Natural Resources

"A team of scientists says the environmental damage from mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia is so widespread, the mining technique should be stopped."

"West Virginia regulators are going to stop processing surface mining permits that propose to dump waste rock and dirt into streams while they develop new guidelines that force coal operators to reduce water quality impacts downstream from valley fills."

"Patriot Coal will cut in half the length of streams buried by its Hobet 45 mountaintop-removal mine, but still produce nearly the same amount of coal as the company originally hoped, under a deal announced Tuesday by the Obama administration."

"The Interior Department office created to oversee billions of dollars of land appraisals is weak and undermined by other bureaus, leaving it unable to function efficiently, the Interior inspector general has found."

"After years of negotiations between environmentalists and industry groups, observers say efforts to reform a century-old law regulating mining may finally pick up steam in Congress."

"To quote a famous line from a famous movie, "It's the only thing that lasts" — land, that is. No wonder, then, that many see land as their legacy, something to pass down to future generations when they die. A landowner in Michigan wants to use death itself — her own — to leave a legacy that's unusually personal."

"A controversial roundup of 2,500 wild horses from public and private lands in Nevada began on Monday amid protests from activists who call it needless and inhumane."

"During a warm spell this fall, vandals hauled 18 decrepit televisions and computers down a narrow gravel road in Utah's picturesque Skull Valley, dumped them on a hillside, blasted them with guns and left them for dead."

"An agreement to protect a Utah canyon decorated by ancient American Indian art is expected to allow energy development in the area to move forward."

Some golf courses get a bad rap from environmentalists, but there's a budding green movement in the golf industry.