Conservation groups are suing the Trump administration to halt construction of a controversial oil production facility in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea, the first offshore oil drilling development in federal Arctic waters. Hilcorp Alaska received the green light from the Interior Department in October to build the Liberty Project, a nine-acre artificial drilling island and 5.6-mile underwater […]
By Kim Smaczniak Most Americans probably don’t know that an independent—and up to now nonpartisan—government agency has played a key role in our nation’s transition to cleaner energy technologies. Under the radar and hidden beneath a layer of technical jargon, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has shepherded changes to electricity market rules that have […]
A coalition of 17 conservation and tribal citizen groups filed a lawsuit Friday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to gut the Bureau of Land Management’s Waste Prevention Rule, stating that the rule violates a number of existing federal policies. The states of New Mexico and California have already filed a lawsuit challenging BLM’s action. “We […]
The Trump administration is appealing a federal court ruling that ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban chlorpyrifos, a widely used pesticide tied to brain damage and other health problems in children. In August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the EPA must ban the pesticide within 60 days based on strong […]
A federal judge on Thursday halted the first Yellowstone-area grizzly bear trophy hunts in four decades. Wyoming and Idaho’s grizzly hunt was set to begin this Saturday, Sept. 1 and would have allowed a potential kill of 23 bears outside of Yellowstone National Park. But U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula, Montana granted a […]
By Noni Austin For tens of thousands of years, the Wangan and Jagalingou people have lived in the flat arid lands of central Queensland, Australia. But now they are fighting for their very existence. Earlier this month, they took their fight to the United Nations after years of Australia’s failure to protect their fundamental human […]
The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported. In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on […]
By Meghana Kuppa The exasperation was apparent in Jesse Marquez’s voice recently as he testified at a public hearing in Washington DC, about a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal to roll back a safety rule that would make the chemical industry more accountable for public health. Marquez was 17 years old when he and his […]
Sen. John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, released draft legislation Monday to significantly overhaul the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Under Barrasso’s proposal, individual states would be given key authority over the federal program to conserve threatened and endangered species. “When it comes to the Endangered Species Act, the status quo is not good enough,” the Environment […]