Natural Resources

"The federal government on Tuesday decided to scrap plans to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades ecosystem in Washington state."

"Dozens of Brazilian corporations are calling for a crackdown on illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, expressing their concerns in a letter Tuesday to the vice president, who heads the government’s council on that region."

"Audio of the forceful push led by U.S. Park Police to sweep protesters out of Lafayette Square on June 1, moments before President Trump’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church, was not recorded by the Park Police radio communications system, the agency said Tuesday."

"Public lands infrastructure projects being fast-tracked as a Covid-19 pandemic response under a June 4 executive order will be kept from public view, the White House said Tuesday. Environmental attorneys and other legal practitioners say the White House’s shroud over the expedited projects suggests that the administration’s efforts to use the economic fallout from Covid-19 to circumvent environmental regulations may not be legal."

"As the territorial government works toward a mineral development strategy, Carcross/Tagish First Nation urges an overhaul of the free entry system that it says puts rights in the hands of miners and removes it from Indigenous Peoples".

"William Perry Pendley's views on racial inequality and social justice could prove a bigger obstacle to the Senate's confirming him as director of the Bureau of Land Management than his controversial statements on public lands."

"The White House on Friday announced its intention to formally nominate William Perry Pendley to be the director of the Bureau of Land Management, which he has directed in an acting capacity for nearly a year."

"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."

"National parks, often romanticized as "America's Best Idea," are also one of its whitest."