Free Republic

Richard Beardall is getting exactly what he wanted: a trespassing ticket from federal land managers for ignoring the rules and riding his ATV on a closed road in the San Rafael Swell. Beardall, three other ATV riders and a Jeep, moved a 10-foot barricade near an old uranium mine and made a half-mile roundtrip along the access road to the Muddy River on Saturday. The Bureau of Land Management closed the area to recreational vehicles in 1993 due to riparian damage, said Price, Utah-based BLM manager Roger Bankert. Beardall, president of the Americans with Disabilities Access Alliance knows that, but...

Tejon Ranch and its conservation partner, The Trust for Public Land, have figured out which 100,000 acres of the ranch's 270,000 acres will be carved out into a preserve. If the deal goes through, some of Tejon's majestic peaks and canyons in the Tehachapi Mountains could forever be saved from development. A step is being taken in that direction today, though an actual deal is much further away. The majority of the land is in the southeastern portion of the Tehachapis. There's also a swath next to Interstate 5 intended to connect the future preserve with the Wind Wolves Preserve...

Mormons planning to re-enact treks on national historic trails in central Wyoming will have to do so without the use of support vehicles and only Mondays through Fridays, according to a decision signed Monday. Permits will be available for a total of 7,500 people annually in groups of 26 or more -- far fewer than the 12,000 handcart trekkers who have used the area in recent years. Jack Kelly, Bureau of Land Management Lander field office manager, said the changes reflect the agency's need to minimize impacts to the area that have been growing with the boom in use. "We...

RENO, Nev. - Call them the ``Outhouse Brigade.'' A group of northeast Nevadans feuding with the U.S. Forest Service over control of a remote national forest road near a trout stream is vowing to defy the agency and drive up the road to clean out a public outhouse. The Forest Service, concerned about the effects on the threatened bull trout, has forbidden vehicles from using South Canyon Road since the Jarbidge River flooded and washed out most of it in 1995. A coalition of anti-federal activists and a local citizens group in Elko County dubbed the ``Shovel Brigade'' began trying...

SALEM - Grant Wheeler wants to add a second shift to his Reedsport hardwood sawmill, his Westwood Lumber Co. remanufacturing plant in Junction City and his planing mill in Saginaw. But a shortage of the alder sawlogs that Wheeler converts into Fender guitar bodies, Purdy paintbrush blanks and parts for kitchen cabinets will keep employment at the three facilities hovering at 135 workers. At least in the short term. "If I had more logs, I would add more employees," Wheeler said. "The market is there." To get those logs, Wheeler and other independent sawmill operators are taking the unusual route...

CAMP SHERMAN -- The trees with the blue ribbons will be cut. Everything decked in pink stays. Of the 50 or so ponderosa pines in a quarter-acre patch of the Deschutes National Forest, as few as 13 could be spared the chain saw. "There's going to be a huge difference. And I'm going to get hammered by some people," says Tim Lillebo, Eastern Oregon field representative for the Portland-based Oregon Natural Resources Council. When President Bush travels to Oregon this week, he is expected to call national attention to this sort of effort to thin the overgrown forests of the...

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A Bellevue couple, who had more than two dozen trees on public land chopped down or severely pruned to improve their hilltop view, have agreed to pay the city $150,000. If the city council approves the deal, Kendall and Janice Kunz will not be prosecuted for violating a city ordinance that bars cutting trees on city property. The Kunzes also agreed to apologize publicly and contribute 32 hours of community service in the proposed settlement reached Friday. The city council is scheduled to vote Monday on the settlement. "This sends the message that our public forests belong...

By Launce Rake <lrake@lasvegassun.com>LAS VEGAS SUNInterior Secretary Gale Norton will attend Thursday's sale of 1,030 acres of federal land, Interior officials said Tuesday. Norton will attend the public auction to showcase a program that has turned over more than 7,800 acres of Bureau of Land Management to private ownership in the Las Vegas Valley, BLM spokesman Phil Guerrero said. The auctions in that program, a dozen so far, have produced more than $220 million, most of it going to the purchase and protection of environmentally sensitive land in Clark County and the Lake Tahoe area, as well as improvements to...

BOSTON (AP) -- A $75 million land sale to Harvard gives the prestigious university unusual new power - the potential to literally move the Massachusetts Turnpike, a state official complained. Documents filed on the completion of the 91-acre land deal show the property includes a toll plaza, an estimated 3,000-foot section of the turnpike and several ramps, The Boston Globe reported Saturday. "Frankly, I think this is ridiculous," Secretary of State William Galvin said. "Harvard University now owns the land on which the turnpike sits. Who has ever heard of selling an interstate for the benefit of a university?" The...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The federal government said Friday it will add two rare southwestern Oregon plants - the Cooks lomatium and the large-flowered woolly meadowfoam - to the endangered species list. Both species grow in seasonal wetlands called ``vernal pools'' in the Agate Desert in Jackson County. Up to 90 percent of those wetlands have disappeared because of commercial development, changes in water use, livestock grazing and the unauthorized use of off-road vehicles, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Cooks lomatium, a member of the carrot family, is a small, perennial plant with pale yellow flowers. Meadowfoam,...

<p>A state agency has sold a 418-acre chunk of San Mateo County that once was part of a hotly contested piece of California coastline to a longtime farmer.</p> <p>The land sale was part of a compromise that allowed two state land agencies, the California Coastal Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, to purchase in 1985 more than 4,000 acres of beautiful, nearly untouched land along the coast -- the point at which the Santa Cruz Mountains roll into the untamed beaches of San Mateo County.</p>