"PINEDALE, Wyo. — The anticline is a tableland of nearly 200,000 acres, the Tetons visible in the distance and, in June, still covered with snow. The plateau is filled with sagebrush that barely reaches the knee, short grass, dirt roads and the occasional oil drill. Beneath its rocky surface are 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, one of the richest concentrations in the entire United States."

"There's not much anyone can tell Barry Sorensen about Idaho's Big Desert that he doesn't know. Sorensen, 72, and his brother have been running cattle in this sere landscape all their lives, and they've weathered every calamity man and nature have thrown at them — until this drought came along."

"Drive just an hour and half north of San Francisco and you're in Drakes Estero, or estuary, named for the first English explorer to lay claim to California."

"Decades of shortsighted decisions by industry and government have put the Mississippi River’s future at risk, and degradation at its southern Louisiana delta is contributing to 'the greatest land loss on the planet,' a five-state environmental coalition warned Wednesday."

"A remote wetland near Itasca State Park, already undercut by three crude oil pipelines, is one of several fragile, isolated habitats along the proposed path of the 610-mile Sandpiper crude oil pipeline across northern Minnesota."

"Scientists have criticised China's bulldozing of hundreds of mountains to provide more building land for cities."

"The federal government is taking a new approach to conservation with a $1.2 billion program in the Farm Bill that will include competitive grants for soil and water improvements in eight regions, including the longleaf pine forests of North Carolina and other Southern states, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Thursday.

'This is a new day,' Vilsack said in an interview.

"The world's food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found."