NEWS ROUNDUP

Northern Plains offers compromise in methane case A conservation group is asking a federal magistrate to allow Fidelity Exploration & Production Co. to continue producing coal-bed methane from 85 disputed wells in southern Montana as long as certain protections for land and water are in place. The proposal by Northern Plains Resource Council comes a month after U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Anderson decided production on the federal wells in the Tongue River-Badger Hills project near Decker must stop because the analysis by the Bureau of Land Management relied on an environmental study he invalidated. Anderson has since put the order on hold, pending further arguments by those involved. Northern Plains, in a court filing, said its position has been not to halt production from existing wells to avoid disrupting royalty and tax revenues. It also says that a major part of the environmental effects it sought to prevent can't be undone because operations are underway. The group seeks, among other things, a prohibition on new ponds to hold methane waste water as well as the construction of land application or disposal sites for the water. "I think this is a compromise we can all live with," Mark Fix, a rancher and Northern Plains member, said in a statement....
Forest Service sues landowner for encroaching on scenic river corridor An Idaho man is fighting the U.S. Forest Service in court, contending that additions he made to his private property within the Clearwater River Wild and Scenic corridor do not violate 25-year-old development restrictions. The U.S. Forest Service has sued Therral "Terry" Jackson in U.S. District Court in Boise, asking Judge Edward J. Lodge to order him to stop cutting timber, cancel further construction plans and remove a new concrete retaining wall, footbridge and other improvements on portions of his 3-acre lot. The land is on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River near Syringa, 90 miles east of Lewiston in northcentral Idaho. If Jackson doesn't remove the additions and return the landscape to its previous condition, the Forest Service says it will tear out the developments and bill Jackson for the cost....
Grizzly bear boundaries under debate Darlene Vaughan says she's glad grizzly bear populations in Yellowstone National Park area have recovered to healthy levels - but the idea of allowing them to wander through her backyard is something else entirely. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a proposed bear management plan that would set boundaries on where the grizzly bear will be allowed to roam in the state. For Vaughan, the proposed boundary comes too close to her home on a ranch outside Lander in west-central Wyoming. "The grizzly bear definitely attacks people, and we just have too many people who live in this part of the state," she said Monday. Setting habitat boundaries for the large carnivore is another part of a more than 20-year effort to help grizzly bear populations recover in the West. Grizzly bears in the region are protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. But the Yellowstone-area population has reached a level where federal wildlife officials plan to propose delisting the bear soon. Residents like Vaughan, who already live among wolves, elk and other wildlife, say the grizzly brings a man-eating dimension that doesn't exist in the debate over other wildlife....
Judge rules sequoia monument fire plan violated federal law A judge ruled Monday that a fire-control plan for Giant Sequoia National Monument violated federal law because the blueprint, which includes logging the preserve that is home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees, did not undergo an environmental review. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and that its plans to manage the 327,769-acre central California preserve could have significant environmental consequences. Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued in March to halt the plan that would have allowed commercial logging in the monument designed to preserve the ancient monster conifers....
Forest Service rethinks park design to attract minorities The U.S. Forest Service is studying ways minorities use public lands in hopes of making improvements to better serve the growing Hispanic population of Arizona and the rest of the Southwest. The research will be used to find out why so few minorities use public lands and to make changes in the way national forests are maintained. For example, Hispanics account for one in four Arizonans but at each of the state's six national forests, Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Coronado, Kaibab, Prescott and Tonto, 88 percent or more of the visitors are white, according to a Forest Service visitor survey....
Carter S. Roberts Becomes President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund World Wildlife Fund announced today that Carter S. Roberts has become president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based World Wildlife Fund (WWF). He succeeds Kathryn S. Fuller, who stepped down after 16 years as WWF's president and CEO on June 31. Roberts has been WWF's chief conservation officer since February 2004. Prior to joining WWF, Roberts spent 15 years at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) much of the time focused on the overall strategy and advancing the organization's conservation programs in Latin America and in the United States. In addition to his deep experience in conservation, Roberts brings a strong background in business to his position. Earlier in his career, he led marketing and management teams at Gillette, Procter and Gamble and at Dun and Bradstreet where he advised companies including RJR/Nabisco and Coca Cola. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard University and graduated with honors from Princeton University....
Wildfires spark new threat: Rain The "Cave Creek Complex" fire did more than scorch hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land. The lightning-sparked inferno also clogged creek beds with debris, blackened vegetation and damaged soil that used to soak up rainwater. That means the impending monsoon rains inevitably will bring flooding to areas like the Seven Springs Campground, parts of Cave Creek, New River, Black Canyon City and Camp Creek, where 11 homes burned. Emergency stabilization efforts are under way to clear and upgrade culverts, mulch the land and reseed as many as 150 acres with a mixture of grass and shrubs before the monsoon storms hit....
Bad news rangers Karen Frauson was one of the first park rangers to respond to word of a plane crash on a lonely sagebrush flat in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park last month. A short time later, she also had the grim task of informing the pilot's family that he had died. But breaking the news of accidents, like this one that killed Wal-Mart heir John Walton, and helping families cope with the sudden reality of the loss is part of what Frauson does as one of the National Park Service's specially trained family liaison officers. Their skills have been in high demand in recent weeks as a series of fatal accidents and extended searches in national parks have attracted distraught families, some from hundreds of miles away, seeking information -- or the chance for a final goodbye....
Experts seek traces of Santa Fe Trail From a distance, Steven DeVore seemed to be mowing the grass Monday in Minor Park. Back and forth, back and forth on a grassy hilltop he pushed a three-wheeled gizmo topped with a … computer screen? Actually, DeVore was trying to solve a mystery with origins going back nearly two centuries: Exactly where in south Kansas City did the Santa Fe Trail run? Although much of the route is well documented, there are a couple stretches where neither the landscape nor the historical record has clarified just where the westbound pioneers beat their path to a hoped-for better life....
The West's defender of wild places On a late spring day, with streambeds roaring and the sun breaking through the thin mountain air, Stewart Udall has just crossed a calf-deep creek, rushing with late-season snowmelt from the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. His corduroy pants are drenched at the cuffs, his sneakers muddied and soaked. Udall is on the Rio en Medio Trail, a popular and well-watered seven-mile hike a good half hour out of Santa Fe. Udall, who turned 85 in January, has slowed down in recent years. Age, the death of his wife and a degenerative eye condition have contributed, but once on the trail, he gamely sloshes ahead, grasping drooping branches and, if needed, an outstretched hand. As secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — and one of the architects of the Wilderness Act — he is perhaps the politician most responsible for the public lands you hike, the rivers you kayak, the mountains you climb and the wilderness you contemplate. And it is this legacy that he is most fearful will be lost. Along with Robert McNamara, Udall is the last surviving member of the original New Frontier cabinet. In his ninth decade, he continues to put forth an environmental agenda, laments the dismantling of national lands and bemoans the malicious attitudes that he sees corrupting Washington....
National parks saw 12% drop in visitation between 1999-2004 Tourism experts say boomers’ preference for cushier vacations is contributing to a decline in campers and visitors at parks nationwide. At Acadia, annual visitation fell 15 percent between 1999 and 2004. Only 72,000 people camped out there last year, a drop of 22 percent in the past decade. Nationwide, camping at national parks fell 12 percent between 1999 and 2004. The aging population is just part of the reason, said Jim Gramann, a professor at Texas A&M University and the visiting chief social scientist for the National Park Service. Other factors include hectic lifestyles, competing recreational options, an uncertain economy, a fall in international travel to the United States, shorter vacations, and even an increase in ethnic populations unfamiliar with the park system....
Confederate descendants fear new skirmish brewing The statue has not budged. Gen. Robert E. Lee still sits astride Traveller, field glasses in one hand, the horse's reins in the other, no hint of the broken wrist that bedeviled him as he rode up and down the Confederate lines during the Battle of Antietam. No one has suggested plans to move his 24-foot likeness. But to the great-grandsons of Confederate soldiers, mere word that the federal government has purchased the grounds where Lee stands has tripped hair-trigger fears of Uncle Sam's treachery. Believing the National Park Service has become "politically correct" and decidedly pro-Union in its stewardship of Civil War battlefields, the Sons of Confederate Veterans has sounded the alarm, warning that the government might move the colossus from its spot west of Antietam Creek, where it was commissioned by a local millionaire a few years ago....
Historic status loss possible at 'Town Too Tough to Die' Some of the Old West's toughest lawmen walked the streets of Tombstone, but now the town may lose its status as a National Historic Landmark because of its failure to enforce the law. State and federal officials for years have warned Tombstone's leaders of the possible loss if they didn't enforce town ordinances that require all buildings in the historic district to resemble the styles typical of the 1880s, when Tombstone won eternal fame as the site of the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Then the National Park Service last year placed Tombstone on a "watch list" of 89 landmarks nationwide that face the possibility of losing the historic designation. Now, community leaders and others are trying to find a solution to the problem, Mayor Andre DeJournett said....
Spotted Horse still bucks To one traveling phone repairman, this is the remote bar/café where he almost had to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a putrid old man who'd set his bar stool on his own oxygen hose and ended up passed out on the floor. To Roy Holdeman and Robbie Montgomery, this is where they took their wedding vows and hung a rose on the antique bicycle on the ceiling. In the 1920s, Jim Spellman was among the first students at the school house across the lot. The Spellmans, Werners and several other families gathered at the dance hall across the road each summer, and in 1944 a tornado ripped it apart. Eleven gallons of gas totaled $2.84 here in 1947, and a hamburger lunch for two was $2.50 in 1952. This is Spotted Horse, located about 37 miles northwest of Gillette on Highway 14-16. You can still get a burger here, but the school is closed and the post office is no longer operated at the bar and café....
It's All Trew: Rollaway bed was favorite for sleeping, hiding My early day heroes slept in thin blankets, on the hard ground with their heads resting on their saddles. Later, my J. Frank Dobie heroes slept in canvas-covered bedrolls which had to be rolled each morning, tied with a rope and tossed on the chuck wagon. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the cowboys slept in bunks with rope bottoms and covered with ticks filled with hay, grass, corn shucks or cotton. Such stuffing seemed to invite insects so bed legs were stood in small cans of coal oil to keep the ants and other critters away. When settlers were finally able to build conventional homes many contained Murphy beds that folded up into the wall to provide more usable daytime floor space. Some beds stood high off the floors above drafts and at times contained drawers beneath in which small children slept. Until after World War II, everyone I knew used iron bedsteads....

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