wildlife

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Exxon Mobil Corp. is challenging $1.7 million in penalties for a 63,000-gallon crude oil spill in the Yellowstone River, according to documents.

The penalties were proposed by the Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which cited bad decisions by the company before and after the spill. The penalties included the failure of employees to close a safety valve, which could have reduced the spill's size, investigators said.

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Under the Obama administration, wind farms have never faced prosecution or fines for the deaths of eagles and other protected bird species.

While the administration has used bird deaths to prosecute oil companies and traditional power companies, wind companies have never faced penalties -- even repeat offenders -- according to an investigation by the Associated Press. The lack of punishment has not only kept the industry from facing liabilities for the deaths but also has kept the number of killed birds a secret.

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A Senate committee Thursday will seek to advance roughly 30 lands bills, including measures to designate wilderness in Nevada and New Mexico, swap tens of thousands of acres of gas-rich lands in Utah, and designate a national historic park in Rhode Island.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee will also consider measures to promote geothermal development on public lands, extend the life of a federal helium reserve and expand off-highway vehicle access at a North Carolina seashore.

Most of the bills on Thursday's docket are noncontroversial.

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The Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday said the operators of wind farms in the Tehachapi Mountains will not be charged if their turbines kill protected condors.

The announcement drew anger from environmentalists, who said the move undermines the California condor program.

The birds were nearly extinct 25 years ago and still have a small population. Federal laws prohibit their disturbance or killing.

But FWS made an exception for the 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch that will last for 50 years. The wind project is expected to expand to cover 8 percent of critical condor habitat.

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The plan for a 600,000-acre mitigation bank in Wyoming would benefit environmentalists, the state and energy developers, according to the men behind the idea.

The idea would allow companies to conserve land before they develop elsewhere. The current proposal involves a restoration project on a parcel of the 600,000 acres in return for credits on other lands for activities such as mining and road construction.

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Grizzly bears lack a reputation as a rule-following animal, but they sure inspire a lot of rule-making. The bears of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem have a draft 158-page rulebook up for public comment this summer as they move toward possible removal from federal Endangered Species Act protection.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan describes how roughly 1,000 grizzlies in that area would be managed, protected and restricted. It’s up for public comment through August.

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The Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels passed an ominous milestone yesterday when a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observatory on the Big Island in Hawaii registered 400 parts per million for the first time.

It's a concentration of CO2 that has not existed in the Earth's atmosphere for at least 3 million years, and it could be enough to trigger 2 degrees Celsius in warming compared with preindustrial levels (ClimateWire, May 10).

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Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who holds the reins in the House over Interior Department spending, urged the Bureau of Land Management yesterday to boost its focus on wildfire management as a means of protecting the imperiled sage grouse.

Republicans like Simpson have long called on the Obama administration to protect the grouse from fire rather than focus on limiting mining, drilling or other public land uses.

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New Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Tuesday that she is still undecided about how to handle a burgeoning wild horse and burro population that is eating more than half the horse budget at the BLM and sparking outrage among wild horse advocates.

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State officials in the Northern Rockies on Monday lined up against a federal proposal to give new protections to the carnivorous wolverine, as climate change threatens to melt the species' snowy mountain strongholds.

A pending U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal would declare the rare, elusive animal a threatened species across the Lower 48 states.