"Killing endangered animals while logging a forest or building a dam would not be considered illegal unless the animals were specifically targeted, under a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act by President Donald Trump’s administration that marks a sea change in how the landmark environmental law is enforced."
The Farm Bill — omnibus legislation that affects the food supply of millions of Americans, as well as their air, water and soil — is bogged down in hyperpartisan division. But as Backgrounder outlines, environmental journalists would be wise to track how Congress ultimately uses it to address matters like land and water conservation, rural water supply and pollution, pesticides and more.
"The towering maple trees and native hazelnut bushes on Salvatierra Farms break up the surrounding corn and soybean fields that sprawl across southern Minnesota."
"An ambitious bill to keep toxic “forever chemicals” off California produce lost its teeth after the chemical and agricultural industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against it."
"Bryce Black kneels in a wheat field battered by intense drought. He holds two strands, remarking on how small the seed head is compared with what’s normal."
"The birds are up with the sunrise — warblers, flycatchers, sparrows and towhees calling across the treetops. Deer browse on tender buds emerging from dense shrubs. Black bears scrounge for roots, insects and other edibles." "But it’s what’s underground that has drawn scientists and investors to this 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract: spongy, dense peat up to 15 feet (5 meters) deep."
"In recent years, public discourse on air quality in Utah has rightly focused on the dangers of wildfire smoke. Wildfire events across the Western United States have degraded air quality for days and weeks at a time. Yet, while headlines chase each new plume of smoke, a slower and arguably more dangerous crisis has been allowed to develop with remarkably little urgency: the drying of the Great Salt Lake and the toxic dust it is now releasing into the air that Utahns breathe every single day."
"A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to evict hundreds of bison from public lands in Montana."
“Trump said Friday that he was authorizing legal documents to be drafted to give farmers and ranchers ‘the right to process their own food,’ casting the move as an effort to break what he called a ‘nasty monopoly’ in the meat industry,” Macias reported." “The announcement came after cattle producers and some Republicans pushed back on Trump’s plan to temporarily allow tariff-free imports of up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef, a move intended to ease pressure on consumers facing high prices at the meat counter.”
"The Trump administration on Friday took another step toward stripping federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands, which help filter drinking water for many communities and provide critical habitat for birds, fish and other wildlife."
