"It took less than an hour last month for a Montana wildfire to reduce Scott McRae's ranch to thousands of blackened acres devoid of the grasses that were to sustain hundreds of cattle."
"It's high season in the nation's national parks as millions of visitors come to see nature. If last year's visitor figures hold up -- and early indications suggest they will -- nine million visitors will see the Great Smoky Mountains, the most visited national park. Three other parks -- Grand Canyon (more than four million visitors in 2011) Yellowstone (about three million) and Acadia (more than two million) -- combined will attract roughly the same number."
"Three recent coal train derailments are bolstering opposition to the planned expansion of coal exports from Pacific Northwest shipping terminals."
A large and diverse array of businesses have an interest in the environmental and energy laws that state legislatures consider: including coal, oil, plastics, chemicals, mining, forest products, and others. The possible financial stake lawmakers may have in the bills before them is fertile ground for investigation. Here's help in finding story ideas.
"Tom Dettweiler makes his living miles down. He helped find the Titanic. After that, his teams located a lost submarine heavy with gold. In all, he has cast light on dozens of vanished ships. Mr. Dettweiler has now turned from recovering lost treasures to prospecting for natural ones that litter the seabed: craggy deposits rich in gold and silver, copper and cobalt, lead and zinc."
"The debate over who should use the roads and paths of the country's national parks is consistently fraught. In California's Sequoia National Park, unkind words are sometimes exchanged when pack animals with their wide panniers encounter hikers kitted out with the latest R.E.I. gear on the trails behind Mount Whitney. The code of etiquette and safety governing such encounters is sometimes ignored, And there have been continual efforts to ban horses, burros and llamas because of their impact on the trails."
"Clashes in northern Peru between police and demonstrators opposing a multi-million dollar gold mining project have left at least three people dead."
"Two years after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, Congress is poised to steer a large chunk of the fines that will be paid by BP - up to $21 billion by one estimate - to the Gulf Coast to help restore coastal ecosystems and rebuild economies in the region."
"U.S. oil companies will be allowed to drill in more areas of the Gulf of Mexico but won only limited access to the Arctic under the final version of the Obama Administration's five year drilling plan that was slammed by industry and some environmentalists."
"The 2010 BP oil spill accelerated the loss of Louisiana’s delicate marshlands, which were already rapidly disappearing before the largest oil spill in U.S. history, a new study reports."
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