"California legislators aiming to pass more stringent regulations on the sale and dissemination of ivory and rhinoceros horns received a boost last Friday when a San Francisco man pleaded guilty to selling an undercover federal agent two black rhinoceros horns for $55,000. The art dealer Lumsden Quan and Mill Valley man Edward Levine will face sentencing in December."
"No leaks, no spills, no impact on climate change. The Keystone XL pipeline would have 'no impact' on the environment if it were approved and built, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday. For that reason, the billionaire said he would approve the controversial project 'immediately' if elected president."
"Several large solar power plants under construction in the United States have in the past few months promised to do something that none has done before: offer prices equal to or lesser than that of a natural gas-fired power plant, even as gas is abundant and cheap."
"President Obama came to Las Vegas Monday to throw his weight behind the booming solar energy industry in its recent political struggles, and to announce a bevy of initiatives to promote clean-energy growth in America’s homes and on its rooftops. It was the first stop in a climate and energy-focused tour that will also take the president to New Orleans and Arctic Alaska this month."
"Americans’ lawns now cover an area three times larger than any irrigated crop in the U.S."
"As a lover of ancient rock art, Steve Acerson usually roams Utah’s backcountry searching for images of hunters and rams carved on boulders and canyon walls. But one morning, on a hillside speckled with those prehistoric petroglyphs, he was also finding signs of a younger civilization: Shotgun shells. Bullets. Shredded juniper trees. Exploded cans of spray paint."
"'Conditions may exist that could result in a... release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters,' stated a 2014 EPA report on the inactive Gold King Mine, whose toxic waters befouled rivers in 3 states earlier this month."
"President Barack Obama and Nevada's U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, two of the most powerful Democrats in the nation, are playing key roles in the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on Monday."
"Newly released documents show that firefighters responding to an oil train derailment and fire last year in Lynchburg, Va., waited more than two hours for critical details about the train and what was on it."
"Humans are throwing ecosystems out of whack by not only killing a large number of animals, but by killing adults and top carnivores in particular, a study suggests. One answer is to act more like animal predators."
"If humans hope to fish the oceans more sustainably, they are going to have to start fishing like fish, a new study suggests.
That means harvesting younger, smaller fish to leave more of their elders to continue maturing and reproducing. And it means fishing quotas that are more in line with what nonhuman predators consume.
