Natural Resources

"Leaders of the Group of Seven nations said Sunday they are preparing to help Brazil battle fires burning across the Amazon region and repair the damage as tens of thousands of soldiers got ready to join the fight against blazes that have caused global alarm."

"When the Trump administration first pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, it predicted that drilling would generate a windfall for the federal Treasury: $1.8 billion, by a White House estimate. But two years later, with the expected sale of the first oil and gas leases just months away, a New York Times analysis of prior lease sales suggests that the new activity may yield as little as $45 million over the next decade."

"Last year, a backyard in Butte, Mont., collapsed without warning. No one was hurt, but a 30-foot sinkhole yawned where a children's wading pool once sat. At the bottom was a century-old mine shaft that had never made the state's list of abandoned mines needing attention."

"EPA scientists wanted their agency to ask for a new environmental review of the proposed Pebble mine project but were overridden by political staffers, according to several sources and a key document obtained by E&E News."

"Appalachia’s main industry is dying and some workers are looking to a new economic promise after Trump’s proves empty".

"Over and over, Michigan environmental regulators sounded alarms as they reviewed a proposed large, open-pit ore mine in the Upper Peninsula near the Menominee River, prized for walleye fishing and a major tributary to Lake Michigan. ... Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and then-Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved the mine anyway."

"The Trump administration took its final step Monday to weaken the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock law that brought the bald eagle, the American alligator, the California condor, the humpback whale and the grizzly bear back from the brink of extinction."

"A proposed copper and gold mine has been rejected twice by the federal government for its impacts on Fish Lake, an area considered sacred by the Tsilhqot’in. But B.C.’s mining laws allow the company to move ahead with exploration work anyway. That doesn’t square with Tsilhqot’in law and the community says it won’t back down".

"The Environmental Protection Agency told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world's most valuable wild salmon fisheries just one day after President Trump met with Alaska's governor, CNN has learned."