U.S. Forest Service cancels agreement with energy company The U.S. Forest Service has canceled an arrangement with an energy company seeking to drill for oil and gas along a scenic western Wyoming mountain range. The arrangement between the Bridger-Teton National Forest and Denver-based Stanley Energy raised protests from Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal and others. The Forest Service had agreed to let Stanley Energy pay for an environmental analysis of proposed oil and gas leases that the company was seeking to acquire on the Wyoming Range. Freudenthal said the arrangement was inappropriate and compromised the environmental analysis. Bridger-Teton Forest Supervisor Kniffy Hamilton says the arrangement with Stanley was a mistake and the Forest Service will now take over the analysis. Freudenthal welcomed the move but says the Forest Service is still proceeding too quickly....
Wyden proposes Badlands wilderness area near Bend Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Tuesday he would introduce a bill to create a desert wilderness area east of Bend. Wyden made the announcement amid the juniper and sagebrush of the area known as the Badlands, which is overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "After years of increasing interest and excitement about protecting this beautiful place, I am ready to introduce the legislation necessary to create the 30,000-acre Oregon Badlands Wilderness," he said. The Oregon Natural Desert Association, a Bend group integral in creating the Steens wilderness during the Clinton administration, has been advocating for converting the Badlands to wilderness. The area 15 miles east of Bend is managed as a wilderness study area by the BLM, which bestows some of the same protections. But only Congress can designate a wilderness, which would exclude motorized recreation from the Badlands. Motorized groups, such as ATV users, have provided the primary opposition. Three years ago their testimony helped lead Deschutes County commissioners to refrain from endorsing the Badlands proposal....
U.S. Forest Service to fill hundreds of vacancies The U.S. Forest Service wants to fill more than 500 positions in California in its next round of hiring. Forest Service officials say they will be ready for this year's fire season. "Absolutely," said spokesman Jason Kirchner. Earlier this month, Mark Rey, undersecretary of Agriculture, wrote in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, that there were 363 firefighter vacancies in California. The difference between the 500-plus number spelled out in a Forest Service document and the vacancy number Rey gave is because as the agency fills positions internally, new vacancies will be created, Kirchner said. "The reason why it's a lot higher is that we fill most of our vacancies with current employees," he said. An April Forest Service report on firefighter retention said the highest attrition rates in the Southern California forests were among entry-level firefighters. Kirchner said the region has recruited so many that 206 will be promoted to the next level, known as GS-05. At that level, the agency has 729 vacancies, but that number will be reduced to 523 once the 206 firefighters are promoted, Kirchner said. Those remaining 523 openings will be filled with temporary employees....
Landowners Beware Under the guise of making more land accessible for the public's use and providing tax relief for land-rich but cash-poor landowners, the government has found a convenient way to restrict the use of private land - often without the original landowner's knowledge. Enter The Nature Conservancy and other large land trust conglomerates that approach farmers or large landowners with what seems like a "win-win" for all involved. In return for donating their land for conservation purposes, the landowners are provided with federal and state tax breaks and agree never to convert, develop or use the land for any purpose other than farming or ranching. A total of 37 million acres of land throughout the United States are currently under the control of land trusts. However, according to a new report by the National Center for Public Policy Research titled, "Conservation Easements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," all-too-often that acquired land, placed under "conservation easements," goes from the land trust right into the governing hands of the largest landowner in the United States, the federal government. Dana Joel Gattuso, author of the report and senior fellow of the National Center, explains these "prearranged flips" provide a back door approach to acquiring land control that is good for the government and the original land trust, but bad for the unsuspecting landowner, who has been kept out of the loop. How profitable is it for conglomerates like The Nature Conservancy to participate in flips? Gattuso cites their annual report, which states about a fifth of the land trust's annual support and revenues come from the sales of easements to the government. "In one example, The Nature Conservancy bought an easement for $1.26 million, then directly sold it to the federal Bureau of Land Management for $1.4 million," she says....
Wolf Shot Near West Yellowstone for Frequenting Campgrounds Montana wildlife officials shot a wolf near West Yellowstone because it had been frequenting campgrounds and residential areas over the past two weeks. State Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say the wolf was exhibiting aggressive behavior toward people and dogs and showed no fear of people. It was shot Tuesday. Regional Wildlife Manager Kurt Alt says most wolves post no threat to people or domestic animals, but occasionally there can be problems. He says such incidents are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Montana has 420 wolves, mostly in the western portion of the state. The Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population was removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act in late March.
Killing the wolves again This year, on Feb. 27, given the reintroduction's success, the Bush administration removed the gray wolves of the northern Rockies from the federal Endangered Species List. It's now legal to shoot a wolf in more than 85 percent of the state of Wyoming, even if the wolf being shot has no history of preying on livestock or domestic animals. On March 28, the day that new state wolf policies went into effect, a hunter stationed near elk feeding grounds in Daniel, Wyo., shot and killed Limpy. In the parlance of wolf management, Limpy was a "clean" wolf who'd never been known to prey on livestock or domestic animals. Limpy is not the only victim. In the past two months, wolf-hunting parties in Wyoming have been gathering near elk feeding grounds. "They're having weekend wolf-hunting parties by snowmobile," says Suzanne Stone, Defenders of Wildlife's northern Rockies wolf conservation specialist. "It's very easy to kill wolves during this time of year because they're so stationary. The whole pack tends to keep very close to their den sites." Some wolves have been chased by snowmobiles for miles before being gunned down. In Idaho, wolves suspected of "molesting or attacking livestock or domestic animals" can be killed without a permit. Montana and Wyoming have also made it easier to shoot a wolf that threatens livestock, and all three states plan to hold wolf-hunting seasons this year. While the wolves that stay in national parks, like Yellowstone and Grand Teton, are still protected, those that stray out of them are at risk of being shot. Since late March, at least 40 wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have been shot dead....
Polar bear is the linchpin to greens' agenda A preventive war worked out so well in Iraq that Washington has launched another. The new preventive war — the government responding forcefully against a postulated future threat — has been declared on behalf of polar bears, the first species whose supposed jeopardy has been ascribed to global warming. The Interior Department, bound by the Endangered Species Act, has declared polar bears a "threatened" species because they might be endangered "in the foreseeable future," meaning 45 years. The bears will be threatened if the current episode of warming, if there really is one, is, unlike all the previous episodes, irreversible, and if it intensifies, and if it continues to melt sea ice vital to the bears, and if the bears, unlike in many previous warming episodes, cannot adapt. But Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says the "threatened" label is mandatory because sea ice has been melting and computer models postulate future melting caused by human activity. So, now that human activity is assumed to be the primary cause of warming, the decision to classify the bears as threatened has become a mighty lever. Now that polar bears are wards of the government, and now that it is a legal doctrine that humans are responsible for global warming, the Endangered Species Act has acquired unlimited application. Anything that can be said to increase global warming can — must — be said to threaten bears already designated as threatened. Want to build a power plant in Arizona? A building in Florida? Do you want to drive an SUV? Or leave your cell phone charger plugged in overnight? Some judge might construe federal policy as proscribing these activities....
Sue, Sarah, Sue The polar bears are doing just fine, thank you very much. So says Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who announced last week that her state would sue to block Washington from listing the animals as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. And it's a good thing, too - because the new bear-population protections mask what may be the most serious threat to American economic might in decades. Yes, polar bears. The polar bear, you see, marks the first species on the "threatened" list whose supposed predicament is linked directly to global warming. The current Alaskan polar-bear population may be near an all-time high. But Interior Department computer models - such as they are - project widespread melting of the polar ice the bears need to hunt. And that's a big problem, given the near-limitless powers embedded in the Endangered Species Act. The act, for one, requires the department to ensure that "all actions authorized, funded or carried out" by all federal agencies aren't likely to "result in the . . . adverse modification of habitat" of listed species. This was odious enough when the presence of a few worthless snail darters was sufficient to derail massive public-works projects. But because polar bears are now imperiled by global warming (officially, anyway), any carbon emissions anywhere in the country could conceivably be judged an illegal threat to their habitat....
Polar bear listing is big win for area group This month's listing of the polar bear as a threatened species was the biggest victory in the 19-year history of Tucson's Center for Biological Diversity. It was also the single biggest step to advance the cause of global warming on the worldwide stage of public opinion, according to the environmental group's friends and foes alike. One legal observer, University of Denver law professor Fred Cheever, likened it to the effect of the endangered-species listings of the bald eagle and peregrine falcon, which led the U.S. to ban the pesticide DDT a quarter-century ago. "If you had to rank them, what single thing has brought the most attention in the U.S. to the climate-change issue?" asked Oliver Houck, a Tulane University law professor who specializes in environmental law. "Would it be Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize, the movie 'Inconvenient Truth,' or a picture of a polar bear on shrinking ice? I say maybe the picture would win. "That image is so much in the public mind that the Bush administration didn't want to list it but had to. Not listing it would be like killing Flipper or Smokey Bear," Houck said. But like scores of other species-protection cases won by the Center for Biological Diversity in the past, this is but the first step in a long, arduous process to translate the listing into action. The center petitioned for the polar bear's listing back in 2005. It later sued along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list it. The center's blueprint for saving the polar bear is ambitious and complex. It includes: ● Challenging offshore oil and gas leasing in Alaska within six months. ● Launching a large-scale challenge to the licensing of coal-fired power plants around the country sometime after that. ● Finally, challenging large-scale, local government development plans in major cities....
Group announces intent to sue over walrus petition A conservation group gave notice Tuesday that it will sue to force federal action on a petition to list the Pacific walrus as a threatened species because of threats from global warming and offshore petroleum development. The deadline was May 8 for an initial 90-day review of the petition by the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to Center for Biological Diversity attorney Brendan Cummings. The group filed the petition in February. Shaye Wolf, a biologist and lead author of the petition, said Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than the best predictions of climate models. "As the sea ice recedes, so does the future of the Pacific walrus," she said. The conservation group was one of three that successfully petitioned to have polar bears listed as threatened because of sea ice loss caused by global warming, a decision announced May 14 by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. That listing also followed court action to force deadline decisions....
Protesters Fear Prairie Dogs Will Be Fed To Ferrets Protesters were trying to stop a large colony of prairie dogs from being destroyed in Douglas County Tuesday. The colony is on 87 acres near the corner of Lucent Boulevard and Highlands Ranch Parkway. Shea Properties owns the land and is planning a retail development. The protesters say Shea Properties has backed out of a deal to help relocate the prairie dogs. The protesters represent a group called Douglas County Citizens for Wildlife. The group had a verbal agreement with Shea Properties to safely relocate the prairie dogs, according to spokeswoman Leslie Johnson. It's estimated that 1,000 prairie dogs live there and something will need to be done with them before the land can be developed. The protesters say the developer intends to use some of the prairie dogs as food for an endangered species -- the black-footed ferret. CBS4 was able to confirm there is a ferret-breeding project in Larimer County. A biologist with the program said prairie dogs are typically captured and shipped still alive to the program. But protestors say they are afraid many of the animals would simply be eradicated....
'Critical habitat' set for sturgeon Eight years after the federal government put the Alabama sturgeon on the endangered species list, it is poised today to name 326 miles in the Mobile River Basin as "critical habitat" needed to keep the species in existence. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will announce a plan to apply the habitat designation to 245 miles of river channel on the Alabama River and another 81 miles on a connected stretch of the lower Cahaba River, according to a Monday e-mail notice from Jeff Powell, a biologist in the agency's Daphne field office. The proposal, which carries a 60-day public comment period, is required by a federal court order. A final decision is due by mid-May of next year, Powell said in the notice. Under federal law, critical habitat refers to specific areas essential for conservation of a threatened or endangered species, he said, and may require "special management and protection."....