Publication Items

Designating lands as wilderness or some other highly protected status always is contentious, but the BLM has identified 24 areas in 9 western states the agency says have significant local support for this idea: CA (9 areas), CO (3), ID (1), MT (1), NM (2), NV (2), OR (2), UT (3), and WA (1).

Offshore oil and gas drilling from 2012-2017 would be focused in the western and central Gulf of Mexico and off the shores of northern and southern Alaska, if the Dept. of Interior's proposed plan and draft programmatic environmental impact statement, released Nov. 8, 2011, are accepted as is. A 60-day public comment period ends Jan. 9, 2012.

Attorneys for some 30 utilities suing Syngenta over atrazine pollution of their drinking water supplies charged the company directed employees to send copies of all correspondence on atrazine to corporate attorneys so that attorney-client privilege could be claimed.

The Central Intelligence Agency is spending untold millions to study the national security threats presented by climate change. Now the Pentagon's Defense Science Board (DSB) is urging that another, new office be created to do the same job, for more untold millions.