According to an Aug. 7, 2023, letter from FWS Acting Regional Director Charles Traxler, the DNR has acknowledged that it sold logging permits on state Wildlife Management Areas, or WMAs, without documenting the habitat value of the sales before the permits were issued. The letter was ...

EPA selected its third existing “forever chemical” for additional testing and data collection, citing potential cancer risks. HFPO-DAF is one of 24 substances the agency listed as candidates for testing under its National PFAS Testing Strategy, which explains how the agency ...

Rick Steiner, board chair of PEER, also noted that killing operations are “economically counterproductive” in addition to being “scientifically bankrupt,” as “millions of tourists travel to Alaska spending billions of dollars annually—just to catch a glimpse ...

A recent news article raises concerns about a controversial issue when it comes to the National Park System: e-Bikes and your safety. The story raises the question of how the National Park Service will regulate e-Bikes in the parks. As we reported last month, Public Employees for ...

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is withholding more than $20 million in conservation grants over concerns the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is allowing logging in sensitive wildlife habitat. “We applaud this action by the Fish and Wildlife Service. U.S. taxpayers should ...

A Park Service policy issued during the Trump administration said that e-bikes could go anywhere regular bikes could. That met with widespread opposition. So, the agency turned the matter over to individual parks, which resulted in legal action. A court ordered the agency to write a new ...

President Joe Biden’s administration proposed a new public lands rule emphasizing conservation. The “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule, first proposed in March, lists conservation as a use of BLM lands on par with grazing, recreation and resource extraction, among others. “ ...

The chair and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works floated draft legislation in late June on the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS that critics argue would fail to regulate the toxic substances by implementing a restrictive legal definition of the ...

The potential destruction of ice age fossils in a Southern Nevada national monument by a proposed energy transmission line is due to a decade-old mapping error, according to federal employees, but at least one government accountability group isn’t buying it. “We are not aware of a ...

Forever chemicals are everywhere, including in period and incontinence products—even in some that companies claim are free of such substances. That’s the conclusion from independent lab testing we solicited that looked for signs of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 44 ...

In a rare and possibly unprecedented move to ensure that Minnesota complies with federal environmental laws when selling timber on state hunting lands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has placed a hold on $22 million in wildlife habitat grant money. “It is outrageous that ...

Kyla Bennett, an ecologist and director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, explained that PFAS accumulates in the body, and the more PFAS that one is exposed to, the more prone they are to experience health issues. “The biggest thing people need to know is that these ...

President Joe Biden’s administration should seek nearly $100,000 that a former government official was found to have improperly used, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on Aug. 4. The illegal spending was first highlighted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). ...

“This violation of taxpayer resources and public trust cannot go unanswered. These misspent funds must be returned to reimburse taxpayers and deter future abuses,” the senator said in a statement. The agency did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Lemos could not be reached. ...

“This report signifies that the public health threat posed by the unending stream of new chemicals entering the marketplace remains largely unabated,” Kyla Bennett, science policy director at the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), says in a statement ...

Eight environmental leaders are pressing Maryland energy regulators for more transparency on how the state’s renewable energy program is handled — and how the state hands out financial credits for entities that generate renewable energy. In a letter sent Tuesday to the five members ...

“Secretarial Orders that remain on the books are supposed to be authoritative, not relics of dead policies,” said Peter Jenkins, senior counsel for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, noting that the Biden administration has already rescinded at least five pre-existing ...

The conversation on artificial turf is happening across the country, with bills pending in California and New York to ban synthetic turf, according to Kyla Bennett, the Massachusetts-based director of science policy at advocacy nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.  ...

Minnesota regulators did not adequately consider whether a key water permit for a proposed copper-nickel mine would comply with the Clean Water Act and did not take seriously federal regulators’ concerns, which were left out of the public record, on the permit, the Minnesota Supreme ...

Kyla Bennett, a former EPA employee who now directs science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said that number is proof “that EPA is making mistakes.” To fix its problems, the report made four recommendations to EPA: plan and finalize guidance for ...