land on the Wyoming Range for energy development including Child’s camp and most of the land where he takes his clients to hunt. Child represents a recent addition to the environmental movement. Ever since the Forest Service earmarked Child’s hunting grounds for oil and gas development, the owner of Trophy Mountain Outfitters has joined a growing coalition of sportsmen working to preserve the wild lands where they work and play....
Oil, gas leases take a blow The Bush administration's attempts to override federal environmental laws to speed oil and gas development in the West took a hit Wednesday when a Utah federal judge ruled 16 U.S. Bureau of Land Management leases on wilderness-quality public lands in Utah were sold illegally. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled in favor of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society, who claimed the BLM ignored federal law and its own wilderness-related findings when it used outdated land-use plans to sidestep federal law to sell the leases. The ruling calls into question many more oil and gas lease sales, said Steve Bloch, SUWA staff attorney. The leases were the first sold after the 2003 "No More Wilderness" settlement that then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt struck to end a lawsuit the state brought against the federal government over wilderness inventories conducted during the Clinton administration. The BLM also relied on land plans so old they didn't include analyses of the potential effects of oil and gas development on the lease parcels, a violation of NEPA's fundamental objective to make sure "an agency will not act on information only to regret its decision after it is too late to correct," Kimball wrote....
Grand Junction residents push to regulate drilling A movement to strictly regulate energy development in Grand Junction’s watershed picked up steam Tuesday when activists turned in double the signatures they need to get proposed rules on the November ballot. The group Concerned Citizens Alliance submitted petitions with 4,150 signatures to the city clerk, who will determine if there are enough valid signatures from registered voters. At least 1,580 signatures are needed to qualify for the city ballot. The alliance, a chapter of Western Colorado Congress, a conservation group, launched the initiative drive after federal oil and gas leases were sold on thousands of acres in the watersheds of Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade. Both communities have protested the leases, which are on hold while the Bureau of Land Management considers the protests. Alliance members said the “overwhelming response” by Grand Junction residents to the petition drive sends a strong message across Colorado that some areas should be off-limits as more and more natural gas wells are drilled in the state....
Hunters and anglers turn GOP "greener" Hunters and anglers are increasingly joining environmentalists in efforts to block oil and natural- gas drilling and other development on wildlife-rich lands in the Rocky Mountain West. Traditionally a Republican constituency, hunters and anglers have won over GOP lawmakers and land administrators in Washington who often view environmentalists as radicals aligned with the Democratic Party. "We're beginning to see hunters and anglers weighing in in ways we haven't seen (in recent years)," said Chris Wood of Trout Unlimited. In the past few weeks, pressure brought by hunting and fishing groups has helped drive a spate of measures blocking drilling in three areas of the Rocky Mountain West: Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., reversed his stance on drilling Montana's scenic Rocky Mountain Front. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., often a supporter of oil and gas development, came out against a drilling plan in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest, adding that there shouldn't be drilling in most national forests. The Republican-controlled House passed a bill blocking drilling in the 101,000-acre Valle Vidal section of New Mexico's Carson National Forest....
Congress looks to speed up salvage logging With fire season underway in the West, Congress is looking at speeding up salvage logging in burned stands of timber on public lands by limiting environmental reviews. The timber industry and the Bush administration say too many acres of fire-damaged trees have been left to rot while the U.S. Forest Service does environmental reviews or fights off lawsuits by conservation groups. "In many cases, active management can restore a forest faster than letting nature take its course," said Mark Rey, an agriculture undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service. "The alternative is to simply let the trees go to waste, which is not a very conservationist point of view." So, the administration is backing the concept behind a bill by Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Brian Baird, D-Wash., that streamlines environmental procedures to get chainsaws into burned or storm-damaged forests faster. But some caution against the rush to log burned forests, saying fire is a natural part of the landscape, and foresters should be more willing to let burned forests regenerate on their own....
Forest-plan delay spurs critics U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar has joined environmental and conservation groups in questioning an unexpected delay in the release of a management plan for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests. The plan was scheduled to be released July 21, and 16,000 copies of the summary, and an undisclosed number of weighty full drafts and CDs, had been printed when the release was delayed by a review in the office of Mark Rey, undersecretary for natural resources and environment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A spokesman for Rey's office insists the review is routine. Initially, spokesman Dan Jiron said the review would delay the release only a few days. He said a week later that the draft plan was under scrutiny to make sure it complies with the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Environmental and conservation groups have expressed concerns that energy companies pressured Rey to make the plan, which governs activities in the forests, more energy friendly....
Former Aztec superintendent thought to be nation's oldest living park ranger Few people ever get to see their 100th birthday. Evidently, fewer people still get to see their 100th birthday if they once worked as National Park Service ranger. Irving Townsend, formerly of Aztec, who celebrated his 100th birthday Wednesday, is thought to be the oldest living former park ranger. Only a few others, including former U.S. President Gerald Ford who, at 93, once worked as a park ranger for a summer in his youth, are known to come close, according to the National Park Service. "The park service is interested in (my father) since he could be the oldest living park ranger in the U.S.," said Townsend's son, who also is named Irving Townsend. "They seem to think he is." Townsend worked as the first superintendent at Aztec Ruins National Monument in 1944. He moved to the San Juan County area after working as a park ranger at Yosemite National Park in California beginning in 1929. While on patrol, he was known for doing his rounds on a motorcycle, horseback or skis, depending on his mood and the weather. When Townsend moved to Aztec to take charge of the Ruins, he was immediately confronted with a slew of troubles....
Tribes Call for Removal of Dams That Block Journey of Salmon Indian tribes along the Klamath River rallied in Portland on Wednesday for the removal of four hydroelectric dams that block salmon from spawning in their historic habitat upriver, and they said they intended to pressure the governors of Oregon and California to help push for removing the dams. The Yurok and Karuk tribes in California and the Klamath tribes of Oregon also said public comments by Bill Fehrman, the new president of PacifiCorp, the power company that owns the dams on the Klamath, reflected new potential for a settlement in one of the most enduring disputes at the nexus of fishing, farming and power supply in the Northwest. Mr. Fehrman, in a statement released Wednesday, said: “We have heard the tribes’ concerns. We are not opposed to dam removal or other settlement opportunities as long as our customers are not harmed and our property rights are respected.”....
More Than 100 Conservation Organizations Call for Withdrawal of Proposed Rules Expanding Aerial Gunning and Trapping in Wilderness Areas A coalition of more than 100 conservation organizations today submitted comments opposing controversial new rules proposed by the U.S. Forest Service that would permit the use of motorized vehicles in wilderness areas to trap and kill predators like bears, coyotes, wolves, bobcats and mountain lions. “The Bush administration is famous for its disdain for public resources,” said Erik Ryberg, Staff Attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “But these rules are the worst of the worst. They bring motorized vehicles into wilderness areas and permit aerial gunning of animals that aren’t even implicated in livestock depredation. They could give ranchers complete freedom in wilderness areas, permitting them to kill anything they want.” The new rules would also permit the use of controversial “M-44” sodium-cyanide traps, which are a danger to domestic pets and children. When triggered, the buried traps explode in a cloud of lethal sodium-cyanide crystals. The Center for Biological Diversity has spearheaded the campaign to get the proposed rules withdrawn, and was the author of the opposition letter that has been endorsed by more than 100 other conservation organizations from Arizona to Maine....
14 states, including N.M., petition for hazardous labeling Attorneys general from 14 states, including New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to require the listing of all hazardous ingredients in pesticides on product labels. Herbicides and pesticides are sprayed or dripped onto land, houses and pets to control insects and weeds. Some are designed to kill only a specific insect, fungus or plant. Others are broad-based, killing all organisms in a certain area for a time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires companies to list a product's active ingredients used to kill a pest or weed. But the EPA doesn't require companies to list inert or "other ingredients" used to preserve or improve the effectiveness of active ingredients in a pesticide, according to the New Mexico Attorney General's Office. "Although almost 400 chemicals used for this purpose have been found by EPA or other federal agencies to be hazardous to human health and the environment, EPA does not require them to be identified on pesticide labels," according to a joint statement from the attorneys general....
Horse Genome Sequence in the Works "It puts a whole new set of tools in play...it's as if you are farmers that are used to relying on plows pulled by a draft animal, and all the sudden you have tractors," says Jamie MacLeod, VMD, PhD, professor of veterinary science and Knight Chair for Musculoskeletal Sciences at the University of Kentucky's Gluck Equine Research Center, of the news that the horse genome will be sequenced. A Thoroughbred mare will soon join the human, mouse, dog, and other species on the list of mammals whose genomes have been sequenced and mapped. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is currently working on a high-level equine genome sequence, which is a major breakthrough for equine genetic researchers who want to better understand and solve common health conditions in the horse. Additionally, the horse genome map will assist human researchers in unlocking human health mysteries. Scientists at the Broad Institute, a part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are churning out segments of the horse genome sequence daily and posting them on a web site, where they are available for immediate use by equine researchers. Before this development, if an individual began a project on a particular DNA region, he or she first would have to obtain a DNA sequence for that region. This preliminary work would take six to eight months and cost up to $80,000. Now the process is akin to pulling a reference book out of a library. The high density sequencing of the horse should cost roughly $30 million....
Western States Horse Expo Draws Top Talent, Thousands of Attendees Thousands of horse enthusiasts poured through the main gate at the Cal Expo fairgrounds in Sacramento, Calif., during the three-day expo in June. They funneled through four huge buildings that housed over 500 retail exhibitors, then spilled out onto the concourse of 11 acres of trailers, six arenas hopping with demonstrations, breed exhibits, horse sales, full-size barns, the Magnificent 7 stock horse competition, acres of tractors and trucks, and the Extreme Cowboy Race. A diversity of headliners captivated audiences with their skills. Cutting horse legend Leon Harrel convinced the audience that everyone--without exception--could achieve cutting horse success. He even had his ten-year-old grandson, Peyton, demonstrate the art of cutting while riding bareback and bridleless!....
Barbaro's Right Hind Leg Healing Well By now, Barbaro should have been close to casting aside any doubts that he could make a full recovery from the devastating right hind leg injuries he suffered at the Preakness Stakes. Instead, the winner of the Kentucky Derby still has a tedious, long recovery ahead because of the often-fatal disease that's stricken his left hind leg. Dean Richardson, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, said Tuesday that the painful hoof disease the colt has is preventing the cast on his right hind from being removed because the colt could not protect himself by bearing more weight on the left hind. Barbaro suffered life-threatening injuries when he broke three bones above and below his right rear ankle at the start of the May 20 Preakness. "If he hadn't had the founder (laminitis) on his left hind, he'd probably be out of the cast and he'd probably be in a splinted bandage on the shoe," Richardson said in a telephone interview. "That's where we'd likely be. I can't do that because his left hind is the more sore of the two legs right now." Barbaro's left hind hoof, which was stricken with a severe case of laminitis, is improving and started to show slight signs of re-growing after 80% of it was removed. Barbaro needs to regrow the hoof if he is to have any shot of walking -- albeit with a hitch in his gait....