Mountain West (CO ID MT NV UT WY)

"The Department of the Interior has frozen oil and gas development on 60 of 77 contested drilling sites in Utah, saying the process of leasing the land was rushed and badly flawed."

"Developers of a controversial coal-fired power plant in Sevier County [Utah] now intend to transport and dispose of the proposed facility's fly ash in Carbon County and Tooele County landfills rather than close to home."

"An incinerator that burns hazardous material from Utah and around the West is facing more than $500,000 in penalties for environmental violations."

"BILLINGS, Mont. -- Facing the combined pressures of climate change, hunters and lax protections, 600 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park are going back on the threatened species list under a federal court order issued Monday."

"Even as Idaho has sold more than 14,000 wolf-hunting permits, the first 10 days of the first legal wolf hunt here in decades have yielded only three reported legal kills."

"With four gray wolves having been killed in Idaho since Sept. 1, a federal judge has cleared the way for legal hunting of the once-endangered predators to proceed."

"The American West is losing its autumn colors as global warming begins to bite and there is far more at stake than iconic scenery."

"PAVILLION, Wyo. ... residents outside this small rural, farming community blame their water woes -- and what they perceive to be the unusual health problems in their midst -- on hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' a common technique used in drilling new oil and gas wells."