On Friday, public interest organizations representing farmers and conservationists made their legal case in a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Monsanto Company, challenging EPA’s approval of Monsanto’s new “XtendiMax” pesticide. XtendiMax is Monsanto’s version of dicamba, an old and highly drift-prone weed-killer. EPA’s approval permitted XtendiMax to be sprayed […]
Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a decision, which spells bad news for the proposed Constitution Pipeline, a 124-mile natural gas pipeline slated to run through New York State and Pennsylvania. Constitution Pipeline went to FERC and asked them to invalidate the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s (NYSDEC) denial for a necessary […]
A group of three widely used agricultural pesticides jeopardizes the survival of endangered salmon, according to a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion unveiled this week. Chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon—all organophosphate pesticides—harm salmon and their habitat to the point that their survival and recovery are at risk, according to the report. Southern Resident Killer […]
By Emilie Karrick Surrusco Jody Meche and his family have harvested crawfish from Louisiana‘s Atchafalaya Basin for generations. When he set his first trap in the 1980s, he hauled in an abundant catch. These days, his traps come back full of dead crawfish. Meche holds the oil and gas industry responsible for the steady destruction […]
2017 was an exceptional year for ordinary citizens who stepped up to come to their communities’ needs and in the process, sent a clear message that anyone can make a difference. As we turn the calendar to 2018, we look to this list as inspiration for others to act as boldly. 1. The California Heroes […]
The Republican-controlled 115th Congress has introduced at least 63 separate pieces of legislation that would strip federal protections for specific threatened species or undermine the U.S. Endangered Species Act, according to a new analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity. That’s one such bill every six days in 2017 alone. The majority of these bills […]
The Havasupai Tribe and a coalition of conservation groups praised the decision Tuesday by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the Department of the Interior’s 20-year ban on new uranium mining claims across 1 million acres of public lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon. The court ruled that the ban, adopted in […]
Hours after President Donald Trump issued a proclamation taking an axe to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah on Monday, conservation organizations filed a lawsuit attacking the order as an abuse of the president’s power. Earthjustice is representing eight organizations in a suit charging that the president violated the 1906 Antiquities Act by stripping monument […]
The Trump administration released on Wednesday its long-overdue recovery plan for Mexican gray wolves, one of the most endangered mammal species in North America with an estimated wild population of just over 100. However, the plan charts a course for extinction rather than recovery, cutting off wolf access to vital recovery habitat and failing to […]