Natural Resources

"Park superintendents across the country these days find themselves keeping close tabs on the real estate market."

"A thawing of permafrost in beaver-built wetlands can release vast stores of greenhouse gases to warm the climate, but Native peoples are already feeling the rodent’s impacts." "When the beavers came to streams near the Alaskan village of Venetie, the fish disappeared."

"A fire raging in an underground Colorado coal field in 1883 sent so much smoke pouring from cracks in the ground that the scene was likened to burning volcanoes and the state’s first mining inspector deemed the blaze “impossible to extinguish.”

"Regular citizens have taken the fight against illegal logging into their own hands in the pine-covered mountains of western Mexico, where loggers clear entire hillsides for avocado plantations that drain local water supplies and draw drug cartels hungry for extortion money."

"Emphasizing the importance of bison hunts outside the park and the transfer of live bison to tribes, Yellowstone National Park is developing a new bison management plan to update a 20-year-old document."

"The findings, related to gold mining in Peru, provide new evidence of how people are altering ecosystems in dangerous ways around the world."

"Ownership of more than 500 acres of a forest in Mendocino County was returned to 10 sovereign tribes who will serve as guardians to “protect and heal” the land."

"Mining company Donlin Gold is seeking to develop one of the world’s largest open-pit gold mines near Alaska’s Kuskokwim River, a spawning ground for several species of salmon, which make up 50 percent of local communities’ diet and subsistence lifestyle."

"A Chilean mining giant’s bid to construct a massive underground copper-nickel mine just a few miles from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has hit another major snag."