NEWS ROUNDUP


Study sees shift away from ranching near Yellowstone Owning a slice of paradise isn't what it used to be. Generations of ranchers on the rural fringes of Yellowstone National Park passed their land to offspring or sold it to likeminded people. But for the past decade and longer, more ranches have been snatched up by people with less interest in turning a buck off the land than weekend trips, trout fishing and catching a glimpse of an elk or wolf on their property, according to a new study. In sales involving 400 acres or more outside Yellowstone, only 26 percent of buyers were "traditional ranchers," according to researchers' study of records from 1990 to 2001. The largest category, at 39 percent, were "amenity buyers," those who want the land not primarily for agriculture production but for its recreation and ambience, the study said. The new buyers often arrive with a different set of values from those who have family ties stretching back generations. In some cases the new owners try to fit in, and in some cases they don't. Either way, they're transforming the social and natural dynamics, said Hannah Gosnell, an assistant geography professor at Oregon State University, one of the study's authors....
Dike removal at century-old ranch site opens Nisqually estuary The Nisqually Tribe on Tuesday celebrated the return of saltwater to 140 acres of the Nisqually River estuary, where dike removal restored critical salmon habitat in south Puget Sound. The land had been used for a cattle ranch for more than a century. Tribal dancers and drummers in vibrant black-and-red blankets and other traditional garb opened the event at the edge of the estuary, where the river meets the inland sea. As speakers addressed the crowd, a 14-foot tide began slowly filling the basin. Birds darted overhead and autumn-brilliant trees rustled along the shore. The 140-acre wetland was named Blaget Marsh to honor the family. Longtime rancher Kenny Blaget sold the family's 410-acre property to the tribe for $2.4 million in 1999. Most of the 840-acre estuary was diked in the early 20th century for agricultural use. The tribe and its state and federal partners removed the dikes enclosing 100 acres this summer, following a 40-acre project earlier. The first saltwater flowed in on Oct. 1, shortly after Blaget died....
EPA sets limits on pesticide use to protect frog California's farmers and ranchers may be significantly impacted by a recent decision issued by a federal district court that prohibits the use of 66 pesticides on thousands of acres of land designated as critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. "California's farmers and ranchers will be directly impacted by this even though they were not parties to either the lawsuit or the injunction. Many of the 66 pesticides are important management tools that form an integral part of successful farming and ranching operations," said Ronda Azevedo Lucas, California Farm Bureau Federation Natural Resources and Environmental Division associate counsel. "Farm Bureau is concerned the injunction is overly broad and questions some of its scientific and legal underpinnings." The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently reached a settlement agreement barring the application of the pesticides in critical red-legged frog habitat areas and in adjoining buffer zones throughout the state until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completes formal consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....
Arson suspect held; 5th firefighter dies Authorities on Tuesday arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of intentionally starting two wildfires this summer and who is considered a "person of interest" in the Esperanza blaze, which killed five firefighters. Raymond Lee Oyler of Beaumont was arrested at 3 p.m. on two counts of arson related to wildfires in June, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. Oyler was not named as a suspect in the Esperanza wildfire, which roared across more than 60 square miles last week. Also on Tuesday, a fifth U.S. Forest Service firefighter died of burns suffered when an engine crew was overrun by the Esperanza wildfire last week. Firefighter Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley died at 5:08 p.m. at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said Jeanne Wade Evans, the San Bernardino National Forest supervisor, at a press conference outside the hospital....
Firefighter supervisor pleads guilty in '04 blaze A Flagstaff man who was among the nation's elite firefighting supervisors pleaded guilty Monday to setting a 2004 wildfire that burned 22 acres of timber near Mormon Lake. Before his arrest, Van Bateman, 55, supervised all federal firefighters in the Mogollon Rim area and led one of the U.S. Forest Service's 16 incident management teams that responded to national disasters. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he spent a month assisting New York firefighters with logistics at the World Trade Center. In 2002, Bateman oversaw firefighting efforts against the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, the state's largest ever, half of which was also set by a firefighter. Paul Charlton, U.S. attorney for Arizona, said Bateman "joins a small universe of firefighters who, for reasons we may never fully understand, violated the public's trust by igniting fires, not extinguishing them."....
Cataloging nature's wounds Scientists on Monday began the long-term work to assess and repair damage done to the natural and cultural landscape by the Esperanza Fire and those who fought it. The recovery job takes brains and brawn, experts as well as inmates. The fire burned a sparsely settled 63 square miles south of Beaumont, scorching parts of the Morongo and Soboba Indian reservations and damaging as much as 90 percent of Potrero Canyon, a key endangered species preserve in Riverside County. The flames made a charcoal-covered landscape of the mountainous terrain along Highway 243, south of Interstate 10. Farther up the mountains, the burned landscape was snow-white, covered in ash. Previously a steep highway drive that takes motorists past desert scrub, sages and manzanitas on the way to a pine forest, the hillsides had only remnants of those signature plants. Animals such as chipmunks, rabbits and birds could be seen through columns of smoke that rose from smoldering roots of burned plants. Assessing damage to the landscape, animal habitats and American Indian artifacts is the first step in helping the region recover the richness of its natural and cultural heritage....
Pine Beetle infestation study: Beetles Invasion Don Goheen says mountain pine beetles are part of a forest’s landscape, but more beetles recently in the Umpqua National Forest are a sign of an oncoming and devastating outbreak. Last week the entomologist and U.S. Forest Service officials met at Diamond Lake Campground to discuss methods for curtailing a potential population explosion of mountain pine beetles. Goheen chopped away bark from a dead lodgepole pine and exposed the inner workings of beetle infestation. Clinging to the tree and underneath the bark were black beetles the size of rice kernels. To prevent a future beetle outbreak, Goheen — who works with the Southwest Oregon Forest Insect and Disease Service Center in Central Point — suggested the Forest Service should focus its concentration on high-risk stands not yet infected. His wife, Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, said thinning and harvesting on wholesale levels could stymie the beetles’ destruction. Stands of mixed species could be thinned of lodgepole pine while stands of 80 percent lodgepole or more could be clear cut, “so your whole area doesn’t get hammered at once,” she said....
Trout Unlimited working to keep Alaska wild Trout Unlimited is taking a lead role in restoring southeast Alaska fisheries damaged by logging. From fighting erosion caused by clear-cuts and road-building to replacing culverts vital for fish passage to spawning sites, the TU Alaska Program is reminding anglers everywhere that in spite of its apparent remoteness, the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest is a public treasure. “This is a near-pristine area owned by every American,” said Scott Hed (rhymes with ‘made’), outreach director for the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska. “When sportsmen think of Alaska, this is the ultimate dream, the last of the last best places.”....
New Mexico Asked to Designate Pristine Waters Under Clean Water Act A coalition of conservation and wildlife groups has asked the State of New Mexico to protect some of the state’s cleanest waters that flow from its roadless national forests. The groups filed a formal petition with the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission to name the waters inside of the Inventoried Roadless Areas on the Santa Fe National Forests above the cities of Pecos and Las Vegas as Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRWs). The Clean Water Act designation would permanently protect the critical source of drinking water for the City of Las Vegas, provide a measure of protection for the roadless forests in which these waters are found, and protect healthy landscapes for future generations of humans and wildlife. The groups filing the petition are Forest Guardians, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, and the Sierra Club. Among the streams nominated for protection are the Pecos and Gallinas rivers and numerous of their tributaries, which provide abundant habitat for fish and wildlife and a variety of recreational opportunities. The Pecos Wilderness Area alone receives 48,000 site visits annually for a contribution of $2.6 million to the State. The rivers not only provide municipal drinking water but also vital water for traditional agriculture downstream. In total, the nomination calls for the protection of more than 100 miles of waterway....
Wild-born ferrets popping up after biologists' restorative efforts Biologists spotlighted two black-footed ferrets that were born in the wild this year among the nine they found in a northwestern Colorado prairie dog colonies. State Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton said tracking the nocturnal animals that live in prairie dog colonies is difficult, and this year's effort is significant. Hampton says the first wild-born black-footed ferret was found by researchers in 2005, so the discovery of two additional wild-born ferrets is significant. This marks the 25th anniversary for the effort to restore the highly endangered ferrets in the United States....
McMahon acquitted of bribing federal officer One week after his former business partner pleaded guilty to bribing a federal officer, a jury acquitted Norman Geoff McMahon of all charges that he allegedly bribed the same officer, according to Norman Cairns, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney General's Office. McMahon's former NewCo Aggregate business partner, Curtis Slade, pleaded guilty on Oct. 20 to one count of bribing Ralph Mason, a former Bureau of Land Management (BLM) geologist. A jury acquitted McMahon in federal District Court on Oct. 27. He faced one count of bribing a public official and another charge of giving a gratuity payment to a public official. McMahon and Slade were charged with bribing the same BLM officer. However, Slade pleaded guilty. McMahon was accused of giving Mason $7,000 in four payments to mine humate — an organic material used in soil conditioners, supplements and fertilizers....
BLM backing for roads asked Moffat County officials asked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday to back their claims to roads that cut across wild federal land in northwest Colorado - a step that environmentalists call a tactic to block wilderness designation of the area. The request on five roads is a test of a new policy laid down by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton shortly before she left office in March. Norton signed a "secretarial order" telling federal land managers that if they determine such claims are valid, they can allow county governments that claim them to send crews out to maintain the roads. Environmental groups say the Norton policy carves up public lands, opens them to off-road vehicles and allows local governments to prevent land from being considered for formal wilderness designation. "Some of them go into very sensitive areas that have been closed to vehicles for a very long time," said Kristen Brengel of the Wilderness Society. "We believe BLM has the authority to deny these claims." Moffat County officials say they're simply preserving traditional access across public lands. They say they don't intend to send bulldozers out to cut new roadbeds....
'America's largest Petri dish' Infectious and sometimes deadly wildlife diseases are inching closer to Yellowstone National Park, and few of its most famous animals seem immune from the threat. The list reads like a who's who of troubling bugs and viruses: chronic wasting disease, West Nile, avian flu, whirling disease, hantavirus and brucellosis. Some are already in Yellowstone; others may be coming. If they take hold, they threaten elk, bison, deer and other mammals along with native trout and birds. Several factors are at work changing the dynamics of animal disease: more people and domestic animals living near the park, less room outside Yellowstone to find relief from disease outbreaks, and the emergence of several dangerous diseases that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animal populations....
State's shrinking glaciers: Going ... going ... gone? Like tiny doctors on the belly of a sleeping giant, three National Park Service workers trudged up the middle of the Nisqually Glacier, stepping over tiny creeks and peering down a dizzying chute where water from the melting glacier wormed into the 300-foot-thick slab of ice. Nearby, a tall plastic pole arced from the ice into the sky. Park scientist Rebecca Doyle knelt at its base, whipped out a tape measure, and began jotting down numbers. The pole is 41 feet long. Six months ago, in April, it was totally buried in snow and ice. On this recent sunny October day, so much snow had melted that only a few inches of the pole remained buried....
A dozen years of desert protection Speeding motorists bent on reaching Las Vegas or Laughlin Nev., as rapidly as possible view the eastern Mojave Desert as a vast wasteland as they zip along Interstate 15 or Interstate 40. Along the way, they pass endless clusters of creosote bushes, some of nature's oldest plants,growing in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve. "A lot of people don't know what's out here," said Dennis Schramm, superintendent of the vast desert preserve, which marked its 12th anniversary Tuesday. "It contains over 900 species of plants, 206 species of birds, 47 species of animals and 36 species of reptiles." And it also is resplendent with massive sand dunes, desolate mountain peaks, stands of Joshua trees, Indian wall paintings called petrogylphs, herds of bighorn sheep and the historic Mojave wagon road. Alarmed by the relentless expansion of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, environmental visionaries mapped out strategy in the 1970s to counter the threat that urban growth posed for the Southern California desert....
Bush Opens National Parks to Bio-Prospecting Consider, for example, the election-season news that the National Park Service is moving forward with its plans to allow private corporations to "bioprospect" for microorganisms in national parks like Yellowstone in exchange for a piece of the action. Bioprospecting, or bio-pirating in this case since it's being taken from the public without our consent, is the act of mining for living organisms ­ anything from microorganisms to plant and animal genes -- in the pursuit of science and/or profit. And whom should the corporate bioprospectors thank for this unprecedented gift of access to the public's natural resources? Well, both political parties and the various federal agencies they've ruled over, of course. Because it was the Clinton-led Park Service that first hatched this idea and now it's the Bush-led Park Service that is seeing it through. Yep, bipartisanship seems to work best when corporate interests are involved....
Park service ordered to review impact of drilling The National Park Service failed to take "a hard look" at the environmental impact of directional drilling on land adjacent to the Big Thicket Preserve in Southeast Texas, a federal judge ruled last week. Judge John D. Bates said that the park service's findings of no significant impact were "arbitrary and capricious" and that the agency didn't provide supporting evidence for its conclusions. "We hope it will insure more stringent rules, a little tighter regulation and that they'll be a little more protective of the environment," said Brandt Mannchen, chairman of the Big Thicket Committee for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "We hope this ruling won't just affect the Big Thicket but the entire National Park System," Mannchen said. "The Big Thicket is really the nexus of this issue because it has the most gas and drilling."....
Campaign Border Patrol First, as for the movie: "Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration," is a tour de force. It doesn't proselytize. It doesn't announce a political position. But it leaves no doubt how vexing, and at times how incredibly dangerous, is the issue of illegal immigration. Ranchers on the border have their property littered, their livestock attacked, and sometimes their safety threatened, by illegals crossing from Mexico. Police and other law-enforcement officials are attacked and in some cases killed. Drugs are run and teenage girls molested, and agitators yell that American land actually should belong to the Mexican people anyway. And, lest we forget, many of the illegals themselves, ones who themselves are peaceful but impoverished, are abused or abandoned en route by paid human-smugglers out to make a quick buck. But the documentary (available through CitizensUnited.com or at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, Netflix and Amazon) also gives ample time, without the moviemakers doing any editorializing, to Enrique Morones, a man dedicated to the mission of caring for the illegals and who becomes increasingly activist in pushing for open borders. Filmed over the course of seven months, the documentary comes across as being scrupulously fair. Yet it's almost impossible to finish the movie thinking anything other than that the borders must be better patrolled and protected, and that the illegal access must be stopped -- because American lands and American citizenship must not be violated....
The return of an old L.A. flame You think you know barbecue? This is real barbecue, the way people did it around here 100 years ago. Angelenos had their own style of 'cue, a heritage from the days of the 19th century Spanish rancheros, who called it carne tatemada. Down through the 1920s, no convention, charity extravaganza or Fourth of July was a party without a huge spread of our distinctive pit-cooked barbecue. We proudly served it to honored visitors, confident that it was superior to grilling and Southern barbecue alike. As late as the mid-1930s, when old-timers lamented that barbecue was dying out, you could get as many as 60,000 people to come to one of these events. Los Angeles barbecue grew out of cattle ranching, which was our main industry for many decades. We might have barbecued chicken or mutton from time to time, but the overwhelming choice around here was beef. And we used huge amounts of beef. Because there weren't any railroads to ship cattle East until late in the 19th century, hides and tallow were all that cattle ranchers had to sell. In effect, beef was a byproduct of the leather industry in L.A., so it was absurdly cheap for a very long time....
Reub Long loved 'Oregon Desert' "Reub Long's Oregon Desert," one in a series of television shows called "Oregon Experience," will bring to life a vision of rural Oregon life in this episode, which airs Friday on Oregon Public Broadcasting. This documentary tells about how, back in the early 1960's, Russ Jackman, a retired Oregon State University extension agent, and Reuben Long, a colorful Fort Rock Valley rancher, collaborated to create a unique book, "The Oregon Desert." It successfully blended natural science with cowboy humor and scholarly prose with casual meanderings. The book was a celebration of rural Western storytelling; over the years, it has become a Northwest classic. The TV show will replicate much of the point of view of the book. Reub Long, who died in 1974, lived his whole life in a flat, dry area of northern Lake County....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Thank researchers, mice for life There are people who are ennobled by their service to mankind. We think of soldiers, nurses, teachers or ministers whose contributions are recognized daily. Others are national leaders, inventors, Olympic athletes or philanthropists. Their achievements attract laudatory headlines and press. But there are many who toil beneath the radar, who persevere and over a lifetime of service produce profound long-lasting benefits to the world. One example is research scientists. I think of research scientists as the really smart people in my physiological chemistry classes who now work in bat caves chasing cures for the physical maladies of mankind. Much of our knowledge about the human body has come from studying animals. From Sir Alexander Fleming's mouse to Dr. Debakey's heart transplant calf, from NASA's monkey to Dolly the cloned sheep, animals have been used to discover and unlock the secrets of disease and initiate their cures. Is it worth it? Ask my friend with Parkinson's. Ask his family. Sir Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929. The average life span of a 29-year-old person that year in the United States was 49 years. In 2006, the average life span of a 29-year-old person is now 72....