wetlands

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    ‘We Have No Other Home’: Alaska Tribes Sue to Stop Largest Pure Gold Mine

    ‘We Have No Other Home’: Alaska Tribes Sue to Stop Largest Pure Gold Mine

    If the Donlin Gold Mine is built as planned in Southwest Alaska, it would be the largest pure gold mine in the world. It would also lead to the filling of thousands of acres of wetlands, harm salmon and rainbow smelt and risk a catastrophic spill of 20 to 40 percent of the up to 568 million tons of toxic waste that could end up stored behind a 471-foot tailings dam.

    1,500 Square Miles of Coastal Wetlands Have Vanished in Two Decades, Study Finds

    1,500 Square Miles of Coastal Wetlands Have Vanished in Two Decades, Study Finds

    Coastal wetlands are vitally important ecosystems. They store carbon dioxide, protect seaside communities from storms and provide habitats for marine life. Yet in the past two decades, Earth has lost 4,000 square kilometers (approximately 1,544 square miles) of tidal flats, tidal marshes and mangroves, a new study published in Science Thursday found. That’s a loss […]

    World’s Freshwater Ecosystems Contaminated With Salt Pollution Despite Government Guidelines

    World’s Freshwater Ecosystems Contaminated With Salt Pollution Despite Government Guidelines

    Saltwater pollution of the world’s freshwater ecosystems caused by agriculture fertilizers, road de-icing salts, mining operations and climate change is on the rise, and the current water quality guidelines in North America and Europe aren’t stringent enough to prevent it. An international study conducted by scientists from Europe and North America found that freshwater lakes […]

    Protecting Wetlands Yields Staggering Economic Benefit, Study Finds

    Protecting Wetlands Yields Staggering Economic Benefit, Study Finds

    By Kimberly M.S. Cartier Mangrove forests, marshes and seagrass beds protect inland areas from storm surges and strong winds. Over long periods, coastal wetlands like these build up sediment that mitigates sea level rise and local land subsidence. A new analysis of property damage from Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal storms has shown that […]

    Trump Admin Repeals Obama-Era Clean Water Protections

    Trump Admin Repeals Obama-Era Clean Water Protections

    The Trump administration repealed the 2015 Clean Water Rule rule Thursday, a rule intended to protect 60 percent of the nation’s waterways from pollution, The New York Times reported. At stake is the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. The Obama-era rule expanded that definition from larger bodies of […]

    Saving the World’s Largest Tropical Wetland

    Saving the World’s Largest Tropical Wetland

    Most people have heard of the Amazon, South America’s famed rainforest and hub of biological diversity. Less well known, though no less critical, is the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. Like the Amazon, the Pantanal is ecologically important and imperiled. Located primarily in Brazil, it also stretches into neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay. Covering an […]