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WEDNESDAY Not Crabby Bowl Wrap About Grilling JANUARY 2, 2013 County Fare Breaking news at: www.redbluffdailynews.com See Page 5A SPORTS 1B DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF Sunny 54/28 Weather forecast 8B TEHAMA COUNTY DAILY 50�� T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Corning High ups English, math requirements By JULIE ZEEB DN Staff Writer Corning Union High School is changing its graduation requirements, but there will be plenty of time for students to make changes. The new requirements, which including four years of English and three each of Math and Science classes, won���t go into effect until the 2015-2016 school year, Superintendent John Burch said. Previously, the requirement was for three years of English classes and two each of Math and Science, he said. ���It will be affect our current freshman in the class of 2016, but this will give them extra 2013 still expecting plan for them.��� While the graduation requirement is a new change, voted in at the last school board meeting, the creation of a threeyear plan has been in place for a few years, Burch said. ���If they change their mind they can come back and meet ���This fits in with the direction of Expect More Tehama��� ��� Superintendent John Burch time to get prepared,��� Burch said. ���They���ll meet in the spring with their counselors and parents to put together a three-year See CORNING, page 7A Bo know s bu lls No first baby had made an appearance as of deadline on New Years Day. The Daily News will publish the first babies of the year along with a list of gifts received when the information becomes available from St. Elizabeth Community Hospital. In 2012, the first baby was not born until Jan. 3. After six years, Northern California Regional Land Trust leader is moving on By HEATHER HACKING MediaNews Group It's been a busy six years for Jamison Watts, who recently left his post at the Northern California Regional Watts Land Trust. Watts has helped protect more than 10,000 acres of land from development and secured funding for promotion of locally grown food. He'll continue with this same line of work next month as the director of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. While Jamison said it's sad to leave his co-workers and people he's met in the area, he's confident the Land Trust is in good shape and will continue on its mission to preserve land in Northern California. At least half a dozen people ran the Land Trust before Watts, and at times the job was volunteer. In 2006, the trust began to build momentum with the closing of a deal that protected the 18,400-acre Llano Seco Ranch off Ord Ferry Road, one of the last original Mexican land grants in the state. That was a huge achieveSee TRUST, page 7A Photos Courtesy of Dustin J. Davis Olson Bo Bacigalupi took first place Monday evening at the Diamond W NBC New Year���s Eve Bullride with 80 points, winning $1,046.80. Cottonwood���s Keith Roquemore, who took first the last two years, came in a close second at 78 points, winning $785.10. Marcis McCarty, 76.5 points and winning $523.40, and Jesse Aitken, with 75 points and earning $261.70, rounded out the top bull riders in the long-go. In the short-go, the winner was Josh Daries with 75 points, taking home $2,000. In bronc riding, Luke White took first with 75 points, winning $660 while Mert Bradshaw took second with 68 points, earning $440. Pot farms wreaking environmental havoc By Joe Mozingo Los Angeles Times (MCT) EUREKA ��� California scientists, grappling with an explosion of marijuana growing on the North Coast, recently studied aerial imagery of a small tributary of the Eel River, spawning grounds for endangered coho salmon and other threatened fish. In the remote, 37square-mile patch of forest, they counted 281 outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses, containing an estimated 20,000 plants ��� mostly fed by water diverted from creeks or a fork of the Eel. The scientists determined the farms were siphoning roughly 18 million gallons from the watershed every year, largely at the time when the salmon most need it. "That is just one small watershed," said Scott Bauer, the state scientist in charge of the coho recovery on the North Coast for the Department of Fish and Game. "You extrapolate that for all the other tributaries, 7 5 8 5 5 1 6 9 0 0 1 9 just of the Eel, and you get a lot of marijuana sucking up a lot of water. ... This threatens species we are spending millions of dollars to recover." The marijuana boom that came with the sudden rise of medical cannabis in California has wreaked havoc on the fragile habitats of the North Coast and other parts of California. With little or no oversight, farmers have illegally mowed down timber, graded mountaintops flat for sprawling greenhouses, dispersed poisons and pesticides, drained streams and polluted watersheds. Because marijuana is unregulated in California and illegal under federal law, most growers still operate in the shadows, and scientists have little hard data on their collective effect. But they are getting ever more ugly snapshots. A study led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that a rare forest carnivore called a fisher was being poisoned in Humboldt County and near Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada. The team concluded in its July report that the weasel-like animals were probably eating rodenticides that marijuana growers employ to keep animals from gnawing on their plants, or they were preying on smaller rodents that had consumed the deadly bait. Forty-six of 58 fisher carcasses the team analyzed had rat poison in their systems. Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in eastern Humboldt who worked on the study, is incredulous over the poisons that growers are bringing in. "Carbofuran," he said. "It seems like they're using that to kill bears and things like that that raid their camps. So they mix it up with tuna or sardine, and the bears eat that and die." The insecticide is lethal to humans in small doses, requires a special permit from the EPA and is banned in other countries. Authorities are now regularly finding it at large-scale operations in some of California's most sensitive ecosystems. It is just one in a See POT, page 7A House passes Senate ���fiscal cliff��� bill WASHINGTON (AP) ��� Past its own New Year���s deadline, a weary Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation to avoid a national ������fiscal cliff������ of middle class tax increases and spending cuts late Tuesday night in the culmination of a struggle that strained America���s divided government to the limit. The bill���s passage on a 257-167 vote in the House sealed a hard-won political triumph for the president less than two months after he secured re-election while calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. In addition to neutralizing middle class tax increases and spending cuts taking effect with the new year, the legislation will raise tax rates on incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. That was higher than the thresholds of $200,000 and $250,000 that Obama campaigned for. But remarkably, in a party that swore off tax increases two decades ago, dozens of Republicans supported the bill at both ends of the Capitol. The Senate approved the measure on a vote of 89-8 less than 24 hours earlier, and in the interim, rebellious House conservatives demanded a vote to add significant spending cuts to the measure. But in the end they retreated. Supporters of the bill in both parties expressed regret that it was narrowly drawn, and fell far short of a sweeping plan that combined tax changes and spending cuts to reduce federal deficits. That proved to be a step too far in the two months since Obama called congressional leaders to the White House for a postelection stab at compromise. PHYSICIAN REFERRAL COMPLETE AUTO REPAIR Smog Inspection $ 2595 +$825 certificate (MOST CARS & PICK-UPS) 195 S. Main St. Red Bluff 530 527-9841 A FREE SERVICE PROVIDED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE 1-888-628-1948