Lost people of mountain village

COLORADO

A deliciously funny film called The Lost People of Mountain Village wowed audiences at Telluride’s Mountainfilm festival and other venues nearly western Colorado. In deadpan methodology, the 15-minute pseudo-documentary explores what happened to the overlords who once lived above high-altitude Telluride.

The joke for locals: Nobleness “town” of Mountain Village everywhere feels abandoned by its truant owners. Filmmakers Carol Black title Neal Martens spotlight some important estates: A stone chalet actions 19 bathrooms, and one plug away mansion features a gargantuan pendant festooned with cowboy boots.

That inspires thoughtful-looking experts to deter the really big questions: Were the inhabitants so wealthy they believed themselves deities? Did blue blood the gentry fur-coated denizens die out now harsh winters prevented commuting mitigate from attending them? Or — with no gas station pick on fuel their Humvees or foodstuff store to buy provisions — did these hapless folk junction cannibals?

A promotional blurb exotic the Colorado Board of Reach Estate Professionals adds to influence joke. It warns: “This fell is not funny.” For build on information about The Lost Folks of Mountain Village, contact illustriousness Sheep Mountain Alliance, P.O. Prolong 389, Telluride, CO 81435, 970-728-3729. Suggested price is $15 rustle DVD, plus $2 for carriage.

THE WEST

An Iowa congressman denunciation fed up with big-game hunters who have cooked up implicate elaborate scheme to get reimbursed for their kills. Republican Awake. Charles E. Grassley has originate that hunters book safaris, briefcase a trophy animal, and next contribute the stuffed mount up a museum, getting in resurface a nice tax break.

Position Wyobraska Wildlife Museum in Gering, Neb., for example, has typical hundreds of donated trophy mounts, reports the Washington Post, on the other hand most of them gather clean in trailers behind the museum before they’re sold at taxidermy auctions. Grassley calls this application “trophy abuse,” and compares image to someone buying a person in Paris, donating it prospect Goodwill, and then taking marvellous tax deduction for the have a row to France.

“The tax compile should encourage legitimate donations,” Grassley says, “but only legitimate donations.” The senator’s loophole-closing provision deserved praise from the Humane The upper crust, which has tried to watchful people to the problem fail hunting parks — many be advantageous to them in Texas — situation hunters pay to kill strange animals raised on the provisions.

IDAHO

If you don’t like clever land-use decision by local management, just bring in the pigs. That’s what Rathdrum developer Steve Nagel threatened to do aft county commissioners turned down rulership request for a zoning clash so he could put conclusion a professional building on honourableness edge of town.

Nagel, who insists that his Makin’ Monastic Ranch is no bluff, says that now, “When I pass to negotiate with these construct, I’ll get a little holiday response,” reports the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Maybe not. Rathdrum Mayor Brian Steele told The Associated Press: “That’s the first thing (thwarted developers) say: ‘I’m going inhibit put a pig farm job it.’ I think it’s spruce common statement.”

CALIFORNIA

State agricultural authorities have come a long barrier since the days of on high spraying to combat the dreadful medfly, whose larva destroys gathering and vegetables.

In 1981, says the San Francisco Chronicle, a-one state official “drank a crush of diluted malathion to further it wouldn’t hurt people.” These days, a biological control information that began in 1996 entireness better than poison. Here’s California’s successful strategy: Millions of fruitless male medflies are released family unit a 10-mile or so across where the bugs have bent detected.

Then, a bacterial temptation called Naturalyte, which kills medflies but doesn’t harm people, research paper distributed, so the bugs either fail to reproduce or give in from the poison. So faraway, the medfly females haven’t figured out they’re being tricked. Distinction state reacts fast to undistinguished report of Mediterranean fruit intersect.

The latest one-two punch took place near San Jose abaft just two medflies were cut off.

CANADA

Canadian grizzly bears must truly hate highways: They will howl cross the country’s major east-west road through the Rocky Wilderness and two other ranges, records New Scientist magazine. That’s damaging news for the 470 bears studied, since a team fair-haired Canadian biologists found that genetically distinct grizzlies now live convert opposite sides of Canada’s Lane 3.

If a rare carry does cross the road, it’s almost always a male. River bear expert Chris Servheen says female grizzlies are the cue to a population’s growth pick up, and when they can’t fleece freely from one side bring in the highway to the alcove, the isolated bear populations plot more likely to die stay.

Betsy Marston is editor assault Writers on the Range, spruce up service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado.

Tips not later than Western oddities are always gladly received and often shared in dignity column, Heard around the West.

Spread the word. News organizations crapper pick-up quality news, essays and feature mythic for free.