NEWS ROUNDUP

Proof on Ice: Southern Greenland Was Once Green; Earth Warmer In 1981 researchers removed a long tube of ice from the center of a glacier in southern Greenland at a site known as Dye 3. More than a mile (two kilometers) long, the deep end of the core sample had been crushed by the pressure of the ice above it and sullied by contact with rock and soil. By destroying the pattern of annual layers, this contamination seemingly made it impossible to assess the region's ancient climate. But DNA extracted from the previously ignored dirty bottom has revealed that Greenland was not only green, it boasted boreal forests like those found in Canada and Scandinavia today. Biologist Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen and an international team of colleagues discovered DNA from alder, spruce, pine and yew trees at the glacier's base as well as insects ranging from butterflies to spiders. This is the "first evidence for a forested southern Greenland," Willerslev says. And based on the tree species found, Greenland must have been warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) in summer and never colder than one degree F (–17 degrees C) in winter, much warmer than present conditions....
Feds shoot female Mexican gray wolf for killing cattle The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday shot a female Mexican wolf in Catron County, N.M. less than a week after cattle killings that subjected the wolf to a three strikes rule. The program to reintroduce endangered Mexican gray wolves into the Southwest in an area straddling the Arizona-New Mexico border requires the permanent removal of any wolf linked to three livestock killings a year - either by trapping and keeping it in captivity or by shooting it. The wolf, designated AF924 for alpha female 924, had killed two head of livestock before being relocated to Catron County on April 25. The day after her release, county officials demanded she be removed before she killed another cow. Fish and Wildlife said at the time it had no reason to remove her under the program's three-strikes rule. The agency issued a lethal order for the wolf Tuesday night after the weekend killings of a cow and calf. Catron County Manager Bill Aymar said Thursday he's not a fan of the wolf program - "I couldn't be with seeing all that happens down here" - but it was a shame Fish and Wildlife killed the wolf. "If they had actually acted upon our first request and removed that wolf, that wolf might still be alive," he said....
Black-footed ferrets return to Wind Cave park Wind Cave National Park officials are celebrating the release this week of seven endangered black-footed ferrets into the 28,000-acre federal preserve. "It's been thirty years since the last sighting of a black-footed ferret in Wind Cave National Park," acting park superintendent Rick Mossman said in a prepared statement. "We hope this is the start of a self-sustaining population that will restore a missing link to our mixed-grass ecosystem." But ranchers who live near Wind Cave fear that the return of the ferrets could bring a tangle of federal restrictions if the ferrets migrate to adjoining private land. Leonard Wood, who ranches west of the park, said Thursday that he was surprised to learn that ferrets had already been released in Wind Cave. "We thought we had them shut down on that until they did some more work on their impact study," Wood said. "But I guess they're going to do what they're going to do." Like other ranchers, Wood worries that black-footed ferrets will leave park land and end up on private ranches or even subdivisions nearby, bringing with them headaches for private-property owners....
After Lobbying, Wetlands Rules Are Narrowed After a concerted lobbying effort by property developers, mine owners and farm groups, the Bush administration scaled back proposed guidelines for enforcing a key Supreme Court ruling governing protected wetlands and streams. The administration last fall prepared broad new rules for interpreting the decision, handed down by a divided Supreme Court in June 2006, that could have brought thousands of small streams and wetlands under the protection of the Clean Water Act of 1972. The draft guidelines, for example, would allow the government to protect marsh lands and temporary ponds that form during heavy rains if they could potentially affect water quality in a nearby navigable waterway. But just before the new guidelines were to be issued last September, they were pulled back in the face of objections from lobbyists and lawyers for groups concerned that the rules could lead to federal protection of isolated and insignificant swamps, potholes and ditches. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act, finally issued new guidelines last month, which environmental and recreational groups said were much more narrowly drawn. These groups argue that the final guidelines will leave thousands of sensitive wetlands and streams unprotected....
Gas Drillers need permit for water In a ruling with potentially statewide impacts, a 6th Judicial District water judge ruled Monday that coal-bed methane gas producers are no better than other water users: They need a water-well permit the same as farmers and ranchers. The ruling Monday by Judge Gregory Lyman upheld the allegations of Jim and Terry Fitzgerald of La Plata County and Bill and Beth Vance of Archluleta County. If the ruling is upheld, it would affect coal-bed methane drillers statewide, the plaintiffs' attorney, Sarah A. Klahn, said. "The state engineer is responsible for wells statewide, not just in the San Juan Basin," Klahn said. The Fitzgeralds, who raise cattle and tomatoes, and the Vances, who raise hay, sued the State Engineer's Office in 2005. They alleged that the chemical-laced water that is injected under pressure to separate gas from a coal formation and then is extracted along with subterranean water depletes the supply of irrigation water and could result in dry wells or contaminated ground water. In response, the state engineer said the agency has no jurisdiction in the matter, alleging that water extracted from the ground to free methane gas from a coal seam is "produced" water and is not governed by the Division of Water Resources....
National forests short staffed for fires Weeks into a wildfire season that has already burned parts of Catalina Island, Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe, swaths of California's flammable national forests are some days protected by nothing more than luck. On any given day, about 40 of 271 U.S. Forest Service engines remain in firehouses rather than on patrol, idled by a shortage of supervisors. Meanwhile, the combined effects of sustained drought, last winter's freeze and a searing heat wave has dramatically raised fire danger levels this season. An exodus of highly trained mid- and upper-level firefighters from the career ranks of the federal agency is at least partly to blame for the fact that 13 percent of the service's 3,600 full-time positions in California are vacant. Nationally, fire planners from all five federal agencies that handle firefighting are dealing with the departure of a generation of top managers hired during a firefighting expansion in the late 1970s. That has left behind too few career firefighters qualified to run engines, oversee forests or command large fire operations....
No permit for us: Peace group sues Forest Service A longtime member of the Rainbow Family has sued the U.S. Forest Service, saying the counterculture group shouldn't have to obtain a permit for its annual gatherings. The U.S. District Court lawsuit filed by Tony Nenninger, 49, a third-year law student at the University of Missouri at Columbia, challenges a Forest Service requirement that a group of 75 or more that gathers on Forest Service land must obtain a special-use permit. The Rainbow Family is holding its annual peace gathering in the Ozark National Forest in Newton County this year. Officials expect up to 10,000 people to attend the event. The Rainbow Family has long refused to sign the permits, saying they are not an organized group, the lawsuit said. Nenninger is ''a practitioner of a sincerely held religious belief that autonomous intuition of what good samaritan deeds do enhances miraculous karmic archangel protection for practitioners of peaceful voluntary cooperation within this life, and for perpetual evolution of religious freedom from institutional and governmental control beyond our individual lifetimes,'' the lawsuit said....
Wide four-wheelers pose problem A new type of four-wheeled vehicle, known as an off-highway or utility vehicle, is showing up on Montana's national forests, but the Forest Service says it's illegal on national forest trails. The machine looks like a golf cart with a pickup bed and carries two or more passengers who sit side by side, instead of front and back. That tends to make the vehicles wider than 50 inches, which is what the Forest Service objects to. "If they're wider than 50 inches and designed with side-by-side seating, then they're not legal on trails in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest," said Bruce Ramsey, supervisor of the 3.3 million-acre national forest....
Officials want data on pollution threat A project to divert Rio Grande surface water for use in the Santa Fe area is designed to handle possible contaminants that drain into the river from Los Alamos National Laboratory, planners said Thursday. But the city-county project’s manager said the lab should still be responsible for keeping nuclear pollution out of the river. Elected officials overseeing the major water-supply expansion project on Thursday called for a detailed report on the issue. The Buckman Direct Diversion will include a river structure and a treatment plant. The goal is to exploit water rights acquired through a federal project that imports flows from the Colorado River basin into the Rio Grande....
Bike Access to Continental Divide Trail Threatened The 3,100-mile Continental Divide National Scenic Trail (CDNST) runs the spine of the Rockies from Canada to Mexico, and is predominately open to bikes in non-Wilderness areas. However, bike access to the country's longest shared-use trail is now in jeopardy. The International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) reports that the Forest Service just released a draft rule that would encourage land managers to kick bikes off existing routes, and not include bicycling on future segments. The Forest Service suggests prohibiting mountain biking where our use is currently allowed on the CDNST. The proposed policy also singles out bicycling as an undesirable use that should be subject to additional scrutiny and restrictions. These include a burden of proof that bicycling "would not substantially interfere with the nature and purposes of the CDNST," which the Forest Service deems to be hiking and horse travel. IMBA believes that the Forest Service directive should not discriminate against bicycling on the CDNST. This is our chance to ask the Forest Service to include bicycling as a central focus and purpose for the trail....
So, how dirty is the Snake River? An ambitious round of water sampling this summer in the Snake River Basin will help lay the groundwork for a comprehensive watershed plan. One key goal is treating polluted drainage from the abandoned Pennsylvania Mine, near Peru Creek, where toxic zinc, cadmium and other dissolved metals are leaching into the water. Combined with pollution from other sources and naturally occurring minerals in the drainage, concentrations of metals in the Snake are so high that fish can’t survive. The sampling this summer includes EPA tests, as well as more work by state health and water quality officials, while the U.S. Forest Service will take a close look at the status of aquatic insects, the macro invertebrates that form the base of the food chain. Among the agencies doing tests is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which has been sampling the Snake and its tributaries for three years as part of a larger assessment of the environmental effects of historical mining in Central Colorado....
Colo.: Don't drill in basin State officials want to keep oil and gas development out of the uninhabited 77,000-acre Vermillion Basin near Dinosaur National Monument. In a letter sent this week to the Bureau of Land Management, Colorado Department of Natural Resources Director Harris Sherman asks that oil and gas leases not be granted there over the 20-year life of the federal agency's management plan. Sherman's request is part of the state's response to the BLM's revision of the management plan for the Little Snake area that covers much of the northwest corner of Colorado, from the monument to Steamboat Springs. The Vermillion Basin contains about 2 percent of the area's "high potential" oil and gas reserves, according to Sherman's letter sent Monday....
For map junkies — BLM GeoCommunicator Ever wondered where active gas and oil leases are located in your area, or where wind energy could be developed? The Bureau of Land Management has a nifty interactive map viewer, the GeoCommunicator, that shows information on land use and minerals leasing: Some of the authorizations that are available include oil and gas leases/agreements/densities, lease sale parcels, oil shale leases, coal authorizations, geothermal, wind energy, and solar energy. A new Land Status Map Viewer has also been added, which provides land and mineral ownership and use information. This viewer contains information such as U.S. Forest Service boundaries and regulated uses, Federal land title, subsurface mineral estate for Wyoming and New Mexico, and surface management Agency boundaries....
Methane development has big impact on grouse The impact of coal-bed methane development on sage grouse populations in the Powder River Basin is dramatic, according to a recently released study, connoting a gloomy future for the bird if the status quo is maintained. A peer-reviewed study by University of Montana professor Dr. David Naugle and other researchers says that only 38 percent of sage grouse leks, or breeding sites, remained active after coal-bed methane development moved into an area, compared to 84 percent in undeveloped areas. And any leks that do survive within developed areas have 46 percent fewer breeding males than those outside coal-bed methane development. The status quo, as it is practiced in the basin, is 80- to 160-acre spacing for wells. The study says that density is three to six times greater than the level the birds can tolerate. Leks typically remain active when well spacing is greater than 500 acres. The study also noted that seasonal restrictions that ended in the middle of last month, prohibiting surface disturbing activities within two miles of leks and breeding grounds, do not address habitat loss....
Editorial - Examine Cheney's role The House Natural Resources Committee should thoroughly investigate Vice President Dick Cheney's role in the 2002 die-off of more than 75,000 salmon in the Klamath Basin. And it should do so with the same pit-bull tenacity that Cheney has demonstrated time and again in undercutting environmental regulations to further his political and ideological agenda. The committee announced this week that it will conduct hearings on Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management decisions that many believe led to the massive fish kill four years ago. Three dozen House Democrats from Oregon and California, including Congressman Peter DeFazio, requested the hearings after The Washington Post reported details of Cheney's extensive intervention. In a four-part series, the Post reported that Cheney personally contacted Sue Ellen Wooldridge - the 19th ranking official in the Interior Department and then Secretary Gale Norton's top adviser on the Klamath - about his concerns over the Bureau of Land Management's decision to cut irrigation deliveries to farmers. The BLM cut the water flow to farmers to enforce a finding by federal biologists that the diversions posed an unacceptable risk to endangered salmon and suckerfish....
BLM releases EIS on fuels reduction on western public lands As part of ongoing efforts to combat the spread of invasive and noxious weeds and reduce fire-prone fuels on public lands, the Bureau of Land Management today released its Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) comprehensively analyzing the environmental effects of various methods for treating and managing vegetation. The Final PEIS is available for public review and comment through July 30. The PEIS presents detailed, national-level analysis of the risks of herbicide use to humans and sensitive species, as well as to other resources and activities. A programmatic environmental report (PER) evaluates additional treatment methods to reduce the risk of wildland fire by reducing highly flammable vegetation such as pinyon, juniper, and dead or downed woody materials. The two reports will guide field-level planning and projects using mechanical, manual and biological techniques to meet fuel-reduction goals under the National Fire Plan. Both documents are national in scope and contain supporting analysis and data....
Archaeologists follow trail to 1806 Lewis-Clark camp Archaeologists have uncovered a Nez Perce Indian village believed to be the site where three members of the Lewis and Clark expedition spent time on an ill-fated fishing trip. Historians have speculated for years about the route that Sgt. John Ordway and Pvts. Robert Frazer and Peter Weise took when they were sent to fetch salmon for the expedition in the spring of 1806. The rest of the expedition was camped along the Clearwater River waiting for mountain snows to melt when the three men descended into the lower Salmon River gorge and Hells Canyon. Based on Ordway's journal, historians have suspected the men left Long Camp near Kamiah and climbed a steep ridge to the Camas Prairie before reaching the Nez Perce village on the Salmon River. The men arrived ahead of the spring salmon run, so they headed for another site on the Snake River, guided by Chief Twisted Hair. The men stayed there a few days, trading for salmon at the new site before making the three-day journey back to the main camp....