Fragile menagerie

A federal court blocked a large logging project near Libby, Montana, on Monday, ruling planners failed to analyze how it might hurt a struggling population of grizzly bears and Canada lynx. The decision halts the Ripley Project on the Kootenai National Forest, which anticipated 10 to 20 years of commercial timber work on just under 11,000 acres east of Libby.

The grizzly bear’s long absence from the North Cascades ecosystem led the Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday to announce it’s no longer considering a proposal to boost the bear’s level of Endangered Species Act protections.

Over the past eight years Cottonwood has grown into perhaps the most controversial ESA court decision not just in the West, but also in Washington, D.C.

Buffalo Field Campaign’s executive director, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, mailed a letter on June 16 to 31 tribes proposing a summit in November to discuss the idea.

On Monday, the Blackfeet Nation transferred 20 wild buffalo (iinnii in the Blackfoot language) to tribal lands near Chief Mountain, an area steeped in Blackfeet cultural significance in the northwest corner of the reservation bordering Glacier National Park. The buffalo were brought to the Blackfeet from Alberta in 2016 after testing negative for diseases.

Mustang advocates have mounted a legal fight aiming to reverse a Bureau of Land Management decision calling for zero horses in some portions of southwestern Wyoming.

Marked declines in trout populations across several of Montana’s iconic fisheries have led a group of anglers, fishing guides and community members to launch a “Save Wild Trout” initiative in hopes of better understanding the cause of those declines.

Alawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Missoula describes a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to install a water-diversion pipeline in the Red Rock Lakes Wilderness in southwest Montana as a blatant violation of the Wilderness Act and a flawed attempt to protect Arctic grayling in a federal wildlife refuge.

Snowpacks disappeared, on average, about a month earlier than they would have in a normal year, according to Paul Christensen, a senior fisheries biologist with Alberta Environment and Protected Areas.

A decades-long fight about whether to breach the four Lower Snake River dams to save salmon brought four politicians to a hearing Monday near the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Recovery targets fall short of culturally meaningful abundance.

Monte Mills, a law professor at the University of Washington School of Law and another author on the amicus brief, said the decision may make it harder for tribes to argue that the United States has a trust obligation to assist tribes.

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow of sorts to the Navajo Nation over its access to clean, running water because the conservative majority said the “ask” from the nation went beyond treaty obligations enshrined in 1868. The nation’s president, Buu Nygren, called it a sad day but a motivator.

Justice Gorsuch’s Navajo Nation opinion is written not as a doleful tragedy but as a call to action. As he sees it, the contradiction between the government’s position in 1961 and the one it is taking now offers a legal opening for the Navajo to try, again, to intervene in the Colorado River litigation on their own behalf.

Uinta Basin Railway could send 10 trains per day through remote Ruby Canyon, Palisade orchard country.

The 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway, proposed by a partnership between industry and Utah county governments, would establish a direct rail connection between the basin and Garfield County for the first time in nearly a century.

America needs lots of clean power, fast. Should it go on public lands or on rooftops?

Solar advocates, long critical of how Rocky Mountain Power makes its decisions on compensating rooftop solar customers who provide energy to the grid, have another reason to be unhappy after a court ruling issued this week.

Colorado Solar and Storage Association, which represents 75% to 80% of the state’s solar companies, with about 9,000 employees among them, insists Holy Cross Energy’s proposed rate increase would violate the net-metering law governing electrical cooperatives that was adopted by Colorado in 2008.

Federal regulators have told BNSF Railway it must transport more than 4.2 million tons of coal this year from the Spring Creek Mine in southeast Montana after its owner, the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, alleged the railroad was giving better service to the mine’s competitors.

Settled in the 1950s to support an aluminum smelter, Kitimat is no stranger to industrial development. As the town adapts to life with LNG Canada and other projects, its community faces new challenges and new opportunities.

Record industry net income could be used to finance methane reduction efforts, the International Energy Agency said, noting that the oil and gas industry’s profits soared to nearly $4 trillion in 2022.

The Biden administration is pouring billions into the industry. The payoff isn’t certain

A new report from Headwaters Economics and Columbia University’s Climate School paints a damning picture of wildfire policy priorities: Those interventions most effective at protecting communities and ecosystems – like building codes, home hardening and prescribed fire – often get the least support, while the least effective (and even sometimes counterproductive) – like wildfire suppression – receive billions in funding.

The U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station wanted to understand how wildland firefighter compensation presents across agencies, and how it impacts quality of life and employee well-being. This report evaluates the structure of compensation packages and their impacts, and suggests where improvements can be made to retain key talent.

Canada is wrestling with its worst-ever start to wildfire season, but recruiting firefighters is becoming increasingly difficult due to tight labor markets and the tough nature of the job, provincial officials say.

Canada’s explosive wildfire season has already pumped millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some of that carbon is coming from vegetation burned at a carbon offset project, highlighting the fragility of a tool the world is relying on to fight catastrophic climate change.

The fire sparked over the weekend and quickly spread across private land in Garfield County before entering the White River National Forest, according to a map posted by the Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire Management Unit.

City plans to deter people from sleeping on public benches, but homeless advocates say bigger issues need to be addressed.

Colville’s Hope Street Project is building skills and homes for an overlooked homeless population.

A new study reviewed the outsized influence that police departments have on homelessness policymaking in America’s 100 largest cities.

Landlords across the state filed more than 2,600 eviction cases in the first four months of 2023. That’s up 40% from the same time period in 2022 and higher than pre-pandemic levels going back to at least 2017.

Real estate prices in Ketchum skyrocketed during the pandemic. To address local workers being priced out, it’s trying to lure property owners with cash incentives if they start renting to local workers.

A new modular home community in Norwood creates a model for affordable housing in mountain communities with donated land, low-interest loans

Part of the solution to stressors facing popular outdoors tourism destinations could be as simple as having tourists pay their fair share to communities they visit.

How the Sackett v. EPA ruling could impact one of Montana’s fastest-growing communities.

And why local governments hate it.

From a study of EPA records and multiple interviews, The Montana Standard has found a disturbing pattern of agency involvement in repeated efforts over the past two decades to discredit and pressure scientists studying how metals exposure may have affected Butte’s health and mortality.

Two environmental groups are positioned to receive previously undisclosed communications between Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Hecla, an Idaho-based company seeking to open two mines in northwestern Montana, nearly 18 months after requesting the documents.

Five days of expert testimony argued that Montana can transition away from fossil fuels and reap economic benefits in the process. Now it’s up to the judge.

Since the trial closed on Tuesday, the four Bozeman plaintiffs have been reflecting on why they got involved in the case, the preparation required, and how the trial went.

The state’s headline expert witness’s testimony was canceled — and other twists from the landmark trial.

Bears Ears National Monument — designated in 2016, eviscerated n 2017, restored in 2021 — continues to make news as Congress considers a proposed land exchange aimed at making the national monument whole and a lawsuit attacking the monument — and the Antiquities Act — wends its way through the courts.

“The only thing wrong with a proposed rule that would have the U.S. Bureau of Land Management officially consider conservation as one of the ‘multiple uses’ intended for the huge swaths of public land it oversees is that it wasn’t written 47 years ago,” writes The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board.

After leading three smaller sites for the National Park Service in Georgia, Gary Ingram will take charge of Rocky Mountain National Park, one of the most popular national parks.

Preliminary testing of water and air quality along a stretch of the Yellowstone River where train cars carrying hazardous materials fell into the waterway following a bridge collapse did not indicate any threat to the public, state and federal officials said Sunday.

Alterra, whose resorts include Steamboat, partnered with Colorado Mountain College to get lift mechanics swiftly trained in the cornerstone job of all ski resorts.

Every summer, the migration of the small insect plays a role in the food web. Don’t be annoyed when they show up in your bedroom.

Rampant removal of groundwater for drinking and irrigation has altered the distribution of water on Earth enough to shift the planet’s tilt, according to a sweeping new study. The finding underscores the dramatic impact that human activity can have on the planet.