Natural Resources

"As a competing bill emerges, supporters defend RAWA as the ’gold standard.’"

"Lake sturgeon don’t need Endangered Species Act protections, federal wildlife officials announced Monday, saying that stocking programs have helped the prehistoric fish return to areas where they had vanished."

"New research questions the long-held theory that reintroduction of such a predator caused a trophic cascade, spawning renewal of vegetation and spurring biodiversity."

"Dams holding vast amounts of uranium mine tailings above the fertile Fergana valley in Central Asia are unstable, threatening a possible Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster if they collapse that would make the region uninhabitable, studies have revealed."

"The Biden administration announced a goal Tuesday to protect and restore 8 million acres of wetlands over the next six years in an effort to counter development pressures and recently weakened federal regulations."

"Thousands of negotiators and observers representing most of the world’s nations are gathering in the Canadian city of Ottawa this week to craft a treaty to stop the rapidly escalating problem of plastic pollution."

"The sound of an earthworm is a distinctive rasping and scrunching. Ants sound like the soothing patter of rain. A passing, tunnelling vole makes a noise like a squeaky dog’s toy repeatedly being chewed."

"A recent scientific expedition to the Gulf of Mexico seafloor shows just how little things have improved near the broken well."

"A paper trail left by a notorious land grabber reveals how he used relatives and an employee as fronts to evade environmental fines and lawsuits, shedding light on this widespread practice in the Brazilian Amazon."

"For the first time in more than 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management will force oil and gas companies to set aside more money to guarantee they plug old wells, preventing them from leaking oil, brine and toxic or climate-warming gasses." "The new Bureau of Land Management regulation, which applies to nearly 90,000 wells on federal public land, is hampered by math errors and overly optimistic cost projections."