Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"When rancher Clint McRae first saw the swirling green and white ponds of arsenic, boron, mercury and lead-containing sludge 10 miles from his property, it was in a photography show at the Montana statehouse. He first thought they were abstract art, but quickly realized some were aerial photos of the ash slurry left over from burning coal at southeastern Montana’s Colstrip Steam Electric Station."

The Wyoming Supreme Court is telling a lower court to reconsider whether the public has the right to know the ingredients in the chemical products used to facilitate hydraulic fracturing."

"Wild bison from Yellowstone National Park that are deemed free of cattle disease could be safely used to establish new herds elsewhere across the American West without posing a risk to livestock, a U.S. Department of Agriculture study concluded."

"Colorado regulators approved groundbreaking controls on emissions from oil and natural gas operations after an unusual coalition of energy companies and environmentalists agreed on measures to counter worsening smog."

"Montana is rife with abandoned mines left by more than a century of men bent on finding fortunes. Now nonprofit groups are joining with businesses and government agencies to clean up the sites by mining them again."

"SALT LAKE CITY -- Using the momentum of a growing number of Utah residents who are dissatisfied with the unhealthy haze hanging over the Wasatch Front, clean-air advocates rallied in modern-day record fashion Saturday to ensure they are heard by Gov. Gary Herbert and state lawmakers."

"Yellowstone National Park managers have rejected a plan to use air rifles to shoot the nation's last herd of purebred bison with so-called biobullets containing a vaccine against a cattle disease, in a decision that has riled the U.S. livestock industry."

"The state Department of Fish and Game last month hired a trapper to eliminate the pair of wolf packs from the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho, where wolves were imported from Canada in the mid-1990s in a bid to reintroduce the species to the Northern Rockies."

"An unprecedented wintertime outbreak of West Nile virus has killed more than two dozen bald eagles in Utah and thousands of water birds around the Great Salt Lake, state wildlife officials said on Tuesday."