Montana
Land Use/Forests

Montana Court Vacates 278 BLM Oil and Gas Leases

GREAT FALLS, Montana, May 5, 2020 (ENS) – Montana landowners, farmers, and conservation groups have won a victory in their effort to protect local groundwater and the climate. A federal judge has ruled that the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, failed to consider risks to Montana’s environment and water supply before issuing 287 oil and gas leases in the December 2017 and March 2018 lease sales. […]

oil palm
Land Use/Forests

Palm Oil Industry Funds Radar to Detect Deforestation

WASHINGTON, DC, April 27, 2020 (ENS) – Ten of the world’s largest palm oil producers and buyers are collaborating to support and fund the development of a new, publicly-available, radar-based forest monitoring system known as Radar Alerts for Detecting Deforestation, RADD. […]

park
Land Use/Forests

Trump Erodes Eco-Protections as Americans Die of Virus

DENVER, Colorado, April 7, 2020 (ENS) – As America fought the new coronavirus over the past 30 days, President Donald Trump’s Interior Department rushed through dozens of attacks on the environment, finds a new analysis by the nonprofit Center for Western Priorities. […]

fires
Land Use/Forests

Amazon’s 2019 Burned Area Trends Parallel Past 18 Years

ALCALA de HENARES, Spain, March 6, 2020 (ENS) – Thousands of fires broke out in the Amazon last year, sparking international media alarm. But a new detailed analysis, using data from the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative, shows a small increase of fires in 2019 compared to 2018, but the number of fires in Brazil was similar to the average annual number of fires detected over the past 18 years. […]

locusts
Land Use/Forests

Unprecedented Locust Swarms Invade East Africa

ROME, Italy, March 4, 2020 (ENS) – The East Africa region now faces a hunger threat from desert locusts, along with climate shocks, conflict and acute food insecurity, top United Nations relief officials are warning, urgently advising that action now will avert a major food crisis later. […]

Estonia
Land Use/Forests

EU Invests €100 million in a Climate-neutral Europe

BRUSSELS, Belgium, February 19, 2020 (ENS) – The European Commission will invest €101 million for new projects under the LIFE programme for the Environment and Climate Action. The funding will support 10 large-scale environment and climate projects in nine EU Member States, helping Europe’s transition to a sustainable economy and climate neutrality. […]

protest
Energy

Canada Gas Pipeline Protests Yield Rail Shutdown, Arrests

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, February 14, 2020 (ENS) – Forty indigenous land and water protectors and non-indigenous activists were arrested in British Columbia and across Canada on Monday, while they were protesting a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline that would run through the unceded tribal lands of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in British Columbia. […]

Land Use/Forests

Australia’s Victoria State Protects Old-Growth Forests

MELBOURNE, Victoria, Australia, November 18, 2019 (ENS) – Logging in the remaining old-growth forests of the Australian state of Victoria will cease immediately, protecting around 90,000 hectares, with logging in all native forests across the state to stop by 2030, according to a new plan announced by the Labor Government of Premier Daniel Andrews. […]

soy
Land Use/Forests

Fixation on Nitrogen

PRINCETON, New Jersey, November 11, 2019 (ENS) – Scientists at three North American universities have discovered one of nature’s “backup methods” for converting nitrogen into plant nutrients. Research published today in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” shows that the process may be more resilient than previously known. […]

dam
Land Use/Forests

Dam Development Is ‘Silencing’ the Mekong River

BANGKOK, Thailand, October 24, 2019 (ENS) – In five days, the Xayaburi Hydropower Project on the Mekong River in northern Laos will formally begin operations. As the first dam on the lower Mekong mainstream, this marks a turning point for the Mekong River. […]

falls
Business

Total Sued Under France’s New Duty of Vigilance Law

PARIS, France, October 23, 2019 (ENS) – Today six environmental groups in France and Uganda, led by Friends of the Earth, are taking the French multinational energy company Total to court for its failure to elaborate and implement its human rights and environmental vigilance plan in Uganda. This is the first legal action under the 2017 French Duty of Vigilance law, which aims to address corporate negligence. […]

fires
At Risk

Fires Destroy Amazon Rainforest at Record Pace

BRASILIA, Brazil, August 23, 2019 (ENS) – South America’s Amazon rainforest is burning in many places, blazing away so fiercely that the fires are visible from space. Smoke from the fires, mostly burning in southern Brazil, has reached Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, more than 1,700 miles away. […]

Timmermans
Land Use/Forests

European Union Acts to Safeguard World’s Forests

BRUSSELS, Belgium, July 23, 2019 (ENS) – The European Commission today set out a new framework of actions to protect and restore the world’s forests, which host 80 percent of biodiversity on land, support the livelihoods of around 25 percent of the world’s population, and are vital to efforts to fight climate change. […]

cranes
Land Use/Forests

New World Heritage Status for China’s Birds, Iran’s Ancient Forest

BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 13, 2019 (ENS) – The World Heritage Committee inscribed 29 new natural and cultural sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List during this year’s session, which took place in Baku from June 30 to July 10 under the chairmanship of Azerbaijan’s Minister of Culture Abulfas Garayev. […]

grouse
Land Use/Forests

Court Blocks Controversial Oregon Grazing Permits

PORTLAND, Oregon, June 4, 2019 (ENS) – A federal judge in Oregon today granted conservation groups’ motion to block livestock from using public lands allotments near the town of Burns in central Oregon during the month of June. The temporary restraining order was issued in response to a lawsuit challenging former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s order to reinstate the grazing permits, overriding the Bureau of Land Management. […]

Land Use/Forests

NGOs Buy Grazing Rights to Protect Argentina’s Species

NEW YORK, New York, May 30, 2019 (ENS) – The largest protected area in Argentina’s Patagonian steppe, inhabited by wildlife such as the guanaco, the Andean cat, and Andean condor, has now been further secured by conservation groups that have arranged to buy the grazing rights on the reserve from livestock producers. […]

protest
Land Use/Forests

Oil Palm Loggers Must Stop Cutting Near National Park

MULU, Sarawak, Malaysia, February 21, 2019 (ENS) – Sarawak Deputy State Assembly Speaker Datuk Gerawat Gala today gave official notice to the oil palm plantation giant Radiant Lagoon to immediately stop clearing the forests on the fringes of Gunung Mulu National Park on the island of Borneo. […]

Baffin Islands
Land Use/Forests

Canadian Arctic Ice Retreat Exposes Ancient Lands

BOULDER, Colorado, January 25, 2019 (ENS) – Glacial retreat in the Canadian Arctic has uncovered landscapes that have not been ice-free in more than 40,000 years, and the region is experiencing its warmest century in 115,000 years, finds new University of Colorado Boulder research. […]

Land Use/Forests

Trump Ends Ban on Pesticides, GMOs on Wildlife Refuges

WASHINGTON, DC, August 6, 2018 (ENS) – The Trump administration’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reversing a 2014 ban on the use of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified crops that trigger greater pesticide use across the national wildlife refuge system. […]