Natural Resources

"Hot Springs National Park, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon National Parks and Mt. Hood National Forest will be the first sites commemorated in a new quarter-dollar program announced today by the United States Mint."

"Citing 'clear evidence' of likely environmental damage, the Obama administration has moved toward revoking the largest mountaintop-removal permit in West Virginia history."

A rare chance for people to walk through the mile-long tunnel that gives entrance to Zion National Park was part of the park's centennial celebration.

The recent Los Padres fire exemplifies a growing trend: Mexican drug cartels setting up shop in California wilderness and parkland.

In the Yaak Valley of Montana, environmentalists have been talking to loggers, snowmobilers and other longtime opponents of wilderness protection about the future of public lands. Rick Bass writes of his involvement in a cooperative effort that could lead to the first wilderness-area designation in the state in a quarter-century.

"A limestone 'quarry alley' 45 miles west of downtown Louisville resembles the scarred landscapes of eastern Kentucky, flattened by blasting for coal. ... Limestone, it turns out, is the key ingredient for stripping sulfur dioxide from smokestacks, helping to reduce acid rain and asthma-inducing haze."

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reissued a permit Friday to Coeur Alaska Inc. for its Kensington mine plans, clearing the way for construction to resume on the final component of the complex that's been on hold since 2006 because of environmentalists' lawsuits."

"The reclassification of nearly 1 million acres of land around the Grand Canyon to prevent new mining claims comes with a fundamental change in how the U.S. Forest Service does business with mining companies."

Should Mt. St. Helens, which erupted almosty 30 years ago, be a National Park? There is a debate over whether the land should be used for recreation or to study how landscapes recover from violent disturbance.

The US and Mexico are joining forces to enhance conservation in the area around Big Bend, in Texas, and El Carmen in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila.