NEWS ROUNDUP

Utah boy killed by bear while camping An 11-year-old boy was dragged screaming from his family's tent and killed by a black bear during a Father's Day outing in the Utah wilderness. The boy, his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother were sleeping in a large tent Sunday night in American Fork Canyon, about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, when the stepfather heard the boy scream "something's dragging me." The boy and his sleeping bag were gone. The cut in the nylon tent was so clean, his family, who was not identified, first believed the boy had been abducted, U.S Forest Service officers said. Wearing flip-flops and without a flashlight, the stepfather searched frantically for the boy and then drove a mile down a dirt road to a developed campground. The boy's body was found about 400 yards away from the campsite, said Lt. Dennis Harris of the Utah County sheriff's office. Wildlife officers led by hound dogs killed the bear Monday. After the bear was shot, an examination of the remains confirmed that it was the killer, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said. He declined to say how the confirmation was made "out of respect for the family."....
Judge says hatchery and wild fish differ Native fish conservation groups won the latest round in dueling opinions about the status of wild vs. hatchery salmon and steelhead. U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, sitting in Seattle, on Wednesday struck down a Bush administration decision to consider hatchery salmon with their wild counterparts in determining whether certain runs need Endangered Species Act Protection. The immediate effect of the rulings in two related cases was to change the listing for upper Columbia River steelhead from threatened to endangered. "We are ecstatic," said Kaitlin Lovell, the salmon policy coordinator for Trout Unlimited in Portland. The group is the lead plaintiff in both suits, the first challenging allowing hatchery fish to count with wild for the purpose of listings, and the second the federal downlisting of upper Columbia steelhead. If the rulings stand, it could affect other salmon in which hatchery fish are part of the listing decisions....
Piñon expansion voted down The US House voted overwhelmingly to block expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site on Friday, with 383 lawmakers saying the Army cannot spend money to even study adding 450 square miles to the training area. The rebuke for Fort Carson planners came after two Colorado Congress members offered the expansion-stopping measure as an amendment to a military construction spending bill. Reps. Marilyn Musgrave and John Salazar made impassioned speeches accusing the Army of plotting to seize large tracts of southeast Colorado, which they said could destroy the ranching economy. “You might as well cross southeast Colorado off the map if this expansion goes forward,” Musgrave, a Republican from Fort Morgan, warned during a speech that played live on C-SPAN....
Families Seek Payment in Land Dispute In 1941, hundreds of families in Western Kentucky were told to leave their farmland to make room for a World War II training camp. Over the years, they say, they have been cheated out of an agreement to buy back their land after the war and denied a stake in a government windfall: the discovery of enormous deposits of gas and oil. Now, the families and their heirs are battling the government for what they say is their fair share of more than $30 million in profit. Interviews with residents, historical documents and court records tell the story behind what lawyers say may be the nation’s last remaining land dispute from World War II. “They don’t get around to paying you quickly when they owe you money,” said 83-year-old William Griggs, who had just graduated from high school in May 1942, when his grandfather and other small farmers were told to move off their land. “Everybody was disappointed,” Mr. Griggs said. “But we were patriotic.” Camp Breckinridge, spanning 36,000 acres across Union, Henderson and Webster Counties, was one of a handful of inland camps built to train soldiers far from the threat of coastal attacks. More than 1,000 people were forced off the land, either through negotiated sales or through condemnation proceedings. Their 522 properties ranged in size from 50 acres to 250 acres. Beginning in 1941, families were told to sell or move all their livestock, furniture and crops....
Ovando woman rides her horses to glory Imagine a few hours in the saddle, riding a horse nonstop at a steady trot up and down mountain trails. Think of the pounding and jarring over uneven, sometimes unforgiving and rocky ground. or most of us, it's not too hard to imagine the soreness and aches that would follow. Over two days recently, Ovando rancher Suzanne Hayes racked up two national championship endurance titles - logging 15 hours in the saddle and 150 miles - at the Arabian Horse Association's National Endurance Ride Championships in Montana's Custer National Forest near Ashland. On June 9, Hayes rode her 7-year-old Arabian-thoroughbred cross named Chevy in the 50-mile competition, finishing the ride in about five hours and earning the national championship title in the half-Arabian division. The following day, Hayes climbed aboard her World Endurance contender, a 12-year-old Arabian-quarter horse cross named Quincy for the 100-mile competition, finishing the ride in 10 hours and earning the reserve championship title. Hayes didn't need any aspirin to recover from her whirlwind 150-mile weekend in the saddle. The achievement of finishing and the giant silver trophies she received at trail's end fully numbed any soreness and stiffness. Adding to the sweetness of it all, both horses received “best conditioned” honors by the competition's team of veterinarians, and out of 180 competitors, Quincy was chosen to receive the veterinarian's highest score for fitness and soundness....
Saddling up in a new niche Van Williams, owner of Envision Film and Video, left KENS-TV confident he could run a successful production company filling orders for corporate video projects and commercials. The plan worked, but in short order Williams' portfolio encompassed much more. Little did Williams know that the company he launched in 2001 would become one of the nation's top equestrian filmmakers. He produces “America's Horse” for Dish Network and DirecTV under a contract with the American Quarter Horse Association. And he recently joined forces with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to promote wild mustang adoptions. The new program, “Extreme Mustang Makeover,” airs this fall on satellite channels. “They are truly wild, wild horses,” Williams said. “To put them in a trailer, or a rope around their neck, is major chaos.” The reality-based program follows 100 adoptions for 100 days. It concludes with a cash prize competition, the objective being to reward those trainers who are the most successful at taming and teaching wild mustangs....
Ride For The Brand Ranch Rodeo 100 working cowboys from 25 historic Western ranches will compete with one another and against-the-clock in action packed Ranch Rodeo events at the 5th annual Ride For The Brand Ranch Rodeo on Saturday, July 7th, 2007, at Norris-Penrose Event Center. Kicking off the Rodeo will be the crowd pleasing Texas Longhorn Cattle Drive at High Noon on Friday, July 6. The prize winning heard of Texas Longhorns will be brought to town by Searle Ranch of Monument, Colorado and will make its way south on Tejon Street from Cache La Poudre to the Pioneers Museum. Driving the cattle will be Stan Searle, President of the Texas Longhorn Heritage Foundation, Waddie Mitchell, well known Cowboy Poet and Rancher from Elko, NV and cowboys from the visiting ranches in town for the Ranch Rodeo. At 6:00 PM, Waddie Mitchell, Host on Horseback, will lead off the festivities in the colorful Grand Entry and the Ranch Rodeo kicks into high gear. Evening events are: Wild Cow Milking, Trailer Loading, Double Mugging and Ranch Bronc Riding. Events are timed and judged, with final scores tallied at the conclusion of the Rodeo. At the Awards Ceremony, the winning teams will be awarded Ride For The Brand Silver Buckles and cash prizes. Awards will also be given to Top Horse and Top Hand. Winning teams participate in the WRCA (Working Ranch Cowboys Association) finals in Amarillo in November 2007....
The Death of Jim Dayton On the west side of Death Valley, about 10 miles south of Furnace Creek Ranch, is the well-known grave of Jim Dayton. He originally arrived in the Death Valley country in the early 1880's and drove a 20-mule team. Later in the decade Dayton found employment at the Furnace Creek Ranch in tending livestock and caring for the grounds. In the 1890's he became the ranch foreman. After about 1890 there was very little travel through the Valley of Death. The borax boom of 1883-1888 had ceased, and the owner of the ranch, F.M. "Borax" Smith, maintained the ranch only to hold the ground and protect his nearby mineral properties. Dayton supplied occasional passers-by with horse feed and limited provisions. Because it was practically impossible to keep workers at the ranch, Jimmie Dayton spent much time alone. To obtain supplies and catch up on the news, Dayton made occasional 140- mile round trips from the ranch to Daggett, located just east of Barstow....
It's All Trew: Lamp chores evolved A boyhood chore, learned at an early age, involved filling lamps with coal oil poured from a gallon can with a blackened potato pushed down over the spout. The potato was used to replace the lost cap for the spout. A small tin funnel made the job easier. We also had a coal oil lantern for outside use. Wind kept the glass so smoky mother always said, "We had to strike a match to see if the lantern was lit." As I recall, we had three or four regular coal oil lamps before buying a Rayo design which had a round wick. It was so bright it hurt your eyes and made your forehead hot if you sat too close. However, it did a much better job of heating mother's hair curling irons than the regular lamps. Coal oil originated in the early 1850s when a Pittsburgh druggist named Samuel Kier began selling a bottled oil skimmed from his father's salt brine well. He called it "Pennsylvania Rock Oil." A whale oil dealer purchased a bottle of Kier's oil, refined it by heating and found it burned well in lamps with very little smoke. When Kier heard of the experiment he began refining Rock Oil in a one-barrel whiskey still converting the crude oil into lamp oil. By 1854, Rock Oil was being refined in quantity and was called coal oil and later kerosene, a major petroleum product today....

Will try to catch up on the rest of the news tomorrow night, including some news about New Mexico athletes at the CNFR.