NEWS ROUNDUP

Warnings of Long-Term Damage After Russian Oil Spill An environmental disaster began to unfold in southern Russia on Monday as tens of thousands of oil-slicked seabirds and globules of heavy oil dotted the shoreline, a day after at least 11 ships, including a small oil tanker, sank or broke apart in a fierce storm, Russian officials said. Three bodies washed ashore, and 20 sailors were missing when searches were called off late Monday because of rough weather, the news agency Interfax reported, citing officials with the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations. But officials added that any survivors were at risk of freezing to death before they could be found. A local official, Alexander Tkachyov, governor of the Krasnodar region, said 30,000 seabirds were covered with oil and would probably die, Interfax said. The World Wide Fund for Nature, a conservation group, said the heavy fuel oil also settled onto the seabed, surely destroying marine habitat and killing fish. The tanker, Volganeft-139, split apart as it was pounded by 18-foot waves in the Kerch Strait which links the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea, a strategic pathway for oil exported by tanker from Russia and the Caspian basin to Europe. Its 13 crew members were rescued, but 1,300 tons of heavy, viscous oil — the equivalent of 560,000 gallons — were discharged into the sea....
Ranchers donate cattle to fight Army’s Pinon plans The fight against the Army's proposed expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site has invaded the dusty environs of the Winter Livestock Auction sale barn. Calves and cows donated by ranchers across Southern Colorado were auctioned off Monday to raise funds for landowners who are fighting the planned 414,000-acre expansion. The battle has been an intense one, pitting the Army's need to train soldiers against ranch families who have been on their land for several generations. "We are here to sell our cattle to help with the opposition of this expansion. This is something important to all of us here," said Stan White, a rancher from Aguilar who donated a steer to be auctioned Monday. White and his wife, Dee, also are donating a steer to be auctioned across U.S. 50 at La Junta Livestock on Wednesday. White, who helped organize the auction, said he and others wanted to give people a new way to help stop the expansion. "Everyone involved donated something here. Ranchers from all over donated cattle and the two sale barns have donated their time," White said....
Concerns grow about disappearing prairie potholes ecosystem The humble name given to "prairie potholes" - the ponds, wetlands and small lakes dimpling Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas - belies the mounting concerns here and nationally about their disappearance from the landscape. Potholes are considered key habitat for almost 200 species of migratory birds. But with federal inducements to plant more crops and the financial rewards of renting out the land, many farmers are ending land-preservation agreements. With a federal report warning of the need to protect them, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is doing flyovers to investigate whether potholes are being drained illegally. At stake is "arguably the most endangered ecosystem in the world," said Rex Johnson, a wetlands expert and wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Fergus Falls....
House Buys Carbon Credits Through Chicago Climate Exchange The Chicago Climate Exchange, which began its greenhouse gas trading operations in 2003, has announced the results of its auction of Carbon Financial Instrument contracts conducted on behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives at its request. The reverse auction was a bid for 300 contracts representing 30,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from a pool of U.S. based projects that have offset a proportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The House purchased these carbon credits to offset the impact of 30,000 tons of carbon emitted by the U.S. Capitol's coal-burning power plant each year. The funds will be used on carbon reducing measures, such as planting trees and underground storage of carbon dioxide, as well as green technologies like wind and solar power. As part of its "Greening of the Capitol Initiative," the House will retire the tons purchased as one of several strategies to reduce the contribution to greenhouse gas accumulation derived from its operations....That's ok for the coal plant, but what about all that hot air that emanates from the House? Don't we need a "Hot Air Capitol Initiative"?
Old maps give clues to California's ecological past Grossinger is director of the historical ecology program. He works with a team of scientists and researchers who pour over old photos and paintings. They're searching for clues about what the Bay Area looked like before the first settlers tore into the soft earth of the bay's creeks, streams and marshes creating today's urban landscape. "We use that information to reconstruct an understanding of how the landscape used to look and function," said Grossinger. But it is old maps that provide the best clues to our ecological past. "I think of these maps almost like treasure maps - because they are like of a far away land that is completely different from the place we know even though it is of the same place," said Grossinger. Each map tells a story, such as willow groves or river routes and the one-time boundaries of rancheros and pasture lands. "These maps were made largely to define properties and boundaries. They used all the natural features - creeks and ponds and willow groves," said Grossinger. Those ranchers hired some of the best map makers of the time to lay out property rights. "A map like this was made in 1850 but is so accurate that when we scan it, geo-reference it and bring it into a modern computer and overlay it onto aerial photography - many of these features will be within 50 to a hundred feet," said Grossinger....
Grants looks to reclaim title of "Uranium Capital of the World" It might have been the tombstone for an industry. The neatly inscribed chunk of rock 25 miles north of Grants marks the final resting place of about 7 million dry tons of tailings - the finely crushed radioactive leftovers of extracting uranium from rock - from the mill site at Ambrosia Lake. It's meant as a warning sign of the 1,850 curies of radon located within the massive pile. But it's also a symbol of what's left of a town that once was - a tombstone for the "Uranium Capital of the World." Grants, as the locals are proud to say, isn't dead. But its role as the uranium capital, as headquarters of a district that mined more uranium than any other in the United States, fell just as the price of the commodity plummeted in the early 1980s. "We're talking about bringing them back." Rick Van Horn says this on a drive through the old Ambrosia Lake mining site north of Grants. It's his company, Uranium Resources Inc. of Lewisville, Texas, that has renewed hope among many that Grants could soon reclaim its old title. URI last month agreed to buy Rio Algom Mining LLC and a mill license from BHP Billiton Ltd. for about $126.5 million in cash....
Nevada BLM's Wild Horses Money, Where Is It? Wild horse advocates think the Bureau of Land Management is systematically trying to eliminate mustangs from the open ranges of Nevada. The most telling sign, they say, is the BLM's lack of interest in promoting horse adoptions. This is a wild horse story that isn't about wild horses. It's about the agency, which is supposed to manage the herds and what it does with millions of taxpayer dollars. We asked the BLM what we thought was a simple question. How much do you spend on rounding up horses and on finding them homes? Both responsibilities are outlined in federal law. You might think it would be easy for BLM to retrieve those numbers, but it took the I-Team seven months and numerous phone calls emails and letters to get the data. Essentially, the figures confirm the suspicions of the critics....
No Straight Answers From Nevada's Top Wild Horse Official More than 30,000 wild horses are now being held in government pens. That is more horses than exist out on the open range. Critics say the reason for the logjam is that the Bureau of Land Management, which is supposed to manage wild horses and burros, spends most of its budget on roundups but very little on adoptions. Are the charges true? Put it this way -- suspicions confirmed. No matter where you stand on wild horses, your tax dollars are being spent in this program. The I-Team filed an information request with the BLM back in February to find out what they spend on the wild horse program. It took until August to get the answer. And then the spin campaign began courtesy of the BLM-Nevada's top wild horse official, whose statements to us were simply incredulous. Susie Stokke, with the Nevada BLM, said, "These last three days, without question, has been the highlight of my career." It seemed odd that BLM's Suzie Stokke would be so bubbly. Less than 24 hours earlier, 129 wild horses in the BLM's Palomino Valley facility had died horrible deaths. And days before that, more than 70 wild horses were found dead of nitrate poisoning on the Tonopah Test Range....
Off Endangered List, but What Animal Is It Now? Amid much fanfare this year, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service declared the western Great Lakes gray wolf successfully recovered from an encounter with extinction and officially removed it from the endangered species list. Under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the wolf boomed in population to 4,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin today, up from just several hundred in northern Minnesota in 1974. But the victory celebration was premature, according to two evolutionary biologists, Jennifer A. Leonard of Uppsala University in Sweden and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. The historic Great Lakes wolf did not return intact from the edge of oblivion. Instead, the scientists report in the online edition of the journal Biology Letters, it hybridized with gray wolves moving in from Canada, coyotes from the south and west and the hybrids born of that mixing. Wolf eradication programs and habitat destruction, followed by protection of the remaining wolves and habitat, created conditions for producing the hybrid animals, Dr. Leonard said. These animals should remain protected, she added, while researchers determine the full extent of hybridization with coyotes, whether it is continuing and whether it threatens to swamp the genetic heritage of the native wolf....
Cowboy Crosses Country on Horseback to Reveal Unseen American Culture When rancher Bill Inman decided to show there's more to America than what's seen on the nightly news, he hopped on his horse Blackie and started riding. And riding, and riding. Weary of the daily drumbeat over war, crime, poverty and assorted social ills, he and his wife are burning through their life savings to tell the stories of hardworking, honest everyday people in rural America. Inman soaks it all in atop Blackie, a 16-year thoroughbred-quarter horse mix who's averaging 20-25 miles a day along backroads from Oregon to North Carolina. "Unfortunately, the image they are portraying is there's corruption in every politician and there's criminals running everywhere," he said. "I guess guys that rope like me, we wouldn't need to rope steers. You could just sit out there and rope a criminal because they're coming by every 10 minutes." Inman, 48, started June 2 from his hometown of Lebanon, Ore. Halfway through his cross-country trek dubbed Uncovering America by Horseback, he's rolled up 1,700 miles....
It's All Trew: Old-time improvisation in branding and jailing During the old days many storekeepers and especially bartenders seemed to have large thumbs and fingers. Some kept their thumb and forefinger pressed together in an effort to widen the surfaces while others used exercises for widening the digits. Why? Because in the absence of coin or cash money, a "pinch" was used as a handy measurement. An example, when salt was used to pay the salaries of Roman soldiers, the bigger the pinch the higher the pay. During the gold rush days, food, supplies, a drink of whiskey or whatever, was paid for with a pinch of gold dust. A bartender with slender boney fingers couldn't hold a job. The term "running iron" is given to any branding tool used to change legitimate brands on stolen livestock. Some thieves used cinch rings from a saddle while others used heavy wire bent into the design needed. Oddly enough, a branding iron made in the shape of a "J" without the top bar, when used in a crude manner, can make every number and letter of the alphabet. I can prove it and you might want to try. Early day jails in many newly established towns took on many forms depending on the imagination of the officer in charge and the city finances at the time. The first jail in Dodge City was an abandoned water well about eight feet deep and 10 feet across....