Scientists in Idaho have dug up living specimens of the giant Palouse earthworm -- a foot-long white worm said to smell like lilies and thought to be extinct.

"Controversy is swirling in Montana after the governor, Brian Schweitzer, requested in a letter sent to local officials that they voice support for 'coal money' from a proposed new mine in exchange for receiving funds to build roads and other infrastructure projects."

"With grizzly bears being found farther out from the Rocky Mountain Front than in past years, officials with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks are holding community meetings — including one in Wolf Creek next month — to discuss better ways to co-exist with them."

"An energy company with government approvals to launch the first significant U.S. oil sands project is trying to raise money to build a plant in eastern Utah that would turn out 2,000 barrels of oil a day."

"The metal tungsten remains an important clue in research related to the Fallon [NV] leukemia cluster, which sickened 17 children and killed three of them between 1997 and 2004, scientists said Thursday."

"Scientific studies are turning up answers to a baffling mystery about the Great Salt Lake. The new findings help explain why concentrations of toxic mercury in the lake are higher than anywhere else in the country. The new studies suggest it's not so much our local pollution that's at fault -- it appears to be mainly the world's pollution."

"A federal judge has approved a first-of-its-kind settlement requiring the government to suspend 38,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana so it can gauge how oil field activities contribute to climate change."

Oil companies use carbon dioxide -- an industrial waste from gas operations, to boost production from played-out oil fields in Wyoming.

"People along the Clark Fork River are still getting used to the removal of Milltown Dam. But as far as the fish are concerned, it's history."

A proposal to build Utah's first nuclear plant along the Green River is running into a host of skeptical questions -- among them: where it will find cooling water in the middle of a desert.

"Rep. Dean Heller says he is worried about an Interior Department memo that calls for carving two national monuments out of parts of central and Northern Nevada to protect American Indian cultural sites and habitat for sensitive wildlife."

"Out of pride and a reluctance to point a finger at neighbors, ranchers in the vast Great Basin outback where Oregon, Idaho and Nevada come together have been slow to admit that someone in their midst, perhaps even someone they know from barbecues and brandings, has been stealing cattle. Just who is doing it, and how they have gotten away with it for at least three years, remains a mystery."

"The Obama administration said Wednesday it is going forward with a contentious plan to round up about 2,500 wild horses in Nevada."

"An agreement to protect a Utah canyon decorated by ancient American Indian art is expected to allow energy development in the area to move forward."

"Montana's top elected officials backed a plan Monday to put vast tracts of coal up for lease, bucking pressure from environmentalists who say digging up and burning the fuel will be an "abomination" that endangers the planet."