Natural Resources

"Douglas James stood Thursday on the Mall in front of the 25-foot totem pole he and a team had spent three months hand-carving and painting from a 400-year-old red cedar tree. James, a member of the Lummi Nation in Washington state, and a group of supporters and volunteers from his tribe hauled the pole on a flatbed truck more than 20,000 miles along the West Coast and across the Midwest before arriving in the other Washington, where the pole will stay as part of a campaign to protect sacred tribal lands."

"Gulf Coast researchers are raising alarms about a $1.4 billion coastal restoration project’s potential to kill and injure bottlenose dolphins. Now, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries employee whose job it was to count dolphin deaths in the state says she was fired in 2019 because her work reaffirmed the potential of the project to devastate a dolphin population."

"Nauru, which sponsors a company to mine the seabed for minerals in ungoverned waters, has triggered a rule with the International Seabed Authority that requires it to allow seabed mining in two years, regardless of whether regulations have been written."

"With the era of building big dams over in the U.S., a growing number of existing dams are being modified to produce hydropower. These projects, advocates say, avoid the damaging impacts of new dams and could generate enough renewable electricity for several million homes."

"One of the rare bipartisan highlights of Florida’s legislative session this year was the decision to spend $300 million buying up land for conservation. ... The result could be a boon to landowners and developers as well."

"A highly anticipated review by the U.S. Interior Department of the federal oil and gas leasing program is undergoing final internal review and should be released "very soon," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told a Senate hearing on Tuesday."

"A hydrophone reveals a vital Antarctic feeding and breeding ground for the world’s second-largest whale."

"A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Lithium Americas Corp may conduct excavation work at its Thacker Pass lithium mine site in Nevada, denying a request from environmentalists who said the digging could harm sage grouse and other wildlife."

"Toliver and Jessica Tucker are used to the dark, oily water, the bulging eyes, the gray flesh decaying to a pulp in the city’s bayous. They have even become accustomed to the smell — God, the smell — of all the rotting fish in gruesome flotillas, victims of a toxic Red Tide in Tampa Bay."

"Tracy Stone-Manning, President Biden’s pick to be the top public lands manager, moved one step closer to becoming director of the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced her nomination solely with Democratic support."