Another one from the Believe-It-Or-Not Department: Colorado officials want to increase clear-cutting to help solve the state's drought problem. Removing trees would allow more snow to fall to the ground, where it would run off into streams in the spring, providing enough new water to supply as many as a million families, says Kent Holsinger, the top water official at the state Department of Natural Resources. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens (R), a powerful Colorado representative to the U.S. House, and key Bush administration officials are all excited about the idea. They say the logging-for-water plan would kill two birds with …

The Bush administration slaps fewer polluters with fines than did the Clinton administration, and those it does nab get far gentler punishments, according to federal records compiled by Eric Schaeffer, the former head of the U.S. EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement. In the first 20 months of the Bush administration, civil penalties plunged nearly 56 percent, compared to those levied during the last 28 months of the Clinton administration, a Knight Ridder analysis found. Bush's current budget proposal would axe 112 EPA enforcement positions.

Now that President Bush has strengthened his hand with a Republican-controlled Congress, his once-doomed energy plan -- which would provide $30 billion in tax cuts for the fossil-fuel and nuclear-power industries and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling -- stands a good chance of passing. Enviros are pinning their hopes on possible presidential contenders, John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who in the past have promised to filibuster any bill in the Senate that would allow drilling to begin. Meanwhile, Bush's plan to increase logging in national forests as a way to combat wildfires will also be …

In addition to suffering a loss at the federal level, the environmental movement came up short in several statewide and local votes on Tuesday. A huge majority of Oregonians voted down an initiative that would have made Oregon the first state to require labeling of genetically modified foods. The Grocery Manufacturers of American, with support from the biotech and food industries, spent more than $5 million to combat the measure. In Utah, voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have outlawed high-level radioactive waste from entering Utah and raised taxes on low-radioactivity waste already brought into the state. In Berkeley, …

At international talks underway on protecting endangered species, the Bush administration has announced that it is "neutral" and "undecided" in the debate over whether to restrict trade in big-leaf mahogany from Latin America. The U.S. position since the time of George Bush the Elder had been to call for stricter limits on trade in the wood. The chief U.S. negotiator attending current negotiations in Santiago, Chile, at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species said the shift would better allow the country to broker a deal with countries that export mahogany. But Curtis Bohlen, who was assistant secretary of …

To the great joy of Canadian loggers, British Columbia's Liberal government unveiled a plan this week to streamline the approval process for forest cutting by April 2003. "The entire framework asks for a lot of trust and faith in the activities of forest corporations," said University of British Columbia forestry professor George Hoberg. Forest Minister Mike de Jong announced the new legislation on Monday, standing alongside more than a dozen forestry industry leaders. He said the bill would cut 18 steps from the logging approval process while maintaining environmental standards. Under the new self-policing framework, companies would have to prepare …

The Bush administration indicated last week that it might withdraw its support from a landmark international agreement on population over concerns that it promotes abortion. At a U.N. meeting last Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, U.S. State Department official Louise Oliver said the 1994 Cairo accord included terms such as "reproductive services" and "reproductive health care" that imply the right to abortion. Supporters of the accord were shocked by the development and said the withdrawal of U.S. support would undermine the entire international effort to control population growth and improve women's health care in developing nations. Francoise Girard of the International …

The Bush administration's plan to expand fossil fuel exploration in the West ran into an obstacle Wednesday when a federal judge temporarily blocked the Interior Department from allowing energy prospecting on thousands of acres of public land in Utah. The ruling halted a project by a seismic exploration company to search for oil and gas reserves in Utah's Arches National Park. The company intends to use 60,000-pound "thumper trucks" to vibrate the ground to test for oil deposits. Environmentalists say such testing would cause irreparable harm to the area and are asking the court to require the feds to conduct …

The Bush administration's plan to open federal lands in the western U.S. to oil and gas drilling would produce a measly amount of energy and a massive amount of environmental destruction, according to a Wilderness Society report released yesterday. The proposed drilling areas, which are scattered throughout millions of acres in six Rocky Mountain states and include some currently protected lands, would produce enough natural gas to meet the total U.S. demand for about 11 weeks and enough oil for about three weeks, according to the 31-page report. The report says the feds have not accurately assessed whether it would …

Anti-environmentalism in Alaska is at a fever pitch, and it's affecting the shape of nearly every political campaign in the final weeks before voters go to the polls. Incumbent state Rep. Harry Crawford (D), for example, has gone out of his way to try to convince his constituency that he's pro-development, not eco-friendly. "I believe I've had to explain it 100 times at the door," said the first-term Democrat, who insists that he's pushed hard to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. Crawford is one of many Alaskan Dems -- gubernatorial candidate Fran Ulmer among them -- …