Alaska and Hawaii

"The Trump administration’s effort to open up drilling across more than a million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) faces significant legal hurdles, according to experts who are likely to assist in challenging the newly announced plan.

The Interior Department on Monday finalized plans to move ahead with a longstanding item on the GOP’s wishlist: allowing drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. The move could have dire consequences for polar bears, caribou, birds and other species that live in the coastal area in the northern part of ANWR.

"The Trump administration finalized plans Monday to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, a move that will auction off oil and gas rights in the heart of one of the nation’s most iconic wild places. Achieving a goal Republicans have sought for 40 years, it marks a capstone for an administration that has ignored calls to reduce fossil fuel consumption in the face of climate change."

"Climate change is poised to thaw and undermine the soil beneath ConocoPhillips’ proposed Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, making its rigs and roads vulnerable to the same global warming the project will be aggravating."

"Pacific walruses have begun massing onshore in Alaska on a Chukchi Sea beach, one of the earliest of the now-annual congregations at that site yet recorded, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Walruses were spotted on July 29 a beach near the Inupiat village of Point Lay and numbered about 5,000 as of Aug. 5, said Andrea Medeiros, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"A Defense Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) watchdog will consider probing the Trump administration’s moves to advance the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska following congressional requests on Monday."

"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."

"The Trump administration, rejecting concerns over the risks to Alaska's fishery, cleared the way on Friday for the Pebble Mine."

"The Bureau of Land Management on Thursday issued a right-of-way permit supporting a roughly 200-mile industrial road through the Northwest Alaska wilderness to a region that the state says could support several mines."

"Thursday a wide array of Alaska Native, commercial fishing, and sportfishing groups issued statements criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Pebble Mine after copies of the document were delivered to interested parties via USPS a day before its publication in the Federal Register."

"As the COVID-19 pandemic slows international shipping and keeps cruise ships docked, scientists are finding measurably less noise in the ocean. That could provide momentary relief for whales and other marine mammals that are highly sensitive to noise."