NEWS ROUNDUP

Column - They call this a consensus? "Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled." S o said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable. Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent. More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies. My series set out to profile the dissenters -- those who deny that the science is settled on climate change -- and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world's premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop -- the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series. Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position....
New protections proposed for bald eagles The Fish and Wildlife Service wants to replace four decades of federal protections for the American bald eagle with new rules against disturbing it. In a push to remove the nation's symbol from the endangered species list, the wildlife agency is writing new regulations under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to protect the birds and their nesting, breeding and feeding areas from anything likely to cause them harm. The law, which dates to 1940, says only that bald eagles cannot be disturbed. Since 1967, when the bald eagle was listed as an endangered species, it has benefited from much tougher protections. The government's new interpretation of the 1940 law, proposed Friday, would allow the birds to be moved in rare cases if their nests or breeding and feeding grounds were in the way of an airport runway or some other development. Killing or injuring them accidentally would not be punishable. Fish and Wildlife, which is part of the Interior Department, must meet a June 29 court-ordered deadline in deciding whether to remove the bald eagle from the endangered species list. A federal judge in Minnesota ordered the agency last year to remove the eagle from the list unless the government could prove further delays were necessary. The order came in a lawsuit brought by Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of a Minnesota landowner who wants to develop property with an active bald eagle nest....
Cougars or humans: Which are intruders? The notion that mountain lions are encroaching on people in the Great Plains draws a chuckle from Gary Jepson, who has lived smack in the middle of cougar country most of his life. The 66-year-old trapper and rancher says it's the hunters and outdoors enthusiasts who are intruding on the cougars' domain. "Human activity in this lion habitat has probably increased 100 times over," he said, atop a wind-swept bluff in western North Dakota's Badlands overlooking prime cougar territory. Cougar stories in the Plains and the Midwest have become more frequent in recent years. In 2004, Illinois reported only its second confirmed cougar sighting in more than a century. North Dakota has its share of unusual mountain lion stories, ranging from a cougar following mountain bikers on the Maah Daah Hey Trail in southwestern North Dakota to a dead lion found frozen in the ice on Lake Sakakawea. In the past six months, four lions have been caught in bobcat traps or snares in western North Dakota. The combination of more deer for lions to eat and more people out in the wilderness to see the cats "makes this appear like an explosion [of lions], when it really is not," Jepson said....
A Fresh Battle In South Dakota's Prairie Dog War Here on the sun-parched prairie, where rain seems as rare as gold dust, the fight over federal grassland is unending, pitting the backers of the crowd-pleasing prairie dog against the supporters of the humble cow. This week, the Bush administration could open the door to poisoning more of the furry rodents in order to help the cattle. A new environmental assessment will say that more prairie dog colonies can safely be targeted. Although the U.S. Forest Service will not make a decision until after a 45-day public comment period, conservation activists started to complain even before federal staff members in recent days mailed the document to politicians and advocates. Challenging ranchers who rely on public land for grazing, activists warned that a reduced habitat for prairie dogs would pose setbacks for Great Plains biodiversity and fragile communities of black-footed ferrets. The ferrets, masked members of the weasel family, were all but extinct a decade ago but have slowly been returning with careful attention from the federal government. It happens that the ferrets, often called the most endangered mammal in North America, prefer one delicacy to all others: prairie dogs. They eat almost nothing else. The controversy is unfolding as ranchers feel embattled and environmentalists feel emboldened by the national momentum toward conservation and "green" policies. Myron Williams, a prominent rancher in Wall, just north of the contested Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, has been pressing political appointees in the Bush administration to act while they still can....
Ferret release on hold pending conclusion of county’s lawsuit It’s been eight months since Mike LeValley submitted a 22-page environmental assessment report that would guide any effort to reintroduce black-footed ferrets into prairie dog towns in Logan County. It likely will be many more months before that report ever sees the light of day — or at least publication in the Federal Register, something that is needed before the prospect can move forward. As a result, it’s unlikely that ferrets will be reintroduced in Logan County again this fall, considered that’s the ideal time for releasing the animals. Under normal procedure, LeValley’s report would have gone from the Denver office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upstream to the Washington office and ultimately be published in the Federal Register. The public then would have at least 30 days to comment on the plan. Then, and only then, could LeValley and his team at the FWS ecological field office in Manhattan start the process of reintroducing the nation’s most endangered mammal into an area where it once thrived. But for some reason, the report has been put on hold. For an unusually long time, officials say. The agency says the delay is a result of Logan County’s lawsuit that seeks to force the poisoning of prairie dogs on land where the ferrets would be reintroduced. Prairie dogs are considered a pest in Kansas and state law allows counties to poison the animals and then send a bill to the landowners. The Logan County lawsuit seeks to force ranchers to remove cattle from their land so the controversial poisoning program can continue. Rozol, the poison of choice, cannot be used when cattle are present....
The restoration: Five years later Walking a narrow path through the middle of Pinehurst Ranch, Laurie Glauth moves between the stark challenge and subtle joy of regeneration. To her right, a line of newly strung fence, pulled taut as piano wire, surrounds acres of scorched ponderosa pine amid an emerging bed of native grasses that will become grazing land. To her left, naked, singed remnants of towering aspen rise above remarkably lush new growth - a grove whose slender shoots reach as high as 20 feet. "How do you mitigate the damage?" says Glauth. "You cross your fingers a lot and hope Mother Nature heals herself." It's been five years since the Hayman fire burned a 138,000-acre footprint on the landscape after a U.S. Forest Service employee carelessly ignited a letter from her estranged husband amid drought- stricken woods. The worst wildfire in Colorado history destroyed 132 homes over six weeks, cost an estimated $238 million in damage and rehabilitation, and burned so hot it created its own weather beneath towering clouds of smoke and ash. It turned most of Pinehurst into a blackened moonscape. Five years. Half a decade to begin repairing the wide-ranging effects of the fire - from lost natural resources to crippled local economies to suddenly sludge-laden watersheds. But barely a heartbeat in the centuries-long process of restoring a forest....
Grayling savior - science or politics? The fluvial arctic grayling are one of Montana's rarest fish. That wasn't always so. At one time, the easily fooled grayling were caught by the basketfuls to feed hungry homesteaders, miners and cowboys all the way along the upper Missouri River drainage. Over-fishing, competition from introduced non-native trout, and habitat degradation slowly pushed the fish best known for its large dorsal fin back into the upper reaches of the Big Hole Basin. Now there's perhaps a few thousand that survive in this last stronghold. In this high mountain valley where cattle are more common than humankind, there's a debate being waged on what's the best way to save the last native river-dwelling arctic grayling population in the contiguous United States. On one side stand the valley's ranchers, many of whom can trace their lineage back the first few who ventured into this place known for its nutritious mountain grass. Over the last few years, many of them have taken up the call to protect precious grayling habitat by fencing off their river and creek channels, building fish ladders and installing water measuring devices on their irrigation head gates. It's all part of an effort to protect themselves from the fallout that could occur if the fish were listed under federal government's Endangered Species Act. On the other side are those who believe the federal law's umbrella of protection is the only sure way that Montana's population of fluvial arctic grayling has a chance to survive....
Cache County in Dispute with U.S. Forest Service over Roads Cache County is fighting with the U.S. Forest Service over whether it can claim to own nearly every mile of road on the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The county council has passed two resolutions in six months declaring it owns 197 miles of roads in the national forest and it intends to claim another 150 miles of road in the future. The county wants to own the roads so it can maintain them. "We as a county are stepping up and saying . . . these are our roads," said Cory Yeates, a council member who has heard numerous complaints that forest roads are often blocked or in poor condition. "By law, they are (now) county roads," says Yeates. The Forest Service disagrees. "The Forest Service and other federal agencies don't really have the right to grant that to them," said Kay Shurtz, engineer for the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. A court would have to determine whether the county's claims to the roads are valid, he said. A Civil War-era mining law allowed counties and cities to use routes across federal land. That law was repealed three decades ago, but existing rights of way were grandfathered in. Confusion now exists on what constituted an existing right of way....It's interesting how these reporters refer to the mining law as a "Civil War-era" relic. The Constitution is just under a hundred years older than the mining law. Yet, those same reporters don't refer to the First Amendment as a "Revolution-era" amendment. No sir, not when their rights are protected.
Out of the ashes, questions still burn I f ever you were caught in the path of a forest fire, believe me, you'd want to have John N. Maclean with you. This is a man informed about the behavior of fire -- about its tendencies to blast over hillsides and through canyons, to jump across roads and giant boulders, and to glow in wild and disturbing colors. Maclean knows how spot fires are doused, how big burns are controlled with the right kind of digging, and he knows how to gauge when it's simply time to get out of fire's way -- running from oncoming flames as fast as possible. Rather than a firefighter or a scientist studying the properties of fire, Maclean is a writer and the author of such fire-related books as "Fire and Ashes" and "Fire on the Mountain," as well as the volume he helped publish after his father Norman Maclean's death, "Young Men and Fire." His latest book, "The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal," is an account of a travesty and a tragedy, the story of a forest fire that started out as a small blaze in the narrow Chewuch River canyon in Washington state, near the Canadian border, in July of 2001, but quickly became more fierce and powerful than anyone could control. Over-stretched managers, who were concentrating on the huge Libby South Fire in the North Cascades Range, underestimated the blaze. By the time these higher-ups realized the seriousness of a fire to which they'd sent mostly inexperienced firefighters, a crew was trapped (along with two campers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time) and four firefighters were dead. Maclean follows the mostly rookie crew forced to deal with the Thirtymile Fire, and we're with that rag-tag group as they realize they're fighting an all-consuming monster instead of a no-big-deal blaze....
Woman who started wildfire to leave U.S. prison next June Terry Barton, the former Forest Service worker convicted of setting the Hayman fire, is scheduled to be released from federal prison next June. Whether she will serve more time in a state prison remains unclear. Barton said she accidentally set the fire after she had burned a letter from her husband while on the job in the Pike National Forest. Barton was sentenced in 2003 to a six-year federal term, which computes, with good behavior, to about five years and two months. She also took a plea deal that carried a 12-year sentence on state arson charges, which likely would have been cut by half or more. That sentence was to run concurrently with her federal sentence....
Hayman recovery: 600 years Five years after the epic Hayman Fire blackened 138,000 acres of pristine Front Range woodlands, nature is sending some promising signals. A greenish hue tints the landscape, the once- blackened ground colored by blue gramma grasses and splashes of sage. Trees are returning, too. Not yet the signature ponderosa pine, but willows and cottonwoods filling in along denuded streambeds. Aspen, also, are resurfacing, their labyrinth root systems sheltered from the fire. Still, it will be centuries before the forest returns to the condition it was on June 7, 2002 - the day before a distraught Forest Service worker started what scientists believe to be the worst wildfire in the southern Rockies in at least 700 years. On Sunday, June 9, the fire raced 19 miles in 13 hours, a freakish explosion of energy so hot it sparked advance fires a mile ahead of its frontline and sent waves of heat to 21,000 feet....
Otero County says fire hazard may increase County officials say the risk of fire in the Lincoln National Forest could easily and steadily increase over the next eight years, if the right conditions remain in place. "Our most recent study shows that conditions will worsen for us over the next eight years, if things continue as they have been," Commissioner Mike Nivison said Friday. Otero County Emergency Services Coordinator Paul Quairoli said there are three factors that will determine the potential for increased fire risk. "These factors are the amount of moisture we receive, the defoliation and the amount of dead trees left in the forest," Quairoli said. "If the dead trees are not removed, they just add to the fire fuel." Quairoli said the depth of the fuel bed, the living above-ground biomass including conifer needles, always determines surface fire behavior. "If the trees die and are not removed, they become snags, standing dead trees or fallen ones on the forest floor. They will accumulate a massive fire fuel load in the forest," Quairoli said. It takes up to 1,000 hours of moisture to alter the combustibility of a tree from dry to saturated with moisture, according to Quairoli....
Snowbowl, feds appeal ruling barring snowmaking at ski resort The owners of the Arizona Snowbowl ski area and the federal government are asking an appeals court to reconsider a March ruling barring the use of treated wastewater to make snow. This week's filings are the latest step in a multi-year court battle between tribes and the owners of the resort on the San Francisco Peaks outside Flagstaff. The Department of Justice, Forest Service and the Snowbowl asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling it made largely on religious grounds. Attorneys for the government and the Snowbowl contend the ruling sets a dangerous precedent, giving almost anyone the power to set up serious roadblocks anytime the government grants a use of public land that they disagree with. They also contend that the three-judge panel's ruling departs from established case law. The filing said the court should have relied on an earlier case that said Native Americans' religious rights were not harmed by the commercial ski area so long as other areas on the San Francisco Peaks were available for religious activities....
Wyoming's natural gas boom sees growing pains On a windy Friday afternoon in Sublette County, Wyo., Ensign Rig No. 121 clanks and moans as it drives steel pipe 11,500 feet into the ground to capture natural gas. Just a few hundred yards away, framed against the stark blue sky, a half-dozen antelope bound across the sagebrush desert. Until recently the county's three million acres served mostly as a quiet and relatively isolated habitat for the herds of grazing animals. But at the moment it's hard to hear anything other than the hulking mechanism's steady percussion. "I guess you could say it's like a gold rush out here," shouts 44-year-old supervisor Todd Arnold over the racket, with the 15-story derrick looming behind him. "Everything is going full bore right now. We keep all the components of this thing moving all the time - 24 hours a day, seven days a week." They can't afford not to. Arnold and his five-man crew are at the epicenter of the biggest boom ever to hit this part of cowboy country. His employer, Canadian natural gas giant EnCana, has drilled 374 new wells in Sublette in the past three years alone. A host of other multinational oil and gas companies, such as BP (Charts) and Exxon Mobil (Charts, Fortune 500), have rushed in as well. The promise of $25-an-hour starting pay for drillers has drawn thousands of men from as far away as Texas and Florida to this once-sleepy corner of western Wyoming. Arnold, who came from Utah, works up to 18 hours a day and makes more than $150,000 annually. A confluence of events in the global energy market brought the drillers here. In recent years Russia and Venezuela, both big natural gas suppliers, nationalized their fields, shutting off access to foreign companies. Simultaneously, natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico - the source for 10 percent of American consumption - declined some 40 percent from 2000 to 2005, as easy-to-drill reserves were depleted and explorers had to move to deeper water. The tightening supply, combined with ever-increasing demand in the U.S., has helped lead to a quadrupling of the price of natural gas over the past decade. And that has created a new urgency to drill for Wyoming's "unconventional" gas - which sits not in easy pools above oil, but thousands of feet beneath the earth in pockets of sandstone and coal formations....
Ducks Unlimited praises Congress for addressing grassland loss A briefing from a new report the Governmental Accounting Office will release this summer says conversion of native prairie grasslands is a growing problem. Ducks Unlimited believes this report and others will help Congress focus on solutions to prairie losses as it writes the new 2007 federal farm bill. “Ducks Unlimited is working with Congress to address grassland loss in the new farm bill legislation,” said Ducks Unlimited (DU) Executive Vice president Don Young. “Interim Results: Impact of USDA Payments and Sodbuster on Grassland Conversions to Cropland” was prepared for two key Senate and House committees working on the new federal farm bill. The report provides compelling evidence that farm program payments contribute significantly to grassland loss in the Prairie Pothole Region. More than 70 percent of North America’s ducks are hatched in this region annually. DU supports the Sodsaver provision to help stop grassland losses. Sodsaver was recently included in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s farm bill proposal. It would eliminate eligibility for federal payments - particularly crop insurance and disaster payments - on newly broken acres without a cropping history....
Dutch try to grow enviro-friendly meat in lab Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter animals. "We're trying to make meat without having to kill animals," Bernard Roelen, a veterinary science professor at Utrecht University, said in an interview. Although it is in its early stages, the idea is to replace harvesting meat from livestock with a process that eliminates the need for animal feed, transport, land use and the methane expelled by animals, which all hurt the environment, he said. "Keeping animals just to eat them is in fact not so good for the environment," said Roelen. "Animals need to grow, and animals produce many things that you do not eat." Research is also under way in the United States, including one experiment funded by U.S. space agency NASA to see whether meat can be grown for astronauts during long space missions. But it will take years before meat grown in labs and eventually factories reaches supermarket shelves. And so far, Roelen and his team have managed to grow only thin layers of cells that bear no resemblance to pork chops....
They Die in Brooks County At the Side Door Café in Falfurrias, Texas, body counts enter conversations as naturally as the price of feed, or the cost of repairing torn fences. “I removed 11 bodies last year from my ranch, 12 the year before,” said prominent local landowner Presnall Cage. “I found four so far this year.” Sometimes, Cage said, he has taken survivors to a hospital; mostly, however, time and the sun have done their jobs, and it is too late. As increased U.S. border security closes certain routes, undocumented migrants continue to come but squeeze onto fewer, more dangerous and isolated pathways to America’s interior. One of these is the network of trails that bypasses the last Border Patrol checkpoint traveling north on Hwy. 281, in Brooks County. That change is having a dramatic ripple effect on the county (total pop: 7,685), and on people who have lived here for generations. Pictures of the dead are kept discreetly in certain places in this town, a collective album that tells an important part of what Brooks County—which used to be better known for oil, watermelon, and a Halliburton facility—has become in the last couple of years: a grave for the weak or unlucky....
America, by horseback Like journalistic legend Charles Kuralt and faux newsman Borat Sagdiyev before him, Bill Inman is embarking on a trip across the United States searching for the true American spirit, as well as for stories and people that aren't typically featured on the nightly news. The most obvious difference between Inman, 47, and his predecessors is that the loquacious Lebanon resident is making his cross-country trek on horseback, with a videographer tagging along every step of the expected 32-week-long adventure. The journey began Saturday during Lebanon's annual Strawberry Festival parade. From there Inman moseyed east along Highway 20 toward Sweet Home - the first of many small-town stops he expects to make between Oregon and the East Coast. If all goes as planned, the Inman expedition will wrap up early next year in Hendersonville, N.C. Inman is hopeful that by then, he'll have compiled enough footage to piece together a documentary film or series that showcases a side of rural American life that he believes is generally overlooked by mainstream media outlets....
Learning the ropes It's 140 degrees in the rope stretching room. Gary Mefford, employed 33 years, dabs his forehead as he strings ropes inside. The heat will permanently remove the spiral effect caused by coiling. It's 9:55 a.m. Five minutes until recess. Dan Morales, who joined the team in 1978, whirls a lasso around his torso, checking its stiffness. Andy Lucas flips a switch and twists strands of nylon and polyester into what will become a fine lariat. The clock on the cement wall in the basement reads 9:59.33 a.m. Close enough. Four grown men bound up the steps. It's break time -- or recess -- at King's Saddlery and King Ropes in Sheridan, a company known worldwide for its high quality, handmade saddles, ropes and tack. King's is fiercely devoted to regular Wyoming cowboys who do real work in a place that remains the real West. It is a business, like its Sheridan-area home, whose employees know how to cowboy up and play hard. Today, the gunslinging wild West has mellowed, but its spirit lives on in Sheridan's cowboys and ranchers. And it lives in the saddle and rope shop founded by Don King more than 60 years ago. Don grew up cowboying with his father around the West. Along the way, he learned how to tie his own ropes and build his own saddles....