People & Population

"Twenty-three Alaskan tribesmen broke the law when they overfished king salmon, but they claim their faith gave them no other choice."

"Cindy Dixon was unloading bales of hay into a metal shed on a blustery afternoon in mid-March, when the landscape around her Navajo Reservation homestead was as brown and bleak as the open-pit coal mine a few miles to the west and well within earshot."

"Ecuador’s government has issued an environmental permit for oil drilling in the pristine Amazon reserve that President Rafael Correa initially offered to exempt from exploration if rich countries would pay his government."

"Q'eqchi Mayan families vow to fight construction, which they say will destroy their livelihoods and flood ancestral land."

"On Memorial Day weekend in 2011, an unattended campfire in Bear Wallow Wilderness sparked a small brush fire that quickly turned into a holocaust, burning through 538,000 acres and destroying 32 homes in the process. It cost taxpayers more than $79 million to suppress. The Wallow fire was the largest fire in Arizona history, with almost 6,000 people evacuated during the weeks it burned. The San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, just to the west of where the fire started, was hardly touched."

"Flame retardants are ubiquitous at preschools and day care centers, potentially exposing children to chemicals that are hazardous to their health, UC Berkeley researchers wrote in a study published Thursday."

"TANGIER ISLAND, Va. — As in many places, conversations on this remote island in the Chesapeake Bay tend to steer toward the weather. But here it's not just small talk."

"Americans at highest risk from accidents at chemical plants are largely from minority communities and are disproportionately poor — and industries and regulators are failing to take measures to make their situation any safer, according to a new study."