NEWS ROUNDUP

Kempthorne puts new face on Interior Department On a bright day in late June, Dirk Kempthorne took the steps of the Jefferson Memorial to trumpet the resurrection of America's symbol, the bald eagle. His agency had worked for weeks to produce inspiring tales about the eagle's comeback, cute shots of eaglets and their protective parents, and stunning TV footage of the soaring bird. It paid off. The announcement that the bald eagle was being removed from the endangered-species list was Washington, D.C.'s good-news story of the month. The eagle's recovery likely wasn't the only accomplishment on Kempthorne's mind. After more than a year on the job, Kempthorne, the former Idaho governor and U.S. senator, may be the Bush administration's most popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill. Democrats and Republicans alike praise him for pumping more money into national parks, repairing the department's relationships with Congress, and moving beyond the scandals that damaged the agency in recent years....
Maine groups threaten to sue for US protection of lynx Three Maine conservation groups were among 21 organizations that filed a notice of intent yesterday to sue the US Fish and Wildlife Service over its actions regarding the Canada lynx. In a letter to H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the groups said they want to force the agency to designate critical habitat for the lynx in Maine and four other states. The Natural Resources Council of Maine, Restore: The North Woods, and the Wildlife Alliance of Maine are the three Maine groups that signed onto the letter. Last month, Hall ordered a review of eight endangered species decisions, including one involving the Canada lynx, after an allegation that a senior Interior Department official had improperly meddled with the rulings. The agency had proposed including more than 10,000 square miles of Maine woods and 8,000 additional acres in Minnesota, Idaho, Montana, and Washington in critical habitat zones for the lynx, which is listed as threatened. But all of the land in Maine and all but 1,841 acres of the other lands was excluded in a final rule published in November by the Interior Department after a top department official met with timberland owners that did not want their properties placed in critical habitat zones....
Natural forces offset global warming last two years: study Natural weather variations have offset the effects of global warming for the past couple of years and will continue to keep temperatures flat through 2008, a study released Thursday said. But global warming will begin in earnest in 2009, and a couple of the years between 2009 and 2014 will eclipse 1998, the warmest year on record to date, in the heat stakes, British meteorologists said. Existing global climate computer models tend to underestimate the effects of natural forces on climate change, so for this analysis, Met Office experts tweaked their model to better reflect the impact of weather systems such as La Nina, or fluctuations in ocean heat and circulation. Instead of using approximations, they used real data on the state of the ocean and the atmosphere to generate forecasts of climate change for the decade beginning in 2005 and running through 2014. The projections suggested that while man-made greenhouse gases would raise temperatures over the long run, cooler water in the tropical Pacific and a resistance to warming in the Southern Ocean would counteract the effect of global warming in the early years of the decade....
Water managers reach river deal State water managers announced Wednesday they have forged an agreement to keep enough water in the Colorado River through the rest of the summer to protect endangered fish and sustain the rafting industry on the Western Slope. The Colorado River Water Conservation District, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and several utility and irrigation companies in the Grand Valley and on the Front Range worked together for three weeks to replace water that likely would have been lost because of recent damage to Xcel Energy’s Shoshone power plant in Glenwood Canyon. The groups agreed to allow 1,200 cubic feet per second of river water to flow through Glenwood Canyon through Labor Day and 810 cfs along a stretch of the river near Palisade that contains endangered fish through October, according to Jim Pokrandt, spokesman for the river district. A water pipe that burst in June, effectively shutting down the power plant, prompted the negotiations because Xcel Energy owns senior water rights on the river. Xcel’s 1,250-cfs right allows it to call water downstream to produce electricity at the plant, and that water is made available to other downstream water users....
Nevada plans hearing on developer's water plan Another effort by Reno businessman and powerbroker Harvey Whittemore to get rural Nevada water for a huge development he's building about 50 miles north of Las Vegas is scheduled for an Oct. 30 state prehearing conference. Whittemore's Tuffy Ranch Properties LLC has filed 54 applications with the state water engineer to change existing water rights in Lake Valley from irrigation use in the valley to domestic use in Whittemore's Coyote Springs project, more than 100 miles to the south. The applications, involving about 11,000 acre-feet of underground water, have been protested by White Pine County and by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Other critics include Louis Benezet of Pioche and Jo Anne Garrett of Baker, both opponents of efforts to export rural Nevada groundwater. A Tuffy Ranch Properties attorney has said approval of the application wouldn't hurt neighboring ranchers in Lake Valley or even the farms and ranches that Tuffy bought up and operates in the valley. Benezet and Garrett have questioned whether there will be enough water for the environment and outlying ranches given the efforts by Whittemore and also by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which is planning a big pipeline to carry rural water to Las Vegas....
Editorial - Land board sets bad precedent with 'agents' Wyoming's Board of Land Commissioners should reverse its decision to appoint energy companies as "agents of the state" in a land access dispute. Such a designation suggests that the coal-bed methane companies are acting on behalf of the citizens of Wyoming. There may be some overlap, but the firms involved are working primarily in their own interests. The board says it has the right to give three companies the authority to cross Powder River Basin rancher Kenny Clabaugh's private land, to access a state parcel he leases for grazing. Clabaugh maintains the companies should have to negotiate an easement agreement with the ranch, as another coal-bed operator has done. Facts and fairness appear to favor Clabaugh's position. Low-lying grazing pastures on his ranch were flooded when state regulatory agencies permitted a number of CBM water discharges upstream from his operation. The agencies failed to consider the cumulative impact of the volumes of water in the drainage. Clabaugh asked the state to either reduce the flow of CBM water or pipe it across his property. But the state merely wants to dig a ditch through the pasture....
Once rare black-footed ferrets make comeback in U.S. West The black-footed ferret, once the rarest mammal in the world, has made an astonishing comeback in the U.S. state of Wyoming after a captive breeding program, researchers said on Thursday. An estimated 223 of the weasel-like animals are busy hunting prairie dogs in the Shirley Basin area, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Science. The animals are all descended from seven ferrets rescued in 1986, Martin Grenier of the University of Wyoming and colleagues reported. "The thing that is neat about this is it shows there's good potential to recover the species. We might be able to make faster progress than we've made in the past 15 years," Grenier said in a telephone interview....
It's time to confront policies that harm Mexican gray wolf numbers In order to recover wolves, we must increase population numbers while lowering conflicts with cattle. This means federal mangers must stop killing wolves and prosecute anyone who does so illegally. This also means that public lands grazing permittees must learn to either live with native wildlife or move their cattle elsewhere. Those in Catron County seem largely unwilling to tolerate wolves or even accept monetary compensation for livestock losses. But a win-win solution does exist. With 400,000 acres of Gila ranches now for sale, it seems many grazing permittees are looking to relocate. Importantly, many conservation buyers want to purchase these ranches and use their allotments for wildlife habitat instead of domestic forage. Federal legislation allowing for voluntary permit buyout can make this a reality. Financially compensating ranchers who want to give up their grazing permits will ensure an end to wolf-cattle conflicts and truly allow for the recovery of the Mexican gray wolf....
Rules on Scattering Remains Draw Protest Frances Coover's business, Ladies in White, lays to rest cremated remains in forest, mountain or meadow on public lands. With more Americans opting for cremation, Coover knew the business, which she started earlier this year, would fill a need. But after performing the service for her first paying client, at a place she won't disclose, Coover found herself at odds with the federal government. The Forest Service has a long-standing policy of rejecting requests to scatter remains on its lands, citing concerns that survivors of the deceased may try to interfere with management of the land. The Bureau of Land Management had no policy against scattering remains, however, so Coover applied for a permit there. Rejected, she has vowed to fight the BLM's decision....We know they don't want us there alive. Apparently, they don't want us there dead either.
BLM proposes major upswing in logging Federal officials want to nearly triple logging allowed on 2.5 million acres of forests in Western Oregon, in part by cutting older trees that are protected now and reducing reserves for the northern spotted owl. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's draft plan also would triple federal payments to 18 Oregon counties and create as many as 3,500 new jobs, the agency said Thursday. Many of those counties have had to make steep budget cuts in recent years as federal timber revenue and a safety net replacing that money have declined. Much of the increased logging would be of older trees that have been off limits under the Clinton administration's 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. The "preferred alternative" in the BLM's draft plan would boost logging of trees 200 years and older sevenfold over the next decade, from 5,100 acres to 34,800 acres. The U.S. Forest Service also is pushing hard to increase logging on national forests in Oregon, as The Oregonian reported Thursday. The two agencies' efforts reflect a drive by the Bush administration to boost logging, which has fallen well short of goals set by the Northwest Forest Plan....
Passion for the Land Aldo Leopold's Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author of A Sand County Almanac. Julianne Lutz Newton. xviii + 483 pp. Island Press, 2006. $35. In "Odyssey," an essay from his posthumously published masterpiece, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold traced the fictive histories of two atoms, pulled from parent rock and sent into ecological circulation at two different moments in North American history. Atom X, coaxed from limestone into the world of nutrient flow by a burr oak root when Native Americans ruled the prairies, meandered along a complex path through a fine-functioning ecosystem before haltingly descending the watershed to the sea; by contrast, atom Y, born from bedrock into a settler land of wheat and cattle and corn, moved downstream much more rapidly before being lost to the muck of the ocean floor. These two journeys seem intended to illustrate a basic ecological lesson about interconnection and complexity. But in the hands of Julianne Lutz Newton, they become parables of Leopold's own intellectual journey and his contributions to ecological science. As Newton notes in her superb new book, Aldo Leopold's Odyssey, Leopold began his career as a forester, studying the world of atom Y and its ilk and striving to make short-circuited systems of resource production more efficient. But over the course of four decades, as he came to see the land as a complex biotic community, he argued that land managers needed to respect the goodness of atom X's inefficient, diverse journey....
Shawnee Cattle Trail Here Long Before The City Was A network of cattle trails snaked up from Texas through Indian Territory in the 1800s. One of them passed through Shawnee, the West Shawnee Cattle Trail. Although the trail shares its name with Shawnee, it is thought the name was derived from a Shawnee village on the Texas side of the Red River. Texas drovers began driving their longhorn cattle to northern markets in the 1840s. They used a primitive route, later named the Shawnee Trail, formed by the Indians and southbound settlers from the Midwest. As the use of the trail increased, opposition arose from local farmers. The longhorns carried ticks that bore Texas Fever, which infected other cattle causing them to die or be unfit for market. In the 1850s, angry farmers formed blockades to head off the herds and sometimes kill the longhorns. Legislation was passed to stop diseased cattle from being brought through the territory. The law failed because the longhorns were immune to Texas Fever and were only carriers. After the Civil War, beef was a prized commodity in eastern states. Texas ranchers met the demand with a supply of millions of longhorns. The sheer volume of cattle that had to be moved changed the inner workings of the pre-war cattle drive into a monumental operation....