Years of recreational shooting left hazardous levels of lead in the soil of a parcel of land in the White Tank Mountains, and the site west of Phoenix will remain closed for three more years for cleanup.  The area was shuttered to recreational shooting after a pregnant woman was killed by a stray bullet more than three years ago.  The multimillion-dollar remediation effort comes as Buckeye aims to lease the land from the federal Bureau of Land Management for a park. It's an area that public safety officials previously describe as "a mess" because of the number of people shooting at all hours, in all directions. - AZ Central

There is perhaps nowhere in the Pacific where the costs of extractive industries are as heartbreakingly clear as Rennell Island. The island, a tiny dot in the vast South Pacific that lies at the southern tip of Solomon Islands, is home to a few thousand people. And it’s starkly divided.  On one side is pristine East Rennell, a Unesco world heritage site, which offers a glimpse of Rennell unspoiled. But in the last decade, West Rennell has suffered the triple assault of logging, bauxite mining, and a devastating oil spill from when a bulk carrier, hired by a mining company, ran aground on a reef. - Guardian

The vast majority of land on Earth — a staggering 97 percent — no longer qualifies as ecologically intact, according to a sweeping survey of Earth’s ecosystems. Over the last 500 years, too many species have been lost, or their numbers reduced, researchers report April 15 in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Of the few fully intact ecosystems, only about 11 percent fall within existing protected areas, the researchers found. Much of this pristine habitat exists in northern latitudes, in Canada’s boreal forests or Greenland’s tundra, which aren’t bursting with biodiversity. But chunks of the species-rich rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia also remain intact. - Science News

California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state. The draft cease-and-desist order, which still requires approval from the California Water Resources Control Board, is the latest development in a protracted battle between the bottled water company and local environmentalists, who for years have accused Nestlé of draining water supplies at the expense of local communities and ecosystems. - HCN

The Rocky Mountains that lie within Blackfoot traditional territory are threatened with mountaintop removal. The Grassy Mountain coal project in Alberta, Canada, is slated to begin coal extraction in fall 2021. It is expected to be profitable for only 25 years. However, by then the almost 4,000-acre project will have blasted the terrain with explosives, separating the substrata from the coal and creating a new rock-scape the size of almost 3,000 American football fields.  Places where mountaintop coal removal occurs are never the same; just look at West Virginia, where mountain areas once rich with biodiverse forests have been reduced to barren desolation. And, as my grandmother taught me, disturbed areas are not places to practice Blackfoot traditional knowledge. - - High Country News Perspective

It’s no secret that the miners in this region work in difficult and often dangerous conditions — some in sanctioned and regulated areas, some illicitly. They labor under the threat of collapsing mines, falling rocks and temperatures in excess of 110 degrees.  Despite the risks, many of the miners speak to me about their work with pride, as if buoyed by a sense of tradition. - NYTimes