Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"The Obama administration has cancelled a disputed oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park."

"Rooftop solar and distributed energy champions have advanced a ballot initiative to restore Nevada’s retail-rate net metering policy. However, they are facing legal challenges from a utility-backed PAC. Expect a vigorous courtroom battle."

"A few miles outside Glacier National Park in northwest Montana is land known as the Badger-Two Medicine, the ancestral home of the Blackfeet tribe. But it's also the site of 18 oil and gas development leases, and an energy company is heading to federal court March 10 to fight for the right to drill there after decades of delay."

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on Thursday stripping Endangered Species Act protections from the grizzly bear in and around Yellowstone National Park, saying the animal's numbers have rebounded sufficiently in recent decades."

"A program that has allowed U.S. coal companies to forego cleanup insurance on massive western mines is flawed and needs to be fixed, Wyoming officials have told federal regulators."

"The Calgary-based company building a controversial $60-million oilsands project in Utah that has been targeted by environmentalists is putting it on hold, but not because of the protesters."

"Federal officials must re-examine a 117 million-ton expansion of a Montana coal mine after a judge sided with environmentalists who sued over the project’s potential to make climate change worse and cause other environmental damage."

"Public enemy No. 1 for climate change and no longer the fossil fuel utilities prefer to burn to generate electricity, coal has few allies these days. But one state is still fighting to save the industry: Wyoming."