"Firefighters across Arizona and New Mexico battled 31 wildfires on Wednesday, their efforts complicated by a relentless heat wave and bone-dry conditions. And in the Angeles National Forest, on the northern edge of Los Angeles, two fires kept more than 300 families from their homes as the fires threatened to merge into one."

"GILLETTE, Wyo. — After Kullin Orcutt lost his job at the Peabody coal mine this spring, he knew what he needed to do: join the exodus. “Leave Gillette, leave the state,” he said."

Dust and emissions from an Idaho smelter left a legacy of lead poisoning among a generation of children near what is now a Superfund site.

"Conservationists are asking the White House Council on Environmental Quality to put the brakes on plans to allow a popular off-road, desert race from near Las Vegas to Reno to run through a newly established national monument in southern Nevada."

"RIM OF CEDAR MESA, Utah — For centuries, humans have used the red sandstone canyons here as a way to mark their existence. ... Now, President Obama is weighing whether and how he can leave his own permanent imprint on history by designating about 2 million acres of land, known as the Bears Ears, as a national monument."

"Efforts to control brucellosis in cattle around Yellowstone National Park may be focusing on the wrong wildlife suspects, according to new DNA research on the disease."

"Thousands of homeowners have reached a $375 million settlement over their claims that plutonium releases from a nuclear weapons plant in Colorado damaged their health and devalued their property, officials said Thursday."

"Under the threat of another legal battle, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has pulled the plug on a public-private partnership in northern Nevada aimed at shrinking the size of a wild horse herd through the use of contraceptives, according to documents The Associated Press obtained on Tuesday."

"Colorado’s Supreme Court on Monday struck down local government prohibitions on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, handing oil and gas companies a victory in a lengthy battle over energy production in the environmentally conscious state."

"When the Yellowstone grizzly bear was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were only about 100 to 200 of them in the park and the surrounding country."