DENVER (AP) — A broad effort to save the greater sage grouse across the West without resorting to the Endangered Species Act is making progress, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Wednesday. “There’s some really good work going on,” Jewell said during a visit to a national wildlife refuge outside Denver, where she announced a year ago that the rare bird ...

DENVER (AP) — Federal land managers have issued new guidelines that will help determine what restrictions are imposed on oil and gas drilling, livestock grazing and other activities in the West to protect the greater sage grouse. The guidelines released Thursday are part of a broader effort to save the distinctive bird without resorting to the Endangered Species Act, which ...

DENVER (AP) — Backers of two proposed ballot measures to change how oil and gas drilling is regulated failed to get enough signatures to get them on this fall’s ballot, Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said Monday. One proposal sought to require new oil and gas wells to be at least 2,500 feet from homes and schools in Colorado, ...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Two environmental groups say in a lawsuit the federal government needs to consider the potential effects of climate change before allowing oil and gas drilling on public land. The federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Washington, D.C., challenges almost 400 oil and gas leases the U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently has issued in Wyoming, Utah and ...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — More than 1,000 Navajos who live without electricity in their homes soon could get power for the first time as the tribal utility buys a system of rural Utah substations and electrical lines under the terms of a decades-old deal with a power company. Across the 27,000 square-mile Navajo Nation, an estimated 15,000 people live ...

BLANDING, Utah (AP) — Laminated sheets of papers held in place by rocks rest inside ancient cliff dwellings nestled underneath a spectacular red rock overhang in southeastern Utah. “Don’t erase the traces of America’s past,” the signs read. “Please do not enter interior rooms.” The weathered signs and a similar warning at the trailhead are the only protections in place ...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — State officials will lay out a plan later this year to scrutinize proposals for major water projects, including a controversial pipeline pulling water from Lake Powell, before dipping into millions lawmakers set aside for water this year, officials said Tuesday. Eric Millis, the director of Utah’s Division of Water Resources, told members of a state ...

DENVER (AP) — The oil and gas industry may not be to blame if northeastern Colorado tap water is so full of methane it can be set on fire, researchers say. Fewer than 5 percent of the region’s water wells that were checked for methane pollution had been tainted by oil and gas leaks, according to a study released Monday ...

DENVER (AP) — Federal land managers have taken another step toward protecting most of western Colorado’s wild Roan Plateau from natural gas drilling, releasing a revised plan that puts many areas off-limits. The Bureau of Land Management said Tuesday the plan puts in place the provisions of a 2014 compromise among conservation groups and natural gas producer Bill Barrett Corp. ...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that federal regulators lack the authority to set rules for hydraulic fracturing, dealing another setback to the Obama administration’s efforts to tighten how fossil fuels are mined. U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl said the Bureau of Land Management can’t set the rules because Congress has not authorized it to do so. The ...