As expanded development on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula encroaches on prime wildlife habitat, big cats find it harder to avoid people, and many wind up dead. In this Inside Story Q&A, Liza Gross of Inside Climate News describes how she and photographer/editor Michael Kodas worked with a local cougar protection team to track a family of big cats to their den and through the area.
"The recently passed spending bill sets logging targets that federal officials don’t have the capacity to meet" "The new law sets aggressive timber harvesting goals and slashes spending for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Environmental advocates and industry insiders say those goals are contradictory and unworkable."
"Wildfires caused by arsonists or thunderstorms and fanned by a heatwave and strong winds wreaked destruction across southern Europe on Wednesday, burning homes and forcing thousands of residents and tourists to flee."
"After a period of cooler weather, swaths of central and eastern Europe face another heatwave as hot air over south-western Europe pushes north-west."
"The National Weather Service announced air quality alerts in 10 states Tuesday as smoke from the Canadian wildfires continues to spread across the U.S. border."
"After a plan to sell public land faced bipartisan backlash, the Interior Department appears to be making a bid to halt the expansion of federal public lands."
"A top oil trade group submitted a policy wishlist to top DOI appointees. The Department is moving quickly to give industry what it wants."
"The U.S. Congress has passed hundreds of laws protecting federal public lands over the past century through bipartisan efforts and with the support of local governments. Now, President Donald Trump’s administration and some Republican lawmakers in Congress are pushing policies and legislation that upend these protections."
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will close its flagship, but deteriorating research site in Maryland as part of a major reorganization aiming to shift 2600 employees away from the nation’s capital area, the agency announced this week. At the same time, USDA said it plans to shutter most of its forest research stations around the country. "
"The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is opening crucial gorilla habitats and pristine forests to bids for oil and gas drilling, with plans to carve up more than half the country into fossil fuel blocks."
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