Natural Resources

"California sued the Trump administration today over EPA's refusal to extend Clean Water Act protections to salt ponds in San Francisco Bay."

"Senate appropriators approved by voice vote this morning a $35.8 billion fiscal 2020 spending bill for EPA, the Interior Department and related agencies, with bipartisan consensus and without any new 'poison pill riders.' But the bill does seek to limit Interior's ability to relocate hundreds of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) jobs out of Washington, D.C."

"A federal judge ordered a preliminary injunction Monday halting the sale of nearly 1,200 acres of old-growth trees in the Tongass National Forest."

"Climate change is already causing staggering impacts on the oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain, according to a sobering new report from the United Nations."

"International donors agreed on Monday to free up more than $500 million in aid to protect tropical rainforests, including the Amazon where wildfires are raging, France’s president said on Monday at a U.N. meeting shunned by Brazil."

"Hugh Hammond Bennett, the father of the modern conservation movementeffort that became today’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), once wrote, “Take care of the land and the land will take care of you.” Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say, “Take care of the soil and the soil will take care of you.”"

"The Minnesota Court of Appeals has handed environmental groups a victory by suspending two key permits for a planned PolyMet copper-nickel mine ahead of a hearing next month."

"The Bureau of Land Management is moving its headquarters to a building that houses offices for several oil and gas companies operating in Western Colorado, including Chevron USA, Inc., and the local branch of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association."

"Interior Secretary David Bernhardt issued an unprecedented emergency withdrawal last night of public lands, shifting control of a 70-mile stretch to the U.S. military to speed construction of the wall along the southern border with Mexico."