"Joshua trees are weird. They've got shaggy bark, twisted branches and needle-like leaves."

"The United Nations has tried to cover up its involvement in the Australian government’s successful attempt to have all mentions of the country removed from a report on climate change and world heritage sites, freedom of information documents show."

"ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. -- Visitors at the Beaver Meadows entrance here marvel over their first glimpse of thick ponderosa pine stands rolling out like a welcome mat to the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. But the meadows that should be filled with native bunchgrasses and flowers instead are covered with cheatgrass."

"A Utah militia group leader accused of trying to blow up a federally owned cabin in Arizona talked about his plans to go on the offensive and strike back by damaging government buildings and vehicles in a secretly recorded video played in court Thursday."

"The fate of a mysterious hummingbird — and that of the indigenous population that shares its territory — hangs by a thread."

"Battle lines over a proposed Bears Ears monument are blurred, dividing tribes and towns."

"A federal appeals court [Tuesday] upheld U.S. EPA's retroactive veto of a water permit for a West Virginia mining project in a big win for the Obama administration."

"US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited Utah's 'Bears Ears' last week in an attempt to resolve an increasingly contentious debate over whether to designate the San Juan County cultural landscape as a US National Monument."

"A wetland in southeast Iraq, thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden and almost completely drained during Saddam Hussein's rule, has become a UNESCO world heritage site, Iraqi authorities said on Sunday."