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After settling a lawsuit filed during the Trump administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service granted six permits to bring elephant parts into the country. It may approve more in the coming months. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service informed some hunters last month that it would allow the import of six elephant trophies into the United States […]
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Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued first Interior secretary has a good shot at winning Montana’s new House seat. But his opponents have seized on a weak point. WHITEFISH, Mont. — Ryan Zinke likes to tout his fifth-generation Montana roots. On his first day as Donald Trump’s Interior secretary, in 2017, the tall, boot-clad ex-Navy Seal famously galloped to […]
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Federal firefighter units tasked with putting out some of the nation’s biggest wildfires are grappling with the reality of a fire season coinciding with a pandemic.
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“Life is what is important right now. I wouldn’t take that risk. I just wouldn’t,” one Bureau of Indian Education educator told the agency in mid-July. The U.S. Department of the Interior – Indian Affairs, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Education, announced last week that it would reopen “brick and mortar schools” under its […]
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The pandemic has hit Native American communities particularly hard. A Bureau of Indian Affairs employee is the first Interior Department staffer to die from COVID-19, according to internal numbers obtained by HuffPost. The death, reported Tuesday, comes as the number of cases at the Interior Department has continued to increase. The unnamed Bureau of Indian […]
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Internal data reviewed by HuffPost reveals how widespread the coronavirus has become within the department. At least 40 employees across the Department of the Interior have tested positive for COVID-19 and are considered contagious, resulting in mandatory employee quarantines, office closures and deep cleanings, according to internal data reviewed by HuffPost. Almost every bureau of […]
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Major parks remain open. And despite rangers and employees testing positive, the government is encouraging use of the parks as a social-distancing solution. Frustrated by what he considered inadequate answers about why some staff could telework while others had to show up to work, Lyndon B. Johnson Historic Park maintenance worker Trevor Wright took matters […]
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The Interior Department is leaving it up to individual parks whether they close. While some may have hoped to escape there for fresh air, the momentum is headed toward closings. It is whispered behind the ever closing walls of city apartments and texted about in anxiety-riddled group chats—perhaps if things got really bad in the […]
Continue ReadingRead the full story in The Hill» President Trump has quietly appointed his Social Security Administration (SSA) inspector general to also oversee a much different agency: the Interior Department. On May 28, Gail Ennis began her second job overseeing the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a role she will keep for the foreseeable […]
Continue ReadingRead the full story in The Hill» The Trump administration Friday announced it would make 725,000 acres of land in California’s central coast open to oil and gas lease sales, ending a five-year moratorium. The decision by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made the federal land available for fossil fuel production across Fresno, Monterey, […]
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