NEWS ROUNDUP

Judge: Bush officials broke law by not reporting on warming The Bush administration has violated a 2004 congressional deadline for presenting the latest scientific research about global warming to lawmakers and the public and must submit its report by next spring, a federal judge ruled today. Federal officials have "unlawfully withheld action they are required to take,'' preparing a new scientific assessment by November 2004 and a research plan by July 2006, said U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland. "Congress has imposed clear-cut, unambiguous deadlines for compliance.'' A 1990 federal law requires the government to produce a scientific report every four years on climate change and its effects on the environment, including land, water, air, plant and animal life and human health. The Clinton administration issued the first report in October 2000, warning of severe effects on different regions. The Bush administration has not issued a report and, according to environmental groups that filed the lawsuit last November, has tried to bury the Clinton report....
Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts Steve Johnson scans the hot, translucent sky. He wants to make rain -- needs to make rain for the parched farms and desperate hydro companies in this California valley. But first, he must have clouds. The listless sky offers no hint of clouds. Inside a darkened room near the Fresno airport, Johnson's colleagues study an array of radar screens. If a promising thunderstorm appears, Johnson will send his pilots into it in sturdy but ice-battered single-engine planes, burning flares of silver iodide to try to coax rain from the clouds. This year, there have been few promising clouds, to the dismay of the farmers, ranchers and power companies who hire Johnson's cloud seeders. "We can increase the rainfall by 10 percent. But Mother Nature has to cooperate. Ten percent of zero is zero," says Johnson, a meteorologist and director of Atmospherics Inc. A few miles south of Fresno, Steve Arthur is looking the other way for water. His company is working around the clock drilling wells to irrigate fields in California's 400-mile-long Central Valley, one of the most productive food-growing areas in the world. "People are really starting to panic for water," said Arthur, whose father started drilling wells in 1959. They must drill ever deeper to tap the sinking water table....
Panel approves rules for railroad eminent domain New rules that likely will help determine whether the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad can use eminent domain to acquire land for its proposed expansion project were approved Tuesday by a legislative panel. The Legislature’s Rules Review Committee endorsed rules that the state Transportation Commission passed last week. The commission has been asked to grant the Sioux Falls-based DM&E eminent domain to acquire land in western South Dakota so it can extend its east-west line into Wyoming’s coal fields in the Powder River Basin. Before state agencies’ rules can take effect, the legislative committee must first approve them. Tuesday’s action means the DOT commission’s rules take effect about Sept. 10. Once that happens, the commission can restart the process of considering DM&E’s application for the right to condemn property....
$25M Punitive Award Against Texaco Tossed in Mont. Pollution Case A divided Montana Supreme Court has reversed a jury's $25 million punitive damages award against Texaco Inc. for contaminating a town's groundwater and properties with benzene. In a 5-2 ruling the high court said the trial court's decision to exclude testimony from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on talks with Texaco about the contamination was erroneous. "These negotiations could have shed light on Texaco's state of mind and correspondingly whether it acted with actual fraud or actual malice," the high court said. However, the Supreme Court upheld a $16 million jury award to fund the restoration of a school and 82 neighboring properties. Texaco operated a gasoline refinery outside Sunburst, Mont., from 1924 until 1961. Gasoline leaked from pipes for many years and contaminated the surrounding soil, according to court documents....
Rep. Salazar seeks support on Pinon Canyon Rep. John Salazar remains "hopeful" that his brother, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, will ultimately decide to support a yearlong moratorium on the Army's plans to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site when Congress resumes work in September. "He hasn't told me 'no' and I am hopeful that he will ultimately support our legislation," John Salazar, the 3rd District Democrat, said Monday. "Believe me, I intend to keep working on him. Ken is still hoping there is a middle ground, but I don't think there is." The legislation is the 2008 military construction appropriations bill, which the House approved in June, including an amendment from John Salazar and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., to block the Army from spending any money on the expansion next year, including money for preliminary studies. The 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon site is located in Las Animas County northeast of Trinidad, within the 3rd District. The Army intends to add 414,000 acres to the site, most of it coming from Las Animas County....
Federal forest official faces contempt hearing A federal judge in Montana has ordered the Bush administration's top forestry official to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court for the U.S. Forest Service's failure to analyze the environmental impacts of dropping fish-killing fire retardant on wildfires. If found in contempt, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, could go to jail until the Forest Service complies with the court order to do the environmental review. Noting that Rey had blocked implementation of an earlier review, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Malloy in Missoula, Mont., ordered Rey to appear in his court Oct. 15 unless the Forest Service completes the analysis before that time -- an outcome Malloy deemed unlikely. "It has been six years since Forest Service staff completed a 'retardant EA' -- only to have higher-up officials embargo it," Malloy wrote in an order issued late Friday. "The time I am giving is likely to prove insufficient if: 1) the agency is simply unwilling to follow the law; or, 2) it is prevented from following the law by its political masters, as was the case when Under Secretary of Agriculture Mark Rey ordered that formal (Endangered Species Act) consultation regarding fire retardant not to occur." Forest Service spokesman Joe Walsh said the agency was working on the analysis, but he could not say whether they would meet the new deadline, because it was two months away. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, an environmental group based in Eugene, filed the lawsuit in 2003, a year after more than 20,000 fish were killed when toxic retardant was dropped in Fall Creek in central Oregon....
War on fire takes a toll on fish One fish kill stretched five miles down Washington’s Omak Creek, and wiped out more than 10,000 trout and steelhead. Another fish kill hit five miles of Colorado’s Mancos River. Others hit several Oregon streams. The cause? Fire retardants dropped by airplanes, as federal agencies battled wildfires during the past three years. The plume of chemicals reaches streams in “less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all the retardant drops,” estimates Alice Forbes, at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. But with 15 to 18 million gallons dropped mostly by federal agencies in an average year, and as much as 44 million gallons dropped in a bad fire year, even the small percentage ending up in streams is too much, says Andy Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics....
Basin man found guilty of fencing Forest Service land for grazing A Basin-area man has been found guilty of fencing off U.S. Forest Service land to graze his horses. Joseph Robertson, 68, who lives five miles northeast of Basin, was tried in absentia after failing to appear at his bench trial Aug. 9. Prosecutors said sometime before Oct. 15, 2006, Robertson used cable and signs saying "Private Property" and "No Trespassing" to block a short section of road in Big Lumber Gulch north of Basin. Robertson later excavated trenches, fenced off 5 acres of Forest Service land for a horse pasture and let his horses run free on land surrounding his private land, according to court records. U.S. Magistrate Keith Strong found Robertson guilty of two counts of blocking or interfering with the use of a road, trail or gate; damaging a road or trail; constructing a fence or enclosure on National Forest Service land without authority and allowing unauthorized livestock to enter the Forest Service lands. A sixth charge of allowing livestock on public lands without a permit or lease was dismissed. Robertson was fined a total of $2,625....
Sage grouse span multiple breeding areas In the quest for the perfect male, female sage grouse in Jackson Hole move from lek to lek, a finding that could have important implications as sage grouse populations continue to decline in the rest of the state. This past summer, Craighead Beringia South biologists used Global Positioning System collars and radio collars to track 15 breeding-aged female sage grouse as they moved among leks at the Jackson Hole Airport, on the National Elk Refuge and in Grand Teton National Park. A lek is where male sage grouse gather to put on a competitive mating display for females. Dominant males defend key locations in the lek from potential rivals. Females then choose the male they wish to breed with, usually the dominant males. According to Beringia biologist Bryan Bedrosian, scientists previously thought that female sage grouse stayed at one lek for the duration of the breeding season. Though the results of the study are preliminary, Bedrosian said its clear that some females in Jackson Hole used more than one breeding area....
Idaho Officials Trap Grizzly Bear Family It’s like a real-life story of Goldilocks and the three bears – but there’s no Goldilock, just the three bears, some beds and some porridge. In this story, the three rambunctious grizzly bears in the Island Park Ranger District of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest of Southeastern Idaho have been captured. The bear family is a five-year-old female and her two cubs. The momma bear was first captured two summers ago in Harriman State Park after getting nosy with a trash compactor. She was given number 502. The momma bear actually is more like Goldilocks in this story because it appears she’s been finding trouble all over the area: raiding apple trees near Ashton, Idaho, (that’s kind of like the porridge part) and being relocated twice. This time the bear was raiding a vacant tent (that’s kind of like the bed part) near Moose Creek on August 16. U.S. Forest Service officials closed the area and let biologists and conservation officers set traps to snare the bad news bears....
Group sues to block project Concerning the impact to wildlife, there's no disagreement. Yet there is a lawsuit. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership filed suit against the U.S. Department of Interior on Friday over the authorization of 2,000 new oil and gas wells in south-central Wyoming. The Atlantic Rim project, according to the Interior's own Bureau of Land Management, would "have adverse impact to suitable habitat for many wildlife species," including iconic big game species including mule deer, elk and antelope. The 1,000 miles of pipeline and 1,000 miles of new roads associated with the wells would transform the hunters' paradise "to an industrial setting," according to the BLM's Atlantic Rim environmental impact statement. The conservation group, and others, agree. The rub is that the BLM said the development should proceed anyway....
Feds hope new report will lead to drilling in Arctic oil reserve Under orders from a federal judge, the Interior Department on Monday released a revised report of how oil and gas exploration would affect one of the most important habitats for calving caribou and migratory birds in northern Alaska. The department hopes the updated report will help put it back on track to lease 400,000 acres around Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to oil and gas companies eager to expand operations on the fuel-rich North Slope. “This sets the stage for determining future actions,” said Sharon Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management in Anchorage. The report by the Bureau of Land Management contains broader descriptions than before of wildlife, industry and Alaska Native communities in the region, but makes few concrete appraisals about how drilling would affect the area....
BLM requires helicopters for logging by hiking trails Bill Taylor pauses along one of his regular mountain-biking routes near the Molalla River and fishes a seemingly endless line of string from the forest floor. The string, discarded after it was used to lay out an upcoming tree-thinning operation, can be murder when it gets wound up in bike sprockets, Taylor said. It also hints at potential conflicts between recreational users and commercial loggers in the next few years. This summer, the federal Bureau of Land Management sold about 10.5 million board feet of timber in an area that includes the Molalla River Shared-Use Trail System. The thinning operation, known as the Annie's Cabin timber sale, will affect 566 acres sprinkled in small patches throughout the area, which includes about 25 miles of recreational trails built almost entirely by volunteers. The winning bidder for the $1.9 million sale was the family-owned Freres Lumber Co., headquartered in Lyons, where about 435 employees produce veneer, plywood and lumber. Thinning likely will begin next year if there are no valid appeals, said Rudy Hefter, natural resource staff administrator for the BLM's Cascade Resource Area....
BLM cuts scope of auction in half Responding to protests from environmental groups and hunting and fishing interests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has slashed by half the size of today's auction of oil and gas leases in Utah. The BLM said it will offer at its auction this morning 39 parcels of oil and gas leases encompassing about 68,521 acres in Juab, Millard, Rich, San Juan, Summit and Uintah counties. However, it originally planned to auction mineral leases to 81 properties, or about 141,000 acres. "We've deferred action on 42 parcels so that we can go back and revisit all of our data and documentation to make sure that we didn't make any errors in offering those properties for lease," said Terry Catlin, energy support team leader at the BLM's Utah office in Salt Lake City. Under federal law, BLM state offices are required to hold an auction of oil and gas leases at least four times a year. As part of that process, anyone can file a protest questioning whether it is appropriate for the agency to offer any or all of the properties for lease....
New prion protein discovered by Canadian scientists may offer insight into mad cow disease Scientists have discovered a new protein that may offer fresh insights into brain function in mad cow disease. “Our team has defined a second prion protein called ‘Shadoo’, that exists in addition to the well-known prion protein called ‘PrP’ ” said Professor David Westaway, director of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta. “For decades we believed PrP was a unique nerve protein that folded into an abnormal shape and caused prion disease: end of story. This view is no longer accurate,” Westaway adds. The study was conducted jointly by the University of Toronto, University of Alberta, Case Western Reserve University (Ohio) and the McLaughlin Research Institute (Montana). The research is published today in the EMBO Journal and represents a culmination of work initiated at the University of Toronto in 1999, and then continued more recently at the University of Alberta. This is the first discovery since 1985 of a new brain prion protein....
Battle over cattle tags pits food safety against Amish religious rights Glen Mast doesn't own a computer and doesn't want one, but he and other Amish farmers complain the state Department of Agriculture is insisting they tag their cattle with electronic chips in violation of their religious beliefs. State agriculture officials say the radio frequency chips are necessary to track animal diseases and protect public health. Mast and other Amish farmers say the chips' 15-digit number is the Mark of the Beast warned of in the Bible's book of Revelation. ``We're a people who are inclined to mind our own business,'' Mast said, sitting in the wood shop he operates without electricity on his Isabella County farm. His small herd of dairy cows lounged in the shade of the barn. Across the road, one of his sons raked hay with a team of horses. ``We're never happier than when we're just left alone,'' Mast said. ``That's all we're asking.'' All over Michigan, Amish farmers are resisting the state program requiring that all cattle be tagged with the electronic chips before they can be sold. Some say they will quit farming if it comes to it. Some say they will leave the state. ``They keep saying that, and that's their choice,'' said Kevin Kirk, who coordinates the program for the state agriculture department. ``Our No. 1 goal is animal health, human health and food safety. I know it's hard sometimes to trust the government, but that's what we're asking is trust us.''....
Montana’s new horse testing rule deadline extended The grace period for Montana’s new horse testing rule has been extended to Sept. 7. The Montana Board of Livestock recently approved a new rule to require all horses coming into Montana be tested for Equine Viral Arteritis (EVA), a respiratory virus that also causes abortion in mares. The new testing requirement was supposed to go into effect on Aug. 20. “That’s just too soon,” said Dr. Jeanne Rankin, acting state veterinarian Dr. Jeanne Rankin. “Some of the tests are complicated and take a long time to run.” Also, a stallion could test positive because he contracted the virus naturally or has been vaccinated previously. If a horse tests positive for EVA, further complex tests that identify the specific virus must be run before the horse is allowed into Montana. The complexity of the tests require specialized equipment so veterinarians must send samples to either the National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, Iowa, or the Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Lab in Fort Collins, Colo....
Horseback traveler headed to Wyoming Bill Inman has no doubt that he will finish what was started nearly three months ago, when he left his hometown of Lebanon, Ore., and embarked on a horseback journey across the United States. "This is the most rewarding and hardest thing I've done in my life," said Inman, who is headed into Wyoming this week after traveling nearly 900 miles through Oregon and southern Idaho astride his horse, Blackie, followed by his small support team in a pickup truck. He hopes to wrap up his expedition early next year in Hendersonville, N.C. A videographer is capturing on film the dozens of interviews Inman has conducted with ordinary and extraordinary small-town folks he has met along the way. Two dozen clips from the journey are posted online on YouTube. Inman hopes to ultimately make the footage available in a more comprehensive package, possibly in a documentary showcasing a side of rural American life that he believes is overlooked by mainstream media. "What I've seen so far is the real America - the heartland," Inman said. "We've met some incredible people from all different backgrounds."....
A pampered, yet unridden bull in the Burch Rodeo string could be the next big name in pro rodeo circles Outwardly, little separates the black bull from his brothers. Like many of the Burch Rodeo bulls, he weighs 1,200 pounds or more. He may be a bit taller or wider, but not by much. Sure, he has no horns. But that just seems to add to his attitude. “He looks like a black muley right now,” owner Matt Burch says. “But it don't matter what they look like. It's a matter of what they do.” This is one mean, ornery bull, but he doesn't often show it. Until he's around humans, that is. The co-owner of Burch Rodeo with his brother, Chad Burch, Matt's speciality is raising bulls. He's ridden bulls in the past, as well, but even he shivers at the idea of taking on Huskemaw. “For a dude that big, it's hard to believe what he can do,” Burch said. “I wouldn't want on him. He doesn't like people.” The 5-year-old bull has made eight trips in pro rodeos so far this year. He's made up to 35 trips overall, since he healed after tearing off a toe at the age of 3....
It's All Trew: Myths of the South Plains Ever wonder why the Panhandle of Texas and the South Plains were among the last areas of the Great Plains to be settled? The book "Land of Bright Promise" by Jan Blodgett tells why and how it all happened. Here are a few excerpts from his excellent volume. The Spanish explorers were the first non-Indian visitors to the Llano Estacado. Their journals were well-documented but were written in Spanish and mostly confined to the Mexican Republic. The first American explorers, Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long, were more interested in finding a way to the Pacific Ocean and saw the Great Plains as being "an obstacle blocking the path of the explorers intent on what lay beyond." Myths and images of the area had taken hold of the public imagination at the time. Government reports, travel journals, textbooks, articles and illustrations in magazines, newspapers and novels all introduced the Panhandle and South Plains as "a desert, a haven for desperate characters, heartless ranchers and renegade Indians." In 1819, the Stephen Long Expedition christened the area as "the Great American Desert" and wrote the title across the map he drew of the area. By 1882, and for the next 50 years, map publishers copied the Long map for all publications....