https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gmggp2y99o #Fluoride #Sagebrush #HackerNews #ngated
#BlueSky, #CarolM.Highsmith, #Landscape, #Photography, #RockyMountains, #Sagebrush, #Scenery, #TetonRange, #USA, #Wyoming
Vintage ◦ Classic ◦ Historical | Art ◦ Design ◦ Inspiration | Restored ◦ Enhanced ◦ Remixed
Prints, T-Shirts, Stickers, & More by @rocketshipretro via RedBubble → https://bigplanetprints.com/go/BOL79P
Silvery shrubs from the desert region of Washington State - Artemisia tridentata, aka Big Sagebrush.
Colors of Yakima. I enjoy the subtle browns and silvers of the desert landscape in Central Washington.
USGS Friday's Findings - Adaptive Management, Fire, and Restoration in the Sagebrush Biome - May 24, 2024, at 2:00 pm Eastern/11:00 am Pacific (Free webinar). #wildfires #sagebrush https://www.usgs.gov/index.php/mission-areas/ecosystems/news/fridays-findings-may-24-2024
Early Estimates Of Exotic Annual Grass (EAG) In The Sagebrush Biome, USA, 2024 (ver. 1.0, April 2024)
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https://doi.org/10.5066/P9351ZTZ <-- link to @USGS open data resource
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#RemoteSensing #GIS #spatial #mapping #MachineLearning #Mapping #EnvironmentalResearch #earthobservation #datadownload #digitaldata #opendata #EROS #invasivespecies #exotic #grass #vegetation #spatialanalysis #EAG #AIM #AI #machinelearning #NDVI #USWest #USA #satellite #sagebrush #biome #landmanagement #planning #range #landmanagers
@USGS
#ThackerPass #Protectors File First-Ever '#BiodiversityNecessityDefense' in #Nevada Court
While pursuing a '#ClimateNecessityDefense,' and making allegations that #mining company has violated their rights, their attorney said, 'They’re not criminals; they’re heroes.'
Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu: “#LithiumNevada is a #greedy #corporation on the wrong side of history when it comes to #EnvironmentalRacism and desecration of #SacredSites. It’s ironic to me that I’m the trespasser because I want to see my ancestral land preserved.”
By #ProtectThackerPass, #CensoredNews, March 26, 2024
"In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for six people sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation for protesting the Thacker Pass mine are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’
"The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.
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"This week’s filing states: 'Defendants possessed an actual belief that their acts of protest were necessary to prevent the present, continuing harms and evils of #ecocide and irreversible #ClimateChange.'
"'We’re in the midst of the 6th #MassExtinction of life on Earth, and it’s being caused by human activities like mining,' said attorney Terry Lodge, who is representing the #protesters. 'Our lives are made possible by #biodiversity and #ecosystems. Protecting our children from pollution and biodiversity collapse isn’t criminal, it’s heroic.'
"Currently Earth is experiencing one of the most rapid and widespread extinction events in the planet’s 4-billion-year history.
"Biologists report that habitat destruction, like the bulldozing of nearly 6,000 acres of biodiverse #sagebrush steppe for the Thacker Pass mine, is the main cause of this '#6thMassExtinction.'"
Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/03/thacker-pass-protectors-file-first-ever.html
Construction begins on controversial #lithium mine in #Nevada
Opponents say the Thacker Pass lithium project was rushed in the name of the green transition.
by Gabriela Aoun Angueira, March 3, 2023
"'It’s an important place not only because a terrible massacre occurred, but also because it’s a place where people gather, it’s a place for ceremony, for hunting,' said Michon Eben, tribal historic preservation officer for the Reno Sparks Indian Colony, a government that includes members from the the #Paiute, #Shoshone and #Washoe tribes. The colony is advocating for Peehee Mu’huh to be on the National Register of Historic Places. 'It’s really hard to be a tribal member and see our homelands destroyed,' said Eben.
"#ThackerPass also comprises thousands of acres of #sagebrush and is a nesting ground for the sage grouse and a migration corridor for pronghorn #antelope. Environmental groups including the Great Basin Resource Watch and Western Watersheds Project say the mine would cause irreversible #ecological damage, and that the project’s impact was not adequately studied.
"'It got by the environmental impact statement process in just under a year and I would expect a project of this scale and complexity to take 3 to 5 years,' said John Hadder, director of Great Basin Resource Watch. 'That’s sloppy permitting on the side of the federal government.'
"Tribes, #environmental groups and a cattle rancher are all plaintiffs in a combined case against the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, and #LithiumNevada, a subsidiary of #LithiumAmericas. On February 6, a federal judge in Reno ruled that the BLM had complied with federal law in approving the mine, with the exception of one matter regarding waste disposal, which the judge ordered the BLM to revisit. The plaintiffs filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit and an emergency motion to block construction before the appeal hearing. The appeals court rejected the injunction and set the hearing date for June. "
https://grist.org/climate-energy/construction-begins-lithium-mine-nevada-controversial/
