Ken Salazar.

See, it's like this. Far from being the obstructionist tree-hugger his critics accuse him of being, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar really, really wants to drill, baby, drill, for oil and gas on federal lands and offshore. He wants to drill the hell out of the place. But the energy companies are apparently full of slackers and greedheads who can't handle the leases they already have, most of which sit idle and undeveloped.

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The U.S. Bureau of Land Management can no longer "remain studiously ignorant of material scientific evidence" indicating that castrating wild stallions is a problematic and possibly illegal way of managing the herds, a federal judge has ruled in the long-running battle over the fate of America's wild horses.

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Bye bye, fly?.

The Arapahoe Snowfly is so small that you wouldn't notice if you inhaled it. At just .2 inches long, it's certainly not the kind of cuddly creature that appears on birthday cards and computer backgrounds. (Like mine, which just so happens to feature an effing adorable photo of two Denver Zoo polar bears spooning. Shut up.) But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife thinks this bug is worth saving, and they've put it on a list of endangered species candidates.

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McNulty.

The Republican House leadership's successful effort to block passage of a civil unions bill yesterday, orchestrated by Speaker Frank McNulty, could well have aftershocks stretching to the fall elections. And lawmakers who opted for inaction may be facing much more than the wrath of liberals and activists committed to the civil unions cause.

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Yesterday the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced that it would remove 22 proposed oil and gas parcels in the scenic North Fork Valley from a summer lease sale, opting instead to "conduct additional analysis...based on public input." And the public that's been deluging the BLM with input -- objections, mostly, to the drilling threat -- is whooping it up.

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Big photos below.

Denver's regional recycling plant is not a good place to lose your car keys. It is, however, a good place to get rid of old cartons.

After five years spent educating the city not to do just that, Denver Public Works announced today that it now has the capability to recycle more containers than just the milk variety. Denver is now among the 35 percent of the country that can.

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Long ago, before hippies like Al Gore co-opted it with their environmentalist liberal agenda, Earth Day was a time for honest, hard-working Americans like you and me to celebrate our dominance over the planet we call home, which, as everyone knows, was awarded to us by God pretty early on in the Bible.

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Since its 2010 launch, Mile High Connects has taken a long, hard, scientific look at Denver's transit system. Formed as a collaboration between nonprofit leaders and philanthropies, the group analyzed the equity and access of area transportation. The findings, which focus heavily on the distance between public transit and low-income housing, take into consideration ten years of data uncovered between 2000 and 2010 to create the Denver Regional Equity Atlas, released today.

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On Friday, for the first time in four years, Denver's streets reached Critical Mass when the local branch of the national organization took downtown on two wheels. But the mass mobilization wasn't all smooth cycling: As riders promoted consideration of a world without cars, eight members were ticketed on Denver's closest street equivalent to that idea: the 16th Street Mall. Denver police impounded all eight bikes.

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Real-estate investor Aaron Million's modest proposal to build a 550-mile pipeline to move water from southwest Wyoming to Colorado's Front Range has lots of critics. But a major challenge facing opponents is how to get city types to understand what's at stake, including the spectacular scenery and recreation of the Green River and Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Unless you're into trophy-class fishing or road trips, you may never have visited the area.

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