NEWS ROUNDUP

Sportsmen vs. Game Farmers: Blame Abounds After Elk Escape Sportsmen across Idaho are furious at elk game farms, after nearly 200 elk escape a farm in eastern Idaho. "Our immediate thoughts from the sportsman's standpoint is that it's simply a train wreck that was simply going to happen. It was a matter of when it was going to happen," Bob Minter, Vice President of the Idaho Sportsmen's Caucus Advisory Council. And they want elk game farms strongly regulated or even banned. "We are concerned to protect our wild stock in this state," Minter said. "And many states have banned game farms. And the sportsmen of the state are probably going to be working towards that." But this Emmett elk rancher says the Chief Joseph Ranch in eastern Idaho was just a bad apple ... and all elk ranches shouldn't be treated the same way. "You're always going to have one in the bunch who might not, I don't think you can, have an accurate reflection on the whole industry by one individual's actions," Kristy Hein, co-owner of the Black Canyon Elk Ranch, told CBS 2 News. "So I think a lot of us are very responsible, we've got a very strong support in Idaho, and we follow the rules and regulations."....
IN THE WEST, A WATER FIGHT OVER QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY It is a strange fight, Montana ranchers say. Raising cattle here in the parched American outback of eastern Montana and Wyoming has always been a battle to find enough water. Now there is more than enough water, but the wrong kind, they say, and they are fighting to keep it out of the river. Mark Fix is a family rancher whose cattle operation depends on water from the Tongue River. Mr. Fix diverts about 2,000 gallons per minute of clear water in the summer to transform a dry river bottom into several emerald green fields of alfalfa, an oasis on dry rangeland. Three crops of hay each year enable him to cut it, bale it and feed it to his cattle during the long winter. “Water means a guaranteed hay crop,” Mr. Fix said. But the search for a type of natural gas called coal bed methane has come to this part of the world in a big way. The gas is found in subterranean coal, and companies are pumping water out of the coal and stripping the gas mixed with it. Once the gas is out, the huge volumes of water become waste in a region that gets less than 12 inches of rain a year. In some cases, the water has benefited ranchers, who use it to water their livestock. But there is far more than cows can drink, and it needs to be dumped. The companies have been pumping the wastewater into drainages that flow into the Tongue River, as well as two other small rivers that flow north into Montana, the Powder and Little Powder Rivers. Ranchers say the water contains high levels of sodium and if it is spread on a field, it can destroy the ability to grow anything. It makes the soil impervious,” said Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who is a soil scientist. “It changes it from a living, breathing thing into concrete.”....
Forest Guardians: Environmental group bids on grazing leases Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians is bidding for two more grazing leases totaling 2,000 acres of New Mexico state trust lands. The environmental organization — which opposes livestock grazing on public lands — currently holds the leases to three former grazing allotments totaling more than 3,000 acres. The first one the group acquired in the mid-1990s was along the Rio Embudo. In the current competitive bid, Forest Guardians offered to pay at least twice what the ranchers are currently paying. Revenues from the leases benefit the public schools and colleges in the state. The site of one of the competing bids includes 640 acres and more than a mile of the Rio Puerco northwest of Albuquerque, which contains potential habitat for the endangered Southwest willow flycatcher. The current lease paid by the rancher is $500 a year, according to Forest Guardians. The second site is a 1,440-acre parcel located northwest of Alamogordo with more than a mile of the Lost River, which provides an essential water source for the state endangered White Sands Pupfish. The current lease is $900 a year....
Water deal on Nevada agenda The battle over the Southern Nevada Water Authority's controversial groundwater pumping project has been playing out for months in the forum of public opinion. Now the proposal - which calls for tapping aquifers under the arid valleys of eastern Nevada and western Utah and shipping nearly 200,000 acre-feet of water annually to Las Vegas via a pipeline network - goes before the person who counts most: Nevada state engineer Tracy Taylor. Three weeks of hearings commence in Carson City on Monday to assess whether the authority's $2 billion project should be approved. For both sides, the stakes could not be higher. The water authority's general manager, Pat Mulroy, says the very future of Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County is on the line. With its Colorado River allotment of water about maxed out, Mulroy has argued that her agency has no choice but to seek alternatives for one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas....
Explosive technique approved to kill prairie dogs Montrose Regional Airport has a new tool for exterminating prairie dogs. The Colorado Division of Wildlife Commission approved the Rodenator at Thursday’s meeting. The device combines propane and oxygen, which is pumped into the burrow and detonated. Jeff Precup, Montrose Regional Airport operations manager, said after the meeting that prairie dogs are a major problem at the airport. Because the facility is located within the city limits, it is limited in the methods it can use to reduce the rodent’s numbers. Precup said the new method will help the airport increase safety because it can limit the number of prairie dogs on the runways. Ron Dent, a representative of the Colorado Airport Operators, said airports around the state could benefit from the tool. He runs the La Plata County Airport and said prairie dogs are a problem....
Editorial - Untangling barbed wire in Cascade-Siskiyou M ount Hood is casting such a big political shadow these days that hardly anyone noticed when Oregon's two U.S. senators introduced legislation to create thousands of acres of new wilderness in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument near the Oregon-California border. The proposal deserves broader attention because it is the result of an unusual and hard-won compromise between Southern Oregon cattle ranchers and environmental groups. The legislation, introduced Wednesday by Sens. Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, includes language that should lead to a buyout of 17 ranchers whose cattle graze on 100,000 acres in and around the Cascade-Siskiyou monument. If Congress approves the creative legislation, it could end years of disputes over grazing, avoid a costly lawsuit and forever remove cows from one of the state's most biologically diverse and important natural areas. It's taken years to get this agreement that's now broadly supported by virtually everyone with a stake in the Cascade-Siskiyou area. The agreement is backed by the Oregon Cattleman's Association, environmental groups and virtually all of the political leadership in Southern Oregon. The concern now is that not much time is left in the congressional session to get the Cascade-Siskiyou legislation through this year. What's really needed is the active support of Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, R.-Ore., whose district includes the Cascade-Siskiyou monument. Walden has the clout in the House to make or break this legislation, and we urge him to join all the groups pushing the compromise forward....
Column - Lawsuits Sometimes Necessary While Working on Forest Solutions Recently I had the privilege of testifying before the U.S. Senate during an oversight hearing on the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA). Without question, the hearing was dominated by a two-hour grilling Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth received from eleven senators of both political parties. Turns out that despite much cheerleading and self-congratulating about the successes of HFRA, three years since the law was passed little has actually been accomplished. This is especially true here in the Northern Rockies where only 103 acres of fuel reduction has been accomplished under the act, including zero acres in Montana. Apparently the Missoulian attributes much of this inaction to the fact that our organization filed a lawsuit on one single HFRA project: the Bitterroot National Forest's Middle East Fork project, which proposes to mix some bona-fide fuel reduction work with cutting down large trees in previously unlogged forests miles away from homes within critical elk and bighorn sheep habitat. Unfortunately, the July 30 Missoulian editorial ignored many facts surrounding this project, including the Forest Service's own analysis, which found this project will increase fire severity for up to three years because the agency has made it a top priority to cut down the largest trees first, while leaving slash and small trees behind....
The Legacy of Oregon’s Measure 37, Part I Camille Hukari’s family has been farming in Oregon’s Hood River Valley for decades, and she says she has no intention of giving up now. But she is willing to make a deal. Truth be told, Hukari would love to trade the vagaries of the pear business for some financial security. She and her family farm about 70 acres, and she believes she could sell off one six-acre parcel for home construction — a transaction that could bring as much income as 40 or 50 years of pear farming on the same piece of ground. "That's a no-brainer to me," Hukari says, adding, "I plan on farming until I retire — but I don't plan on farming 'til I'm broke." Thanks to the passage of Measure 37, the controversial property rights initiative that gave longtime land-owners a way around Oregon’s strict growth-management regime, Hukari will likely get her chance to make that sale....
Oregon’s Hood River Valley: Life After Measure 37 Oregon's uniquely thorough planning goals emenate from the state, but on-the-ground planning rules are promulgated locally. And that's also where Oregon's Measure 37 plays out in the most contentiuous way. Measure 37 is implemented differently in each of the state's 36 counties. Hood River County receives high marks for efficiency, meeting the law's 180-day action deadline for claims and seeking answers to questions that arise, says Steven Andersen, a Columbia Gorge-area property consultant. Nearly all the Measure 37 claimants in the county have hired Andersen to shepherd their claims through the detail-intensive process. On the other hand, says Andersen, the county has followed the state Attorney General's position by holding narrow, pro-planning positions on some unresolved legal questions that limit some claimants' desired land uses. Like, for example, transferability of Measure 37 development rights to new buyers. It is, Anderson says, "a very hard line against restoration of property rights."....
The Legacy of Oregon’s Measure 37, Part III For 30 years, Oregon had the nation's most restrictive land-use laws, and when voters in 2000 passed a property-rights initiative only to see it nullified by the courts, public officials should have seen it as a wake-up call that the rules were alienating citizens. But they didn't, and thus it wasn't surprising that the follow-up, Measure 37, passed in 2004 with 61 percent of the vote. It isn't hard to see what drove Measure 37: Too many planners telling people they couldn't build on their property; too many rural retirement dream-homes nixed (and too many grand development schemes); a gradual erosion of equity as Oregonians saw neighbors achieve things they themselves had had to forgo. And many held a growing suspicion that the state's planning program was about protecting open space, at their expense. It galled landowners to think that their options might be severely curtailed for others' viewing pleasure - with nobody admitting it. That's what happened here. But if Oregon's the restrictive state, how can others around the West be so concerned about the far less-demanding land laws they live with? As it turns out, they are at least concerned enough in six states - Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington - to have signed petitions to put similar initiatives on their fall ballots....
Recreation planning under fire A Colorado-based group says a relatively new U.S. Forest Service policy threatens to close thousands of recreation sites nationwide as the agency works to impose a for-profit model on national forest management. The Western No-Fee Coalition report said the policy initiative - called Recreation Site Facility Master Planning - requires the agency to rank all recreation sites and close those that don't measure up. And while Forest Service officials said it's unlikely many recreation sites in this part of the country will be closed, there could be changes in the way some areas are managed. It all boils down to money. Over the last few years, congressional appropriations for recreation programs have been relatively flat, said Terry Knupp, the Northern Region's developed recreation program manager in Missoula. At the same time, there's been a significant increase in the amount of use at campgrounds, rental cabins and other recreational sites, Knupp said....
Plan to save aspen The U.S. Forest Service plans to clear-cut several thousand acres of southwestern Colorado aspen in a last-ditch effort to save dying stands of the slender, creamy- barked tree that's synonymous with the state's high country. Clear-cutting large swaths of forest may seem like an unlikely cure. But the idea - which has not been tried before in Colorado - is to remove all the adult aspen trees in an ailing stand to allow thousands of new seedlings to sprout and grow without having to compete against mature aspen for sunlight. "It's a drastic treatment, very similar to an amputation," said research forester Wayne Shepperd of the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins....
West on track for worst wildfire season in decades There's no sign of a letup to the 2006 wildfire season — almost certain to claim more acres than any season in a half-century — and firefighters are stretched so thin that help has been flown in from New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Nearly 8.7 million acres already have burned, and an unusual string of late-season major fires still are charring land in Nevada, Idaho, Washington and Montana, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise reports. The center coordinates federal, state and local firefighting efforts. "We're on track to set a record in terms of the last 30 to 50 years," said Rick Ochoa, the center's fire weather program manager. "Our biggest season was last year (8.7 million acres) and I think we're going to surpass that in the next few days." The center imported 92 firefighters last month from Australia and New Zealand, and 100 more from Canada to fight fires in Washington state. Also, about 500 active-duty soldiers were deployed in Washington. Supervisors tell of making frantic deals for manpower and equipment such as helicopters and bulldozers....
Wildfires also consume resources The fires are stretching resources to the breaking point and caused the Senate last week to approve a $275 million cash infusion for this year for the strapped firefighting network. The 2006 $1.4 billion firefighting fund was "just about down to zero," said Scott Miller, counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Even Montana's projected $547 million surplus has suffered. Legislative fiscal analyst Terry Johnson said the cost of wildfires was whittling it down to $525 million. "Through the national resource-allocation process, are we getting enough to face these fires? I think the answer is no," said Bob Harrington, Montana's state forester. In Nevada, federal Bureau of Land Management spokesman Chris Hanefeld called it a "challenge" to juggle limited resources among a series of lightning-sparked fires around Elko. A national command team and three elite "hotshot" crews have been flown in to fight fires there. Mike Barsotti, an Oregon Forestry Department spokesman, said supervisors had only half the personnel they needed three days into a fire burning near Sweet Home, north of Eugene....
Judge rejects suit challenging Big Snowy winter travel plan A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a winter travel plan for the Big Snowy Mountains that was negotiated more than two years ago. U.S. District Court Judge Don Molloy of Missoula ruled recently in favor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, Montana Wilderness Association and Montana Snowmobile Association, which negotiated the agreement for winter recreation in the mountain range 15 miles south of Lewistown. The Central Montana Wildlands Association filed a lawsuit to block the winter travel plan in late 2004. Molloy had earlier denied a request by Central Montana Wildlands Association seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the agreement from taking effect. In is latest decision, Molloy applauded those group's efforts to reach a compromise....
Column - Predator control proposal violates the Wilderness Act You are backpacking in your favorite wilderness, enjoying magnificent scenery and solitude, when suddenly the silence is shattered by the rapid-fire thudding of a helicopter rotor. Presently the noisy thing appears above the treetops, then lands in a meadow 100 yards from your camp. Government trappers emerge with guns. Angrily, but with trepidation, you approach and demand to know what's going on. You think this kind of thing is illegal in a wilderness. You are informed that there is a need to dispatch a couple of wolves, a bear and a cougar. Within the U.S. Department of Agriculture resides a little-known agency formerly named Animal Damage Control and now calling itself Wildlife Services. The Animal Damage Control Act of 1931 mandated the Secretary of Agriculture to "promulgate the best methods of eradication [and] suppression [of] mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, prairie dogs, gophers . . . for the protection of stock and other domestic animals . . . and to conduct campaigns for the destruction or control of such animals." Currently, Wildlife Services can conduct predator killing in Forest Service wilderness only under strictly specified, narrow conditions and with case-by-case forester approval. The use of motorized equipment is not allowed. But all this may be about to change....
The anatomy of an energy lease Grand Junction and neighboring Palisade in western Colorado - smack in the middle of the West's energy country - are riding the economic high of the natural gas and oil boom. But now that boom threatens their water supply: The federal Bureau of Land Management has leased a big chunk of the towns' watersheds to an oil and gas company. Community leaders aren't pleased. In their failed attempts to prevent the leasing, they even tried to buy some of the leases themselves. It's a familiar story: The BLM offers a lease on sensitive land, and one or more groups protest. The agency considers the protest, but usually denies it, so another parcel joins the over 225 million Western acres offered for oil and gas development since 1982. The Grand Junction/Palisade watershed story lays out the little-understood process of oil and gas leasing. It also underscores how such leasing represents a long-term and nearly irreversible commitment of the West's natural resources....
Gold or Just a Fever? The bleak sands of the Mojave conceal a bounty of treasure. Native tribes pocketed agate and turquoise long before Nevada's silver rush in the 1860s, which sent fortune-hungry miners scrambling into the Providence, Mescal and Clark mountain ranges. Tent cities sprouted in the sand. Some matured to communities of shelters cobbled from rocks and juniper poles — with most towns building the requisite general store and saloon and sometimes a brothel. Ivanpah, among the largest on the California-Nevada border, boomed to several hundred residents, but it and most smaller outposts went bust when the silver, copper or tin markets crashed. The mining rush slowed to a trickle by the 1930s. Into this desolate landscape wandered Dorr, a prospector with blue eyes, a shoulder-holstered gun and "immaculate table manners," said his nephew Ray Dorr, 78, a retired contractor in Cañon City, Colo., who is writing a book about Kokoweef. Earl Dorr, born in the 1880s to wealthy Colorado cattle ranchers, traveled the Southwest in search of a mine that would make him rich. He would visit Ray's father in Pasadena, striding to the door in a Stetson hat with a sack of penny candy for the kids, whom he entranced with tall tales. Along the way, Dorr either "discovered the richest gold deposit in the United States ... or he was the most imaginative liar in the state of California," his nephew wrote in a 1967 article for Argosy magazine....
Livingston biz breathes life into old sheepherder wagons Jem Blueher has a niche in the ‘‘mobile-home’’ business. ‘‘The original RV, right here,’’ he said, gesturing to one of his restored sheepherders’ wagons. The units were a way to roll the comforts of home into the backcountry as workers traveled with the grazing animals. ‘‘It’s basically an Americanized gypsy wagon,’’ Blueher said. Through his business, Blueher’s Anvil Wagon Works, Blueher, 37, refurbishes old wagons and builds new replicas. Each one, new or old, typically has a bed, benches, a wood stove and a table. At about 11 or 12 feet long and 5½ to 6½ feet wide, the wagons aren’t exactly roomy. But they are a cozy, efficient living space that provides the basics of home. ‘‘The small space, you get used to it,’’ Blueher said. He can say that from experience, having lived in one of his wagons for two years. Herders and ranchers tending animals first used the wagons in the late 1800s. They went out of fashion in the mid-20th century, he said, although some still are in use today....
If you're set on hanging a man, better leave the moonshine home Several ranchers were fed up with cattle rustlers and, determined to make their point, they set off for Apopka to hang the man they suspected was at the root of their problems. On their way, they bought a new rope and two jugs of moonshine, one for the trip up and one for the way back. Halfway through the first bottle, the men stopped at an oak tree. Seems they had never actually hanged a man before and, after a few more slugs, decided they should practice. That required a volunteer, so they all took swigs and volunteered the storyteller. Someone tied the hangman's noose and tossed the end over the biggest branch and tied it off around the trunk. Someone else backed a horse up under the rope and up jumped the volunteer into the saddle. Just as one of the cattlemen lowered the rope around our storyteller's chin and gave it a good pull, one of the drunken cattlemen stumbled and spooked the horse....