This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante: Trump’s Monumental Mistake
Well, he told us he would do it. And now he's actually doing it — or at least trying to. Late last week, President Trump, via the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, announced that he was formalizing his plan to develop lands that once belonged within the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in southern Utah. The former is a stunningly beautiful, ecologically fragile landscape that has played a crucial role in Native American culture in the Southwest for thousands of years; the latter, just as beautiful, is one of the richest and most important paleontological sites in North America.
Trump Admin Finalizes 'Atrocious' Plans to Allow Drilling and Mining on Gutted National Monuments
The Trump administration finalized plans Thursday to open public lands in Utah to the fossil fuel industry.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
The world's largest gypsum dunefield is now the United States' newest national park.
There is an outcry in Arizona after footage captured border wall construction bulldozers plowing over iconic cacti that are protected in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument — a monument created to protect Organ Pipe and Saguaro cacti, as Newsweek reported.
Trending
Trump Administration Delays Construction of Border Wall in Arizona Wildlife Preserve
The Trump administration is delaying construction on its long-promised border wall that would cut through protected stretches of the Arizona desert.
New BLM Appointee Believes Founding Fathers Wanted All Public Lands to Be Sold off
By Julia Conley
Control over nearly 250 million acres of public lands was placed Monday in the hands of a former Reagan administration official who has argued that all federal lands should be sold to fossil fuel and other corporate interests in accordance with the goals of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
New Trump Admin Plan for Bears Ears National Monument 'Recklessly Weakens Protections'
By Jessica Corbett
Conservation groups and congressional Democrats slammed the Trump administration Friday over its destructive new management plan for the "illegally reduced" Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
Biggest Public Lands Bill in 10+ Years Clears Congress, Protecting More Than 1.3 Million Acres of Wilderness
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 363-62 to pass the Natural Resources Management Act Tuesday, which means the biggest public lands bill in more than a decade has now passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support.
Trending
The Grand Canyon celebrates its 100th birthday as a national park this month, but it just earned itself a protector who is even older!
In a rare bipartisan push, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a major public lands package on Tuesday.
The Natural Resources Management Act, approved 92-8, establishes 1.3 million acres of new wilderness, adds 694,000 acres of new recreation and conservation areas, creates four new national monuments, among other important conservation measures, according to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who introduced the bill with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
To Preserve National Parks in a Warming World, Reconnect Fragmented Public Lands
By Stephen Nash
The Trump administration's decision to keep many U.S. national parks open during the current federal government shutdown, with few or no staff, spotlights how popular and how vulnerable these unique places are.
Some states, such as Utah and Arizona, have spent heavily to keep parks open rather than lose tourist revenues. Unfortunately, without rangers to enforce rules, some visitors have strewn garbage and vandalized scenic areas.