Wyoming

BILLINGS, Mont. — The Obama administration on Friday proposed lifting most remaining federal protections for gray wolves across the Lower 48 states, a move that would end four decades of recovery efforts but some scientists criticized as premature.

State and federal agencies have spent more than $117 million restoring the predators since they were added to the endangered species list in 1974. Today more than 6,100 wolves roam portions of the Northern Rockies and western Great Lakes where protections already have been lifted.

With Friday’s announcement, the administration signaled it’s ready to move on: The wolf has rebounded from near-extermination, balance has been restored to parts of the ecosystem, and hunters in some states already are free to shoot the animals under state oversight.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The last of five defendants charged with defrauding investors of more than $4 million by promoting nonexistent wind farm projects in Wyoming and South Dakota pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony charges.

Robert Arthur Reed, of Salt Lake City, pleaded guilty in federal court in Casper to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money. Four other co-defendants have entered earlier guilty pleas to various charges.

Prosecutors charged that Reed and the others  -- including a Morgan, Utah, woman -- used personal aliases as well as the company names of Mountain State Power Group, Mountain State Power and Sovereign Energy Partners.

CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. — It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America’s green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm’s spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.

Killing these iconic birds is not just an irreplaceable loss for a vulnerable species. It’s also a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines.

But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- A federal jury took just over an hour Thursday to convict an Australian man living in Utah who said he robbed a bank in Wyoming so he could give money to the homeless.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — An Australian man who says he robbed a bank in Jackson on New Year’s Eve so he could give the money to the homeless is set to present his defense to a federal jury in Cheyenne.

 CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Federal prosecutors on Thursday dropped their request to force a Wyoming newspaper reporter to testify about her interview with a bank robbery suspect.