Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"A landmark climate trial that will reverberate in states and litigation across the US is set to begin Monday, when more than a dozen young people face off with the state of Montana at Lewis and Clark County District Court."

"A federal judge has yanked approval for a phosphate mining project in southeastern Idaho, saying federal land managers in the Trump administration didn’t in part properly consider the mine’s impact on sage grouse, a bird species that has seen an 80% decline in population since 1965."

"In Colorado's famed San Luis Valley, residents who rely on well water are grappling not only with a shortage amid drought, but questionable quality of the water coming out of the ground."

"In the middle of the longest-running drought in more than a thousand years, Colorado energy companies diverted rising volumes of the state’s freshwater resources for fracking, a new analysis shows."

"Festival organizers are trying to block plans to build a clean energy plant in the Nevada desert, highlighting the struggle to combat climate change and the cost of clean power."

"One of the darkest towns in America lies roughly 100 miles north of Reno, where the lights are few and rarely lit until one week each summer when pyrotechnics and LEDs set the sky and mountains aglow.

"For decades, conservationists have fought against gold mining at the edge of Yellowstone National Park, fearing hard-rock extraction could fragment its wildlife habitat and pollute its waterways. Now park lovers say they say have a permanent way to preserve this crown jewel of the national park system: buying gold rights at Yellowstone’s doorstep."