Natural Resources

"Battle lines over a proposed Bears Ears monument are blurred, dividing tribes and towns."

"A federal appeals court [Tuesday] upheld U.S. EPA's retroactive veto of a water permit for a West Virginia mining project in a big win for the Obama administration."

"US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited Utah's 'Bears Ears' last week in an attempt to resolve an increasingly contentious debate over whether to designate the San Juan County cultural landscape as a US National Monument."

"A wetland in southeast Iraq, thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden and almost completely drained during Saddam Hussein's rule, has become a UNESCO world heritage site, Iraqi authorities said on Sunday."

"An expansion of farmland has damaged nature beyond a "safe" limit on 58 percent of the world's land surface, threatening natural services such as crop pollination by insects, scientists said on Thursday."

"Stabilization work [was] set to begin Saturday at the Gold King Mine in southwest Colorado as part of continued cleanup efforts at the site after last summer’s massive wastewater spill."

"A high-profile clash over the trademarking of Yosemite National Park names appears headed for a mediated settlement."

"GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- In 1891, a search party found the body of Robert Hamilton floating in the Snake River and lit a fire atop Signal Mountain to alert others in Jackson Hole. Today, the mountaintop is sending out new signals -- cellphone service -- across the sage- and pine-covered valley."

"Conservationists are crying foul over U.S. land managers' initial conclusion that there are no environmental concerns with an off-road race that will cross 650 miles of Nevada desert and cut through a new national monument."