From the category archives:

Environment

June 2, 2010

Before Deepwater Horizon Disaster – Wyomingites Had Key Roles in MMS

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The federal agency cited for an overly “cozy relationship” with the energy industry, which may have contributed to the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, has enjoyed extensive Wyoming political and economic connections since its creation in 1982 by then-Secretary of Interior James G. Watt, a native of Lusk in eastern Wyoming.
“For too long, for a decade [...]

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March 22, 2010

Subdividing the West: Wyoming at Planning Crossroads

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Property owners like the Banburys are at the center of an ongoing debate over land use and planning in Wyoming, a state protective of private property and the rights of owners to do what they want with their land. On the one hand, the Banburys have a clear vision of what is special about the state. On the other, their new house is in a ranchette subdivision, just the kind of development that some feel threatens the Wyoming dream.

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February 16, 2010

Green Fees: Cheyenne Lawyer’s Crusade on US Legal Payments

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Cheyenne attorney Karen Budd-Falen has raised a furor among ranching communities in Wyoming and elsewhere in the West by claiming that environmental groups are abusing federal statutes and collecting billions of dollars in attorneys’ fees from the public treasury.

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February 7, 2010

Big Piney CO2 Storage Pilot Nears OK

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Federal regulators are nearing approval of a natural gas development project in southwest Wyoming that would serve as a testing ground for new mineral extraction technology while becoming one of the largest carbon sequestration pilot projects in the world.

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January 7, 2010

State Oil and Gas Regulators Are Spread Too Thin to Do Their Jobs

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by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica – December 30, 2009 12:38 pm EST

Larry Parrish knew something was wrong as soon as he wheeled his state-owned pickup off the West Virginia highway and onto the rocky field where the natural gas well was supposed to be. Oak trees 18 inches in diameter looked dead as boards, and [...]

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December 14, 2009

Underused Drilling Practices Could Avoid Pollution

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As environmental concerns threaten to derail natural gas drilling projects across the country, the energy industry has developed innovative ways to make it easier to exploit the nation’s reserves without polluting air and drinking water.

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November 10, 2009

Wyoming’s “Roadless Rule” Warrior US District Judge Clarence Brimmer

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The environmentalists’ boogeyman walks with tiny, uncertain steps. He’s 87 years old, suffers from an arthritic knee and worries about stumbling and falling down. He’s also slowly shrinking — he lost an inch and 24 pounds over the last three years, so now he’s only 5 feet 6 and 120 pounds. But today he’s looking flashy, spicing up his beige suit with a nicely coordinated daffodil-yellow shirt and an amber-hued bow tie.

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October 26, 2009

The Sage Grouse Report – Wyoming Ground Zero of Three Year Study

We project that future oil and gas development will cause a 7–19 percent decline from 2007 sage-grouse lek population counts and impact 3.7 million ha of sagebrush shrublands and 1.1 million ha of grasslands in the study area.

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September 23, 2009

New Johnson County Land Wars

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118 years after that famous massacre, the county again finds itself in the middle of a fight. It’s a quieter battle this time, waged in courts and county offices…

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August 26, 2009

EPA: Chemicals Found in Wyo. Drinking Water Might Be From Fracking

Federal environment officials investigating drinking water contamination near Pavillion, Wyo., have found…

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July 15, 2009

Wyoming News Reader

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NEW: For the best, hand-picked, eclectic selection of current news about Wyoming from newspapers, magazines and websites…

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April 20, 2009

Green River Diversion Plan A Big Rip-Off Of Wyoming

In dry Wyoming, it has been said that water is more precious than gold.
If this is true, recent efforts by a Fort Collins entrepreneur to suck water from Wyoming’s Green River and Flaming Gorge and send it to Colorado should be generating terrific opposition.
Called a “trans-basin water diversion plan,” this monster project figures to use [...]

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April 20, 2009

Annie Proulx’s new Red Desert book

This book is not intended as another plea to save the greater Red Desert. Many tries for conservation by people who love the place have come and gone over the decades, defeated by the prevailing attitude of “show me the money,” by the congressional cold shoulder, by lack of knowledge of what is in that [...]

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April 6, 2009

Barstool Mountain Myths: Wolves & Elk Numbers Strong Despite Dire Predictions

While some Wyoming legislators, hunters, and ranchers claim that wolves are decimating the state’s elk herds, analysis of the facts tells a different story. Prior to the reintroduction of wolves into the Greater Yellowstone area during 1995 and 1996, some pessimists predicted that following wolf recovery, Wyoming’s abundant elk herds and popular elk hunting would [...]

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February 16, 2009

The View from the Divide: Four Decades in Wyoming Wilderness

Nestled on the downwind side of the Rocky Mountains, Dubois, Wyoming is in the southeast arm of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. This small mountain town has been our home for nearly four decades. We spent 30 years building and operating a successful wilderness outfitting business. We saddled horses for folks who want to vacation, to [...]

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December 1, 2008

Bears by the Numbers, Keeping Tabs on Our Bruins

Casper — Ever since that day in 1961 that the Craighead brothers, Frank and John, placed a radio collar around the neck of Marian, a female grizzly bear, bear biologists have formally designated bears with numbers.
Marian was No. 40 – her life and times and tragic death documented in “Track of the Grizzly,” by Frank [...]

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November 17, 2008

Wyoming Ruling Complicates Snowmobile Scene, Pro-Snowmobile Group Declares Victory

CASPER  –  U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer said in a Friday ruling that, while he didn’t like another federal judge’s decision to throw out Yellowstone National Park snowmobile rules, he wasn’t going to fight it.
But Brimmer confused matters by also ruling that “the NPS[National Park Service] shall reinstate the 2004 temporary rule until such time [...]

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November 10, 2008

Yellowstone, Teton Plan Reduces Snowmobiles in Park

Casper — With the winter season closing in and Wyoming snow outfitters in limbo, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park officials unveiled a temporary winter use plan that lowers daily snowmobile numbers by more than 40 percent.
The proposed reduction came after a previous parks service plan, allowing 540 snowmobiles a day into the parks, was [...]

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October 13, 2008

For Wyoming’s New Coal Power Plants, ‘Best Available Control Technology’ Seldom Best

Casper — So, you want to build a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming. How clean do you want to make it? Because it turns out, it’s largely up to you to decide — no matter how loudly state regulators and politicians insist that such a plant must be as clean as possible.
On September 29, state [...]

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September 8, 2008

Lame Duck Rules Undercut Endangered Species Act

Laramie — On May 9, 2008, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten issued a memo exhorting all executive branch agencies to “resist the historical tendency of administrations to accelerate regulatory activity in their final months.” Agencies, he wrote, should “avoid issuing regulations that are unnecessary. Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in [...]

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August 31, 2008

Wildfires and Personal Responsibility

Casper — While still on staff at the Casper Star Tribune, I trained for a week with Bureau of Land Management firefighters in Casper, to earn my Red Card — an interagency certificate signifying that one is minimally qualified to fight wildland fires.
I haven’t renewed my Red Card for some years — mostly because as [...]

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August 18, 2008

Adventure In The Winds: The Elusive Golden Trout

We hiked three days just to get here — the lake that we hoped was Flying Monkey, home to the biggest golden trout in the Wind River Mountains.
It was early July, a time of abundant mosquitoes and raging rivers, when many seasoned Wyoming backpackers are content to leave the high country to the pikas. We [...]

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July 21, 2008

Trophic Cascade: The Case For Wolves

Wolf Protection Restored, AP Story, July 19, 2008.
A federal judge restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, halting plans for public wolf hunts this fall
Judge Returns Gray Wolves to Endangered List, NY Times Story, July 19, 2008.
Gray wolves in the greater Yellowstone area of the northern Rocky Mountains were again put [...]

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June 23, 2008

“Does the River Run Downstream?”

Casper – Retailers have the expression that you “open your doors and the public comes in.” That’s equally true for the National Park Service and certainly for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. A range of humanity drives, walks, bikes or snowmobiles into our national parks and they bring with them all of society’s strengths [...]

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May 12, 2008

Do Elk Feedgrounds Violate Public Trust?

Laramie – How much are big game animals worth to Wyoming? A judge recently ordered a hunter to pay $6000 restitution for killing a bull elk and leaving it to waste.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department offers $5000 for information leading to the arrest of persons poaching moose or elk. A Wyoming game warden, describing [...]

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May 12, 2008

Close Elk Feedgrounds Before It’s Too Late

An open letter
Dear “X” and Governor Dave Freudenthal,
I’m writing to the next director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and to the Wyoming governor, on a matter of some urgency.
You’re running out of time to phase out and shut down the 22 elk feedgrounds in western Wyoming. Failure to do so, and soon, will [...]

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