Public land agencies could join services A study was launched by the Government Accountability Office in Washington D.C. last month to determine whether moving the U.S. Forest Service under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior is feasible. “While I have not had the opportunity to fully consider the implications, when I look at the unequal treatment of the Forest Service compared to the Department of the Interior when it comes to budget, it makes me wonder whether such a move might be worth some serious thought,” Allard said in a prepared statement. Allard is the ranking Republican leader of the Senate Interior Appropriations Committee. Stephanie Valencia, a D.C.-based spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colorado, noted that the GAO study is something the senator has his eye on. Bureaucratic brethren of the Forest Service include the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manage 84 million acres, 96 million acres and 258 million acres of public lands. The latter three are within the Interior Department. The four agencies have overlapping missions that include fire prevention and suppression, natural resource conservation, fostering recreational uses, and regulating commercial activities such as logging, drilling, mining and livestock grazing....
New rules for forest planning adopted The U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday adopted a new version of the basic planning rules that made it possible for conservation groups in the 1990s to win court orders drastically cutting back logging to protect the northern spotted owl and salmon. Associate Chief Sally Collins said from Washington, D.C., that she hopes the rule will lead to less conflict and better planning to meet the challenges of global warming and wildfire while providing resources such as clean water and timber on the 192 million acres of national forest. "We have the most transparent, inclusive (forest planning) process anywhere in the planet," Collins said. Conservation groups said they will be back in federal court to again challenge the rule, which was tossed out by a federal judge last year on procedural grounds. They argue that the Forest Service refuses to analyze the potential for causing harm to the environment after taking out a long-standing system of protections for fish and wildlife habitat. "This is the same clown in different shoes," said Pete Frost, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, which represents some of the plaintiffs in the case....
Vandals Damage Property On Colorado Grasslands U.S. Forest Service officials are looking for vandals who have reportedly caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage each year on the Pawnee National Grassland in northern Weld County. Investigators said a small fraction of shooters are responsible for the damage. The Forest Service said every year it costs at least $7,000 to replace signs that have been shot up. An electronic company spent $42,000 recently after shooters blasted transformers. And there is a problem with windmills. "They've shot holes in the casing on the head there and when that happens the oil leaks out and its pretty tough to repair those," Tom Baur, vice president of Crow Valley Grazing Association. Baur said the shooting vandalism is costing the association $20,000 a year. The windmills pump water for cattle that graze on the grassland. "It's gotten worse over the last few years I think," said Baur. "The repairs on just one windmill alone are going to cost us $7,000 and we have two of them, so were gong to investigate this as a felony," said Terry Baxter of the Forest Service....
More money sought for national parks A conservation group warns that unless the White House and Congress provide more money to buy private land within national park boundaries, there could be logging at Washington state's Mt. Rainier, commercial development in Valley Forge, and similar problems at national parks from Golden Gate to Gettysburg. A National Parks Conservation Association report Tuesday said money to buy so-called in-holdings within the parks has declined sharply over the past decade, from a high of nearly $148 million annually to $44 million now. "Of the 391 units in the national park system, a significant and growing number face some threat to wildlife habitat or the preservation of cultural treasures because of development on privately owned land within national park boundaries," the report said. Though some of the private landowners have been willing to sell to the National Park Service or to conservation groups, the report said the Park Service has "lacked funding to close the deals, and even the most public-spirited owners cannot be expected to forgo their own financial needs indefinitely."....
Grant County eyes solutions for rabies State and federal representatives have told Grant County officials that initially, there will be a fairly large number of rabies cases from a strain new to New Mexico, but that the number should taper off. Officials from the state Department of Game and Fish, state Health Department, U.S. Wildlife Services, the U.S. Forest Service and others met Tuesday in Grant County to look at the spread of rabies in the southwestern New Mexico county, particularly among foxes. A Silver City woman was bitten by a fox last Thursday outside her home. The animal was captured and tested positive for rabies. A woman bitten by a fox March 18 on the Catwalk National Scenic Trail near Glenwood received rabies treatment as a precaution after the animal couldn't be found. A fox bit a Silver City man March 4 outside his home. Rabies generally comes in cycles, with high years followed by years in which the virus seems to disappear, Ettestad said. "The real issue is getting people to vaccinate their pets," he said. A Silver City veterinarian, John Wenzel, said many people refuse to vaccinate pets and livestock, but he urged ranchers and horse owners to vaccinate their animals....Do wolves get rabies?
Wilds bill may please many A Washington County lands bill that has been revised to include more wilderness areas may garner support from environmental groups. The once controversial bill has been revived, with the changes, by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. The Washington County Growth & Conservation Act of 2008, as it is called, would allow a little more than 9,000 acres of non-environmentally sensitive public land to be sold under local guidelines developed through a smart growth initiative called Vision Dixie, Bennett said. This is a decrease from the 24,300 acres proposed in the 2006 version of the bill, but "that number was always a cap and not a goal," Bennett said. That bill received committee hearings but never was voted on in either the House or Senate. The highlights of the bill include: • 264,394 acres of land would be added to the National Wilderness Preservation System, increasing the amount of wilderness acreage in the county from 3.5 percent to 20.5 percent. • The creation of two National Conservation Areas to provide 140,000 acres for the protected desert tortoise, as well as recreational uses. • 123,000 more acres of permanently protected land than was included in the previous bill. • 9,000 acres of public land would be sold to private developers, with all of the money either going to the county or being used locally by the Bureau of Land Management....
Say your prayers, cane toads Though Australian scientists are working to engineer a virus to control the invasive pests, an Aussie politician has suggested a less subtle solution: kill 'em all. Shane Knuth, a legislator in the northeastern state of Queensland (where cane toads thrive), has proposed and official day for residents to hunt down and kill the exotic invaders. Cane toads have plagued the land down under for decades, and their increasing numbers and toxic skin threaten the survival of native Australian animal species. For a feature in this month's issue of The Scientist, Brendan Borrell traveled to Australia and met some of the researchers aiming to modify a Ranavirus that could decimate toad populations. He also visited with "Toadbusters" seeking to exterminate the pest using brute force. Knuth's proposal for a day of amphibian massacre, which he dubbed "Toad Day Out," calls for an even wider effort. The plan has gained the approval of Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which told the Associated Press that the hunt was acceptable as long as the toads were killed humanely....
Stem cell rx wins another horse race Earlier this year, we reported on a company called Vet-Stem which has devised a treatment for horses using the animal's own stem cells to heal tendon and ligament injuries. In some cases it's been an unqualified success. One of those successes was part of our story - a big gray gelding named Greg's Gold. When we posted the story online, Greg's Gold had just won a race on opening day at Santa Anita racetrack, pushing his earnings close to the million dollar mark. The past weekend Greg's Gold ran again, for the ninth time since his treatment. He won easily, beating two other Grade I winners handily (Grade I winners are the top in racehorse land) and pushing his earnings to $1, 067,923. This achievement appears to answer one of the questions skeptics have about the treatment - namely, how long will the previously injured leg hold up? Trainer David Hofmans says, "Yes, the old boy showed up again, he came out of the race great, cleaned out his feed tub, looked around for more." Plans are to run twice more to tune up for the Breeders Cup Sprint and a championship, all on that Vet-Stem repaired leg.