Conservation groups and the U.S. Forest Service have reached an agreement that protects an area of rare old-growth forest from logging near Franklin in the Nantahala National Forest.
Conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging an Environmental Protection Agency rule that exempts large-scale biomass-burning facilities from carbon dioxide limits under the Clean Air Act for the next three years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in its overall effort to rein in heat-trapping greenhouse gases, took a major step backwards today with a final decision to ignore carbon pollution from biomass-burning plants for at least three years.
The U.S. Office of Surface Mining (OSM) will hold three public hearings starting this week to receive input from local citizens regarding the state's petition to protect mountain ridgelines on public lands in the Cumberland Plateau from surface coal mining.
After years of debate, the U.S. Forest Service and conservation groups have reached a mutual agreement over logging plans for the Globe area of the Pisgah National Forest near Boone and Blowing Rock.
Conservation groups have withdrawn their challenge of a large timber sale that the U.S. Forest Service was planning in the north section of the Cherokee National Forest after reaching an agreement with the agency sparing the most vulnerable ecosystems and critical wildlife habitat.
Environmental Defense Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Center announced this week they are appealing a recent decision by the N.C. Utilities Commission that would allow Duke Energy to get renewable energy credits from harvesting and incinerating whole trees to produce electricity in old coal plants.
North Carolina Utilities Commission ruled that Duke Energy can use electricity derived from burning whole trees, rather than just wood waste, to comply with state renewable energy targets.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and the National Parks Conservation Association today applaud Governor Phil Bredesen and the state of Tennessee for petitioning to limit surface mining on state-owned lands in the North Cumberland Plateau, which would eliminate the threat of mountaintop removal coal mining in these critical watersheds and ridgelines.
Four environmental groups, representing citizens concerned about climate change and forest resources in New England and the Southeast, filed a joint motion in federal court late yesterday to help defend the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to count emissions from burning biomass when it begins regulating global warming pollution from large power plants and other large industrial facilities. The agency's decision also includes a commitment to continue a scientific evaluation of the true carbon impact of the many forms of biomass energy.
Tennessee Wild, a broad coalition of conservation organizations, praised Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker today for introducing legislation to permanently protect new wilderness areas on the Cherokee National Forest.
The Departments of Transportation in Tennessee and North Carolina are now studying ways to complete the Corridor K project between Chattanooga and Asheville by improving existing roads instead of building stretches of new four-lane highway through mostly new terrain, a proposal which has drawn regionwide oppo
SELC joins conservation groups across the region in applauding the historic settlement that successfully ends the decades-long fight to stop a highway through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Final decision announced today by the U.S. Forest Service as a win-win approach to resolving the problem.
Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb of Virginia and Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina, along with 17 members of the Southeast's congressional delegation are joining more than 150 colleagues from across the country and from both sides of the aisle to introduce a bill in the House and Senate today that would permanently protect 58.5 million acres of America's premiere public land.
With a 285-140 vote in the U.S. House today, Congress has officially passed a bill that permanently protects more than 53,000 acres of the Jefferson National Forest in the mountains of southwest Virginia - the largest wilderness bill in the Southern Appalachians in the last decade.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and National Parks Conservation Association are filing suit today in federal court in Washington D.C. challenging a rule issued last month by the Bush Administration that severely limits the government's ability to protect Appalachian streams from the ravages of mountaintop removal and other destructive forms of surface mining for coal.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the largest environmental advocacy organization dedicated solely to protecting the Southeast, today announced a list of ten special places in the South that face immediate, potentially irreparable threats in 2009.
Conservation groups from two states today took legal action to protect water quality in the Tellico River area in the Nantahala National Forest.
Conservation groups today condemned the findings of a recent environmental study by the North Carolina Department of Transportation that a 10-mile section of the proposed Corridor K highway would have little environmental impact.
As the U.S. Forest Service re-starts its process to update the long-range plan for the 1.1 million acre George Washington National Forest in western Virginia, a broad coalition of citizen groups called on the agency to focus on protecting clean water, diverse wildlife habitat, old-growth forests and remote, wild areas, as well as prime spots for fishing, hunting and other outdoors recreation.
More than a dozen public interest groups have banded together in a legal move designed to stop the potential destruction of state parks and private lands throughout Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau from large-scale commercial rock removal.
A team of conservation groups, together with Tennessee's wildlife agency, today filed a petition with federal agencies demanding they stop ignoring the impacts of coal mining, including mountaintop removal, on the nation's threatened and endangered wildlife.