Simplot Company report to justify lower water quality standards provokes big controversy-
Anglers don’t like pulling fish off their lure that look like mutant monsters. The accusation that selenium poisoning from the Smoky Canyon phosphate mine is killing fish, creating awful deformities, and being picked up into the ecosystem in general has greeted a 700-page draft [...]
Continue Reading →The effort to list the Greater Sage-grouse via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been an uphill battle. However, even as the end-game has yet to be realized, the effort itself has been remarkably successful at prompting bureaucratic backflips and a whole lot of paper-shuffling to accommodate consideration of the species. Unfortunately, many of the existing and developing [...]
Continue Reading →Over my years of traipsing around public lands in the West I have come across hundreds of uncapped 3-foot tall PVC pipes sticking out of the ground. For a long time I didn’t know the purpose of the pipes but later came to understand that they were used as markers for mining claims. I’ve peered [...]
Continue Reading →Utah’s Kennecott pit shocks Native Alaskans contemplating the proposed giant Pebble Mine-
Kennecott’s pit on the edge of Salt Lake City has been a fixture of the area for many years. It polluted the ground water and the smelter poisoned the air, but it [...]
Continue Reading →EPA wants the dam to release clean, treated water.
The dam built to keep selenium and heavy metals also blocks water flows to the Blackfoot River.
EPA concerned about Monsanto pollution control dam.
By JOHN MILLER – Associated Press
20 year threat of mining near Yellowstone National Park is over.
The New World Mine was proposed to be built just north of Yellowstone National Park in 1990 by a Canadian mining company but it received a lot of opposition because it greatly threatened the headwaters of the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone and Soda [...]
Continue Reading →Wyoming herd is a big tourist attraction
The Whiskey Mountain Bighorn Sheep Locatable Mineral Withdrawal may be extended to protect bighorn sheep habitat from development for another 20 years. The herd there is estimated to be about 1,000 bighorn.
Feds propose extending minerals extraction ban on bighorn habitat.
Casper Star Tribune
Conservation deal for Canadian forest the size of Texas-
Although the first article below has a somewhat pessimistic tone, this certainly seems better than the current trend in boreal Canada. There is more value to the vast boreal forest than caribou.
Caribou still at risk under historic forestry deal. Industry, environmentalists band together [...]
Continue Reading →1,142 acres of BLM Land in southeast Idaho could be sold to Simplot for phosphate mining
This would be a precedent setting decision that would eliminate access to this land and limit input into how it is managed.
Agency mulls selling public land for mine
TODD DVORAK – Associated Press
Is this a final victory in 23 year fight against the mine?
It probably isn’t because Judge Molloy both ruled for and against conservationists on their variety of claims, but it does send the Forest Service’s decision to approve the mine back to square one.
Molloy blocks mine beneath Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. By Michael [...]
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