Environmental Studies

"The Trump administration finalized plans Monday to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, a move that will auction off oil and gas rights in the heart of one of the nation’s most iconic wild places. Achieving a goal Republicans have sought for 40 years, it marks a capstone for an administration that has ignored calls to reduce fossil fuel consumption in the face of climate change."

"The decades-long battle over an effort to raise the height of Shasta Dam took another turn Thursday when the Trump Administration released a new environmental report on the plan, just five years after completing a similar study."

"Federal agencies suggest caution in U.S. bat research to avoid transmitting the novel coronavirus to wildlife."

"The U.S. government announced Friday that four huge dams on the Snake River in Washington state will not be removed to help endangered salmon migrate to the ocean."

"Earlier this month, when the Trump administration told hospitals to send crucial data about coronavirus cases and intensive care capacity to a new online system, it promised the change would be worth it. ... Instead, the public data hub created under the new system is updated erratically and is rife with inconsistencies and errors, data analysts say."

"With the Amazon rainforest predicted to be at, or very close to, its disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, deforestation escalating at a frightening pace, and governments often worsening the problem, the need for action to secure the future of the rainforest has never been more urgent."

"The world is on track to triple the amount of plastic we dump into the ocean in just two decades. But if civic and business leaders get their [act] together to curb the global plastics crisis, we could reduce that rate by 80%, according to two new reports on Thursday."

"Thursday a wide array of Alaska Native, commercial fishing, and sportfishing groups issued statements criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Pebble Mine after copies of the document were delivered to interested parties via USPS a day before its publication in the Federal Register."

"A growing number of National Academy of Science members sign a statement decrying the Trump administration’s 'denigration of scientific expertise.'"

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is poised to give its blessing later this week to an Alaska copper and gold mining project the Obama administration tried to block because of concerns it could harm the state’s salmon industry."