Free Republic

Catron County Manager Bill Aymar says officials only want to prevent problems by asking the federal government to remove a pregnant female Mexican gray wolf released on the county's border after it killed two cows elsewhere. But Victoria Fox, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says the agency has no reason to remove the wolf. The dispute over the animal -- designated F924 -- began as soon as it was released April 25 in southwestern New Mexico. The next day, the county demanded it be removed as an "imminent danger." Fish and Wildlife rejected the demand last...

An environmental group went to court Thursday in an effort to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expand a program to reintroduce the endangered Mexican gray wolf in New Mexico and Arizona. The Center for Biological Diversity, which has offices in both states, alleged in a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., that Fish and Wildlife has refused to implement recommendations of a scientific panel that reviewed the program. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Vickie Fox of the agency's Albuquerque office said federal officials haven't had a chance to review the lawsuit and do not in general comment...

An Arizona appeals court on Wednesday upheld a jury’s $600,000 judgment in favor of a rancher in a defamation lawsuit, rejecting an environmental group’s argument that documents it posted on the Internet were shielded by the First Amendment. The Court of Appeals upheld a Pima County Superior Court jury’s award of compensatory and punitive damages to Jim Chilton in his lawsuit against the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit with offices in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, D.C. A lawyer for the rancher said the appellate court had stood up for a person wrongly defamed, while an attorney...

Responding to a constituent's request to oppose the Law of the Seas Treaty, Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., told his constituent that the treaty did not surrender national sovereignty. When pressed for an explanation of the Senator's claim, when Article 2(3) clearly says that "sovereignty over the territorial sea is exercised subject to this Convention ...," the senator's staff said, "We'll have to get back to you on that." After three phone calls over seven days, Myron Nordquist responded, not to speak for the senator, but as an adviser to the senator. He says that Article 2(3) does not surrender national...

<p>In a frontal assault on one of the most contentious federal subsidies in the West, eight environmental groups sued the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday for failing to complete a plan in the mid-1990s to increase fees that ranchers pay to graze livestock on public lands.</p>