NEWS ROUNDUP

High-altitude hedonism in Davos Celebrity sightings may have been scarce, but the annual gathering of the world's most powerful people in Davos still managed to wrap its air of serious debate in a sheen of glamour. For all the grave talk about the dangers of climate change at the four-day meeting of corporate and political leaders, petrol-guzzling limousines and SUVs remained the transport mode of choice for the vast majority of participants. For the really "serious money," the road was left behind altogether in favour of a helicopter entry and departure to the small ski resort high in the Swiss Alps. And if pop icon and activist Bono cut a lonely figure from the entertainment world, there was safety in numbers for the corporate billionaires and heads of state and government who turned up for the networking highlight of their year. A short walk through the crowded Forum venue provided immediate confirmation of Davos's continued pulling power, with an above average chance of brushing shoulders with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, or former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov. And then there was the presidents' club: Former presidents like Mohammed Khatami of Iran, current presidents like Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines, almost-presidents like US Senator John Kerry and aspiring presidents like Russian Deputy Premier Dmitry Medvedev....
Treasure seller a thorn in the side The big metal gates that kept the world out of Waldo Wilcox's Range Creek Canyon cattle ranch for 50 years are now locked against him. "If they don't want me there, it's their right," the 76-year-old Wilcox says of state officials and archaeologists. "They bought it. When I owned it, I changed the locks to keep people out too." Wilcox is the celebrity curmudgeon of eastern Utah - a man who sold his remote 4,200-acre spread to the state in 2001 for $2.5 million and revealed to the world a treasure trove of hundreds of largely undisturbed ancient Indian sites. But the outspoken rancher has become something of a nuisance to the new stewards, as he freely expresses his concerns over their management, vandalism by others, artifact removal, dusty roads and dried-out fields. "They was always bragging about their educations," Wilcox says. "But I was always having to straighten them out."....
Burro ouster called an environmental necessity On the eastern edge of San Bernardino County, a piece of the Old West came to an end this week, with the help of a modern-day wrangler in the sky. A thudding helicopter emerged from the distant folds of the desert and darted around power lines. The pilot nudged wild burros at a fast clip through several miles of the creosote-dotted landscape. The burros, young and old, were driven from their longtime home around Clark Mountain, the nearly 8,000-foot chalky-brown peak that gave the Clark herd its name. Like thousands before them, the burros will be put up for adoption. Although these particular burros couldn't have known any better, they wandered into a part of the Mojave National Preserve and a neighboring valley considered by the federal government to be critical for the survival of the desert tortoise. Once there, the burros munched on the same plants needed by the lumbering reptiles, officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said....
Can Wolves Survive as Federal Protection Ends? There have been several sightings of wolves in this, the gateway to northern Utah's Uinta Mountains. Wildlife experts say the animals have likely migrated south from Yellowstone National Park where they were reintroduced many years ago. It's one more sign that wolf recovery programs have paid off — so much so that the U.S. Department of Interior will announce Monday that it wants to take wolves off the endangered species list in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, and within the year remove them from federal protection in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The reintroduction of the gray wolf was made possible by declaring them an endangered species and making it a federal crime to kill them. As a result, wolf packs began migrating here from Canada — and were successfully bred in Yellowstone National Park. Today, more than 4,000 roam three states in the Upper Midwest, and nearly 1,300 can be found in the northern Rocky Mountain states....
Push for bigger Army affects Pinon Canyon Five years of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have driven home a lesson to Congress that the Army needs to be substantially larger - and that pressure is rippling down to the Army's desire to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. "(The public) isn't getting a realistic picture of our training needs right now because so many of our brigades are overseas in the fight," Maj. Gen. Robert Mixon Jr., Fort Carson's commander, said in an interview Friday. "Our obligation is to look at the space we'd need if those brigades were home and to look into the future." Mixon and Brig. Gen. James Milano, the deputy commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division, said they recognize that ranchers and communities around the 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon site are afraid the government will condemn private land in order to expand PCMS by 416,000 acres. A request to enlarge the training area southwest of La Junta is pending with the Secretary of Defense's office, but Mixon and Milano said the Army wants to talk with landowners about many options, short of buying land, if that request is approved. "We want to have that conversation with the public because, as Army officers, we don't care whether the Army owns the land we're training on or not," Mixon said. Leasing agreements, grazing agreements, paying landowners for the right to move troops over private land from one training area to another are all subjects the Army is willing to explore, he said....
Industry rallies against water rules To date, producers have tapped merely 5 percent of Wyoming's $140 billion coal-bed methane resource in the Powder River Basin. Yet the remaining resource may be lost, and hundreds of coal-bed methane workers are threatened with losing their jobs. That was the doomsday scenario that coal-bed methane companies laid out for about 200 workers Thursday evening: Their jobs are at risk if the Environmental Quality Council adopts -- and Gov. Dave Freudenthal approves -- proposed new rules regarding water produced from coal-bed methane wells. Yates Petroleum, Devon Energy and Marathon Oil rallied coal-bed methane workers, landowners and businessmen during a meeting here Thursday evening, urging them to submit comments to the EQC opposing the rule changes before the Monday 5 p.m. deadline. "I don't think this petition is about protecting the environment," Jim Barber of Yates Petroleum told the crowd. "I think it's about getting CBM activities stopped." The reality of that actually happening, however, may be in serious question. Gov. Dave Freudenthal has repeatedly indicated that he would not sign off on such a rule change, instead hinting that a statutory fix may be more amicable....
Senators try again for timber payments A group of Western senators led by Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden filed a new bill last week to continue payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging. Seven senators from both parties joined Wyden in co-sponsoring a bill to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which has pumped more than $2 billion into Oregon and other states. But the list may be most notable for a name not on it: Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who worked with Wyden to co-sponsor the original law in 2000 and had been a champion of recent efforts to renew it. Wyden's chief of staff, Josh Kardon, said Wyden was disappointed that Craig declined to support the latest effort to renew the program known informally as "county payments." "My understanding is that Senator Craig wants to redo the formula so that Oregon gets less (money) and Idaho gets more, and that Senator Craig is interested in phasing out the program," Kardon said. Dan Whiting, a spokesman for Craig, said his boss still supports the program's goal but believes Oregon gets far too much money under the current formula....
Forester escapes black panther by traveling to other side of river A federal forester says he was chased into the Chattooga River by a 7-foot-long panther with "jet black" fur. Terrance Fletcher, a technician with the U.S. Forest Service, dove into the frigid water and crawled up the bank in South Carolina to escape. "The animal started running ... so I decided to run and get away and jump in the river to get across to the other side," Fletcher said this week. "It was a life-changing event for me." The incident occurred the second week in January along the mountain river separating Georgia and South Carolina. Black panthers are not native to the southeastern United States, meaning Fletcher might have seen a river otter or a bobcat, state wildlife officials in Georgia and South Carolina said. Fletcher and Forest Service District Ranger Dave Jensen said they think he saw some sort of large cat on the Georgia side of the river. "It was a little too big to be a bobcat," Fletcher said. "My first impression was a panther."....
Forest Service: closures will get scrutiny A study that could result in the closure of campgrounds and other facilities in the country's national forests will be opened to greater public scrutiny, the U.S. Forest Service vowed Friday. The agency won't make any decisions on closures for the next two months so an internal "review team" can assess how to broaden citizen involvement in the process, according to Joel Holtrop, a deputy chief of the Forest Service. The review committee will make recommendations April 2. Holtrop acknowledged the review team was organized in response to increased public and media attention to the effort. Conservation groups have warned the agency's Recreation Sites Facility Master Plan process will lead to closures of campgrounds, historic sites and other recreation amenities without public input....
Kill wolves to help elk? Everyone agrees wolves consume elk. That's about where the agreement ends. Just how big of an impact wolves are having on elk and other big game remains at the center of debate. That debate was ratcheted up last week after Gov. Dave Freudenthal said any wolf management agreement with federal officials must allow the state to kill wolves that are hurting big game populations before federal wolf protections are lifted. The governor said if state managers are not able to manage wolves to protect other wildlife, "that's kind of a death knell for some of the elk herds." Attorney General Pat Crank said the issue is timing. Once wolves are proposed for delisting -- a move expected today -- it will probably be several years of litigation before states can actually assume control. By then, there will be even more wolves having even more of an impact, and there must be a way to control and "balance" the wolf population with other wildlife in the interim, Crank said....
Wolves alter elk hunting in Wyo Wolves have made elk hunting more difficult in some parts of Wyoming, state officials and others agree. But that's not necessarily because wolves have drastically reduced the state's elk numbers. John Emmerich, deputy director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said wolves are having "some impact on hunter opportunity from what we've seen so far." "I know a lot of areas where people are going into traditional places where they've hunted over the years, and they're not seeing the elk in those traditional places," Emmerich said at a legislative committee meeting last week. "I think it's pretty apparent that the presence of wolves has certainly changed the behavior of elk and the distribution. They're using the countryside differently, it appears ... elk are acting differently, and hunters haven't really adjusted or figured out what the elk are doing as a result of wolves being present." Game and Fish Director Terry Cleveland said wolves are reducing big game numbers available to hunters, but it is unclear how much of an impact....
Colo. lynx likes Wyo chickens A lynx that had been released in southwest Colorado in 2004 was found hundreds of miles away in Cheyenne where it apparently had been raiding a chicken coop. The lynx was captured by Wyoming Game and Fish Department employees on Tuesday and returned the same day to the Colorado Division of Wildlife in apparently good health. South Cheyenne resident Lauriel Winters first suspected an unusual predator in the vicinity when two of her chickens were killed last Friday night. "I could tell the chickens weren't killed by a fox because there were no feathers strewn around -- just blood sprayed all over," Winters said in a Wyoming Game and Fish news release Wednesday. About 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, her dogs raced into the yard and chased the lynx up a tree. State Game Warden Jon Stephens and state Wildlife Biologist Rebecca Schilowsky went to Winters' home and captured the 40-pound cat with a 6-foot catchpole outfitted with a wire snare....
BLM investigating thefts of petrified wood in Utah Bureau of Land Management officials are investigating dozens of illegal dig sites in an ancient petrified wood forest not far from the small town of Virgin in Washington County. Wally Stout examines an exposed section of petrified log in Washington County. Huge petrified logs have been hauled away, the BLM says. "This is a very intrusive, unauthorized take of petrified wood," said Russell Schreiner, a geologist with the St. George BLM office who collected evidence at several of the dig sites with BLM Ranger Mark Harris. "Regardless of how many individuals did this or what people think about collecting petrified wood on public lands, this is not acceptable. Especially in Washington County." Individuals can legally collect up to 25 pounds of petrified wood a day and no more than 250 pounds in a year with a permit issued through the BLM. The free petrified wood must be retrieved without the use of power equipment or explosives and can only be taken for personal use. No commercial operations are allowed, and the environment must not be damaged....
Column - Letting more buffalo roam As communities recover from the recent series of winter storms that battered the Western High Plains, the full costs and losses become more apparent. Especially hard-hit were ranching communities and the region's large cattle population. Authorities cite a figure of 3,500 cattle deaths from southeastern Colorado alone, with estimates for the entire region ranging much higher. The stress from continued exposure and cold is certain to drive the final mortality figure higher, and estimates from western Kansas indicate potential losses of $150 million to $200 million from lost weight on feedlots alone. Still, thanks to helicopter hay deliveries by the National Guard and other emergency interventions, the ultimate toll should not approach the 30,000 deaths from the October blizzard of 1997. Without minimizing concerns for cattle ranchers and their herds, the cost in cattle lost and taxpayer dollars nevertheless raises interesting questions about ranching cattle versus bison. Though bison are far less numerous than cattle across the affected region, there are no reports of significant mortality from the recent storms. This is largely a function of the bison's natural adaptations to not only Western grasslands, but to Western rangeland weather. These include a massive head and the strength to use it as a snow-sweeper to expose buried grasses, a lower metabolism that reduces demand for food and fat reserves, and an ability to derive liquid needs from eating snow. In each of these respects, the bison is much better adapted for survival when winter storms sweep the plains. In fact, a five-year study found no significant winter mortality of a South Dakota herd of 500 free-ranging bison. This past October, more than 170 bison experts from agencies, academia, industry, tribes, and conservation organizations gathered in Denver to discuss the potential for greater ecological recovery of bison....
Big Game Means Big Business: Scientific breeding yields big bucks at Dead Man's Pass “Let’s face it. In Texas, it’s really the horns. It’s all about the horns,” asserted Ross DeVries, ranch manager at Dead Man’s Pass Ranch, Sunday (Dec. 31, 2006). But for DeVries and his boss, proprietor Michael McGee, the 2,300-acre spread north of Comstock is an entrepreneurial blend of science, wildlife management and personal dedication. The focus of DeVries’ days, often starting before dawn and extending long into the night, is continuous improvement of herds of trophy white-tailed deer and American elk. And that means habitat improvement: Enriching the quality and diversity of natural food sources, providing water where it’s scarce, enhancing cover and protection against unrelenting sun and predators. Dead Man’s Pass Ranch has been in McGee’s ownership, with his wife Jeanne, since September, 2000, and he and DeVries have transformed both the appearance and the natural character of the place. Once owned by ranchers Fred and Frankie Lee Harlow, Dead Man’s Pass was dotted with herds of sheep and goats with vastly different habitat requirements from trophy deer....
Experts: Latest Climate Report Too Rosy Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't take into account the gorillas _ Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century." Michael MacCracken, who until 2001 coordinated the official U.S. government reviews of the international climate report on global warming, has fired off a letter of protest over the omission. The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don't know how to predict its effects in their computer models. But many fear it will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than most predict. Others believe the ice melt is temporary and won't play such a dramatic role....
PETA workers' cruelty trial to enter second week The prosecution is expected to wrap up its case in the trial of two PETA workers accused of animal cruelty on Monday. The trial for Adria Hinkle of Norfolk and Andrew Cook of Virginia Beach is likely to take an additional week, Superior Court Judge Cy Grant said earlier this week. After two days of jury selection, Grant set a trial schedule beginning each weekday at 9:30 a.m. and ending by 5 p.m. The defendants are being tried in Hertford County Superior Court on 21 counts of animal cruelty, seven counts of littering, and three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses. District Attorney Valerie Asbell, in her opening statement, said she would prove that the defendants killed the animals and acted intentionally and with malice. She alleged that they falsely represented their motives when picking up a cat and her kittens at the Ahoskie Animal Hospital and later euthanizing them instead of taking them to Virginia to be put up for adoption. Defense attorneys said the only thing the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals workers did wrong was illegally dump the animals in a shopping center's garbage bin and that police should have tried to save the animals if that was their primary concern....
USDA: 'Not now brown cow' In a remarkable turnaround, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided to provide an ''opt out'' procedure for people whose premises have been registered in the National Animal Identification System. Complaints have arisen in several states from people who say that their premises were registered without their knowledge. Until now, these people have been told the USDA has no provision for removing a premises once it has been registered. A spokesman for USDA told the Liberty Ark Coalition late last week that since the NAIS was now an ''opt in'' voluntary program, the department had decided to also provide an ''opt out'' procedure. Although the protocol has not yet been fully defined, the spokesman said the procedure would require participants to write to the state NAIS coordinator and make a formal request to be removed from the NAIS. The state coordinator will confirm the validity of the request and advance the request to the USDA. The USDA will then, presumably, remove the name from the registry, according to the spokesman. State NAIS coordinators can be located here.
Feed lots get E-P-A warning The federal Environmental Protection Agency has issued a warning to four of the fifty feedlots it surveyed last year in western Iowa, saying it's likely they violated the Clean Water Act. EPA Region 7 Administrator John Askew says after a five-year moratorium ended, they began inspections, along with Iowa's Department of Natural Resources. Askew says Iowa cattle producers overall have been working toward getting into compliance with the Clean Water Act over the last five years. Despite the efforts of the majority, he says a few have been dragging their feet. Four of the fifty inspected last year were sent administrative compliance orders. There are monetary penalties included in those orders, determined by the degree of violation found at those farms. The farmers still have an opportunity, Askew says, to come in and work with the EPA regulators to negotiate the issue. Rather than tramping through every feedlot, attorney Dan Breedlove says inspectors used a model to determine if the operators were doing what's needed to keep their livestock waste from polluting waterways in their areas. Put together by the Department of Agriculture, this model's used by engineers to calculate the runoff that would need to be contained from a livestock facility, and determine the size of manure lagoons they need to build. It takes into account rainfall, the soil types, and the slope of the land to figure how much water would run off a given feedlot in a 24-hour rainfall in a "25-year storm." It's the model used by USDA to calculate how much water runs off. That model showed four farmers without adequate design in place to prevent their expected runoff from polluting waterways....
Though cows survived, calves won't Across thousands of square miles of the Great Plains that slice through southeastern Colorado, the merciless and unimaginable snow has finally stopped. Now, the calves will die. Rancher Eddie Ming knew it the night the monstrous Caterpillar D6 bulldozer he'd rented punched a path across 4 miles of his Baca County spread. At the bottom of this canyon, in a land where Colorado loosens its grip and the vast and rugged prairie becomes the property of Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico, were 40 of Ming's cows. They'd been trapped and pounded by a pair of savage storms. They hadn't eaten in 10 days. Calving season begins in a few weeks. It will not be pretty. Starvation and stress have caused many cows to abort. They'll soon start dropping dead calves. Other cows will give birth to underdeveloped calves weighing perhaps 30 pounds instead of 60. Wet and malnourished, the calves will be dropped into the endless snow of the prairie. They will thrash for a while, unable to get to their feet. They will call out. And then they will die. Ming, 63, does the simple math. "Last year we got $600 per calf," he said. "If we lose just 50 calves because of this snow, that's about $30,000. And that's way more than this ranch profits in a year."....
Bolivia Restricts Beef Exports Bolivia has restricted its beef exports to Peru, Ecuador and Colombia because of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, local media report Sunday. The disease was detected in four head of cattle in the western part of the state, where the country's cattle industry in concentrated. Ernesto Salas, director of the government's National Service for Animal Health and Food Safety, said the industry had to react "in the quickest way possible so that the negative effects are minimized," Santa Cruz newspaper El Mundo reported. Last year, Bolivia exported about US$10 million (euro8 million) of beef. It was not immediately clear what the financial effect of the restrictions would be. Santa Cruz Ranchers' Federation President George Prestel told reporters the losses would be significant. He said the government should declare a state of emergency, freeing up resources to fight the disease....
2 charged with cattle rustling Two Montrose men face cattle-rustling charges after a San Miguel County rancher reported some cattle missing when his herd came down from high-country pastures in November. Dustin Gleason, 22, and Jarrod Edwards, 21, are both due in court in February, charged with felony theft of agricultural animals and felony wrongful branding. The theft charge is punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine up to $500,000, and the wrongful branding charge is punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. San Miguel County authorities began investigating after rancher Jim Kornberg noticed some animals missing from his Dallas Divide Ranch. Among the missing animals were nine pregnant black Angus and an unweaned calf, along with 11 other calves. Five of the animals were traced to Kansas, and five others were found in a Montrose County pasture....
Hordes line up in cold for heaping helpings of free grub at Cowboy Breakfast By 5 a.m. Friday, thousands of San Antonio residents had lurched out of bed, ventured out into frigid weather and queued up in the parking lot of Crossroads of San Antonio mall for free biscuits, gravy and breakfast tacos at the 29th annual Cowboy Breakfast, a tradition that kicks off the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. Originally a small party for trail riders, the event has mushroomed into the world's largest breakfast and feeds an annual crowd of 30,000 to 40,000. In addition to the main event — food — there are live music, dancing and a competition to see who can toss a smelly cow chip into a golden toilet. A couple of people even used it as an excuse to start drinking first thing in the morning....
New Mexico weather full of sunshine, tempests When New Mexico received a record snowfall recently, the news must have surprised many Easterners. Among people in the Atlantic coastal states, one encounters the common belief that our state is only hot and dry and supports palm trees. Until such outlanders have traveled here in winter, they are not likely to be convinced that snow actually falls on the banks of the Rio Grande. In fact, major snowfalls do occur, although rather infrequently. One of the worst was an Arctic blast that roared down from Canada in March 1887. All across the Great Plains, livestock turned tail and drifted south before the wind. When finally stopped by cross fences, they piled up and froze. Ranchers from New Mexico to Montana suffered staggering losses of cattle and horses. Many never recovered, and those plains folk who did had the catastrophic blizzard etched in their memories. Of course, drought and heat are far more typical of our New Mexico climate....
News of 1937 Two “Dude” cowboys from Brooklyn, N.Y., 22 and 27, attempted to rob the Southern Pacific‘s “Apache” passenger train near Las Cruces on Thanksgiving Day in 1937. An El Paso railroad employee was killed and the robbers severely beaten by enraged passengers and trainmen. “We didn’t mean to kill anyone,” said one of the Dudes. “We agreed before the holdup that we wouldn’t shoot, even if they captured us and it meant 20 years in jail.” They were sentenced to 50 to 75 years in prison on Feb. 21, 1938. Late in the year, an Albuquerque paper reported about an old rancher here in New Mexico called to testify what he saw when two trains crashed head-on. He was the only witness and the railroad lawyer asked him to testify as to what he saw. “Well,” the rancher said, “I was on my horse near the railroad out in the middle of nowhere and I heard a train coming from the west. Then I heard a train coming from the east. They were on the same track and coming lickety-split toward each other. That was the most gosh-awful crash I ever saw!” “What were your thoughts when you saw the crash?” the lawyer asked him. “Well, I thought to myself that that was a hell of a way to run a railroad!” At the end of 1937 the federal postal department reported on postmasters in New Mexico. “In New Mexico there are 3,000 postmasters who can neither read nor write....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Scientific panel to review feedlot impact The Pew Charitable Trust has given a $2.6 million grant to the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to study how concentrated animal feeding operations (dairies, feedlots, hog confinements and chicken houses) may impact public health, sociology and the environment. Any guesses what they will conclude? Here's my guess: It's bad. In fairness, there is at least one person on the committee list who appears to have spent some time in a feedlot. That should balance the academics, gentiles, politicians and "Daryl Hannah, actress and advocate for biofuels and environmentally sustainable lifestyle." What is blatantly missing in the list of distinguished panel members is even one hungry person. Most Americans are so far removed from how their hamburger or tofu or salmon get to their plate they are sitting ducks for the ANTIs....