NEWS ROUNDUP

Lion trackers receive death threat An anonymous caller to the Arizona Game and Fish Department's Tucson office left a message stating he would shoot anyone tracking the mountain lions in Sabino Canyon, a department official said this morning. "It was a guy screaming and ranting and raving," Perry said. "He said, 'I'm going to get up on the ridges above Sabino Canyon with a high-powered rifle. If I see anybody following lions, I'm going to shoot them dead.'" Perry said Forest Service officials called him Thursday to report that they'd received a similar phone call.... Senate moves to fully fund Healthy Forests Act It increases the budget authority for hazardous fuels projects and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act by $343 million to reach the $760 million authorization of Title I in the law; currently, the Bush Administration budget slashes funds from other vital Forest Service programs and moves those dollar amounts into HFRA without providing real new funds for the law..... Column: The Bush administration packs the courts with anti-environmental judges A glance at federal court records suggests that the administration has already begun using the courts to weaken environmental protections. Department of Justice attorneys have consistently failed to defend legal challenges to strong environmental policies, such as the Clinton administration's Roadless Rule, which would protect more than 58 million acres of road-free national forest lands throughout the country. Add a well-placed smattering of anti-environment judges to the federal courts, and far greater damage could be done, Sugameli warned. According to the Senate Judiciary Committee, after almost three years of nominating and confirming, about 52 vacancies remain, or about 6 percent of the 877-member federal judiciary. About 50 nominations are waiting to be taken up by either the committee or the full Senate, which must give confirmation. Twenty-seven vacancies have been open for so long that they are considered judicial emergencies.... Grizzly populations spread south If the rate of grizzly bear population growth continues as it has for the past 20 years, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem could be at "full occupancy" within 25 years, biologists announced this week. The grizzly bear population is expanding fast south of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks into southern Wyoming, Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, wrote in the latest edition of Animal Conservation journal.... Probe: Aide didn't influence Klamath policy The Interior Department's inspector general has found no basis for a claim by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that White House political advisers interfered in developing water policy in the Northwest. Specifically, the inspector general said President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not involved in a 2002 decision to divert water from the Klamath River in Oregon to irrigate farms. While Rove mentioned the Klamath in passing during a briefing with senior Interior officials, "we found nothing to tie Karl Rove's comments ... to the Klamath decision-making process," Inspector General Earl Devaney said in a March 1 letter to Kerry.... Officials exterminate Madsion Valley wolf pack The second wolf pack that has been attacking cattle in the Madison Valley was wiped out Friday morning. Federal trappers flying in a helicopter east of Ennis Lake early Friday morning spotted five wolves out on a sagebrush plain and swooped in to shoot all of them, said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "There are basically not any wolves left in the Madison Range," Bangs said late Friday afternoon.... Enzi requests wolf inquiries Two federal agencies have been asked to look into the effect of wolf management on landowners and local communities. The request to the Interior and Justice departments came Monday from Sen. Mike Enzi, who was responding to a request from the Park County commissioners based on a Feb. 14 incident on a Meeteetse ranch with a federal wolf official. Enzi is asking the departments to apply a "strict liability standard." Dubbed a "no excuse standard," it means "regardless of the reasons for the action, those taking the action are responsible for what happens," Enzi spokesman Coy Knobel said.... Park Service grants Pilgrims' road permit The National Park Service will allow a temporary access permit for a backwoods family's request to haul supplies on an old mining road to their remote cabin in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. However, the announcement comes too late to help the Pilgrim family this winter, a spokesman said. The route is impassible. "The biggest problem, we have six and a half feet of snow," Joseph Pilgrim, the family's oldest son, said Thursday. The Park Service said it will let the Pilgrim family use a bulldozer on the road when ground is frozen, covered by snow and resistant to damage. The road leads 14 miles to McCarthy. Joseph Pilgrim said he had not seen a proposed Park Service permit. The agency has invited the family to meet with park officials next week.... Digging Up Conflict On a high-desert mountain where prospectors first struck it rich in the 1860s, the world's largest gold mining company plans a major expansion that critics say could pollute the environment for tens of thousands of years. Newmont Mining Corp.'s proposed $200 million Phoenix project would cover nearly 10 square miles of northern Nevada, reclaiming parts of an existing 3,000-acre contaminated site and spreading gold mining operations over an additional 4,300 acres beginning in 2006. The Bureau of Land Management backs the project, but the Environmental Protection Agency agrees with a watchdog group's claims that the Denver-based company is dramatically underestimating the potential costs of environmental risks.... Humans, pipelines stall animal migration U.S. animal migration in places like the Yellowstone National Park are being cut off by encroaching human habitation and energy plants and pipelines. As a result of the migration problem, the Wildlife Conservation Society has issued a report calling for the establishment of "national migration corridors" to protect the routes these animals have used for the last 5,800 years, the New Scientist reported Friday. Virtually every large, migrating North American animal outside of Alaska lives in Yellowstone ecosystem, but many of their migration routes are being truncated because of human habitation and energy facilities, a report said.... Senate passes Hagel animal ID program A budget resolution for fiscal year 2005, passed late Thursday by the U.S. Senate, included a national animal identification program sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb, and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. Under Hagel's amendment passed by the Senate, it would give the secretary of agriculture authority to implement a national animal identification program similar to the one developed by the National Identification Task Force, which was created by the livestock industry with the USDA to develop the U.S. Animal Identification Program in 2002.... Elmer Kelton, journalist and author of western novels Elmer Kelton is the author of more than 40 novels, including his latest, "Texas Vendetta," now on bookstore shelves. He is the winner of seven Spur awards from the Western Writers of America and has had three of his novels appear in Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Four have won Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and one, "The Time It Never Rained," was made into a movie by Turner Network Television....