"An expansion of farmland has damaged nature beyond a "safe" limit on 58 percent of the world's land surface, threatening natural services such as crop pollination by insects, scientists said on Thursday."

"Stabilization work [was] set to begin Saturday at the Gold King Mine in southwest Colorado as part of continued cleanup efforts at the site after last summer’s massive wastewater spill."

"A high-profile clash over the trademarking of Yosemite National Park names appears headed for a mediated settlement."

"GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- In 1891, a search party found the body of Robert Hamilton floating in the Snake River and lit a fire atop Signal Mountain to alert others in Jackson Hole. Today, the mountaintop is sending out new signals -- cellphone service -- across the sage- and pine-covered valley."

"Conservationists are crying foul over U.S. land managers' initial conclusion that there are no environmental concerns with an off-road race that will cross 650 miles of Nevada desert and cut through a new national monument."

"Can one man’s pie-in-the-sky idea save one the West’s most iconic and underloved rivers?"

"Nature wrought the inlet that separates this narrow strip of dunes and brush from Ocean City just to the north, but humans have sought to control the shifting sands ever since."

"Records say when the first plows sliced through the great Midwestern prairie, a popping sound rang through the air like a volley of pistol shots. It was the sound of millions of roots snapping against the plow's steel blade."

"The U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigated only one out of 27 fatal accidents in the last fiscal year, part of a five-year slide that saw the agency fail to probe more than 90 percent of workplace fatalities, U.S. EPA's inspector general said in a report released yesterday."

"Every place has its own sound. A small group of scientists is hard at work recording the natural sounds of national parks all across the U.S. — more than 70 soundscapes so far."