Plastic Bag Industry Tries To Silence Critics

June 15, 2011–The New York Times' Felicity Barringer tells the story of Andy Keller, 38, who dresses up in bags as "Bag Monster" to promote his reusable "ChicoBag," invoking the ire of three plastic bag manufacturers in South Carolina.

41 New Trails Span About 650 Miles

June 8, 2011–Just in time for summer, 41 new segments of the US National Recreation Trails system in AL, AR, CT, FL, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, MI, MN, NJ, NM, OK, PA, TN, and WV, covering about 650 land and water miles in 17 states, are open for business. These are part of a much larger system of about 1,100 trails spanning 13,000 miles.

BP Blowout Anniversary: "What's Under Elmer's Island?"

April 20, 2011–Denial of news media access to Gulf beaches has been an issue since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. There's tussling over access to (and interpretation of) scientific information on possible impacts of the spill on the Gulf ecosystem. And The Guardian obtained >30,000 pages of BP in-house memos FOIA'd by Greenpeace, which suggest BP was working hard to influence the results of the research it was paying for.

Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America

April 15, 2011–

BP Still Keeps Media from Covering Damage on Gulf Coast

April 6, 2011–The intrepid Mac McClelland, who covered the spill and secrecy at its peak for Mother Jones, went back to see if anything had changed. But BP's cops tried to stop her.

Nonfederal Rangeland Often in Poor Shape

October 13, 2010–USDA and USGS researchers found about one of every five acres of rangelands in 17 western states, as well as portions of Louisiana and Florida, has some degree of degradation of at least one factor (soil and site stability, hydrologic integrity, and biotic integrity).

Federal Cops to Gulf Journos: Don't Dig, It's Illegal

September 22, 2010–Watch the video: Pensacola TV reporter Dan Thomas is accosted by USFWS and NPS after finding layers of crude oil (with his toy shovel) less than a foot below the surface — giving the lie to BP and government claims that beaches had been cleaned.

More Resources for Digging Into the Gulf Spill Story

September 22, 2010–Despite the new, apparently unwritten law against digging journalistically into the impacts of the spill, there are information resources here that may help you dig into other oil/environment stories as well.

Got Gulf Experts? SEJ's Daily Glob Can Help

September 1, 2010–View and suggest additions to our list of important Gulf-related research institutes, academic programs, and labs working on marine science, gulf ecology, oil spill response and recovery, coastal ecosystems, wetlands, and more.

EPA Offers Air, Water, Sediment, Waste Data from Gulf Oil Spill

August 11, 2010–Reporters can find most of the environmental monitoring data EPA has collected on one webpage in a form that can be queried or downloaded.