As I write this, President Bush is about to sign a continuing resolution, which will keep the government operating into the new fiscal year. The CR would fund at current levels the budgets of most departments and federal agencies until March 6, 2009 — after a new administration has been sworn in.
Meanwhile, national wildlife refuges [...]

Today is National Public Lands Day — an annual event that is a program of the National Environmental Education Foundation, which promotes volunteerism on all publicly accessible lands at the federal, state, and local levels.
As part of this year’s celebration, one million trees have been planted to honor the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation [...]

The National Wildlife Refuge Association has just put out this important announcement regarding an upcoming congressional vote on refuge funding for recovery from natural disasters, including the recent Hurricane Ike:

Dear Friends,
A few weeks ago, Hurricane Ike battered refuges along the Gulf Coast and before that, refuges in Florida, the Midwest and the east coast were [...]

As this blog previously reported (here and here), the Department of Homeland Security had requested permission to build permanent towers for the Secure Border Initiative Network on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona.
Today azcentral.com published an Associated Press story saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has made a final determination on [...]

Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne recently announced that the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission approved $4.1 million in funding to add more than 4,400 wetland acres to seven national wildlife refuges.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release:

Among the wetlands that will be acquired in national wildlife refuges are 2,027 acres for the [...]

On September 16, the Houston Chronicle reported that Tim Cooper, project leader for McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Texas, reported to the Associated Press that the tidal surge from Hurricane Ike had left a “sheen” of oil at the refuge. Cooper also reported that a smaller amount of oil had flowed into the nearby [...]

As I reported in this blog (here and here), the House and Senate had been considering a land swap bill that would build a $15.6 million, nine-mile gravel road through federally designated wilderness at Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This is a project that has been heavily pushed by Alaskan lobbyists, Governor Sarah Palin, [...]

As many readers may already know, the Bush administration has decided to make one last assault on the Endangered Species Act before leaving office for good. Apparently it’s not enough that the Bush administration has repeatedly refused to list endangered species during the last eight years unless forced to by a court of law — [...]

KXNet.com in North Dakota recently published a video piece about J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge, which is a 58,700-acre refuge in north-central North Dakota. The refuge is the largest in the state and extends south from the Canadian border for about 45 miles.
One interesting activity featured in the video clip on the KXNet.com website [...]

The News and Observer in North Carolina recently published a good article about how Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is dealing with the massive lightning-induced fire that burned approximately 25,000 of the 110,000-acre refuge and which this blog reported on back in June.

Even now, fire smolders underground in the carbon-rich peat soil in remote parts [...]

On August 24, this blog reported on the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to give preliminary approval to the Department of Homeland Security to build permanent towers for the Secure Border Initiative Network on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona.
In the press reports that circulated at that time, they seemed [...]