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....