"President Trump’s choice to lead the Interior Department, David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who has been accused of conflicts of interest, faced questioning Thursday from senators who must decide whether he is the right person to oversee some 500 million acres of public land and vast coastal waters."
"John Sturgeon worried he was jinxing himself when he fixed up the mothballed hovercraft in his garage without knowing whether the Supreme Court would let him pilot it to his favorite moose-hunting grounds in Alaska."
"After years of effort, scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service had a moment of celebration as they wrapped up a comprehensive analysis of the threat that three widely used pesticides present to hundreds of endangered species, like the kit fox and the seaside sparrow."
The Society of Environmental Journalists is backing right-to-know lawsuits brought by journalism groups, and a collaborative press freedom tracker gets new funding. Meanwhile, at the Interior Department, one watchdog group angles for environmental impact statements on ANWR drilling, while others track possible conflicts of interest by the acting secretary. That and more in the latest WatchDog roundup.
SEJ's own James Bruggers, long-time member, former board member and president of the SEJ board, was the last full-time environmental reporter at a Kentucky newspaper when he left to join the InsideClimate News team. The New Yorker's Charles Bethea interviewed Bruggers and SEJ's E.D. Meaghan Parker for his story on the continued demise of newspapers and staffers reporting on coal country — and the innumerable costs of that lack of coverage.
"Environmental groups and women from Alaska and Louisiana say the Environmental Protection Agency has dragged its heels on issuing rules for oil spill dispersants, and they’re ready to sue to demand them."
"A Canadian company has applied for an exploratory gold and copper mining permit in the headwaters of the Skagit River, which flows from British Columbia and through northwest Washington state to Puget Sound."
"Executives at Vale SA, the world’s largest iron ore miner, quashed efforts by Brazilian authorities to audit one of the company’s mining dams months before it collapsed and killed over 300 people, a state prosecutor was quoted as saying by news website G1 on Wednesday."
"Faced with reservoirs less than half full along the Colorado River, federal authorities and negotiators for Colorado and six other Western states on Tuesday finalized a landmark plan to share the burden of voluntarily using less water as growing cities and warming temperatures deplete the supply for 40 million people."
"Spring has arrived in Southern California and with it a crisis has blossomed in the small city of Lake Elsinore, where tens of thousands of visitors have flocked to see a “superbloom” of poppies in a desert canyon."
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