"David Vela's short tenure as acting director of the National Park Service ended abruptly today [Friday]."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a major employee union signed an agreement Thursday after years of disputes."

"President Trump is struggling to win over Maine voters with his recent pledge to lift restrictions for the state’s lobster industry. ... But the state’s lobstermen aren’t celebrating."

"The decades-long battle over an effort to raise the height of Shasta Dam took another turn Thursday when the Trump Administration released a new environmental report on the plan, just five years after completing a similar study."

"When Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced climate "equity" legislation on Thursday, climate activists saw it as a hopeful sign of Democratic unity less than three months before a hugely consequential election with both the White House and the Senate up for grabs."

"The U.S. government settled a lawsuit Wednesday brought by the state of Utah over a mine waste spill caused by federal workers that sent wastewater downstream to several states from the inactive Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado five years ago."

"President Trump on Tuesday signed into law the Great American Outdoors Act, a measure with broad bipartisan support that guarantees maximum annual funding for a federal program to acquire and preserve land for public use."

"A lawsuit was filed Tuesday to stop the Trump administration from building a 211-mile-long industrial road that would cross Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and the Kobuk Wild and Scenic River in Alaska."

"As Oregon Gov. Kate Brown crafted a bill in 2018 to enact sweeping limits on greenhouse gas emissions, leaders at an obscure state agency worked behind the scenes to discredit research they feared would persuade her to target one of the state’s most powerful industries."

"A botanist hired by a company planning to mine one of the most promising deposits of lithium in the world believes a rare desert wildflower at the Nevada site should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, a move that new documents show could jeopardize the project."