Natural Resources

"On dusty land in Mission, Tex., near the Mexican border, Marianna Trevino Wright recently took a walk with a contractor. She was showing off her effort to turn the earth surrounding the National Butterfly Center into 'an oasis for butterflies,' she said — with 10,000 native milkweed plants that a dwindling number of monarch butterflies use as habitat in their arduous and yearly migration from Mexico and across the United States to Canada."

"Los Angeles is woefully park poor. Less than half of L.A. County residents have easy access to a park, and three-quarters of the public spaces we do have are falling apart."

"Just beyond the southeast corner of Joshua Tree National Park, rows of boarded-up houses, gouged mountainsides and concrete ruins are an ugly reminder of the never-ending battle over the West’s public lands."

"The Trump administration is wading into one of the oldest and most contentious debates in the West by encouraging more coal mining on lands owned by the federal government. It is part of an aggressive push to both invigorate the struggling American coal industry and more broadly exploit commercial opportunities on public lands."

"The fate of these carbon-hoarding habitats will play a big role in our planet’s climate future".

"The Interior Department announced on Wednesday that the Upper Missouri River Breaks, a famous chunk of river in central Montana that holds a national monument designation, would remain fully protected by federal land-use restrictions."

"The growing crowds at U.S. National Parks have become unmanageable, jeopardizing the natural experience the parks were created to provide. With attendance this summer continuing to shatter records, officials are considering limiting use of the parks in order to save them."

"Twelve years after Hurricane Ivan destroyed a Taylor Energy Co. platform in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government has finally started investigating how oil and gas that is still leaking from its wells damages natural resources."

"The route to Newspaper Rock — so named because it’s carved with ancient petroglyphs — from the tiny city of Monticello, Utah, follows a narrow two-lane road through a breathtaking landscape."

"One of two men convicted in the first of several trials stemming from a 2014 standoff led by renegade rancher Cliven Bundy against federal authorities in Nevada was sentenced on Wednesday to 68 years in prison for his role in the armed confrontation."