The growing number of threats and assaults against employees of federal land agencies in the West is certainly the public's business. But efforts to document it by High Country News using the Freedom of Information Act have been thwarted by the Bureau of Land Management's central FOIA office. Veteran journalist Ray Ring tells the sad tale in HCN.
"YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK – If you've hiked in the Northern Rockies above 9,000 feet, you've hiked among a whitebark pine forest."
"Wyoming wolves are back under federal projection after a ruling Tuesday by a federal judge in Washington, D.C."
"An oil boom in Wyoming is having a filthy side effect. A string of accidents, ranging in geography from a remote gulley in the Powder River Basin to a refinery in downtown Cheyenne, already has made this year the state's worst for oil spills since at least 2009, state records show."
"Described as a historic package of Northern Nevada lands bills — six introduced by Congressman Mark Amodei and one by Rep. Steven Horsford — will be up for final passage in the House as a bipartisan suspension bill on Monday, Sept. 15."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved an aquifer exemption for a coal gasification pilot project in Campbell County [Wyoming] this week, drawing criticism from landowners worried that the facility could contaminate a potential source of drinking water."
"Climate change could kill up to 90 percent of the forests covering the Rocky Mountains, warned the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists today in a new study based in part on projections made by the U.S. Forest Service."
"DENVER — Seeking to head off a costly election-year fight over oil and gas drilling that could threaten vulnerable Colorado Democrats, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper said Monday that he had reached a deal to keep two antifracking measures off November’s ballots."
"New herds of genetically pure wild bison may once again roam vast expanses of the American West where the iconic animal has been absent since the end of the 19th century, under a tentative plan federal officials advanced on Wednesday."
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