Alaska and Hawaii

"A Defense Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) watchdog will consider probing the Trump administration’s moves to advance the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska following congressional requests on Monday."

"A lawsuit was filed Tuesday to stop the Trump administration from building a 211-mile-long industrial road that would cross Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River in Alaska."

"The Trump administration, rejecting concerns over the risks to Alaska's fishery, cleared the way on Friday for the Pebble Mine."

"The Bureau of Land Management on Thursday issued a right-of-way permit supporting a roughly 200-mile industrial road through the Northwest Alaska wilderness to a region that the state says could support several mines."

"Thursday a wide array of Alaska Native, commercial fishing, and sportfishing groups issued statements criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Pebble Mine after copies of the document were delivered to interested parties via USPS a day before its publication in the Federal Register."

"As the COVID-19 pandemic slows international shipping and keeps cruise ships docked, scientists are finding measurably less noise in the ocean. That could provide momentary relief for whales and other marine mammals that are highly sensitive to noise."

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is poised to give its blessing later this week to an Alaska copper and gold mining project the Obama administration tried to block because of concerns it could harm the state’s salmon industry."

"Alaskan beavers are carving out a growing web of channels, dams and ponds in the frozen Arctic tundra of northwestern Alaska, helping to turn it into a soggy sponge that intensifies global warming."

"Last summer, across southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region—home to the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world—tens of thousands of fish washed up dead along riverbanks. Rivers running at temperatures above the threshold for salmon health were killing the fish even as record numbers of them were returning from the ocean to reproduce."

"A federal agency on Thursday released a final management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, proposing to make 7 million additional acres of land on the North Slope open to potential oil and gas development."