Surveyors found illegal cattle grazing, defaced petroglyphs and ditch-digging.
Barack Obama
Posted inAugust 22, 2016: 100
How the Park Service is planning for climate change
The agency is forging ahead despite meager help from Congress.
Posted inAugust 22, 2016: 100
Why has the National Park Service gotten whiter?
The agency is trying to hire more racially diverse staff — but can’t seem to make headway.
Posted inJuly 25, 2016: Salmon Power
‘Keep It in the Ground’ prompts online oil and gas leasing auctions
Protests against drilling on public lands continue.
Posted inJune 27, 2016: The New Advocates
A new generation of warriors for the wild
Sierra Club rec head Stacy Bare sees a role for veterans in conservation.
Posted inJune 27, 2016: The New Advocates
#whereisjose: The man forging a new path in the outdoors
José González is tapping into Latinos’ passion for nature.
Posted inArticles
Don’t just save the Grand Canyon. Save the wider region, too.
We think we’ve saved the Grand Canyon. We established a national park that is supposed to remain “forever unimpaired,” as the Park Service’s enabling legislation put it. But the Grand Canyon is so deeply enmeshed in a spider web of connections to its watershed that a lot of work needs to be done to keep […]
Posted inArticles
Are Hillary Clinton’s clean energy goals achievable?
Before clinching the nomination, she outlined her ambitions for public lands and renewables.
Posted inMay 30, 2016: Trial by Fire
“A history of subversion”: An excerpt from Terry Tempest Williams’ latest book
“César E. Chávez National Monument” from The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks.
Posted inMay 2, 2016: The Gold King Reckoning
Want to build the second century of American conservation? Look to César Chávez.
On the eve of the National Parks centennial, Chávez’s son praises a monument to his father.
Posted inApril 4, 2016: A Land Divided
Can a legal victory make Indian Country whole again?
For over a century, federal law has split Native American land holdings into tiny pieces. A settlement unites some of the splinters, but at a steep cost.
Posted inArticles
Federal fossil fuels programs contradict Obama’s climate goals
Despite the Keystone rejection, keep-it-in-the-ground activism is still a sideshow to the larger climate movement.
Posted inArticles
Pope Francis and Obama make joint appeal for climate action
Pope’s address promises to rile Republicans who deny human connection to climate change.
Posted inArticles
Obama slashes greenhouse gas emissions from power plants
The EPA’s historic Clean Power Plan makes a big push for renewables.
Posted inJuly 22, 2013: Red Rock Resolution?
Obama’s love letter to natural gas
The political and practical potential of gas in the climate fight
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Economy, distrust complicate allocation of tribal settlement money
When the Obama administration announced in April that it would pay 41 tribes some $1 billion to settle a lawsuit over federal mismanagement of trust funds, many saw it as a sort of stimulus package for Indian Country — a chance to invest in long-term development and infrastructure, such as schools, clinics and roads. “The […]
Posted inRange
President Obama says Indian Country is at a turning point
Politicians are required to be optimistic. It’s the first tool in their bag. And a president of the United States is even more optimistic than most politicians. It’s what we expect from our leader. President Barack Obama beamed that message at the White House Tribal Nations conference last week. He told tribal leaders: “We’ve got […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Obama’s record on Western environmental issues
In the late fall of 2008, the staff of the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility gathered at the Airlie Retreat Center in Virginia’s horse country to plot strategies for a new day dawning: Barack Obama had just been elected president, promising fresh progress on issues that had frustrated environmentalists throughout the eight years of […]
Posted inBlog
Cobell, settled at last
Federal government finally accounts for money mismanagement of tribal nations.
Posted inGoat
New law empowers tribal justice systems
In late July, President Obama, an adopted member of the Crow Tribe of southern Montana, signed the Tribal Law and Order Act. The measure, introduced by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) in 2008, aims to smooth out the “jurisdictional maze” of law enforcement on reservations in order to empower tribal communities to better confront crime. Many […]