Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Over a dozen states file briefs supporting Utah's land grab lawsuit
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Thursday, October 24, 2024
Utah's Desolation Canyon Wilderness Area; BLM/Flickr ([link removed])

Federal and state officials from over a dozen states ([link removed]) have filed amicus briefs asking the Supreme Court to take up Utah’s land grab lawsuit and to rule in the state’s favor.

Republican attorneys general from nine states with very little national public land filed a joint brief in support of the lawsuit. Those include Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Texas. The Dakotas also signed onto that brief. Attorneys general from Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming also filed a joint brief siding with Utah, as did the Arizona Legislature.

The filings come right as hunting season gets underway, and hunting advocates say transferring national public lands to Western states like Utah would be bad for sportsmen and wildlife ([link removed]) . Under state control, the pressure to wring every dollar out of these lands would lead the state to increase resource extraction as well as sales of public land for revenue. That would decrease the amount of public land available for hunting and other forms of recreation, and lead to the destruction of wildlife habitat.

Famous grizzly hit, killed

A famous grizzly bear, who lived most of her life inside Grand Teton National Park and was beloved by tourists and photographers, is dead after being struck ([link removed]) by a vehicle in western Wyoming.

Grizzly No. 399 died Tuesday night ([link removed]) on a highway in Snake River Canyon south of Jackson, park officials said in a statement. At 28 years old, the bear was the oldest known reproducing female grizzly in the Yellowstone ecosystem. A yearling cub was with the grizzly when she was struck and, though not believed to have been hurt, its whereabouts are still unknown.


** Quick hits
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Grizzly bear 399 struck, killed by vehicle south of Jackson

WyoFile ([link removed]) | Associated Press ([link removed]) | Guardian ([link removed]) | ABC News ([link removed])

Montana Fish and Wildlife cites four people for driving side-by-sides through Big Hole River

Daily Montanan ([link removed])

Over a dozen states align with Utah in land grab lawsuit

E&E News ([link removed]) | Deseret News ([link removed])

Religious freedom law firm joins Tribe to stop copper mine at Oak Flat

E&E News ([link removed])

Zion National Park’s first wild California condor suffers a ‘horrible death’

Salt Lake Tribune ([link removed])

Enforcement finally comes to New Mexico's San Juan Basin oil field

Land Desk ([link removed])

Recreation site arsons near Missoula investigated at local, state, federal level

Missoulian ([link removed])

Holding out hope on the drying Rio Grande

Inside Climate News ([link removed])


** Quote of the day
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” This fight here at Oak Flat is spiritual, it’s on our religious rights, of who we are and where God put us to be and where he put spirits... This is the fight that I’m fighting the United States with.”

—Wendsler Nosie ([link removed]) , head of Apache Stronghold, former chair of the San Carlos Apache


** Picture This
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@Interior ([link removed])

Interior joins our partners, community members and friends in Wyoming, and around the world, in remembering grizzly bear 399. [link removed]… ([link removed]) Photo by C. Adams / NPS

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