NOTE TO READERS

This is a shortened version of The Westerner, as will probably be the case tomorrow night. I've been asked to participate in the PRCA Turquoise Circuit Finals starting tomorrow and will be plenty busy through Sunday afternoon.


NEWS

Colorado in water crisis Russell George made a kind of sentimental journey to Glenwood Springs Tuesday when he spoke to a gathering of rancher and farmer conservationists. George, the executive director of the state Department of Natural Resources, grew up on a farm in Rifle. He spoke to the annual state meeting of the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts at the Hotel Colorado. Colorado is in a water crisis brought on by natural and social forces, George said. Situated on the eastern end of the Great American Desert, he said Colorado is naturally dry. In fact, it took the large irrigation projects of the 1880s when the state was being settled to allow a population to take root and grow to what it is today. Colorado has always contended with drought, but today it faces another form of drought, "a demand exceeds supply drought," he said. "It is my belief that we have a people-caused drought." Coloradans saw the effect of these two forces this summer when irrigation wells were shut down by the state along the South Platte River because of water shortages. The shutdown caused crops to fail. "We understand brutally and painfully the convergence of these two droughts ... where the demand has so far exceeded supply. It's tragic economically; it's tragic culturally," he said....
Conservation Groups Intervene in Wyoming Wolf Lawsuit Six conservation organizations filed legal papers in Wyoming federal court today seeking to prevent unregulated poisoning, trapping, and shooting of gray wolves across the vast majority of the species' range in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone National Park. The State of Wyoming filed suit in October, challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's refusal to approve Wyoming's wolf management plan and eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for the Northern Rockies population of gray wolves. The Wyoming plan proposes to classify wolves as "predators," which would legalize indiscriminate killing throughout 90% of the wolf's range in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Wyoming has requested a court order requiring the federal government to approve the Wyoming management plan and to immediately kill approximately 200 wolves in the state. "Wyoming seeks to turn back the clock on wolf recovery," said Steve Thomas of the Wyoming Sierra Club's Sheridan office....
Forest Service employee accused of embezzling firefighting money A U.S. Forest Service purchasing agent wrote government checks worth more than $642,000 to her live-in boyfriend, and then spent the money on gambling, restaurants and car and mortgage payments, according a federal indictment. Debra Durfey, 49, of Echo was arraigned Wednesday in Portland on charges of embezzlement and theft of public money. Court documents and prosecutors said she drew the money from a national pool of fire funds, where it was overlooked among the nearly $1 billion spent nationwide on firefighting each year. As coordinator of a federal charge card program for the Umatilla, Malheur and Wallowa-Whitman national forests in Eastern Oregon, Durfey had her own charge card account and was authorized to write government checks to small businesses that cannot accept federal charge cards....
Reauthorizing feedgrounds Officials with the Bridger-Teton National Forest are looking to reauthorize controversial elk feeding programs for this winter under a "categorical exclusion," typically reserved for extremely low-impact operations. In a letter posted on the agency's Web site and sent to "interested citizens," the Bridger-Teton said it is seeking public comment to allow the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to "maintain facilities and use (national forest) land in conjunction with its winter elk feeding program for the 2006/2007 winter season." No mention is made of a controversial test-and-slaughter program carried out last winter on the Muddy Creek feedground, and planned again for this winter....
A forest-plan expert provides perspective As the Coronado National Forest revamps its big management blueprint--or "vision statement," if you will--some experts offer an even beefier viewpoint. Among them is Paul Hirt, an associate professor of history at Arizona State University. Hirt is also board president of Tucson's Sky Island Alliance, and author of A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since World War II (Our Sustainable Future). He was a longtime resident of this fair city. And he's a grizzled veteran of the Coronado's last planning go-around in the 1980s, then as representative for Arizona's Sierra Club chapter. In his book, Hirt argues that the U.S. Forest Service failed its "sustainable yield" credo by allowing lumber companies to run amok for decades. When timber harvests subsequently crashed in the 1990s, that perhaps accelerated a change already occurring within the agency, where a preponderance of road engineers and timber honchos were giving way to ecologically oriented scientists....
Subdivisions, not logging, the real threat to wildlife Logging is not as much of a threat to wildlife habitat as rural residential development, Missoula County commissioners heard Monday. Roads can be closed and trees will grow back. But subdivisions just keep popping up in every valley of the west, causing loss of habitat, displacement of wildlife, and eventually, dead animals, said Chris Servheen. Our actions in guiding subdivision growth over the next 10 years will determine the fate of such sensitive wildlife species as the grizzly bear, lynx, wolverine, and bull trout, he said. He recommended that development be restricted in known wildlife linkage zones. If it must occur, the home sites should be concentrated to preserve open space and to reduce the area of ecological disturbance, he suggested. Chris, the regional grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, offered a quick overview of his research in the Seeley-Swan area. He offered the guidelines for the commissioners because they have the final say in approving all subdivisions within the county....
Animal Terrorism Act Approved by Congress A measure designed to give federal authorities the ability to arrest and prosecute animal terrorists who use intimidation, threats and other tactics is expected to be signed by President Bush this month. On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006--which strengthens the ability of the Justice Department to prosecute animal rights terrorists who do damage to property or threaten individuals associated with an animal enterprise. Among some of the specifics of the bill include amending the Animal Enterprise Protection Act and enhances the effectiveness of the Department of Justice's response to recent trends in the eco/animal rights-related crime sprees and terror campaigns; addresses the third party targeting system used by animal rights terrorists by prohibiting the intentional damaging of property of a person or entity having a connection to an animal enterprise; prohibits veiled threats to individuals and their families; and increases penalties for intentionally causing economic disruption or damage and for intentionally causing a person bodily injury....
Seattle's Egan wins National Book Award Seattle author Timothy Egan has won the National Book Award for nonfiction for his harrowing account of America's Dust Bowl catastrophe, "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl." But for his prize-winning book, published by Houghton Mifflin, Egan went outside the Northwest. In an interview earlier this year with the Seattle Times, Egan said he got the idea for "The Worst Hard Time" after he did a series of stories for The New York Times, based on the 2000 census, that showed the southern Great Plains as "a giant black hole" of population loss. "Every county on the western edge of the Great Plains had lost population. I would hear people in the Southern Plains say, 'Yeah, it goes back to the Dust Bowl,'" Egan said. Then a New York editor approached him about writing a Dust Bowl book. Egan was skeptical that he could craft a narrative until he began to track down Dust Bowl survivors in the dwindling small towns of the region. "Once I had three or four of these people I knew I could follow them," he said. "They move in, they dig in, they rise to a degree of prosperity — then nature exacts its terrible revenge." Their stories, and the sheer scope of the economic and environmental disaster, drove Egan's impassioned account of the great swath of grassland – 100 million acres in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado – appropriated from the American Indians by cattle ranchers, who then sold to land speculators. The speculators then sold to farmers, who enjoyed bumper crops and a booming economy for a few rainy years. Then wet years turned to dry, and prairie land that should have never been plowed began to blow away, devastating both the land and the lives of the people who lived there....
City to dedicate new statue Casper residents and visitors will get to enjoy Navarro's latest sculpture called "20% Chance of Flurries," located in Pioneer Park at Center and "A" streets downtown. The sculpture will be unveiled at a ceremony today at 11:30 a.m. Navarro, 50, has been sculpting professionally for 26 years, though he has no formal art education. He started sculpting full time when he quit his job in the oil field and still likes to rope and ride his three horses. "I used to help out at the Robinett Ranch years ago," he said. "I asked Guy and Vern Robinett to model for me for a sculpture I was working on. We were driving out to go rope a calf on the ranch when Guy told me, 'You know, a 20 percent chance of flurries almost put me out of business.' I told him that's the title." The Robinetts lost about 2,500 livestock when a spring storm in 1980 dumped 3.5 feet of snow just after the sheep had been sheared. "There were dead sheep piled up everywhere," Navarro said. "That title says a lot about how man is tied in with nature, trying to save livestock in the middle of a spring storm. Man battling the elements."....