NEWS ROUNDUP

Ranchers triumph over land battle with the feds... for now anyway It's sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul, as the old saying goes. But in this case, Peter is a rancher and Paul is the U.S. Army. Gov. Bill Ritter and most Colorado lawmakers have taken Peter's side, and are hoping to stop the Army from using eminent domain to expand a military training site in southern Colorado. Ritter signed a bill Thursday that removes the federal government's option to use eminent domain to obtain land for military purposes. The hope is that it would prevent the Army from condemning land to expand its Piñon Canyon training site by 653 square miles -- almost triple the land the Army already has. The expansion would absorb dozens of ranches. With Ritter's signature on House Bill 1069, the state is basically saying "no" to the federal government. "It's never been done," Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, says with some pride. That means there's no precedent. There is no way to determine whether this is allowed, without some kind of legal ruling. Might the Supreme Court take notice? McKinley, a professional cowboy with a fierce -- and very Western -- independent streak, shrugs and says, maybe so. He invokes the Founding Fathers when he talks about the injustice of the Army's plans. "The Declaration of Independence talks about the king keeping a standing army without the colonies' consent," he said....
In Oregon suit, greens take new poke at public-lands grazing Environmentalists are making a new attempt to reduce the number of cattle on federal land in the Columbia River Basin and perhaps elsewhere in the West, arguing that federal anti-pollution laws should be applied to grazing permits. A federal suit filed last week makes a test case out of a permit issued to Bill Colvin, 66, a rancher along a tributary of the John Day River in Eastern Oregon. In 1996, a federal judge in Portland ruled that state agencies such as Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality had to certify that cattle grazed on federal lands wouldn't cause streams to be degraded. The department enforces the federal Clean Water Act. But two years later the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the decision. It said what are called "non-point" sources of runoff such as livestock grazing are not subject to review under the act. "Non-point" sources, which can also include runoff from paved-over urban areas, are distinguished from readily identifiable "point" sources such as water treatment or factory drains. The new suit cites a 2006 Supreme Court's decision from a Maine case involving a hydroelectric dam. The question was whether the water from a dam's reservoir is "discharge" into the stream below the dam. The court said it is, and the decision was interpreted as meaning that states have broader power than thought to regulate the quality of rivers. At the time, Maine's attorney general, Steven Rowe, predicted the case would have an impact "well beyond the state of Maine." The suit filed last week in Oregon said the Supreme Court's definition of discharges is broad and calls into question the appeals court ruling from 1998....
Forest Service plans sheep grazing restrictions Facing a lawsuit from three environmental groups that want to protect bighorn sheep, the U.S. Forest Service has announced that it plans to restrict sheep grazing in some areas of the Payette National Forest this summer. The Forest Service made the announcement Thursday ahead of a preliminary injunction hearing before U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise to prevent domestic sheep from being allowed onto the grazing allotments later this month. "This is a big win for us," Greg Dyson, executive director of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council, told the Idaho Statesman. "It's the first time in a long time there will be no domestic sheep in Hells Canyon." Besides the council, Western Watersheds Project and the Wilderness Society had sued the Forest Service in April over domestic sheep grazing, arguing that disease brought in by domestic sheep kills bighorn sheep in Hells Canyon. The groups also asked Winmill for an injunction to prevent domestic sheep from being put on the allotments this month. "Ninety percent of our issues were mute by the time we got to the hearing because the Forest Service conceded all of them," Dyson told The Associated Press on Friday....The Forest Service will go to court to defend their policies on oil & gas leasing and timber harvesting, but then "concede" to the enviros on grazing policy. I can't help but wonder why Mark Rey and the Bush Administration haven't been a friend to the western rancher.
Regulations take 'forest' out of deskbound forest rangers Greg Casselberry won't leave the forest. That might not seem unusual given that he's a 31-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service. But Casselberry, 55, is a rarity. Working out of the Idyllwild Ranger Station, he's one of the few longtime forest workers who still spends a good part of his time outdoors. "I decided to put my passion for land management above promotion," Casselberry says, adding that he doesn't want to spend 90 percent of his time behind a desk like so many of his colleagues. "Where the rubber meets the road is here," he says. "You're right there where you can see what's happening." And what Casselberry has seen happen in his three decades of service is a colossal shift in Forest Service philosophy and in the ways its lands are managed. Over the past 30 years, the U.S. Forest Service has been caught in a quandary: How to meet increasing demands on wild lands with ever-diminishing resources. The computer age was supposed to provide the solution, making rangers and foresters more efficient. Instead, many feel it has trapped them behind a desk, away from the environment they signed on to protect. But it is not simply a matter of money and personnel, says forester Gary Earney, another 31-year Forest Service veteran who works out of the Lytle Creek station. He says increased regulations have made caring for the land more complex and time intensive. "We can't dig a hole out in the forest for a signpost unless we have a minor environmental clearance," says Earney....
Whistle stop wilderness For nearly 100 years, the Chugach National Forest has remained a dramatic backdrop in Southcentral Alaska -- the stepping-off point for boating Prince William Sound or hiking the Kenai Peninsula. In the winter, telemark skiers and snowmobilers explore its backcountry. In summer, anglers seek its lakes and rivers. And while recreation is a big reason people come to this 5.5 million-acre forest, getting to the best areas can be a challenge. Other than flying in to remote areas or trekking by map and compass, access is limited, keeping most visitors just along the forest's edges. That's why National Forest rangers are so excited about their latest development, a new recreation opportunity called the Whistle Stop. Timed to the 100-year anniversary of the creation of the nation's second-largest national forest, the Chugach Whistle Stop will allow visitors to travel by train to predetermined stops along the Alaska Railroad corridor, giving them easier access to some of the forest's most beautiful areas. When travelers get off the train, they will be met by trails, cabins, campsites and other rustic recreation opportunities....
Feds ask for longer sentences in eco-crimes Government prosecutors filed court papers Friday seeking longer prison terms for a gang of convicted eco-saboteurs now awaiting sentencing, saying their serial arsons constituted "federal crimes of terrorism." The government's 148-page sentencing memorandum is part of the biggest prosecution of eco-saboteurs in U.S. history. It summarizes firebombings and other sabotage across the West from 1995 to 2001, and spells out the extraordinarily secretive measures of the saboteurs, who called themselves "The Family." The sentencing memo, which the government cobbled together through statements by the accused, also clears up a series of crimes that, for a time, made Oregon synonymous with the word "eco-terrorism." Solved: the Animal Liberation Front's Christmas 1995 arson at Dutch Girl Dairy in Eugene. Solved: the torching of a truck at the U.S. Forest Service's Detroit ranger station in October 1996, the first arson attributed to the Earth Liberation Front in the United States. Solved: The 1996 release of 2,000 minks from a farm in Lebanon. Six men and four women are set for sentencing before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken beginning May 22. All were convicted for their roles in a five-state arson campaign that left timber company offices, dozens of SUVs, meat companies, federal installations and a ski resort in smoldering ruins. The government estimates damages at more than $40 million....
Former forest chiefs decry costs of fires As wildfires across the nation continue to get bigger and burn longer, the U.S. Forest Service has been forced to spend a larger portion of its overall discretionary budget to pay for firefighters, helicopters and air crews. Five former Forest Service chiefs recently told Congress that those soaring costs affect other areas, such as campground maintenance and research on forest lands. "As Chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service from 1979 to 2007, we wish to express in the strongest way that the Forest Service has been put into an untenable financial situation due to the way fire suppression funding is being handled in the federal budget," their prepared statement said. The statement was signed by R. Max Peterson, F. Dale Robertson, Jack Ward Thomas, Michael Dombeck and Dale Bosworth. At one time, the Forest Service depended on the funds it took in from timber sales to keep its checkbook in the black. Whenever fire suppression costs soared past budgeted levels, the agency borrowed money from the trust funds deposited by timber purchasers. When the fire season ended, Congress reimbursed those funds through supplemental appropriations. In the 1990s, the agency's timber sale program was slashed 80 percent due to environmental concerns and those trust funds nearly dried up....
Shale's Black Sunday Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of "Black Sunday" than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West - and to those of us who've spent 25 years trying to forget it - May 2, 1982, was the day Exxon announced that it was pulling the plug on the largest boom in modern western Colorado history. After a courtesy call in the morning to then-Gov. Dick Lamm, Exxon managers locked the gates to the company's appropriately named Colony Project, signaling the end for thousands of workers. It also signaled the beginning of a decade or more of struggling recovery for Western Slope communities that had overbuilt in anticipation of Exxon's boastful predictions. Lest anyone think that's all behind us, all you have to do is take a look around. Mesa County's unemployment rate is so low, wages for everything from fast-food workers to house cleaners are going up. And just try to find a place to rent or a house that's affordable. Those of us speeding down Interstate 70 on a regular basis know that the long lines at some exits aren't caused by workers heading off to the resort towns of Glenwood Springs, Snowmass or Aspen; they're heading for Parachute, Rulison and Rifle, where the landscape has been transformed into an industrial zone....
Oil and gas well-ness checkup A gas well a stone's throw from the Hoffmeisters' retirement home south of Silt was on fire, and the area was steeped in oily smoke. Hoffmeister, 69, who has suffered intermittent mysterious ailments since that well was drilled in 2005, ended up at the emergency room. Hoffmeister and hundreds of others believe their aches and pains - and more serious ailments - are directly related to some of the 31,522 wells that dot vast stretches of the Piceance Basin and other oil-rich areas of the state. So do some doctors who treat them. But in this state and others, there are no studies proving a connection. And no agency has been charged with documenting all health concerns, leaving sick residents in limbo. Some energy companies have been willing to help - but without acknowledging a connection between illnesses and wells. Bill Barrett Corp. offered to pay for Hoffmeister to stay in a motel or apartment for six months. It also added controls to minimize emissions. Hoffmeister's condition improved. "We're trying to be as responsive to issues that people perceive as we can," said Jim Felton, a manager with Bill Barrett. He said the company spends several thousand dollars per well to lessen emissions near homes. But industry representatives generally downplay residents' tales of vertigo, bloody noses, tumors, burning lungs and aching joints as well as the more exotic illnesses - rare adrenal tumors, nerve damage and a neurological condition that makes sufferers speak in accents....
Some coal-bed methane wells not producing gas Officials in the coal-bed methane industry have been analyzing how many wells in the Powder River Basin pump water to the surface without producing gas, even after the wells have been running for years. Coal-bed methane is brought to the surface by pumping gas-saturated groundwater off underground coal seams. The groundwater is discharged on the surface. Some of the water is put to use by ranchers and others, but most of it runs away, never to be used. The water sometimes can flood low-lying grazing areas. According to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, more than 14 percent of active coal-bed methane wells in the Powder River Basin were producing only water in December. The state has faced increasing pressure to get a handle on the volumes of water produced by coal-bed methane wells. To date, wells that have not produced gas have produced more than 39,000 acre-feet of water; an acre-foot is enough to cover an acre with a foot of water. Meanwhile, agriculture, industry and regulatory officials appear to have started discussing a possible standard to limit unnecessary water production, and companies are taking inventory of which wells produce gas and which might only be creating water problems....
Easy Target The USGS estimates that invasive species cost the U.S. economy $150 billion in "biological pollution" annually, a cost outweighing all natural disasters combined. From zebra mussels in Virginia ponds and Asian carp in the Great Lakes to feral pigs on Southern California's Channel Islands and goats in the last wetlands of Los Angeles, the battle against the invading hordes rages. But when the species at the center of the dispute is charismatic megafauna, say -- a snow-white deer that has thrived for many generations in one of the last stretches of protected California coastline -- plans to remove nonnatives excites strong feelings and political opposition. Call it the Bambi effect. In the war against the ecological Other, the Park Service is increasingly employing blitzkrieg tactics that put the potshots of Bambi's faceless hunters to shame. ProHunt, the New Zealand company of professional sharpshooters that impressed conservationists with its swift slaughter of 5,000 destructive wild pigs on Santa Cruz Island last year is up for the contract in Point Reyes. With helicopters, high-powered rifles and elaborate GPS mapping and tracking devices, these wildlife managers-cum-snipers are set to restore the balance of nature. The Park Service says its scientific justification is a slam-dunk. The exotics, they say, are a menace to the ecosystem, crowding out the native coastal black-tailed deer, and denuding the landscape. But the science to back this view may be slender, which suggests the decision is motivated as much by ideology....
A better fish ladder? Central Oregon inventor Mark Rubbert believes he has designed a miracle for Pacific Northwest fish. He says his design for a huge, floating, flexible, fish-collecting, water-distributing machine - a modification of the $62 million monster that PGE engineers have already designed for the Round Butte Dam at Lake Billy Chinook - could help millions of little smolts get safely around the region's hydroelectric dams, open hundreds of miles of rivers to salmon and steelhead again and shave millions of dollars in costs from PGE's existing designs. His design, Rubbert is convinced, could affect the lives of millions of people by improving their environment, saving the region's dams and lowering the ultimate cost of their power. Rubbert, a Brothers-area rancher and charter boat captain, has shipped his drawings to the U.S. Patent Office for approval of a patent that he hopes will not just save fish, but make him millions someday....
Enviros: Children 'bad for planet' HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank. The paper by the Optimum Population Trust will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family's carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York. John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: "The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. "The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child."....
Enviro says mankind is a 'virus' and we need to 're-wild the planet' Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth. Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion. The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued. Watson was invoking the worst of Robert Malthus, an English political economist who claimed that mankind was overpopulating the earth. That claimed first appeared in the late 1700s. Watson urged some solutions for mankind as part of a process to “need to re-wild the planet”....
Gore sees 'spiritual crisis' in warming Playing equal parts visionary, cheerleader and comedian, Al Gore brought his message of how to fight global warming to a capacity crowd of receptive architects Saturday in San Antonio. The former vice president referred continually to a "new way of thinking" that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet. "It's in part a spiritual crisis," Gore told the crowd in the Convention Center at the American Institute of Architects national convention. "It's a crisis of our own self-definition — who we are. Are we creatures destined to destroy our own species? Clearly not." Gore told the architects they are in a unique position to help solve the problems by continuing to push building standards and methods that conserve energy and water. The message was in line with the focus of this year's AIA conference, titled "Growing Beyond Green." Gore, seen by some as a polarizing political figure, has long championed environmental issues. In 1992, he wrote the best-selling book "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit," and he won an Academy Award this year for his film "An Inconvenient Truth."....
Mutilated bull: No blood, no clues Robert Allen wasn't surprised when the story of the cattle mutilation last October in the small town of Kanjilon, N.M. was buried way inside the local paper. After all, the hoopla over cattle mutilations - which were a big subject back in the 1980s - has died down in the last decade or so. The problem is that while the newsworthiness of the subject has died down, cattle mutilations have not. He was in the area in October when he heard of a rancher near Kanjilon - a small community of about 200 people south of the Colorado border some 280 miles northeast of Gallup - who came across his prized four-year-old bull dead and mutilated in a field near his home. Not only mutilated but cut in a strange way. Its genitals and anus were cut away and its blood was totally drained. Even odder was that there was no blood where the bull was found. There were also no footsteps or prints of any kind going to or from the bull. Allen went to the site to look at the bull first-hand, and he talked to the family, who were still in shock and worried about what it all meant....
Boots on a fence summon a fleeting era Consider the cowboy boots hanging from a tired, barbed wire fence as your car shoots the ever-closing gap between top-dollar subdivisions described as "highly desirable" and "nicely landscaped." As you pull onto the chewed gravel shoulder of this narrow rural road to accommodate a truck delivering custom cabinets and another churning concrete, consider those worn-out Tony Lamas stained dark red by the spring rain and dripping. There's a hole in the sole of one boot where the ball of a man's left foot broke through years ago and kissed the pebbly Saltese soil. Stories are worn into the soles of these boots, stories of colts broken and calves raised and slaughtered at this crossroad of East 32nd Avenue and Linke Road. Consider what it all means and how these shriveled leather shapes fit into the ever-changing puzzle that is the West, a puzzle without edges. Like so much of what's been done out here the fence is what it is, according to Bob Storm, just because. "I just put them out there," said Storm, a 70-something cowboy, who in the tradition of cowboys keeps his small talk short and simple. His dog Sam, a "pure-blooded black dog," seems to sense all that needs to be said had been said and turns his attention to the ground....
Rare book made more valuable because of its family history, makes it home The pencil had smudged a bit since someone wrote the numeral three followed by two underlined zeros to denote the $3 price of “50 Years in the Saddle” more than six decades before. But the gentle loops of the black pen were unmistakable, untouched, unfettered. Charles Sorenson was floored by what he read: With love to Glen from Mother Christmas 1942 It wasn’t just another copy of a rare book. It was THE copy. He had stumbled upon his Uncle Glen’s book. As Steve Sorenson grew up in northern Campbell County, he looked up to his Uncle Glen, the tall, burley pipe-smoking rancher who had larger-than-life stories to match. He was a decorated World War II veteran with a cowboy hat affixed to his head in most every picture taken. Glen had always been there with a helping hand or encouraging word for Steve. He had guided him through his teenage years, introduced him to his wife on a trip to Story, been a source of inspiration and wellspring of knowledge about ranching. He told stories, recalling the old ranching and cowboy tales from his father — Steve’s grandfather — that filled in gaps of family and local history that were sometimes missing. One of those ranchers was a man by the name of William Pendleton “W.P.” Ricketts....
Wrangler's daughter chronicles cowboy's life “A Red Howell Fit,” scheduled to be out under Raging Brook Press this fall, is Aycock's third book about a way of life often immortalized in movies, serials, and dime novels, though Red was the real thing, not a Hollywood Hopalong. “I've been rich and I've been poor, and I couldn't handle either one of them,” she quoted her father, a rancher and rodeo roper who rode a roller coaster life in the saddle from cradle to grave, raising Beth and his sons along with 3,000 head of cattle on his spread about a four-hour drive from Carlsbad, N.M. in one of his many beloved cars, then suddenly bankrupted in the Depression and back to ranch hand and roper to pick up a few bucks. The title is based on the quick temper of this redheaded rounder who embraced hard work and a code of honor as he carved out his little cattle empire and became known as one of the top rodeo ropers in the country. “The book typifies the Old West experience,” Riggenbach said, describing it as sort of an expose' on the transition from the real old cowboys to the modern Western man, reflected in Red with his stereotypical patriarchal pride and toughness, leathery and hard drinking, but a family man who pushed his kids to read and study, his pockets full of candy for them when he returned from weeks away on the rodeo circuit or a livestock sale while Nell ran the ranch....