NEWS ROUNDUP

Wolves Hamper Wyo Efforts To Avoid Cattle Disease Outbreak Wolves have hindered efforts to keep elk and cattle separated in the Buffalo Valley area, where the state game managers recently noticed a spike in brucellosis prevalence among elk. Since Dec. 20, state Game and Fish Department officers have hazed between 50 and 150 elk out of Buffalo Valley into nearby Spread Creek in an effort to keep the elk from mingling with cattle. Bill Long, North Jackson game warden, said officers used firecrackers and snowmobiles to chase the elk from two cattle ranches in Buffalo Valley. “I go up every single day,“ Long said. “ It’s just a matter of if the elk are in a bad place or hitting a hay stack.“ Long said he has been hazing elk in the Buffalo Valley on a regular basis during his 17-year career. But problems with elk hitting cattle feed has increased since wolves entered the area in recent years, he said. “There’s a new wild card there, and everything we do can be undone overnight,“ Long said. “Before we had wolves, you could put elk on a feed ground and they would stay,“ he said. “Now they chase them off and they make the commingling problem even worse. That’s the brave new world. Wolves have their place, clearly, but they have certainly caused some problems in terms of damage and commingling.“....
Payouts for wolf depredations hit record Compensation paid to ranchers who lost livestock to wolves set a record in 2006, a newspaper reported Sunday. Defenders of Wildlife, a national environmental group that pays ranchers for confirmed or probable kills of livestock by wolves, wrote checks for $154,000 last year, the highest amount the group has paid, according to a report in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Most of the deaths _ with compensation totaling $148,000 _ took place in the Northern Rockies states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. The rest were in New Mexico and Arizona, where a fledgling group of Mexican gray wolves has been reintroduced. Across the West last year, Defenders paid for the losses of 158 cattle, 204 sheep and eight other animals, mostly guard dogs but also a couple of horses. In 2005, the group paid $101,000 for depredations. It paid $137,000 in 2004. The Defenders' Bailey Wildlife Foundation Compensation Trust is now in its 20th year....
Caribou forest eyes energy leasing The search for natural gas in western Wyoming could soon spill into neighboring Idaho, which to date has been essentially devoid of petroleum production. The U.S. Forest Service is drafting a plan to lease areas of the Caribou National Forest and Curlew National Grassland along Idaho's southeastern border for oil and gas exploration. The agency is reviewing potential lease sites on the forest's 970,000 acres in Idaho and 17,000 acres that extend into Wyoming and Utah. There are no known petroleum deposits in Idaho. Every test well drilled in the state over the past 25 years has come up dry, but as gas prices soar and available resources become scarce, energy companies are hoping the vast basins of oil and gas discovered in Wyoming, Montana and other Rocky Mountain states might extend to Idaho's fringes. Several national forests, including the companion Targhee National Forest in Idaho and Wyoming, have already developed plans to open areas to drilling....
Nature reclaims Yosemite route Winding lazily into the Sierra Nevada, California 140's two asphalt lanes for generations served as the busiest road to Yosemite, with more than 1 million visitors each year rolling up the route to the magnificent granite valley. But of late, the natural world has gotten in the way. A dozen miles from the park, the old road has disappeared, its once-bustling blacktop buried under a rubble pile broad as two football fields. With a geologic shrug of the shoulders, Mother Nature last spring sent roughly 90,000 cubic yards of boulders and debris sliding off Ferguson Ridge, blocking the highway and causing consternation from Yosemite's west gate to the downtown streets of Merced. For now, the big rocks have mostly stopped raining down, and the slide appears to have stabilized in a precarious angle of repose, its foot buried deep in the swirling waters of the Merced River. Experts admit they can't predict exactly how the rocks of Ferguson Ridge will behave....
That was then, this is now If a single photograph is worth a thousand words, Paul Hosten figures two photographs can tell a whole story. Particularly if the second photograph is taken from the same site a century or so later. For the last couple of years, the ecologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District has been collecting historic photographs taken by the likes of early-day forest ranger John Gribble and pioneer photographer Peter Britt, tracking down the sites where the shots were taken and snapping new ones. He is employing what is called "repeat photography" to compare the old and new vegetation as part of a research project to better understand the regional landscape....
Flathead snowmobile plan challenged as threat to grizzlies Environmentalists have challenged a collaborative snowmobiling plan for the Flathead National Forest, saying it endangers grizzly bears by allowing late-season sledding. On Thursday, Swan View Coalition and Winter Wildlands Alliance filed an appeal of the forest's latest wintertime motorized recreation plan, criticizing new spring-season snowmobiling that in some areas extends through May. “The appeal will go to our regional office,” said Denise Germann, spokeswoman for the Flathead. “They'll look at it and follow the process to decide what needs to be done.” In their appeal, the activists charge that federal land managers admit the late season poses a threat to female grizzlies and their cubs as bears emerge from winter denning sites. The Flathead already has rules in place prohibiting snowmobiles in grizzly bear habitat once bears are out of their dens, but Swan View Coalition's Keith Hammer says the new plan circumvents those rules....
Western Shoshone keep fighting for land The way Allen Moss sees it, most of the riches of Nevada -- from the Las Vegas Strip to the state's gold mines -- belong to an American Indian tribe. Keep Las Vegas, he said. But the Western Shoshone tribal leader wants to reclaim ancestral lands stretching from California through Nevada and Utah to Idaho. Time after time, in lawsuit after losing lawsuit, the Western Shoshone National Council and its members have been turned aside as they try to use a 19th-century treaty to win back what they say has been improperly taken by the U.S. government. The tribe never used lines on a map until the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, which the Shoshone say gave them to up to 93,750 square miles of ancestral lands. Las Vegas would tuck into a notch on those lines. Tribe members insist the treaty, ratified by Congress in 1866, grants the Shoshone, not the federal Bureau of Land Management or other agencies, royalties and final say over water, mineral and property rights in an area the size of the state of Maine....
BLM Begins Winter Wild Horse Gather A roundup is under way to reduce two overpopulated herds of wild horses in eastern Sweetwater County, Wyo. The roundup started Friday and is expected to take four to five weeks. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to capture 1,760 horses from the two herds, which together have about 2,200 animals. The goal is to make available for adoption 1,399 of the captured horses. The BLM also plans to give a birth-control drug to about 200 mares and return those horses to the wild. A member of a wild-horse advocacy group said the wintertime roundup could cause the horses to become wet and fall ill. Ginger Kathrens, volunteer executive director of the Cloud Foundation Inc., also said snow can cause the horses to fall while running during the roundup. "You can't not expect to have some slips and falls and potential broken legs from the bad footing if it's muddy or snowy or wet or whatever," she said. "It's very unusual in a cold climate to run any horse."....
Senator wants probe of BLM in Kim family tragedy U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Friday called on the Interior Department to investigate the circumstances that led to the death of a San Francisco man stranded with his family in the Oregon mountains. Feinstein, D-Calif., cited the failure of federal employees to lock a gate on a logging road. Lost in the mountains of Southern Oregon, James Kim, 35, drove his family down the road before getting stuck in the snow. She commended Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne for the search efforts by the Bureau of Land Management for Kim, whose body was found Dec. 6 after he left his family in their snowbound car to find help. But, she wrote Kempthorne, "I am disturbed by what appears to be a failure to follow instruction and a deviation from agency policy that contributed to cause this incident."....
Hotel showdown: U.S. military could use supremacy to build hotel in Park City's open space A new developer in this resort town has rare power. It is exempt from local zoning laws. So it soon may build a huge hotel/condominium project on a pristine hillside that the city had long planned to preserve as open space. Since local officials cannot stop it through zoning, they are trying to use millions of dollars to lure the developer to a different site. The developer who may reap such bounty also happens to be heavily armed — with missiles, bombers and fighters, no less. It is the U.S. Air Force. Why is the Air Force suddenly in the Park City hotel business? It "would benefit service members worldwide from all branches" with "an affordable way ... to visit Park City and enjoy its R&R opportunities," says a written statement from Hill Air Force Base. Terry Morris, Hill's director of plans and programs, adds the military seeks to build a big, world-class hotel resort there — on par with a few big ones that the military now operates with discounts for its personnel at Walt Disney World and in Hawaii, the German Alps and Korea....Do you think the average foot soldier will benefit from this? Neither do I. Not only should the military not do this, they should sell their other resorts and use the funds to adequately equip military personnel in harms way.
Energen opposes $14.9M judgment Attorneys for Energen Resources Corp. have asked a judge to reduce a $14.9 million judgment to a Farmington family or grant the company a new trial. Energen attorney Bradford Berge called the judgment "grossly excessive" in court documents filed Wednesday in Santa Fe. Energen was ordered Dec. 6 to pay the family of 19-year-old John Stapleton, $13 million in punitive damages and more than $1.92 million in compensatory damages after a Santa Fe jury found that the company was 65 percent responsible for the teen's death because its wells were not fenced. Stapleton and Cody Amezcua, 20, died July 21, 2002, when the car they were riding in backed into a natural gas wellhead, which exploded into flames in the Glade Run Recreation Area in Choke Cherry Canyon, north of Farmington. Stapleton, who was driving the car, died on scene. Amezcua died the following day in Albuquerque at University of New Mexico Hospital from burns sustained in the accident....
Tiny owl could be bred in captivity Pygmy owls, numbering barely two dozen known adults in Southern Arizona, might be bred in captivity starting this spring. The Arizona Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are considering breeding 10 owls, five per sex, now living two to a cage in a wildlife rehabilitation center north of Phoenix. In the wild, the rust-colored, cream-streaked owls nest in saguaro cavities. The tiny birds — less than 7 inches tall and weighing 2.5 ounces — need about 280 acres of territory, where they prey on creatures including lizards, rodents and birds. But they live in lush Sonoran Desert areas where people want to build, and where competition is the apparent reason behind the owls' diminished numbers. If an advisory body of scientists and other interested parties supports the idea, captive propagation could start about a year after the wildlife service removed the bird from the endangered species list — citing a healthy population in nearby Mexico — in April 2006. The breeding is hardly a new technique, having been done with dozens of endangered species around the country. But like virtually every government action involving the pygmy owl since it was listed as endangered in 1997, captive breeding appears likely to be steeped in controversy....
Montana studies plan to allow falconry Offspring of a swift, crow-size raptor removed from the federal endangered-species list in 1999 could be captured in limited numbers for the sport of falconry, under a proposal the Montana wildlife agency is considering. The state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is taking public comment until Jan. 15 on the plan to let falconers take fledgling peregrine falcons from nests - perhaps removing about half a dozen birds a year. In falconry, trained birds circle above the falconers, take high-speed dives at flushed prey such as grouse, then try to capture the prey. The Montana Falconers Association wants this state to join six others in the West that allow removal of peregrines from the wild, within a federal framework. If the proposal advances, Fish, Wildlife and Parks will prepare an environmental assessment....
DAVE FOREMAN: IT'S STILL ABOUT POPULATION, STUPID The day was ballyhooed as symbolizing the death of Malthus and proof that Julian Simon had won the bet with Paul Ehrlich. There were rumors that Julian Simon’s waxy corpse was teased out of his glass sarcophagus to dance with giddy young ladies and plump, pink-faced young men at the Club for Growth. Even a spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund explained that population growth wasn’t a problem, that the problem was just where people chose to live. Terrible and foreboding as our country’s population explosion to 300 million is, more terrible and foreboding is how Americans > across our beautiful land are reacting. For almost forty years, I’ve supported slowing and then halting human population growth. It hasn’t been my main issue, but I have always woven it in—especially in my Earth First! Journal and Wild Earth writings. During these four decades I have seen the world’s thinkers and leaders degenerate from taking population growth seriously and trying to find practical ways to slow the explosion to flippant brush-offs: “Oh, don’t you know? Ehrlich was wrong. Everyone knows that. Population isn’t a problem anymore. Julian Simon proved that.” And they say this in growing numbers, even within the environmental movement; they say this while standing in the knife-edged, roaring winds of climate change, mass species extinctions, gut-wrenching poverty and hunger around the world, resource-shortage-driven wars of unspeakable brutality and inhumanity....
Trying to lead stranded bull to water The storm and horrible winds had whipped the land into a Siberian landscape that faded against the horizon in every direction. Left in its swath was some 50 inches of heavy snow on the level ground and great sweeping ivory drifts that easily covered six-foot barbed wire fences. Now, five days after the crushing storm had moved on, the snow still reached almost to the thick shoulders of the big, black bull. Each step brought a heavy grunt from the animal's whiskered jowls. Jets of condensation shot from his nostrils as his hot breath collided with the icy air. He had lived for several years in this wild place on the eastern Colorado plains. Breeding was his mission. He ruled the land. But for five days now he had only nibbled on sagebrush and tumbleweed. Even his heavy hooves couldn't penetrate the thick cover of snow. He could not get to any water. The massive muscle that carried him across the bluffs and arroyos was withering fast. The bones of his hips pushed against his skin. He was alone. And he was dying....
Editorial - An era rides into the sunset Like the dying embers of a cowboy campfire or the final shimmer of a crimson sunset, an era is fading in Arizona. In many ways it already is long gone, called to mind now only because its final stalwarts, its last two holdouts, still hold seats in the Arizona Legislature. In a recent, poignant story - his last for this newspaper before moseying off into the world of PR - reporter Robbie Sherwood wrote about state Sen. Jake Flake, R-Snowflake, and his friend, state Rep. Jack Brown, D-St. Johns, under the headline "Capitol's last cowboys ride on." Flake and Brown, you see, are ranchers, the only two among the Legislature's 90 members and the remnant of perhaps 120 rancher-lawmakers who've ridden off the range and into Arizona's Capitol over the years. Their presence today, as the Legislature begins a new session, may evoke a certain nostalgia, a wistful and romantic longing for the Old West, but there was a time when the predominance of rural interests in the Legislature had real-world consequences....
Ethanol boom divides farmers, ranchers From corn fields to Wall Street, enthusiasm for ethanol is at an all-time high. But not everyone is enthusiastic. Demand for the corn-based fuel is driving up the cost of feed corn, making it more expensive to feed cows, chickens and pigs. "It's hard to see where the future is, if corn keeps going up," said Kerby Barker, a cattle rancher in southwestern Wyoming. "Anytime you jack up the price of fuel, anytime you jack up the price of corn, it just drives up our bottom line." Long-term, it could drive up the cost of food, which is alarming to meat producers and food companies. Like many ranchers, Barker questions the 51-cent-a-gallon tax credit created by Congress to encourage growth of the ethanol industry. "The feeling in our area is that all the subsidies going to support ethanol production is really hurting livestock production," Barker said....
Farm Bureau chief wants an overhaul of labor system The federal raid on a northern Utah meat-processing plant that nabbed 154 undocumented workers last month proves the U.S. labor and immigration systems are broken, according to members of a national agricultural group meeting in Salt lake City. And if they're not fixed, American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman said, it could cost farmers and ranchers $5 billion annually from labor shortages. Speaking on Sunday to some 5,000 farmers and ranchers meeting at the Salt Palace, Stallman said his organization is working to pressure the Bush Administration and Congress to enact immigration reform. "Swift was using a state-of-the-art federally sanctioned worker ID program, but even that system apparently could not prevent a federal raid," he said at the start of the three-day national convention. "This serves as further proof that the system is broken." Stallman said the only way to fix the system "is to enact a comprehensive bill that addresses all aspects of the immigration process, including U.S. agriculture's need for an adequate legal workforce."....
Activists Attack Animal Agriculture Aggressive anti-animal agriculture campaigns have created conflict, not only within agriculture, but also among U.S. consumers, most of whom are generations removed from any agricultural roots and context, according to experts who addressed farmers and ranchers at the American Farm Bureau annual meeting. Although critics are intensifying their efforts, producers are attempting to accurately inform the general public of the facts of farming by using science to validate claims, unlike activists. More specifically, the Coalition to Support Iowa Farmers (CSIF) is making great strides within Iowa, as well as joining forces with like-minded individuals in other states. “We in agriculture are giving too much credit and power to these extremists,” CSIF executive director Aaron Putze said. “Instead we need to take them on.”....
New Congress means new look at single food agency One hundred years ago this week, the nation's first extensive food safety laws went into effect. Inspired by Upton Sinclair's stomach-churning novel "The Jungle," President Theodore Roosevelt bullied Congress into passing the Food and Drug Act. Its key inventions were federal food inspections and mandatory food labeling. A century later, consumers, food makers, farmers and ranchers will likely face a major overhaul of Roosevelt's landmark handiwork. Key food safety advocates in Congress, spurred by last year's veggie scares and November's election, promise hearings and legislation on new approaches to food safety. The push will come from two, newly powerful Democratic members, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin. In 2005, each introduced identical legislation in their respective chambers to create a national "Food Safety Administration." This new, single office would combine and then direct "the administration and enforcement of food safety laws," from today's tangled alphabet soup of food-watching federal agencies. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has at least four sub-departments either conducting or implementing food promotion, safety, research and inspection: FSIS, GIPSA, AMS and APHIS. Additionally, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the EPA, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Customs Service, the National Maries Fisheries Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms have pieces of the food safety pie.
Ranchers brave element to attend show Ranchers from the across the country braved roads left icy and snowy from a recent series of storms to make it in time for opening day Saturday at the 101st edition of the National Western Stock Show, one of the country's premier livestock showcases. As cattle producers from Oregon to Tennessee were scooping snow out of pens in the stockyards at the north-Denver stock show complex, ranchers in southeast Colorado, northern New Mexico and western Kansas were still digging out from under several feet of snow. Despite back-to-back blizzards that crippled parts of the plains, the number of animals registered for exhibits and contests at the National Western was running near last year's record-high of more than 15,000. "It's a still a day-to-day thing," National Western spokeswoman Kati Anderson said. "We've had some calls, cancellations....
'Last Cattle Drive' gem then and now "The Last Cattle Drive" by Robert Day (University Press of Kansas, 252 pages, $45) One mark of a classic novel is how well it holds up over time. After 30 years, "The Last Cattle Drive" remains fresh and funny, as if it could have been written last week. Fed up with high trucking costs, rancher Spangler Tukle decides to drive his herd of 250 steers (and one bingy heifer) from Hays to Kansas City. As in, on horseback, down dirt roads, past little towns, under interstates and eventually through downtown Kansas City to the stockyards. His wife, Opal, his old ranch hand, Jed, and his city-slicker summer helper, Leo (who is the book's narrator), assist in this endeavor, not entirely convinced that it's a good idea but caught up in the romance of the ride anyway. "I never could get used to the idea that I was a real scout for a real cattle drive," Leo thinks, daydreaming one day on the trail. "There weren't any Indians, though. Only cars." Humorous, poignant, earthy and definitely not politically correct, "The Last Cattle Drive" is a romp of a story with nuanced characters and scenes that will stick in your memory, as when Spangler Tukle shoots a balky old lawn mower to put it out of his misery, and when spectators line the streets of Kansas City to cheer on the cowboys....