NEWS ROUNDUP

Idaho officers kill four more elk believed to have fled game farm Fish and Game authorities have killed four more elk believed to have escaped from a private hunting reserve in eastern Idaho. And they are continuing the hunt, despite elk rancher Rex Rammell's demands that state officers stand down from Gov. Jim Risch's emergency declaration allowing the animals to be shot on sight. Since the escape, state hunters have shot 14 elk. At least four of the elk did not have ear tags identifying them as domesticated animals, but officials say they still may belong to Rammell. He just may not have properly tagged them. Rammell says he has recovered about 40 head -- including 10 prized bulls....
Column - Forest Service, Two Dot rancher long at odds over public land My grandfather McFarland wintered in the house I live in in 1889. Our current brand was registered in 1902. I lease grass from the U.S. Forest Service and have an outfitting permit. I have Forest Service grazing permits that total 78 animal units per month, or 0.3 percent of my ranch operation. Most hunting is done on private land. I agree that the public has a right to go to their land, but I don't have to surrender my property rights to make it happen. I have been around this ranch all of my life, and most of the time we have allowed people to access the Forest Service's Big Elk Canyon. To get to the canyon you come to the ranch office and sign in. I offered to make that into a written agreement with the Forest Service. That offer was rejected. The ranch owns several sections of timber surrounded by Forest Service land. I was going to do a fuel reduction plan. I applied for a permit to cross Forest Service corners to get to my land. The USFS had this application in their files for years. They came up and viewed the crossings with five people. After three years, I got a bit impatient and started making some calls. This is when I became a villain....
7 black-footed ferrets take 1st step toward the wild For black-footed ferrets, being released in Colorado is almost a death sentence. South Dakota is fairly safe. Wyoming is getting better all the time. But a ferret hitting the ground on the Colorado reintroduction area has only a 10 percent chance of surviving a few months. Fortunately for them, only one of the seven adolescent ferrets being loaded into a pickup at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo on Thursday was slated to stay in its home state. The slender, 2-pound prairie dog hunters chattered and sniffed at the mesh on their cages as their keepers prepared to ship them to Fort Collins for a few weeks of learning to prey on live prairie dogs before they are released. The recovery has two parts: a captive breeding program led by zoos across the country, including Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and a program to release the animals into the wild. Breeding starts in spring. In the fall, hundreds of ferrets are released at 11 sites in the West....
Editorial - Water deal with Nevada best kept off fast track It's clear that Utah and Nevada ranchers understand the proper order of horse and cart better than the Southern Nevada Water Authority or the Department of Interior. Those two agencies have made a surreptitious deal for a massive groundwater pumping project to benefit burgeoning Las Vegas before getting all the facts about its potential negative effects. The folks whose ranching livelihoods could be threatened by a SNWA plan to drain hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water out of the aquifer under rural valleys in eastern Nevada and western Utah reasonably want water officials to consider hard science before deciding whether to approve the plan. That makes more sense than allowing the SNWA to pull 225,000 acre feet of water out of the arid valleys near the Great Basin National Park and ship it to Las Vegas through a brand-new 200-mile pipeline before reports show what the impact of the project could be. The U.S. Geological Survey is collecting data for a groundwater analysis that will be completed next year. The Bureau of Land Management is doing an environmental impact study that is not yet finished. Moving ahead without the results of those studies to allow the pumping and then monitor its effects after the fact seems to us to be dangerously putting the cart way out ahead of the horse....
Drought relief stalls again in Senate The latest attempt to pass $6.5 billion in drought relief for farmers and ranchers has failed. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., offered an amendment Wednesday that would have added disaster assistance to a Senate port security bill. Republicans on Thursday blocked the amendment with a procedural maneuver, saying it is not germane to the legislation. The amendment was based on two separate pieces of disaster assistance legislation introduced by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont. Burns, whose bill would have added about $230 million for wildfire recovery, expressed disappointment at the decision. “I don’t think the fires we’ve had in Montana yield to a point of order,” Burns said of the procedural maneuver....What a charade. They knew the point of order would be made before they offered the amendment. Pure political theater for the folks back home.
Column - The Endangered Species Act Maybe this is just what we needed. For the past several years, I have been trying to get the attention of our elected leaders at the local, state and federal level to mount a campaign to push back hard against an organization called the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). This organization has served to establish Santa Barbara County as ground zero with respect to the Endangered Species Act. The damage being incurred is as a result of the fact that the CBD files lawsuits to accomplish three goals or means to their end. Our elected officials and the staff at all levels of government that work for them don't do anything effective to counter these goals by way of effectively fighting the lawsuits or changing the law to prevent more of the same. What the CBD does first is they get species listed. Santa Barbara County has more species listed than any other county in the continental United States! The CBD then sues to get critical habitat for the species designated, which has served to encumber almost our entire county. As an example, if you add the critical habitat designation and range of the species for the tiger salamander, which typically occurs on ranchlands, in areas away from waterbodies, and the land designated for the red-legged frog, which typically occurs near water bodies, there isn't much of this county left unencumbered! Throw into the mix another 20-30 species, and well, you get the idea. Now, the CBD has moved to phase three of their plan, which will serve to limit the ability of landowners to make productive use of their property as a result of the critical habitat designations....
DEATH to TUI CHUBS A white-suited man strolling along the Diamond Lake Resort dock systematically pumps death into the depths of Diamond Lake. From a backpack and a hose, he dispenses lethal levels of the pesticide rotenone, culminating a five-year, $5.6 million effort to kill millions of unwanted tui chubs that have robbed the lake's natural ecology and trampled its once-famous trout fishing. Jim Caplan, the former Umpqua National Forest supervisor who signed the chubs' death warrant in 2004, watches this "collision of values" before him — poisoning a lake in the name of saving it — and laments the loss. "In one sense, it's a tragedy that these resources have to be expended and, oh, so much life has to be destroyed," Caplan says. "But there's a higher value here." Reclaimed water quality, a rejuvenated ecosystem and the eventual revival of what once was Oregon's most popular trout fishery all make Thursday's massive fish-kill a necessary evil, he says....
Firefighting by agency fires a dispute A Bush administration study on whether some jobs in the U.S. Forest Service could be done better by private contractors compromises the agency's in-house firefighting force, say groups representing federal employees. Administration officials dispute the claim. But the question of whether "competitive sourcing" studies -- which determine whether nongovernment activities should be kept in-house or turned over to private firms -- undermine the "fire militia" has caught the attention of Congress. The Government Accountability Office this year began looking into the issue after a bipartisan group of senators asked if the outsourcing competition studies give enough consideration to the Forest Service's long-term ability to manage wildfires. While Congress has prohibited the Forest Service and the Interior Department from studying outsourcing of federal jobs that are dedicated to fire suppression and management full time, there's no similar protection for staffers in other jobs who are cross-trained in fire duties, say union officials, wildland firefighter associations and watchdog groups. "If you outsource Clark Kent, what are you going to do when you need Superman?" said Mark Davis, a Forest Service chemist in Madison, Wis., and a member of the Forest Service Council, an arm of the union representing federal employees....Unbelievable. Now they think they are Superman.
Streamlining forest “Health” Legislation that would cut across federal, state and tribal boundaries and suspend standard management rules in a bid to streamline forest projects was unveiled by Bush administration officials Sept. 5. The new approach is needed, they say, to react to increasing danger from forest fires and bark beetle infestation. The “Healthy Forests Partnership Act” sent to Congress would allow for the declaration of “healthy forests partnership zones” wherein the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management could grant no-bid, long-term contracts to state and tribal governments to prepare and carry out fuel reduction projects on federal land. “We’ve made great progress under the Healthy Forests Initiative and have improved the health of millions of acres of forests and rangelands across America. This legislation, however, will allow us to work more effectively with our state and local government partners to fully achieve the desired effects of HFI,” Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said at a Denver press conference on the issue. Conservation groups who have criticized provisions of the 2003 Healthy Forests Initiative aimed at speeding up projects say this new proposal works more aggressively to reduce public involvement and circumvent existing environmental laws. Mike Peterson, executive director of the Lands Council, characterizes the act as a “privatization scheme” because it would turn control of wide swaths of national forests over to state entities, which could subcontract the work. The “partnership projects” and “partnership zones” would be exempt from certain provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act, and judicial oversight of these projects would also be restricted, which concerns Peterson and other groups including Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Wilderness Society and the WildWest Institute....What? Share Superman's cape? This can't be.
Utah's acting BLM director given national assignment Henri Bisson, acting director for the Utah Bureau of Land Management, was named the national BLM's deputy director of operations on Thursday. "Henri is one of the Bureau's most highly regarded managers," BLM Director Kathleen Clarke said in a statement. "He has a deep understanding of our multiple use mission and is a skilled professional who will bring broad expertise in field operations to Washington, D.C." Bisson will manage the BLM's daily operations, which includes 9,000 employees and a budget of more than $1.7 billion. He will take over the post in November, after Clarke's chief of staff, Selma Sierra, arrives in Utah to assume the state director job permanently. At the request of Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., the Interior Department's inspector general is investigating a meeting between Bisson, Utah county officials and oil company representatives to determine whether he made commitments to influence land-use plans in the state to expand oil and gas development....
Federal agencies grow leery of S. Utah land sale proposal The Bush administration expressed reservations Thursday about key provisions of a bill, already opposed by environmental groups, aimed at shaping the explosive growth in Washington County. The Interior Department voiced concerns over language in the bill directing the department to sell off up to 20,000 acres of land now under control of the Bureau of Land Management. And the White House budget office is not satisfied with limits placed on the $1 billion the sales could rake in. "The Department of Interior supports the goals of the legislation, but opposes provisions that require lands to be sold, regardless of whether they have been identified for disposal," Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Chad Calvert told a House subcommittee. "Furthermore, the administration believes that all taxpayers should receive some benefit from the sale." The bill would earmark 85 percent of the money from the land sales for conservation initiatives, but the White House Office of Management and Budget does not want its hands tied. The administration hopes to work through the issues with the bill's sponsors, Republican Sen. Bob Bennett and Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson, Calvert said. Matheson pointed out that the bill divides the money using the same formula Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., used in two similar Nevada bills. But Calvert said the White House budget office "would like to revisit that."....There they go again, messin' with Superman's cape.
Group fights for equality of horses Like people, horses are found in different colors — and like humans, horses were discriminated against because of the color of their coat. Before the 1960s, "painted" horses were considered inferior to those of solid color. Painted horses are a mixed-color breed deriving from a blend of the quarter horse and thoroughbred blood lines. It wasn't until 1962 that a handful of people decided to change ranchers' perspectives on painted horses by forming the American Paint Horse Association. APHA gives painted-horse enthusiasts an opportunity to see what they can do in different events such as roping and trail courses. The events are meant to show the horse's skills. Marla Fadel, Utah APHA show secretary, said for years painted horses were considered outcasts and horsemen wouldn't breed them. A lot of people thought if a horse had white feet, they were considered weaker than if they had dark feet. "Paints weren't considered as good a quality," she said. Jerry Circelli, APHA director of public relations and marketing, said the association wanted to prove painted horses could do things just like any other horse. APHA has grown, and painted horses have been recognized as equals to quarter horses and thoroughbreds. APHA president Carl Parker said there are 890,000 registered painted horses and 102,000 members in the association....