"President Obama will not renominate his chosen candidate for assistant secretary of interior for parks and wildlife, who ran into a firm wall of Republican opposition in the Senate."

"The nomination of Rebecca Wodder, a longtime environmental advocate and former head of the conservation group American Rivers, expired at the end of last year. Expecting a bitter battle with an uncertain outcome, she asked that she not be renominated, according to an Interior Department spokesman. She was originally nominated last June.

The agency said Ms. Wodder would stay on at the agency as an adviser to Secretary Ken Salazar."

John M. Broder reports for the New York Times' Green blog January 20, 2012. [2]