Report shows Pinon Canyon hosts about one big exercise each year Military reports show the Army has conducted large-scale training exercises at its Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site an average of about once a year, prompting opponents to again question the need to nearly triple the size of the 368-square-mile site. The documents show Pinon Canyon has been used for about 30 big exercises since 1985, the Pueblo Chieftain reported in its Wednesday editions. The after-action reports, compiled after the exercises were over, were obtained by the Pinon Canyon Expansion Oppod sition Coalition through the Freedom of Information Act. The Army wants to expand the site to about 1,000 square miles, citing an influx of 8,000 additional soldiers at Fort Carson by 2011. The reports show the site has been used only once since 2003. Rice said that's because Fort Carson soldiers have been fighting in Iraq. "Since 2001, we really haven't used Pinon Canyon because all of our units based at Fort Carson have been in the fight," he said. "All wars eventually will end and we aren't looking at expanding Pinon Canyon for this war, but for the future training needs of the Army." Lon Robertson, a rancher from Kim who leads an opposition group, said the Army hasn't used the current site enough. "So now we're supposed to give up our land because they say they will use it more often in the future? My answer is, our families need the land right now, absolutely, positively," he said....
ID water director sending early warning about next summer The state's top water official is sending an early message to thousands of southern Idaho groundwater users that their pumps may be shut down next summer if the state logs another winter of low mountain snowpack. David Tuthill, director of Idaho's Department of Water Resources, said letters will be mailed later this week to more than 2,700 farmers, ranchers, cities, schools and other businesses spread across a broad swath of southern Idaho that draws water from the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer. The letters provide advance warning that, barring a wet spring and an above-average snowpack in Idaho's mountain ranges, cutting off water supplies to some of those users may be the only option heading into the 2008 growing season. "If the projected runoff is inadequate, then curtailments likely will be necessary," Tuthill wrote in an op-ed piece sent to newspapers across the state this week. The warning comes just months after the state nearly enforced a shutdown of hundreds of groundwater pumps in south-central Idaho. The prospect having their water turned off irked growers, municipalities, dairymen and other businesses reliant on the resource....
EPA Announces First-Ever Agricultural Advisory Committee Continuing efforts to strengthen relations with the agriculture community, EPA today announced the establishment of the first-ever Farm, Ranch and Rural Communities Federal Advisory Committee. The committee is being formed under the guidelines of the National Strategy for Agriculture, and it will advise the administrator on environmental policy issues impacting farms, ranches and rural communities and operate under the rules of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). "We at EPA appreciate that agriculture isn't just the producer of the food, agriculture is the producer of environmental and economic solutions," said Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. "This committee provides an opportunity to improve dialogue between EPA and the farming community. By sitting down at the same table, together we can do what's good for agriculture and good for our environment." The committee will meet approximately twice yearly and is intended to consist of approximately 25 members representing: (1) large and small farmers, ranchers and rural communities; (2) rural suppliers, marketers and processors; (3) academics and researchers who study environmental issues impacting agriculture; (4) tribal agricultural groups; and (5) environmental and conservation groups....
Bedke issue becomes a federal case A lawsuit filed by Oakley ranchers Bruce and Jared Bedke against Bureau of Land Management officials has been removed from Idaho's Fifth District Court and will be heard in federal court by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mikel H. Williams. The Bedkes filed the lawsuit in July after receiving a BLM notice of impoundment for grazing their livestock on BLM-managed rangeland south of Oakley. Since then, 31 head of their cattle have been impounded and sold in a private auction. The suit listed as defendants BLM officials Bill Baker, Ken Miller and Mike Courtney in their individual capacities. At the time, Jared Bedke said he and his father Bruce Bedke listed Baker, Miller and Courtney as individual defendants because district courts cannot hear cases involving federal entities. Notice for removal to federal court, filed Oct. 4 by the office of Assistant U.S. Attorney Warren Derbidge, states removal is appropriate because the defendants "are persons sued individually for actions taken under color of their office as employees of the Bureau of Land Management, Department of Interior." The suit filed by the Bedkes claims BLM has unfairly managed the Goose Creek Group Allotment, a range where the Bedkes and several other ranchers grazed livestock. The Bedkes claim BLM acted outside its authority when it divided the range into private allotments in 2004....
Wildlife at border may lose sanctuary The federal government's plan to fence off more than 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is fostering strange political bedfellows here in South Texas. Few dispute that the same reedy riverbanks beloved by critters are also prime habitat for drug runners and human smugglers. Now an unusual assortment of interest groups -- not just the usual tree-huggers, but also civic and business leaders worried about eco-tourism dollars -- have begun voicing alarm over the environmental costs of a boundary that many South Texans consider a hopeless boondoggle. So it was a sign of the times when Perez and Odgers happily floated down the river together, eager to show off a nature lover's paradise they fear will be forever lost beyond 16-foot-high walls....
Nebraska sees dramatic increase in carbon credit program enrollments The number of acres in a carbon sequestration program in Nebraska tentatively grew this year by nearly 300,000 acres, according to John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. The carbon sequestration program is sponsored by Nebraska Farmers Union and the Chicago Climate Exchange. A big reason for the growth of the program, Hansen said, was that this year it was opened to all 93 Nebraska counties. In 2005, only 51 counties were accepted into the program. Also, Hansen said, the rate farmers were paid for program participation and the addition of pasture and range land into the program were big factors for the increase. Hansen said 105,500 acres of cropland was enrolled this year, along with 185,581 acres of range and pasture that's pending. Also, there's a carryover of more than 58,000 acres from the previous year....
Spikes damage logging vehicle Three long metal spikes buried in a U.S. Forest Service road did $400 in damage to a logging contractor's vehicle near Sundance, Wyo., earlier this week. The Forest Service is investigating. "It's too soon to say whether it was intentional," Bear Lodge District Ranger Steve Kozel said Wednesday. The Bear Lodge District is part of the Black Hills National Forest. The spikes were in an established Forest Service road southeast of Warren Peak, about 5 miles north of Sundance. Kozel said two of the metal spikes or stakes were similar to stakes used in masonry construction. The third appeared to be wrought iron....
Conservation group wins battle for Forest Service records A conservation group won its two-year battle to get information without charge on the damage caused by off-road vehicles and unmaintained roads on national forests around the West. The U.S. Forest Service had refused to waive fees for providing the information, so Wildlands CPR sued under the Freedom of Information Act. The Forest Service relented in a consent decree filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont. The information to be provided includes timber sale records, policies for off-road vehicles, watershed analyses, geographic information system records and other material from 84 national forests, said David Bahr, attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, Ore. Wildlands CPR expects the information to show that the numbers and damage caused by unauthorized roads are growing, which will help to inform the public as the Forest Service develops new off-road vehicle policies on each national forest, Bahr said....
Still no resolution on roadless rule The next shot will soon be fired in the battle over a rule that would restrict new roads on National Forests. While the issue is national, Wyoming residents should note that the state will play a featured role in the next court battle. On Friday morning, the State of Wyoming will appear before U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Brimmer, in Cheyenne and argue that the federal government unlawfully promulgated the so-called “Clinton roadless rule.” Brimmer already has ruled against the federal government regarding the rule. Another judge, in a different jurisdiction, has since re-instated the rule. Oddly enough, the federal government under the Bush administration will be in Cheyenne to defend how the rule was created, despite the fact that administration officials don’t want to apply the rule. So it goes with a hot-button issue that has been extensively litigated in a variety of courts and jurisdictions, participants in a panel discussion said, Tuesday evening at the University of Wyoming College of Law....
New Battle of Logging vs. Spotted Owls Looms in West A 1990s’ truce that quieted the bitter wars between loggers and environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest is in danger of collapse. With that truce, made final in 1994 by the Clinton administration, the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, seemed to be getting the breathing space it needed to regroup. While some land was opened to loggers, nearly twice as much was set aside for owls’ hunting grounds. But more than a decade later, their numbers continue to decline faster than expected. Now the truce, the Northwest Forest Plan, is in jeopardy as one of the parties to it, the Bureau of Land Management, is rethinking its participation. It is proposing a threefold increase in logging on its 2.2 million acres in western Oregon, with greater increases in the old-growth stands that are the owls’ preferred territory. The land agency’s action would reduce by 10 percent the territory covered by the Northwest Forest Plan. With the agency’s proposal, it seems that the timber industry, which never stopped pressing for access to more trees than the Northwest Forest Plan allowed, is getting what it had long sought in court. The industry and local county governments, which get a share of the proceeds, say the plan restores the rightful primacy of logging on these tracts. The timber industry also believes that the villain in the spotted owls’ continued decline is not loss of forest habitat, but the arrival of the barred owl, an eastern bird that now out-competes the spotted owl....
Officials, activists battle expanded energy drilling A plan to issue gas-exploration leases in untouched areas of Colorado has drawn fire from local officials and highlights a growing backlash against the industry's expansion in the West. A federal Bureau of Land Management lease auction scheduled for Nov. 8 includes 23 parcels in a fast-growing tourism-and-ranching region in northern Colorado where practically no exploration has occurred in the past. Among the available leases are 12,802 acres of BLM land and 18,276 acres of "split estate" property - in which the owner of the land does not control the mineral rights beneath the ground. "I'm not sure that it's a good fit," said Ted Wang, the mayor of Granby, who was drafting a protest letter authorized by the Town Council. "To have something like that potentially plopped right here is not in conjunction with what we're trying to do." As the Bush administration continues its push to develop domestic-energy supplies by encouraging oil-and-gas exploration on public lands throughout the West, communities and activists wary of the social and environmental impacts increasingly are resisting intrusions into new areas....
Rancher finds fame on snowboard Mark Carter, 27, is a third-generation rancher in Ten Sleep, but that isn't unusual in Wyoming. What is unusual is that Carter has a career in snowboarding that has taken him all over the world and landed him parts in five movies. During the summer, Mark and his brother R.C. work on their father's ranch. And in the fall, Carter helps his brother guide hunting and fishing trips. "Every day is different when you're ranching. You could be fixing fence, chasing cows around or branding calves," Carter said. But by the end of October, when the temperatures begin to drop and snowcapped mountains begin to appear, Carter is whisked away to such enchanting places as Switzerland and Japan where he makes snowboarding films and in general "rips it," as he put it. Carter used to ski at Big Horn Ski Area when he was a small child, but when he saw his first snowboard he was captivated....