Environment & Public Lands

Hundreds of migrating birds crash-landed at Utah’s Dugway Proving Ground overnight, apparently mistaking a parking lot in a snowstorm for water.  Al Vogel, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Army, says these are eared grebes, a species that can’t take off from land.  Vogel says the Army’s own wildlife specialists and the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources are working to rescue the birds that survived.

"They’ll take the birds to a nearby pond on post, let ‘em rest there and then they’ll take off and continue their migration," Vogel tells KUER.

  The University of Utah College of Law is hosting the annual Stegner Symposium this week, focusing on Religion, Faith and the Environment. Increasingly, people of faith are citing their beliefs as a major motivation for protecting the environment and caring for those at the margins of society.

Outdoor businesses and conservation groups are calling on the federal government to protect the land in and around Utah’s parks. 29 organizations sent a letter Monday to President Barack Obama calling for lasting protections for state and national parks from overdevelopment. 

  Environmentalists who’ve been trying to stop a water pipeline from the Great Basin to Las Vegas are applauding a decision by Utah’s governor to reject an agreement between Utah and Nevada.

Governor Gary Herbert has rejected an agreement with Nevada that would allow Las Vegas to pump massive amounts of groundwater from the states' shared border along the Snake Valley. The governor says he came to the decision after talking to residents and government officials in the West Desert.

Governor Gary Herbert says he’ll decide whether or not to sign the controversial water sharing agreement with Nevada in the next couple of weeks. Nevada officials signed the document three years ago. It would allow the state to pump groundwater to Las Vegas by way of Snake Valley, which straddles the Utah/Nevada border. 

The governor, speaking at the monthly KUED today news conference says it’s clear most people in Utah and even some in Nevada believe the pipeline is a mistake.

US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has announced a plan to encourage oil shale and tar sands development in the Mountain West. The Bureau of Land Management released its final plan Friday to develop and test technologies to extract these fossil fuels in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. But the citizen group Utah Tar Sands Resistance says this move will endanger the environment and public health. 

The weekend fatality of a West Jordan man will become an unplanned topic at the State School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration or SITLA Board meeting later this week. 22-year-old Kyle Stocking died following a rope swing accident from Corona Arch which is located on SITLA Land. Kim Christy is the Deputy Director of the Administration which owns 3 point 4 million acres in Utah. He offered condolences to the family and friends of Stocking.

Kane County and the state of Utah have regained ownership of several back-country roads that cross federal land. A federal judge granted the state and county title to 12 of 15 roads being contested in a legal dispute with the Interior department and Bureau of Land Management. 

Utah Attorney General John Swallow says the decision proves the state of Utah and 22 of 29 Utah counties involved in the lawsuit are not just barking in the wind.