If the Clean Water Act can't protect a subalpine lake inside a national forest, something obviously is very wrong.

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing new air-quality rules that would make it easier to build coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and other major polluters near national parks and wilderness areas....

The Bureau of Land Management has expanded its oil and gas lease program in eastern Utah to include tens of thousands of acres on or near the boundaries of three national parks, according to revised maps published this week.

The bill consists of more than 140 separate public land proposals, including 15 wilderness measures that would forever protect wild lands in eight states — including 517,000 acres in Idaho’s Canyonlands, 470,000 acres in California’s Eastern Sierra and San Gabriel Mountains, and 11,700 acres of Lake Superior shoreline in northern Michigan.

In the rush to feed the world's growing appetite for climate-friendly fuel and cooking oil that doesn't clog arteries, the Bornean orangutan could get plowed over.

But as it prepares to leave office, the [Bush] administration is working quickly to hand over much of southern Utah to the oil and gas industry and off-road-vehicle enthusiasts.

In 2001, President Clinton awarded Seiberling the Presidential Citizens Medal. Clinton called him an "environmental hero" for crafting the Alaska Lands Act of 1980, which doubled the size of the U.S. national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide. It also tripled the area of federally designated wilderness.

A controversial land swap proposal could open portions of an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, dividing Alaska natives and stoking opposition from environmentalists seeking to protect the bears, moose and birds that live there.

The country’s treasured open spaces are no more immune to air pollution from coal-fired power plants than are its big cities. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain and kills trees. Mercury emissions poison streams. Nitrogen oxides and sulfates create smog and haze.

The grassy sweep of the Lamar Valley in the northeastern corner of this park is famous for its wildlife, especially its vast herds of elk and bison and the wolves that hunt them.

In a victory for gun-rights advocates, the federal government is preparing to relax a decades-old ban on bringing loaded firearms into national parks.

With minimal public notice and no formal environmental review, the Forest Service has approved a permit allowing a British mining company to explore for uranium just outside Grand Canyon National Park, less than three miles from a popular lookout over the canyon’s southern rim.

The video game's popularity underscores a broad new study that, looking at everything from national park visits to U.S. fishing licenses, found a persistent decline in the public's interest in nature. According to the new research, participation in outdoor recreation has fallen by as much as 25 percent in the last two decades.

A federal plan to expand oil-and-gas drilling in Alaska presents the Bush administration with an awkward choice between oil and polar bears.

More than 3 million acres of pristine wilderness in Alaska's Tongass National Forest would be open to logging and road building under a new management plan released Friday by the U.S. Forest Service.

Within less than a decade, national park officials have seen the federal budget for land acquisition slashed by 75 percent, making it increasingly difficult for administrators to purchase roughly 1.8 million acres of privately owned land inside national parks.

There are now nine million off-road vehicles, meaning all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes (snowmobiles are a separate category). And their owners, with little resistance from the authorities that ought to be policing them, are transforming some of America’s most sensitive public lands into their personal playgrounds.

National parks and refuges are federal lands, set aside as peaceful preserves for all the species that enjoy them, including humans. Ready-to-fire guns have no place in them.

In the San Juan National Forest here, an iron rod gate is the last barrier to the Weminuche Wilderness, a mountain redoubt above 10,000 feet where wheels are not allowed.