"A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration violated the law when it declined to grant Endangered Species Act protections to the iconic Joshua tree."
Twenty years after the attacks on 9/11, the war on terror has left many risks in the built environment under a cloak of secrecy. For WatchDog Opinion, keeping vital information about such preventable hazards under wraps from the public and journalists is not just wrong, but bad policy. Here’s why. Plus, a rundown for environment reporters of where exactly this secrecy reigns.
"Ms. Malmberg, 64, is a goat herder and a pioneer in using the animals to restore fire-ravaged lands to greener pastures and make them less prone to the spread of blazes."
"A group of landmark giant sequoias has so far been spared by a blaze sweeping through a California national park, authorities said on Sunday."
"Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to phase out oil and gas drilling and ban new drill sites in the unincorporated areas of the nation’s most populous county."
"Growing wildfires in the Sierra Nevada forced the closure of Sequoia National Park in California on Wednesday as blazes sparked by lightning strikes threaten the park’s groves of giant sequoias, home to some of the tallest and oldest trees in the world."
"The drought, along with man-made impediments, has placed the state’s wild Chinook population at grave risk."
"President Joe Biden on Monday used his first Western swing in office to hold out the wildfires burning across the region as an argument for his $3.5 trillion rebuilding plans, calling year-round fires and other extreme weather a climate change reality the nation can no longer ignore."
"Fire season has become a hard-to-breathe reality in much of the western United States. But the blazes may affect more than air quality or even human lungs. A recent study attributes as many as 7,000 preterm births in California to wildfire smoke exposure."
"It was just before sunrise in July when the botanists Naomi Fraga and Maria Jesus threw on backpacks and crunched their way across a brittle alkaline flat in the hottest corner of the Mojave Desert. Their mission: to rescue a tiny plant teetering on the brink of extinction."
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