NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranchers recruiting help to block Pinon Canyon plan Ranchers hoping to block the Army's expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site came here Tuesday night hoping to add the Colorado Springs chapter of the Sierra Club as allies in their campaign. Armed with a Power Point presentation that details what they believe the Army ultimately wants in the future - a 2.5 million-acre training area that essentially covers the southeastern corner of the state - the group's spokesmen said they were waging a public relations fight to stop the expansion. "We think we have a pretty good chance to stop this if we can get enough people involved," rancher Lon Robertson, who heads the opposition group, told about a dozen Sierra Club members. The environmental group was a good audience for the message because the PCMS opponents brought with them photos of the famous dinosaur tracks that are found in the Purgatory River rocks, slides of ancient pictographs that dot the rock walls of the region and scenic views of the red-rock canyons that cut through what seems to be flat land from a distance....
Man not guilty by insanity in '99 ranger shooting A 37-year-old man yesterday was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting death of a U.S. Park Service ranger on the Big Island in December 1999, federal prosecutors said. Eugene Frederick Boyce III, who has been hospitalized at various federal prison hospital facilities since the shooting, was turned over to the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons by federal judge Susan Oki Mollway. Boyce was tried for killing Park Service Ranger Steve Makuakane-Jarrell at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park. The ranger was investigating a visiting woman's complaint about aggressive behavior by Boyce's dogs. During a struggle that ensued, Boyce gained control of the ranger's gun and shot Makuakane-Jarrell twice from close range....
Park to limit howitzer use during winter Controlled avalanches along Yellowstone National Park's Sylvan Pass will be triggered more from helicopters this year than by shooting the aging 105mm howitzer on the hill. Park officials for years have been looking to reduce their reliance on the howitzer because it's unsafe for employees and has a long record of shooting duds that could later detonate. "If this was an easy problem to be solved, it would've been solved a decade ago," said Steve Swanke, Yellowstone's acting health and safety manager, who has been involved with the avalanche issue for years. "It's far from that." For the past two years, the park has contracted with a Bozeman company for up to 10 helicopter missions over Sylvan Pass to drop explosives and set off avalanches to prevent buildup of snow that falls unexpectedly on visitors or workers. The howitzer has been used periodically. The helicopter will be used again this winter, but the howitzer will only be used in "extremely limited cases," Swanke said, such as in bad weather when the helicopter can't fly and there's an emergency....
Group opposes trapping measure A decade-old ban on trapping wildlife in Colorado is being undermined by a new state regulation allowing box traps to capture pine martens and mink, according to a wildlife advocacy group suing to overturn the decision. Wendy Keefover-Ring of Boulder-based Sinapu said her group on Tuesday updated their lawsuit filed in August in Denver District Court. The update establishes the groups' argument against the July 13 decision by the Colorado Wildlife Commission. It wasn't clear by the close of business whether the lawsuit had been filed. The commission, which oversees the state Division of Wildlife, approved a request from the Colorado Trappers Association to use box traps to catch martens and mink. The panel rejected allowing the trapping of seven other animals, including swift fox and gray fox. Keefover-Ring said the commission's action violates a 1996 voter-approved constitutional ban on leg-hold traps, traps that kill instantly, snares and poison....
Rule dampens use of firefighting jet Federal rules are preventing the takeoff of a major advance in firefighting -- a jetliner modified to unleash enough flame retardant to coat a 3/4-mile-long stretch of ground in a single pass. The DC-10 jumbo jet first flew this fire season. Streaking several hundred feet overhead, the jet's belly opens and a torrent of pink liquid cascades earthward, creating a 100-foot-wide fire line. Those spectacular drops helped halt fires threatening state land in California and Washington. But its virtual prohibition from federal land, including the national forests, means it cannot be dispatched over vast swaths of the West -- 33 million acres in California alone, an area the size of Arkansas. The reason for that no-fly zone: The plane hasn't passed a U.S. Forest Service safety check. Federal officials say they're not sure when it will because they've not received important performance data from the plane's private owners. "What a horror story to see fires burning out of control and knowing that the aircraft aren't available," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, who has criticized the Forest Service for not using larger air tankers....
Quenching the roaring monster:A short history of air fire control John Robertson, retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and now employed by the Oklahoma Agriculture Department, relates some high points of using aircraft for fire control. 1915 -- In Wisconsin, first use of aircraft to detect fires. 1930 -- Spokane, Wash., first attempt to drop water on fires. Wooden beer kegs were kicked out the door of a low-flying plane. Some of the keg drops wreaked damage. 1947 -- David Godwin, "Rocky the Ranger," toyed with dropping water out of a B-29 bomber. 1953 -- In Palm Springs, Calif., "Project Firestop" employed the first free-fall of water from planes to control the spread of wildfires. 1955 -- The "Borate Bombers" using B-26 planes began using borate in fire drops to starve fires of oxygen and fuel....
Forest Service fireman dies in Oregon jail A U.S. Forest Service firefighter living in Tell City before his arrest in Oregon on kidnapping and attempted rape charges was found dead Monday in a jail cell in Pendleton, Ore. Investigators believe Thomas Francis Humiston Jr., 31, intentionally hung himself in the Umatilla County Jail. He was found hanging by a noose fashioned from a bed sheet around 6 a.m. According to the Umatilla County District Attorney's office, Humiston was alone in the cell and had been checked by jail staff less than an hour earlier. No foul play is suspected, a release from District Attorney Christopher Brauer stated. Humiston had been assigned to the Forest Service's firefighting company in Tell City for about a year and was living at 847 Sixth St. He was arrested Aug. 21 in Pendleton for allegedly attacking two women: an employee of a motel where he was staying and, a night later, another woman staying at a neighboring motel....
Utah off-road group vows to fight closure of government land An off-road group plans to defy federal authorities Saturday by toppling a barricade and motoring along a southern Utah dirt road that was closed by the government three years ago. Go ahead and ticket us, say the all-terrain vehicle riders, who are angry over the closing of public lands, most recently around Factory Butte, a monolith that towers over the San Rafael desert and harbors pockets of protected cacti. They plan to shove aside a 10-foot barricade at the old Hidden Splendor uranium mine, where a mining road drops into spectacular Muddy River canyon. The Bureau of Land Management will be ready _ even if rangers have to drive 2 1/2 hours to write tickets. Richard Beardall, president of Americans with Disabilities Access Alliance, is looking for a crowd of off-roaders to drive a few hundred yards to the river and back. They'll move the buck-and-pole barricade back into place after the protest, then accept citations that could run $300 apiece, an event others plan to videotape....
Vast federal land swap collapses An eight-year effort to swap nearly 50,000 acres in northeast Oregon between the U.S. Forest Service and private landowners collapsed Thursday when the U.S. Forest Service said the trade no longer served the public interest. The $41 million trade -- known as the Blue Mountain Land Exchange -- would have been the largest Forest Service land swap in Oregon and Washington. It was designed to consolidate the government's landholdings and seize riverfront property while offering its fragmented hard-to-manage parcels -- some of them prime old-growth timberlands -- to private parties that could log them. The failure cost the Forest Service at least $1.4 million and a private real estate company $1 million, according to private and federal estimates. Blame went to escalating land prices, declining lumber values and frustration by landowners with how long the deals were taking....
CID district manager announces resignation to accept Arizona job Carlsbad Irrigation District Manager Tom Davis has announced he will be leaving the CID mid December to head the Yuma County Water Users Association in Yuma, Ariz. Davis has held the position of CID manager for the past 20 years. "We are in shock," said CID Board Chairman Bill Ahrens, speaking on behalf of the board. "He is one of those irreplaceable people. There are not many people out there like Tom who are so well versed in water issues in our state. I'm happy for him that he has found something bigger and better, but I don't know what the board will do to find a replacement for Tom. I'm sort of walking around in shock. I've tried not to think about the day when he would leave. I had hoped it would be after I got off the board." In the state's water community, Davis has been a high-stakes player. He is respected across the country for his knowledge in water issues and the role he has played in New Mexico's battle with Texas over Pecos River waters. He also serves on the New Mexico Water Trust Board....
Grain stockpiles at lowest for 25 years The world’s stockpiles of wheat are at their lowest level in more than a quarter century, according to the US Department of Agriculture, which on Thursday slashed its forecasts for global wheat and corn production. The lower forecasts were largely attributable to the severe drought in Australia, where the forecast for this year’s wheat crop was cut by 8.5m tons to 11m. That is less than half of the 24m produced last year, of which about 17m went to exports. As a result of the low Australian crop, AWB, the country’s main wheat exporter, said it would suspend exports from the country’s east coast due to the poor crop and review its export requirements. To add to the global supply concerns, Ukraine has introduced licences and quotas on its wheat exports, effectively bringing shipments to a standstill. This has already halted Ukrainian wheat shipments of 50,000 tonnes to India. The USDA also lowered wheat output for China, Brazil and the European Union. Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade reached a new 10-year high of $5.51 a bushel before the release of the USDA report, which represented a rise of 18 per cent since last Friday....
No-frills Colorado ranch puts its guests to work The first sound a city slicker hears at 5:30 a.m. at Chico Basin Ranch is ... nothing. No television. No traffic whizzing by. Then, a thousand sounds. Insects dance. Birds sing. Cattle bleat. A horse sighs. The wind howls a long way off, as it gathers force across the prairie like a wave. Only 35 miles southeast of Colorado Springs, this ranch resides between the city and the Old West. Chico Basin, an 87,000-acre working ranch, opens its gates to visitors who come to play cowboy, to meet the mythical West, to ride horses and to earn calluses. In the Holmes Bunkhouse, guests Brian Wyka and his 12-year-old daughter, Lauren, of Sarasota, Fla., begin to stir. Once a family home, it now hosts visitors from all over the world. "I'm here for my daughter," Wyka says. "If you're a wimp or a pampered princess, it probably isn't the thing to do."....
It’s The Pitts: Sins Of The Cowboy I thought such discrimination was illegal these days but I see ads like this all the time. I think some ranchers are being a bit unreasonable in trying to find a competent person who can do things that not one hundredth of one percent of the people in the world can do, like pull a calf or break a horse. And on top of that they want them to be saints. Some owners are even more persnickety: they don’t want any smokers or cowboy poets either. And they want these angels for less than minimum wage! Whenever I read a help wanted ad like that it reminds me of some down-on-their-luck cowboys I met one night at the Pow Wow in Tucumcari. They’d been deeply engaged in one of the cowboy sins for hours when they told me the tale of a green cowboy who blew in from Arizona along with the tumbleweeds and landed himself a job on one of the big spreads in the Land of Enchantment. Only his job wasn’t all that enchanting. He was expected to live in an old line-camp for 12 months a year where he was lonelier than a preacher on pay day. The nearest town, if you could call it that, was two hours away and civilization was another world away. The young cowboy had grown up on a ranch so he had the necessary cowboy skills but he was not what you’d call worldly. Truth be told, he was greener than a 400 pound drouthed out yearling. For weeks at a time his only interaction with people was when he’d be out riding fence and run into the grizzled old timer who lived in the adjoining cow camp. He was a contrary codger whose legs were warped, along with his outlook on life. One day the old geezer rode up to the young man’s cabin on a lathered horse. “The cow boss is making the rounds,” he told the young cowboy. “You’d best bury any whiskey along with any other bad habits you got. There’s no drinking or gambling allowed on this outfit.”....

HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13TH!!

For the fearful, this Friday has their number

This is not a good day for paraskevidekatriaphobics -- those who fear Friday the 13th. It's double-13 Friday. All the numbers in the numerical notation -- 10/13/2006 -- add up to 13 as well, giving great pause to the superstitious. The phenomenon hasn't happened in 476 years, said Heinrich Hemme, a physicist at Germany's University of Aachen who crunched the numbers to find that the double-whammy last occurred Jan. 13, 1520. "Pure chance," the good professor told the press yesterday. But it's not exactly TGIF for the 21 million Americans who fear the day. Some may not travel or even get out of bed, said Donald Dossey, a North Carolina psychologist who coined the term "paraskevidekatriaphobia" 20 years ago. He estimates that the nation is out $900 million in lost productivity because of Friday the 13th sick-outs. "It's just ingrained in our culture -- one of those collective, unconscious fears stretching back about 2,800 years," Mr. Dossey said....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Feds developing map project to determine risk of wildfire The federal government is developing a $40 million mapping program that can be used to identify communities most at risk of wildfire, but an environmental group has criticized the project because it contains ecological data but none on where people live. Federal officials have said that the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project, or Landfire, will improve their ability to choose high-priority fire-prevention projects. A recent independent government audit cited the project as one way to overcome problems with federal projects to reduce vegetation that can fuel wildfires. The report found that the Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire-prevention projects are funded first. "Forest Service officials believe that Landfire, a new system being developed, will provide more accurate nationwide data so that they can more accurately define and identify a community most at risk," the report said. A shared project of the Forest Service and the Interior Department, Landfire uses satellite imagery to map the land and software models to provide more detailed information about soil, vegetation, climate and fire history. Partners on the project include the Forest Service's Missoula Fire Sciences Lab and the Nature Conservancy....
Enterprise will give $50 million to the Arbor Day Foundation The gift has a ring to it: $50 million for 50 million trees over 50 years. Enterprise Rent-A-Car will announce on Thursday its gift to the National Arbor Day Foundation, which will use the money to help the U.S. Forest Service plant seedlings in national forests that have been damaged by fire, storm or disease. Laura Bush plans to attend the 2:30 p.m. ceremonial planting at the World’s Fair Pavilion in Forest Park. Four white pine seedlings will planted in a tub that will be transferred to Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri, one of 155 national forests that will be supported by the gift along with some European and Canadian forests. Arbor Day Foundation president John Rosenow said it was the biggest gift ever to the organization. "The size of the gift is big time," Rosenow said. "But we’re also thrilled with the certainty and the flexibility of it." The gift comes as the U.S. Forest Service struggles to cope with record fires and tight budgets....
Conservation corps gets green light The conservation corps, a public works program that dates back to the 1930s, will be reconstituted in Wyoming next year to improve state and federal parks and facilities. Thanks to two recent grants from Serve Wyoming and the Wyoming Community Foundation, the Wyoming Conservation Corps will be able to field crews of young adults next summer. "Things are looking really good, and it's just going through nuts and bolts of contract work and setting up projects for May," said organizer Nick Agopian, a law student at the University of Wyoming who conceived the idea. Projects the crews will work on are still tentative. But they could include refencing grizzly bear habitat for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, working at Devils Tower National Monument for the National Park Service, rehabilitating the areas around gauge houses on lakes and rivers for the state engineer's office, working on the trail system under construction at Curt Gowdy State Park and helping build the Continental Divide Trail for the Bureau of Land Management....
Outdoors sportsmen play bigger role inWest's energy development Outdoors guide Keith Goddard remembers when he could go for hours or even days and not see another person on top of western Colorado's Roan Plateau. "Up until a few years ago, you could stand right here all day long, and if you'd seen one or two vehicles, you'd seen a bunch," Goddard said, peering from a field of wildflowers to rocky, wooded slopes below. As he spoke, three 18-wheelers sped by in a noisy reminder of the natural gas boom many expect to get even bigger in this stretch of land 180 miles west of Denver. It is prized by both energy companies and by people like Goddard, a 42-year-old member of the so-called "hook and bullet" crowd that is wielding more and more clout when it comes to managing public land -- clout that's being noticed by industry officials and politicians on both sides of the aisle. Fearing that energy development sweeping through the Rockies could permanently scar the landscape, hunters and anglers are forming alliances with environmental groups like The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club. The two sides, who have sparred in the past, are trying to protect such areas as northern Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, Wyoming's Jack Morrow Hills and New Mexico's Valle Vidal. Standing on the Roan, where there are already some 30 natural gas wells on private land, Goddard said he doesn't want his favorite hunting ground developed, but sees it as inevitable. He said he just hopes the impact is minimized and drilling is banned in the most wild and environmentally sensitive areas. "If they do it heavy-scale and take a shotgun approach on the Roan and it's real tight density and spacing, it will put us out of business and it will disperse the deer and elk herds," Goddard said....
State, BLM clash on Piceance oil projects Two state officials are criticizing the Bureau of Land Management over its environmental assessment of an oil-shale project in Rio Blanco County, saying the agency's proposal would allow it to ignore state regulations. Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Co. is proposing oil-shale research and development projects in the Piceance Basin. In a recent environmental assessment, the BLM said the company must comply with state and local regulations and get applicable permits for rights of way and road access. But the BLM said it would waive the requirement for such compliance if it determines that state regulations conflict with the "achievement of a congressionally approved use of public lands." Colorado Water Quality Control Division Director Steve Gunderson and Air Pollution Control Division Director Margie Perkins said in a Sept. 15 letter to the BLM that the state "strongly disagrees" that the agency can "unilaterally waive state and local laws and disregard state permit conditions."....
Greens sound alarm on drilling pollution Estimates show that fine particulate matter in the air above the Jonah Field would exceed Environmental Protection Agency standards if the proposed 3,100 wells were built using current technology, according to a Bureau of Land Management report. Development of the Jonah infill project, which would increase the density of wells in the field, would add between 44 and 49.4 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter to the air, for a cumulative 24-hour concentration of roughly 62 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the project’s environmental impact statement. The current EPA standards, adopted last month, say that fine particulate matter levels cannot exceed 35 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter over 24 hours. Previous standards put the limit at 65 micrograms per cubic meter. Environmental groups say the infill violates the Clean Air Act and, further, warn that these small particles and liquid droplets could exacerbate respiratory illnesses such as asthma and other chronic pulmonary disease. Sublette County Health Officer Dr. Thomas Johnston expressed worries for the residents living in Sublette County. “The smaller the air particle the further down your lung it goes,” he said. “The further down in the lung it goes the more damage it causes.”....
Government Money: Kindling Start a fire; put it out. Start a fire; put it out. It sounds like a cruel punishment cooked up by a vengeful deity, but to Bureau of Land Management firefighter Levi Miller, it's "fun and easy." Miller copped to the quote in Idaho's Seventh District Court last week while pleading guilty to charges of felony solicitation of arson. Miller admitted that he tried to pay a teenager in Salmon $100 to start a fire on the outskirts of town in order to help the federally paid firefighters like himself make some money, according to the Idaho Falls Post Register. Of course, teens being what they are, the offer worked. The resulting fire burned about a half-acre of grass and brush in August before fire crews extinguished it. In a followup call, Miller gave the teen instruction on how to dispose of evidence from the arson. At his November sentencing, Miller could face up to 12-and-a-half years in prison and up to $25,0000 in fines for the solicitation. In the phone conversation, Miller boasted about starting eight other fires in the Salmon area in 2003. One of the fires, according to court records quoted in the story, was less than 250 yards from Miller's residence and had been started with a stick of incense and some matches....
Chapman to Focus on Otero Mesa in UNM Maxwell Museum Lecture Richard Chapman, director of the Office of Contract Archeology, a program within the University of New Mexico's Maxwell Museum, will present “Otero Mesa: An Illustrated Tour of the Otero Triangle” on Wednesday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. in Anthropology Lecture Hall rm. 163. This installment of the Maxwell Museum Southwest Lecture Series focuses on the results of preliminary research into the 12,000-year span of human interaction with the varied Otero Mesa environment. The New Mexico region commonly known as “Otero Mesa,” is a 1,600 square mile triangle of landscape located at the Texas-New Mexico border in southern Otero County, NM. Landholders include the NM State Land Office, Bureau of Land Management and private ownership. BLM-administered lands have recently been proposed for oil and gas exploration by the federal government. In response to concerns about the effects this development might have on this sparsely populated and isolated part of the Chihuahua desert, a number of studies of vegetation, wildlife, water and soils have been launched to assess possible impacts. The Office of Contract Archeology was awarded a contract by the New Mexico State Land Office to conduct a preliminary assessment of the knowledge about prehistoric and historic cultural resources in the region. Chapman will discuss the assessment results....
Burning Questions From high atop a horse named Cruiser, it’s easy to see what ails so much of America’s West. Above and below an equestrian path in the Gallatin National Forest, pine trees and Douglas firs crowd together like rush-hour subway commuters. Many are shorter and thinner than normal, due to intense competition for water, nutrients, and light. Among these upright evergreens, dead trunks, limbs, and branches litter the arid ground. They are parched white, like the bones of a carcass bleached beneath the searing sunshine. “This hasn’t burned since the 1940s,” says Ryan Neel, a wrangler from the nearby Lone Mountain Ranch. One well-placed lightning bolt could turn this overgrown hillside into a furnace. Compare this neglected patch of the federal property portfolio to the practically groomed habitat at CNN founder Ted Turner’s 175-square-mile Flying D Ranch, about 50 miles away. Young and old members of assorted arboreal species stand comfortably apart from each other, minimizing fire risk. On this private land, (managed by Turner Enterprises) foresters carefully pick trees to sell, and then carefully remove them by helicopter. Despite such costly techniques, Turner Enterprises turns a profit. “Fire safety is an ancillary benefit of thinning for pest and disease control,” says general manager Russ Miller. “Spacing out the trees makes it more difficult for insects and flames to spread from tree to tree.” This contrast between public mismanagement and private stewardship recurs across the West. The enormous fires that routinely engulf millions of acres from the Rockies to the Pacific tend to devour federal lands. Washington, D.C., owns, for instance, 29.9 percent of Montana, 45.3 percent of California, and 84.5 percent of Nevada. Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, 54.1 percent of America’s West is federal property. Actively maintained, private forests usually enjoy health and fire resistance, thanks to deadwood clearance, controlled burns, and selective harvesting....
DNA testing on possible wolf will take time The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken the lead role in unraveling the mystery of a 91-pound canine shot Oct. 1 in North Troy, but it could be months before it's known whether the animal shot by a hunter is a coyote, a wolf, a once-domestic animal or of mixed genealogy. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department has sent tissue samples to three laboratories for DNA analysis, said Kim Royar, furbearer biologist for the state. Royar said it could be as long as a year before results are returned. "My experience has been that it takes much longer than you expect," Royar said. Vermont has sent samples to laboratories in Vermont, Idaho and New York, she said. Meanwhile, law enforcement officers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took the carcass of the animal that hunter Charlie Hammond turned over to state officials in St. Johnsbury. Hammond said he thought he was shooting a large coyote when he pulled the trigger....
Out of fire's destruction comes new growth For all of a wildfire's smoke, heat and bluster, it doesn't always leave behind death and destruction. In recent weeks, carpets of bright green grass have sprung up in places charred and blackened by this summer's largest fires, including the Derby Mountain, Pine Ridge and Bundy Railroad complexes. "That stuff is coming on pretty fast," said Chuck Roloff, with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Big Timber, who has been tracking the aftermath of the Derby Mountain fire. As fire burns across the landscape, it releases huge amounts of nutrients tied up in slowly decomposing plants, leaves, twigs and trees. When those nutrients settle into the soil and slow, steady rains come - as they have recently - the underground roots get a charge and life springs from the ground....
Bikers provide ecological study input Mountain bike enthusiasts and recreation managers have a new ally in preserving places to ride: scientific research. Land managers, policy makers and cyclists have faced the challenges of crowded mountain trails, irresponsible trail use, increased demands for more trails and degradation of existing trails caused by the explosion of mountain biking as a popular national pastime. In the absence of sound scientific information, managers often have chosen to take regulatory action – or to restrict use of recreational resources. In an effort to understand the ecological impacts of mountain bike use on trails, the Arizona State Office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Shimano American Corp. launched and funded a collaborative research project led by recreational ecologists Dave White from ASU and Pam Foti from Northern Arizona University. Their efforts provide managers with assessment guides that inform their decision-making, and help sustain the trail systems as well as this increasingly popular outdoor activity....
Reign of the Monarchs How can an insect the size of a matchbook and half the weight fly from Massachusetts to Mexico -- a faraway land it's never visited before -- in only two months? That's the magic of the monarch butterfly. For weeks, record numbers of these orange and black creatures have been fluttering across northeastern Massachusetts, captivating residents as they pass through on their annual southern migration. ``This has been the best year for monarchs that I've ever seen," said Steve Haydock of Newbury, who volunteers for the state chapter of Monarch Watch, a tracking program based at the University of Kansas. ``They are everywhere this year." Each fall, monarchs make their way across the United States to spend the winter near Mexico City and other points south. Along the way, they roost overnight wherever there is water, which provides warmth, Haydock said. But for reasons less clearly understood by authorities on butterflies, monarchs are amassing here this year in numbers not seen for decades....
Feds push grizzly delisting At a meeting in Jackson Wednesday, federal officials said they would go ahead with efforts to remove grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protection after receiving over 200,000 comments on the proposal. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator Chris Servheen said the agency hopes to address the public comments and delist grizzly bears by early 2007. Servheen said the public comments include “a wide range of concerns” from people who want more protections for the bears and also from people who think that too many bears live in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. “We have to answer all of those [comments] in a logical way,” he said. Conservation groups such as Earthjustice say the decision to delist the grizzly bear is premature and ill-advised, citing concerns about a lack of appropriate habitat protections, inadequate oversight, and declining food sources....
The Saudi-Osama Connection It was supposed to be one of those international “ho-hum” conferences, dedicated to endangered species. But in a surprise move, the government of Saudi Arabia turned it into an international confrontation, using its veto power to prevent an American conservationist group from presenting what it called “actionable information” that tied top Saudi and United Arab Emirates leaders to al Qaeda. UN officials called the Saudi move to ban the U.S group, which had official United Nations observer status, “unprecedented.” The UN actually tried to facilitate the appearance of the U.S. group at last Friday’s meeting in Geneva of the 54th Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). That may have been a first in UN history. The conservationist group, the Union for the Conservation of Raptors (UCR), said it was prepared to present “new evidence” of ongoing smuggling operations that tied top Saudi and United Arab Emirates leaders to al Qaeda. In a letter outlying their proposed testimony, the UCR said that it would present evidence of bribes paid to UN officials by UAE and Saudi officials in order to allow the smuggling of hunting falcons....
Park Service deputy chief resigns National Park Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy has resigned from his position and will leave at the end of this week, the Park Service has confirmed. Murphy is a central figure in the case of former Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, who was fired in July 2004 after publicly complaining about budget and staffing shortfalls at the agency. She has fought to be reinstated since that time. Murphy has made conflicting statements under oath about the existence of a positive appraisal of Chambers' performance. His resignation comes on the heels of a federal judge's rejection of the Interior Department's motion to dismiss a case in which Chambers claimed her performance appraisal was illegally kept from her in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act. David Barna, the Park Service's chief of public affairs, confirmed Murphy's departure, but declined to elaborate on it other than to say, "It doesn't have anything to do with Teresa Chambers." Barna said Murphy was unavailable to comment. His replacement has not been named. In late September, the Senate confirmed Mary A. Bomar, a career Park Service employee, to be the new director of the agency, succeeding Fran Mainella....
Wyoming women receive wool grant Mountain Meadow Wool Company, Inc. received a $296,000 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase 2 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its proposal to create a wool processing facility in Wyoming.
Mountain Meadow Wool Company, Inc. is a small wool marketing company, based in Buffalo, Wyo. Over the next two years, the company hopes to build a processing mill in the state. “A processing facility in the state will allow Wyoming wool producers to establish a value-added product, and will provide for the beginnings of a wool textile sector,” said Valerie L. Spanos, president of the Mountain Meadow Wool Company. Although Wyoming ranks second in the nation in wool production, no commercial scouring facility exists in this region. “Unfortunately, the wool is shipped out of state before processing, meaning that Wyoming ranchers cannot benefit from their superior product,” Spanos said....
Quick learner is a real grand champion Dusty Blue is no run-of-the-mill jackass. An adopted animal originally from Ridgecrest, Calif., Dusty Blue won Grand Champion All-Around at the recent Bishop (Calif.) Wild Horse, Donkey, and Mule Show. And that was after only five months of training, and his very first show at that. Dusty Blue is a wild donkey that was adopted by Bob Crock from Bureau of Land Management land when he was two years old. Crock said that when they first adopted Dusty, he was "wilder than wild." But it would appear that Dusty, now 7, has settled down a bit. Tom Shiloh, a horse and mule trainer who runs Performance Horses, trained Dusty Blue. Shiloh said that normally an adopted donkey has to be trained a little at a time, focusing on each class of competition separately. He said that it usually takes about a year for a donkey to earn grand champion in a competition. But after five months, Shiloh said of Dusty Blue, "You name it, he does well-groomed and well-mannered they are; and halter, which involves the animals' physical appearance; as well as several other events including barrel racing. In order to achieve the title of Grand Champion All Around, Dusty Blue placed in each of the classes and had the highest overall point tally. "As far as training donkeys and mules, he's probably the smartest donkey I've ever trained," said Shiloh. "He's a thinker."....
Taiwan halts Canadian beef from U.S. Taiwan is no longer accepting imports of Canadian beef products from the United States, according to a news release from R-CALF USA. The Billings, Mont., advocacy group said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service on Tuesday issued updated export requirements for Taiwan regarding fresh and frozen boneless beef derived from Canadian cattle under 30 months of age. Effective Monday, Oct. 9, beef products derived from cattle imported from Canada for immediate slaughter are not eligible for export to Taiwan, according to the news release from the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. R-CALF USA is among groups that have pushed USDA to keep Canadian beef and cattle out of the U.S. because of the number of mad cow disease cases in Canada. Mad cow is known scientifically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE....

JOHN AUGUSTINE

In Memoriam--John Augustine "Mr. Farm Bureau"

John Augustine, the first executive vice president of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, passed away October 9, 2006 in Las Cruces, N.M. Mr. Augustine is a true legend in the annals of New Mexico agriculture where he started as county extension agent and went on to build one of the nation's premier agricultural organizations. In 1987he was presented with the Distinguished Service Citation by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation's highest agricultural honor. He was also the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for the NMSU College of Agriculture and Home Economics in 1975.

John was born in El Paso, Texas August 29, 1914 to John L. Augustine and Myrtle Smith Augustine. El Paso was the closest hospital to where his family lived in Lordsburg, N.M. where his father worked as a copper and silver miner and his mother was a homemaker. He graduated from the New Mexico Military Institute and the New Mexico College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts, now New Mexico State University, in 1937. He taught vocational agriculture in Farmington, N.M. 1937-38. In 1938 he moved to Las Cruces and was named Dona Ana County Extension Agent.

Mr. Augustine built the foundation for a county 4-H program and was also involved for many years with the FFA. In those days the extension service and Farm Bureau were affiliated organizations on the county level. In 1946 he accepted the position of Executive Secretary of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, a post he held until January 1, 1980. Upon taking the helm of Farm Bureau he formed "The 100 Club" an organization of farmers and ranchers who would put up $100 each in seed money to fund the new agricultural organization. He built the New Mexico Farm Bureau from 500 members to 9,000 family-members statewide prior to his retirement. Following his retirement he then served as a consultant for the organization until 1994. He and his protégé, Bob Porter, would build the organization to 10,000 members making it the state's largest and most influential agricultural organization. Porter went on to serve as Farm Bureau's Executive Vice President following Augustine's retirement. Today statewide Farm Bureau membership tops 17,000 families, businesses and organizations.

Mr. Augustine also served as secretary-treasurer of Western Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, serving both Arizona and New Mexico, and was active as a nominal editor of New Mexico Farm and Ranch Magazine, from 1947-1985. Mr. Augustine was very active in many civic endeavors including: The Rotary Club, Masonic Lodge, Lions Club and as chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the Chamber of Commerce. He was always active in the local, state and national Republican Party serving as precinct chairman, member of the county central committee and the state central committee.

According to the achieves at the NMSU College of Agriculture, Augustine was "tremendously effective in securing adequate funding for the Cooperative Extension Service, the N.M. Department of Agriculture and NMSU....year after year." Mr. Augustine was instrumental in bringing Roger Corbett, executive secretary of the American Farm Bureau Federation, to serve as president of NMSU.

Augustine served two terms on the New Mexico Racing Commission and bred and raced quarter horses. He was a long time cotton farmer in the Mesilla Valley and a member of the Dona Ana County Sheriff's Posse. He and his late wife Elise formed and coached the Thunderbirds a square dance team on horseback performing at fairs and rodeos all over New Mexico. After his retirement, Mr. Augustine went right on building and promoting the Farm Bureau by founding N.M. Farm Bureau Prime Timers, an organization of retired farmers and ranchers which thrives to this day.

John Augustine was a master motivator and a quiet, behind-the-scenes leader of men and women. Part of his legacy are the thousands of young people he helped develop into leaders in agriculture across New Mexico. State history will remember Augustine's influence on the careers of numerous political leaders including the late Governor Ed Mecham and Congressman Joe Skeen. He was the driving force behind elevating the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau to a potent political force in New Mexico and across the nation. Most of the good things in agriculture in New Mexico have John Augustine's guiding hand upon them though he always made sure his students, Farm Bureau volunteers and staff took the credit. He never missed the chance to praise the virtues of the Farm Bureau organization and its grassroots structure and his lessons to young staff people and volunteers are legendary.

He leaves a network of friends and family across the Land of Enchantment that would fill Aggie Memorial Stadium, all of them better off for knowing the man who earned the title "Mr. Farm Bureau." Those folks will also treasure the memories of his fine-tuned, yet subtle sense of humor and friendly mischief.

He is survived by his children Peggy (Doug) Bogart, Las Cruces; John (Diana) Augustine, Poway, CA; grandchildren Sherry (Joe) Galemore, Los Lunas, N.M., Annette Augustine, Debbie Schatzle and Amanda Augustine all of Poway, CA; great grandchildren, Traci Galemore and Chris Galemore of Los Lunas, N.M. His parents and his wife Elise preceded him in death.

Pallbearers are Bob Porter, Chub Foreman, Keller Davis, Jim McMullan, John Bigbee and Erik L. Ness. Honorary pallbearers will be the members of the N.M. Farm Bureau Prime Timers.

A memorial service is set for 10:00 a.m. Monday, October 16, 2006 at Graham's Mortuary Chapel, 555 West Amador Ave., Las Cruces, N.M. E.G. Smokey Blanton will officiate the services at the chapel and at the burial to follow at the Masonic Cemetery. A reception will be held in Mr. Augustine's honor at noon at the New Mexico Farm Bureau Center, 2220 N. Telshor.

In lieu of flowers the family asks that contributions be made to the John Augustine Scholarship Fund in care of the N.M. Farm and Livestock Bureau P.O Box 20004, Las Cruces, N.M. 88004.

Wolf howls prompt wilderness evacuation: Frightened Forest Service employees extracted

Two U.S. Forest Service employees from Utah were evacuated by helicopter from the Sawtooth Wilderness in late September after encountering a pack of howling wolves about five miles east of Graham in the Johnson Creek drainage. Johnson Creek is the southwestern portion of the Sawtooths and in the North Fork of the Boise River drainage. According to Ed Waldapfel, spokesman for the Sawtooth National Forest, the incident occurred Sept. 23 at about 10 a.m. when the employees observed wolves chasing a bull elk across a meadow. "A little while later they started hearing wolves howling all around them," Waldapfel said. "They called on their radio or satellite phone and asked their supervisor if they could leave the area." Waldapfel said the employees, whose names he did not know, were from the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Ogden and were conducting forest inventory work in the Sawtooths, began hiking back to their camp a couple miles away. But they claimed the howls persisted, Waldapfel said. "No matter which way they went they said they could hear the wolves," he added. "They climbed onto a rock outcropping and continued to communicate with their supervisor. "They admitted they were very scared and wanted to get out of the area." Shortly thereafter, Waldapfel said the employees' supervisor contacted the Sawtooth National Forest and "asked for a helicopter to come in and retrieve them."....Just wait till Laura Schneberger sees this. They expect ranchers and their children to adapt to having wolves in their environment. But Forest Service employees? Heavens no. And aren't they priviliged characters too. I mean, a helicopter in a Wilderness Area?

NEWS ROUNDUP

Wyoming sues federal government, again, over wolf plan Wyoming is renewing its legal fight to try to force the federal government to accept a proposed state management plan for wolves that would allow them to be shot on sight in much of the state. In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, the state argues that the federal government rejected the state's proposed wolf management plan because of political considerations, not because of its scientific merits. It made that argument in a previous lawsuit, but it was dismissed in U.S. District Court, a decision that was upheld by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The new lawsuit is based on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision in July to reject the state's petition to remove wolves in Wyoming from the endangered species list. The Fish and Wildlife Service has already turned management of wolves over to state agencies in Montana and Idaho, which filed management plans acceptable to the federal agency. About 400 wolves have been killed in those states for preying on livestock and for other reasons since 1987, Bangs said earlier. Wyoming's proposed plan for managing the estimated 309 wolves in the state calls for leaving the animals alone in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Killing of wolves in nearby areas would be regulated by the state, while wolves elsewhere in Wyoming could essentially be shot on sight....
Study: Modern Hatcheries Aid Wild Salmon New research confirms that steelhead raised for generations in hatcheries do poorly when they try to reproduce in the wild, but the first generation of fish raised from wild parents in hatcheries are as successful at reproducing in their native rivers as their wild cousins. The results of genetically testing some 15,000 steelhead returning to the Hood River in Oregon over the past 15 years offer support for federal policies using hatcheries to bolster threatened and endangered wild runs of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin. Hatchery fish make up about two-thirds of the salmon and steelhead returning each year to the Columbia Basin, the largest producer of salmon on the West Coast. The returns represent just 5 percent of historical levels before dams, logging, agriculture and urban development destroyed much of their habitat. Conservation groups, Indian tribes, fishermen, state and federal agencies, the timber industry, agricultural groups and property rights groups have been battling over whether to rely on hatcheries for decades....
Fed government sued over chinook salmon harvest management A regional coalition of fish conservationists went to court Tuesday to try to force the federal government to reevaluate its management of Puget Sound chinook salmon so more of the species can return to spawn. The complaint filed in U.S. District Court claims that a salmon-harvest management plan approved in 2004 jeopardizes the recovery of chinook, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. "This goal is kind of closing the circle in terms of a comprehensive recovery plan for Puget Sound chinook," said Bill Bakke of Native Fish Society in Portland, Ore., which joined the Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance, Washington Trout and the Clark-Skamania Flyfishers in bringing the lawsuit. The groups are suing the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife over a plan developed by Washington state and Puget Sound tribes to guide salmon catches in the area until 2010....
Frustration at Trapper Creek Securing a safe future for a remnant population of genetically pure Colorado River cutthroat trout on the Roan Plateau has proven a frustrating task for a group of local anglers. More than 15 years ago, the Grand Valley Anglers chapter of Trout Unlimited adopted Trapper Creek, a headwater tributary of East Parachute Creek, and the handful of cutthroat trout that managed to survive in the stream during the millennia since the fish were isolated on the plateau at the end of the last Ice Age. There are five remaining populations of Colorado River cutthroats on the Roan Plateau, but only two of them — in Trapper and Northwater creeks — are considered Core Populations, meaning their genetics are at least 99 percent pure. The others show signs of interbreeding with rainbow trout stocked in the previous century. But more than exotic species threatened the cutthroats. Years of cattle grazing along the creek resulted in beaten-down banks and, along most of its length, the stream was too wide, too shallow and too warm to support fish easily. In 1991, the GVA gathered about two dozen volunteers and spent a day moving rocks, building instream log barriers to create pools and drops, and planting willows and narrow-leafed cottonwoods. Chief among their efforts was building, with cooperation of the Bureau of Land Management, cattle exclosures along two sections of the creek, totaling about three-quarters of a mile....
Royalties suit could include hundreds of mineral owners in Garfield County A class-action lawsuit against Williams Production could help hundreds of Garfield County mineral owners recover unpaid royalties from the company, according to a Parachute rancher who filed the suit and his attorney. Sid Lindauer, his wife, Ruth, and his brother, Ivo, are the plaintiffs in the suit recently filed in Garfield County District Court. Sid Lindauer said Tuesday they decided to act after two other Garfield County mineral owners, the late Bill Clough and Joan Savage, won millions of dollars from Williams over underpaid royalties. Clough was awarded $4 million, but that case remains on appeal. Savage won more than $500,000. “Over the years, Williams hasn’t cooperated with us in the ranching area,” Lindauer said. “They act like they’re doing us a favor while they have this history of not treating people right.” Lindauer said they resisted leasing to Williams for some time, but when faced with the prospect of the company “pooling” the family mineral rights with others and getting their gas from adjacent property, they relented....
Local filmmaker wins environmental award at festival As oil and gas drilling spreads across the Rocky Mountain West, the debate about where and when to drill has often been framed as industry versus environmentalists. Local filmmakers, Mark Harvey (producer, director) and Greg Poschman (director of photography), put together a film, "A Land Out of Time," with a very different message. As drilling poises to go into wild places such as Colorado's Roan Plateau, Wyoming's Red Desert and Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, Harvey takes it directly to the people on the ground. After screenings at Aspen Filmfest and in Glenwood Springs last month, local filmmaker Mark Harvey took "A Land Out of Time," to the Taos Mountain Film Festival, where it won "Best Environmental Film" on Oct. 7. "It's not just tree-huggers: It's hunters and ranchers, it's people who have been on the land for generations," Harvey said. "I've watched as people have gone to these public meetings and spoken out in favor of protection. The federal government is just ignoring the public. I've never seen this before. They've made drilling for natural gas such a priority that, in my opinion, they're violating the public trust."....
Courts mow down development strategy The Bush administration's push for more commercial development on federal land in the West is colliding with the environmental legacy of former president Richard Nixon. In a half-dozen cases since August, federal courts have slapped down the administration's plans to drill for oil and gas in Utah and Alaska, to allow road-building and logging in federal forests, to ease regulation of livestock grazing on public rangeland and to divert water from a Colorado national park. The judges in each case said the administration failed to comply with a landmark environmental law overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by Nixon in 1970 called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The law requires government agencies to study potential environmental consequences of federal projects and to allow citizens to comment on those actions. Agencies must prepare "environmental impact statements" that can run hundreds of pages, or issue less extensive "environmental assessments" on minor projects. In its nearly 40-year history, the law has had a broad impact on how government agencies decide on everything from constructing highways to logging forests to building dams. The Supreme Court noted in a 1989 case: "Simply by focusing ... attention on the environmental consequences of a proposed project, NEPA ensures that important effects will not be overlooked." In recent months, the law has been an effective tool for environmentalists seeking to block initiatives that would allow commercial activities on hundreds of millions of acres of public land....
Evangelicals Discover Environmentalism A few years ago the Rev. Tri Robinson did an odd thing. Mr. Robinson, a politically conservative Idaho rancher and pastor of the Vineyard Boise Church, took his place at the pulpit, opened his mouth and told his evangelical Christian congregation that it was time to do something about the environment. “Our truth is that God created the world,” Mr. Robinson tells Bill Moyers on “Is God Green?” “He commissioned us to take care of it. And that’s that.” This intriguing one-hour documentary, the second of three in this month’s “Moyers on America” series, will be shown on most PBS stations tonight. And it will not make evangelical celebrities like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell happy. (Toward the end of the hour, Mr. Robertson is seen telling his audience that “some of the evangelicals are being used by the radical left to further their agenda.”) Actually, Richard Cizik, a vice president of the National Association of Evangelists, saw the light (so to speak) at a 2002 conference of scientists and religious leaders in Oxford, England. Mr. Cizik (pronounced SIGH-zik), who lives in Virginia, was impressed by Sir John Houghton, a British scientist and fellow evangelical. He told Mr. Moyers that the laws of science “are God’s laws, because they’re the way he runs the universe.” A lot of American evangelical Christians agree wholeheartedly and are making special efforts to become involved in environmental causes. They call what they’re doing “creation care.”....
Sea of grass now is a sea of people If you are living in Garfield County, you are living on land that was once upon a time a sea of grass and home to thousands of head of cattle owned by 100 ranchers running almost Bonanza-size cattle operations on land leased from the Cherokees. It was the Cherokee Outlet, containing nearly seven million acres of land. The Cherokees obtained it through an 1835 treaty. It was the strip of land running from a point in eastern Oklahoma to the Panhandle on the west, and from the Kansas border on the north, to a point just north of Hennessey on the south. The federal government gave it to the Cherokees as an outlet to the western hunting grounds, “a perpetual outlet to the west, and a free and unmolested use,” Those were the terms of the agreement. Well, the famous Chisholm Trail ran right through it, too, and over a period of 20 years an estimated 15 million head of Texas longhorns ambled along the long route from deep in the heart of Texas to the rail head at Abilene, Kan. The Cherokee Strip Live Stock Association more or less controlled the outlet. Its more than 100 members held the grazing rights to the land. They didn’t have to worry about sodbusters and their crops either. No farming operations were allowed in the outlet. Those farmers who stubbornly persisted in their efforts to settle the area systematically were driven out by federal troops. These illegal settlers were called Boomers because they advocated, or were booming, the cause for settlement of the area. Cattle ruled....

Helen Chenoweth-Hage was a giant for individual ideals

In the wake of news that Helen Chenoweth-Hage was killed last Monday in Nevada, those who knew the former Idaho Congresswoman talked about her strength, her penetrating knowledge of history, and her staunch defense of conservative principles. Some credited her as the primary force behind the resurgence of the Republican Party in Idaho, where she took the party's helm in the '70s as its executive director and became U.S. Rep. Steven Symms' chief of staff. And some privately reviled her as paranoid, personally backward and even prejudiced.

Helen Chenoweth-Hage had opinions, and she never was reluctant to share them.

She questioned whether salmon was really an endangered species when it was available on store shelves. She said white males are more endangered than salmon, complained about government "black helicopters" harassing ranchers, said minorities don't like North Idaho because it's too cold, and called for disarming federal resource enforcement agents.

But here's the thing: Love or hate Helen Chenoweth-Hage's politics, you had to respect the fact that she said what was on her mind. Unlike many politicians -- and assorted other human beings, too -- you always, always knew where Helen stood on an issue.

What we appreciated was her staunch defense of individual rights and her insistence upon limited government. And that she kept her word. Seeking the District 1 seat in 1994, Helen said that, if elected, she would serve no more than three terms. In 2000 she stepped down, just as she had promised.

Virtually everyone who knew her said that Chenoweth-Hage loved Idaho and served it to the very best of her ability. U.S. Rep. Butch Otter summarized his predecessor this way:

"Helen was a person, whether in her private life or in her public service, who was dedicated to principles of limited government. In every sense of her being, she fought for the maximum individual liberty and the minimum in government."

We can think of no more noble political pursuits and feel certain Helen would like to be remembered that way.

NEWS ROUNDUP

Gone for Decades, Jaguars Steal Back to the Southwest Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico. Four of the elusive cats have been photographed in the last decade — one as recently as last February — in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. And while no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or how long they hang around before sneaking back to their breeding grounds in Mexico, their presence has set off repercussions on both sides of the border. At least 10 organizations are working to protect the jaguar in one or both countries. Conservationists are developing incentives to stop bounty hunters in Mexico from killing the big cats. Cameras have been set up near the border to monitor jaguar comings and goings and, inadvertently, the movements of “mules,” or drug runners. Some environmentalists are pressing federal officials to declare parts of Arizona and New Mexico critical habitat for jaguars. But local ranchers and many jaguar experts say such a move is unnecessary because the animals show no signs of breeding here. And then there is the fence. If the Border Patrol builds a 700-mile barrier in the region to deter illegal immigration, the natural corridors used by jaguars and other migratory wildlife will be cut off....
Hundreds in Idaho mourn former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage A roster of Idaho's top politicians joined ranchers in blue jeans and bolo ties and mourners in black suits to remember steely former Republican U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage at a memorial service Monday. "I say now to the almighty God - and I'm not quite sure why you called her - but she's there now: stand back and give her rein," U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said in an eulogy before hundreds gathered in a suburban Boise chapel. U.S. Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, R-Idaho, who succeeded Chenoweth-Hage, said she built a Republican dynasty in Idaho, starting with her speeches in small homes and grange halls as the state GOP's executive director in the 1970s and ending with her speeches as a congresswoman in the 1990s. Otter said that during votes where he refused to budge from unpopular conservative positions, House members would say "Helen would be proud." "It wasn't quite meant as a compliment," Otter said in a tearful speech. "It was meant to say, 'you'll never be as conservative as Helen, so quit trying.' Well, I didn't quit trying and I'll never quit trying." Craig said Chenoweth-Hage's unwavering stances, particularly on the management of the nation's 193 million aces of national forests, continue to influence policy makers six years after she left Washington, D.C. Dozens of current and former Idaho politicians, including Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Gov. Jim Risch, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, attended the service....
Deal with Canada on lumber worries builders House builders in the United States, concerned that an agreement between the U.S. and Canada to manage the lumber trade might lead to shortages and price increases, began meetings in Russia Monday intended to secure new import sources. Russia, which has more than one-fifth of the world's forested land, might join with a group of European countries to increase exports to the U.S. in the face of likely declines in lumber trade from Canada, said Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Homebuilders. The ability of Canadian companies to export lumber "is going to be severely curtailed," Howard said in an interview from Moscow. Canada provides about one-third of the U.S. lumber used in housing construction each year. Imports from Europe grew to about 5 percent of consumption last year. In addition to more imports, the association of more than 235,000 builders and remodelers said it is researching ways to use other construction materials such as cement and petitioning to open more U.S. forest land for logging....
Forest Service: BLM ignores air issue The Forest Service's White River supervisor has written the Bureau of Land Management twice to complain its environmental analysis of proposed oil shale research and development understates the threat to air quality. Maribeth Gustafson also wrote that the BLM was wrong to say the proposals by Shell, E.G.L. and Chevron would have no significant impact on the environment. Gustafson said the BLM said visibility on the Flat Tops Wilderness would be affected only 20 days a year. "We consider this a significant impact," she wrote in a Sept. 15 letter obtained by The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction. She also sent a letter to the BLM in August, asserting the same complaint about its analysis of E.G.L. Resources' oil shale proposal. Under federal law, strict air standards are enforced on the Flat Tops, where the nation's largest elk herd roams....
Mt. Hood bills grapple with size of land parcels The 1964 federal Wilderness Act says chunks of lands protected as wilderness -- putting them off-limits to roads, logging and development -- should be at least 5,000 acres, or at least big enough to be preserved unimpaired. But the bill in Congress to set aside more wilderness on Mount Hood includes many chunks less than 5,000 acres including some that would rank among the smallest pieces of protected wildlands in the nation. One of them, between Lost Lake and Bull Run, is only 859 acres. The size of the parcels has become an issue because the U.S. Forest Service under the Bush administration says small, isolated pieces of wilderness are difficult to manage and does not want them included in the bill. It raises a long-standing question about protected areas: How big must a piece of wilderness be to make it worth protecting -- to provide the solitude and preservation wilderness is known for? And it may undermine efforts by Oregon's congressional delegation to expand Mount Hood's wilderness. "A very small tract doesn't really give you the wilderness experience if it's surrounded by more developed uses that are in conflict with wilderness," said Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture who oversees national forests. "Where we can we ought to try to avoid setting up those future conflicts."....
Diamond Lake declared toxic Health officials say it's a nice time of year to visit Diamond Lake in Southern Oregon - but don't drink the water. Or touch it. An algae bloom has hit the lake, health officials say, and the blue-green algae can produce toxins harmful to humans and animals. The poisons can't be removed by boiling, filtering or treating the water, they said. Forest Service officials say the algae bloom is an expected consequence of the poisoning of the tui chub. Eventually, the lake is to be restocked with trout. Tui chub carcasses are decomposing in the water, and the fish no longer are eating microorganisms, both conditions that foster algae growth. Umpqua National Forest spokeswoman Cheryl Walters said.
As forest roads crumble, access to woods slips away In national forests all over Washington, roads are crumbling, washing away or clogging with underbrush. In the Cascade Mountains alone, hundreds of miles of roads have essentially been abandoned. Routes that Honda Civics could cruise a few years ago will soon be passable only by pickups and SUVs. In some cases, the Forest Service is intentionally neglecting roads or tearing them out. In others, it's fighting a losing battle as it tries to keep up with too many roads. On top of it all, residential subdivisions are being built along some of the same roads, straining them even further. For hikers, campers and other users who have come to expect nearly unbridled access to the mountains of Washington, the situation means countless acres of backcountry could soon be much harder to reach. Forest managers are forced to think less ambitiously about the role of roads in the woods. Even for environmentalists, who usually have little love for roads cut through the wilderness, the neglect spells trouble for fragile streams and fish runs....
Sifting through ashes to find history Margaret Hangan finds history in ashes. As a Forest Service archaeologist, she scours the smoldering moonscapes left by wildfires for signs of long-gone civilizations. After the Horse Fire burned through forest land just east of San Diego last summer, Hangan found flat-topped granite boulders that 2,000 years ago were part of a Kumeyaay tribe village. As she worked, an oak tree still burned nearby, its solid trunk a living ember. "This place was happening," Hangan said of the village. "They had water, food, grass for baskets — everything they needed." Forest Service archaeologists have found more than 318,000 historic sites in federal park lands. Thousands more have been unearthed by workers in state parks. Still, the search goes on, with experts in fire-prone areas from California to Arkansas often relying on wildfires to clear dense underbrush and reveal the remnants of villages and campgrounds. "Fires are a double-edged sword," said Richard Fitzgerald, an archaeologist for California state parks. "They can be very destructive, but after a big fire you can find new sites, even in areas that have been surveyed before."....
Column - Anti-hunters can be a distraction With the hunting season about to go into high gear, I can't help but wonder how licensed hunters will react if interfered with by animal rights activists. Can't happen, you say? It can. It already has, and it probably will happen again in the future as various well-financed animal rights groups become more brazen in their attempts to stop recreational hunters. That alone is astonishing because in the Washington area, Virginia and Maryland have laws on the books that prohibit anyone from interfering with, bothering, harassing or otherwise getting in the way of legitimate hunting pursuits. However, that's not nearly as noteworthy as the fact that hunters have shown remarkable restraint when bothered by the animal religionists. After all, if you pay attention to the blabbering nonsense that comes from well-paid PR flaks at the Humane Society of the United States and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- to mention only two -- hunters are portrayed as unshaven, toothless, uneducated hayseeds who would take a shot at a billy goat, believing it to be a deer. If true, why haven't hunters (whom the "antis" believe to be social misfits) turned violent when animal rights protesters show up at public hunting facilities, as they have done, for example, at McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management area in nearby Montgomery County?....
Deal preserves old northern Nevada ranch Eight years after the original proposal to preserve the old Hussman Ranch, the check has cleared and the first conservation easement under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act is in place. The easement protects 300 acres of irrigated pasture land in northern Nevada's Carson Valley. David and Kathi Hussman had been working with the American Land Conservancy since 1998 to preserve the ranch. The approval of the Southern Nevada Public Lands Act allowed them to begin going forward with the deal in 2001. Hussman said the family's property rights were like a bundle of sticks and that the easement, which netted them an undisclosed sum, takes away just one of the sticks. "The only right we're giving up is the right to develop," Hussman said of the working ranch. "We're not allowing public access." The Hussman family has operated the ranch for 134 years. William Hussman came to Carson Valley from Germany in 1869 and purchased the ranch in 1872. He was killed while felling a tree in 1873, and his widow, Johanna Heitman, then married his brother, Fred....
Energy boomtown faces worker shortage Early one morning in August, Kathy Brazee stood alone at Coffee Friends. She had undergone surgery just one week earlier, yet she was about to work another 12-hour day. She'd already mixed the ingredients and put the dough in the oven. She had ground coffee beans and started the pot. She was the only worker there when the realization hit her: ''Physically I can't do it anymore.'' Something had to change, the 57-year-old cafe owner knew. She could no longer work 12-hour days. The answer was clear, yet agonizing - open later and close earlier.
Coffee Friends is one of at least eight Gillette businesses that have been forced to cut back their hours due to a lack of workers. The unemployment rate in Campbell County, the heart of Wyoming's booming coal-bed methane drilling, is a mere 1.7 percent. That's far below the 4.7 percent unemployment rate nationwide and the 3.3 percent rate statewide. Most new jobs in the state are in the mining and construction industries, where wages are much higher for workers than in the restaurant business. ''There's not a work force to draw from,'' Brazee said. ''At a small business like mine, it's hard to pay at the same level [as larger businesses].'' It was a similar story at Pokey's BBQ & Smokehouse, where owner Ric Schuyler has found that good workers are hard to find.
Tiny town is abuzz about mega-resort Town Clerk Jeania Joseph is right. With plans for a 100,000-square-foot spa, $6 million villas and $1,200-a-night hotel rooms, the swanky new resort under construction near Lake Powell won't be serving the "Wal-Mart and Kentucky Fried Chicken crowd." No, try the Martha's Vineyard and Ritz-Carlton set. Think Trump, not tramp; Rockefeller, not Rocky Balboa. In fact, the $200 million Amangiri resort - slated to open in early 2008 just east of southern Utah's tiny town of Big Water - is expected to become a premier escape for wealthy world travelers. Why? Well, the hype is based partly on who will be running the place: Amanresorts. The Singapore-based hotel-management group oversees posh playgrounds around the globe - from France to French Polynesia - including its only other U.S. resort, in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Another reason for the high expectations? Location, location, location. The Kane County resort - set in the sandstone spires and jagged walls of southern Utah - is a quick drive from Glen Canyon Dam, Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Guests will be able to water-ski Lake Powell, hike the Vermilion Cliffs and fly-fish the Colorado River. The southern Utah resort will feature a 34-room hotel (renting for up to $1,200 a night), 28 private villas (6,000 square feet, going for $6.2 million) and a mammoth spa....
Illegal dumps alter Western landscapes They rise from the Western landscape, but they're not purple mountains. They're heaping mounds of car parts, furniture, appliances and household trash dumped illegally onto public land in deserts, mountain ranges and streambeds. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reports they're especially piling up across the American West, where burgeoning cities from Palm Springs, Calif., to Boise are spilling into once pristine landscapes. "There is hardly a city in the West right now that isn't experiencing significant growth," Felicia Probert, chief ranger of the BLM, said. "Typically, we haven't had the appropriation, the budget strength, to add rangers as these issues grow in the expanding West."....They're good aren't they? The BLM and FS law enforcement types have been lobbying all year for more dinero. They should contract out to local law enforcement like FLPMA authorizes.
On the Edge of Common Sense: Technology advances cattle feed business This summer, within 30 days of each other, I was at the Idaho Old Timer's Feedlot Reunion where the average age of attendees was close to 70 years old, and the Adams County, Iowa Cattle Feeders and Farm Bureau barbecue where the average age of attendees was under 40. My generation is the one in between those two. I worked for the old timers when they were in their prime, and I am still able to serve as a somewhat slow but occasionally useful advisor to the younger set. There are glaring differences between the old time feeders and the new ones. Technology is the most obvious. In the '60s and early '70s, most data collection was done by hand or with primitive punch card automation. Feed truck drivers carried clipboards with load weights, average daily gain was calculated at the end of 120 days when the heavy end of the pen sold, and cutbacks were lumped together to go into oblivion. In the Midwest, feed was mixed like cement - five scoops of corn per bucket load of silage and a cup full of supplement sprinkled on top. Packing house buyers sorted fat cattle in the alley favoring blacks and black ballys simply because they matured quicker and assumed they would grade higher. Charlais were discriminated against and considered an exotic breed. The old timers were the first to be forced to deal with the Environmental Protection Agency....

NEWS ROUNDUP

Anger Drives Property Rights Measures Cheeks chapped, patience thinned, Katie Breckenridge had no trouble making up her mind about an Idaho ballot measure that would make the government pay property owners if zoning rules reduce the value of their land. “Do I think this is almost swinging the pendulum back too far in the other direction? I do,” said Ms. Breckenridge, 61, a rancher just in from tending to cattle and quarter horses. “But do I think we’ve got to do something to bring the balance back to property rights? I do, and I’m going to vote for it.” More than a year after Suzette Kelo and several of her neighbors in New London, Conn., lost their battle against eminent domain in the United States Supreme Court, the backlash against the ruling has made property rights one of the most closely watched ballot issues nationwide. Already, 30 state legislatures have enacted restrictions on eminent domain in response to the court ruling. Now voters here and in 11 other states will consider property rights measures in November, making it the election’s most prevalent ballot issue. Most of the measures would limit eminent domain to some degree, while others, in Western states, would go further, imposing new restrictions on government’s ability to enforce zoning laws, even if those laws are intended to reduce sprawl and improve safety. Supporters of the ballot efforts in the West — often called “Kelo-plus” — say they want to stop so-called regulatory takings, the idea that government effectively takes private property when zoning laws limit how it can be used....
Balancing interests in environmental issues is an ongoing battle On the frontlines of environmental issues, it’s often a case of one person’s word against another’s. And many times, those words are angry ones. Such is the situation in the most recent cattle-grazing battle over Trout Creek, in the southern Sawtooth National Forest. Environmentalist Jon Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, said that on Sept. 27 he saw about 150 cattle near the riparian area along Trout Creek, including a dying animal in the creek, and notified the Sawtooth National Forest office on Monday. Marvel said it looked like the animals had been along the creek for weeks. Rancher Bud Bedke, whose cattle were near Trout Creek at the end of last month, admits about 700 of his animals got into the restricted grazing area, but said they were there for only three days and had gotten into the area because an environmentalist opened the gate to the creek in an effort to set him up. “You bet ... it was sabotage,” Bedke said. “If it wasn’t (Marvel), it was somebody like him.”....
Gas boom stirring up life in loneliest county If nothing else, Delores Smith says the drilling rig across the street has spiced up Mentone's nightlife. Smith and her husband, 87-year-old Kenneth, are both decadeslong residents of this desolate West Texas area and acknowledge not much happens in the least-populated county in the United States. By Sheriff Billy Hopper's count, Loving County has 81 residents, which amounts to about eight square miles per person. It has never even had potable running water. Things could be changing, though, now that Loving County turns out to be centered in one of the nation's hottest natural gas plays, attracting some of the world's largest energy companies. Rigs like those shadowing the Smith home in Mentone (population 18) are prowling this part of the Chihuahuan Desert between the Big Bend and the New Mexico line, and more are on the way. The natural gas boom has shattered the usual peace and quiet of Loving County's squat 71-year-old courthouse. Hopper says anywhere from two to 20 landmen — agents who scan title records on behalf of prospective drillers — can be found wandering the modest building. Geologically speaking, two types of drilling are sparking interest in several promising pockets across the country, including Loving County. Some, such as large independents Anadarko Petroleum and Chesapeake Energy, are focusing on "tight gas," which is highly pressurized inside dense sand deposits that have low permeability. Others are drilling hard shale beds, which are more prominent in neighboring counties. Neither technique was considered worthwhile until market prices rose sharply this decade while technology caused drilling costs to fall....
No room for strutting Sage grouse mating rituals could be described as goofy, astonishing or even magical. The large, speckled birds faithfully return to their breeding grounds - called leks - every year in spring, where males gather early each morning to strut, fret and heave out their chests in search of a mate. Birders and locals alike often flock to see the yearly ritual by a bird that a former Wyoming Game and Fish Department director called "as distinctively western as the Stetson hat." Yet if energy development continues as it is right now, there will be a lot less strutting in the future, according to new research by Wyoming and Montana scientists, and that could mean that environmental groups will again petition for the listing of the sage grouse under the federal Endangered Species Act. Should the bird be listed as endangered, ranchers, drillers and anyone else whose activities could impact sage grouse would be subject to much more stringent regulations. Several studies, released within the last year, are finding that sage grouse populations are declining in the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah Field in western Wyoming and Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming. Those are areas with gas and coal-bed methane development, seriously threatening the birds' future. Similar levels of oil and gas development are planned for other sage grouse strongholds, including the Red Desert of southern Wyoming....
Elk That Escaped From Game Farm Are Seen as Threat to Wild Herds There is an elk hunt going on in the forests and farm fields near here at the foot of the craggy Teton Mountains. Ordinarily, that would be no great surprise, but the reason behind it is. The elk are domesticated animals, raised on a game farm less than 10 miles from Yellowstone National Park, which is home to thousands of wild elk. Recently, a bear tore open a fence and the elk escaped, said Dr. Rex Rammell, a veterinarian who owned the farm. And that has led to a state-ordered death warrant against them. Domestic elk are controversial in the West. Idaho wildlife officials worry that the animals could pollute the genetic purity of the region’s native elk or could carry chronic wasting disease or other illnesses and infect the wild herds. Dr. Rammell condemned the shooting of his escaped animals, saying they were pure elk and posed no threat because of genetics or disease. “It’s all false information to get the extermination of my herd and the elk industry in Idaho,” he said. Dr. Rammell, who said he has sold his ranch and is getting out of the business, said that 100 to 160 animals escaped. The elk escaped around mid-August, but state officials say they were not notified of the escape until September. On Sept. 7, Gov. James E. Risch issued an order that allowed state wildlife officials to destroy the animals. Seven three-man “shooter teams” were sent to kill as many as possible. Dr. Rammell said he could have captured the escaped elk by luring them into a trap baited with grain and molasses, but once the shooting started, he said, the herd scattered. “They are pretty spooked right now,” he said....
Island park game focus of tug of war There are hunters who dream about places like this. The game animals - unusually large Kaibab deer, Roosevelt elk that lope like thoroughbreds along the wind-scoured ridgelines - are trophy-quality. All it takes to bag one is a 30-mile trip across the Santa Barbara Channel, a rifle, good aim, a minimum fee of about $8,000 and the existing agreement by the National Park Service to close 45,000 acres of parkland to the public, August through December. Close a public park to make way for a private hunt? That is not the Park Service's preference. When it acquired Santa Rosa Island at the time the Channel Islands National Park was formed in 1986, it accepted a 25-year transition period during which the hunting would continue. It wants the animals off the island. The 1,150 deer and elk, park officials say, compromise the native ecosystem - for instance, by munching on seedlings of the rare island oaks. An advocacy group, the National Parks Conservation Association, is also arguing against continuing to open parkland to private pursuits. Their late-1990s lawsuit ensured that the herd's 100-year history on the island would end. Starting in 2008, the herd would be whittled down - either shipped out or shot. By 2011, it would be gone. That was the deal, until Rep. Duncan Hunter came along. A powerful congressional committee chairman who seems named, if not born, for this dispute....
Sen. Burns expects talks about road dispute A road provision that was undertaken by Sen. Conrad Burns and benefits a friend was not intended to be permanent and may be reversed by the Montana senator, his spokesman says. Earlier this year, Burns added to a bill a provision that allows friend and campaign supporter Mac White to build a private road across public land near the Crazy Mountains. The provision does not provide for equal public access to nearby public lands, as federal regulations require. “The language was inserted as a placeholder” and was not intended to be permanent, said James Pendleton, spokesman for the Republican senator. Burns hoped the provision would encourage parties to reach agreement about the road issue in a discussion he intends to coordinate after the Nov. 7 election, Pendleton said. “Hunters and anglers ... are watching these (road) negotiations and we think they are inappropriate, at least in the way they have occurred so far,” Craig Sharpe of the Montana Wildlife Federation told the Lee Newspapers of Montana. At issue are roads on the east side of the Crazy Mountains, where there is scant public access to Lewis and Clark National Forest and Gallatin National Forest lands in the mountains. White, who said his family has known Burns for close to 30 years, wants to build a private road that would cross Forest Service lands so he will have access almost two sections of his land now locked behind public land. White said the only way he now can access the land is by horse or on foot. He said forests on his land are overgrown and with no road, he is unable to thin them....
Loss of sheep devastates family For four generations, the sounds of October on the Slaven family ranch have been ones of renewal, the bleating of ewes giving birth and the cries of newborn lambs. This year, the sounds are only of grief. A wildfire that tore through the family's rolling ranchland northwest of Sacramento in late September decimated the family's herd, leading to the deaths of 75 percent of the family's 1,200 sheep. For the past two weeks, the family and veterinarians from UC Davis have endured a wrenching, daily ritual. They examine the surviving sheep and divide those that stand a chance of living from those too badly injured to survive. Most of the dead are being dumped into a massive burial pit in a remote corner of the family ranch. "I don't know where it's going to lead to," said Mike Slaven, who co-owns the ranch with his parents, Bill and Joan. "Even with the sheep that are left, to me, it's a total loss." About 100 of the sheep escaped the fire unscathed. The remaining 200 or so survivors may never fully recover, said Dr. John Madigan, head of the Veterinary Emergency Response Team from UC Davis, which has been tending to the sheep since the fire....
State's first female attorney argued case before high court Sarah Herring became Arizona's first female attorney in 1892 because her father was grieving over the loss of his only son and law partner. And because she had the ability to do so. That was just the beginning. She would go on to set another milestone: being the first woman attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court without the assistance of a male lawyer. Herring was born Jan. 15, 1861, in New York City, the first of five children of William and Mary Herring. The elder Herring's mining venture proved unsuccessful when investors declined to provide additional funding, and he opened a law practice in Tombstone in 1881 - the same year that the boom town witnessed its most notorious event: the shootout near the OK Corral. Sarah and her siblings joined the family in Tombstone the following year, and she began a 10-year teaching career that included serving as librarian and principal. Brother Howard had become a lawyer, and he joined his proud father as the junior partner of the expanded law office of Herring & Herring. A tragedy struck, however, on Nov. 2, 1891, when 27-year-old Howard went to a Tombstone dentist to have some teeth extracted....
Life in 1881 Tombstone, Arizona What was life like in Tombstone in 1881? As part of my ongoing series of articles centered around the 125th anniversary of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, we’re going to do some time traveling.Southern Arizona in the late 1870s was a very dangerous place to live. The Apache, having been consigned to reservation living, weren’t happy with the state of affairs. Geronimo was making life very interesting for any non-Apache who dared to venture into what is now Cochise County, Arizona. For many years intrepid prospectors tried to exploit the vast mineral wealth in an area known as “Goose Flats”. Their fatal adventures read like a Stephen King novel with murder upon murder, betrayal, violence, massacre, and that was just among "friends". So, in the late spring of 1879,when Ed Schieffelin, safe at Fort Huachuca, announced he was heading a bit east to prospect, everyone told him he would never make it out alive. His now famous retort, “So, I’ll find my Tombstone.” Which he did. Schieffelin tapped into what was one of the greatest mineral bonanzas thus far discovered in the United States. Naturally he couldn’t keep a good thing to himself. Within just a few months of filing his claim, a small town began to grow at “Goose Flats”. It was soon moved a few miles to Tombstone. By December of 1879 the Earps had arrived in a bustling boom-town.....
It's All Trew: 1930s brought a war with the grasshoppers If you can remember mixing and spreading grasshopper poison in the “dirty-thirties” you have probably quit lying and started bragging about your age. A chapter in the book, “Coming of Age in The Great Depression” by Richard Melzer describes the grasshopper plagues that devastated some areas in the Dust Bowl. In what became known as The Grasshopper Wars, farmers and ranchers already plagued by continued drought and terrible dirt storms found further misery as an invasion of destructive grasshoppers struck parts of the Great Plains. Northeastern New Mexico and the upper Panhandle of Texas suffered heavy damage in 1936 and 1937 with 20 to 30 of the insects counted per square foot of ground. A cold winter killed the insects, but their eggs hatched the next spring, bringing another plague worse than before. In one area consisting of some 25,000 acres in Union and Colfax counties in New Mexico, the hordes were advancing a half mile per day, stripping the land of every leaf and blade of grass. Driving the paved roads was dangerous as the insects made the surface slick. Women complained the grasshoppers ate holes in their clothes hanging on the clothes line after washing . State and federal authorities declared war on the insects, placing all available manpower in action to help the landowners in their plight. The National Guard, Works Progress Administration employees and Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees marched into the battle just like regular war. CCC trucks were filled with sawdust at sawmills and hauled to poison mixing stations. WPA workers mixed wheat bran and arsenic poison with the sawdust in huge batches for landowners to spread on their lands. This treatment was used from 1936 to 1940 before the plague finally diminished. My father built a grasshopper bait spreader out of a Model T rear-end using a metal fuel barrel as a hopper to hold the mixture....