NEWS ROUNDUP

Low snowpack heightens fears of new drought California's final snow survey of the year, taking place today in the Sierra Nevada, is expected to reveal early signs of a drought. Automated monitors already show the snowpack's water content is only 29 percent of average. Today's field measurement is expected to confirm that -- perhaps producing even worse numbers. The National Drought Mitigation Center, based in Lincoln, Neb., has declared drought conditions in nearly all of California. Its Web site paints the state in shades of dry, ranging from yellow to deep red -- deeper trouble -- from north to south. Mark Svoboda, climatologist at the center, said 27 percent of the western United States was in drought at this time last year. Now it's 51 percent. "All in all, the drought has got a strong foothold on the region," Svoboda said. "Right now there's nothing in the cards saying it's going to be over until we reassess this time next year, at least in the case of California." Despite the thin snowpack, the California Department of Water Resources predicts no water shortages this summer because reservoirs and groundwater basins are full from last winter, the fifth-wettest on record in Northern California....
Elk at risk? Otero County ranchers and farmers are calling on the county commission to demand action from the state game department regarding damages being caused by elk herds to forage, fences and crops. They are also asking for permission to shoot some elk. One such permit has already been granted, and an environmental group has raised its voice in protest. Rancher Charles Walker addressed Wednesday's commission work session and told the commission similar problems are being experienced in Lincoln, Chaves and Eddy counties. He said ranchers' pleas for compensation for the damages, or for increased landowner hunting permits, have fallen on deaf ears. Walker said under the grazing allotments with the Bureau of Land Management, the forage belongs to the ranchers. The refusal to either thin the herds or repay the allotment holders for damages represents an illegal "taking," Walker said. He and other ranchers say the problem has persisted for decades but has now become particularly acute. Commission Chairman Doug Moore said county staff are working on drafting a package of ordinances that would address the problem. He noted allotment holders have been required to reduce their herds by some 20 percent, yet no effort is being made to increase the number of elk that can be hunted each year. Moore said the elk are using as much as 80 percent of the forage resources on some of the allotments....
Litterers among 500 on marshals' warrant list Federal authorities are kicking off a blitz to arrest some 500 people in Arizona who have disobeyed laws protecting federal land. The people committed gruesome crimes, such as leaving litter at a campsite. Or getting drunk and disorderly on a mountaintop. Or perhaps even peeing in a park. The feds had offered people with outstanding tickets for such misdemeanors a Safe Surrender Day on Tuesday to come clean with their offenses. They could have visited their local federal courthouse or the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office in Mesa to clear their records. One person showed up. "I don't know what (crime) he did, but he paid a $250 fine," said Tonto National Forest spokesman Vincent Picard. Now, those who didn't show up can expect a knock on the door, Picard said, adding that the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish & Wildlife will work in concert with the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix to nab those 500 scofflaws who now have warrants out for their arrest....
America's Forests in State of Renewal and Re-Growth The United States of America is covered by 750 million acres of forestland, an amount that has remained essentially unchanged over the past 100 years, reports a landmark new study released today by the Society of American Foresters (SAF). In addition, forestland in the United States has increased by more than 10 million acres over the past 20 years. The report is available for viewing or downloading at http://www.safnet.org/. The new study found that replanting and reforestation efforts, as well as natural forest re-growth on abandoned agricultural lands has generally offset any loss of forestland during the 20th century due to urban/suburban growth. Technological advances have made farming more efficient, vastly reducing the amount of land needed to produce food, thereby allowing forestland to regenerate, the report found. The State of America's Forests reports there is good reason to believe that the positive trends will continue. The new report is a comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis of a wide variety of data regarding forestland in the United States from a broad range of sources, including the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The report was authored by forestry expert Mila Alvarez, a professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute's College of Natural Resources and principal of Solutions for Nature, a natural resources management consulting firm. The release of The State of America's Forests comes on the heels of a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report in March that also found the United States had annual increases in forest area in the 1990s and through 2005. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences released a study in November 2006 that came to a similar conclusion, finding a widespread pattern of reforestation in the United States and calling the United States a world leader in forestland re-growth....
A controversial 'Walk with Bears' Lynn Rogers grew up terrified of bears. Now he spends much of his time alongside them -- literally, within arm's length, even feeding them by hand. He knows his casual interactions with bears -- particularly the hand-feeding aspect -- go against the conventional wisdom of wildlife managers around the country. But he is also convinced that his way, not their way, is appropriate. "People are moving into bear country like never before," said Rogers, 68, who this weekend will open the North American Bear Center, an extension of the Wildlife Research Institute he has overseen since 1971 near rural Ely, Minn. "The message today has to be coexistence, rather than the frontier mentality of whenever you see a bear, shoot it, trap it, poison it, so (bears) keep their distance." Nor does Rogers think his actions -- chronicled in a documentary film, "The Man Who Walks with Bears," that has been nationally televised on such channels at Discovery's Animal Planet more than 70 times -- are apt to endanger others trying to experience the same kind of proximity with bears in the wild....
Honda Opens Unique 'Environmental Learning Center' in Irving, Texas Honda today opened an Environmental Learning Center (ELC) in Irving, Texas, the company's third such facility in the country. The ELC is designed to be a unique community resource that promotes a responsible land use ethic through a greater understanding of the varied regional ecology. Honda also has ELCs in Colton, Calif., and Alpharetta, Georgia. Honda's Irving ELC consists of approximately four acres surrounding an existing four-acre Rider Education Center where more than 30,000 street, dirt and ATV riders have been trained since it opened in 1989. The ELC features a trail system and species of plants, grasses and trees representing ten different Texas ecosystems as part of the Center's state-of-the-art off highway training facility. "Our ELCs serve as both an environmental resource for youth organizations as well as motorcycle training centers teaching environmentally responsible rider ethics to both beginners and experienced riders," said Dave Edwards, national manager of environment and education for the Motorcycle Division of American Honda Motor Co., Inc....
N.J. man died of thirst during wilderness survival adventure in the Utah desert By Day 2 in the blazing Utah desert, Dave Buschow was in bad shape. Pale, wracked by cramps, his speech slurred, the 29-year-old New Jersey man was desperate for water and hallucinating so badly he mistook a tree for a person. After going roughly 10 hours without a drink in the 100-degree heat, he finally dropped dead of thirst, less than 100 yards from the goal: a cave with a pool of water. But Buschow was no solitary soul, lost and alone in the desert. He and 11 other hikers from various walks of life were being led by expert guides on a wilderness-survival adventure designed to test their physical and mental toughness. And the guides, it turned out, were carrying emergency water. Buschow wasn’t told that, and he wasn’t offered any....
Mountains Say Goodbye to Mom-and-Pop Ski Schools It sounds like the plot for a bad Jason London movie: A ski mogul with an eye on the bottom line takes over a local resort and cancels contracts with the community-based ski schools that have traditionally served the slopes, then asks the ski bums to join the corporate ranks. Lessons double in cost. Longtime skiers and snowboarders are outraged. The National Forest Service washes its hands of the matter. Will the underdog community schools yield to big business? Can snow-loving families afford the increased cost of lessons? Will the feds step in? Coming in winter 2008: Cold War, starring London, Tara Reid, Stephen Baldwin, Cuba Gooding Jr., and a pack of drunken sled dogs. Trite as this make-believe plot may sound, it's not far from reality at Crystal Mountain, where John Kircher and Boyne USA, owners of the Mount Rainier resort for the past nine years, are jettisoning the concession ski schools that have traditionally managed multiweek programs in the Northwest, and consolidating instruction on the mountain to a single in-house school....
Wildlife agency denies protection for Nevada butterfly A butterfly found only at a popular Nevada off-road vehicle site won't receive federal protection as a threatened or endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided Wednesday. After a 12-month review, agency officials said federal listing under the Endangered Species Act is unwarranted because of recently adopted measures to protect the habitat of the Sand Mountain blue butterfly. Also, higher-than-expected numbers of the insect were found during a survey last year, fish and wildlife officials said. "Our finding, after looking at all the available information and the conservation strategy being implemented, is that the threat of the species becoming extinct is no longer there," said Bob Williams, field supervisor of the agency's Nevada office....
Congressional delegation weighs in against closing pass All three members of Wyoming's congressional delegation sent a joint statement Wednesday to planners at Yellowstone National Park opposing the proposed closure of the East Entrance to snowmobiles and snow coaches. "This decision is unacceptable to us and to our constituents," the letter said, urging the National Park Service to reconsider the proposal. Signed by Rep. Barbara Cubin and Sens. Mike Enzi and Craig Thomas, all Republicans, the letter was a formal comment from the legislators on a draft plan that would also set a daily limit of 720 snowmobiles allowed in the park. "It is our belief that it is possible to keep reasonable access available to Yellowstone through the East Entrance," said the letter, which was also sent to Deputy Secretary of the Interior Lynn Scarlett and National Park Service Director Mary Bomar....
Tester rapped for panel vote on liquid coal amendment Although he says he supports the technology, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., on Wednesday helped sink a measure pushed by Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., to increase the production of liquid fuels from coal. Thomas accused Tester and other Democrats of failing to act on their words of praise for transportation fuels made from coal. But Tester said he couldn't support the amendment because it would have scuttled the entire bill to which it was attached. Tester voted against the provision during a meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to assemble an energy package. The legislation contains measures boosting biofuels, energy efficiency and research and development on carbon capture and storage technology. Thomas' amendment would have required 21 billion gallons of coal-based fuels to be used annually by 2022. The bill already had a provision mandating 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. The amendment was defeated on a 12-11 party-line vote....
Washington will destroy dams to revive a river High hopes ride on knocking down two aging hydroelectric dams along the blue-green waters of the Elwha River: robust salmon runs, replenished beaches, restored wildlife habitat, a tourism windfall, access to sacred Indian sites long submerged. But the dams' demise — one would be the tallest ever demolished in the USA — may play a larger role. Hundreds of dams built in the past century are near the end of their usefulness and pose dilemmas for policymakers: remove them or make costly upgrades to keep them functioning. The Elwha River project, which won state approval in March, could be a model for how to bring a river back to life, environmentalists and biologists say. Hundreds of small dams have been torn out around the country in recent years, but none as high as the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon, the taller of the two on the Elwha....
Making ethanol of corn takes far too much water Many crops can be distilled into ethanol, but most makers are choosing corn. And corn is the most water-intensive of all the possible ethanol crops. How much water? How much corn? The answers are startling. First, many studies have suggested that corn-based ethanol isn't the best solution to breaking our oil addiction. Corn-based ethanol is far less efficient as a fuel than sugar-cane ethanol. And diverting corn from other uses, such as feeding cows and chickens, likely will drive the costs of food and farming higher. Big companies who deal in growing and marketing corn would prefer we ignore such facts. But it's harder to ignore the amount of water that using corn-based ethanol would require. This is a back-of-the-napkin look at ethanol's impact on California water. The conclusions are imprecise, because no energy, water or utility agency has gotten into this yet. Let's start with two assumptions: Corn will remain the crop of choice, and California will have to grow its own corn because other states will be using their own corn for making fuel. The Water Education Foundation says it takes about 118 gallons of water to grow a pound of corn. How many pounds of corn does it take to produce a gallon of ethanol? About 21 pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Doing the multiplication, each gallon of ethanol will take roughly 2,500 gallons of water....
USDA promises to do better on protecting personal info Last month, USDA announced it had accidentally published the Social Security numbers of over 29,000 farm and rural development program participants on a public Internet web site. And Wednesday, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on data security at USDA. USDA Chief Financial Officer Charles Christopherson was the primary witness. He opened his remarks with an apology and a promise. "We regret the incident that has occurred," Christopherson intoned. "We are committed to taking care of the individuals who are affected and we will fix the problems that led to this issue." According to Christopherson, USDA had attempted to contact all those who had had their Social Security numbers inadvertently released, and had reached all but a couple of dozen. He said those affected had been offered a free year of credit monitoring and a $20,000 insurance policy against the threat of identity theft. Christopherson also said USDA had quickly removed the Social Security numbers, which were embedded in a longer, 15-digit account number, from the public web site on which they'd been published. In fact, Christopherson testified that USDA had already begun a data security project over 10 months ago, shortly after the Veterans Affairs Department lost over 26,000,000 Social Security numbers. USDA’s goal, Christopherson said, is to replace Social Security numbers as record identifiers within all of USDA's information technology (IT) systems. But with 56 separate IT systems to go through, Christopherson told lawmakers the project could take a long, long time....
Reading Green: Ten books to help understand and save the environment. With all the world’s pressing environmental problems—not the least of which is the fact that humans are changing the planet’s climate—it’s all too easy to get caught up in fear and despair. It’s time to temper the bad news with knowledge. What follows is a list of books that will help anyone learn more about the state of the environment and, more specifically, the state of the West. The environmental movement has its classics, books like Thoreau’s On Walden Pond and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; there are also excellent anthologies on everything from wilderness to environmental justice. In short, there are thousands of great books on the environment—and everyone has their favorites—but these 10 are invaluable....
Author signs to Bantam after newest book Even as a first-grader, Heather Sharfeddin had a natural knack as a storyteller, often telling exaggerated stories to her friends and classmates. Fast forward to the last several years and Sherwood's Sharfeddin is now the critically acclaimed author of two novels, "Blackbelly," and the recently released "Mineral Spirits." A Sherwood-area resident for 12 years, Sharfeddin's novels capture the contemporary West and its people. Her setting for "Blackbelly" is Central Idaho, a location where the 41-year-old writer spent a portion of her life, and still recalls the seemingly simple everyday things about the area, including the taste of the well water and the smell of the dirt. Her latest work, "Mineral Spirits" takes place in the sparsely populated Mineral County, Mont.....