Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

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."

"Colorado, which gets 60 percent of its electricity from coal-burning power plants, has set some of the more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets in the United States. It wants to cut emissions from its power plants 38 percent by 2030. ... One of the immediate problems of the target-setters, however, is that the state lacks plans from its fastest-growing, most energy-hungry users: owners of indoor marijuana farms."

"BILLINGS, Mont. — The Obama administration brushed over the threat that climate change poses to the snow-loving wolverine when it denied protections for the elusive predator also known as the "mountain devil," a federal judge ruled Monday."