Land Use/Forests

NEW DELHI, India, February 5, 2015 (ENS) – Smart cities are meant to promote “harmonious living with nature,” India’s Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu told delegates to the Convocation of The Energy Research Institute on Wednesday. The minister called for reorientation of urban design and planning approaches to promote such a harmony. […]

WASHINGTON, DC, January 26, 2015 (ENS) – “Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge is an incredible place – pristine, undisturbed,” said President Obama in a YouTube video announcing his administration’s plan to protect core areas of the refuge, including its Coastal Plain, as Wilderness, the highest level of protection available to public lands. […]

KUCHING, Sarawak, Malaysia, November 17, 2014 (ENS) – For the first time in the 50-year history of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, a chief minister has taken the timber industry to task. Chief Minister Adenan Satem Monday gathered the tycoons of the state’s big six logging firms for a meeting, during which he publicly accused them of “corrupt” practices. […]

SYDNEY, Australia, November 14, 2014 (ENS) – The IUCN’s Green List of Protected Areas was introduced to the world today at the IUCN World Parks Congress 2014 in Sydney. Held once every 10 years by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the World Parks Congress gathers thousands of delegates from around the world to strategize on protection of the planet’s vanishing pristine areas. […]

BRASILIA, Brazil, November 6, 2014 (ENS) – In a struggle between a Brazilian indigenous tribe and the federal government over two dams that would flood lands claimed by the tribe, a federal judge has ruled that the government must immediately publish its report delineating the tribe’s territory that has been withheld for more than a year. […]

BASEL, Switzerland, November 3, 2014 (ENS) – Swiss publisher Bergli Books announced today that, as planned, it will publish Lukas Straumann’s book, “Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia,” despite demands to withhold publication by a law firm representing the billionaire governor of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Abdul Taib, whose activities are detailed in the book. […]

WASHINGTON, DC, October 21, 2014 (ENS) – President Barack Obama has used his authority under the Antiquities Act to establish 540 square miles of national forest land in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California as a national monument, permanently protecting the popular outdoor recreation destination. […]

By Robert Wanjala – NAIROBI, Kenya, October 6, 2014 (ENS) – Wario Galelo, 64, raises livestock downstream from the site of a hydroelectric dam which the Kenyan government plans to construct on the Ewaso Ngiro river in the north of the country. […]

WASHINGTON, DC, October 2, 2014 (ENS) – A long court battle came to an end Tuesday when a federal judge upheld the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s denial of a permit for a large, contentious mountaintop removal coal mine in Appalachia, the Spruce No. 1 Mine. […]

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, September 10, 2014 (ENS) – Climate change could kill up to 90 percent of the forests covering the Rocky Mountains, warned the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists today in a new study based in part on projections made by the U.S. Forest Service. […]

KHOST, Afghanistan, September 8, 2014 (ENS) – For hundreds of years, people in Afghanistan have stockpiled winter snows in specially-dug pits so they can use it during the scorching summer months. Now, residents and officials in Khost say storing and selling snow could provide a viable alternative to illegal logging. […]

ROME, Italy, July 25, 2014 (ENS) – A third of the world’s soils are degraded by erosion, nutrient depletion, acidification, urbanization, and chemical pollution, soil experts at a global conference warned today. There, governments approved a global plan of action to safeguard soil resources through strong regulation and investment. […]

SEATTLE, Washington, July 18, 2014 (ENS) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today proposed regulations to protect one of the world’s most valuable salmon fisheries, in Bristol Bay, Alaska, from the risks posed by a proposed open pit mine nearly as deep as the Grand Canyon and larger than Manhattan. […]