The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources. It also administers programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, territorial affairs, and insular areas of the United States, as well as programs related to historic preservation. About 75% of federal public land is managed by the department, with most of the remainder managed by the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. The department was created on March 3, 1849. It is headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C.
Conservation in Australia is an issue of state and federal policy. Australia is one of the most biologically diverse countries in the world, with a large portion of species endemic to Australia. Preserving this wealth of biodiversity is important for future generations. 25% of Australia is managed for conservation.
The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) is a United States national monument protecting the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante in southern Utah. It was established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton under the authority of the Antiquities Act with 1.7 million acres of land, later expanded to 1,880,461 acres (7,610 km2). In 2017, the monument's size was reduced by half in a succeeding presidential proclamation, and it was restored in 2021. The land is among the most remote in the country; it was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the president of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments protect a wide variety of natural and historic resources, including sites of geologic, marine, archaeological, and cultural importance. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents the power to proclaim national monuments by executive action. In contrast, national parks in the U.S. must be created by Congressional legislation. Some national monuments were first created by presidential action and later designated as national parks by congressional approval.
The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the progressive movement, it was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world. Since the 1950s, it has lobbied politicians to promote environmentalist policies, even if they are controversial. Recent goals include promoting sustainable energy and mitigating global warming, as well as opposing the use of coal, hydropower, and nuclear power. Its political endorsements generally favor liberal and progressive candidates in elections.
Petroglyph National Monument stretches 17 miles (27 km) along Albuquerque, New Mexico's West Mesa, a volcanic basalt escarpment that dominates the city's western horizon. Authorized June 27, 1990, the 7,236 acres (2,928 ha) monument is cooperatively managed by the National Park Service and the City of Albuquerque. The western boundary of the monument features a chain of dormant fissure volcanoes. Beginning in the northwest corner, Butte volcano is followed to its south by Bond, Vulcan, Black and JA volcanoes.
Off-roading is the act of driving or riding in a vehicle on unpaved surfaces such as sand, dirt, gravel, riverbeds, mud, snow, rocks, or other natural terrain. Off-roading ranges from casual drives with regular vehicles to competitive events with customized vehicles and skilled drivers.
Delaware North is an American multinational food service and hospitality company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. The company also operates in the lodging, sporting, airport, gambling, and entertainment industries. The company employs over 55,000 people worldwide and has over $3.2 billion in annual revenues.
The desert tortoise is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species is native to the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, and to the Sinaloan thornscrub of northwestern Mexico. G. agassizii is distributed in western Arizona, southeastern California, southern Nevada, and southwestern Utah. The specific name agassizii is in honor of Swiss-American zoologist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. The desert tortoise is the official state reptile in California and Nevada.
Grand Canyon: A Different View is a 2003 book edited by Tom Vail. The book features a series of photographs of the Grand Canyon illustrating 20 essays by creationists Steve Austin, John Baumgardner, Duane Gish, Ken Ham, Russell Humphreys, Henry Morris, John D. Morris, Andrew A. Snelling, Larry Vardiman, John Whitcomb, and Kurt Wise. It presents the Young Earth creationist perspective that the canyon is no more than a few thousand years old and was formed by the Global Flood or Noachian flood of the Bible.
The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 is a United States federal law that established the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, a single agency, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, had responsibility for the development and production of nuclear weapons and for both the development and the safety regulation of the civilian uses of nuclear materials. The Act of 1974 split these functions, assigning to the Energy Research and Development Administration the responsibility for the development and production of nuclear weapons, promotion of nuclear power, and other energy-related work, and assigning to the NRC the regulatory work, which does not include regulation of defense nuclear facilities. The Act of 1974 gave the Commission its collegial structure and established its major offices.
Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto is a Washington, D.C.-based international whistleblower rights law firm specializing in anti-corruption and whistleblower law, representing whistleblowers who seek rewards, or who are facing employer retaliation, for reporting violations of the False Claims Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, Sarbanes-Oxley Acts, Commodity and Security Exchange Acts and the IRS Whistleblower law.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, Todd Schulke and Robin Silver. The center is based in Tucson, Arizona, with its headquarters in the historic Owls club building, and has offices and staff in New Mexico, Nevada, California, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont, Florida and Washington, D.C.
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax exempt, educational and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1988 by the lawyers Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP. As of June 2021, Siri Nelson is the executive director. Since its founding, the center has worked on whistleblower cases relating to environmental protection, nuclear safety, government and corporate accountability, and wildlife crime.
Salazar v. Buono, 559 U.S. 700 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case concerned the legality of the Mojave Memorial Cross, a Latin cross which was placed atop a prominent rock outcropping by the Veterans of Foreign Wars foundation in 1934 to honor war dead. The location is known as "Sunrise Rock" in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County in southeastern California. The Supreme Court ruled that the cross may stay, but also sent the case back to a lower court, making the issue currently unresolved.
The Mojave Memorial Cross, officially known as the White Cross World War I Memorial, is a cross formerly on public land in the Mojave desert in San Bernardino County, California that was at the center of the Salazar v. Buono legal case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The original cross was erected in 1934 to honor those killed in war.
Daniel P. Meyer is an attorney admitted in the District of Columbia and is currently the Managing Partner of the Washington D.C. Office of Tully Rinckey, PLLC, an international law firm headquartered at Albany, New York, and co-founded by Mathew Tully and Greg Rinckey.
Grand Canyon Conservancy, formerly known as Grand Canyon Association, is the National Park Service's official non-profit partner of Grand Canyon National Park, raising private funds, operating retail shops within the park, and providing premier guided educational programs about the natural and cultural history of the region. Supporters fund projects including trails and historic building preservation, educational programs for the public, and the protection of wildlife and their natural habitat.
Charles Monnett is an American Arctic wildlife biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation's natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf (OCS).
Tom Devine is an American lawyer, investigator, lobbyist, teacher, and advocate for whistleblower rights. He is currently the legal director at the non-profit Government Accountability Project, in Washington, D.C., where he has worked since 1979. He has assisted more than 7,000 whistleblowers, testified in Congress over 50 times, and has been a leader on the front lines to draft, enact, help to enact, or defend 34 whistleblower laws in the United States and abroad, including nearly all federal laws since 1978 and international rights ranging from former Soviet Bloc nations such as Kosovo, Serbia and Ukraine to the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, and Organization of American States. He is also an adjunct professor at the District of Columbia School of Law, where he teaches classes on and supervises clinical programs in whistleblower protection.
