Biodiversity

"Republicans have a clear path to open national monuments to mining and fossil fuels by tossing out Biden-era conservation plans, but legal analysts say such a move would risk legal chaos."

"The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit Tuesday over public records related to the Trump administration's efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act."

"The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit Tuesday over public records related to the Trump administration's efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act."

"A recent, non-binding opinion from the Government Accountability Office may pave the way for Congress to begin rescinding management plans for national monuments across the country, environmentalists and experts say, potentially leading to protected areas being further opened up for resource extraction. And Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is yet again at the center of the renewed threats to the nation’s monuments."

"A niche rule established by the U.S. Forest Service to justify the clearing of tens of thousands of acres of forest in the name of reducing wildfire risk was unlawfully created and applied, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon found last week, invalidating its future use across the United States."

"Conservationists fighting Alaskan efforts to build a 211-mile industrial mining road across pristine lands of the southern Brooks Range, including a portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, told a federal court that President Donald Trump and his team violated numerous environmental laws in pushing through approvals to let it proceed."

"Bally Philp hauls up his baited traps from the waters off Scotland’s Isle of Skye, checking each one methodically. Unlike most of Scotland’s coastline, these waters are protected from industrial fishing methods that have devastated seabeds elsewhere. But Philp, who’s fished for more than three decades, has watched conditions deteriorate nearly everywhere else along the coast."