Natural Resources

"A half-million-acre national wildlife refuge would be established in California's Riverside County under a new bill introduced with bipartisan support."

"Researchers have found high levels of radiation in giant clams near the Central Pacific site where the United States entombed waste from nuclear testing almost four decades ago, raising concerns the contamination is spreading from the dump site’s tainted groundwater into the ocean and the food chain."

"The Trump administration announced Friday that it will kill a Forest Service program that trains disadvantaged young people for wildland fire fighting and other jobs in rural communities, laying off 1,100 employees — believed to be the largest number of federal job cuts in a decade."

"In 1995, Mike Najarian became dissatisfied with the lack of maintenance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. That's when he hit upon an idea: He called the National Park Service to ask whether he and his friends could help organize a group that would clean the wall each week."

"The National Park Service (NPS) plans to pay the salaries of full-time staff from the money it collects from entrance fees, a move that is likely to enrage Democratic lawmakers who chastised the agency for dipping into the coffers to keep parks open during this year's partial government shutdown."

Native American tribes and environmental groups have sued to stop a massive copper mine near Tucson. The $1.9 billion Rosemont Mine, at a half-mile deep and a mile wide, would sprawl across federal, state and private land, leaving a waste pile the height of skyscraper.

"The Chesapeake Bay’s recovery took a step back in 2018, but the estuary retained its “C” grade on an annual report card from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science."

"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Native American rights in a 5-4 decision in a case out of Wyoming. Justice Neil Gorsuch, the only Westerner on the court, provided the decisive vote in this case, showing himself again to be sensitive to Native American rights."

"Donald Trump’s interior secretary hasn’t “lost sleep over”, the record-breaking levels of pollution heating the planet, he told US lawmakers in an oversight hearing."