"A Canadian company has applied for an exploratory gold and copper mining permit in the headwaters of the Skagit River, which flows from British Columbia and through northwest Washington state to Puget Sound."
"Executives at Vale SA, the world’s largest iron ore miner, quashed efforts by Brazilian authorities to audit one of the company’s mining dams months before it collapsed and killed over 300 people, a state prosecutor was quoted as saying by news website G1 on Wednesday."
"Faced with reservoirs less than half full along the Colorado River, federal authorities and negotiators for Colorado and six other Western states on Tuesday finalized a landmark plan to share the burden of voluntarily using less water as growing cities and warming temperatures deplete the supply for 40 million people."
"Spring has arrived in Southern California and with it a crisis has blossomed in the small city of Lake Elsinore, where tens of thousands of visitors have flocked to see a “superbloom” of poppies in a desert canyon."
"A pair of Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Interior Department watchdog to look into ethical concerns involving a number of key agency officials."
"Yak, reindeer and entire ways of life in the “Third Pole” and Scandinavia face new threats in a warming world."
"The Trump administration on Friday finalized its plan to loosen Obama-era protections on the habitat of the sage grouse, an imperiled ground-nesting bird that roams across 10 oil-rich Western states."
"Brazil’s right-wing government has ordered environmental enforcement agency Ibama not to respond to requests from the media, stoking fears that President Jair Bolsonaro may be rolling back environmental protections out of the public eye."
The vast Colorado River, recently in the news over a troubled drought deal, is at the heart of numerous environmental problems in the American West, where water is scarce and the legal complexities of water rights voluminous. The latest Issue Backgrounder offers an explainer on the story, which involves at least seven states, the federal government, Native American tribes, a hornet’s nest of irrigation districts and even Mexico.
"The White House fiscal 2020 budget for the Interior Department would prioritize funds for a departmentwide reorganization as well as for land and wildfire management."
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