Free Republic

Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits. The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City, Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The circumstances were quite different, but the decision to kill the bears was undoubtedly influenced by a 1996 court case over the terrible bear mauling of 16 year-old Anna Knochel at a U.S. Forest...

Missoula, Mont. (AP) -- A Bush administration official apologized Tuesday to a federal judge in urging that he not hold the U.S. Forest Service's use of a fire retardant that environmentalists say kills fish and plants. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, acknowledged the agency was slow in preparing environmental studies related to the effects of the chemical firefighting tool dropped from airplanes. "There is no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball," Rey testified in court. "We're sorry." While Rey was contrite, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy was...

Jefferson County officials said last week that plans to aid an Arizona businessman in his quest to construct a bio-energy facility in Golden are moving forward. Wade Yates, special project coordinator for Jeffco, said the county has finalized a $161,700 contract with CVL Consultants of Colorado for an engineering study and design plan for the proposed wood-pellet fuel biomass plant. If the report finds the site is appropriate for the Front Range’s first biomass facility, the consultants will help Jeffco rezone the land from agricultural to industrial uses and develop a comprehensive site development plan. At that point, “we’re really...

The Colorado Army National Guard will maintain its annual high-altitude helicopter training on Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands in Eagle and Garfield counties at 3,000 hours. The Guard also has agreed to additional stipulations in order to protect wilderness areas, wildlife and livestock, the White River National Forest and BLM announced today. The military believes high-altitude combat training is vital for the protection of pilots and aircrews. In combat, aircrews trained in high-altitude aviation have a higher mission success rate as well as fewer accidents. As such, the Army had asked for 6,000 hours that could...

The federal judge who overturned the Bush administration’s Roadless Rule declared Wednesday that energy companies can’t set up their drill rigs on any undeveloped oil and gas lease issued since 2001 within a roadless area. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. LaPorte ruled in September that President Bill Clinton’s 2001 Roadless Rule be reinstated, protecting 4.4 million acres of roadless areas in Colorado national forests and more than 58 million acres nationwide. Her ruling Wednesday prevents the U.S. Forest Service from approving or allowing any surface disturbance of a mineral lease issued after Jan. 12, 2001, on which drilling or development...

With budgets getting tighter every year, the U.S. Forest Service plans to raise up to $800 million in much-needed cash by selling off 200,000 acres of land across the country... The proposed land sale would be authorized under a Congressional amendment to the 2,000 Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The law is intended to help rural communities that have seen National Forest logging-based revenue drop as timber cutting dwindled across the country. The list is based in part on land ownership adjustment analyses that designate lands suitable for disposal. Most of the lands to be sold are parcels...

"GMUG" stands for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests. Combined, they encompass some 2.9 million acres of National Forest lands in Central and Western Colorado. These three forests are home to some of the most outstanding recreational opportunity in the West. Right now, the forest's are revising their Forest Plans. These management plans provide broad guidance on what activities may or may not occur on these lands. The BlueRibbon Coalition (BRC), a national recreation advocacy group that champions recreational access and responsible use of public and private lands, is growing increasingly concerned about the influence several anti-access groups...

Three environmental activists were cooking up plastic explosives and had planned to test a device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted them. The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. The suspects planned assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a 'loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization' of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. Eric McDavid, 28, Zachary Jensen, 20, and Lauren Weiner, 20, remain in jail. They could enter a...

Finally, more than four years after its hideous birth, the Clinton "Roadless Rule" is dead. The Bush administration and the Forest Service just announced a final rule that effectively undoes Clinton's reckless decree. Dying with the "Roadless Rule" are the following: - threats of catastrophic wildfire - threats of forest infestation and disease - lack of public access to public lands - improper resource management - unhealthy forests - top-down federal overreach Recall that Bill Clinton, just eight days before he left office, in the dark of night, penned his infamous, unilateral, executive order that locked up over 58 million...

<p>YAKIMA, Wash. — Months ago, national fire managers predicted the 2004 wildfire season (search) would be a bad one in the West.</p> <p>Now, they're changing their forecast: It's going to be worse.</p> <p>With unseasonably warm temperatures in March and April, the potential loss of heavy air tankers for safety reasons and a years-long drought continuing, Western states and the federal government are facing the possibility of another devastating fire season.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Just as the 2004 wildfire season is opening, the government on Monday grounded an aging fleet of 33 former military tankers that had been among the biggest weapons in its arsenal for fighting the blazes. The Forest Service and the Interior Department terminated contracts with private companies for use of the planes after the National Transportation Safety Board determined their airworthiness could be not assured. Three such planes crashed between 1994 and 2002, killing seven crew members. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said that, in the wake of the NTSB report, continuing to use the tankers posed...

Monday, February 2, 2004 Coalition Fights Drill Plan By Adam Rankin Journal Staff Writer A U.S. Forest Service decision on whether to allow coal-bed methane drilling on 40,000 acres of the Valle Vidal isn't expected until January 2005 at the earliest, but a coalition of conservation groups is stirring up political opposition. "Everyone is kind of rolling up their sleeves, putting aside their differences and saying this is something we just can't allow," said Stuart Wilde, operator of a backcountry guide service, and a member of the newly-formed Coalition for the Valle Vidal (www.vallevidal.org). The coalition of about 10 groups...

Thursday, August 14, 2003 Critics Say Wolf Team 'Stacked' By Tania SoussanJournal Staff Writer     The team being formed to revise a recovery plan for the endangered Mexican gray wolf is "stacked" in favor of the livestock industry and anti-wolf groups, 15 conservation organizations claimed Wednesday.     In a letter to Dale Hall, Southwest region director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the groups criticized the list of 24 agencies and organizations invited to be part of the wolf recovery plan team.     Three of those on the list are conservation groups, seven represent the livestock industry and one...

Thursday, August 14, 2003 Cattle in Gila Forest Stir Protest By Rene RomoJournal Southern Bureau     SILVER CITY— The protest signs being paraded in front of the Forest Service headquarters here Wednesday said: "Remove the sacred cows" and "Where's the beef? Trespassing in our wilderness."     Roughly two dozen sign-carrying protesters staged an hourlong demonstration in front of Forest Service offices Wednesday to express their impatience with the agency's failure to remove cattle that Catron County ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney are running in the Gila National Forest without a permit.     Forest Service officials said the case is being...

<p>Environmentalists are accusing federal land managers in Nevada and Idaho of violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing livestock grazing and water diversions harmful to the threatened bull trout in the Jarbidge River.</p> <p>The Western Watersheds Project and Committee for the High Desert filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management on Monday that charges the agencies with not doing enough to protect the fish that federal biologists say is vulnerable to extinction.</p>

The following is a transcribed portion of an interview aired today on the Lars Larson radio program from Portland, Or., which is broadcast across the Northwest from noon to 4:00 P.M. pacific. There is little I can add to his exchange with the executive vice-president of a company that supplies helicopter service to the US Forest service to show the inept and dangerous policies of this bureaucracy. Please bring these disclosures to your congress people’s attention and demand the policy of silence and media blackout practiced by the Forest Service and environmental groups stop. Our homes, forests and lives are...

<p>Last month, environmental groups across the country hollered like banshees when politicians and local communities began taking them to task for the massive wildfires that are today gutting the West. The crescendo came when Arizona's Gov. Jane Dee Hull, watching half a million acres of her state go up in smoke, flatly blamed greenies for obstructing work to clean up national forests. She was talking about the never-ending stream of appeals and lawsuits they file to halt thinning, road building and firebreaks.</p>

Congress is gearing up to vote on a very dangerous bill. The National Heritage Areas Act (HR 2388), sponsored by liberal Republican Rep. Joel Hefley (Colo.) and liberal Democrat Rep. Nick Rahall (W.Va.), would do for land grabs what the assembly line did for automobiles. It would speed up the process to a point where private property would be the equivalent of the horse and buggy. The Heritage Areas Act proposes to extend federal control over local land use in exchange for federal grant money going to local communities. Politicians see it as a pork-barrel spending program to benefit their...

<p>There are a number of reasons for the catastrophic wildfires now consuming huge swaths of the American West. Some are well known, while others are rarely discussed.</p> <p>It's clear, of course, that the West is a fire-prone landscape. In addition, the region is in the grip of a severe drought.</p>

<p>Fires continue to roar through the West, aided by drought and allegedly in some cases by arson. But as the damage stretches into a million acres and billions of dollars, other culprits are coming in focus -- especially the high-powered environmental groups that have dominated U.S. forest policy for at least a decade.</p>