In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, social media was flooded with reports of animals reclaiming abandoned environments. According to one widely shared post, dolphins had returned to the canals of Venice. While many of those stories have since been debunked, conservationists are providing legitimate reports of cleaner air and water, and wildlife reclaiming […]
The Coronavirus pandemic has altered humans’ relationship with natural landscapes in ways that may be long-lasting. One of its most direct effects on people’s daily lives is reduced access to public parks. Looking south from New York City’s Central Park. Ajay Suresh/Wikipedia, CC BY By Richard leBrasseur, Dalhousie University The Conversation The COVID-19 pandemic has […]
Ancient trees in Australia were devastated by the recent bushfires there. Nightcap oaks have lived through a lot, but humanity’s influence could completely wipe them out. By Johnna Crider Cleantechnica Along the southern edge of Australia’s Nightcap Range, 200 or so gray trees were the last ones standing as the continent-crushing fires were finally put out. […]
On March 4th, Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) introduced an important bill that would address the growing National Park Service deferred maintenance backlog and provide full, permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). It is well past time to restore and repair our national parks and we are thankful […]
The Trump administration has undertaken a massive, unprecedented response to the climate crisis. In fact, they clearly see this enormous undertaking as their signature project – the legacy this administration will leave the nation. I’m not talking about some tree-planting pledge or a sudden change of heart about windmills. Folks, I’m talking about Trump’s border […]
Nearly two weeks ago, plaintiffs filed a pair of motions in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking summary judgments against Donald Trump’s shrinking of two national monuments in Utah—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. “The proposed summary judgment motions will be ‘partial’ in the sense that they seek to resolve plaintiffs’ entitlement to relief on their core claims that […]
A few hundred yards from the Mexican border in southern Arizona lies a quiet pond, about the size of two football fields, called Quitobaquito. About 10 miles to the east, heavy machinery grinds up the earth and removes vegetation as construction of President Trump’s vaunted border wall advances toward the oasis. The waters of Quitobaquito […]
Even though several lawsuits challenging the shrinking of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by the Trump regime are working their way through the federal courts, the Interior Department on Wednesday signed off on plans issued by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to allow mining, oil and gas drilling, and grazing on land that is within the Obama-set boundaries of the two […]
A young bull bison grazes on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Matthew Moran, CC BY-ND A young bull bison grazes on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Matthew Moran, CC BY-ND By Matthew D. Moran, Hendrix College The Conversation Driving north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, an extraordinary landscape comes into view. Trees disappear and an […]
When I took a post-college job as a seasonal ranger at Grand Teton National Park 23 years ago, I noticed right away that my “Smokey Bear” hat carried some serious emotional baggage. As I later wrote in my book, “Reclaiming Nostalgia: Longing for Nature in American Literature,” park visitors saw the hat as an icon […]
Human-caused climate change is disrupting ecosystems and people’s lives around the world. It is melting glaciers, increasing wildfires, and shifting vegetation across vast landscapes. These impacts have reached national parks around the world and in the United States. Until now, however, no analysis had examined climate change trends across all 417 U.S. national parks. By […]
This has been a great month in Congress for our national parks and public lands. The Senate recently passed the largest public lands bill in a decade and now both chambers of Congress have reintroduced bipartisan legislation to to address the critical maintenance needs of our beloved national parks. We applaud the leaders in Congress […]
Few sights are as instantly recognizable, and few sites speak more fully to American nationalism. Standing on the South Rim in 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed it “one of the great sights every American should see.” It’s true. Every visitor today knows the Grand Canyon as a unique testimony to Earth’s history and an icon of […]
Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to shrink the Bears Ears National Monument designated by President Barack Obama in the last days of his presidency has sparked a number of lawsuits such as this one and this one that are working their way through the courts. Most lawyers knowledgeable about the 113-year-old statute authorizing presidents to set aside public lands for national monuments […]
It was probably too much to hope that Donald Trump would do anything to make our government work better, but who could have predicted how ably he could make it work worse? As his unprecedented shutdown of much our federal government extends into its fourth week, the consequences are bad for him and far worse […]