Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"The Obama administration today canceled 15 oil and gas leases on Montana land considered sacred by the Blackfeet Nation."

"In recent years, a number of communities in the state have passed local [fracking] bans, but the state Supreme Court struck them down. Activists then decided to try to change the constitution to allow local fracking bans. So the oil and gas industry then decided to try to make changing the constitution more difficult."

"BUNKERVILLE, Nev. — Less than a week after being acquitted at a trial over last winter’s armed occupation of an Oregon federal wildlife refuge, Nevada rancher Ryan Bundy said another protest action will be justified if President Obama goes ahead with plans to create a huge national monument abutting the Bundy family’s ranch here."

"Few voters have a taste for lengthy debates over utility regulation. Nevadans are different."

"Funded largely by the oil and gas industry, Amendment 71 would put big hurdles in Colorado's relatively easy path to changing its state constitution".

"In the wake of helping defeat two recent ballot measures that could have reined in fracking in Colorado, the state's oil and gas industry is leading a campaign to sharply limit future citizen initiatives.

"U.S. government agencies plan to push ahead with a $57 million dam and fish bypass on Montana's Yellowstone River despite concerns among scientists that it won't meet its goal of helping an ancient fish species, officials said Monday."

"CHEYENNE, Wyo. — When President Theodore Roosevelt designated the country’s first national monument 110 years ago, the proclamation inadvertently left out a punctuation mark, and what was supposed to be Devil’s Tower became Devils Tower instead."

"Montana reopened a stretch of the Yellowstone River to fishing and other recreational activities on Friday after a month-long closure prompted by the spread of a deadly aquatic parasite that killed thousands of whitefish and sapped the local economy."

"After months of legal and regulatory battles, Nevada utility regulators have unanimously approved a motion to restore retail-rate net metering for the state’s 32,000 existing solar customers."

"For decades, a creek in the mountains west of Denver sometimes ran yellow from toxic waste gurgling out of abandoned mines — a painfully familiar story in the picturesque wreckage of Colorado's 1859 gold rush. But after a three-decade, $62 million Superfund cleanup, Clear Creek now lives up to its pristine-sounding name, at least most of the time."