The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service released a recommendation Wednesday to lift former President Obama’s uranium mining ban in the watershed of the Grand Canyon. The move was made in response to President Trump‘s sweeping “energy independence” executive order in March to ease regulatory burdens on energy development. “This appalling recommendation threatens to destroy […]
The Liberty Project has posted a video about its proposal to build the nation’s first oil production platform in federal waters in the Arctic. The video was quietly uploaded two months ago and shows Hilcorp Alaska’s plan to build an artificial gravel island and undersea pipeline for its offshore drilling project in the Beaufort Sea. […]
Ryan Zinke‘s Interior Department is working behind the scenes to build a controversial and long-contested road through the heart of Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, documents show. The refuge was established more than 30 years ago to conserve wetlands and habitats for migrating birds, brown bears and salmon and other wildlife. 300,000 of its 315,000 […]
Conservation organizations announced Wednesday that Trader Joe’s has declared it will stop buying shrimp from Mexico. The popular grocery store chain’s decision follows pressure from organizations behind the Boycott Mexican Shrimp campaign, launched earlier this year to save the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, from decades of decline due to entanglement in shrimp fishing gear. […]
By Rina Herzl Picture an animal enrobed in a fiery, jigsaw-patterned coat. A creature of such majestic height that it towers amongst the trees. As your eyes make their way up its long neck that appears to defy gravity, you find crowned atop its head two Seussian, horn-like protrusions framing dark, curious eyes fanned by […]
The Trump administration will scrap the Clean Power Plan (CPP), President Obama’s signature environmental policy aimed at fighting climate change, confirming earlier reports of such a move. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt said at an event in Kentucky he will sign a proposed rule on Tuesday “to withdraw the so-called clean power plan […]
Wildlife officials in Mexico next week will attempt to capture and protect some of the last vaquita on Earth in a desperate effort to save these small porpoises from extinction. The operation in the Gulf of California, scheduled to begin Oct. 12, will use trained U.S. Navy dolphins to locate vaquita, whose numbers have dwindled […]
The Trump administration announced Wednesday it would decline to list the Pacific walrus on the endangered species list, reversing an Obama-era finding that the walruses should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended in 2011 that the walrus be considered for endangered species status in the near future […]
Republican U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah introduced legislation this week that would strip federal Endangered Species Act protections for animals and plants found in only one state. Known as intrastate species, such imperiled animals and plants make up the majority of the 1,655 species protected under the act. The legislation is […]