There’s little cause to celebrate upcoming Sunshine Week for those who cover Trump administration environmental agencies. The latest WatchDog catalogues how the EPA has adopted a secretive approach and displays frequent hostility to the news media, including with a troubling series of attacks on individual journalists.
"Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt dismissed evolution as an unproven theory, lamented that “minority religions” were pushing Christianity out of “the public square” and advocated amending the Constitution to ban abortion, prohibit same-sex marriage and protect the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments, according to a newly unearthed series of Oklahoma talk radio shows from 2005."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lessened protections for crops and wildlife habitats after Monsanto Co. supplied research that presented lower estimates of how far the weed killer dicamba can drift, according to a review of federal documents."
"The Trump administration is looking to slash the National Weather Service's budget at a time when the service already has hundreds of unfilled positions — all while extreme weather is increasing."
"U.S. EPA is planning to shut down a grant-making center that supports leading-edge research on human exposure to pollution and its effects."
A photographer undertook an artistic and scientific odyssey that was inspired by an ancient migration now imperiled by human encroachment. His new volume tracks the mythical journeys taken by pronghorn, mule deer and elk through the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. BookShelf reviews Joe Riis’ “Yellowstone Migrations.”
"A federal environmental program that distributes grants to test the effects of chemical exposure on adults and children is being shuttered amidst a major organization consolidation at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)."
"One of the world's richest troves of Triassic-period fossils has been discovered in an area of Bears Ears National Monument that just lost its protected status, scientists announced Thursday. President Trump signed a proclamation in December that shrank the national monument by 85 percent."
"Two senior U.S. Geological Survey officials have stepped down after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke asked that they provide his office with confidential data on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska before it was released to the general public."
"The president of a Tennessee state university, under fire for an academic study on truck emissions that was paid for by a local trucking company, has asked federal officials to disregard the study, at least for now, in its review of pollution regulations that could benefit the company."
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