暗黑爆料

With $417,000 in seed money from a top water agency and Great Outdoors Colorado, a new team is setting out to identify rivers in need of attention to aid fish, anglers and rafters, and keep everyone safe. Listen to our "Morning Edition" host Michael Lyle, Jr. discuss this story with Colorado Sun publisher Larry Ryckman and then read The Colorado Sun story at the link below.

A U.S. District judge said it was 鈥渘ot hard to imagine鈥� that some horses and burros went to slaughter in his ruling that led to the Bureau of Land Management鈥檚 decision to shut down the adoption program.

Freshman Representative Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) is sponsoring a bill that would require Bureau of Land Management field offices across the west to adopt plans that would open up more lands to oil and gas drilling.

The plan opens up 31 million acres of public lands to solar development across 11 western states.

The guidance documents tell state and field office managers across the West how to carry out the new rule, which officially went into effect in June.

Selling federal land often worries conservationists, but an environmental law professor says this proposal is different.

A dozen agriculture, mining, oil and gas organizations filed a lawsuit this month to overturn the rule, which elevates conservation in land-use decisions. They argue it undermines traditional uses.

Newly released data from the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility shows that vast swaths of the grazing land administered by the Bureau of Land Management do not meet the agency鈥檚 land health standards. States in the West showed a wide range of compliance with those standards, with 82 percent of assessed rangeland in Montana meeting standards compared to just 10 percent in Nevada.

The Bureau of Land Management recently held a series of public meetings about its new proposed sage grouse management plan. As the bird鈥檚 population continues to dwindle across the West, the agency is trying to add protections, all in an attempt to prevent the bird from being listed as an endangered species.

The agency says the new rule puts conservation on equal footing with other uses of public lands, like ranching and mining.