Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 11

Monday, October 1, 2012 Casper Star-Tribune Amanda Reinhardt takes a picture of Sagewood Elementary School, where she program on Saturday morning. FLIGHT teaches fourth and fifth grade, during the KYU ntANTHAH STAI-TMUNE Civil Air Patrol's teacher orientation WOUF CoctirifroapAl EDc and deer hunters shot 78Percent of the wolves tilled during Montana's 2009 wolf hunt, according to a survey by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. People also didnt have time to plan for a Wyoming wolf hunt The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its decision to remove Wyoming wolves from the endangered species list in late August Some people may have bought tags simply for the novelty of buying a wolf hunting license in Wyoming, Nesvik said. He cant predict how many wolves will be killed ttdsfaH Montana set its first wolf hunt quota at 75 wolves and 72 were killed by the close of the season, according to state's wildlife department At least 10 wolves were killed in less than two weeks in Wyoming's predator management area when wolves were briefly delisted in April 2008, according to Star-Tribune archives.

Under Wyoming's wolf management plan, the state will be divided into three sections: The trophy game area is the northwest corner of the state outside of Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, the National EDc Refuge and the Wind River Indian Reservation. A seasonal trophy area runs south of the regular trophy area along the west-em border. Wolves are a trophy animal from Oct. 15 to the end of February and a predator the rest of the year.

Wolves are predators in the rest of the state and can be shot on sight. In December, wildlife officials estimated that Wyoming had about 220 to 230 wolves. Another estimate win be made this December. The state is required to keep a rninimum of 10 breeding pairs and 100 wolves outside of Yellowstone and the Wind River Reservation. Conservation groups filed a letter with the Fish and Wildlife Service when the delisting ruling was published outlining their intent to sue, said Jenny Harbine, an attorney for Earthjustice, a non-profit law firm representing the groups.

The organizations Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biologic Di- versify and the Sierra Club must wait until early November before going to court to challenge the ruling. Reach Open Spaces reporter Christine Peterson at 307-746-3121 or christine.peterson trib.com. Follow her on Twitter PetersonOutside. ence and math. "It's a way to make science and math more exciting; to have real world examples and real world applications," Mitchell said.

"And not just memorize a bunch of formulas." ThsCAP A civilian-staffed relative of the Air Force, the Civil Air Patrol is a nonprofit organization that runs search and rescue missions, trains cadet pilots and promotes aerospace education. Twenty-two senior members and 13 12- to 19-year-old cadets make up Casper's branch of the Civil Air Patrol, whose search and rescue volunteers have made seven finds and 10 saves so far in 2012. Statewide, 167 senior members and 96 cadets are registered volunteers with the Civil Air Patrol. Saturday marked the Casper Civil Air Patrol's second annual Teacher Orientation Program. Besides actual flight time, teachers also toured the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum and an air traffic control tower, and experienced a flight simulator at Casper College's flight school.

"The a better exposure to another way to excite students about learning," said search and rescue pilot and Kelly Walsh High School educator Joe Feiler. Careers in aviation are on the rise, Feiler said, citing the increased use of drones in nonmilitarized airspace and the potential for drones to monitor big-game populations. And the next generation of aviation technology won't develop itself; the Civil Air Patrol hopes to be a part of educating future aircraft engineers and innovators. District instructional coach Sue Simons and Kelly Walsh industrial arts teaching assistant Brett Morton both said they would continue to be in touch with the Civil Air Patrol. tracts and pricing, acknowledged the recent disruptions but predicted that the U.S.

fuels wouldn't make their way to Europe on any important scale. "Although we heard that the motive of these activities was to decrease dependence of certain countries on Gazprom gas, the end results of these efforts will be utterly favorable to us," Komlev wrote in an email to the AP. "The reason for remaining tranquil is that we do not expect the currently abnormally low prices in the USA to last for long." In other words, if the marketplace for natural gas expands, Russia will have even more potential customers because it has tremendous reserves. Komlev even thanked the U.S. for taking the role of "shale gas global lobbyist" and said Gazprom believes natural gas is more environmentally friendly than other fossil fuels.

"Gazprom group generally views shale gas as a great gift to the industry" he wrote. When natural gas prices rise, "it will make the U.S. plans to become a major gas exporter questionable." Whether exports happen involves a dizzying mix of math, politics and marketplaces, along with the fact that U.S. natural gas companies and their shareholders -want prices to rise, too; James Diemer, an executive vice president for Pace Global, an interL national consulting company based in Virginia, believes that shale gas costs more to extract than the cur- ceo Continued from page Al Reinhardt, 30, said she signed up for the Civil Air Patrol's Teacher Orientation Program without knowing exactly what she was getting herself into. But the chance to co-pilot a jaunt in a Civil Air Patrol plane fit perfectly with the "hands-on" teaching practices Reinhardt tries to bring to her fourth-grade classroom.

"My philosophy and my belief is getting kids out to do whatever it is we're learning," Reinhardt said. Reinhardt, two years into a master's program studying place-based education, was one of three Natrona County teachers participating in the Civil Air Patrol's event Saturday at the CasperNatrona County International Airport. The program's goal, according to Mitchell, was to encourage teachers to use aviation exercises like aerodynamics, climatology and weight distribution to teach sci GAS Continued from page Al Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government concluded in a report this summer. The story began to unfold a few years ago, as advances in drilling opened up vast reserves of gas buried in deep shale rock, such as the MarceDus formation in Pennsylvania and the Barnett, in Texas. Experts had been predicting that the U.S.

was running out of natural gas, but then shale gas began to flood the market, and prices plunged. Russia had been exporting vast quantities to Europe and other countries for about $10 per unit, but the current price in, the U.S. is now about $3 for the same quantity. That kind of math got the attention of energy companies, and politicians, around the world. Some European governments began to envision a future with less Russian natural gas.

In 2009, Russia had cut off gas shipments via Ukraine for nearly two weeks amid a price and payment dispute, and more than 15 European countries were sent scrambling to find alternative sources of energy. The financial stakes are huge. Russia's Gazprom energy corporation, which is state-controlled, had $44 billion in profits last year. Gazprom, based in Moscow, is the world's largest producer of natural gas and exports much of it to other countries. But last month Gazprom halted plans to develop a new arctic gas field, saying it couldn't justify the J1'' "I'm hoping to hook up with teachers like Reinhardt that really want to do it" Simons said.

"Aviation-related homework, get kids up in the planes, the whole thing." Reinhardt said her fourth -graders could do the math to complete the weight distribution form Civil Air Patrol officials walked her through before her flight. She hopes an assignment like calculating weight balance on an aircraft would provide an exciting, real-world context to ease any drudgery of boring math homework. "If I can attach whatever I'm teaching out of this book to something that's out in the real world, then connect that learning," Reinhardt said. "In life, you don't leam.out of a book." Reach county reporter Leah Todd at 307-266-0592 or leah.toddfftrib.com. Follow her on Twitter leahktodd.

rent market price. Pace, which recently released a report called "Shale Gas: The Numbers vs. The Hype," has been studying shale gas for Gazprom and other clients. "The capital will stop flowing" to U.S. shale gas, and the price will go up, Diemer predicted.

He would not divulge the kind of work Pace is doing for Gazprom. Pace is owned by Siemens, a German company. Pace's work for Gazprom has raised some eyebrows in Washington, and Hill noted that industry watchers in Europe already believe Russia is bankrolling environmental groups that are loudly opposing plans for tracking in Europe, which could cut down on Russia's natural gas market. "I've heard a lot of rumors that the Russians were funding this. I have no proof whatsoever," she said, noting that many critics give the rumors credence because Gazprom owns media companies throughout Russia and Europe that have run stories examining the environmental risks of tracking.

Gazprom dismissed such conspiracy theories, saying that "nothing could be more out of touch with Gazprom's inherent interests," because the shale boom promotes gas as an abundant, affordable energy source. Many U.S. media outlets, including the AP, have run stories about shale gas and the environment. Regulators contend that overall, water and air pollution problems are rare, but environmental groups and some scientists say there hasn't been enough research. if 3 investment now, and its most recent financial report showed profits had dropped by almost 25 percent.

The U.S. presidential campaigns have already addressed the strategic potentiaL Acarnpaign position paper for Republican Mitt Romney said he "will pursue policies that work to decrease the reliance of European nations on Russian sources of energy 100-year supply' In early September, -President Barack Obama said the U.S. could "develop a hundred-year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet," which would "cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone." Poland's Ministry of the Environment wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that "an increased production of natural gas from shale formations in Europe will limit the import via pipelines from Algeria and Russia." The issue has reached the highest levels of the Kremlin, too. Hill, of the Brookings think tank, heard President Vladimir Putin speak in late 2011 at a Moscow gathering of academics and media. She said in a blog post that "the only time I thought that he became truly engaged was when he wanted to explain to us how dangerous tracking was." But one top Gazprom executive said shale gas wiU actually help the country in the long run.

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