Environmental novel 'Monkey Wrench Gang' to be filmed fter 30 years of various movie options, filming rumors and false starts, one of Utah's most infamous stories may finally come to the big screen. State Route 95 near Hite, with bridge over Colorado River in the background. The crew in "The Monkey Wrench Gang" wants to protect Utah lands from overdevelopment. But the movie won't be filmed in Utah. Edward Abbey's legendary novel, "The Monkey Wrench Gang," is mere months away from production. The novel is about a group of Utah environmentalists who are fed up with the overdevelopment of the region's canyonlands and who want to destroy the Glen Canyon Dam to drain Lake Powell. "The characters are very hysterical, they're very funny, very eccentric and just a blast to read," the film's director, Catherine Hardwicke, said. "So it's not preachy. It's a wild rumpus, an anarchist's romp, about people that care passionately about the land." Hardwicke is a juror at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Her directing credits include "Thirteen," "Lords of Dogtown" and this year's "The Nativity Story." The novel, published in 1975, is an edgy, comedic story about a four-man gang that attacks trains and bulldozers. It inspired the environmental Earth First! movement, and the term "monkeywrench" now means to ruin something — usually in order to protect the environment....
Forests stir land-use stew Stimson Lumber Co. has owned Pacific Northwest forests since the 1800s, but the Portland-based company sees itself as part of a modern revolution in the woods. In this new world, the value is in the land as well as the trees. "Timberland has really become a commodity," company President Andrew Miller says, standing in a boardroom overlooking Pioneer Courthouse Square. "It's no different than this office building." Now, Stimson is using Oregon's property rights law to advance its business plan. The company filed Measure 37 applications that would allow housing on 56,000 acres across northwest Oregon, probably the largest request under the 2004 voter-approved law. Stimson officials say they're just keeping options open on most of that land but may develop slivers of it near fast-growing cities. Stimson's approach -- and political backlash against large Measure 37 claims -- speaks volumes about the intersection of Oregon's new law and a rapidly changing timber industry....
Park's wolves eat elk calves After two years of preferring bull elk in their winter diet, wolves in Yellowstone National Park apparently have renewed their taste for elk calves. An early winter study of the wolves in December showed that they were primarily killing young elk, followed by older females and then bulls, said Doug Smith, Yellowstone's lead wolf biologist. "My guess is it was just a super-mild fall and early winter. When things are mild, wolves don't have an edge ... and the easiest to kill are calves," Smith said. Calf numbers have also been up, so more of them were available for predators, he said. On the park's Northern Range, where more than half the park's wolves live, about 75 percent of the wolf kills were calves, while 15 percent were bulls and 10 percent were females. "Prime age" elk were the least frequently killed, he said. Wolf biologists survey the population every December and March for 30 days to get a feel for what they're eating and how the overall population is faring....