NEWS ROUNDUP

Mexico-to-Yukon conservation proposal unveiled A conservation group unveiled a strategy Wednesday for protecting a contiguous area from Mexico to the Canadian Yukon with the goal of preserving wildlife migration routes. Of particular concern to The Wildlands Project are five areas it considers especially threatening to wildlife, like Interstate 70 through central Colorado and I-40 east of Albuquerque, N.M...Plan to log Durango fire area sparks battle Environmentalists and Forest Service officials are at odds over a proposal to salvage logs in the area burned by last summer's Missionary Ridge fire...Lawmakers accuse Bush of shifting funds President Bush defended his healthy-forests plan on Tuesday while congressmen from both parties fumed that his administration is diverting money from healthy-forests projects to fight fires... Freudenthal worries about fed view of wolf plan After a recent talk with a federal official, Gov. Dave Freudenthal didn't exactly get the impression that Wyoming's wolf plan will satisfy the federal government's requirements to move the gray wolf off the endangered species list...Environmentalists sue government to safeguard salmon In a move that could have far-reaching effects on development in the Puget Sound region, environmentalists sued the federal government yesterday to force it to restrict construction that harms salmon protected under the Endangered Species Act...Agency reports forest thinning numbers are misleading "The current method of reporting annual performance under the fuels reduction program is resulting in misleading data on what is actually being accomplished," the GAO says... Prescott mulls selling water from ranch Water will likely become a marketable commodity if the City of Prescott decides to go ahead with a plan to buy the Paulden-area CV Ranch...Questions on fish, air, wetlands likely to face Leavitt in confirmation Throughout his run for re-election in 2000, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was stalked by a 6-foot fish. "Whirley," a woman in a trout costume, heckled the governor, deriding his ties to the Leavitt family fish farm that some people claimed had helped spread whirling disease. That disease warps trouts' spines, causing them to swim in tail-chasing circles...