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Show A8 Wednesday, June 7, 2006 .Vernal Express. II odd m mmm MS mm NOTICE OF BUDGET HEARING The Uintah County School District will hold a hearing on the final budget adoption for the 2006-2007 school year and the final amended budget adoption for the 2005-2006 school year. This hearing will be held at 7:00 p.m. on June 20 at the Uintah County School District Board Office, 635 West 200 South, Vernal, Utah. The public is invited to attend. The final budget for 2006-2007 is available avail-able to the public upon request in the Business Administrator's office located at 635 West 200 South in Vernal beginning on June 6, 2006. Published in the Vernal Express June 7 and 14, 2006. 'Notes'from the Uintah Mountain Club On Wednesday, May 31 and Thursday, June 1, The Utah Council for Crime Prevention sponsored seminars semi-nars to educate the community commu-nity about drugs and their growing popularity. The Wednesday seminar was primarily pri-marily on education and prevention. pre-vention. It was held from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday was an all day affair which focused on guidelines for a drug-free workplace and community. There were representatives from the Vernal City Police Department, and a college professor who gave a comprehensive com-prehensive lecture on procedures proce-dures for drug testing. The drug problem in our community is increasing. Although marijuana is the most popular, police say that they make arrests for meth-amphetamines meth-amphetamines every other day. Meth is a problem, not only because it is harmful to the user, but because of its strong addictiveness. All drugs are addictive, but meth is by far the worst Police Chief Gary Jensen stated, "The addiction to meth is beyond our capability capabil-ity to comprehend, it transcends tran-scends all other addictions." Meth is a one time addiction drug (it only has to be taken once for a person to become addicted), and the addiction is progressive which means that the longer one uses the drug, the more he or she needs it Supporting a meth habit costs about $50-100 a day. A statistic provided at the seminar sem-inar stated that 70 percent of those who use illegal drugs are employed, but the money made at these jobs isn't enough to support their drug use. Still, users will do anything any-thing to support their habit "Meth affects everyone," said Chief Jensen. Even if an individual isn't using meth, he or she is being affected by the actions of people who are. For example, users may need to rob a store or burglarize to get the money they need. The use of meth and other drugs increases crime rates. The goal of these seminars was to inform the community commu-nity that drugs are a prob lem. The police are working to help reduce the problem by training officers to use canine units. They are also working with the Uintah School District by putting full time officers in the Vernal Middle School and Vernal Junior High. This act is a big step in decreasing drug use because most drug use begins at that age. The police also ask community com-munity members to watch in their neighborhoods. They urge the public to report anything they think might be suspicious nothing is insignificant. Leave it to the police to decide whether or not something seen or heard needs to be investigated. Eden at our doorstep By Linda West Last summer I visited Yellowstone National Park for the first time in about 15 years, and it felt like a vacation vaca-tion in Eden. The geysers, mud pots, and colorful, steaming pools and terraces are always impressive, but what truly captivated me was the wildlife. A raft of pelicans silhouetted silhou-etted on Yellowstone Lake at sunrise. A cow moose and her calf browsing by the roadside at dusk, quite unconcerned by the resultant traffic jam and camera-shutter barrage. Bison by the hundreds in Hayden Valley and one enjoying a dust bath barely a hundred yards from my tent at Norris. Elk ambling up a lush green hillside among blackened snags left, probably, from the big fires of '88. An osprey soaring soar-ing overhead with its freshly caught trout supper. And late one night, a chorus of howls, echoed first from one direction, direc-tion, then another, heralding the restoration of a long-lost top predator. I may try to go back again this summer, but during the past month I was reminded that you don't have to travel that far to find an equally magnificent display of life. It's brief in duration and doesn't include "charismatic mega-fauna" mega-fauna" like wolves and bison, but the spring migration season sea-son at Ouray National Wildlife Refuge just off Vernal's doorstep, so to speak is Eden for bird lovers. This spring has been nothing noth-ing short of spectacular. In many recent years the Refuge has been rather dry, due both to natural conditions and to management's efforts to burn off areas of cattails and other invasive plants. This year plenty plen-ty of water is flowing in again, flooding the "bottoms" and mm At f , liiaililiiiip''' Avocet at Ouray National Wildlife Refuge.. creating a mecca for waterfowl and shorebirds, and for those who enjoy seeing them. I first drove over in late April, and was greeted by the most white-faced ibis I've ever seen at one time. Every few yards along the Sheppard Bottom tour route, another flock would explode out of the roadside plants and pools. Against the low morning sun they were just dark shadows identified by long down-curving bills, until they turned and wheeled so their iridescent feathers caught the light and burst into rainbows. Along with the ibis, in every shallow pool were avocets backs boldly striped in black and white, heads and necks ablush in pale rusty breeding plumage and black-necked stilts, whose necks are more white than black but whose legs, bright red and improbably improb-ably long, look as if they were borrowed from a circus. Killdeer ran about everywhere, every-where, piping so frantically they often dropped a syllable and simply shrieked "Deer-deer-deer-deer-deer!" The wider expanses of water, as well as some of the smaller , poolsVrhpsted a , vast array of ducks:'' mailardin-tail, mailardin-tail, cinnamon teal, gadwall, lesser scaup, redhead, shov-eler, shov-eler, and perhaps my favorite, the dapper little ruddy duck. The drake's chunky red-brown body is the source of his name, but isn't nearly so eye-catching as his flashy white cheek and baby-blue bill. There seemed to be one male blackbird mostly yellow-headed, yellow-headed, but some red-winged as well for every square yard of marsh, all clacking and gurgling and flashing their wing patches at me and each other: "This is MY space you keep out!" Now and then the drabber females could be seen deeper down among the stems, and once or twice I caught a glimpse of a smaller songster, the little marsh wren whose call rattled back and forth through the dense stands of rushes. Occasionally a skein of Canada geese added their honks to the symphony, and once a deep, liquid "Gloonk-loonk!" "Gloonk-loonk!" like a big rock falling fall-ing into water signaled that a bittern was hiding somewhere some-where out there. Through May, each successive succes-sive visit brought new sightings: sight-ings: ring-necked ducks, eared grebes, long-billed dowitchers, Wilson's phalaropes, snowy egrets. The first time my friend Denise joined me, we not only spied the elusive bittern, but caught it in the act of swallowing swallow-ing a bedraggled rodent; then, shortly after we'd remarked on not seeing any raptors, we spotted no less than a peregrine per-egrine falcon in a big dead Cottonwood. Cot-tonwood. With exquisite timing, tim-ing, a huge flock of red-necked phalaropes showed up for the refuge open house, then were gone a few days later, drawn like most of the migrants to tundra nesting grounds far in the north. Still, many species remain in the Refuge to breed. By late May, scattered eggshells showed that new generations of killdeer and ducks were afoot or afloat. On my last visits, vis-its, coots paddling through the shallows were trailed by youngsters whose downy heads glowed unexpectedly red when they passed through patches of sunlight among the marsh plants. My recreation; their re-creation, the pageant of life endlessly renewed. 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