Mountain West News Bureau

When the rule was first enacted in 2001, the government held hundreds of public hearings that took nearly two years

So instead of Santa hand-delivering stockings of coal along with his team of reindeer, it's NTEC — or the Navajo Transitional Energy Company — with its diesel-powered trucks trekking across the sprawling 27,000-square-mile reservation.

There were early signs that this fire season could be a big one, especially the record-low snowpack last winter. In Teton County — near the Grand Targhee Resort — that spurred interest in a novel effort: raising money to help hire a local wildfire mitigation coordinator.

Environmentalists fear it could set a dangerous precedent.

The Trump administration is revising the Travel Management Rule, a U.S. Forest Service policy that dictates when motorized use is allowed.

Coal is perhaps most closely associated with Appalachian states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky — or Wyoming, the nation's leading producer of the fossil fuel. But the coal-mining business was once thriving in northern Arizona as well, atop the Colorado Plateau.

Western cattlemen are poised to lose almost all opportunity to comment on oil and gas development underneath their property.

Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming are not subject to mandatory reductions; instead, those states are setting up programs to voluntarily conserve water.

The federal government will cut back on the amount of water for Arizona, California and Nevada after years of negotiations. They will hit cities in the Phoenix and Tucson areas the hardest.

This comes after the U.S. Department of the Interior reportedly restricted staff from telling the public about deaths or injuries in national parks.