Alaska and Hawaii

"On Pleasant Island, Alaska, wolves are feasting on sea otters. That’s surprisingly bad news for deer."

"The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it has banned logging and road-building on about nine million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, aiming to settle a two-decade battle over the fate of North America’s largest temperate rainforest."

"The National Park Service is moving to prohibit hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting black bears with doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot hibernating bears and cubs in their dens, techniques allowed by the Trump administration but considered inhumane by conservationists."

"Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and in some cases they are becoming more acidic. This otherwise undeveloped landscape now looks as if an industrial mine has been in operation for decades, and scientists want to know why."

"Federal wildlife officials have proposed that more than 275,000 acres of forest across Hawaii be designated critical habitat for the ‘i‘iwi bird, one of about a dozen native honeycreeper species currently headed toward extinction."

"The U.S. government on Friday received just a single bid, from Hilcorp Alaska, for oil and gas drilling rights off the coast of Alaska the first federal auction in the region in more than five years."

"An Alaska Native group on Thursday will announce that more than 44,000 acres of land near Bristol Bay, the site of the world’s largest wild salmon fishery, are off limits to future development, according to details shared exclusively with The Climate 202."

"Environmental groups on Wednesday sued the Biden administration over next week’s planned lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, saying the sale, mandated by Congress, is based on a faulty environmental review."

"The Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan is challenging a state permit approving construction of a gold and metals mine that would tunnel under the Saksaia Glacier on 6,100-foot Flower Mountain near the headwaters of the Chilkat River watershed."

"Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy [R] named former oil and gas lobbyist John Boyle to serve as commissioner of the agency in charge of oil and gas development in the state."