the Hold Steady with “Chips Ahoy”

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More than 100 oil and gas leases in Utah may be undevelopable because of a federal court ruling that threw out a Bush administration rule and reinstated one dating from the Clinton presidency.
The decision was issued Wednesday by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco. The case is a consolidation of a suit brought by the state of California and others, and one filed by environmentalists

This is an amazing ruling that could have far reaching implications.

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Washington - A federal judge has voided nearly 100 oil and gas leases on sites in Colorado’s national forests.

The leases were issued after the Bush administration suspended the Clinton administration’s 2001 Roadless Initiative, which blocked development of roads on 58.5 million acres of national forests and grasslands across the country.

View the maps here courtesy of Earthjustice.

More on this story here.

images copyright 2006@wilderness-sportsman

Amazing, really. Hopefully, Bush can be persuaded to pass more wilderness in the next two years as part of an effort to establish or save whatever legacy he can. One can dream, right? Doing the right thing is more important than who does the right thing.

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The bill gives wilderness protection to 42,000 additional acres in the Green Mountain National Forest, a designation that means the land is off-limits to logging and mechanized recreation, such as snowmobiling.

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Whether Congress will pass legislation this session that would protect federal lands along the Rocky Mountain Front from gas, oil and mineral exploration is anybody’s guess.

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This story didn’t make the radio talk shows or the Sunday morning TV programs, but it should have. For a lot of American families it is more important than many of the topics that got the attention.