MONTANA

Feds say pine tree that feeds grizzlies is threatened

BILLINGS – Climate change, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Dec. 1.

A Fish and Wildlife Service proposal would protect the whitebark pine tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, according to documents posted by the Office of the Federal Register.

The move marks a belated acknowledgement of the tree’s severe declines in recent decades and sets the stage for restoration work. But government officials said they do not plan to designate which forest habitats are critical to the tree’s survival, stopping short of what some environmentalists argue is needed.

Whitebark pines can live up to 1,000 years and are found at elevations up to 12,000 feet – conditions too harsh for most tress to survive.

Environmentalists had petitioned the government in 1991 and again in 2008 to protect the trees, which occur across 126,000 square miles of land in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and western Canada.

A nonnative fungus has been killing whitebark pines for a century. More recently, the trees have proven vulnerable to bark beetles that have killed millions of acres of forest, and climate change that scientists say is responsible for more severe wildfire seasons.

The trees have been all but wiped out in some areas, including the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park, where they are a source of food for threatened grizzly bears. More than half of whitebark pines in the U.S. are now dead, according to a 2018 study from the U.S. Forest Service.

That has complicated government efforts to declare grizzlies in the Yellowstone area as a recovered species that no longer needs federal protection. Grizzlies raid caches of whitebark pine cones that are hidden by squirrels and devour the seeds within the cones to fatten up for winter.

A 2009 court ruling that restored protections for Yellowstone bears cited in part the tree’s decline, although government studies later concluded the grizzlies could find other things to eat.

WYOMING

Health official: ‘so-called pandemic’ a communist plot

CASPER – A Wyoming Department of Health official involved in the state’s response to the coronavirus questioned the legitimacy of the pandemic and described a forthcoming vaccine as a biological weapon at a recent event.

The “so-called pandemic” and efforts to develop a vaccine are plots by Russia and China to spread communism worldwide, department readiness and countermeasures manager Igor Shepherd said at the Nov. 10 event held by the group Keep Colorado Free and Open.

Shepherd was introduced as and talked about being a Wyoming Department of Health employee in the over hour-long presentation in Loveland.

Shepherd’s baseless and unsubstantiated claims undermined Wyoming’s public health measures – and public exhortations – to limit spread of the virus, as well as its plans to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in the months ahead.

Even so, Wyoming officials including Gov. Mark Gordon, who at a recent news conference called people not taking the virus seriously “knuckleheads,” declined to comment.

Department Director Mike Ceballos and State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist did not answer questions from The Associated Press, including when they became aware of Shepherd’s talk and what if anything they have done in response.

Phone and social media messages left for Shepherd on Dec. 4 weren’t returned.

He has worked for the health department since 2013 and has been a part of the state’s team responding to COVID-19, though not in a leadership role, department spokeswoman Kim Deti said.

Researchers have worried for months that politicized skepticism of COVID-19 vaccines could hurt their efficacy. Vaccines are more effective if most of the population is inoculated.

NEW MEXICO

State to require details of water for oil well drilling

ALBUQUERQUE – New Mexico oil and gas operators will be required to report the amount and quality of water used to drill wells, officials said.

The data collection is an attempt by state agencies to scrutinize water use across New Mexico’s economic sectors, the Albuquerque Journal reported Nov. 28.

Adrienne Sandoval, director of the Oil Conservation Division of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, said the reports will help fill a data gap for industry water use.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, blasts water, sand and chemicals underground to break through shale formations to retrieve oil.

Operators previously reported the amount of produced water injected into storage wells but were not required to disclose water data for well completions.

Produced water is a salty chemical mixture surfacing along with petroleum, which companies often recycle for future fracking.

Office of the State Engineer data show oil and gas operations account for less than 1% of New Mexico’s water use.

Researchers: Starvation, weather to blame for bird die-off

SANTA FE – Starvation and unexpected weather are to blame for a statewide die-off among migratory birds in New Mexico, researchers said Dec. 4.

Biologists from multiple agencies collected hundreds of samples of warblers, swallows and other birds and sent them to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin to be analyzed.

The researchers found that nearly all the birds were severely emaciated, already starving when they moved into New Mexico. An unusual storm likely made things worse, they said, causing the birds to become disoriented and fly into buildings and objects. Some died from exposure to the cold weather, were killed by predators or hit by vehicles.

The evidence of starvation included kidney failure, empty stomachs, small amounts of blood, depleted fat deposits, irritated lung tissue and shrunken breast muscles that control the birds’ wings, the researchers said.

The researchers didn’t identify a single, definitive cause of death. They ruled out disease and poisoning.

Countless birds died earlier this year, with the first signs in late August. They were reported in the Taos area and at Valles Caldera National Preserve in the north to the cottonwood forest along the Rio Grande to southern New Mexico, including at White Sands Missile Range.

IDAHO

State is top pick for Energy Dept. nuclear test reactor

BOISE – The U.S. government said Nov. 19 that Idaho is its preferred choice ahead of Tennessee for a test reactor to be built as part of an effort to revamp the nation’s fading nuclear power industry by developing safer fuel and power plants.

The U.S. Department of Energy said in an email to The Associated Press that the site that includes Idaho National Laboratory will be listed as its preferred alternative in a draft environmental impact statement planned for release in December.

The Versatile Test Reactor, or VTR, would be the first new test reactor built in the U.S. in decades and give the nation a dedicated “fast-neutron-spectrum” testing capability. Some scientists decry the plan, saying fast reactors are less safe than current reactors.

The final environmental impact statement is due in 2021, followed by what’s called a record of decision finalizing the selection of the site. Plans call for building the reactor by the end of 2025.

The Department of Energy’s draft environmental impact statement also examines building the test reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee as an alternative.

Revamping the nation’s nuclear power is part of a strategy to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by generating carbon-free electricity with nuclear power initiated under the Obama administration and continuing under the Trump administration, despite Trump’s downplaying of global warming.