Natural Resources

"Interior Secretary Deb Haaland signed the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes water rights compact on Friday, settling a decades-long battle over thousands of individual water rights in Montana and on the Flathead Indian Reservation. The deal also created a $1.9 billion trust to settle claims and refurbish the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project in Montana."

"The Biden administration plans to move the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters back to Washington but will convert the current headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., into a Western hub with additional staff assigned there, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told bureau employees today."

"A Missouri cave containing Native artwork from more than 1,000 years ago was sold at auction Tuesday, disappointing leaders of the Osage Nation who hoped to buy the land to “protect and preserve our most sacred site.”"

"The Biden administration said Wednesday that federal protections may need to be restored for gray wolves in the western U.S. after Republican-backed state laws made it much easier to kill the predators."

"Travelers, tour guides and service workers share how years of record-high tourism levels are reshaping popular destinations".

"The developer of an oil refinery near Theodore Roosevelt National Park will keep its construction permit active, even after it has faced delays and received two extensions."

"Environment officials and campaigners have called for a global moratorium on deep-sea mining and on issuing new exploration contracts unless marine ecosystems can be effectively protected."

"Experimental pine seedlings poke from the rocky New Mexico earth, the only living evergreens on a hillside torched by one of the U.S. West’s drought-driven wildfires. These climate-smart sprouts about 30 miles (48 km) east of Taos are part of a push to increase the dramatically lagging replanting of U.S. forests after fires."