Natural Resources

"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."

"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."

"Police and prosecutors from Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname have arrested nearly 200 people in their first-ever joint cross-border operation targeting illegal gold mining in the Amazon region, authorities said Thursday."

"On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finalized a new rule making it easier for companies to apply for the right to mine the deep ocean floor."

"The House of Representatives voted 214 to 208 Wednesday to open up hundreds of thousands of federal acres to mining near the border of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness."

"The world is facing irreversible water "bankruptcy", with billions of people struggling to cope with the consequences of decades of overuse as well as shrinking supplies from lakes, rivers, glaciers and wetlands, U.N. researchers said on Tuesday."

"House Democrats asked the Interior Department’s inspector general on Tuesday to investigate whether Karen Budd-Falen, the agency’s third highest ranking official, played a role in the federal approval of a lithium mine after her husband entered into a $3.5 million financial relationship with the mine’s developer."

"An international agreement to safeguard marine life is now in effect. Known as the High Seas Treaty, it represents the first time that international waters, which lie outside of any country’s jurisdiction and cover nearly half the globe, can be protected."

"Decades of water depletion, dam building and repression of scientists and environmentalists have driven Iran toward ecological crises that are fueling protests rocking the country."