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200 Soldiers Deployed Help Fight Western Wildfire
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on August 18th, 2015
Reuters: The U.S. Army mobilized soldiers on Monday to reinforce civilian firefighters stretched thin by dozens of major wildfires roaring largely unchecked across the West, with more than 100 homes reduced to ruins in several states.
The 200 troops deployed from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, are to be organized into 10 firefighting crews of 20 each, all of whom will be sent to a single fire yet to be determined, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
Fire...
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New Mexico rivers polluted mine waste reopen for drinking water intakes
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on August 16th, 2015
Reuters: Stretches of two rivers in New Mexico contaminated by toxic waste earlier this month from an abandoned gold mine were reopened late Saturday to cities whose public drinking water systems are supplied by the rivers’ surface waters, state officials said.
Sections of the Animas and San Juan rivers also were re-opened for boating and fishing for the first time since being polluted by a spill of more than 3 million gallons of waste from the derelict Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, New Mexico...
Poisoning blamed in part for killing migrating snow geese in Idaho
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on May 16th, 2015
Reuters: A poison used on cropland to kill rodents also killed at least a handful of more than 2,000 snow geese that fell dead from the sky in Idaho while migrating to nesting grounds on the coast of Alaska, state wildlife officials said on Friday. The carcasses of the snow geese were found in March in eastern Idaho, where dozens of state Department of Fish and Game workers and volunteers retrieved and incinerated most of the dead birds to avoid spreading what biologists believed to be avian cholera. But...
Climate change seen bringing more fires, less snow to Yellowstone
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on April 9th, 2015
Reuters: Predicted climate changes bringing warmer and drier conditions to Yellowstone National Park will likely fuel catastrophic wildfires, cause declines in mountain snows and threaten the survival of animals and plants, scientists said on Thursday. Warming that is expected in the American West over the next few decades would transform lands in and around Yellowstone from a wetter, mostly forested Rocky Mountain ecosystem to a more open landscape akin to the arid U.S. Southwest, the researchers said in...
Climate changes push native Montana trout toward extinction -study
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on May 28th, 2014
Reuters: Climate changes that have made Montana streams much warmer over the last 30 years are helping invasive trout push their native cousins toward extinction, researchers said on Tuesday, saying study is an example of global warming reducing biodiversity.
The study led by ecologists with the U.S. Geological Survey links warming streams and reduced spring flows in the Flathead River basin in western Montana and Canada to a sharp rise in interbreeding between rainbow trout introduced by government fishery...
Scientists seek cause catastrophic fish kill in Nevada lake
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on January 17th, 2014
Reuters: Biologists scrambled on Thursday to unravel the mystery behind a massive fish kill in a popular manmade lake in Nevada that draws thousands of anglers each winter for prized game fish such as trout.
More than 100,000 stocked fish such as bass and catfish are estimated to have perished in the lake in the northern city of Sparks in recent weeks in an unprecedented die-off that has destroyed the entire fishery, said Chris Healy, spokesman for the state Department of Wildlife.
Testing of water...
Judge halts shipment on Idaho road of giant tar sands equipment
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on September 13th, 2013
Reuters: A U.S. judge has temporarily blocked a shipment of massive oil field equipment from traversing a scenic Idaho roadway that cuts through the homeland of the Nez Perce Tribe and runs alongside two federally protected rivers.
U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill halted next week's planned shipment on U.S. Highway 12 of an oversized water treatment system destined for Canadian tar sands in a decision handed down late Thursday.
He also ordered the U.S. Forest Service to ban the so-called megaload...
Hundreds evacuated as wildfire menaces Idaho ski resort towns
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on August 17th, 2013
Reuters: Firefighters battled on Friday to check a fast-moving wildfire raging near the Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho, where more than 1,000 people were evacuated as flames menaced multimillion-dollar homes in the area, authorities said. The so-called Beaver Creek Fire, the nation's top firefighting priority, has raced across 64,000 acres of mountains and canyons intersected by luxury housing developments since it was sparked by lightning in the Sawtooth National Forest on August 7. Occupants of more than...
Wildfire threatens two Idaho mountain towns; evacuations ordered
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on August 13th, 2013
Reuters: A wildfire nipping at the edges of two Idaho mountain resort towns has destroyed about a dozen homes, prompting authorities to intensify calls to hundreds of residents to heed mandatory orders to evacuate, fire officials said on Tuesday.
It was unclear how many of the 1,000 summer residents of the towns of Pine and Featherville had actually left their homes ahead of the lightning-sparked blaze, which has already charred 99,000 acres and is now the nation's top firefighting priority.
It is the...
Tribal Activists Arrested Trying to Block Tar Sands ‘Megaload’ on Idaho Highway
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on August 7th, 2013
Reuters: Police arrested 19 members of the Nez Perce Tribe on Tuesday on suspicion of disorderly conduct for refusing to break a human chain blocking a highway in Idaho in protest against a 322-ton load of equipment bound for the tar sands of Alberta, Canada. The blockade by more than 250 mostly Native American protesters halted travel of a so-called megaload for two hours on a scenic roadway at the front lines of an ideological struggle over North American oil and gas development and its impact on the environment,...