Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Klee Benally, a member of the Navajo tribe, has gone to the mountains just north of here to pray, and he has gone to get arrested. He has chained himself to excavators; he has faced down bulldozers. For 10 years, the soft-spoken activist has fought a ski resort’s expansion plans in the San Francisco Peaks that include clear-cutting 74 acres of forest and piping treated sewage effluent onto a mountain to make snow."

"President Obama plans to bypass Congress and sign an executive order [Friday]designating the ancient Chimney Rock ruins in southwest Colorado as a new national monument, the administration announced late yesterday."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has called on NV Energy to close the coal-biurning Reid Gardner electric power plant near Las Vegas.

"A coal-fired power plant in Billings, Montana, will be mothballed starting in April 2015 because it will cost too much to comply with new emissions reductions required by the government, plant owner and operator PPL Montana said on Wednesday."

"The long legal battle over Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's controversial 2009 decision to cancel 77 leases near pristine federal lands in Utah may have finally reached its end."

"Mosquito Gold President and CEO Brian McClay took in stride a federal judge’s decision that the Forest Service needs to do more analysis of its exploration program."

"Gray wolves in Wyoming, the last still federally protected in the northern Rockies, will lose endangered species status at the end of next month, opening them to unregulated killing in most of the state, the U.S. government said on Friday."

"KALISPELL, Mont. -- A man dressed in a military-style 'ghillie' suit and apparently trying to provoke reports of a Bigfoot sighting in northwest Montana was struck by two cars and killed, authorities said."