Natural Resources

"Drive just an hour and half north of San Francisco and you're in Drakes Estero, or estuary, named for the first English explorer to lay claim to California."

"Decades of shortsighted decisions by industry and government have put the Mississippi River’s future at risk, and degradation at its southern Louisiana delta is contributing to 'the greatest land loss on the planet,' a five-state environmental coalition warned Wednesday."

"A remote wetland near Itasca State Park, already undercut by three crude oil pipelines, is one of several fragile, isolated habitats along the proposed path of the 610-mile Sandpiper crude oil pipeline across northern Minnesota."

"Scientists have criticised China's bulldozing of hundreds of mountains to provide more building land for cities."

"The federal government is taking a new approach to conservation with a $1.2 billion program in the Farm Bill that will include competitive grants for soil and water improvements in eight regions, including the longleaf pine forests of North Carolina and other Southern states, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Thursday.

'This is a new day,' Vilsack said in an interview.

"The world's food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found."

"A vast peatland has been discovered in a remote part of Congo-Brazzaville."

"Ecuador’s government has issued an environmental permit for oil drilling in the pristine Amazon reserve that President Rafael Correa initially offered to exempt from exploration if rich countries would pay his government."