NEWS

Man Says He'll Leave Treasure Hidden in Desert The family of a man who claims to have found millions of dollars worth of gold and antique guns in a desert cave says he's tired of dealing with the federal government and plans to just leave the cache where he found it. Scott Taylor has been a virtual recluse since news broke this week on two Salt Lake television stations that he allegedly stumbled across a lost fortune while hiking on public land in west Utah about a month and a half ago. Taylor claims he found 280 gold bricks with "U-S Cavalry" stamped on each; two Civil War-era rifles; a six-shooter; and dynamite. But the Bureau of Land Management and others say Scott Taylor is the only who claims to have seen this loot. The Taylors counter the goverment isn't willing to share a finder's fee for the cache. The B-L-M says it's NOT their place to negotiate, and if the gold really has 'U-S Cavalry' on it, then it belongs to the Army....
Feds develop plan to use oil reserve The federal government is launching a process that could lead to oil leases in a reserve encompassing a southwestern section of Alaska's North Slope. The Bureau of Land Management begins a series of public meetings in July to discuss possible uses for the southwestern part of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, a Bureau of Land Management official in Anchorage confirmed Friday. The meetings will focus on use of 9.2 million acres in the southwest portion of the 23-million-acre reserve....
COURT ORDERS BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO RELEASE SOME ENERGY RECORDS, BUT SOME TO REMAIN SECRET In a mixed ruling today, a federal appellate court upheld a lower court decision that the Bush administration improperly withheld documents related to fast-tracking federal energy projects. However, the court also ruled that the administration could continue to withhold the records of key staffers of Vice President Cheney's energy task force. The D.C. Court of Appeals found that Ronald Montagna, a Bureau of Land Management official, remained an employee of the Interior Department while serving on the White House Task Force on Energy Project Streamlining. As a result, the court ordered the agency to search and publicly disclose records related to Mr. Montagna's work on that task force. The streamlining task force has aggressively opened public lands to energy development at the expense of environmental protection and public participation, according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). Also in today's decision, the court rebuffed NRDC's efforts to obtain additional documents related to Vice President Cheney's secret energy task force....
New grazing rules mean less down time New rules for livestock grazing on 160 million acres of federal lands were welcomed by ranchers but criticized by environmentalists. The regulations issued Thursday by the Interior Department will require ranchers to either use the grazing lands they lease from the government or give up their permits so others can use them. Any ranchers who leave acreage idle for more than a year could lose their grazing permits, which are generally issued for 10 years. The department’s Bureau of Land Management had been letting people keep the permits as long as they didn’t go more than three years without using the acreage for grazing....

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