Officials join in initiative to preserve sage grouse Top officials from several state and federal agencies signed on to efforts Monday to preserve a sagebrush-loving bird that many believe is threatened in Colorado by the growing energy industry and other activities. The Colorado greater sage grouse conservation plan marks a major move to protect the bird so that it doesn't become listed as a federally protected endangered species. A grouse listing, some say, could keep the oil and gas industry away from important fossil fuel reserves and make it harder for ranchers to graze their animals. The plan, 21/2 years in the making, identifies steps that can be taken to preserve the birds' sagebrush habitat in hopes of preventing population declines that could trigger more stringent protections. Signing onto the plan: the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Colorado Division of Wildlife....
Land near Yellowstone safe from mining under deal A conservation group said Monday it has an agreement to protect nearly 1,500 acres of private mining claims northeast of Yellowstone National Park. The plan calls for the Trust for Public Land to use $8 million in federal money to buy the claims and convey them to the U.S. Forest Service, ending the fight over the proposed New World Mine near Cooke City. "We're hoping in the next several months . . . that we will be able to work with Congress and our partners, the Forest Service, to do everything that we can to make sure our funding request is made good on," said Alex Diekmann of the Trust for Public Land. In 1989, Crown Butte Mines, a subsidiary of Canadian mining company Noranda Inc., proposed a large gold mine near Yellowstone. Conservation groups warned it would harm the park's ecosystem, and lawsuits were threatened. In 1996, Crown Butte agreed to abandon its planned mine and create a fund to clean up past mining operations in exchange for $65 million in federal land and other assets. However, Margaret Reeb, who owned most of the claims Crown Butte planned to mine, wasn't part of the negotiations and did not want to sell, the Trust for Public Land said. She eventually agreed not to mine the land and owned it until her death in 2005. Mike and Randy Holland, her nephews, recently reached the agreement giving the Trust for Public Land the right to purchase the land and mining claims over a two-year period and to convey them to the United States for inclusion in the Gallatin and Custer national forests....
Number of bison killed sets record Roughly one out of four bison in Yellowstone National Park has been captured, sent to slaughter or otherwise killed this winter. The unofficial tally on Monday reached 1,098, topping a previous record of 1,084, set in the winter of 1996-97. The number could exceed 1,200 in the coming days. Park officials said there were an estimated 4,700 bison in Yellowstone before winter set in, the second-highest total ever recorded. But as temperatures turned cold, bison began having a harder time breaking through crusty snow to find the food below. As they have done for years, groups began to wander west and north toward lower elevations. State and federal management policies, though, are designed to keep bison from wandering too far, out of fear that they might transmit brucellosis to cattle in the area. So far this year, 822 bison captured along the north edge of Yellowstone have been shipped to slaughter, including 57 on Monday. Another 110 or so are expected to be shipped in the coming days, and scores more in the area may soon be captured. Three bison have been euthanized on the north side. Meanwhile, the Montana Department of Livestock has captured and sent to slaughter 107 bison near the western border. Hunters this year also killed 166 bison: 63 in a hunt sponsored by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and another 103 by tribal members....
Wolves kill calf in Boulder drainage Wolves killed a calf on private property along the East Fork of the Boulder River south of Big Timber on Saturday, according to a release from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The pack returned Sunday and ran cattle through a fence. Officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services were authorized to remove two wolves from the pack. And the landowner was issued a shoot-on-sight permit for as many as two wolves. No wolves had been removed as of Monday afternoon, the release said. Calving operations are just getting started in the area. The pack is believed to have been involved formed in 2004 and included four wolves as of December 2007. A year ago, the pack killed one calf, and one wolf was removed.
Forest Service land eyed for housing In the quest to find more places for Eagle County workers to live, some Eagle County residents are turning their attention to the biggest landowner in their area: the U.S. Forest Service. About 84 percent of the county is owned by the federal government, and there are ways that local governments could acquire slivers of the land for housing — even if most of that land is either too remote, too steep or too sensitive for development. “I don’t know exactly where you’d do it, but they have a lot of land up and down the valley,” former Vail Mayor Rod Slifer said. One way to acquire Forest Service land is a swap in which the Forest Service would receive land that it considers valuable, such as wildlife habitat, said Eagle District Ranger Brian Lloyd. Otherwise, Congressional approval might be needed to approve a sale, Lloyd said. A third option is the “Townsite Act,” which can allow for Forest Service lands to be sold to towns if those lands serve a community need. That might include housing, Lloyd said....
Fair game for drillers Nature rewards hunters on horseback who hoof a few miles into the pine-covered hills of the Bosque del Oso State Wildlife Area. On display are red-tailed hawks riding the thermals, black bears, bobcats, regal bull elk crowned with forests of antlers and a slumber party of wild turkeys dozing in the roof of a cottonwood tree. But, as documented in recent Colorado Division of Wildlife surveys, local hunters also are running into the startling impacts of the coal-bed methane industry. Dirt clouds follow truck convoys carrying water, chemicals and equipment in and out of the Bosque. Haul roads make gravel ribbons through habitat - along ridges, through valleys and cut into hillsides. Drill pads are flat-topped interruptions to the rounded high country. The grind of diesel engines pierces the cool, silent air. Industry's mechanized omnipresence is an especially jarring sight considering that hunters enter the preserve only on foot or by horseback. Inside the 30,000-acre Bosque del Oso (Forest of the Bear) State Wildlife Area, 25 miles west of Trinidad, energy producers are drilling for methane deposits trapped in coal seams a thousand feet or more underground, seeking fuel to run power plants and heat the West's homes and businesses....
Congressman proposes bill to block mining on land near Grand Canyon More than 1 million acres of public lands near the Grand Canyon would be withdrawn from potential mineral exploration under a bill introduced Monday by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. The Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act of 2008 was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources less than a week after the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations filed suit to block exploratory drilling near Grand Canyon National Park. Also last week, Gov. Janet Napolitano asked President Bush to issue an executive order blocking exploration in the area. Soaring uranium prices have prompted hundreds of new mine claims on Kaibab National Forest and Bureau of Land Management properties north and south of the Canyon. Grijalva said he moved to block mining efforts until environmental and health issues are resolved.
Environmentalists intend to sue over Fort Irwin's tortoise-relocation plan Environmental groups on Monday put three federal agencies on notice that they intend to sue over a plan to move nearly 800 desert tortoises from land where the Army is expanding its tank-training center near Barstow. The notice from the Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors comes just two weeks before the Army was planning to move the reptiles, which are threatened with extinction, from the southern expansion edge of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin and onto public lands closer to Interstate 15. It is the latest salvo in what became known as tanks vs. tortoise -- a more than 20-year effort by the military to expand the training center to accommodate faster-moving tanks. Troops come to Fort Irwin from across the country to train against a home team that acts as the enemy. Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the groups are not against the so-called tortoise translocation since Congress approved the center's expansion. But, she said, the new land is lower-quality habitat, and has pockets of diseased tortoises, mines, and illegal dumping and off-roading....
State to raise deer kill to reduce bovine TB The state's latest attempt to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis, a sickness that poses little threat to humans but has hit 11 herds in northern Minnesota -- and threatens more -- comes to northern Minnesota this week. Watch out, wild deer, blamed for spreading the disease. With the blessings of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who flew to the northwestern corner of the state on Monday to visit ranchers hurt by the disease, state officials plan to distribute expedited deer-hunting permits at a meeting in the northern town of Wannaska tonight. A proposed emergency rule, expected to take effect later this month, would allow any landowner in the area to shoot deer without a permit or license until May 15, provided the deer are turned in for TB testing. The new steps come on top of a crew of state and federal sharpshooters sent to Roseau and Beltrami counties last month to thin the deer herd....
Patch burning: A new concept in rangeland management A six-year research project is underway in Woodson County, Kansas where Kansas State University scientists are working to determine how viable patch-burn grazing is for raising livestock. Patch-burn grazing is a fairly new concept in rangeland management, but has been occurring naturally for hundreds of years, said Walt Fick, K-State Research and Extension range management specialist. Historically, Native Americans purposely started prairie fires, and lightning did the same thing naturally. Bison and other native herbivores were attracted to the new growth that comes up after the land burned; consequently, these animals moved from grazing area to grazing area -- searching out the most attractive areas of new growth, Fick said. Some ranchers are mimicking that grazing pattern by sectioning a large pasture into three or more burn areas. "Every year, one of those sections is prescribed burned, concentrating the grazing pressure in specific areas of the pasture," he said. "The cattle are free-roaming over the entire pasture, but tend to gravitate toward the one-third area of the pasture that has been burned, because that is where the most attractive new growth has occurred."....
Your Burger on Biotech If the biotech industry has its way, ordering a hamburger might soon sound something like this: “one charbroiled cloned-beef patty, with genetically modified cheese, lab-grown bacon and vitamin-C-fortified lettuce, on a protein-spiked bun.” The burger of the future is delicious, nutritious and contains more engineering than a stealth bomber. With the Food and Drug Administration ruling in January that meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs, goats and their offspring is safe to eat, the only thing keeping the superburger off your dinner plate is time. It will be a few years yet before cloned meat hits store shelves. Cloning the perfect (and tastiest) cow can cost upward of $15,000, which makes clones themselves too expensive to eat, so we’ll have to wait until they spawn enough offspring (the old-fashioned way) to feed the masses. Meanwhile, researchers are busy formulating all the fixings. Take a look at what science is doing for the burger, from bun to beef and everything in between....
Pheasant Ranch Nine years ago, with cattle prices down and farmers throughout the Klamath Basin struggling with low water supplies and increased hay costs, Burt Holzhauser pondered about the future of his ranch. A third-generation rancher in rural Siskiyou County, Holzhauser decided to sell his cattle and start a pheasant hunting club. Today, the Rising Sun Ranch Hunting Preserve is one of the more successful pheasant hunting destinations in the West. I was in the field plowing one day and it popped into my head,’ Holzhauser recalls. ’I thought about it for a while. There were no pheasants in this area at all. But I thought it would be a good thing to do.’ Holzhauser’s grandfather, Herman, homesteaded 1,080 acres 38 miles south of Klamath Falls in 1880. Growing up on the ranch, Holzhauser’s father and grandfather would take him bird hunting when they weren’t busy with the cows or growing grain or alfalfa....
Women fliers made aviation history in Idaho Alys McKey became the first woman to fly in Idaho on May 30, 1913, when she took off in a Curtiss biplane from the Boise fairgrounds, which then were at the corner of Fairview Avenue and Orchard Street. It might well have been her last flight but for a bumpy takeoff. In the press of the crowd that gathered around her frail plane, someone had leaned hard enough on a wing rod to crack it. It might never have been noticed had she not hit a rut in the field on her first attempted takeoff. "That jolt saved my life," she told a Statesman reporter. The jolt collapsed the top wing onto the one beneath. If she had started on the smooth race track in front of the grandstand, instead of on the grassy infield, the jolt would not have happened and she would have left the ground with the rod already splintered. "With that rod in that condition," she said, "the first time I attempted a turn in the air it would have snapped and that would have been the death of me." By the late 1930s, many Idaho women had learned to fly. Some were students in Idaho colleges through the Civilian Pilot Training Program, established in 1939 by the federal government. Its mission was to be "a safeguard against the vast aerial militarization now being pressed with fanatical zeal by foreign powers." Clearly, Germany and Japan were the unnamed foreign powers, and women trained as pilots in the program would serve in various flying capacities after Dec. 7, 1941....