Page 18 - Robin Silver News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

For years, two Australian mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP, have sought to build a massive copper mine in Oak Flat, a region of the Tonto National Forest east of Phoenix that is considered sacred by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and other regional Native American tribes. The proposal, which was approved by Congress in 2014, involves swapping 2,422 acres of federally protected forest land in that area for over 5,000 acres of private land and constructing a roughly mile-wide crater to extract copper deposits located underneath Oak Flat. Critics of the project argue that it will be an environme...

The battle to protect Arizona’s remaining old growth ponderosa pines has flared again with a dispute about a timber sale on the Kaibab National Forest – with implications for forest restoration efforts statewide. The tense exchange of complaints and explanations centered on the removal of thousands of fire-resistant trees greater than 24 inches in diameter as part of the Jacob Ryan Project. A forest supervisor’s suggestion that the removal of the old-growth trees reduced fire damage in a recent wildfire provoked a furious response from environmentalists. The dispute threatens t...

For Immediate Release, December 18, 2020 Contact: Greta Anderson, Western Watersheds Project, (520) 623-1878, greta@westernwatersheds.org New Documents: New Mexico Rancher Who Pleaded Guilty to Bludgeoning Endangered Wolf Admitted Trapping, Beating One More FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— New documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity show that a New Mexico rancher confessed to trapping and beating at least one other endangered Mexican gray wolf in 2015. In 2018 rancher Craig Thiessen pleaded guilty to brutalizing a wolf he had trapped in violation of the Endange...

A Mt. Graham red squirrel matriarch. (Photo by Robin Silver) TUCSON, Ariz. (CN) — Encroaching development and wildfires exacerbated by climate change have conspired to leave a squirrel species unique to a tiny niche of Arizona forest teetering near extinction. Mt. Graham, a 10,000-foot peak in the Pinaleño Mountains, is home to a University of Arizona observatory, a telescope owned by the Vatican, an abandoned church camp, and 14 privately owned summer cabins — all of which threaten the Mt. Graham red squirrel. The sub-species, thought to be extinct by the 1950s but rediscovered in the 1...