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Thursday, March 28, 2013 – Daily News Death Notices Death notices must be provided by mortuaries to the news department, are published at no charge, and feature only specific basic information about the deceased. Paid obituaries are placed through the Classified advertising department. Paid obituaries may be placed by mortuaries or by families of the deceased and include online publication linked to the newspaper's website. Paid obituaries may be of any length, may run multiple days and offer wide latitude of content, including photos. Gertrude Lorena Crossman Gertrude Lorena Crossman of Corning died Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at Vintage Rose in Red Bluff, Calif. She was 79. Hall Brothers Corning Mortuary is handling the arrangements. Published Thursday, March 28, 2013, in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. William Howard Piper William Howard Piper died Monday, March 25, 2013, at his residence in Red Bluff. He was 83. Affordable Mortuary is handling the arrangements. Published Thursday, March 28 2013, in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. LIFE (Continued from page 1A) them." The event will be from 9 a.m. on April 27 to 9 a.m. April 28 with each team having at least one member on the track at all times, she said. Beckley said she invited the council and the community to come out and participate and that she would help DELTA (Continued from page 1A) have a net effect that provides for fish recovery.'' But environmentalists said the plan continues to rely on taking too much water out of the delta, and habitat restoration would not be enough to offset the impact of the tunnels on fish. ''It's clear we need to reduce diversions from the delta, and the plan does not contemplate reduced diversions, which seems really problematic,'' said Doug Obegi, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. ''There's very little evidence that restored habitat will help fish.'' The twin tunnels, Obegi said, could also create new hotspots where predator fish would congregate to eat the smelt. Promoted as a way to deliver water while protecting the environment, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is a federal and state initiative that includes a proposal unveiled by Gov. Jerry Brown in July. The 35-mile twin tunnel project would carry water south to vast farmlands and thirsty cities. It would have a total capacity of 9,000 cubic feet per second and its three proposed intakes would be located along the Sacramento River between Freeport and Courtland. Construction and operation costs of almost $20 billion would be covered by water contractors. CARE (Continued from page 1A) The order, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011, prompted the state to enact Brown's so-called realignment law, which requires lower-level offenders to serve their sentences in county jails. Since then, the population of the state's 33 adult prisons has dropped by nearly 25,000 inmates to about 119,000. Karlton said Wednesday that the current prison system is ''a substantial improvement over what the court found when it found deliberate indifference initially.'' The question is whether the state can prove that the level of care now being provided complies with the Constitution, he said. Court-appointed experts and overseers recently said California still provides substandard care to inmates with mental and physical illnesses. However, experts hired by the state said 13 prisons they visited last year all provided acceptable mental health care. Karlton could refuse to consider the reports by the state's experts because of what he called a ''serious them find a team if they did not have one. The Red Bluff Relay For Life is scheduled for May 18 starting at 9 a.m. at Vista Middle School. For more information on either event visit www.relayforlife.org. ——— Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @DN_Zeeb. The plan also calls for creation of more than 100,000 acres of new habitat — floodplains, tidal marshes and grasslands — at a cost of $3.2 billion, to be paid by taxpayers. About 47 square miles of that habitat would be created in the next 15 years. Existing water projects pump water from the delta to 25 million people and 3 million acres of farmland. But in recent years, as fish populations continued to plummet, federal management plans have limited the amount of water that can be pumped, in order to protect fish species. Without the new plan, officials say, the ecosystem will continue to decline, as will water deliveries. ''The premise of the status quo is unsustainable from the environmental and economic perspective,'' said Michael Connor, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the federal water project in California. The Delta Vision Foundation criticized the plan in a letter, saying it ''does not include essential facilities to capture water when it is truly surplus to the environment,'' calling into question officials' claim that water would be stored during wet years to reduce the need for pumping water out of the delta. Officials agreed the plan should go hand in hand with other actions, such as water conservation, recycling, water management and increased storage, but those are not included in the plan. ethical violation.'' Attorneys representing inmates complained that they were not notified and were not present when the experts interviewed their mentally ill clients, as required by ethical standards and a previous court order. McKinney said a state expert had mentioned the interviews to one of the inmates' attorneys, and that the court-appointed special master was told that visits were planned. ''We disagree that this was done in secret,'' McKinney said. ''I don't want to raise my voice. Assume that I disagree with you. Assume that this is a profound ethical violation,'' the judge retorted during the 90-minute hearing. Nonetheless, Karlton said he may still allow the state reports that form the core of the state's case because the issue is so important. Karlton would have to rule on the request for renewed state control by early next month under a legal process Brown set in motion in January. However, he said that doesn't leave him time to question witnesses and gauge their credibility, so he is searching for a way to extend the deadline. 7A Western environmentalists oppose wolf delisting CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Western environmental groups say they're alarmed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a plan to end federal protections for gray wolves in vast areas where the animals no longer exist. The groups say ending federal protections would keep wolves from expanding their range back into states that could support them, including Colorado and California. ''As a matter of principle, I just think it's wrong,'' said Jay Tutchton, a Colorado lawyer with the group WildEarth Guardians. Tutchton's group has sued over recent action to end federal protections for wolves in Wyoming. Wolves in most of the ''Cowboy State'' are classified as unprotected predators and scores have been killed since federal protections ended last fall. ''The Endangered Species Act was designed to protect species, including in places where they no longer reside,'' Tutchton said. ''You were supposed to try to recover them, not throw in the towel.'' The Fish and Wildlife Service could announce as soon as this spring whether it will propose a blanket delisting of wolves in most of the lower 48 states. Wolves in the Northern Rockies and around the Great Lakes, where reintroduced populations are well-established, are already off the Endangered Species List. Chris Tollefson, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, DC, said Tuesday that the agency hasn't made any decision yet whether it will propose the blanket delisting. An agency report last year proposed dropping wolves from the endangered list in most areas where they're known not to live. Even if the Fish and Wildlife Service ends federal protections, Tollefson said states would be free to cultivate their own wolf populations. ''It's fair to say that there wouldn't be a prohibition, it would simply be left to the states to determine how to manage wolves in their boundaries,'' he said. Tollefson said his agency regards the wolf recovery efforts in the Great Lakes states and Northern Rockies as enormous successes. ''Our view, and that of the biolog- ''Unmanaged wolves are devastating to livestock and indigenous wildlife. Currently state wildlife officials have their hands tied any time wolves are involved.'' — Letter to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe ical community is that those populations are thriving and no longer require the protections of the Endangered Species Act,'' Tollefson said. ''Obviously, we'll be discussing other areas as we move forward on that.'' The prospect of the national delisting has prompted members of Congress on both sides of the issue to lobby the Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. Seventy-two members of Congress, most of them Republicans, signed the most recent letter to Ashe on Friday urging him to go through with the delisting. Another group of scores of congressmen wrote to Ashe earlier this month urging him to reject the delisting idea. ''Unmanaged wolves are devastating to livestock and indigenous wildlife,'' the members of Congress, led by Rep. Cynthia Lummis, RWyo., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and others, wrote to Ashe last week. ''Currently state wildlife officials have their hands tied any time wolves are involved.'' Lummis said Tuesday that the letter was intended to celebrate the successful recovery of wolves. ''I know some will wring their hands over a delisting, but for the life of me I don't understand why they don't throw a party instead,'' Lummis stated. ''In most suitable habitat, and in states that strongly objected to their presence initially, the wolf is here to stay. For some that is a bitter pill to swallow, for others it's not enough, but the bottom line is there are wolves where there once were none, and everyone but the most litigious among us seem ready to move on.'' Bob Brister, wildlife campaign coordinator for the Utah Environmental Congress in Salt Lake City, has been campaigning to restore wolves to Utah, where he said they were extirpated in the 1930s. Brister said the effect of delisting wolves in Utah and elsewhere where they currently don't exist would be to preclude their ultimate recovery back into their historic range. He noted that wolves are hunted heavily in the Wyoming, Utah and Montana and that states can't be counted on to provide the protections new populations would need to survive. ''It's especially dire here in Utah, because we depend on wolves migrating from Wyoming and Idaho to restore wolves here in Utah,'' Brister said. ''And when they're being hunted so intensely in Wyoming and Idaho, it greatly decreases the possibility of wolves migrating into Utah.'' Erik Molvar executive director of the Bioldiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyo., also noted that Wyoming, Idaho and Montana allow substantial wolf hunting. He said delisting wolves across the rest of the Lower 48, ''would seem to be a very unwise move, given the tenuous status of wolf populations in this area.'' Molvar, whose group also is challenging the recent delisting of wolves in Wyoming, said it's clear there are other areas of the West that could support wolf populations. ''It certainly is true that there are places in Colorado, particularly Rocky Mountain National Park, where elk are so overpopulated that they're becoming a nuisance, that wolves are one of the few options to restore the natural balance,'' Molvar said. Tutchton said his group and others are likely to fight the sweeping delisting effort. ''I'm very sure that if wolves were delisted in Colorado, we would want to sue. If wolves get delisted in Oklahoma, I don't know. That might be a different question,'' Tutchton said. ''There are some places where wolves would be quite viable.'' Budget cuts hobble Calif. community colleges SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Student enrollment at California's community colleges has fallen dramatically in recent years as campuses slashed teaching staffs and course offerings in response to unprecedented cuts in state funding, according to a report released Tuesday. The report by the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California details the impacts of $1.5 billion in state budget cuts between 2007 and 2012 on California Community Colleges, the nation's largest system of higher education. During that period, enrollment within the 112-campus system dropped from 2.9 million to 2.4 million students, according to the report, which is based on official campus reports and interviews with more than 100 senior administrators. The enrollment declines were steepest among students return- MERCY (Continued from page 1A) expect continued benefits," Bauer said. Her museum is desperately in need of volunteers since most of them are older and several have died recently, Kelly-Griggs House Museum President Sharon Wilson said. "It has been wonderful having the students," Wilson said. "They've worked very hard and been in just about every room in the museum." The group spent time dusting and vacuuming the area, which was a huge help since the museum is planning for a memorial on April 6 for long-time member Linda Elsner, she said. "Student Gillie Coehlo said she chose the KellyGriggs Museum in part because she had not been there before. Coehlo said she loved being able to get a personal tour and some of the history from the Kelly-Guides present while they cleaned. She ing to school after an absence and first-time college students, researchers said. Enrollment of first-time students fell 5 percent even as the number of high school graduates in California rose 9 percent. ''The decline in access of first-time students is troubling, given California's longstanding need to increase college-going rates for new high school graduates, who are the workforce for the future,'' said PPIC researcher Sarah Bohn, the report's coauthor. On the bright side, continuing students completed courses, earned passing grades and transferred to four-year institutions at higher rates, researchers said. California's community college system, which is known for its low fees and open-access policies, is open to nearly all adults, but in recent years campuses have been forced to turn was joined by Hailey Xin Gao, Theo Zang and Anthony Aviles. Gao, who is staying with a family in Corning, is a foreign exchange student from the town of Kun Ming in southeast China and said she enjoyed working on the museum. "I like it here," Gao said. "I haven't seen it before. It's amazing." Across town, Mariah Kingwell, Stefanie Cheek and Shyanne Riberal-Norton took time to work at the Tehama County Animal Care Center where they were supposed to bathe dogs, however, the sporadic rain foiled their plans. Instead, students played with and brushed the dogs and visited with the cats. Cheek said she helped volunteer last year for community service days and loved it so much she wanted to come back. For Kingwell, who is planning to become a veterinarian, it was a natural fit because she is an animal lover, she said. Students were sent to the away hundreds of thousands of students who couldn't get into the classes they wanted. Across the system, the number of academic-year course offerings dropped 21 percent, summer classes fell 60 percent and class sizes swelled, researchers said. All types of courses were cut, but the drop was most significant for non-credit courses for enrichment or remediation. The outlook for California Community Colleges has improved since November when voters approved Proposition 30, a ballot measure that temporarily raises the statewide sales tax and income taxes of high earners. ''With the passage of Prop. 30, community colleges are slowly starting to restore the access that was lost, but it will take years for the system to regain its original financial footing,'' said Paul Feist, the system's vice chancellor for communication. following locations: Red Bluff Kelly-Griggs Museum, Sacred Heart Parish Hall, Sacred Heart Church, Tehama County Animal Care Center, Hope Chest, Red Bluff (River Park, PATH shelter and the Tehama County Library; Corning New Life Church, Harvest Christian Church and 2nd Chance Pet Rescue; Cottonwood Safe Haven Horse Rescue and St. Anne's Church; Tehama Tehama County Museum Redding Our Lady of Mercy Church, St. Joseph's School, St. Joe's INCOME TAX PREPARATION Fast, Friendly, Reasonable Fees Fee for Short or Long form includes all the tax credits and E-filing with direct Deposit. Also Bookkeeping, Payroll and Financial Services available P RALPH CAMPBELL, EA Enrolled Agent 855 Walnut St. #2 530-529-9540 Cemetery; and Chico Jesus Center. ——— Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @DN_Zeeb.