New deadline set to protect 8 rivers

Federal regulators have agreed to a new 2024 deadline to enact protections for parts of eight rivers in California, including one that originates in Nevada, under a court settlement announced Friday. Congress designated portions of the Amargosa and seven other rivers as wild and scenic in 2009, but the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management never completed comprehensive management plans for them, as required by law. The Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson, Arizona-based environmental group, sued the two agencies over the plans in March. Under the settlement agreement filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the BLM and the Forest Service committed to finishing the planning process by the end of 2024...MORE