Judge denies Northern Arapaho eagle request

A federal judge has denied a request from the Northern Arapaho Tribe to reconsider his recent ruling that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acted properly in barring the tribe from killing bald eagles for religious purposes on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne entered an order Tuesday denying the tribe's request to reconsider his November ruling. The Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this year granted the Northern Arapaho Tribe the nation's first permit allowing the killing of up to two mature bald eagles a year for use in the tribe's annual Sun Dance. The permit specified that the tribe couldn't kill the eagles on the reservation it shares with the Eastern Shoshone Tribe because of that tribe's opposition to killing eagles.