Chukchi Sea, Alaska. Courtesy USFWS.

Like many students, I often put projects off until the last minute. This was a great source of aggravation to my parents, who would be besieged by requests for rides to the library at 8 pm the night before research papers were due. This lack of foresight on my part led to several sub-par efforts, and many teachers cited a “hurried” feel to the papers or projects in question. Read more

Oil shale. Courtesy DOE.

A remarkable news item surfaced this past week that Gale Norton, President George W. Bush’s first Secretary of the Interior from 2001-2006, is under a federal criminal probe due to her potentially inappropriate, unethical, and illegal relationship with Royal Dutch Shell over the federal lands that a Shell subsidiary was awarded for oil shale development when Norton was Secretary. Read more

Right now, visitors can carry a gun in a National Park as long as it is unloaded and stored. These are the rules that many Americans have been following for decades. So, if you hunt in a National Forest and cross into a park, that is how you have proceeded. This year, the Bush Administration announced its intent to change these rules. It should not surprise anyone to know that the administration is altering the rules without any analysis of how this might affect visitors and wildlife. Read more