"One year after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, at least a third of the lawyers on staff at the Justice Department’s environment division have walked out the door, gutting the government’s capacity to defend its own energy and climate policies and kneecapping its power to keep polluters in check."
"Republicans have a clear path to open national monuments to mining and fossil fuels by tossing out Biden-era conservation plans, but legal analysts say such a move would risk legal chaos."
"The U.S. will put together a $12 billion minerals stockpile, President Trump announced in the Oval Office on Monday."
Journalists love a secret. And WatchDog Opinion delves into a whopper on the environment beat — the hidden data surrounding a singular test well drilled in one of the most contested ecosystems in the United States. Now that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been reopened for oil leasing by the Trump administration, do the findings even matter? More on the saga.
"A recent, non-binding opinion from the Government Accountability Office may pave the way for Congress to begin rescinding management plans for national monuments across the country, environmentalists and experts say, potentially leading to protected areas being further opened up for resource extraction. And Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is yet again at the center of the renewed threats to the nation’s monuments."
"Conservationists fighting Alaskan efforts to build a 211-mile industrial mining road across pristine lands of the southern Brooks Range, including a portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, told a federal court that President Donald Trump and his team violated numerous environmental laws in pushing through approvals to let it proceed."
"Police and prosecutors from Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname have arrested nearly 200 people in their first-ever joint cross-border operation targeting illegal gold mining in the Amazon region, authorities said Thursday."
"On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finalized a new rule making it easier for companies to apply for the right to mine the deep ocean floor."
"The House of Representatives voted 214 to 208 Wednesday to open up hundreds of thousands of federal acres to mining near the border of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness."
"The world is facing irreversible water "bankruptcy", with billions of people struggling to cope with the consequences of decades of overuse as well as shrinking supplies from lakes, rivers, glaciers and wetlands, U.N. researchers said on Tuesday."
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