NEWS ROUNDUP

Protecting a Monument Cattle should be permanently retired from grazing on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, according to a study conducted by a team of 10 scientists hired by an environmental group. The researchers, who studied the impact of grazing on the monument for spring through fall from 2003 to 2006, found that it harms riparian areas, promotes noxious weed invasion, disrupts predator-prey dynamics and alters the soil. The research was done in collaboration with the BLM whose own grazing research is expected to be released this fall. "We're incorporating their findings with all the information we received that's pertinent to evaluating rangeland health and whether grazing is compatible with the proclamation," said John Gerritsma, Ashland Resource Area manager for the BLM's Medford District. If the agency doesn't retire grazing on the monument and decides to modify grazing by protecting sensitive areas, the center estimates it would cost at least $4 million over a 10-year-period to build and maintain some 148 miles of fencing needed, he said. That $4 million is in comparison to the $3,664 the agency now receives annually from grazing on the monument and slightly more than $36,000 it could expect to receive in a decade, he said. "That's a pretty expensive slice of beef," DellaSala said. The estimated public cost of buying out the ranchers with grazing allotments on the monuments is about $814,200, he said. Ranchers have also supported the buyout effort....
Wolf kills rise as animals push into new areas Wolves are being killed at an increased rate across the Northern Rockies this year as their population expands and wildlife officials seek to curb their appetite for livestock, state and federal officials said Monday. In Wyoming and Idaho, 90 wolves have been killed to date because of livestock run-ins. That matches the states' figures for all of 2006 even as livestock conflicts were expected to continue through the fall. In Montana, 32 wolves have been killed this year by federal agents - 11 more than at this point last year, said John Steuber, state director for federal Wildlife Services. The Montana figure does not include an unknown number of wolves killed by ranchers defending their livestock. The rising death toll, coming off a record 142 killed in the three states last year, was attributed to the wolves' surging population. Much of the best wolf habitat - where elk, deer and other wildlife are present in numbers dense enough to satisfy the carnivores' hunger - already is occupied, state and federal officials said. That leaves younger wolves to push into areas close to ranches, where sheep and cattle offer tempting targets....
More mystery-shrouded killings plague Eastern Montana sheep More mystery predators are stalking sheep in Eastern Montana. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say that "wolflike canids" have killed two lambs and perhaps 10 additional sheep in Garfield County. One animal, a dark-colored female, was caught in a coyote snare and died late last month. At least two other animals, a light brown one and a gray one, haven't been since Aug. 22, when they were spotted near Jordan, said Carolyn Sime, head of FWP's wolf program. The sightings have a familiar ring in Garfield and McCone counties. Last year, more than 120 sheep were killed. An animal that was shot and killed in November and is believed to be responsible for the depredations was later determined to be what state officials called a domestic wolf, the product of manipulated breeding in a captive environment. The animal had genetic material from wolves in the Great Lakes, Lower 48 and Alaska. Things were quiet after that until Aug. 21, when two lambs were killed on private land northwest of Jordan and wolf-sized tracks were found nearby. Ten sheep on a neighboring ranch were also found dead, but the bodies were too decomposed to make a determination of the cause, Sime said....
Prairie dogs poisoned; rancher incensed Farmers have hated prairie dogs for decades, considering the flea-ridden rodents a threat to livestock and crops. Environmentalists say the critters are land-friendly and invite other animals -- federally protected burrowing owls, snakes, ornate box turtles, cottontail rabbits -- into their colonies. So "prairie dogs" is fightin' words in some parts of western Kansas. And a skirmish happened this weekend out in Logan County. Exterminators under contract with the county showed up on Larry Haverfield's ranch and -- despite his protest -- began using aluminum phosphide gas to poison nearly 100 acres of prairie dog burrows. Environmentalists fear the poisoning may have killed other species besides prairie dogs and threatened a federal plan to re-introduce endangered black-footed ferrets, a prairie dog predator, to Kansas. Logan County officials used a 1904 state law that permits county governments to poison land with prairie dogs and bill the landowner....
Court upholds rancher's $4M win The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider an appeal of a $4 million jury award to a late Garfield County sheep rancher who won his lawsuit against a natural-gas giant over improperly paid royalties. The decision followed a state Court of Appeals decision in February that upheld an August 2004 Garfield County District Court jury award to William Clough. He died last year at the age of 89, so his estate and widow, Genevive Clough, will receive the money. Genevive Clough could not be reached for comment Monday, but attorney Nathan Keever of Grand Junction said with 8 percent interest and other costs, the total amount is approximately $6.7 million. William Clough filed the suit several years ago against the Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Companies....
Park worker details 'out of nowhere' mauling A Yellowstone National Park employee who was attacked by a grizzly Sunday said the bear "came out of nowhere" and flew at him, a Park Service official said Monday. Meyer suffered injuries to his back, left leg, stomach and both forearms, Nash said. Meyer, who was hunting black bear, was near Little Trail Creek for about five minutes early Sunday morning when he encountered the female grizzly with two cubs, Nash said. The bear "came out of nowhere" and attacked, knocking Meyer to the ground and sending his rifle flying, Nash said. Meyer and the bear wrestled on the ground. "He said his instinct at that moment was survival," Nash said. At some point, the cubs began making noise and the female grizzly left to investigate. Meyer crawled over to his rifle and the grizzly came back. It stopped about five feet in front of him and then attacked again, inflicting injuries to his hands and arms as he tried to fight the bear off, Nash said. Meyer said he fired his rifle three times and believes he struck the bear at least once, Nash said. The bear rolled over into a creek. Meyer, thinking the bear might be dead, said he walked back to his vehicle and drove to his home at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone's headquarters. Once he got there, though, he realized he couldn't get out of his car, Nash said....
Fighting fees on public lands Remember trekking up Mount Lemmon, Madera Canyon and Sabino Canyon for free? Then you've been around Tucson a while. A fee demonstration project enacted in 1996 started a "pay to play" trend that hasn't stopped. Recreation fees now are charged at some 400 sites managed by federal agencies, including those three Tucson-area favorites. Having underbudgeted our national parks and forests for decades, Congress decided to do the wrong thing: ratchet up the people's payments. If the money collected were spent to improve the health of our public lands, we might be happy campers. But nearly half the sums collected by the U.S. Forest Service are spent simply to perpetuate the problem program, the General Accountability Office reports. What happens to the rest isn't clear, the GAO says....
Governor Pushes Compromise on Trust Land Gov. Janet Napolitano has taken a more active role on a hard-to-crack issue, meeting with key state lawmakers to launch a new attempt to hash out a compromise on a ballot measure on state trust land. Details of a new proposal have yet to emerge, but several participants in the effort indicated that past proposals to set aside some acreage as open space without compensation to the trust won't be included. ``I think you could characterize it that there will be a mechanism to pay for lands,'' said Michael Haener, a Napolitano deputy chief of staff and her chief legislative lobbyist. ``There won't be free land,'' Sen. Carolyn Allen, a Scottsdale Republican who has been aligned with conservationists and educators on trust land issues, said Monday. Arizona's roughly 9.3 million acres of trust land represent a century-old legacy from statehood that has seen recent unsuccessful efforts to set aside large parcels for conservation as open space while protecting funding the land provides for public schools through sales and leases....
Farmington's John backs Udall's effort to boost American Indian businesses It takes David John less than a month to start a business in Farmington. If the former partner at The Head Shop and owner of Hogan Industries selects Navajo Nation land to start a business, he may wait as long as three years. "Starting a business on Indian land is like starting a business enterprise on federal property such as Bureau of Land Management land," he said. "The procedure consists of 60 or more steps, and people are getting frustrated and quitting." John, a Shonto, Ariz., native who has owned businesses in Farmington for more than 35 years, is pushing for a bill that would aid entrepreneurs on reservation land. He recently returned from Washington, D.C., where he testified on behalf of Congressman Tom Udall's small business development center act. Udall, D-N.M., first introduced his bill in 2001, and it passed through the House twice before dying in the Senate....
SNWA seeks more water The Southern Nevada Water Authority has reversed itself and doubled its demand for water from the Snake Valley straddling the Utah-Nevada state line. SNWA had pledged to pump and pipe 25,000 acre-feet - more than 8 billion gallons - of water annually from the Snake Valley that opponents view as part of the agency's huge "water grab" to fuel Las Vegas' continued growth. Now the application has been upped to 50,679 acre feet per year of the valley's groundwater - the amount Las Vegas water agencies applied for in 1989 -- according to the Bureau of Land Management's Penny Woods, groundwater program manager. Ms. Woods wrote, in an e-mail to a Snake Valley resident, "In July 2007, SNWA revised their application and plan of development to include all of the water they applied for with the Nevada State Engineer in 1989. So, for Snake Valley this is 50,679 AFY." Ken Hill, a Partoun, Utah resident, said the change in the demand for Snake Valley water invalidates much of the ongoing work on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the SNWA "water grab." The DEIS used the 25,000 foot figure for initial scoping to identify potential project impacts....
Baucus vows to fight planned Canadian mine Montana's top Democrat promised “a knock-down, drag-out fight” if coalbed methane plans are pursued north of Glacier National Park. In a meeting Monday with executives from British Petroleum Co., Sen. Max Baucus said BP should expect “a massive and unpleasant fight from Montana” if the company moves ahead with a proposal to open southwest British Columbia to drilling and energy exploration. The senator also warned that fight “will end badly” for BP. “I've been fighting to protect water quality and wildlife in the Flathead Valley for 30 years,” Baucus said after the meeting. “I'm not about to give up now. We're going to do whatever it takes to stop energy development north of our border. We're pulling out all the stops. The gloves are off.” It is a decidedly more aggressive approach than that of Montana's other senator, Democratic freshman Jon Tester. At a meeting last month, Tester said he would work to prevent industrialization of the Canadian Flathead, but would not “jump in the middle and start screaming and hollering.” Tester said that, for now, he favors negotiation and dialogue....
Plan to dump PCB-tainted soil raises concerns Environmentalists are questioning plans by the Port of Seattle to dump contaminated sediment into Elliott Bay, saying it would run contrary to state efforts under way to clean up Puget Sound. As part of a $118 million plan to deepen a docking terminal south of Safeco Field and Qwest Field to make way for more container ships, the Port is planning to dig up 59,000 cubic yards of marine sediment that is slightly polluted with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The issue is what to do with it all. The Port has received federal approval to put it into Puget Sound, but a dozen environmental groups are pushing for the agency to get rid of the pollution, not just move it around. "Given that we already have a PCB problem, they should see this as an opportunity to do something different," said Fred Felleman, a leader of the group Friends of the Earth....
Suit is filed to protect giant Palouse worm The federal government is dragging its heels on protecting the giant Palouse earthworm, so environmental groups said Monday they will sue to speed up the process. Up to a yard long and known to spit on attackers, the giant Palouse earthworm must be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the groups said. "The worm was once common but has been seen only a handful of times in the past 30 years," said a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, Palouse Prairie Foundation, Palouse Audubon Society and Friends of the Clearwater. The groups filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in August 2006 to protect the worm. The agency has not responded to the petition, missing deadlines, the groups said. On Monday, the environmental groups filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the agency for failing to respond....
Agencies Work Together in Black-footed Ferret Reintroduction Efforts When the black-footed ferret was reintroduced in Wyoming in the early 1990s, its survival was not guaranteed. Studies of endangered species taken captive for breeding programs to build a population that could be reintroduced into the wild showed such efforts didn’t always succeed, for several key reasons. Little was known about the black-footed ferret, says Steve Buskirk, University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology professor. In some cases, the environmental conditions that led to declining population numbers -- disease, for instance -- still existed. In others, some inbreeding took place because of the relatively small gene pool of the surviving animals. And in still others, behavioral consequences of living in captivity could not be overcome. The result often is a population that may not be able to sustain itself naturally. “While the data show that species recovery is possible, we knew so little about the black-footed ferret,” Buskirk says....
Bluetongue fears ground Musselshell sheep Sheep producers in Musselshell County cannot transport sheep within or beyond county lines for the next 30 days because of a recent possible outbreak of bluetongue, the state veterinarian has ordered. Dr. Marty Zaluski authorized the hold order Monday in an effort to reduce potential transmission of the virus. About 100 sheep in Musselshell County have died in the past two weeks, according to the Montana Department of Livestock. Several sheep initially tested positive for the virus in a screening test, and when whitetail deer were also tentatively diagnosed, Zaluski decided to protect other livestock with the order. "The sheep from this flock had clinical signs and death loss that is consistent with bluetongue," Zaluski said. "But we still need to confirm that diagnosis. Also, several deer in Musselshell County tested positive for bluetongue." Sheep, whitetail deer and pronghorn antelope are especially susceptible to bluetongue, and the virus often causes death if these species are exposed. Cattle, goats, mule deer and elk also can contract the disease but rarely show symptoms and are a much lower risk to spread the disease, Zaluski said....