"MANITOU SPRINGS, Colo. -- Searing, record-setting heat in the interior West didn't loosen its grip on firefighters struggling to contain blazes in Colorado, Utah and other Rocky Mountain states. Colorado has endured nearly a week of 100-plus degree days and low humidity, sapping moisture from timber and grass, creating a devastating formula for volatile wildfires across the state and punishing conditions for firefighters."
"COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. --The total number of homes destroyed by a two-week old wildfire in northern Colorado was raised to 248 on Sunday as residents of a subdivision near Fort Collins learned that 57 more homes in their neighborhood had been lost, authorities said."
"LARIMER COUNTY, Colo. -- Monday's predicted convergence of high temperatures and gusty winds failed to materialize at the High Park fire — but the day brought news of more destruction as authorities confirmed that another eight homes had been claimed by the flames. That disclosure pushed to 189 the total of residences destroyed in the second-largest wildfire in Colorado history."
"DENVER -- Crews in northern Colorado are facing powerful winds as they battle a blaze that has scorched about 86 square miles of mountainous forest land and destroyed at least 181 homes, the most in state history. Meanwhile, local authorities are focusing on another concern -- looting."
Brandon Loomis, The Salt Lake Tribune public lands reporter, has just won the 2012 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment for "Our Dying Forests." Brandon and his colleagues will receive the US$75,000 award for this "measured and exhaustive series about the causes of the decline of ancient conifer forests stretching from New Mexico northward to the Canadian border."
"BELLVUE, Colo. -- Massive wildfires in drought-parched Colorado and New Mexico tested the resources of state and federal crews Monday and underscored the need to replenish an aging U.S. aerial firefighting fleet needed to combat a year-round fire season."
"They gathered in airboats off the northeastern corner of the Great Salt Lake shoreline. Above, clouds jostled in the vast Utah sky."
McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 25 years. He is the director of journalism at the University of Delaware, and the author of numerous books, including What’s Gotten into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World, which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.
"The Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pen d'Oreilles tribes consider Montana's National Bison Range part of their heritage, a link to the animals their ancestors once hunted and worshipped."
"CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Wyoming's governor persuaded the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to postpone an announcement linking hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination, giving state officials -- whom the EPA had privately briefed on the study -- time to attempt to debunk the finding before it rocked the oil and gas industry more than a month later, an investigation by The Associated Press has found."
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