NEWS ROUNDUP

We own the Eberts/Elkhorn Ranch; now, what shall we do with it? Now that the Eberts Ranch has been acquired by the U.S. Forest Service, it might seem that the long struggle to protect Theodore Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch is over. Not quite. The 5,200-acre Blacktail Creek Ranch (aka the Eberts Ranch) now belongs to the people of the United States, to be supervised by the U.S. Forest Service. That's the province of Dave Pieper and Dakota Prairie Grasslands. Pieper has pledged to keep the Eberts acreage open to traditional uses, which include grazing, oil development and recreation. The ranch includes the 5,200 acres recently acquired, and the 18,000-plus acres already owned by the U.S. Forest Service that were leased by the Eberts family. The Medora Grazing Association would like the Eberts acreage, one parcel of the 290,000 acres of National Grasslands in Billings County, simply to be divvied out to area ranchers for traditional grazing purposes. This makes a kind of sense. The two traditional economic "uses" of the Badlands have been grazing and mineral extraction. In other words, it's cattle and oil country. If Dakota Prairie Grasslands is serious about continuing to support traditional uses of the land, why not fill the vacuum left by the departure of the Eberts family by letting other ranchers lease the grass? Such an outcome would not be the worst thing that ever happened. But there is a much better use for the land in question, and it would be a terrible mistake not to take advantage of this historic moment on this historic property to take public grazing in North Dakota to the next level of thoughtful conservation and wise management. Instead of simply parceling the acreage out and letting it slip below the public radar, Pieper would like to turn the Eberts-Elkhorn acreage into a grassbank. The grassbank idea is relatively new (1990s), which is the main reason some people find it threatening....
As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Up Open Land in West William P. Foley II pointed to the mountain. Owns it, mostly. A timber company began logging in view of his front yard a few years back. He thought they were cutting too much, so he bought the land. Mr. Foley belongs to a new wave of investors and landowners across the West who are snapping up open spaces as private playgrounds on the borders of national parks and national forests. In style and temperament, this new money differs greatly from the Western land barons of old — the timber magnates, copper kings and cattlemen who created the extraction-based economy that dominated the region for a century. With the timber industry in steep decline, recreation is pushing aside logging as the biggest undertaking in the national forests and grasslands, making nearby private tracts more desirable — and valuable, in a sort of ratchet effect — to people who enjoy outdoor activities and ample elbow room and who have the means to take title to what they want. Some old-line logging companies, including Plum Creek Timber, the country’s largest private landowner, are cashing in, putting tens of thousands of wooded acres on the market from Montana to Oregon. Plum Creek, which owns about 1.2 million acres here in Montana alone, is getting up to $29,000 an acre for land that was worth perhaps $500 an acre for timber cutting....
Lead From Carrion Killing Off Calif. Condors When the dairy farmers around Bakersfield, Calif., see the white Dodge pickup truck with the brown logo of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the door, they know it's time to bring out their dead. The biologists come by every couple of weeks to collect the bodies of stillborn calves and haul them to walk-in freezers strategically positioned around the state. Then, in the dark of night, they drag the bovine corpses into clearings visible at dawn from the heights flown by California condors, a species that has battled back from the brink of extinction but is not yet trusted to feed itself. The massive birds now fly, nest and reproduce reliably outside zoos. But left to plan their own meals, they will swoop down on the carcasses of animals killed by hunters and, in gobbling the carrion feast, ingest chunks of the bullets that scientists now call the most persistent threat to the reestablishment of California condors in the wild: secondhand lead. In the belly of a 25-pound bird, a .308-caliber round leaches lead into the bloodstream far more efficiently than any toy coated with lead paint. Scientists have seen a condor drop out of the sky dead from lead poisoning, and they have recorded blood lead concentrations in sick birds 40 times the level considered toxic in humans. The evidence, including striking increases in those lead readings during deer-hunting season, stirred the California legislature this summer to pass a bill that would ban lead ammunition in condor habitat....
Climate Change Likely to Increase Fires Climate change is likely to increase the number of wildfires fueled by invasive weeds that are spreading throughout the Great Basin, researchers told a U.S. Senate subcommittee Thursday. Researchers described a potential increase in the amount of cheatgrass and other invasive weeds that populate the region and have fueled wildfires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the West. Ecologist Jayne Belnap told a meeting of the public lands and forests committee that some climate change models predict average temperature increases of up to 11 degrees by the end of the century, as well as increases in precipitation and carbon dioxide levels. The combination means more cheatgrass and potentially more wildfires. "There's a lot of reason to expect (wildfires) will increase," Belnap told the subcommittee meeting in Las Vegas. "The biggest reason is we'll have drier soil, we'll have drier fuels. ... most climate models would project that they will increase." The Great Basin covers 73 million acres and touches five Western states. Just more than half of the region is public lands....
Big Sea Treaty Would Crush Entrepreneurs The Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST, is the most important treaty you've never heard of. It would turn over all of the world's unclaimed natural resources to a second United Nations and is moving ever so steadily toward Senate ratification. Back in the 1970s, some Third World governments loudly campaigned for a global socialist economic order of more foreign aid, U.N. regulation of business and collectivist resource development. LOST is a result. It declared all seabed resources to be the "common heritage of mankind," levied fees and royalties on Western mining and oil companies, created a monopoly company to mine the seabed, and established a new international body to divvy up the spoils. President Ronald Reagan refused to sign the treaty in 1982, leaving it to sink beneath the waves. But President Bill Clinton decided to "fix" LOST. After winning a few small concessions, the U.S. signed. For years, opposition in the GOP-controlled Senate prevented American ratification, but more than enough other countries assented to bring LOST into effect. President Bush now supports the accord. In broad sweep, LOST covers three subject areas. The first includes exclusive economic zones, fishing, marine research, ocean pollution and oil exploration. The second covers navigational freedom. The third covers seabed mining — and it is here where the treaty's worst parts lie....
A manifesto for a new environmentalism Rachel Carson opened Silent Spring, her 1962 polemic against chemical pesticides, with a terrible prophecy: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth." She proceeded to narrate a "Fable for Tomorrow," describing a bucolic American town "where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings." The nearby farms flourished, the foxes barked, and the birds sang in a kind of pastoral Eden. "Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community." Cattle died. Children died. And the birds stopped singing. It was a silent spring. The moral of the story was obvious: Apocalypse was imminent unless humankind stopped violating nature. And so it came to pass that the environmental movement's highest priority would be to limit our contamination of the world around us. This "pollution paradigm" worked well enough--for a time. Regulatory legislation of the 1960s and '70s cleaned up our lakes and rivers and greatly reduced smog in our cities. In the 1990s, it dealt with acid rain and phased out ozone-depleting chemicals. Given these successes, it's not surprising that environmental leaders have seen global warming, which is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, as, essentially, a very big pollution problem. In the summer of 2006, Carson was resurrected in the form of Al Gore, whose documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, began with images of power plants belching pollution and ended with scenes from the apocalypse: hurricanes, floods, and droughts. In case viewers missed the point, Gore observed, "It was almost like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation." And he warned, "It's human nature to take time. But there will also be a day of reckoning."....
The Greatest Dying Two hundred fifty million years ago, a monumental catastrophe devastated life on Earth. We don't know the cause--perhaps glaciers, volcanoes, or even the impact of a giant meteorite--but whatever happened drove more than 90 percent of the planet's species to extinction. After the Great Dying, as the end-Permian extinction is called, Earth's biodiversity--its panoply of species--didn't bounce back for more than ten million years. Aside from the Great Dying, there have been four other mass extinctions, all of which severely pruned life's diversity. Scientists agree that we're now in the midst of a sixth such episode. This new one, however, is different--and, in many ways, much worse. For, unlike earlier extinctions, this one results from the work of a single species, Homo sapiens. We are relentlessly taking over the planet, laying it to waste and eliminating most of our fellow species. Moreover, we're doing it much faster than the mass extinctions that came before. Every year, up to 30,000 species disappear due to human activity alone. At this rate, we could lose half of Earth's species in this century. And, unlike with previous extinctions, there's no hope that biodiversity will ever recover, since the cause of the decimation--us--is here to stay. To scientists, this is an unparalleled calamity, far more severe than global warming, which is, after all, only one of many threats to biodiversity....
Eight elk’s ancestors are part of a herd that numbers as many as 800 He is a descendent of a herd started nearly 40 years ago in the Rochelle Hills south of Gillette. His lineage can be traced back to the efforts of one landowner — a rancher who introduced elk to the surprising variety of geography in the Rochelle Hills. The landscape ranges from rugged canyons to gentle, red-orange scoria-carved hills. It slopes from tall, steep ridges to gentle steppes that flatten into the golden grass-covered plains. Small creeks flow throughout — some for just part of the year. Squares of private land and surface coal mines dot the landscape as well. But the elder bull knows little of those boundaries. This isn’t where you’d expect to find elk, especially those bearing huge racks of antlers. And yet, the herd in this isolated, southeast Campbell County area rivals the more infamous herds found in the northwestern mountains of Wyoming. It’s the only big-game herd started by a private landowner in Wyoming, long before the state introduced game-farming laws and made such practice illegal. Burton “Burt” Keith Reno was the third generation of his family to operate the Heartspear Ranch south of Wright. His great-grandfather, Burton Jones Reno, worked on ranches in the area as far back as the 1890s. His grandfather, Burton Everette Reno, bought up homesteads to form the ranch that is now along the Edwards-Reno Road near School Creek. Then it was Burt’s turn....
Superior Lumber Arsonists: Burned by their own fire In the cold, early morning hours of Jan. 2, 2001, five strangers with sinister plans based on misguided ideals drove toward this small town at the south end of Douglas County. As Glendale families slept, a different kind of “family” was about to unleash havoc, lighting the dark sky not with fireworks like some might have used to welcome the New Year, but with flames of protest. Shortly before 2 a.m., the Earth Liberation Front members pulled up to the Superior Lumber office at 2695 Glendale Valley Road. Within the hour, the building would be burnt in half. As the arsonists slipped away up Interstate 5 toward Eugene, they listened to scanners as reports came in of the fire that would cause more than $1 million in damage and scar a community. Nearly seven years later these five individuals, known to a loyal few as environmentalists but prosecuted as terrorists, have been brought to justice....
Judge holds jail threat over administration's top forest official A federal judge warned the Bush administration's top forestry official Friday that he could go to jail for contempt of court in a case challenging U.S. Forest Service use of fire retardant. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, Montana, issued the warning in a written order canceling a contempt hearing for Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey that had been scheduled for Monday. The judge said he needed time to read 200 pages of material filed at the last minute by the Forest Service. Judge Molloy wrote that, if the government does not comply, he'll reschedule the contempt hearing and Rey will be required to appear and show cause why he should not be held in contempt, and jailed. The judge also gave the Forest Service 10 days to produce the environmental analysis the agency did on fire retardant six years ago, in order to evaluate the "legitimacy" of the analysis.
The BLM plays with fire in Oregon Everyone here in Oregon loves our forests. These lands — most in public ownership — are the cornerstone for both the economic and ecological health of the state, and are central to our identity. Indeed, more and more of us are making our homes in the woods every year, in the so-called “wildlands-urban interface.” And so, whether we are loggers, conservationists or vacation-home owners, we all share a common fear: fire. Uncontrolled, stand-replacing wildfire can destroy in a day all the forest values that took centuries to develop. Therefore, it’s hard to believe that the Bureau of Land Management would propose to drastically increase the risk of wildfire on their forestlands in Oregon. Yet that is exactly what the agency is doing. This burning secret is hidden deep within the BLM’s recently-released Draft Environmental Impact statement for its Western Oregon Plan Revisions, or WOPR, pronounced “whopper” by just about everyone. Arising from an out-of-court settlement between the Bush administration and a timber industry group, the plan discards the present management framework governing 2.5 million acres of low-elevation forests throughout western Oregon and the Klamath Basin. Current management includes an extensive network of reserves that were established to assure the survival of the threatened Northern Spotted Owl, and that are off-limits to commercial logging. The draft plan would eliminate those reserves, drastically reduce no-cut buffers along streams, and instead designate commercial logging as the “predominant” use. BLM is promoting this change as a way to dramatically increase timber revenues. That prospect is very tempting to Oregon counties, which have financed public services for decades on their portion of federal-land timber receipts....
Chertoff may void judge's order to halt border fence The nation's top security official may use his power to unilaterally trump a federal court order halting construction of a fence on a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is weighing whether to invoke a section of federal law that allows him to exempt border construction projects from any law, his press aide, Russ Knocke, told Capitol Media Services. That includes requirements for studies on environmental impacts of federally funded projects. The move would not be unprecedented: Chertoff used the power at least twice since it was granted. In 2005 he decided to build fencing near San Diego without conducting environmental studies. And in January he issued a waiver from all laws for a project along the edge of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Southwestern Arizona. The possibility of Chertoff again exempting his agency from environmental laws comes days after a federal judge in Washington stopped construction of a nearly two-mile stretch of fence at the foot of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area southeast of Tucson....
Public lands precedent? Recently, the Utah Bureau of Land Management cancelled an oil and gas lease sale, citing the need to further study the impact of drilling on wildlife habitat. Conservationists think the cancellation – the first in over 25 years – sets a national precedent for protecting wildlife habitat from energy leasing. But the BLM disagrees and public-lands experts say that isn’t necessarily the case. The BLM says many factors, including a recommendation by the Utah Department of Wildlife to increase the study of wildlife habitat, led to the cancellation of the 141,717-acre Nov. 13 sale. But an agency document cites an Interior Department judicial board ruling as a reason for deferring a majority of the 86 proposed sale parcels. In November 2006, the Interior Board of Land Appeals, which rules on Bureau of Land Management policy, ruled on a lease sale appeal filed in Utah by the Center for Native Ecosystems. The board said that the appropriate time to consider potential impacts of drilling is when public land is first proposed for leasing, before sales are made. This is the first time an IBLA ruling has had a hand in parcels being deferred from leasing, and conservationists were elated....
BLM Horses Improving After Salmonella Outbreak Wild horses at the Nevada Bureau of Land Management's Palomino Valley Center are improving after 156 died or were euthanatized due to a range of illnesses, including an outbreak of salmonella that prompted BLM officials to close the center to the public Sept. 26. "The recovering horses are adapting to their diet of hay," said JoLynn Worley, BLM spokesperson. "They're stabilizing and putting on weight." The recovering horses are among 983 gathered from the Jackson Mountain area and brought to the Palomino Valley Center in late August and early September. However, Worley said, several horses in the herd arrived at the facility showing signs of having weathered a drought-plagued summer in the desert. "There are always some horses in a gather that are in poor condition or that have a hard time transitioning to normal feed, but not this many," she said. "This time all the wrong conditions came together. "The horses were eating brush because no grass was available and they had limited water," Worley explained. "Salmonella is present in all animals' guts, but horses' digestive systems are particularly sensitive. The harsh diet contributed to the Salmonella blooming out of control.'....
Suit over checkerspot threatened Plans by the Lincoln National Forest to spray sections of the forest affected by the looper infestation may have hit a snag. The Forest Guardians announced in a press release Friday that it will file suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. The suit alleges the federal government is in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The release states the Santa Fe-based organization is petitioning to have the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly listed as an "endangered or threatened species." It also calls on the Interior Department to designate "critical habitat" for the butterfly. The group filed a petition with the Fish and Wildlife Service June 28 this year to list the butterfly. Under the Endangered Species Act, the department must make a finding within 90 days as to whether the species is endangered or not. The group states that finding is now overdue. The organization is giving the Interior Department 60 days within which to make a ruling, after which it says it will file a lawsuit. The Forest Guardians argue that the checkerspot butterfly is found only within a six-mile radius of Cloudcroft and the use of Btk to kill the loopers will also kill the butterfly larvae, which are now actively feeding....
Water fight in Caldwell County splits neighbors, political allies Former Texas Comptroller John Sharp once was a political godfather to state Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs. In 2002, Sharp, then running for lieutenant governor, hosted one of the first fundraisers for the fresh-faced Rose, who was just out of college and challenging a Republican incumbent. Today, Sharp and Rose are not speaking. The relationship had deteriorated to the point that immediately after the legislative session, Sharp said he was "sympathetic" to someone challenging his fellow Democrat for re-election. The source of their falling out? Water. Specifically, Rose refused to give Sharp's friends — water developers — special treatment in a bill trying to bring groundwater regulation to this Caldwell County ranching community for the first time. The eastern extremes of the county are a no-man's land, a rare sliver of water-rich Texas on the outskirts of Austin surrounded by pumping regulations but beyond any regulatory hand on the local spigot. It is a microcosm of the money, politics and tension between rural communities with water and the state's sprawling urban areas. Water (read money) is so emotional it pits neighbor against neighbor and, in this case, split political allies....
Ranchers now see need for water rules The debate in this ranching community used to be whether any government regulation was necessary for the area's water. Today, it's quickly becoming whose rules should apply. "I've changed my mind," said rancher Tony Spears, who four years ago opposed any attempts to regulate the underground water in this area. His embrace of regulation, however limited, is a recognition of economic reality and legal uncertainty. His lawyer, Ed Small Jr., said he's unsure how much longer water developers can depend on the age-old precedent that a landowner can pump water from his land without regard to its effect on his neighbors. "I can't guarantee Tony that if he puts in a big well, he could pump the heck out of it," Small said. Instead, the squabble is whose rules should apply. And those rules vary greatly from county to county over the same aquifer. Regulators use production caps, export fees, spacing between wells and acreage limits to restrict how much water can be pumped....
Fat is beautiful — and profitable — to biodiesel makers Millions of Americans are trying to avoid fat, but Jason Christensen isn't one of them. He seeks it out every day. A trader for Agri-Trading, based near Minneapolis, Christensen looks for as much fat as possible. Fat is sizzling, and biofuels are cooking up the demand. Fats can be used to make biodiesel and can be cheaper than making the fuel with soybean oil. "When you tie food to fuel, it … affects different segments of the economy that people never thought of," Christensen says. At least two biodiesel plants in Iowa have begun to make biodiesel from animal fat, along with at least five plants in other states, according to the National Biodiesel Board and plant operators. The price of animal fat — often called tallow or white or yellow grease — has about doubled in the past year, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department's annual report on beef tallow. When Christensen began trading about eight years ago, he says he sold a 46,000-pound truckload of pork fat for $2,300. Today, he says, it's worth $11,500....
USCA launches initiative to amend beef checkoff The U.S. Cattlemen's Association (USCA) launched an initiative last week, urging Congress to amend the Beef Promotion and Research Act of 1985 to allow checkoff funds to be used to promote U.S. beef. More specifically, the initiative is seeking an amendment to earmark the checkoff dollars collected from U.S. cattle producers to be used in the promotion of products derived specifically from cattle born, raised and slaughtered in the United States, said Leo McDonnell, USCA director emeritus and Columbus, Mont., rancher during a meeting in Lewistown, Mont., on Sept. 25. “Never before have producers had so much opportunity on Capitol Hill,” he said. “There are many positive things happening. We are on the cusp of seeing mandatory country of origin labeling implemented. It only makes sense for U.S. producers to direct their checkoff dollars towards supporting their domestically born and raised product. It is important that we let Congress know the changes we are seeking and this initiative is the method to accomplish that.” As currently written, the Beef Promotion Act does not allow checkoff funds to distinguish beef products by which country the cattle originated. It promotes beef only in a generic sense....
Whether salty spirals or big jolts, Earth is their canvas Meticulously spread out over 1 mile by 1 kilometer of scorched earth near Quemado, N.M., the 400 stainless-steel poles of ''The Lightning Field'' sound like something the aliens dropped off on the way to Roswell. (How could a mere mortal conjure ''lightning''?) As a lover of those groan-inducing '50s sci-fi flicks, the thought of a close encounter with this inorganic construction designed to commune with the heavens was irresistible. And what better place to play it out than in American Indian land, whose mysticism has stayed with me since a family road trip 20 years ago. ''The Lightning Field'' itself is in an intentionally undisclosed location. The closest city to fly into is Albuquerque, a 2 1/2 -hour drive through the beautifully rugged El Malpais National Monument to Quemado, where my husband and I were instructed to check in at the ''white, two-story building on the north side of the town's main street.'' (City slickers: Don't panic. It's the only white, two-story building in ''downtown'' Quemado.) In the sparse, whitewashed office of the Dia Art Foundation, the high-profile New York nonprofit that preserves and manages ''The Lightning Field'' and other important land works, we were greeted with a placard informing us to wait for our escort. Soon after, Robert Weathers, a disarming local rancher who helped De Maria install ''The Lightning Field'' back in the '70s, arrived in a pearl-white SUV to get us and our cabinmates. Only six people are allowed a visit each night; accordingly, only six chairs occupy the otherwise empty foyer. A quick glance at the guestbook was revealing: Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany....
Howard Hopkins Puts Some Bite Back into the Wild West Howard Hopkins aims to bring western and horror readers together with the publication of The Dark Riders. The Dark Riders is a sweeping epic of a young cattle rancher whose life has been stalked by death and grief—the loss of his parents, his sister and a fateful confrontation with an outlaw that altered the course of his entire existence. But he soon discovers all the tragedy that has gone before was only a prelude to the darkness that invades his life just when he thinks things have finally turned his way as a vicious gang of vampire outlaws invades his uncle’s ranch. Howard Hopkins, who writes collectible hardcover westerns under the pseudonym Lance Howard and horror novels under his own name, wrote The Dark Riders to satisfy not only his desire to blend two of his favorite genres but to provide readers of both genres with an exciting change of pace and greater scope of story than either westerns or horror alone would normally encompass....
One wild town: Arland saw murder, mayhem during its brief existence The tiny town of Arland existed only for about 13 years, but it saw enough bloodshed and mayhem in that time to etch a place of distinction in the annals of the lawless Old West. From 1884 until 1897, Arland was home to between 50 and 75 residents, serving as a stagecoach stop and supply station for ranchers. Historian Clay Gibbons hosted a tour last week of the former town site, about eight miles north of present-day Meeteetse. "Where you are standing right now was probably one of the most wild and woolly spots in the Old West," Gibbons told a group of about 40 people who gathered in a clearing along Meeteetse Creek on a cold, overcast day. Together with Cody historian Bob Edgar, Gibbons and others have spent years researching the colorful history of Arland. The town was home, at least for a while, to such characters as Blind Bill Hoolihan, Mexican Joe, the Red River Kid, Broken Nose Jackson and Belle Drewry, a prostitute known as "the Lady in Blue." Though the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy once lived in Arland, Gibbons relishes telling the tales of more obscure residents, including William Gallagher, described by a local rancher at the time as "a mean, vicious and savage man, but the best with a horse and a rope that I've ever seen."....