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SAN BENITO - Private landowners throughout the Rio Grande Valley are getting a chance to restore more than a dozen different species of wildlife on the state’s conservation list, including the endangered ocelot.

After decades of conservation projects, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency wants to enroll 5,000 acres for the Conservation Reserve Program to re-establish Tamaulipan thornscrub habitat for the ocelot and other wildlife.

Micky D. Woodard, chief of the conservation division at the FSA, said landowners and producers can designate portions of their property to try to re-establish the ocelot’s habitat. Landowners involved in the effort will enter into 15-year contracts with FSA.

Woodard met Wednesday with a number of FSA officials from Cameron, Hidalgo, Willacy and Kenedy counties to discuss the CRP’s Lower Rio Grande Valley Thornscrub Restoration Project State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE).

“This is a voluntary program designed to enhance a national restoration program,” Woodard said.

Nearly 90 percent of the original thornscrub habitat in the Valley has been lost by conversion to agricultural production and, later, urban areas.

About 650,000 targeted acres are within the SAFE area, including eastern Cameron County, eastern and northern Willacy County, east-central Hidalgo County and southern Kenedy County.

“Other wildlife can also increase,” Woodard said. “It’s a long-term goal.”

Landowners who want to participate can benefit from incentives, cost-share and maintenance payments for establishing and maintaining habitat, officials said.

“The payment is a sort of enticement,” Woodard said. “This is compensation to them.”

Cris Perez, the Cameron County FSA executive director, said the money paid to landowners is based on the agricultural value of the land. In Cameron County, that base rental rate for the land is $40 an acre, he said.

“This isn’t a way to make a lot of money, but they do get compensated,” Perez said.

Already, people are interested in trying to restore ocelot habitat.

Woodard said the program is devoted to row crop agriculture, with scattered citrus groves with high rates of wind erosion also included.

There’s no maximum limit a landowner is able to use in the program.

“We want to work with him and whatever he’s willing to do,” Woodard said.

It can take up to 25 years to determine if the restored habitats have any effect, Woodard said.

The FSA will stop its involvement and payments on the rental of the 5,000 acres after 15 years, Woodard said.

Perez said the San Benito area FSA plans to hold an informational meeting for landowners in May.

For more information on the conservation project, contact the Cameron County Farm Service Agency Service Center at 956-399-1311.

HOUSTON (AP) - A Sugar Land woman is going to prison and must pay back earnings to a domestic employee who received only $320 for several years of work.

A federal judge in Houston on Thursday sentenced 43-year-old Rozina Mohd Ali to one year and one day in prison, plus ordered nearly $73,000 in restitution.

Ali pleaded guilty to forced labor-related charges involving a woman from Indonesia.

Prosecutors say Ali had the Indonesian woman do her domestic work for practically no money at all, plus withheld the worker’s passport.

The worker, whose name was not released, fled the Ali household last August.

She had been employed by Ali, first in Malaysia, since August 2002 and was in the U.S. on a temporary visitor’s visa.

Ali has been in federal custody without bond.

NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) - The district court clerk for Nacogdoches County has been charged with felony theft by a public service.

Donna Phillips was arrested Thursday, was arraigned and freed on $8,500 bond.

The Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel reports the arrest affidavit says Phillips is accused of taking nearly $16,000 last year from the child support account she oversees.

The affidavit says some child support payments made in the office were never deposited into the official account.

EDINBURG - U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Friday that he will file a bill authorizing the government to reimburse Cameron and Hidalgo counties for any spending on repairs to a federally owned flood control system along the Rio Grande.

Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas said he hopes to have 75 percent of the repairs completed by the end of the year. The first phase of construction is slated to begin in April.

The local reimbursement model “allows this reconstruction to go forward and not wait for the federal government to act,” Cornyn said. “It can take a while for the federal government to get around to doing the right thing sometimes.”

Assuming Congress authorizes the payback, proponents still would have to convince Congress to allocate the funding for it through the International Boundary and Water Commission, which is overseeing repairs and controls the levees along the nation’s southern border.

“(Cornyn) said he’s going to tack it on to the fastest bill he can find,” Salinas said of the funding request.

Hidalgo County voters in 2006 approved a $100 million bond issue to repair the levees, but area leaders hoped the federal government would relieve the burden on local taxpayers by reimbursing the county for any spending on those repairs.

Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos and other officials put the price tag of repairing that county’s levee’s at $50 million. So any help from the federal government would help save local taxpayers from shouldering the burden.

Rick Noriega, Cornyn’s Democratic challenger in the upcoming November general election, said during a visit to McAllen on Thursday that the senator is now pushing for money and supporting a combination border security wall/levee to hide the fact that he authorized funding for the unpopular wall in the first place.

“He’s looking for a way out for the three votes he cast for the wall,” Noriega said. “Why haven’t you (Cornyn) brought funding down here to fix the levees first?”

The federal government is responsible for levee maintenance, but federal law and an agreement between the county and IBWC prohibit the IBWC from reimbursing the county.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in January that it would build a border wall here designed to halt illegal entry from Mexico along 22 miles of the county’s levees. That portion of the project is stalled while officials try to figure out exactly how to fund it.

The entire levee repair project in Cameron and Hidalgo counties is expected to cost about $125 million.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) - Mexican soldiers arrested nine police officers who were allegedly carrying drugs in their patrol cars in the violence-plagued city of Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas.

The officers were detained over the weekend while carrying marijuana and radios with non-police frequencies, Mayor Jose Reyes and municipal Public Safety Department spokesman Jaime Torres said Monday.

“We know there are officers who aren’t upright and are breaking the law,” Reyes said. “Our job is to identify them and fire them, and to support the federal authorities in their efforts.”

Last week, the government sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to crack down on soaring violence in the border state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez is located.

About 200 people have been killed in the city of 1.3 million so far this year, and 47 policemen have resigned or requested retirement in the last month.

Chihuahua is also home to the town of Palomas, across from Columbus, New Mexico, where at least 40 people have been killed since Jan. 1. Palomas’ police chief recently sought asylum in the U.S. after his deputies abandoned him and he received death threats.

RACHAL - U.S. Border Patrol agent Adam Ruiz had to act fast as the van full of undocumented immigrants veered into the path of a hurtling 18-wheeler.

Should he pursue the vehicle’s driver, who bailed out on the shoulder of U.S. 281 and left the van’s gear in drive? Or chase down the van and its occupants as they edged closer and closer into oncoming traffic?

In seconds, Ruiz sprang into action. The eight-year agency veteran bolted toward the moving vehicle, leaped through the passenger side door and steered the vehicle to safety.

His quick thinking and fast action may have saved the lives of the nine Mexican nationals later found sitting the back of the van without any type of safety restraints, local Border Patrol spokesman Daniel A. Doty said.

“This happens more than people know,” Doty said. “Our first concern is for the safety of the people involved.”

But as daring as the March 11 rescue near Rachal sounds, it’s a situation border agents are encountering more often as they step up efforts to crack down on human smugglers.

Ruiz, a supervisory agent stationed in McAllen, declined interview requests about the rescue. But its details emerged Monday in court documents filed against the van’s driver, 30-year-old Ramiro Regalado Garcia.

Immigrant smugglers, or coyotes, are increasingly putting their passengers’ lives in danger in efforts to avoid arrest, Doty said. Some have even left still-moving vehicles to hurtle into trees, fences and highway barriers.

In a similar case earlier this year, 22-year-old accused smuggler Jose Padilla lost an ear as he tried to jump out of a moving vehicle during a police pursuit in La Joya. The six Honduran and Salvadoran immigrants police say he was carrying managed to escape the eventual crash without major injury.

“At one time several years ago, people would just park the car and start running,” Doty said. “Now that we’ve increased our manpower, they’re starting to adopt new strategies to get away.”

But Border Patrol agents have also adjusted their tactics to address these dangerous situations, he said. Now, one group of agents focuses on apprehending fleeing drivers while another group works to ensure the safety of his immigrant cargo.

Operating under new training strategies, Ruiz ran after the endangered Mexican nationals while Border Patrol helicopters kept tabs on a fleeing Regalado. Agents apprehended him yards from where his van was eventually stopped.

On Monday, Regalado pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges and remains in federal custody pending a sentencing hearing scheduled for June 9.

But thanks to some fast thinking from Ruiz, the coyote’s nine passengers were all able to return to Mexico safely.

“He is an exceptional agent,” Doty said. “But he doesn’t like to take the spotlight for something any other agent would have done in that situation.”