New designation of the Land of Standing-Up Rocks, known for its historic rock spires, passed with bipartisan support
An area of towering rock spires in south-eastern Arizona known among Native Americans as the Land of Standing-Up Rocks has become the nation’s newest national park.
Legislation to create Chiricahua national park was sent to the White House and Donald Trump signed it on Tuesday. It passed Congress with bipartisan backing and is now the 64th US national park.
Continue reading...School looking to sell piece of open land beloved by people in Devon town to fund refurbishments
On Saturdays throughout autumn, residents of Totnes have met at a field on the banks of the River Dart to play ballgames, fly kites or simply sit on the grass and chat.
But it hasn’t just been about having fun – this has been a “play protest” aimed at trying to save a beloved piece of open land in the historic Devon market town.
Continue reading...British crown estate portfolio rises in value by 8.3% to £15.6bn
The value of rights owned by the Queen’s property company to exploit the seabed around Britain’s coastline has swelled to £5bn after a record-breaking auction of plots for offshore windfarms.
Profits for the crown estate, which generates money for the Treasury and the royal family, jumped by £43.4m to £312.7m in the year to the end of March.
Continue reading...The confirmation of Charles F Sams III marks a symbolic moment for many Indigenous communities
Charles “Chuck” F Sams III made history this week in becoming the first-ever Native American confirmed to lead the National Park Service.
Sams, an enrolled tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, received unanimous consent by the US Senate on Thursday after being nominated by Joe Biden in August.
Continue reading...Tongass national forest, which plays a key role in fighting climate crisis, poised for logging after US ruling
A coalition of Alaskan native tribes, conservation groups and small businesses have filed a lawsuit in an effort to save America’s largest national forest by overturning one of the Trump administration’s most contentious environmental rollbacks.
Protection for the Tongass national forest in Alaska, one of the world’s last intact temperate rainforests, which plays a crucial role in fighting climate change, has been gutted by a recent US government decision to overturn a two-decade ban on logging and road building.
Continue reading...Not long after a similar structure was discovered in a Utah desert, a silvery column has been found in Atascadero
A new mystery metal monolith has appeared atop a mountain in California, just a week after a similar structure captured the imagination of the world when it was discovered in the deserts of Utah – before being taken down and disappeared.
The local newspaper in the small town of Atascadero, on the central California coast, reported that the silvery column had been found atop Pine mountain where dozens of local hikers made the trip to view it – and post their pictures on the internet.
Continue reading...After four years of Trump, protected places such as national monuments and wildlife refuges have opened to oil drilling, new maps show – with more on the way
Continue reading...No one had tested positive via nasal swabs, but researchers’ investigation tells a different story
Yosemite national park officials suspect that hundreds of visitors this summer may have had Covid-19 thanks to an unorthodox approach – testing sewage.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that the county health department has been collecting untreated wastewater flowing from the idyllic Yosemite Valley for testing. Prior to this effort, according to the Chronicle, no one had tested positive for the virus through nasal swab testing at the park’s health clinic. Scientists at a lab called Biobot Analytics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have examined the sewage water to determine if there are traces of genetic material from Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in the human feces. From the traces in a given sample, they can estimate how many people passing through Yosemite might be infected with Covid-19 at that time.
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