Judge rules for government in falcon dispute A federal judge has rejected the final part of a challenge by environmental groups to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate the northern aplomado falcon as a nonessential, experimental population in New Mexico and Arizona. The environmentalists alleged the designation violated federal policy and stripped the falcon of needed protections under the Endangered Species Act. They wanted U.S. District Judge William Johnson to declare the designation illegal and force the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to their petition for critical habitat in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Johnson's legal opinion Tuesday upheld the federal agency's determination that there was no native population of falcons in New Mexico before a 2006 program to release them in the state. The program has released about 120 birds since its inception. The judge rejected the environmentalists' contention that New Mexico fell within the species' current range and that New Mexico's population was not "wholly separate geographically" from nonexperimental populations across northern Mexico or those released in West Texas....