Blog

How should the United States manage the largest biodiversity conservation system to be greater than the sum of its parts? This vexing question for the national wildlife refuges has received scant attention for the past quarter century. Now the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Service), which administers the refuge system, has proposed a rule to guide specific refuge decisions to ensure they contribute to a national network rather than incrementally fray the web of conservation.

Last week, in the capital of the state holding the largest recoverable coal reserves and the fifth-highest per capita combustion emissions in the country, a trial court shook the fossil fuel establishment by invalidating legislation that helps sustain the dominance of fossil fuels in Montana.

Too much of the Biden administration's regulatory effort remains focused on reversing Trump administration environmental rulemakings. This defensive unwinding of rollbacks preoccupies progressive reformers at the expense of implementing a broader vision. A recent proposed Endangered Species Act (ESA) rule to restore a “blanket rule” for conserving newly listed threatened species illustrates how the Interior Department can get trapped the anti-regulatory framing of the prior administration.

In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court slayed a phantom, a regulation that does not exist. Why? The justices in the majority could not contain their zeal to hollow out the EPA’s ability to lessen suffering from climate change in ways that impinge the profits of entrenched fossil fuel interests.

This past week, many national newspapers picked up the story from Utah, where the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) just approved a spate of resource management plans that clear the way for a massive oil/gas lease sale next month. Some of the tens of thousands of acres slated for leasing are near the boundaries of […]