NEWS ROUNDUP

In rural Colorado, a way of life in peril Just a few miles south of town on Colorado 109 the flat farm fields descend into the wide valley of the Purgatoire River, flanked by low buttes, green with spring grass, stretching for miles to the southwestern horizon. Along the highway, junipered bluffs mingle with grassy meadows, where clusters of black cows roam with frisky calves. It is another springtime in southeastern Colorado, and a drive through this land leaves no question why it is indelibly stamped on the hearts of ranchers and farmers who have lived on it for generations. "People don't understand the tie to the land. People don't realize there are fourth and fifth generation ranchers, and their families homesteaded there," said Otero County Commissioner Kevin Karney, who ranches 16,000 acres south of La Junta. "There's ranchers out there who you could offer any amount of money, and they'll say no," he said. "It's not about the money. It's their way of life." Their way of life is now at risk. In February the Army confirmed long-standing rumors, announcing that it would acquire another 418,000 acres adjacent to its current 238,000-acre Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site northeast of Trinidad...Lewis, the chairwoman of the private property rights committee of the national Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, or R-CALF, has organized or attended more than 50 meetings in the last two years to inform area residents of the Army's plan. They do not trust the Army, which has already broken promises made during the original Piñon Canyon expansion, said Lewis, holding former Sen. Hank Brown's copy of the 1983 Environmental Impact Statement. "In 1983 they said they'd never increase Piñon Canyon's size, and the EIS statement said no live rounds. Well now they've changed their tune on both of those statements," Lewis said. There is more than just broken promises, she said. Lewis points to what she describes as a Defense Department map that outlines an 18-year timetable beginning in 2010 to obtain not just the latest 418,000 acres, but 2.5 million acres, stretching south to the New Mexico and Oklahoma borders and east through Baca County almost to the Kansas border....
Biofuels Could Do More Harm Than Good, UN Report Warns The global boom in biofuels is laden with environmental and social risks, even as it presents strong new prospects for mitigating human-caused global warming, a new UN study says. The study also suggests that biofuels—energy sources derived from plant matter like corn or sugarcane—would serve better for heating and industrial power than for cars and buses, as is the current trend. "The use of modern biomass for energy production has the potential to significantly reduce anthropogenic green house gas emissions," reads the report, released yesterday by the cross-agency UN Energy working group. Biofuels such as ethanol can be a cleaner job-generating energy source for 1.6 billion people who live without access to electricity, the authors say. But the study, titled "Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers," also warns that an unregulated biofuels boom will spawn deforestation, deplete soil nutrients, and undermine food security by monopolizing farmland....
Biodiesel industry seeks more subsidies Biodiesel producers are asking Congress for an additional subsidy to go with the $1-a-gallon tax credit that the fuel additive already receives. In testimony to the Senate Agriculture Committee, the chief executive of an Iowa biodiesel plant said the additional subsidy is needed to protect U.S. producers from imported biodiesel. The subsidy would be set at a level to offset what the U.S. industry sees as a tax break for biodiesel exporters in Argentina, which taxes biodiesel shipments at a lower level than those of soybean oil. At current soybean oil prices, the proposed subsidy would be worth 43 cents a gallon. Neil Rich of Riksch BioFuels at Crawfordsville said the new subsidy should be included in the 2007 farm bill. At this year’s projected production level of 250 million to 300 million gallons, the subsidy could cost up to $129 million, but the industry continues to grow. Iowa has 10 biodiesel plants with a production capacity of 167.5 million gallons a year, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. Four additional plants now under construction could produce an additional 150 million gallons annually....
Keeping it Wild Bruce Gordon isn’t familiar with the Missoula airport and he’s muttering in “pilot-ese” to the radio tower that he hopes the third time’s the charm in his effort to find the right runway for takeoff. He’s got a full load of people in his six-seater Cessna 210 — tail-number 7-6-1-echo-X-ray-echo — which includes a senator’s aide, a rancher, a photographer and two reporters. Gordon has been hired this morning by The Wilderness Society, which has learned through the years that reality beats out a paper map and a list of talking points to try to get its story told. Today, the goal is to bring to life a paper plan that would add 87,000 acres to the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat and Mission Mountain wilderness areas. The plan includes opening 2,000 acres to snowmobilers and building a $7 million biomass plant to generate electricity for a timber mill and possibly portions of the small town of Seeley Lake. It seeks $400,000 in federal funds per year, for the next 10 years, for restoration projects, which would be matched dollar for dollar from private funds. An additional $350,000 per year n again, for the next 10 years n would pay for planning, management and monitoring of the restoration projects. Seeley Lake Rancher Jack Rich knows that’s a big order. He’s seated in the Cessna next to Gordon, his broad body towering above the pilot. Rich is here to point out landmarks and explain the value of the landscape that provides the backdrop to his life....
Column - BLM balance needed Federal land managers have a difficult job, but it's made particularly tough when direction comes from Washington, D.C., to put oil and gas development ahead of all else. In the late 1990s, when I was Colorado director of the Bureau of Land Management, balancing conservation and development was the main part of my work. I learned firsthand that it is possible to have a vibrant oil and gas program and at the same time protect our wildlife, air, water and places to hunt, fish, recreate and enjoy wilderness. Back then, managers had the flexibility to avoid leasing in sensitive lands that were roadless or of wilderness quality. Today, it seems, those are the very places targeted. Oil and gas development in itself is not the problem. The problem is that over the past six years, oil and gas development has become the predominant use wherever those resources might exist. The BLM by law is supposed to be a "multiple-use" agency, and while oil and gas may be an important natural resource, so are those now taking a back seat - from wildlife and fisheries to recreation and cultural history....
Column - Serengeti in the Dakotas So what do you make of an idea like Pleistocene rewilding? It manages to be both crazy and not crazy at the same time. As the article by C. Josh Donlan beginning on page 70 describes, a team of biologists has proposed a decades-long project to restock North America with large mammal species like those that roamed the continent before humans crossed the Bering Strait--species such as camels, lions and elephants (the nearest thing to mammoths). The undertaking would culminate in a vast national park--1,000 square miles or more--stretching across the Great Plains. The plains states are depopulating anyway, whereas Africa and Asia are filling up. So the project would transplant wildlife from where it gets in the way to where it would have plenty of room. To be sure, Midwesterners might not see it that way. Elephant families running free under big skies sounds romantic--unless you have to dodge them on your morning commute. Lion cubs are so very cute--except when they wander into your backyard. Farmers worry about rampaging rogues, cattle ranchers about novel diseases. Proponents have addressed some of the concerns but clearly have a lot more work to do. Whether or not cheetahs ever chase pronghorn across the continent again, the rewilding concept has drawn attention to the fact that the loss of biodiversity is not just a problem for the rain forest; it affects less exotic locations, too. The demise of large animals has thrown entire ecosystems out of balance. Even if humans decided now to leave these ecosystems alone, they are too far gone to recover on their own. The prairie would revert not to its Pleistocene glory but to a scraggly weedland. Instead of merely bemoaning nature's plight, the proponents of rewilding are doing something about it....
100 years as ranchers, Idaho tribe now breeding fat trophy trout Shoshone and Northern Paiute Indians whose ancestors were exiled to this 450-square-mile reservation amid 19th-century hostilities with the U.S. Cavalry have raised Angus and Hereford cattle on the Idaho-Nevada border for more than a 100 years. The descendants of those 1878 Bannock War survivors now have turned to a new breed to help boost their economy: 5-pound trophy rainbow trout in an artificial lake on a flooded lava rock-and-sage plain that's also a migrating-bird haven. Fly-fishing-only, catch-and-release Lake Billy Shaw was built in 1998 with federal money that paid for the tribe to divert water from the Owyhee River. It's now attracting anglers from as far as California, Western Washington and Arizona, as word-of-mouth on fat rainbows up to 28 inches long has put Billy Shaw on the map of traveling fly fishermen....
BLM plan would scrap target-shooting at park At the base of a small hill, many saguaros are pockmarked with bullet holes. So are signs warning "No dumping." A few saguaro arms are scattered on the ground. So are remnants of dead cholla cacti, fragments of clay pigeons and scores of spent shotgun shells. These sights are among the reasons that the Bureau of Land Management is proposing to ban target and other forms of recreational shooting inside this 129,000-acre monument. Hunting would still be allowed, but people could no longer fire bullets at discarded computers, TV sets or stoves and leave behind their shotgun shells as trash. "People are bringing their trash out and shooting their trash, or they shoot someone else's trash," said Patrick Madigan, who oversees management of the Ironwood monument northwest of Marana. "That's a law enforcement issue — littering — but we're stretched so thin that we have no staff to deal with the trash." The proposal has drawn opposition from the National Rifle Association, which has tried to make it a national issue. The ban would mark the first step toward kicking hunting and all other gun uses off all national monuments and other public lands around the country, an NRA spokesman said....
Mexican crew puts in long hours planting trees in the Bitterroots The blackened slopes high in the headwaters of Nemote Creek are filled this early morning with the steady sound of hoedads striking stone. Ping. Ping. Ping. Just down off the steep edge of this remote Lolo National Forest road, Enrique Moreno's Mexican crew is scrambling over unsteady terrain. Packing heavy 30-pound loads of ponderosa pine seedlings wrapped in wet burlap, the men stretch out single file across the hillside. Every few steps, they stop for a moment to swing their sharpened tools hard into the rocky soil. Ping. Ping. Ping. Pulling back on the 6-inch slice of steel opens another hole in the earth. The men reach down into their bag for the next bare-root seedling. With the seemingly effortless motion that comes from countless hours of repetition, a tree is placed into its new home. On a good day - when the ground isn't filled with rocks - the men might plant upward of 700 trees. “This reforestation work is really important, especially in areas that have burned really hot like this one,” said Garry Edson, the Lolo National Forest's Ninemile District ranger....
So how did An Inconvenient Truth become required classroom viewing? First it was his world history class. Then he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth shown to him by four different teachers this year. "I really don't understand why they keep showing it," says McKenzie (his parents asked that his last name not be used). "I've spoken to the principal about it, and he said that teachers are instructed to present it as a debate. But every time we've seen it, well, one teacher said this is basically a two-sided debate, but this movie really gives you the best idea of what's going on." McKenzie says he has educated himself enough about both sides of the climate- change controversy to know that the Al Gore movie is too one-sided to be taught as fact. Even scientists who back Mr. Gore's message admit they're uncomfortable with liberties the politician takes with "science" in the film....
DiCaprio warns human race faces extinction Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio has warned that humans face extinction because of global warming. The heartthrob has made a film, the 11th Hour, warning that the human race could be wiped out as a result of the environmental crisis. After a screening of the movie at the Cannes Film Festival, The Blood Diamond actor, 32, attacked US President George Bush, saying: "It's very simple. He's done very little for the environmental movement." The Titanic star's film, which he narrates, follows another environmental warming documentary by former US Presidential candidate Al Gore, shown at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Today DiCaprio defended Gore from criticism over the amount of energy he has been reportedly using to jet around the world and to run his home. "Don't shoot the messenger", he said. "This person is trying to relay a message to the public and the way that he travels should not be splayed out like that."...
DiCaprio bites back over eco 'hypocrisy' Leonardo DiCaprio hit back at charges of hypocrisy Saturday as he unveiled an eco-documentary he wrote, produced and narrated at the Cannes film festival. Asked after the premiere of "The 11th Hour" whether he had taken a fuel-guzzling jet on his way to the French Riviera, the "Titanic" star spat back sarcastically: "No, I took a train across the Atlantic." When the British journalist followed up, saying that many stars used emission-heavy private jets while touting environmental protection, a testy DiCaprio countered that he had taken a commercial flight from New York. "I try to travel commercial as much as I can," he said. DiCaprio later came back to the reporter, saying that he was irritated with the media for going after prominent environmentalists such as former US vice president Al Gore (whose own film on global warming "An Inconvenient Truth" picked up an Oscar this year) for supposed inconsistency in their private lives. "We're all trying the best we can, truly, we really are," he said....
An Advocate Rallies to Unify GOP on Immigration Immigration policy is one of the few issues that split conservatives and the business lobby. It's the "shut the borders" pack vs. the "we need workers" crowd. Conservative activist Tamar Jacoby has dedicated herself to bringing the two together. The outcome could determine whether key conservative members of Congress stand back and allow an overhaul of immigration law this year. Jacoby has been busy. She has helped to light a fire under previously disengaged business owners in places such as Texas, Arizona and Colorado, where immigrants -- legal and illegal -- are a large part of the workforce. She has flown to those states to hold policy briefings and to encourage employers to tell their tales to conservative lawmakers in Washington. She talks daily to small-business owners. "The most important thing is the temporary-worker program," Jacoby told them. Lawmakers "are going to go all out to cut it in half and unless business goes all out, like D-Day, they will surely win." Ray Prewett, who lives in Mission, Tex., and runs a trade group for citrus farmers, leaned in. Without enough immigrant workers "all the farms will move to Mexico," said Prewett, who was preparing to meet with Sen. John Cornyn (R). The senator has said that he has serious concerns about the immigration deal, and last year he voted against comprehensive restructuring. "We need to go into these offices and say we need this now. . . . We know they won't vote for it, but we have to tell them not to stand in the way," Prewett said. That is the kind of argument that could ultimately win the votes to revise the immigration law, lobbyists pushing to pass a bill say....
High corn price mean pigs eat candy bars, french fries Near record high prices for corn mean that farmers are feeding their pigs "people food" according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. With demand for ethanol booming, American farmers are facing a dilemma when it comes to feeding their livestock. The Wall Street Journal, reports that some farmers are increasingly relying on food waste to feed their animals. "Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs," writes Lauren Etter. "California farmers are feeding farm animals grape-skins from vineyards and lemon-pulp from citrus groves. Cattle ranchers in spud-rich Idaho are buying truckloads of uncooked french fries, Tater Tots and hash browns."....
Brucellosis confirmed in Montana herd It's finally happened. Brucellosis was confirmed this week in domestic cattle in Montana, in a herd near Bridger. Since 1985, the state's beef herds have been certified as free of the disease, which causes cattle to abort their first calf after infection. Fear of brucellosis drives most of Montana's controversial efforts to limit bison moving into the state from Yellowstone National Park. However, Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Friday that it doesn't appear the outbreak is linked to bison. “These are not cattle that ever commingled with buffalo,” he said by telephone Friday. The outbreak affects seven cows traced to a ranch in Bridger, a small town south of Laurel and far from any Yellowstone bison. Schweitzer said some of the infected cattle might have spent time in the Emigrant area in Paradise Valley, about 25 miles from the park's northern boundary. “That still doesn't mean buffalo” are the source of the disease, he said. “Buffalo don't make it to Emigrant.”....
Defined by road apples Drivers on Western Slope roads in the spring and fall often encounter herds of cattle being driven to or from the high country. Inevitably, the residue of their passing is readily apparent. Not long ago, a newspaper published a letter from a resident who complained about the resulting smell and the mess it left on her car. The odor has the smell of history in it. The complaining letter's scent reflects some of today's reality on the Western Slope. Neither is especially bad. Traffic jams near the small towns over here are often the result of those herds of cattle being patiently prodded by cowboys and cowgirls from summer range to winter feeding, and back again in the spring. They are who we used to be. They represent the ranchers, miners, farmers and merchants of the Western Slope of the recent past. Today's ranchers follow many time-honored methods of raising cattle, with an added touch of technology that helps them with business plans and keeping cattle healthy. But it's a difficult, thankless, smelly, cold-in-winter, hot-in-summer kind of job that doesn't pay well and has as many ups and downs as the West Elk Mountains. Still, they see a lot of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, they live in some of the finest country on Earth, and most of them seem pretty happy with who and where they are....
Idaho's extinct Hagerman horse to ride again US shipping company U-Haul is featuring the extinct Hagerman Horse on 1800 of its new 26-foot moving vans. The Hagerman Horse was a precursor of the modern horse and roamed the land more than three million years ago along the shores of the now extinct Lake Idaho. The official unveiling is on Friday, part of U-Haul's "Venture Across America" campaign, at Coltharp Park in Hagerman, Idaho, and will kick off the opening ceremonies for this year's Hagerman Fossil Days Celebration. With horses lying at the heart of one of North America's greatest mysteries, the uncovering of ancient, mysterious bones from the animal dubbed the "Hagerman Horse" was an extremely important find. In 1928 cattle rancher Elmer Cook discovered some fossil bones on his land in in Hagerman, Idaho. He showed them to Dr H.T. Stearns of the U.S. Geological Survey who then passed them on to Dr. J. W. Gidley at the Smithsonian Institution. Identified as bones belonging to an extinct horse, the area where the fossils were discovered was excavated and three tons of specimens were sent back to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC....
Living History: A lesson in heeding flood warnings A wet spring had filled the reservoir at what was then called Hatchtown, Garfield County, to the top of its spillway, and on May 25, 1914, its earthen dam held back about 14,000 acre feet of Sevier River water. All was well when caretaker A.W. Huntington made his routine morning inspection. At 2 p.m. he discovered a muddy ooze below the dam and summoned help. For hours he sought the source of the leak. The ooze increased to a stream, and the ground above began to cave, first in small slabs, then large, until the dam gave way entirely at 8 p.m. Water burst through the five-story-high breach with the pressure of a fire hose, scouring farmland far beyond the river banks as the flood rushed northward. Nine minutes later, the flood crashed into the W.R. Riggs house. Most of the family's belongings had already been moved to higher ground. As the Riggses ran, 10-year-old Ernest carried the last items to be saved - loaves of his mother's new-baked bread. Four miles downstream, Panguitch was high enough to escape damage. Two dozen low-lying farms to the north were in danger, however. Telephone operators had been busy, and George West, a traveling salesman from Ogden, set out in his automobile to alert isolated farmsteads....
Texas historian probes Cynthia Ann Parker fantasy, facts The tale is a familiar one for generations of Texas schoolchildren and all fans of Western lore: the Indian captivity of young Cynthia Ann Parker, who eventually gave birth to the Comanches’ last great war chief, Quanah Parker. On May 19, 1836 — mere weeks after Texas won its independence from Mexico — the family’s isolated outpost, Fort Parker, near present-day Groesbeck, was attacked by a band of Comanches and Kiowas. Five men were killed and five women and children captured before 21 terrified survivors made their way over six nights some 90 miles down the Navasota River to safety. Almost 25 years passed before the last of the Comanches’ prisoners were recovered. The saga of that search and its aftermath are the focus of the new book, RETURN: The Parker Story, by Texas historian Jack K. Selden. Selden, of Palestine, says the story is more than a historic reverie for him, it’s family history. In 1952 he married Gloria McCracken, a granddaughter of Ben. J. Parker, himself a great-great-grandson of Elder John Parker — grandfather of Cynthia Ann Parker — who was killed in the massacre at the fort. RETURN relates the story of the large Parker clan from its arrival in Texas in 1830 through the events that brought Anglo-Texan Parkers and the Indian-Oklahoman Parkers together via the first joint family reunion in Mexia in 1953....
Elmer Kelton's 'Sandhills Boy' Unlike the pulp shoot-'em-ups of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, Elmer Kelton's Westerns tend to be as unpredictable as the West Texas weather they often take place amid. As Kelton states in his new memoir, "Sandhills Boy," "I have often been asked how my characters differ from the traditional larger-than-life heroes of the mythical west. Those, I reply, are seven feet tall and invincible. My characters are five-eight and nervous." Born April 29, 1926, on the Five Wells Ranch a few miles east of Andrews, Kelton knew the cowboy way of life from the cradle onward. In 1929, his 5-foot-8 father, Buck Kelton, was hired onto the McElroy Ranch, eventually becoming its foreman. Growing up on the ranch around cowboys like Happy Smith, a bootlegger who enjoyed a brief stint as a stunt man in Hollywood's silent film world, and Manerd Galer, a trick roper in the Will Rogers tradition who once toured Europe as part of Tex Austin's rodeo troupe, Kelton was given lifelong fodder for his future stories. Many of the old cowboys from Kelton's youth fondly recalled the open range days, having reluctantly become accustomed to the world's modern barbed wire environs, for them an unwelcome change. Inspired by their struggles, Kelton has usually written about men who must deal with a world in a constant state of flux. In his signature works "The Time it Never Rained" and "The Good Old Boys," Kelton's protagonists cope with the difficult transitions between drought and flood, open range and fences. In "Sandhills Boy," Kelton says he simply wrote about what he knew. "Insofar as possible I like to have a story grow out of some historical reality, an event, a situation, a period of change in which an old order is challenged by something new," he writes. "Not all stories have a happy ending. Life is not that kind to us." Like fellow Texas novelist Larry McMurtry (whose essay collection "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen" recalls his own ranching heritage), Kelton was inept as a cowboy and regarded literature as an escape from the physical world. An advanced reader, Kelton graduated from high school at the age of 16 and went on to study journalism at the University of Texas, despite his father's protestations that "a pile of papers did not count, as these could not be eaten, worn, ridden, or driven."....
A celebrity tossed in the slammer? That's old news Just as celebrity watchers swoon over the saga of socialite Paris Hilton, facing jail for driving with a suspended license, another glamorous traffic scofflaw received similar treatment 86 years ago. And she did Hilton one better: She scored another movie role out of her time in the slammer. In March 1921, 18-year-old silent screen vamp Bebe Daniels drew a 10-day sentence for speeding through Santa Ana at 56.25 mph — more than 20 mph over the limit. She was driving a Marmon Roadster, whose other Jazz Age owners included F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. Her arrest and trial touched off a comic legal circus and accorded Daniels the dubious honor of being the first woman convicted of speeding in Orange County. The events made the Saturday Evening Post and led to her starring in the comedy "The Speed Girl," shot on location at the Romanesque courthouse where she was tried. In January 1921, Daniels was behind the wheel of her high-powered speedster, racing through Santa Ana, when motorcycle officer Vernon "Shorty" Myers or Meyers — his name was spelled both ways in news stories — pulled her over. Daniels' mother, Phyllis, was in the back seat. A friend, middleweight boxer Marty Farrell, rode shotgun, The Times reported. (Some reports said it was her boyfriend, heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey.)....
Baxter Black - For sale: A home on the range The ad read: For sale - 30-acre ranchette with two wells, year-round creek, round pen, loading chute, run-in shelter, paddocks, corrals, granary and poultry condo, a perfect place to watch people and critters grow and thrive in a Montana atmosphere! Poultry condo? That would clinch it for me. When the housing market declines, real estate agents resort to more diverse enticements to lure prospective buyers. The most stubborn example I can recall is an ad I saw running in comic books, Western magazines and pamphlets since my youth called the Deming ranchettes. Described in my memory as "A beautiful four-acre piece of Heaven, in the shadow of rugged mountains with abundant wild life and exotic flora." These ranchettes were on the mesa and easily seen from the freeway, and I have driven by them for more than 40 years now. It is a fairly barren piece of scrub mesquite and grease wood. Ah, but the lure of the west....