"Fires in Brazil’s Amazon increased 13% in the first nine months of the year compared with a year ago, as the rainforest region experiences its worst rash of fires in a decade, data from space research agency Inpe showed on Thursday."

"The Trump administration says it will comply, for now, with a federal court ruling that blocks William Perry Pendley from continuing to serve as the temporary head of the Bureau of Land Management."

"Louisiana will get nearly $215 million in BP oil spill money for two projects planned to restore more than 4,600 acres of marsh and other habitat in the New Orleans area, Gov. John Bel Edwards said."

"WASHINGTON - From Bolivia to New Zealand, rivers and ecosystems in at least 14 countries have won the legal right to exist and flourish, as a new way of safeguarding nature gains steam, U.S. environmental groups said on Thursday.

Rights of nature laws, allowing residents to sue over harm on behalf of lakes and reefs, have seen 'a dramatic increase' in the last dozen years, said the Earth Law Center, International Rivers and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.

"A federal court ruling that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had an illegitimate director for more than a year has cast doubt over a slew of the agency’s recently completed efforts to boost oil and gas development on federal lands, according to lawyers and environmental groups."

"When William Perry Pendley started work today, he did so as something other than the Bureau of Land Management's leader for the first time in 427 days."

"The Trump administration is expected on Friday to finalize its plan to open about 9 million acres of the pristine woodlands of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and road construction."

"Mining executive Tom Collier, who boasted in secretly taped conversations that he had leveraged his ties to Republican officials to advance a controversial project in Alaska, resigned Wednesday."

"Wildfires in Washington state have burned hundreds of thousands of acres, including an important mating habitat for sage grouse."