Deb Haaland threw her support behind the president’s decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline and halt new oil and gas leases on federal land during a second round of questioning from senators.
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Responding to Republicans’ concern over pipeline opposition, the congresswoman nominated to become the first Native American Cabinet secretary said the Biden administration is moving toward new opportunities in clean energy.
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The Biden administration reversed a Trump-era rule that would have given state and local officials the authority to block conservation purchases made by the federal government.
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The Department of Interior will have to reassess its decision to deny the Chinook Indian Nation the small sum it awarded 50 years ago for the vast territory surrounding the Lower Columbia River, where their oral history says they have always lived.
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For the first time in the nation’s history, a Native American has been chosen to lead the department that oversees and manages America’s most cherished parks, waterways and tribal lands.
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Environmental groups sued the Trump administration in federal court Monday for failing to protect the endangered Gunnison sage grouse from cattle grazing across its southwestern Colorado habitat.
Read moreA federal judge found that the Department of Interior erred in assigning 12 rights-of-way to a pipeline operator rather than its business partner, making it liable for the costly enterprise of maintaining the pipelines. The pipeline operator is entitled to an opportunity to be heard before the department makes its decision about the firm’s property rights and obligations.
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As it makes its reluctant exit from the White House, the Trump administration will issue a call to enterprising oil and gas developers eyeballing Alaska: the time is now to secure drilling rights in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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The Trump administration’s failure to consider the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in a recent assessment of the potential harm offshore drilling could do to endangered species triggered a lawsuit from a slew of conservationists Wednesday.
Read moreThe Center for Biological Diversity accuses the U.S. Department of Interior has done nothing about its request to protect the rare wildflower called Tiehm’s buckwheat, which has experienced a 40% decline in population in recent months and faces eradication.
Read moreIn a lawsuit filed Tuesday, environmentalists blast the Trump administration for ignoring sound science and withdrawing a proposal to list the bi-state sage grouse as threatened.
Read moreA federal judge in New York dismissed the Natural Resources Defense Council’s challenge to the chartering of an Department of Interior advisory committee, the International Wildlife Council. The council no longer exists, so the environmental group lacks standing to sue over the council’s alleged failure to represent divergent viewpoints.
Read moreCalifornia law empowers the governor to concur in the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s determination to allow gaming on tribal trust land, the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a case relating to the Enterprise Rancheria of Maidu Indians’ request to build a casino in Yuba County, about 20 miles from another tribe’s casino.
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A former oil industry attorney will continue calling the shots for a government agency that oversees nearly a quarter-billion public acres in the U.S. West, despite the White House saying over the weekend that President Donald Trump would withdraw the nomination of William Perry Pendley.
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The Trump administration opened the largest remaining area of pristine land in the country — Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — to oil drilling Monday in the midst of a worldwide oil glut.
Read moreThe Hoopa Valley Tribe of Humboldt County, California, complains the federal government’s conversion of time-limited water contracts into permanent ones will deplete the Trinity River and harm the fish the tribe relies on for food and a living.
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The State of Kansas asked a federal court Monday to set aside a U.S. Department of Interior decision that allows the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma to develop a casino in the Wichita suburb of Park City.
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An environmental group said Wednesday it plans to sue the federal government to secure endangered species protection for catfish and salamanders in North Carolina because the government has stalled on the proposed protection.
Read moreThe Center for Biological Diversity brought a federal complaint over the failure by the Department of the Interior to respond to its December 2017 FOIA request “seeking records related to the agency’s December 2017 announcement that all work on grizzly bear recovery efforts in the North Cascades ecosystem would be halted.”
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The Trump administration is walking back a plan to introduce grizzly bears back into Washington state’s North Cascades, striking a blow to environmental groups who say the plan was critical for the recovery of the species.
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