"An oil industry lobby group successfully recruited a Canadian cabinet minister to deliver a pep talk and dispense strategic planning advice at a closed door meeting in a luxury Rocky Mountains resort, the Guardian has learned."

"The Obama administration, aiming to keep a finicky, chickenlike bird called the greater sage grouse off the endangered species list, moved on Thursday to limit petroleum drilling and other activities on some of its wide-ranging habitat in the American West."

"Their desperate mission: to attempt the first artificial insemination ever of a softshell turtle, saving the species from oblivion."

"The foul-smelling carcasses of whales are attracting a veritable swarm of marine biologists to California beaches in what has so far been a futile effort to figure out why so many of the blubbery beasts are washing ashore."

"Environmental activists say Michigan’s tourism slogan -- “Pure Michigan” -- may no longer be accurate unless the state takes stronger action to prevent a 62-year-old oil pipeline from rupturing in a sensitive waterway."

"Environmentalists urged California regulators on Wednesday to reject a proposed expansion of the only offshore drilling operation still permitted in state waters along the Santa Barbara coastline, seizing on public outrage over last week's nearby oil spill."

"When Texas regulators bypassed the EPA to ease air pollution regulations on 19 coal plants, they violated the federal Clean Air Act, a new petition says".

"If honeybees are busy pollinating large, blooming croplands, farmers wanting to spray toxic pesticides will soon have to buzz off, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing."

"The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate."

Areas of the Southwest are desert, but federally financed water projects have created cities and farms dependent on water that may not be there much longer.