Free Republic

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal appeals court has lifted a temporary ban on construction of a Nevada geothermal power plant opposed by a tribe and conservationists who say the site is sacred and home to a rare toad being considered for endangered species protection. U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones in Reno had granted the 90-day injunction last month sought by opponents of Ormat Technologies’ Dixie Meadows project at the high-desert site bordering wetlands fed by hot springs east of Fallon. A two-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued a one-page ruling...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will review allegations that Donald Trump Jr., may have illegally killed a rare sheep during a recent trip to Mongolia and imported parts of the animal back to the U.S.

AUSTIN, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance today filed a notice of intent to sue the Texas Department of Transportation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Austin highway construction project’s threats to the federally endangered Austin blind and Barton Springs salamanders. The conservation groups recently learned that the MoPac Intersections Project has exposed at least 21 underground caves, sink holes and other karst features that provide habitat for the endangered salamanders. There is a high risk that construction will pollute the two species’ habitat by introducing silt and pollutants to the subsurface. The...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing that 838,000 acres near the U.S.-Mexico border be designated as critical habitat for jaguars. While a small section of the proposed zone is in New Mexico, most of the land is in Southern Arizona, including the area of the proposed Rosemont Mine. The move was hailed by the environmental group that has long worked for jaguar protection. "Jaguars once roamed across the United States, from California to Louisiana, but have been virtually extinct here since the 1950s," said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, which sued to...

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>