Environment | WPN World People News

Jake Gladstone, Montana's Blackfeet Troubadour, in the Badger-Two Medicine area in northwest Montana.

Conservationists and fishing groups represented by Earthjustice, together with the State of Oregon and with support from the Nez Perce Tribe, filed motions for injunctive relief on January 9 asking the U.S. District Court in Portland to compel federal agencies to take important interim steps to safeguard wild salmon. These measures should be implemented in the short-term while the agencies move ahead with developing a new plan to protect threatened and endangered wild salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Apple, Google, Facebook, and newcomer Switch are taking some of the greatest strides towards 100% renewable energy, while companies such as Netflix, Amazon Web Services, and Samsung are lagging. The findings in Greenpeace USA's report, Clicking Clean: Who is Winning the Race to Build a Green Internet? outlines the energy footprints of large data center operators and nearly 70 of the most popular websites and applications.

On Friday, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a motion with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., asking District Judge James Boasberg to throw out Dakota Access’s lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers. The Department of Justice, which represents the Corps, filed a similar motion.

The Obama administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on January 6, announced that it will deny six pending permit applications to conduct airgun seismic surveys in the Atlantic Ocean. Earthjustice has worked for years to oppose seismic blasting, which is used to search for oil and gas deposits under the seafloor, because of the harm it poses to imperiled marine life.

Most of the reefs in the Seychelles have died due to El Niño, bleaching, fishing and the rising temperature of the seawater.

On January 5, a federal judge in Seattle entered a consent decree imposing a deadline for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take action to protect Borough residents and their families from breathing polluted air in Fairbanks, Alaska.

“Commissioner Goldmark listened to the public and gave a firm ‘no’ to the largest coal terminal in the country. Millennium started off misleading the public about the intended size of the coal terminal and later ignored Washington state’s request for critical information on their finances. Millennium failed to show they can protect public resources—the Columbia River. We ring in the new year with a major victory for the public, and showing that, once again the Northwest holds the line on dirty fossil fuels.”

As many people return to work after the New Year bank holiday, the Met Office has issued a Yellow National Severe Weather Warning for ice extending from 2am until 10am on Tuesday 3 January 2017.

EPA is conducting a radiation screening at a limited number of homes in Bridgeton’s Spanish Village neighborhood beginning on December 27. The screening is part of a focused response to address concerns raised in a recently filed lawsuit that alleges potential radioactive contamination in a Spanish Village home.