NEWS ROUNDUP

Idaho rancher suspects wolves after 158 sheep go missing An Idaho rancher said 34 lambs and ewes were killed by wolves and he's missing another 124 sheep he fears also fell victim to the predators. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has authorized federal trappers to shoot two wolves. They're part of a new pack that may be establishing itself in a rugged, mountainous area of spruce and red fir just southeast of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. Rancher Ron Shirts, a 39-year-old Weiser resident, says he began finding dead sheep from his flock of 2,500 starting August 26th. He says, "the killing had to have gone on for a long time."....
Burning Man Turns 20 TWENTY YEARS AGO, a pair of San Francisco bohemians, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, burned a handmade wooden effigy on San Francisco's Baker Beach. That simple gesture, through word of mouth, attracted more participants in following years, and by 1990 the crowds pushed it off the beach and out to the Nevada desert. It developed into a seasonal settlement of 40,000 or so, known as Black Rock City. For one week each year, Burning Man becomes the most quintessentially American city in America. The city, dedicated loosely to art, community and general post-Merry Prankster high jinks, gets built, lived in, and then disappears the week before Labor Day in the Black Rock Desert playa, a dry lake bed 100 miles from the nearest "real" city, Reno. The week of fun ends each year with a giant bonfire of an elaborate, 40-foot-tall wooden man, in a ceremony that means whatever you want it to. Burning Man is like a theme park, but where the customers build the rides. It's like an arts festival, but with no plaques telling you what anything is or who built it. It's like a giant party, but held in a godforsaken wasteland no rational person would ever otherwise choose to be....
Sheriff: Death of man at Burning Man apparently natural causes A man collapsed and died apparently of natural causes on Tuesday at the Burning Man counterculture festival in the desert about 100 miles north of Reno, authorities said Thursday. The man in his late 30s or early 40s was from out of state. He's been identified but his name has not been released pending notification of family, Pershing County Sheriff Ron Skinner said. "At this time, we believe he died of natural causes," Skinner said. He said the death remains under investigation. Medics responded when the man collapsed at a camp site during daylight on Tuesday but could not resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead at the scene, said JoLynn Worley, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages the land that is home to the festival....
Litigation dropped before they go to trial A lawsuit filed in 2005 by a Lincoln County couple who accused U.S. Forest Service officials of negligence after their home burned, is scheduled to be dismissed with prejudice. Albert and Loretta Sanchez sued a year ago after their home was destroyed by The Lookout Fire ignited on the Cibola National Forest at the northern border of the county on May 21, 2004. They valued the ranch house at $338,070. The suit claimed at the time of the incident, the fire danger level was extreme, but the agency failed to properly man a fire lookout in the area or to call in the proper firefighting resources. In a joint motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, the couple and U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, representing the Forest Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture, asked that the suit be dismissed with prejudice....
Mont. wildfire grows; destroys 20 houses A wildfire has burned 20 houses and 15 other buildings and continued to spread in southern Montana, officials said Thursday. The wildfire was about 156,000 acres, or about 244 square miles. Fire officials had issued evacuation orders for about 500 homes in Stillwater and Sweet Grass counties. Two private bridges across the Stillwater River also were destroyed. Authorities said they didn't know when people would be able to return to their homes. Numerous risks remained, including downed power lines and burned trees that could fall at any time. "I know you want to get into your homes," said Stillwater County Undersheriff Woody Claunch. "I want you there, too. But it's my responsibility to keep you safe." Officials were bringing in the National Guard to staff road blocks....
Neglected Vows Cited at BLM The Bureau of Land Management has neglected its public commitments to monitor and limit harm to wildlife and air quality from natural gas drilling in western Wyoming, according to an internal BLM assessment. In the Pinedale, Wyo., field office of the BLM, which oversees one of the most productive and profitable gas fields on public land in the West, there is often "no evaluation, analysis or compiling" of data tracking the environmental consequences of drilling, according to the document, which was written in May and which BLM officials confirm is genuine. The BLM in Pinedale has failed for six years to honor its commitments to track pollution that affects air quality and lake acidification in nearby wilderness areas, the document says. In the years that the agency was not tracking emissions, the level of nitrous oxides in the Pinedale area exceeded limits that the BLM had publicly agreed might have an "adverse impact" on air quality, according to the internal assessment. Nitrous oxides, from gas-field engine exhaust and the burning of waste gas, are a primary cause of the ground-level ozone that has reduced air quality in the high sage plains of western Wyoming, a region that until recently had one of the most pristine airsheds in the West....
US regulators propose new pipeline safety rules U.S. pipeline regulators on Thursday proposed new rules aimed at preventing the kind of runaway corrosion that plagued pipelines at the huge Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska, which are now exempt from oversight. Current U.S. pipeline regulations do not include the 22-mile (35.4 km) line operated by BP Plc (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) that leaked oil onto the Arctic tundra, spurring a shutdown of about half the capacity of the 400,000 barrel-per-day field, the nation's biggest. That's because low-stress lines like BP's Prudhoe Bay network -- ones that run at less than 20 percent of their rated capacity and are sited away from population centers -- are deemed to be less risky than high-pressure lines. The new proposal would bring new federal oversight over about 1,283 miles (2,064 km) of such lines, including BP's (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) Prudhoe Bay lines. That's about 19 percent of the 6,722 miles (10,816 km) of low-stress lines on the U.S. pipeline network....
TXU plans to build nuclear plants Electric utility TXU Corp. said Thursday it plans to build nuclear reactors at up to three sites to meet growing electricity demand in Texas beginning late in the next decade, an indication that nuclear energy could undergo a revival in the United States. The company said it expects to submit applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008 to build and operate the plants, which would likely begin operating between 2015 and 2020. TXU said nuclear power is currently more costly than other fuels, but it believes it can shave 30 to 40 percent off capital costs as nuclear technology improves. By applying to the NRC before the end of 2008, TXU expects to get $6 billion in tax credits, nuclear risk insurance and federal loan guarantees approved by Congress in last year's energy law. The company estimated it would cost $50 million to $150 million to prepare the applications. Chairman and Chief Executive C. John Wilder said nuclear reactors could provide lower-priced, low-emissions sources of power that would reduce Texas' reliance on natural gas....
Texas mayors form group to fight new coal units Mayors from 17 Texas cities, citing poor air quality across the state, vowed on Thursday to fight construction of more than a dozen coal-fired power plants unless regulators consider all options that could lead to cleaner air. The group, Texas Cities for Clean Air Coalition, which includes mayors from Houston and Dallas, said it planned to intervene in the coal-plant permitting process and named law firm Susman Godfrey LLP of Houston to lead the fight. The primary target is TXU Corp., which wants to build 11 coal units at nine existing power-plant sites while promising to reduce overall air emissions by 20 percent. State regulators need to examine all available methods to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon and mercury, Houston Mayor Bill White said at a press conference at city hall....
EPA Official Promises Guidelines to Define Wetlands The Bush administration is preparing instructions for regulators puzzling over which wetlands are covered by federal clean water law, a top Environmental Protection Agency official said Wednesday. But the EPA hasn't decided whether to issue a comprehensive regulation on the issue in the wake of a confusing U.S. Supreme Court ruling in two Michigan wetlands cases, said Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water. "Our overarching goal is to continue to protect wetlands under the Clean Water Act to the maximum extent allowable since the decision," Grumbles told The Associated Press in an interview. "Which tools are the best to use is a policy decision we haven't made yet." The high court took up the Michigan cases in hopes of settling a long-running debate concerning federal jurisdiction over wetlands. But the June 19 decision muddied the waters further. The justices split three ways, with none of their five written opinions drawing majority support. Several urged Congress or federal agencies to deal with the issue, saying they were best suited to handle its complexities. Courts have agreed the Clean Water Act requires permits to degrade wetlands alongside navigable waterways such as lakes and rivers. The question is whether the law also applies to tributaries of those waters and their adjacent wetlands — and if so, how far upstream....
Oil fuels environmentalists' hopes Renewed worries about offshore oil drilling and effluent dumping off the Central California coast are reviving hopes of extending the southern boundary of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to protect waters off San Luis Obispo County. Environmentalists, working with the Chamber of Commerce, hope to generate enough enthusiasm for the idea to persuade the county board of supervisors this fall to seek congressional action adding more than 40 miles of coastline to the existing sanctuary. If enacted, it would mean that the sanctuary would extend more than 300 miles from Marin to Point Sal State Park, covering over a third of the state’s coastline. Marine sanctuaries are off limits to oil and gas development and dumping but not commercial and sport fishing. A marine sanctuary off the San Luis Obispo coast has been under consideration virtually since the Monterey Bay sanctuary was created in 1992. It has not had the political support to move ahead....
New Report Warns Against Expansive New Regulation of 'Invasive Species' Calls by some federal lawmakers to add burdensome new regulations to quarantine, to control or to kill so-called 'invasive species' are of dubious environmental value and represent a real threat to property owners, says a new report released by The National Center for Public Policy Research. According to Dana Joel Gattuso, senior fellow at the National Center and author of the study, efforts on Capitol Hill to regulate non-native species -- plants or animals that are considered by some to be alien to a particular ecosystem -- is based more on "emotion rather than science.” Gattuso argues that adding new invasive species regulations would be a disaster for sound scientific practices and would require massive expansion of government regulatory control on land. The study, "Invasive Species: Animal, Vegetable or Political?," argues that most non-native species are not an environmental calamity but, in fact, adapt to their surroundings and are even useful for ecosystems, the environment, human health and industry. "In spite of the fact that most non-native species are harmless, lawmakers are reacting to hype and exaggerations," writes Gattuso. "[T]here is no scientific evidence of actual global extinction caused by a non-native species. Nor do exotic species threaten species 'richness' or 'biodiversity.'"....go here to view the study.
Canadian BSE Case May Indicate Testing Regimes Are Missing Infections The 50-month-old dairy cow dairy cow found on a farm in Alberta evidently showed prion development months earlier than could have been expected, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency report on its investigation of the case. "The staining pattern from the confirmatory IHC tests supported the notion that this animal seemed to have been detected at an earlier stage of BSE incubation," the report states. "Had the animal succumbed to BSE and not to an unrelated disease, it may have been some time before BSE symptoms would have been noted." USDA and other experts have contended that prion formation dangerous to humans takes place only shortly before the onset of BSE symptoms, and USDA has concentrated until very recently on animals exhibiting symptoms of BSE and elderly cattle most likely to have the disease. Bill Bullard, chief executive of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, charges that the discovery upsets the apple cart of traditional scientific thinking about the disease. "The revelation that a rapid BSE test can detect infected animals up to eight months before the animal would have fit the criteria for targeted testing is not only new news, but groundbreaking news," he said in a statement....
A step back in time With a "Heeup" and a "Ho," the four-horse team dug hooves into the ground, strained against the squeaking harnesses and pulled the rack of hay to the top of the stacker, dropping the hay into the wire-framed cage. For a history group from Chugwater, Wyo., a trip to Don Licking's ranch north of North Platte became a trip back in time. Licking uses his Belgian draft horses to feed and hay his cattle, cut his hay and stack it, and on Thursday, he hosted a demonstration for 30 people who wanted to see how the equipment worked....
Kodiak a cow town? In the summer of 1951 Alaska was still a territory, and in Kodiak, where the city government’s budget was $120,000, gravel streets were the norm and grocers, cannery mess halls and the Navy base at Womens Bay all relied on local ranchers for beef. That summer, rancher Tom Nelson announced he would host Kodiak’s first rodeo on his spread at Kalsin Bay. The event was held the first Sunday of August and billed as the first rodeo in Alaska. “John Gibbons ran it, and he was one hell of a cowboy,” 89-year-old Norman Sutliff recalled. “It was a regulation-sized rodeo grounds with a squeeze chute and a gate. We put it all up in one day.”....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Column - Rotten to the Corps If an unsafe building collapsed and killed 1,000 people, we wouldn't blame the building's manager, even if he bungled his evacuation plan, or its maintenance crew, even if they had shirked their jobs before the disaster, or the rescue squad, even if it was terribly slow to respond. We wouldn't shrug and blame Mother Nature. And we certainly wouldn't blame the victims -- especially if they had been assured the building was safe. We would blame the architects and engineers who produced the unsafe building. And we might ask some tough questions about the way our buildings get produced. Apparently it's different with unsafe levees. Otherwise, the fingers of an outraged nation would point directly at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that drowned New Orleans a year ago. And the Hurricane Katrina anniversary coverage would focus on America's dysfunctional system of funding water projects, a system owned and operated by shameless porkers in Congress and their environmentally destructive servants at the Corps. Mother Nature took it relatively easy on New Orleans; Katrina was not even close to the Big One the Big Easy has dreaded for decades. It was a Category 1 or perhaps 2 when it hit the city; the Corps was supposed to protect against a Category 3....
Bill sends 'clear message' that state will fight global warming Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders endorsed landmark legislation Wednesday that could serve as a national model for combating global warming and, according to Silicon Valley business leaders, spur a wave of cleaner-burning energy technologies. "This is groundbreaking legislation," said Rafael Aguilera, a climate change expert for Oakland-based Environmental Defense. "It sends a clear message to Washington and the rest of the world that California is serious about a low-carbon future." California and 11 other states have sued the federal government over its failure to regulate greenhouse gases, and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. The agreement makes California among the first states to try to effectively regulate greenhouse emissions on its own -- a potentially daunting task. The bill, AB 32, mandates that California reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent -- to 1990 levels -- by the year 2020. Major carbon-emitting industries will be forced to report their emissions to the state Air Resources Board, which will craft regulations to reach those goals. Those regulations would take effect in 2012....
Column - Burn, baby, burn Anyone who wants it now has a clear view of what America's "environmentalists" consider stewardship of our forests. Here in the western states, the view is a picture-perfect rendition of the chants of the '60s radicals who tossed the first match: "Burn, baby, burn!" Armies of firefighters are camped in key staging locations near several major fires in Oregon, trying to control the fires paths to keep them from destroying homes, schools and businesses. The photo below show the view from Crater Lake National Park over the past weekend. Many western states with timber resources have been dependent on the revenue generated from selling some of those trees every year to help fund their public education systems. It's a system that made perfect sense. Coupled with modern forestry techniques (often developed at land-grant colleges here in the West), it still does. The land can yield consistent and perpetual timber harvests and provide the funding it was designed to provide for public schools. But there's one major problem: America's "environmentalists" don't like to see trees cut down and used to build houses. They'd rather see them burn. Thus they disrupt the Forest Service's plans to thin the undergrowth that provides so much fuel for forest fires, and when the fire has done its devastating work they disrupt the sales of charred trees that could still be salvaged from the fire area. It's a win-win, if you like to see the nation's resources go up in smoke every summer....
Hundreds Urged to Flee Mont. Wildfire A wildfire nearly doubled in size in southern Montana Wednesday, prompting officials to urge hundreds of residents to leave their homes in Stillwater and Sweet Grass. "We're not going to take you out in handcuffs," Undersheriff Jerry Mahlum told residents at a public meeting. "We are going to ask you to sign a waiver that you've been warned and to let us know the next-of-kin you want notified." People who have not already left were being called by emergency services and told that the situation was deteriorating, Sweet Grass County officials said. The Stillwater Mine called off its night shift for about 200 workers because of smoke from the fire and concern about traveling conditions. Interstate 90 was temporarily closed between Livingston and Columbus. The wildfire was estimated at 80,000 acres, or about 125 square miles....
Precedent Threatens Backcountry Singletrack A new Forest Service policy could close hundreds of miles of singletrack in Montana and Idaho. The International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) is fighting to stop this potentially precedent-setting change before it spreads to other states. "This could become the largest access issue in five years," warns Jenn Dice, IMBA's government affairs director. This policy would expel mountain bikers from more than 700 miles of singletrack in Montana and Idaho and, if left unchallenged, could set national precedent. Most national forests allow existing uses like bicycling to continue in areas recommended to possibly become Wilderness, before the formal Wilderness designation takes place. The proposal for Montana and northern Idaho does not. Banning bicycles from these areas could have far-reaching negative consequences and lead to trail closures in national forests from coast to coast....
Forest Service now says Walden commercial needed permit U.S. Forest Service officials said today that a company hired by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., should have obtained a permit before filming a new television commercial for Walden in the Mount Hood National Forest. The 30-second commercial now airing promotes a bill that Walden co-wrote with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat, to designate new wilderness on Mount Hood. It shows Walden hiking with his son and other youths on the trail to Tamanawas Falls south of Hood River. He urges viewers to push for his bill. Walden's campaign hired a Florida company, The Victory Group, to produce the commercial. But the company did not obtain a permit required for commercial filming in the national forest. The commercial's producer, Renee Dabbs, said the Forest Service had told her a few years ago that no permit was needed for filming an earlier Walden commercial in the Deschutes National Forest. She said she assumed that still held true....
Badlands ranch sold to Forest Service The U.S. Forest Service will buy a historic Badlands ranch in western North Dakota in a deal worth about $5.3 million, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Wednesday. The 5,201-acre ranch is next to Theodore Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch site, where the former president ranched more than a century ago. More than 50 wildlife and conservation groups, including the Boone and Crockett Club started by Roosevelt himself, have pressed Congress to approve the purchase. The Blacktail Creek Ranch is owned by brothers Kenneth, Allan and Dennis Eberts and their families. The property is more commonly referred to as the Eberts Ranch. The deal requires the Forest Service to sell an equal number of acres in North Dakota to balance the acquisition and to assure continued grazing and other activities on the ranch, including oil and gas development....
Conservationists reach pact with Denver oil firm An agreement between a conservation group and an oil and gas producer has cleared the way for seismic exploration to resume in a portion of the Bighorn Basin in northern Wyoming. Under the agreement signed Monday, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance will drop its appeal of a Bureau of Land Management decision to allow Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp. to conduct a seismic survey in an area east of Meeteetse. Exploration halted this summer when the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, based in Laramie, protested that the seismic equipment would harm sage grouse breeding and nesting habitat. Bill Barrett Corp. agreed to measures to protect the sage grouse. Those include establishing a buffer area around the bird's breeding grounds, restoring ground disturbed by trucks so tracks don't become new roads for off-road vehicles, and establishing a $25,000 fund for grouse conservation projects....
EnCana Site a Showcase For Industry's Lighter Touch On the western flanks of the Roan Plateau, one of Garfield County's biggest players in the natural gas industry is developing techniques to lessen its impact on the environment. Land has been set aside to preserve migration corridors for mule deer. A pipeline has been rerouted to avoid sage grouse habitat. Multiple wells are drilled off of single pads, meaning fewer well pads. Contaminants are piped away from well sites, the water cleaned and recycled. EnCana Oil and Gas (USA) has touted its North Parachute Ranch area as a demonstration of how gas drilling can be done responsibly, minimizing the impact on the environment. The company owns the 45,000-acre property. It was formerly the heart of Union Oil of California's oil shale operation. Now, the rugged sagebrush-covered canyons below the Bookcliffs of the Roan Plateau are becoming the centerpiece of EnCana's operations in the gas-rich Piceance Basin. By owning the property, EnCana officials say, it allows them more flexibility to try techniques that are softer on the environment and on the bottom line....
Interior secretary gets look at BP pipeline damage Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was getting his first look Wednesday at BP Alaska's pipeline corrosion that shut down some North Slope oil production, but said the problems should not prevent new drilling in some environmentally sensitive areas. Kempthorne, on a three-day visit to Alaska's oil fields, toured an oil processing facility operated by ConocoPhillips 60 miles west of Prudhoe Bay, where he was told its practice is to run pipeline "pig" tests to guard against corrosion every two years. BP had conducted only one "pig" test of its pipeline — in which a device is inserted into the pipe to gauge wall thickness. That was back in 1998 and it was only a partial test. Instead, the British-based petroleum giant had used what it has since acknowledged is less reliable ultrasound testing. ConocoPhillips' Alpine field is the most modern on the North Slope and uses directional drilling to limit the surface footprint of its drilling wells....
U.S. Agencies Open Another Investigation Into Energy Trading at BP BP, the giant oil company, acknowledged yesterday that federal investigators were looking into possible trading irregularities in oil and gasoline markets. The company said yesterday that it was “aware of investigations” by the federal authorities and was cooperating with them. The agencies, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Justice Department, are examining possible manipulation in the over-the-counter crude oil market in 2003 and 2004, and in gasoline trading in 2002, according to reports yesterday. Other trading companies may also be part of the inquiry. The accusations are the latest blow to BP, which faces a range of investigations in the United States, including claims that it failed to properly maintain pipelines in Alaska, leading to an oil spill earlier this year. It is also under scrutiny for safety failures that led to an explosion at a refinery in Texas City last year that killed 15 people, and is facing allegations that its traders manipulated the propane market....
New policy on national parks expected to favor conservation Ending a yearlong debate over its management and guiding philosophy, the National Park Service was to adopt today a policy emphasizing conservation of natural and cultural resources over recreation when they are in conflict. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected to announce the new policy in Washington today. The new park-management regulations give barely a nod to most of the concerns of the recreation industry and its congressional champion, Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., while rejecting the most important revisions the industry sought. The park service would not comment on the policy until it is made final but a draft of the policy was provided to the New York Times by a group favoring the conservation framework. It makes a few concessions to the recreation industry, like ensuring that so-called gateway communities -- close neighbors to the large national parks that draw tens of thousands of tourists each year -- have a role in park managers' decision making. But it generally rejects earlier proposals that would have paved the way for increased use of snowmobiles, off-road vehicles and personal watercraft. Commercial activities like mining and cell-phone tower construction, which would have been easier under the suggested revisions of a year ago, will continue to face the same high hurdles they have in the past....
Former Congressman Stenholm Warns Americans of Dire Consequences for Horse Welfare if HR 503 Passes Former Congressman and ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee Charlie Stenholm dismissed today's poll released by The National Horse Protection Coalition (NHPC) as a shallow attempt by someone with deep pockets who has never stepped foot inside a horse processing facility yet purports to be an expert to influence public opinion. The poll, issued in preparation of a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, claims that "71 percent of Americans believe that horses are part of America's culture and deserve better treatment." Representatives of http://www.commonhorsesense.com/, and the nation's horse processing facilities couldn't agree more, which is why they're urging Congress to vote against H.R. 503 "The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act." The legislation would eliminate the three remaining U.S. horse processing plants, currently the only means of federally regulated and supervised humane euthanasia for horses. Nearly 200 organizations concerned about the welfare of horses of horses have joined in urging Congress to vote against H.R. 503. "These organizations represent people that care for and own horses, unlike some shortsighted animal rights groups such as NHPC, PeTA, and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) that are only concerned with furthering their anti-animal agriculture legislative agenda. They know that the passage of HR 503 will result in more harm than good for the welfare of America's horses, leaving many to neglect or abandonment," said Stenholm....
Wolves complicate Navy's airfield plans Endangered red wolves prowl the pine bogs and farm fields of Washington and Beaufort counties where the Navy wants to build a jet landing strip, according to federal tracking data released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which is challenging the Navy's plan to build the airfield near a national wildlife refuge, said eight wolves in several packs have moved onto the refuge and surrounding private farmland near the proposed landing field site in the three years since the Navy studied the area. The presence of red wolves, an endangered species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying to reintroduce in the wild for two decades, could further complicate the Navy's plans to locate an airfield near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge....
Grand Canyon fish stabilizing The population of an endangered fish in the Grand Canyon area of the Colorado River may be stabilizing, according to biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey. The number of adult humpback chub appears to have stabilized at about 5,000 fish, according to research by federal biologists. "It means that conditions exist in Grand Canyon that allow adult fish to reach reproductive age," said USGS biologist Matthew Anderson in a statement. Until recently, the chub population in the canyon was steadily declining, because adult fish were dying at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a year, and young fish were not surviving in large enough numbers to replace them. There also are signs of more juvenile fish in the past few years at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, where the chub are known to spawn, the research showed. More young fish of three other endangered fish species have also been documented at the location....

OPINION/9th CIRCUIT COA

Fitzgerald Living Trust v. US, No. 04-16149 (9th Cir. August 30, 2006)
In a dispute over property owners' right of access over a national forest road and a proposed statutory easement by the Forest Service providing them with access over the road, summary judgment for the Forest Service is affirmed as the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) vests the Secretary of Agriculture with the authority to regulate access over a national forest, and the FLPMA easement offered to plaintiffs, who hold no common law easements over the forest service land, was a reasonable exercise of that authority.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0416149p.pdf

NEWS ROUNDUP

West Desert: They get an earful about Nevada's plan to pump border groundwater Visiting state legislators here Monday got an up close and personal primer on how vital water is to the residents of Utah's West Desert - and how vehemently opposed they are to a proposal by southern Nevada water officials to tap groundwater sites just over the state line and begin shipping it via a pipeline to Las Vegas. "I'm afraid for my community and I wonder if this is the start of a long, slow goodbye," said West Desert elementary school teacher Kathy Hill, who along with her neighbors fears that the Southern Nevada Water Authority's groundwater pumping project will dry up and destroy a place - the Snake Valley - that they have called home for generations. The SNWA plan calls for multiple well sites in Lincoln and White Pine counties that would take about 180,000 acre-feet of water annually out of eastern Nevada's aquifers. About 25,000 acre-feet would come yearly out of Snake Valley, which runs along the state line. Because Utah and Nevada share that aquifer, Utah's approval is necessary for the project - scheduled to be operational by 2015 - to go forward. To that end, members of the interim Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee got an earful from local political leaders, who complained that the Huntsman administration hasn't been aggressive enough in combatting what one resident called "a naked water grab."....
Leavitt plans 'recreational subdivision' in Nebo wilderness A group of investors that includes at least one brother of former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt wants to develop a "recreational subdivision" on private property within the Mount Nebo Wilderness Area. An application filed with the Juab County Planning Commission calls for 15 to 35 lots on 152 acres owned by The Eva Mining Co. of Vernal. "Our plan is to develop the property into something that is environmentally in harmony with the 20,000 acres of wilderness that surrounds it," said David Leavitt, an attorney. "The unique characteristic of this piece of property is that it's surrounded by wilderness. If you do anything to hurt that, you're not helping anybody." Plans call for cabins built with environmentally friendly materials and practices. The main sources of power will be solar energy, Leavitt said, although generators would be allowed as backups. Water would come from wells, and "significant portions of land" would be left as common areas, according to the planning application....
Court blocks Bitterroot logging project A federal court of appeals has blocked commercial logging on some U.S. Forest Service land in the Bitterroot Valley, a project a federal judge in Missoula twice refused to halt. Small trees in the project near Sula may be removed as a way of reducing wildfire fuel, but trees 8 inches in diameter or larger must be left until a court case filed by environmental groups is settled, two judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday. The WildWest Institute and Friends of the Bitterroot filed the case challenging the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuels Reduction Project. Arguments before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula are scheduled for this fall. The project was prepared under a Bush administration measure — the Healthy Forest Restoration Act — advanced as a way to improve forest health through tree thinning and other management. WildWest and Friends of the Bitterroot say the East Fork project is not sound scientifically and was prepared with inadequate public involvement....
Groups challenge new dam rules Many utilities and power companies that operate dams will be allowed to do less to protect salmon and other fish if the Bush administration’s interpretation of the 2005 Energy Policy Act is allowed to stand, a lawyer for several environmental groups told a federal judge Tuesday. “The end result is that measures to protect wildlife ... are being weakened as we speak,” Earthjustice’s Jan Hasselman told U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issues licenses to operate dams, and often those licenses incorporate conditions set by other federal agencies to protect wildlife — building fish ladders, maintaining river flows and monitoring water quality, for example. The Energy Policy Act, signed by President Bush a year ago, allows dam operators to challenge such conditions in a hearing before an administrative law judge. It also allows the dam operators to suggest alternative environmental measures, and requires the judge to approve those measures if they are “adequate” and will be less expensive or allow for greater electricity production. The environmental groups, led by Washington, D.C.-based American Rivers, are not challenging the law itself. Instead, they’re challenging the Bush administration’s decision to apply it to dam relicensing applications that were under way when the law took effect....
New Product May Be Answer To Pine Beetle Problem A Boston-based company may give new hope for mountain homeowners dealing with the pine beetle problem. Arborjet Inc. developed a product that may be able to repel the bug which has ravaged the hillsides in Colorado's high country. The new insecticide also acts as a fungicide that repels insects and prevents the blue fungus that beetles leave behind from suffocating the tree from inside out. To use the product, holes are drilled into a tree and plugs put in to keep the solution from leaking out. The tree is than injected and its own veins are what distribute the insecticide. The product hasn't been approved by the EPA, but Arborjet believes an approval could come as soon as next spring for some small scale projects....
Wolf Creek petition fails The developers behind the proposed Village at Wolf Creek have unsuccessfully petitioned Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns to review and reverse a recent Forest Service decision requiring two access roads to their high-mountain site next to Wolf Creek Ski Area, according to an agency official. Texas billionaire and radio mogul Billy Joe "Red" McCombs and Bob Honts, doing business as the Leavell-McCombs Joint Venture, filed a request in late July "urging that only one road, the Tranquility Road (through the ski area), is necessary for the village and that the second access road, the Snow Shed Road, constitutes an unnecessary environmental impact on Forest Service lands." Forest Service spokesman Dan Jiron said Monday a discretionary review by the secretary is not going to happen. "There is no provision for discretionary review under (the) regulations for this type of decision," Jiron said. "The parties that requested the review have been informed."....
NASA satellites can see how climate change affects forests Although predicting how future climate change will affect forests remains uncertain, new tools, including satellite data, are giving scientists the information they need to better understand the various factors at play and how they may change forest composition and health. Scientists have found that satellite measurements of tree species and growth in forested regions across the United States were often equivalent to those taken directly on the ground. The study relied on a sophisticated data product from NASA's MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites called the "enhanced vegetation index," a measure of forest productivity that can also be used to gauge the total number of tree species in a region. The data was found to be highly successful in indicating the number of tree species when compared against data compiled, for the first time, in a country-wide survey of tree species by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The MODIS data also shows that the overall productivity or growth of a forest in response to weather and seasonal conditions was closely linked to the number of different tree species it contains, allowing scientists to more readily infer the effects of climate change. "In anticipation of shifts in climate, accurate measurements of forest growth and composition are becoming more important," said Richard Waring, professor emeritus of forest science at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Ore., and lead author of the study. "These new data help us better predict how forests may change so officials can implement environmental plans or regulations to lessen the impact in advance."....
Study targets mercury in eagles In the wake up reports that several bald eagles in Montana had toxic levels of mercury in their blood, a study is being launched to see if others in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming have been affected. Eagles with mercury poisoning showed up last winter at the Montana Raptor Conservation Center in Bozeman. Since then, 10 to 12 more brought to the center showed elevated mercury levels and two have died. Mercury occurs naturally in certain kinds of soils and rocks and also is a pollutant associated with coal-fired power plants, mines and other human-operated causes. Once it reaches the water, mercury is usually converted to methylmercury, which fish can absorb and maintain in their tissue. When eagles, osprey or other fish-eating birds snatch them up, the poisonous mercury in the tissues comes along, too....
Interior Secretary: Alaska Drilling Safe Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne declared after a helicopter tour that drilling will proceed in a North Slope region that has become the focus of a new dispute over Alaska oil drilling. He said the area's wildlife will be protected. Some members of Congress and environmentalists have argued that problems with pipeline spills at Prudhoe Bay and pipeline corrosion 200 miles to the west makes opening an ecologically sensitive area of the North Slope to oil companies especially questionable. But Kempthorne said Tuesday after seeing the region in person from the air that he is more convinced than ever energy production can coincide with environmental protection. ``We're set to go forward,'' said Kempthorne, whose department will sell oil leases to nearly 500,000 acres north and east of Lake Teshekpuk, an area environmentalists maintain should be protected because of its value to caribou and as molting grounds for tens of thousands of geese....
Salty methane water may quench timber's thirst The green oasis next to the coal-bed methane water reservoir stands out from the sagebrush prairie. Over a rise on the road, in a valley just north of nowhere, the grove attracts hundreds of rabbits with a landscape feature unique in these parts: Trees. But not a single one of the 2,100 trees covering the three-acre spread in carefully planted rows would be there if it were not irrigated by coal-bed methane water, the salty and bedeviling byproduct of drawing natural gas from coal beds. "What we started was what we consider a pilot project," said Patsy Ballek, an environmental specialist with Windsor Energy Group, an Oklahoma-based company with coal-bed methane operations in the Powder River Basin. Now the trees -- poplars bred by an Iowa company to soak up large volumes of salty water -- appear to be thriving. Some have grown more than 2 feet since they were planted in late April, giving Ballek and others involved with the project hope that the technique might be used in other parts of the basin to sop up the vast quantities of salty water that accompany coal-bed methane development....
Conservation groups sue BLM, Nevada developer Two conservation groups have filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management, claiming the federal agency improperly changed a public land boundary to accommodate a prominent developer without conducting an appraisal or environmental analysis. The Seattle-based Western Lands Project and the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association in Carson City said in court papers that the BLM's state office in Reno wrongfully issued a "corrected patent" last year. The groups claim the move rearranged the boundaries of a 14,000-acre wedge of leased, public land set aside to protect the endanger desert tortoise located in the center of developer Harvey Whittemore's 42,000-acre planned development, Coyote Springs. The change allowed Whittemore's company to consolidate its private holdings on the site where he intends to build 150,000 homes. This was done with the "lack of environmental analysis of any kind and lack of appraisals," Western Lands Project's layer Chris Krupp said in an interview Monday....Go here to read the suit.
Lawmakers push Utah land-use bill Two Utah members of Congress said Monday they will push this year for congressional passage of their Washington County land-use bill despite continued objections of environmental groups. U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, told The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board he was “mildly optimistic” about getting the bill enacted before a new Congress is sworn in in January. The bill would, among other things, set aside wilderness, designate Utah's first-ever wild and scenic rivers and free up to 24,300 acres of federal land for sale. U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, emphasized the Washington County bill would work hand in hand with county-led land planning to address sprawl and growth problems that have come to a head, with Washington County identified as the fastest growing county in the nation in the past five years. “On the ground, things are happening,” said Matheson. “And it ain't good.” Unconvinced the bill's good points outweigh the bad, Utah conservation advocates vowed to do their best to derail it. As they have since the Bennett-Matheson concept was unveiled last spring, they complained about being excluded from the bargaining table and about specific parts of the bill....
Ruling means problem wolves stay alive A federal judge's recent ruling that barred wildlife officials from killing problem wolves in Wisconsin has saved the lives of at least five wolves preying on livestock in northern Wisconsin, the state's coordinator of the wolf management program said Tuesday. Since the judge's decision Aug. 9, wolves killed sheep and calves on four farms in Douglas and Bayfield counties, said Adrian Wydeven of the Department of Natural Resources. Until the ruling, wolves causing problems for the farms would have been trapped and euthanized with a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The permit allowed for the killing of 43 such wolves this year. Up to 10 wolves might have been trapped and killed by now, Wydeven said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his office in Park Falls....
Column - Environmental what-ifs, and infringing on our property rights One of the most dangerous trends today, as far as our right to liberty, is the environmental movement. I am not talking about environmentalists' worries, of which some are surely justified. But like so many zealous people, environmentalists tend, in the main, to urge greater government powers and invasion of individual rights, especially the right to private property, in support of dealing with their concerns. But if we think about this a bit, it becomes clear that the greatest friend of the environment, including endangered species, is the principle of private property rights. One way to appreciate this is by considering what would have happened in the past if the principle had been firmly adhered to. For one, road building would have been curtailed. Indeed, all transportation that had expanded by leaps and bounds relied on the taking of private property, something the Constitution permits if it concerns some public use. Had it been strictly implemented, the takings clause of the Constitution would never have permitted the violation of the right to private property since "public use," properly understood in a free country, means only whatever is required for the administration of the legal system, such as a courthouse or police -- or military -- station. Every other purpose would have had to be achieved without violating anyone's property rights. This constraint would have required virtually all road and rail building, as well as all building of dams, sports stadiums and similar massive projects, to be carried out on a relatively smaller scale than what government-sponsored projects that violate private property rights involve....
Game animals dying for food Drought conditions in Fremont County aren't just hurting local ranchers and farmers. The Wyoming Department of Game and Fish says dry conditions since April are also having an effect on wildlife. Deer and antelope are increasingly being killed by vehicles as they seek out relatively lush vegetation along roadways. "Road ditches have more succulent vegetation and more of it," said Kent Schmidlin, wildlife supervisor for the game department's Lander Region. He said plants along roadways receive double the water after a rain shower. While Steinke said the majority of his crew's work usually takes place during spring and fall migration periods, he said the lack of feed at higher elevations has pushed animals down to roadways now....
DM&E taking land acquisition steps in S.D., Wyo. The Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad has been sending letters to landowners along new lines that the Sioux Falls-based railroad proposes through western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. But in some cases, the landowners aren't interested. Smithwick rancher Dale Molitor says the railroad offered him $200 for access to his land for survey crews. He threw the letter in the garbage. Molitor and some other ranchers have been fighting the DM&E's plans for nine years. Rancher Nancy Darnell of Newcastle, Wyo., said it's way too early to talk about land acquisition. The railroad is trying to rush people with the letters seeking access, she said. Jaf Karim, a DM&E spokesman, said the railroad has good working relations with most of the landowners. But Darnell, of the opposition group Midwest Coalition for Progress, said only about 16 of an estimated 120 landowners who would be affected are working with the railroad. If the project is approved and financed, DM&E would have the power of eminent domain to condemn and acquire right of way -- in most cases a 100-foot strip -- from landownmrs along the route....
Johanns Focuses USDA Programs To Aid Drought Regions Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns today announced during a visit to South Dakota $780 million in assistance to help farmers and ranchers manage drought and weather related production challenges. This funding includes a new $50 million program for livestock producers impacted by drought, focusing nearly $30 million in unused conservation funds on drought, and accelerating the delivery of an estimated $700 million in counter-cyclical payments. The new $50 million program for livestock producers, called the Livestock Assistance Grant Program, will provide $50 million in Section 32 to states in block grant form. States will distribute to livestock producers in counties that were designated as D3 or D4 on the Drought Monitor anytime between March 7 and August 31, 2006. The grants will help livestock producers restore their purchasing power. A list of eligibility criteria and eligible counties can be found at www.usda.gov by clicking on the drought spotlight....
Rancher taking new steps to keep cattle behind fences in RR Milo DeWitt is clearly not comfortable in meeting rooms. He dresses in cowboy boots and Wranglers and has a belt buckle the size of a football. After a life spent wrestling feisty steers his frame is cinder. As he tossed his hat on the seat next to him and stood to address the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors at their weekly meeting Wednesday, it was clear he wanted to say his peace and go home. DeWitt leaned down to the microphone and read from a statement he had prepared: “Three new water drinkers have been installed to move the cows away from Rio Rico Drive and Pendleton Drive across from the new Ranchos del Rio Subdivision,” he read. “The fields along Pendleton Drive were upgraded to plant Sudan grass for the summer. In October, these will be plowed under and 110 acres of alfalfa will be planted.” He continued. The corrals would be rebuilt. The cows would be placed in pastures. Four new hands would be hired and they would monitor the daily movement of the cows away from the roads. The herd itself would be cut in half. The bill for all the changes would cost the rancher $90,000....
Wandering pickups and cattle drives all part of life in Powder River County Charles Patten put his pickup in low gear, tied a rope to his steering wheel, then to his gear shift so the truck would go in something resembling a straight line, and let the clutch out. The truck slowly rolled out across the prairie, and Patten climbed out of the cab and hopped into the bed of the truck to pitch hay out to his cattle as the vehicle putted along. It was winter, and bitter cold, but the physical activity kept him warm. All was going well until the truck hit a rut and Patten was knocked out of the back. He heard a sickening snap as he hit the ground. “A cowboy knows when he's broke a bone,” Patten says, and he lay in the field, unable to move with his hip broken, and watched his pickup drive off. After a long, long time, it disappeared over the horizon. “I found a frozen cowpie to put my head on, and settled in,” Patten says. “I'd told my daughter where I was going, and I was pretty sure, eventually, somebody'd come lookin' for me.” An hour passed, then two, then three. After about four hours, Patten finally saw something driving toward him. It was his own pickup truck....

NEWS ROUNDUP

New bill gives major tax breaks for land conservation On Aug. 17, President George W. Bush signed into law H.R. 4, which expands federal tax incentives for conservation easement donors. The bill can be especially beneficial to farmers and ranchers as well as people owning historic properties. The expanded tax incentive raises the deduction a donor can take for donating a conservation easement from 30 percent of their adjusted gross income in any year to 50 percent of their income. The incentive allows qualifying farmers and ranchers to deduct up to 100 percent of their income and it increases the number of years to take deductions from the previous six years to 16 years. Local agricultural officials say local farmers could essentially pay no taxes on income by conserving large amounts of land. “For farmers and ranchers, this is huge,” said Sandra Reid of the Polk County Soil and Water District. “Farmers could zero their income for the next 15 years and be tax free.” Reid says her office and PAC will be glad to steer landowners wishing to participate in the right direction for the incentive. An example from http://conserveland.org says that under the previous rules, a landowner earning $50,000 a year who donated a $1 million conservation easement could take a $15,000 deduction for the year of the donation and for an additional five years, for a total deduction of $90,000. Under the new rules that landowner can deduct $25,000 for the year of the donation and then for an additional 15 years, for a total deduction of $400,000 for the same $1 million property. If the landowner qualifies as a farmer or rancher, they can zero out their taxes, and they could take a maximum of $800,000 in deductions for their million dollar gift. According to the website conserveland.org, the new law applies to all easements donated from Jan. 1, 2006 until Dec. 31, 2007....
Biologists monitor Oregon's sage grouse population for West Nile Wildlife officials have pinpointed the first known cases of West Nile Virus in Oregon's sage grouse, a population that has been under consideration for the threatened and endangered species list. The investigation began in early August, when a landowner near Burns Junction reported dead birds in a field, said Christian Hagen, sage grouse coordinator with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. U.S. Geological Survey biologists with the National Wildlife Health Center got to the property a few days later, and set up a systematic survey to look for dead birds, he said. They found three fresh carcasses that tested positive for the disease as well as more than 60 decomposed birds. When the virus infects birds it gets into their nervous system, said Colin Gillin, the state wildlife veterinarian with the department. The virus then causes encephalitis and meningitis, or inflammation of the nervous system and the brain, he said. Sage grouse seem to have a very high mortality rate when exposed to West Nile, with about 90 percent of infected birds dying from it and symptoms showing up within five to seven days, Gillin said....
Judge overturns pesticide-approval rule Ruling that the Bush administration "plainly violated" the Endangered Species Act, a federal judge Thursday overturned a regulation that streamlined approval of pesticides by eliminating reviews by wildlife officials responsible for protecting rare animals and plants. By throwing out the 2004 regulation, the judge restored previous standards, which had required the Environmental Protection Agency to consult with federal wildlife biologists before licensing pesticides for use. The ruling was a victory for a coalition of nine environmental groups that filed suit against the U.S. Interior Department two years ago. The new rule allowed the EPA to bypass the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Its aim was to shorten the years-long process of reviewing whether each pesticide poses a danger to any of the nation's more than 1,200 endangered species....
Kempthorne conducts listening session in Fairbanks The country's top land steward heard several dozen Fairbanks-area residents ask him to keep oil and gas development out of sensitive North Slope areas, including the Teshekpuk Lake region and the Arctic National Widlife Refuge. Monday's meeting, one of 24 "listening sessions" being held across the country, was hosted by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, and representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Kempthorne said he would take the comments into account in developing federal management policies. "You're helping me," he told the crowd of about 100 people at the Carlson Center. More than three dozen people commented during the meeting on issues ranging from oil and gas development to federal funding for wildlife management....
Kempthorne seeks land legacy for Bush Drilling managers led Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on a tour of Wyoming's Anticline gas fields to show how they are reducing truck traffic and wildlife habitat destruction in one of the West's largest energy projects. Kempthorne's thoughts drifted back to his days as mayor of Boise where he dealt with traffic congestion and air quality issues. "I'm asking, 'What's our carrying capacity?'" he said. A day later, the landlord of 20 percent of the nation's land mass was walking through the steaming sulfurous cauldrons of Yellowstone National Park's famous geyser basins greeting tourists and talking to rangers about the challenges of preserving the nation's crown jewels. This week he'll be touring the oil fields of Alaska on behalf of his boss, President George Bush. Kempthorne has two years to establish Bush's conservation legacy, one that has drawn strong criticism from a wide range of conservation groups and sportsmen....
Report identifies 'missing linkages' in wildlife corridors A "missing linkages" report designed to ensure the continued existence of wildlife indigenous to the Santa Monica/Sierra Madre mountains has been released by the National Park Service, in conjunction with the nonprofit South Coast Wildlands organization, to approximately 90 civic agencies, jurisdictions and public action groups focused on open space and wildlife habitat conservation. The 213-page report, part of the South Coast Missing Linkages Project and titled "A Linkage Design for the Santa Monica-Sierra Madre Connection," is an informational rather than an action document and is advisory in nature, Parks Service officials said. It recommends methods and enhancements for maintaining critical corridors, the "linkages", that allow wildlife to move naturally between large habitat areas. The sector affecting Malibu specifically includes the Santa Monica Mountains, the Susana Hills, Simi Hills and north to the Los Padres National Forest. Some of the recommendations include not only keeping open and maintaining wildlife corridors for mammals in urbanized areas to allow for migration, but to remove nonnative vegetation and to restore riparian vegetation in certain creeks and watershed areas that would inhibit the recovery of Southern steelhead trout and other species. Removal of barriers such as Arizona crossings (low-water concrete crossings) and dams, including the Rindge Dam in Malibu, is discussed as well....
Washington state's glaciers are melting, and that has scientists concerned With more glaciers than any state in the Lower 48, Washington state has emerged as a bellwether for global warming. The signs are not encouraging. A national environmental group recently reported that North Cascades and Mount Rainier are among the dozen national parks most susceptible to climate change. At Mount Rainier, which has more glacial ice than the rest of the Cascades combined and is among the best studied sites in the nation, the area covered by glaciers shrank by more than a fifth from 1913 to 1994, and the volume of the glaciers by almost one-fourth, the National Park Service says. From 1912 to 2001, the Nisqually Glacier on Mount Rainier retreated nearly a mile....
Flying rafts out of control A new type of inflatable raft designed to soar into the air as it is towed behind a speeding motorboat has been pulled from the shelves of several local stores and could face a ban at Lake Mead. The National Park Service at Lake Powell already has outlawed the flying rafts after a string of accidents at the reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border. Since April, four people have been injured badly enough to be airlifted from Lake Powell. In one of the accidents, a 14-year-old girl from Houston was knocked unconscious when she tumbled into the water from 10 to 15 feet up. In another, a 29-year-old man from St. George, Utah, suffered a broken neck when he fell about 35 feet from a raft towed at 35 to 45 mph. The parks agency said the man was the third person in his party injured that day while riding the flying raft, but the other two did not require medical treatment....
Thieves and Vandals Put a National Gem at Risk Linda Farnsworth picked her way across a field of loose rocks, down a steep slope under the overhang of sandstone cliffs. The archeologist stopped at the remains of a low stone retaining wall and searched briefly until she found the series of backfilled holes — where looters had rooted around a remote kiva site for highly prized black and white Anasazi pots, tools and other prehistoric objects. There are no signs or trails that lead visitors here, to Woods Canyon Pueblo, a site containing the remnants of 50 stone kivas, 220 rooms and 16 towers. But isolation offered scant protection when thieves swept through it a few months ago, leaving behind crude excavations, discarded pot shards and their own trash — crumpled water bottles and wrappers from banana LifeSavers. Although Farnsworth and other officials of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the monument, suspect that the looters scored a valuable haul from the site, they can't back up their hunch. "I have no idea," said Farnsworth, the BLM's sole archeologist at Canyons of the Ancients, in Colorado's southwest corner. Farnsworth and other officials can't say what's missing because they know so little about what was there. Only about 18% of Canyons of the Ancients has been inventoried to assess historic, cultural or scientific values. That's more than the BLM knows about a great many of the places it administers. Less than 6% of the 262 million acres managed by the agency has been inventoried for cultural resources....
Bush calls for national parks makeover There's nothing like a big birthday bash on the horizon - even if it's a decade away - to make you want to look your best. So, President Bush on Friday directed the National Park Service on Friday to set "performance" goals for itself for the next 10 years. The idea is to have as many bragging rights as possible when the park service turns a century old in 2016. "As havens of enjoyment, recreation, learning and personal renewal, national parks must endure," said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, while opening a new visitor education center Friday at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. To the Park Service, the presidential nudge is tantamount to President Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon. "This is for us what that was to NASA," Park Service spokesman David Barna said....
Severe Plains drought hurting land, lives, traditions With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large part of the northern Great Plains, forcing farmers and ranchers into conditions they say are comparable to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The drought has led to desperate, rarely used methods. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into "dug outs," natural watering holes for animals, because so many of them (up to 90 percent in South Dakota, by one estimate) have gone dry. South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, who has requested that 51 of the state's 66 counties be designated a federal agricultural disaster area, recently sought unusual help from his constituents: He issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain. "It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, owner of a livestock market in Herreid, a small town near the North Dakota border, where 37,000 cattle were sold this summer, compared with 7,000 during the same three months last year....
US To Ask OIE For Official BSE Status The U.S. will make a massive submission in September to the World Organization for Animal Health, known commonly by the French acronym OIE, for its decision on the U.S. status for bovine spongiform encephalopathy risk, a government agricultural official said Monday. J.B. Penn, U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary for farm and foreign agriculture services, said the U.S. will not be asking for a specific status level, but rather making a presentation and allowing the OIE to decide for itself. "We are going to submit to the OIE a package of information that details our entire experience with this disease," Penn told Dow Jones Newswires. "We're going to let them determine our status and tell us," he said, but stressed that the submission will show that USDA's "conclusion is that this disease is very, very rare in our livestock herd." The U.S. began restricting what ranchers could feed their cattle in 1996 as means to prevent the spread of BSE even though the disease had not been found here....
Latest BSE Case in Canada Likely Came from Feed Supply An Alberta dairy cow that was diagnosed last month with bovine spongiform encephalopathy probably contracted the disease from contaminated feed, federal regulators say. Because the 50-month-old animal from an Edmonton-area farm was exposed to mad cow disease after a 1997 feed ban was imposed, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has launched an enforcement investigation. The CFIA report said two feed manufacturing facilities received prohibited material from the same rendering plant implicated in previous BSE investigations. The investigation is focusing on the activities of the feed mills, the report said. The CFIA tracked approximately 170 cows that originated at the same farm as the infected dairy cow. The trace-out investigation located 38 live animals on the farm and in other herds to which they had been sold. Most of these animals have been destroyed and their carcasses burned....
Russia says to hit imports of US meat if no WTO deal Russia threatened on Thursday to scrap preferences for U.S. poultry and red meat shipments if Washington failed to endorse Moscow's accession bid for the World Trade Organization within three months. "If talks (on Russia's WTO entry)...set for the end of October in Geneva fail, Russia will have to return to its original stance prior to agreements on (bilateral) meat trade that had been reached," Economy Minister German Gref said in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. Excerpts from Gref's letter, first made available by unnamed sources to the Kommersant business daily, were posted on the ministry's official website at www.economy.gov.ru. Last month U.S. and Russian officials failed to reach a trade deal in time for the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, where Russia had hoped to clinch a WTO accord with the United States after Moscow's 13-year-old bid for membership....
Richardson Reports Barbaro's Right Pastern Completely Fused Veterinarians at the University of Pennsylvania's George D. Widener Hospital changed the right hind leg cast of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro yesterday, Sunday, August 27. "The cast was changed because there was a small crack in it," said Dean W. Richardson, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, Chief of Surgery. "Based on new radiographs that were taken, the leg looked excellent under the cast. The pastern joint looks completely fused, and there is only a small area in the long pastern bone that has a little farther to go before we take him out of the cast completely." In addition, the radiographs showed that there were no signs of infection. The cast change took place under general anesthesia, and Barbaro had another successful pool recovery before returning to his stall. The colt's left hind foot has laminitis, but Barbaro seems comfortable with that foot as well. The bandage on the left hind foot continues to be changed daily. According to Richardson: "Barbaro is bright and happy this morning with an excellent appetite."....
End of the trail It drove James Earle Fraser crazy. But Gene Autry kept doing it. As the finish to his rodeo act, Autry and his horse, Champion, would strike a pose, shoulders hunched, heads bowed, as the cowboy crowed to the crowd that they were portraying Fraser's famous painting, "End of the Trail." You'd think Fraser might have loved the publicity. Guess again. "End of the Trail" wasn't a painting, it was a sculpture. Autry could never seem to get it right. Fraser could never understand why. James Earle Fraser (1876-1953) is not a name many Americans will recognize. Yet it was Fraser who created some of our most recognized art. The most recognized of the recognized? His "End of the Trail." If you've visited the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, you've no doubt seen it. A 25-foot rendition is on permanent display. But even if you haven't made the trek yet, you've probably seen a snapshot of the piece. Almost everybody has....
Cowboys blend bridles, Bibles Don't be hankerin' for yer buddy's stuff. Few theologians have ever reduced coveting to such simple terms, but the Texas Fellowship of Cowboy Churches has no problem translating elevated religious language into words any cowboy can understand. This simplicity is in part what drew a record crowd to George W. Truett Theological Seminary this weekend for a cowboy church conference sponsored by the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT). The weekend's events covered topics such as youth ranch rodeo, chuck wagon cooking and cowboy band worship. The concept of cowboy churches is an outreach of the BGCT and targets those "in a western culture who may not be comfortable in a regular church," said Pastor Greg Moore of Top Hand Cowboy Church in Crawford. While their theological beliefs are in line with the BGCT, their style of worship varies. Many cowboy churches meet in arenas or barns as opposed to traditional church buildings and have youth rodeos instead of retreats, Moore said....
It’s The Pitts: Grinders, DINKS & Rabbits Although they might show up at wine and car auctions, here are some folks you’ll NEVER meet on sale day at your local auction market during the slaughter cow run: A Grinder- It is the Grinder’s job at high-end auto auctions to get in the face of bidders and “grind” on them until they bid again. I feel for the safety of anyone who gets in the face of a cow buyer to point out the attributes of the canner cow he was trying to steal. Whereas the auctioneer is permitted to say a kind word about an old cow, anyone else who stops the sale and tries it is liable to get punched in the face. Insurance Salesman- A common sight at Thoroughbred sales, these folks wait in the wings to insure buyer’s purchases. I have yet to see an insurance salesman write a policy for a barren, toothless cow with an extremely short life expectancy. A Rabbit- At horse sales sometimes you’ll see a person bid repeatedly in a clandestine manner to force another bidder to pay a higher price. We call such people “rabbits.” Auction owners provide all the market support needed at a cow sale. Paddle Holders- Unlike antique sales, where neophytes often leave their bidding paddles in the air, grizzled cow buyers try to make it difficult for anyone to see them bidding. Unfortunately, this includes the auctioneer. Spouses- During charity auctions you might see a husband and wife argue about spending $5,000 for a Kobe Bryant basketball or a Barry Bonds baseball. I have yet to see a cow buyer bring his wife to a killer cow sale, let alone confer with her on whether to bid another tenth of a cent on an old piece of leather holding a cow together....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Dalidio may set land-use precedent From the time rancher-developer Ernie Dalidio began circulating petitions to place his shopping center initiative on the Nov. 7 ballot, opponents have charged that it will set a precedent by evading land-use controls. "The precedent that would be set by the success of Dalidio's initiative could result in the unraveling of local representative democracy," Atascadero activist David Broadwater wrote in an April 26 letter to the editor to the Sun-Bulletin, a weekly paper published by The Tribune. A citizens initiative, Broadwater and other Dalidio opponents say, is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. Further, it lessens local control by creating its own zoning. Besides the agricultural, rural- residential and other zones typically found locally, the Dalidio Ranch project would have its own zone, with its specific rules and regulations that county planners could not change. Opponents of Measure J, the Dalidio Ranch initiative, say that if it succeeds, other developers throughout the state would follow his example. Vicky Shelby of the county clerk's office believes this is the first time locally that an individual property owner has put a measure on the ballot for his particular property....
Two ranchers accused of setting fires Father and son ranchers have been accused of setting fires within the unburned portions of a huge lightning-caused southeastern Oregon wildfire in which more than 115,000 acres have been blackened in the past week. Charges were filed Thursday in Harney County against rancher Dwight Hammond, 63, and his son Steven Hammond, 37, just as a break in the hot weather caused some of the wildfires across the region to begin winding down. Favorable firefighting conditions continued through Friday. Harney County Sheriff Dave Glerup of Burns said allegations against the ranchers include four felony counts of reckless endangering, four counts of reckless burning and a single count each of first-degree criminal mischief. Glerup said fire crews working nearby could have been endangered by the fires the pair is accused of setting abut 50 miles south of Burns. The arrests followed a joint investigation by Glerup's office and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Glerup offered no motive for the alleged arsons. "They won't talk to me," Glerup said of the Hammonds. "I advised them of their rights, and they said they didn't want to talk to me."....
Firefighter in Idaho is accused of arson conspiracy A federal firefighter has been charged with conspiracy to commit arson, accused of convincing a friend to set a brush fire on the outskirts of Salmon. Levy Miller, 21, was being held in the Lemhi County Jail on $30,000 bond, officials said. Miller, a Salmon resident, has worked for the local Bureau of Land Management office as a firefighter for about two years. He was charged in a blaze that charred a half-acre of brush in the Smedley subdivision on Aug. 13. Police say Miller may have been trying to create work for federal fire crews. Arson cases among firefighters are not uncommon. Former U.S. Forest Service firefighter Craig Matthew Underwood was sentenced to four months in prison and four months of home detention in July after pleading guilty to starting three fires in 2004 in the Los Padres National Forest in California. Last year, Leonard Gregg, a firefighter for a tribal fire department in Arizona, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for starting the Rodeo Fire in eastern Arizona.
Former Water Chief To Warn Lawmakers About Las Vegas Water Plan Controversy is heating up over a plan by Las Vegas officials to drill for water near the Utah-Nevada border. Tomorrow and Tuesday, delegations of lawmakers from both states will travel to the area for a first-hand look. Ranchers and farmers are furious about the proposal. They say it could dry up wells and springs, damaging agriculture, wildlife and the environment. Utah officials seem to be moving toward an agreement with Nevada, but they've promised they will not agree to anything that hurt's Utah's interests. One man meeting the lawmakers is coming from California to deliver a warning: "Don't let Las Vegas do to you... what Los Angeles did to us." We visited his valley in California to learn about a big-city water-play that's been making people angry for nearly a century. Ever since Las Vegas set its sights on drilling, residents along the Utah-Nevada border have been saying, "We don't want to become another Owens Valley."....
Endangered falcon takes flight in West Texas Ranchers are working with a national nonprofit to reintroduce the endangered Aplomado falcon to West Texas. With support from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Texas Hawking Association, the fund will release more than 100 captive-bred falcons this summer in hopes that the birds will reestablish a nesting population. The Aplomado falcon was once a regular resident of Texas, but somewhere around 1930, it began to disappear, and no one really knows why. Now the falcon is about to be reintroduced to the wide open spaces of West Texas. Some captive-bred chicks from Idaho will be released on private ranches in Van Horn, near the Mexican border. “Working with private landowners is nothing new for the Peregrine Fund. That's the way we have always worked as with individual people, by building relationships with landowners," Angel Montoya of the Peregrine Fund said. The partnership led to the release of 126 Aplomados over the course of this summer. The falcons are released under a "safe harbor" agreement between landowners, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Peregrine Fund....
For struggling West Texans, giant turbines bring winds of change The thing about West Texas that you can't ignore, that you can never forget, is the wind. On that big, flat stretch of land dotted with scrubby mesquite trees, the wind sweeps through effortlessly, unimpeded. It rakes across acres of ranchland, over cattle and rocks and red dirt, over nearly dry stock tanks and abandoned oil pump jacks. Always, always it whips at your face or pushes at your back. It fills your ears with a high-pitched, wavering whistle. There's always another gust on the way. And that wind brings a lot of things with it. Tumbleweeds, maybe, that scuttle along highways and prairies. Or dirt, picked up and carried through the air, turning the sky red, choking the atmosphere with dust and sand. These days, though, the wind is blowing something else across West Texas: change. Giant turbines are going up by the hundreds, planted all over the prairie to harness that wind and turn it into clean, renewable energy. Now, Texas leads the Western Hemisphere in wind energy production, generating enough to power nearly 600,000 homes. This summer, the state surpassed California to become the largest producer of wind energy in the nation....
Column - A Colorado River two-step A two-step program is needed to get local anglers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop fighting about the controversial removal of smallmouth bass and other non-native fish from the Colorado River. The removal program is part of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program and is reducing competition and predation on native fish by exotic species, in this case smallmouth bass. Anglers aren’t happy about losing a potential fishing opportunity and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and by extension the Colorado Division of Wildlife, doesn’t appear interested in involving anglers in the project. But the project isn’t going to stop, no matter how often a small handful of anglers revert to diatribes, inane disquisitions and personal attacks on Service and DOW employees who merely are doing their assigned jobs. We’re not sure if there is a viable smallmouth sportfishery on the Colorado, but the feds don’t help by acting as if it’s a secret where the smallmouth are. Because the recovery program doesn’t allow smallmouth bass to be re-stocked in the Grand Valley, any smallmouth caught are killed and then tested by a DOW researcher looking for specific isotope in an attempt to trace the fish’s origins, said Pat Nelson, non-native fish removal coordinator from the Fish and Wildlife Service. The theory is that if you know what pond or ponds the fish are coming from, you can put stop the fish from escaping by putting a net across the opening or simply poisoning the fish before they escape....
Spraying to eradicate salt cedars A spraying program to kill salt cedars on land along 160 miles of the Canadian River in New Mexico and Texas is hoped to help the flow of water into Lake Meredith, said officials of the Canadian Municipal Water Authority. Last week, Lake Meredith hit an all-time low, said Chad Pernell, Deputy Manager of the authority. The lake supplies water to some 500,000 people in 11 cities in the Texas panhandle including Amarillo and Lubbock. “They’re trying to get more water into Lake Meredith, but it will also be a great benefit to us,” said Jim Frank Richardson, who has been ranching for 17 years on more than 25,000 acres in Quay County. A section of his ranch is bounded by the Texas border. “We hope to see the springs opening up and the water table rising,” Richardson said....
N.M. developer to offer 'green' burial Tromping across a small grassy meadow ringed by pi¤on and juniper trees and dotted with cactus and clumps of bright yellow flowers, Joe Sehee suddenly comes to a stop. "That's definitely a burial area," he says, peering at the gently sloped, south-facing hillside. "It's somewhat protected, so you have a feeling of being comforted here." Someday soon, he says, visitors to this patch of ranchland will be able to admire the view - uninterrupted for miles - then scout out a spot for burial, in graves marked by rocks or trees or newly sown wildflowers or nothing at all. A proposed 10-acre "green burial" site is a small but singular component of an ambitious conservation and community development project under way about 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe. It's part of a small but growing movement to offer environmentally conscious cemeteries and protect open land in the bargain. Commonweal Conservancy is buying a 13,000-acre ranch, of which nearly 12,000 acres is slated for preservation as open space available for use by the public. "The landscape is gorgeous, just spectacular classic West - buttes and grasslands and mountains," said Ted Harrison, founder and president of the conservancy. Development on a small slice of the ranch - principally 300 acres devoted to a mixed-use, mixed-income village of as many as 965 homes - is providing the money for the project, named the Galisteo Basin Preserve....
BLM honors Herrell with Take Pride' award Tony Herrell's management style and ideas have not gone unnoticed with his superiors in Washington. His management of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management Carlsbad Field Office and the things that he and his staff have accomplished since he took over as field office manager has earned him the 2006 Take Pride in America national award in the federal manager category. Herrell, the only one from New Mexico, will join five other federal land mangers from other federal agencies around the country in a Sept. 14 ceremony honoring them and their achievements. A Carlsbad native and a 1977 Carlsbad High School graduate, Herrell returned to his roots about 18 months ago after serving in Tucson, Ariz., as assistant field manager at Ironwood national monument. When the Carlsbad Field Office manager's position became vacant, Herrell was the successful candidate. Shortly after taking the helm of the BLM's Carlsbad office, Herrell started making some changes within the office, and the biggest change — sometimes hard for federal employees — was establishing better communications with the community....
New fences protecting fragile areas on border Only a few steps north of the barbed-wire fence that separates the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge from Mexico is a chain of steel sawhorses that could help save a park trampled by illicit visitors and littered with trash and rusting vehicles. Made of century-old railroad tracks, the waist-high vehicle barrier won't completely block the thousands of illegal immigrants who cross into the refuge on foot each year. However, it is impassable to the vehicles that wreak the worst environmental damage as smugglers tear across the grassland. "We love it," refuge manager Mitch Ellis said as he surveyed the rusty barricade for the first time last week. "The wall is a whole different story." For now, barriers are the best compromise available for land managers who want to protect their battered parks, Border Patrol agents who want to keep illegal immigrants out and environmentalists who are concerned that solid border walls will destroy protected spaces and impede animal migration. They are proving effective, too, reducing illegal vehicle traffic by more than 90 percent in some areas. More barriers are planned for other federal and natural areas overwhelmed in recent years by migrant traffic. Eventually, officials said, most of Arizona's border with Mexico will be lined with the barriers....
Farmers seek water audit A coalition of northeastern Colorado farmers called on Gov. Bill Owens Thursday to order an audit of the South Platte River to ensure water laws are being enforced and water is not being stored illegally. More than 25 farmers and ranchers gathered at the state Capitol and urged Owens to respond to a letter sent to him July 17. Chuck Sylvester, a prominent Weld County farmer and write-in candidate for governor, said rumors are rampant in Weld, Morgan and Washington counties that water laws are being ignored and water is possibly being hoarded upstream by Front Range cities with senior water rights. "Farmers are hemorrhaging and they're at grave risk of losing their lands and livelihoods," Sylvester said. Dan Hopkins, spokesman for Owens, said the decision to conduct an audit will be made by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which has already studied the river's flow numerous times, he said....
New rules for Oregon fire crews This summer, Oregon is enforcing tough new standards on the 158 contract firefighting crews that it oversees. Contract crews are composed of firefighters employed by private companies that contract with the government to fight fires. Oregon crews account for 78 percent of the contract firefighters in the United States and are made up mostly of Latinos. Each crew consists of 20 people. Federal costs for fighting wildfires have been running about $1 billion a year since 2000, the year that 8.4 million acres of rangeland and forests burned around the country. The wildfires show no signs of declining because of drought, a warming climate and forests thick with fuel from a century of putting out fires. With declining budgets, federal agencies such as the Forest Service can no longer fill the need for full-time firefighters. Contract crews have filled the gap, even though they are generally more expensive. But that has led to some problems, such as the close call on the Biscuit fire. Acting on complaints from fire bosses and fire crew contractors, the Oregon Department of Forestry is phasing in standardized tests to ensure crew bosses speak English and the language of their firefighters well enough to be safe on the fire line. Inspectors check to be sure contractors maintain proper dispatch facilities, records, training and equipment. It is up to contractors to ensure that none of their firefighters is an illegal immigrant. Failure can mean suspension or termination of the contract....
Bat Blitz studies furry fliers while educating To catch a bat, you've got to think like one. With that in mind, a dozen or so bat specialists headed down miles of gravel road and dirt paths, over rocky crags and shallow streams, to find a remote wilderness where bats thrive. At the edge of the Chattooga River, near the South Carolina border, they rigged up barely visible black nets where they figured bats would most likely swoop by. As night fell, they crowded around a fold-out table, quietly cracking soda cans and jokes as they waited for the soft thud of bats flying into taut nets. Like the few other teams fanned out across the area, the squad was part of the latest Bat Blitz, a gathering of scientists and students who devoted three nights this month to capturing, tracking and measuring as many of the night creatures as they could....
High-elevation studies try to predict the impact of climate change Some of the world's best evidence of global warming was buried under 18 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada last winter, and Connie Millar was determined to dig it out. Millar, a veteran field scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, sweated uphill with three colleagues on a July morning, headed deep into Lundy Canyon, just north of Mono Lake, one of the few access points to the Sierra crest along its rugged eastern flank. She was hunting for rock glaciers -- a cache of ice under a pile of boulders -- which she suspects may be more common than realized in the Sierra. Insulated by its rocky cover, the ice is slow to melt and could become a significant source of summer water for mountain animals and plants if one of the main predictions of global warming is realized: a radical reduction in the Sierra's snowpack. Millar is finding and monitoring as many of these hidden ice caches as she can, to better predict how ecosystems might change as temperatures rise....
Rockies' Forests Fall to a Tiny Foe For 35 years, Peter Runyon has been photographing the stunning landscapes of this Rocky Mountain resort. His postcards capture winter's showy white and summer's serene green, flecked with wildflowers in yellow, purple and red. This summer, two new colors streaked the familiar peaks: the orange of dying trees and the ghostly gray of dead ones. An unprecedented infestation of tiny flying beetles has put the great forests of the Mountain West under siege. Tens of millions of Colorado's mature pine trees will die within the next few years. Millions more are falling in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, and into Canada. Federal and state forest managers have conceded defeat: There is no way to stop the hungry swarm. Slope after slope will turn the rusty-orange hue of a cheap hair dye. Then the needles will fall from the towering lodgepole pines in Idaho and Colorado and from the ancient white-bark pines in Montana and Wyoming. The trees may stand, skeletal, for a year or two, but eventually they will topple. Millions of acres in treasured national lands, including vast swaths of wilderness in and around Yellowstone National Park, will be affected. "You're going to see a lot of gray sticks out there," said Cary Green, a timber manager with the U.S. Forest Service....
4WD club to protect alpine wetlands A four-wheel-drive club continues work today to repair damage caused by reckless off-roaders in alpine wetlands in southwest Boulder County. Volunteers with the Rising Sun 4 Wheel Drive Club plan to build barricades near the intersection of Rollins Pass Road and the Jenny Creek Trail in hopes of keeping future off-roaders on designated forest routes. “When we became aware of the project and the opportunity to adopt the trail came up, we were very excited,” said Bill Morgan, land-use coordinator for the club, which recently adopted wetlands at the project site. Morgan spearheaded the club’s effort to help protect and restore wetlands at the Jenny Creek Trail. “That wetland area has been driven through and turned into a mudhole,” he said. Volunteers from Rising Sun and Wildlands Restoration will install a 700-foot post-and-cable barrier to keep off-roaders out of the wetlands when snowdrifts block the designated road in the winter and spring....
'Adrenaline rush' drives more off-roaders to sport Environmentalists call it destructive, whether done legally or illegally. Government officials are concerned too, restricting off-roaders to a smaller slice of state and federal parks while cracking down on illegal riders on public land. Obscenely high gas prices are hitting off-roaders in the pocketbook. Safety advocates and law enforcement officials warn that the sport can be dangerous, particularly when youngsters ignore common-sense precautions. But all that hasn't stopped off-roaders from buying motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and four-wheel-drive trucks at a national rate of 1,500 a day. Despite its rough-and-rowdy reputation, off-roading continues to be a recreational juggernaut, growing in the number of enthusiasts by 42 percent in the last four years. With nearly half a million enthusiasts in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Southern California is the hub of off-roading in the West. Yet there are only a handful of local areas where it is legal. In fact, environmental restrictions and the high cost of land have made it nearly impossible for state and federal officials to keep up with the demand for off-road parks. As a result, government agencies have located most of them in dried lakebeds, muddy reservoirs or hot desert scrubland, miles from urban centers....
Pollution in the Water, Lawsuits in the Air Every time the rain comes down, muddy water laden with phosphorus, arsenic and other contaminants flows into the Illinois River from chicken farms nearby and just across the border in Arkansas. The inflow of nutrients has begun to change the river and the reservoir it feeds, Tenkiller Ferry Lake. At times the water is clogged with fish-killing algae, occasionally emitting a foul odor that affects the drinking water and undercuts the area's attraction as a tourist destination. Frustrated that nearly four years of talks failed to produce a solution, Oklahoma is now suing eight firms -- including Arkansas giant Tyson Foods Inc. -- on the grounds that the chicken waste applied to crops near the river contains hazardous chemicals that are damaging the ecosystem and jeopardizing the region's tourist industry. "They're not fertilizing, they're dumping," said Drew Edmondson, an Oklahoma lawyer who filed the suit last year. Across the country, states and localities are suing polluters outside their jurisdiction, and sometimes each other, in efforts to curb air and water contamination that respects no borders. They say they are forced to act because Congress and the Bush administration have failed to crack down on everything from storm water runoff to dumping of invasive aquatic species.
Some Oregon campers use gunfire to discourage neighbors When hunting season arrives, many hikers, mountain bikers and other non-hunters think twice before heading into the woods. It's all about that rifle fire echoing over the hills and canyons. But now it seems hunters and target-shooters aren't the source of it. Some have discovered that random shooting helps solve the problem of overcrowding in the woods. One Willamette National Forest official says some folks apparently feel nothing guarantees solitude in the forest more than a fusillade of gunfire. "Frequent use of firearms ... for the purpose of intimidating other recreating public around heavily used recreation sites has become a problem," states a news release by the Detroit Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest. It announced a new regulation prohibiting the blasting off a few rounds in specific areas. It says the rules are intended to address safety issues and to assure the peace and tranquility people seek in the forests....
Damage to environment threatens the poor: pope Pope Benedict XVI warned that damage to the environment had dire consequences for the poor and called for all Christians to work to save the earth. The world "is exposed to a series of risks created by choices and lifestyles that can degrade it," the leader of the Roman Catholic Church said in his Sunday sermon given at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. "Damage to the environment makes the life of the poor on Earth particularly unbearable," the pope said, calling on all Christians to take care of the earth and not deplete its resources, sharing them in solidarity. The pontiff's call came a few days before Christian associations celebrate in Italy on September 1 a "day for the safeguarding of Creation"....
California Seeks to Clear Hemp of a Bad Name Charles Meyer’s politics are as steady and unswerving as the rows of pima cotton on his Central Valley farm. With his work-shirt blue eyes and flinty Clint Eastwood demeanor, he is staunchly in favor of the war in Iraq, against gun control and believes people unwilling to recite the Pledge of Allegiance should be kicked out of America, and fast. But what gets him excited is the crop he sees as a potential windfall for California farmers: industrial hemp, or Cannabis sativa. The rapidly growing plant with a seemingly infinite variety of uses is against federal law to grow because of its association with its evil twin, marijuana. “Industrial hemp is a wholesome product,” said Mr. Meyer, 65, who says he has never worn tie-dye and professes a deep disdain for “dope.” “The fact we’re not growing it is asinine,” Mr. Meyer said. Things could change if a measure passed by legislators in Sacramento and now on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk becomes law. [The bill reached Mr. Schwarzenegger last week; he has 30 days to sign or veto it.] Seven states have passed bills supporting the farming of industrial hemp; their strategy has been to try to get permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration to proceed. But California is the first state that would directly challenge the federal ban, arguing that it does not need a D.E.A. permit, echoing the state’s longstanding fight with the federal authorities over its legalization of medicinal marijuana....
IBM Builds Cattle-Monitoring Network IBM Corp. is teaming up with a Utah company that offers a remote system to transmit the body temperature of cattle to ranchers, dairy farmers, feedlot owners and government regulators. IBM said Thursday it will provide network services to monitor millions of cattle at a time for TekVet of North Salt Lake, a company that developed a battery-powered transmitter with a flexible thermometer that can fit inside a cow's ear. A microprocessor can identify an animal and its life history, show its approximate location and log body temperature once an hour, giving livestock owners an early warning of health problems that could lead to an outbreak of disease. "The cattle industry is basically the last frontier for technology to conquer. This is an industry that's been untouched for the most part by technology," Tali Haleua, chairman and president of TekVet, a company he started in 2003, said Thursday. "It could ultimately help protect our food supply."....
Dust bowl days stay in memories Traces of their frontier life are hidden. They share two rooms, Nos. 19 and 21, at the end of a sterile hallway in a home for the old. When she digs the photo album from its resting place, the bottom of a drawer, those times drift into the room. “There was nothing to keep the wind and dirt out,” remembered Foy Bailey, 92, his khaki pants and plaid shirt loose on his weathered frame. Dirt invaded everything. It burrowed under fingernails, snuggled into the pores of skin, blackened the sky so dark buses and cars halted in their path and people dared not leave their homes, he said. During the Great American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Baileys were newlyweds. Their first home, captured in a black-and-white photograph, was lined with cardboard, a 10-by-16-foot shack in Grady that Foy Bailey built himself....
A cowboy with a western view Looking west, from the cozy front porch of the Starbuck ranch, you can see everything that Frank Starbuck stood for and believed in. The hills, to the west of the ranch, are the heart of West Divide Creek. Embedded in those hills, is Frank. The Starbuck ranch, resting upon a hilltop southwest of Silt on county road 342, illustrates a simple life. When Frank, and LaVerne (Bubbles) - his wife of 55 years - purchased the 40-acre plot to build their home on, he knew exactly what direction he wanted it to face. Toward the west. Because, from that point, he could literally see - down the valley - to every place he'd ever lived, and everywhere he'd ridden as part of the cattle pools for the West Divide Creek Ranchers Association. It's an amazing picture that captures the beauty of his life. According to Bubbles, Frank was one of the lucky ones. He never had to think about what he was going to be when he grew up, because he'd always been exactly what he wanted to be; a cowboy. "That's why I married him, because he was a cowboy," Bubbles said. "And he was a good one."....
Georgetown tips its hat to cowboy days Georgetown took a step back in history Friday for “Up the Chisholm Trail,” a historical reenactment sponsored by the Williamson County Historical Museum. Cowboys drove longhorn cattle down Main Street to remind 21st century Texans of Georgetown’s role in the historic Chisholm Trail, as well as Williamson County’s rich cattle-driving and cattle-raising heritage. For most of the late 1800s the Chisholm Trail stretched from South Texas to Kansas. It was a way for ranchers in cattle-poor Texas to sell their steers for a much higher price up north. Today the Chisholm Trail still exist but it's changed over time. "It's not by the hoof anymore, it's by the tire. It's a little different but they are still driving to markets north," Chris Dyer of the Williamson County Historical Museum said. The father of the Longhorn Chisholm Trail, Peter Preston Ackley, coined the phrase “Up the Chisholm Trail.” Ackley was a famous trail driver who made his first trip up the trail to Kansas as a teenager in 1878. He spearheaded the trail marking movement in the 1930s in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, with the goal of placing an “Up the Chisholm Trail” marker in every county that the trail passed through. One of these historically significant trail markers still stands at the southwest corner of the Williamson County courthouse as a tribute to the trail drivers of Williamson County. More than 5 million cattle and a million mustangs were driven up the Chisholm Trail from 1867 to 1885, making it the largest migration of livestock in world history....
On the Edge of Common Sense: If it's not a bond, then what do we call it? Anthropomorphism is a word that has often been used in a negative context by people in the livestock business. By definition, it is the ascription of human characteristics to things not human - particularly animals. In our continuing effort to raise animals for meat purposes humanely, we confront huge moral, biological, spiritual and logical differences that distinguish man from beast. Yet, we who spend our lives caring for animals know better than most that there are incidents that occur that cannot be explained or denied. Horse people know that bonds exist between horses. Gary's 31-year-old mare died of old age. Her 20-year-old gelded offspring and two other horses were in the pasture with her. On the advice of his veterinarian, Gary left the dead body unburied for three days. To allow the other horses to grieve, the vet had said. Gary said the offspring stood vigil over the mare's corpse....