"A coalition of activists on Tuesday protested outside the office of the federal Bureau of Land Management in Reno to decry an auction of huge tracts of public land for private oil and gas exploration that they claim damages the environment and guzzles water in a time of drought."
"BILLINGS, Mont. — A long-delayed risk study released Monday for a Montana mining town where hundreds of people have died from asbestos poisoning concludes cleanup practices now in place are reducing risks to residents."
"Federal wildlife managers on Friday declined to upgrade protections for a population of grizzly bears in the remote reaches of Idaho and northwest Montana that numbers fewer than 50, and which conservationists say are going extinct."
Power company Pacificorp has gone to court to prevent the Interior Department from disclosing how many birds are found dead at its wind-energy turbine sites. AP reporter Dina Cappiello has been writing an investigative series on the birds, including eagles, killed at wind farms in the U.S. The series found that federal regulators have not prosecuted or penalized wind-energy companies when their turbines kill birds and — the government has helped keep the scope of bird mortality secret.
"Nearly 140 bison originally from Yellowstone National Park that were quarantined on a ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner to create a herd free of a cattle disease will be transported late on Wednesday to an Indian reservation in Montana."
"BUTTE — The number 5,410 has special meaning to Butte. It’s the critical water level – 5,410 feet above sea level – of the Berkeley Pit. The water in the pit must be kept below that elevation or risk contaminating Silver Bow Creek."
The growing number of threats and assaults against employees of federal land agencies in the West is certainly the public's business. But efforts to document it by High Country News using the Freedom of Information Act have been thwarted by the Bureau of Land Management's central FOIA office. Veteran journalist Ray Ring tells the sad tale in HCN.
"YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK – If you've hiked in the Northern Rockies above 9,000 feet, you've hiked among a whitebark pine forest."
"Wyoming wolves are back under federal projection after a ruling Tuesday by a federal judge in Washington, D.C."
"An oil boom in Wyoming is having a filthy side effect. A string of accidents, ranging in geography from a remote gulley in the Powder River Basin to a refinery in downtown Cheyenne, already has made this year the state's worst for oil spills since at least 2009, state records show."
