Natural Resources

"The once great floating gardens of Mexico City, which filled the bellies of the Aztecs, are dying of serious neglect."

"President Barack Obama said Friday that his personal experiences with America's national parks - both as an 11-year-old with his mother and grandmother and later as a father - have made a conservationist out of him. The President was speaking at a conference hosted by the White House linking conservation with strong local economies through tourism, outdoor recreation, and healthy lands, waters and wildlife."

Coltan ore is valuable as a source of niobium and tantalum, metals key to many kinds of electronics. Coltan mining has helped finance war in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now new illegal coltan mining activity has sprung up in the remote Amazon jungles on the border between Venezuela and Columbia. It is controlled largely by armed militias and drug smugglers.

"U.S. officials said on Friday they would offer higher payments to certain owners of environmentally sensitive farm land if they idle it in a conservation program instead of using it to grow crops."

"The Nuclear Energy Institute and the National Mining Association, Monday filed a federal lawsuit seeking to reverse the Obama administration's withdrawal of one million acres of public land in Arizona from uranium mining for 20 years."

"The House [Thursday] morning voted to allow a $690 million highway bridge over the federally protected St. Croix River, ending decades of legal and legislative wrangling and setting in motion what would be the largest bridge project in Minnesota history."

"It is a pattern seen in various parts of the world — children being sickened from exposure to lead from mining activities. But the scale of the problem in Nigeria’s gold-mining region of Zamfara is unprecedented: More than 400 children have died and thousands more have been severely poisoned by exposure to lead dust."

Elizabeth Grossman reports for Yale Environment 360 March 1, 2012.

"GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—Chevron Corp. is giving up its experimental oil shale lease in northwest Colorado, saying it wants to free up its resources for other priorities."

"Frustrated with the pace of the United Nations group charged with protecting Antarctic waters, a coalition of environmental groups announced its own initiative on Tuesday, calling for the creation of what would be the world’s largest network of marine reserves in the Southern Ocean."

"The Bureau of Land Management announced Friday that it has selected a location for the nation's first wild horse ecosanctuary - a privately owned ranch in southeastern Wyoming 30 miles west of Laramie."