FLAGSTAFF – A group of environmentalists is appealing a plan by the U.S. Forest Service to log an area north of the Grand Canyon.

It’s the second logging plan on the Kaibab National Forest that conservationists have challenged this year. Both sites are within an area where 58,000 acres burned in 2006.

The plan approved in March calls for logging on 9,100 acres and the planting of conifer trees on nearly 10,000 acres in an effort to restore forest conditions.

Conservationists say the plan makes no sense economically or ecologically. They say it would erode soil, damage habitat for the threatened Mexican spotted owl and increase the potential for wildfires.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians signed on to the appeal filed Thursday.

FLAGSTAFF – A federal appeals court has ruled that a woman who started part of the largest wildfire in Arizona history must exhaust remedies in a tribal court.

Valinda Jo Elliott was lost on White Mountain Apache land for two days in 2002 when she started a blaze to get the attention of a television news helicopter. That fire merged into the Rodeo-Chediski fire.

She wasn’t criminally prosecuted, but the tribe brought a civil case against her.

After she tried unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed in tribal courts, she turned to a federal district court.

That court held that Elliott must exhaust her tribal court remedies and dismissed the case without prejudice.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling Thursday.

TUCSON – A wildfire burning in eastern Arizona near the New Mexico border is 15 to 20 percent contained. The fire started Tuesday afternoon located north-northwest of Springerville.

The Arizona State Forestry Division says the fire has burned 5,000 acres. Unburned interior islands will continue to flare up throughout the night with visible flames, officials said.

The fire started along the north side of U.S. 60 and is burning grassland and shrubs.

Winds have begun to decrease and will likely continue decreasing to 10 mph or less Wednesday morning. Very dry conditions will continue into Wednesday and Thursday. Lighter southwest breezes are expected with continued above average daytime highs.

Motorists are advised to exercise extreme caution within the vicinity of this fire due to the presence of multiple emergency response vehicles.

SIERRA VISTA — Fire officials say winds cooperated Thursday in holding down a wildfire in southeastern Arizona and the blaze near Sierra Vista should be contained Saturday.

Incident management team spokeswoman Jonetta Holt says officials estimated the Canelo fire would be 80 percent contained by nightfall. It burned 4,208 acres as of Thursday, having destroyed three homes and burned a man listed in critical condition at the Maricopa Burn Center in Phoenix.

Crews focused on mopping up interior hot spots.

Holt says the blaze that began in grass and brush Tuesday, also burning five outbuildings and six vehicles, no longer threatened any structures.

Residents evacuated from a subdivision near Fort Huachuca returned home Wednesday.

SIERRA VISTA – Officials say generally calm winds helped keep a southeastern Arizona wildfire near Sierra Vista in check Wednesday, a day after it destroyed three homes and burned a man.

Authorities had feared that winds would pick up and drive the human-caused Canelo fire northeast again.

The blaze was 25 percent contained at 4,000 acres. It destroyed five outbuildings and six vehicles Tuesday. Residents evacuated from some of about 50 homes in a subdivision near Fort Huachuca returned Wednesday.

A spokesman at the Maricopa Burn Center in Phoenix listed the man airlifted with third-degree burns as in guarded condition.

Officials say crews made significant progress in controlling hot spots and in digging containment lines.

Spikedace, loach minnow may get bigger set-aside area

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can reconsider the designation of several hundred miles of riverbed in New Mexico and Arizona as critical habitat for two threatened fish species.

The agency’s original habitat designation for the spikedace and loach minnow will remain in place while federal biologists determine whether the fish need more habitat set aside under a ruling filed Tuesday by Senior U.S. District Judge John Conway.

Embroiled in litigation, the Fish and Wildlife Service filed a motion earlier this year seeking to take a new look at the species’ habitat needs.

The agency cited a Department of Interior inspector general’s report that found potential political interference by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald. She resigned in 2007 after the inspector general concluded she pressured federal scientists to alter findings on certain matters before the Fish and Wildlife Service.

In his ruling, Conway discussed the report, which states that MacDonald selected one of several potential critical habitat designations for the two fish and wanted to make the area set aside for the species “as small as possible.”

“Upon examination of the portion of the IG report relevant to this case, it appears that the problem with the existing final rule is more likely that its designation of critical habitat was not expansive enough,” Conway said.

It was not immediately clear when the Fish and Wildlife Service would begin reviewing the critical habitat designation for the fish. An agency spokesman did not return phone messages seeking comment.

A coalition of counties in the two states and the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association had sued over the original habitat designation, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service overstepped its bounds and failed to adhere to requirements of the Endangered Species Act in setting aside the critical habitat.

The groups argued that the original designation should be vacated while the agency reconsiders the matter.

The agency and conservationists argued that the fish needed the protections afforded by critical habitat until the agency makes a final decision.

Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity said nonnative species are a big threat to the fish as well as stream degradation due to grazing and water withdrawal.

“Really, the whole aquatic fauna of the Southwest is headed toward extinction,” he said.

The spikedace and loach minnow have been eliminated from more than 80 percent of their historic ranges in Arizona and New Mexico. They were once common throughout much of the Verde, Salt, San Pedro and Gila rivers.

The counties and the cattle growers had argued that restrictions stemming from the critical habitat designation prohibited landowners from making improvements on their property and put them at risk for flooding.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed the action on behalf of the counties, said Fish and Wildlife ignored its duty to consider the economic impact of the designation.

But Conway ruled that it would be “least disruptive” to allow the existing habitat designation to remain in effect pending the Fish and Wildlife Service review.

Damien Schiff, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said Wednesday his clients may consider filing a motion asking the judge to reconsider his dismissal of their claims.

“The best case scenario at the end of the remand period is a designation that retains the basic contours of the current designation, that is, things don’t worsen any further for our clients,” he said. “Worse case scenario is that the designation on remand becomes much larger, in which case the injuries that our clients are suffering just become worse.”

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On the Web

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

www.fws.gov/southwest

Center for Biological Diversity:

www.biologicaldiversity.org

FLAGSTAFF – A group of conservationists says pollution from a coal-fired power plant is clouding views of the Grand Canyon, and they want the federal government to do something about it.

A petition filed by the conservationists Tuesday asks the National Park Service to declare that particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions from the Navajo Generating Station near Page are harming air quality.

The group said the declaration could trigger a reduction in emissions at the plant, improve visibility and safeguard the public’s health.

The plant is operated by the Salt River Project, which supplies water and power to the Phoenix area. Kevin Wanttaja, manager of environmental services for SRP, said the agency has submitted a plan to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 40 percent. No cuts in particulate matter are planned.

Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust, which is among the petitioners, commended SRP for volunteering to retrofit its three units at the plant with nitrogen oxide controls by 2011. But he said it’s not enough. The best available control technology would cut such emissions by 80 percent to 90 percent, he said.

The humpback chub, a closely watched indicator of the Grand Canyon’s ecological health, has grown steadily in number since 2001 as changing conditions on the Colorado River have created a more hospitable habitat.

The population of the endangered fish grew by 50 percent over the past eight years, the U.S. Geological Survey reported Monday. By the end of last year, there were an estimated 7,650 adult chub, fish at least 4 years old, near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. That’s up from about 4,000 fish as recently as 2000.

Scientists offered several possible factors for the higher numbers, including drought-related spikes in water temperature, the removal of non-native fish from the river and a series of experimental water releases from Glen Canyon Dam.

Put together, those factors essentially re-created some of the conditions that once supported larger populations of the chub.

“It may be that the synergy, the combined impacts of all of those, is the thing that helps humpback chub survive best,” said Matthew Andersen, a USGS biologist. “We have great confidence in the population trend. We’re still investigating the reasons behind it.”

The chub, found in just six locations on the Colorado River and its tributaries, has become a measure of the Grand Canyon’s overall condition in recent years. The chub’s numbers in the lower Colorado dwindled after the 1963 completion of Glen Canyon Dam shut off the river’s natural flow, altering the habitat.

Finding more fish in the river is encouraging, environmental advocates said Monday, but work remains to ensure the species’ long-term survival.

“This is not a result that should have us sitting back comfortably in our chairs,” said Nikolai Lash, Colorado River program director for the Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon Trust. “It should have us leaning forward, trying to figure out how to take advantage of whatever it was that led to a small improvement.”

A decision is expected in the next few weeks in a case the trust and others filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, challenging the government’s management of the river and the chub habitat.

The chub, named for a protruding hump on its back, can grow as long as 20 inches and can live for 30 years or more. It uses its prominent fins to glide through the water and find insects to eat. Over 4 million years, the chub evolved to survive in warm sediment-laden water.

The construction of Glen Canyon Dam to store water and generate electricity changed the fish’s environment on the lower Colorado. The river’s flow was controlled artificially and, because water was released from the lower depths of Lake Powell, its temperature cooled.

As a result, native-fish populations plummeted. Responding to lawsuits from environmental groups, Congress passed legislation in 1992 that ordered federal agencies to manage the dam in ways that would help restore habitat, but until about 2000, fish numbers remained low.

In 2001, the population started to grow, Andersen said. Scientists began looking at three factors:

• A long drought lowered water levels at Lake Powell, which allowed the sun to reach deeper into the lake and warm the water.

• Non-native fish have been removed from parts of the river where the chub live. Non-native fish compete for food and eat young chub. From 2003 to 2006, the non-native rainbow trout population near the Little Colorado confluence dropped 80 percent.

• The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has conducted a series of experimental test releases from Glen Canyon Dam. Andersen said it’s possible some of those tests have helped improve conditions.

PHOENIX — An increase in Arizonans living near and recreating in wilderness areas has contributed to a record number of rabies cases in Arizona, a state health official told lawmakers Thursday.

So far this year, the Arizona Department of Health Services has confirmed rabies in 99 animals, putting the state on pace to eclipse the record of 176 cases set last year, said Craig Levy, vector-borne disease director for the Arizona Department of Health Services.

“We are on track this year, unfortunately, of setting another state record,” he told the Senate Committee on Government Institutions.

Pima County leads all Arizona counties with 35 cases of rabies so far this year, 25 of them involving skunks. Officials are urging residents to avoid skunks that act friendly toward humans, and that do so during the daytime, said Patti Woodcock, community relations manager for the Pima County Health Department.

“If a nocturnal animal like a skunk or a bat is out in the daytime, that is a sure sign that something is wrong,” she said.

Because of an outbreak in foxes and skunks around Flagstaff, Coconino County has ordered a three-month quarantine forcing owners to keep dogs on leashes or in fenced yards and to keep cats indoors in and around the city.

Levy said Pima County is seeing an unusual number of rabid skunks, as is the area of Cochise County around St. David.

However, Levy said rabies outbreaks are cyclical and will abate with time. Better rainfall in recent years has increased the population of skunks, foxes, bobcats, bats and other creatures that carry rabies, and the disease eventually will reduce those numbers, he said.

Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system and is spread most commonly through bites from infected animals. It’s always fatal in humans once symptoms appear but can be prevented in exposed individuals through the prompt administration of shots.

There is no treatment for unvaccinated pets.

Levy said officials are especially concerned with summer approaching.

“You’re going to have a lot of people camping and fishing, and we want them all to be prepared,” Levy said.

Those venturing into the wilderness should be ready for encounters with rabid animals, Levy said. Running is a good option when facing skunks, which can’t keep up, but he said foxes and bobcats are highly aggressive when they contract rabies and will catch up to you.

“A good walking stick, believe it or not, is one of the best forms of protection,” Levy said.

Laura Oxley, the communications director for the Department of Health Services, said that the number of rabid bats usually picks up in the summer as bats migrate from Mexico to Arizona. That leads to increased rabies exposure in the fall, when rabid bats fall onto school grounds and children play with them, she said.

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2009 rabies cases

The Arizona Department of Health Services confirmed in each county through April 20:

— Apache: 0

— Cochise: 15

— Coconino: 21

— Gila: 1

— Graham: 0

— Greenlee: 1

— La Paz: 0

— Maricopa: 2

— Mohave: 0

— Navajo: 0

— Pima: 35

— Pinal: 2

— Santa Cruz: 11

— Yavapai: 7

— Yuma: 0

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On the Web

Arizona Department of Health Services:

www.azdhs.gov

A bill that would force Homeland Security to obey environmental laws when considering border security programs was introduced in Congress by U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva.

The legislation would compel Homeland officials to consult with state, local and tribal governments on security programs that may impact the environment and health.

The southern Arizona Democrat is chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

His bill would:

• Require Homeland Security to consult with federal land managers, along with state, local and tribal governments in creating an effective border protection strategy while protecting federal and tribal lands.

• Ensure that laws protecting air, water, wildlife, culture, and health and public safety “are fully upheld.”

The Arizona Game & Fish Commission has extended a moratorium on killing mountain lions on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge until July 31, but conservationists said Thursday they aren’t satisfied.

Federal and state officials put the ban in place a year ago after state officials killed two of the cats because they were feeding on bighorn sheep in the refuge outside Yuma.

Conservationists objected and wildlife officials said they would study whether the mountain lions were responsible for declines in sheep herds. The moratorium expired last Friday, but a day later the state commission that directs the Arizona Game & Fish Department voted to extend it.

“It’s a national wildlife refuge, not a state game farm, and it needs to be run as an ecosystem, and that includes protecting these lions,” said Daniel Patterson, a spokesman for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER.

The cats, which are also called cougars or pumas, are rare in low-desert, low-elevation environments like the Kofa refuge. But neither they nor the desert bighorn sheep population found on the Kofa are listed as endangered.

The mountain lions were targeted after the refuge’s once-robust sheep population plunged by more than half, from a high mark estimated at 812 in 2000 to 390 in a 2006 survey, Game & Fish spokesman Doug Burt said.

The die-off was attributed to factors including drought, readily available food and predation.

The refuge population was estimated at 438 as of last fall’s survey, he said.

By law, Game & Fish manages the state’s wildlife, including on national refuges, unless a species becomes threatened or endangered, Burt said.

“While sheep are not endangered, they are at a very low number,” he said. “Our goal is to repopulate the sheep in those areas where they once were . . . They’re an iconic animal and they’re very important to us and they’re very important to the Southwest.”

The Kofa herd is one of the strongest available for repopulating other areas, he said.

PEER threatened court action last year to stop the killings. It said Thursday that neither the study nor an environmental assessment for a refuge mountain lion management plan has been completed.

“We believe there would be a serious legal problem if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to permit Arizona Game & Fish to continue to go after these lions if they don’t have this environmental assessment done.

“That’s why we’re concerned about the short extension,” said Patterson, an ecologist and Southwest director for PEER, which is representing some concerned Fish and Wildlife employees on the issue.

Fish and Wildlife regional spokesman Jose Viramontes in Albuquerque, N.M., said the agency has been working closely with state officials. He said the assessment might not be completed by July 31 but that the service intends “to move forward as quickly as possible on completing” it.

Patterson also said environmental organizations are concerned about what he called a loophole for Game and Fish that might allow a lion on the 665,000-acre refuge to be killed if it kills a sheep and it leaves the refuge.

The worry is that if the area’s mountain lion population is wiped out, it will be difficult to get the animal re-established.

He said a solution can be reached but would require a recognition that there is a national interest and responsibility at the refuge and that Game and Fish must recognize that there is room for lions to exist on it.

SALT LAKE CITY — If the West continues to heat up and dry out, odds increase that the mighty Colorado River won’t be able to deliver all the water that’s been promised to millions who rely on it for their homes, farms and businesses, according to a new study.

Less runoff — the snow and rain that fortify the 1,400-mile river — caused by human-induced climate change could mean that by 2050 the Colorado won’t be able to provide all of its allocated water 60 percent to 90 percent of the time, according to two climate researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.

The more parched the landscape, the more difficult the choices will be for those with dibs on the Colorado’s water and those in charge of divvying it up, said Tim Barnett, lead author of the study.

“The dry year scenarios in the future are going to be absolutely brutal,” he said.

Barnett and fellow Scripps scientist David Pierce made waves last year with a study saying there’s a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam, could run dry by 2021.

They teamed up on the latest study to predict when the river — under different climate scenarios predicting 10 percent to 30 percent reductions in runoff — will be unable to fully meet all of the demands put on it.

The results were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Without numbers like this, it’s pretty hard for resource managers to know what to do,” Barnett said.

The Colorado is a lifeline of the southwest, flowing through seven states and into Mexico and quenching the thirsts of some 27 million people who use it to irrigate crops, water lawns, produce drinking water and operate businesses.

Drought has already stressed the river. The problem is being compounded by growing populations demanding more water and the expected effects of climate change, said Brad Udall, director of the University of Colorado’s Western Water Assessment.

“We’re on a collision course between supply and demand,” Udall said.

The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that plays a key role in how the river system is managed, has used a different set of calculations than the Scripps researchers to reach a similar — though less dire — prediction, according to Terry Fulp, the agency’s Nevada-based deputy regional director for the Lower Colorado.

His agency’s calculations predict the Colorado could run short of water 58 percent to 73 percent of the time by 2050.

There’s room to quibble over percentages, Fulp said, but the overriding point remains.

“We’ve got some serious issues to grapple with,” he said.

Under conservative climate change scenarios in the West, Barnett and Pierce found decreases in runoff could short the Colorado River by about 400,000 acre feet of water 40 percent of the time by 2025. That’s equivalent to the amount of water needed to supply 400,000 to 800,000 households.

Those figures double later in the century, according to the Scripps researchers.

The signs point toward tough decisions about who will get less water. Agricultural operations use about 80 percent of the water taken out of the Colorado, Barnett said. He knows the arguments, though: Shorting farms could drive up food prices. Curbing development in cities and suburbs will make developers unhappy. Whatever the case, he said, some decisions need to be made soon.

“The actions that need to be taken aren’t going to be fun,” Barnett said. “It’s not going to be life as usual.”

But, Barnett and Pierce said, it isn’t too late to buffet some of the harshest effects.

Measures such as conservation and water exchanges, which can require upfront investments and flexibility, could play a key role in avoiding some of the biggest shortfalls, they said.

In 2007, officials from the seven states that get water from the river — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne signed a far-reaching agreement aimed at conserving and sharing the scarce resource. The 19-year plan formalized rules for cooperating during the ongoing drought.

Meanwhile, researchers will continue gathering information on climate change and looking for ways to keep the Colorado functioning — albeit with a new set of climate-driven rules.

“It really depends on how innovative people get,” Fulp said.

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On the Web

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: www.pnas.org

LAKE PLEASANT – Hundreds of tiny quagga mussels clinging to a 43-foot boat provided proof that the pesky mollusks hadn’t gone anywhere over the winter, but state wildlife authorities wanted to make a bigger point Thursday.

Boats and their owners are all that stand between the quaggas and the rest of Arizona’s lakes.

“We need the public to help by not moving these guys around,” said Kevin Bergersen, a law-enforcement administrator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “The costs of letting them out are profound. Clean, drain and dry, and life will be good.”

That advice – cleaning a boat after removing it from a lake, draining it and allowing it to dry thoroughly – will figure prominently in a ramped-up publicity campaign aimed at containing the quaggas.

The thumbnail-size mollusks have so far infested Lake Pleasant, along with Lakes Mead, Mohave and Havasu on the lower Colorado River. Although the mussels pose no health risk to humans, they can clog pipes, jam machinery and begin to destroy parts of a lake’s ecosystem.

Water provider Salt River Project is pouring resources into the campaign in an effort to keep quaggas out of its six largest reservoirs on the Salt and Verde rivers. If the mussels find their way into those lakes, they could spread into water-treatment plants across Phoenix, distribution pipes and power plants.

Boats have become the focal point because they almost certainly brought the first mussels from the Great Lakes to Lake Mead and are a likely form of transport between lakes.

Although mussels can form crusts several inches thick on metal and concrete surfaces, the boat hauled out of Lake Pleasant on Thursday was not as obviously infested. Tiny quaggas clung to the drive shaft and the propellers, but a boat owner might mistake them for other debris that builds up underwater, Bergersen said.

“The average boater will look at this and say, ‘I don’t have a problem,’ ” Bergersen said. He scraped off a handful from the hull. “This is a problem. These guys will hang on if you don’t wash them off or let the boat dry.”

Quaggas can linger in damp conditions but can’t survive long once a surface dries completely.

Bergersen plucked a mussel shell from a plastic bucket that held hundreds more, all scraped Thursday morning from a boat in the nearby harbor.

He held it between his thumb and forefinger and pinched. It turned to dust.

“That’s what you want to see,” he said. “He’s done for. If you see this . . . ”

He pulled a small container from his pocket and pulled out something softer, slimier. He squeezed it and it oozed moisture. “You’ve got trouble. If you miss one of these when you clean, they’ll go to town the next time the boat goes in the water.”

Lesly Swanson, an environmental scientist for SRP, said it’s critical to prevent the spread of the mussels because it’s almost impossible to eradicate them once they settle in. SRP continues to monitor its lakes and so far has found quaggas only at a junction between an SRP canal and the Central Arizona Project Canal.

Arizona Game and Fish eagle biologist Kyle McCarty sits in an eagle nest Thursday trying to catch two young bald eagles. They were lowered to the ground, where they were tagged and then returned to the nest.

Kyle McCarty, an eagle biologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, was 40 feet up a sycamore tree in the Tonto National Forest trying to gain control of a pair of young bald eagles.

It would not be easy.

Twigs snapped, and the branches holding the nest began to sway.

“There you go, there you go,” McCarty said. “You’re a fighter. Good for you. There you go.”

The nestlings’ parents soared overhead, squawking and displeased.

After placing leather hoods over their heads, and covering their talons with booties, McCarty placed the 6-week-old birds in a bag and lowered them to biologists waiting below.

What happened on Thursday, the first and almost certainly the last time these animals will ever be touched by human hands, would help determine their future.

The desert-nesting bald eagles of central Arizona are the only bald eagles still receiving protection as members of the Endangered Species List.

Getting and keeping that protection has not been easy.

In 1967, the bald eagle was listed as endangered under federal law.

After four decades of habitat protection and hunting prohibitions, the eagle was thriving.

In July 2007, eagles in the lower 48 states were removed from the federal protection list. But environmentalists in Arizona were not ready to let those protections lapse.

The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, and Maricopa Audubon filed a petition in federal court arguing that the desert-nesting bald eagle – sometimes called the bald eagle of the Sonoran Desert – should still be protected.

These birds, they argued, were not just any bald eagles but a distinct group.

In March 2008, the U.S. District Court in Arizona agreed with the conservationists and designated the animals as a “distinct population segment.” That means the birds, though they are the same species, are geographically, biologically and behaviorally distinct from all other bald-eagle populations.

That status gave the eagles, which live south of the Mogollon Rim and north of the Arizona/Mexico border, a protected position under the Endangered Species Act.

But the eagles’ travels through the court system are still not finished.

The judge ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to perform a status review of the eagles to determine whether they deserve the special protection.

Under the order, the birds cannot be removed from the list until a finding is made.

The information gathered on Thursday by Arizona Game and Fish will be part of that research.

After lowering the birds to the ground, McCarty stayed in the nest, gathering information on their diet.

There was a skunk tail, some duck remains, fish bones and rabbit fur.

The diversity of the diet was a good indication that these are healthy birds.

On the ground, Kenneth Jacobson, head of the bald-eagle management program for Game and Fish, started to measure the birds and place metal bands on their legs.

Each was a male, and each weighed about 6 pounds, 13 ounces.

The birds will not have the distinctive white feathers on their heads and tails until they are about 5 years old.

During the measuring and weighing, the hoods kept the animals calm and docile. They appeared to be in an almost trancelike state.

“The brains are pretty much run by their optic nerves,” Jacobson said. “You shut off the lights, he pretty much shuts down.”

The metal band markings, 23/U for the first and 23/V for the second, will identify the eagles. Scientists with high-powered lenses will track their movement in the years ahead.

Arizona Game and Fish will share this information with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The position of the state agency is that desert-nesting bald eagle deserves special protection.

There are just 50 breeding pairs of the eagles in the state.

“We do believe it deserves distinct population segment,” Jacobsen said. “It does deserve special protection. It’s such a magnificent bird.”

FLAGSTAFF – Parking near the Grand Canyon’s South Rim is set to undergo a transformation that officials say will make it easier for tourists to spot the visitor center and will improve safety.

Nearly 4 million people visit the canyon’s South Rim each year, and finding parking can be difficult. Many motorists are forced to park alongside the road in busy areas, setting up conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles.

Construction beginning this month will add 600 new spaces in three parking lots within a few hundred yards of the rim, a separate parking area for 40 commercial tour buses and a shuttle bus staging area.

“That will correct that situation, and make it much safer and improve the visitor experience greatly,” said Maureen Oltrogge, a spokeswoman for the Grand Canyon National Park.

The Park Service released the visitor transportation plan for the Grand Canyon in February 2008 to address long waits to enter the park, traffic congestion, poor traffic flow and access to the visitor center that opened in 2000.

The first phase of the project near Mather Point, a popular lookout spot, is expected to be complete by November and cost $5.3 million.

When finished, the entrance road will loop around the Canyon View Information Plaza to the south and west, providing access to the new parking lots and visitor center about 300 yards from Mather Point.

Project manager Vicky Stinson said Mather Point is the first area to catch a glimpse of the canyon for people who are coming to the South Rim. But, she said, “if you’ve missed that, you’ve missed the visitor center, too.”

The visitor center provides opportunities for tourists to interact with interpretive rangers, see exhibits, seasonal messages and know what the weather has in store for the day, Oltrogge said.

“It’s a good place to stop and plan your visit and know what’s out there in terms of park activities and programs,” Oltrogge said.

A second phase of construction will remove about 115 parking spaces at Mather Point, and add an amphitheater at the rim and interpretive exhibits. Stinson said park officials have the option to add another 300 parking spaces at the visitor center in the future.

A guide that park officials hand out at the entrance to the South Rim alerts the public to possible traffic delays and detours during construction.

Park officials have added a northbound entrance lane, kiosks, and an independent pass lane for the park’s shuttle buses and emergency and government vehicles at the entrance to the South Rim to ease traffic congestion.

Visitors also have the option again this year to park their vehicles in nearby Tusayan and take a shuttle to the South Rim. The program is expected to start next month and run through mid-September.