Department of Interior

A group led by the Interior Department has released recommendations to reform mining practices on public lands.

The Interior Department recently announced $180 million in new funding for large-scale water recycling programs. The money is available for local agencies looking to reuse wastewater, which officials say will make a big difference for western communities dealing with drought.

A new report shows that visitors to national parks spent a record amount in surrounding communities last year, providing a major economic boost to those areas.

U.S. House Republicans are proposing sweeping cuts to the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other executive departments with major influence in the Mountain West.

The federal commission compiling a report about missing and murdered Indigenous peoples’ is traveling to Indigenous communities to hear their stories. The next stops are Albuquerque and Billings.

The Interior Department is spending another $64 million to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells that threaten the environment and public health, including some wells in the Mountain West.

The Biden administration has ordered a 20-year ban on new oil and gas development around Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico, a landscape considered sacred to many tribes.

As a part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the Department of Interior and the National Endowment for the Humanities will be digitizing records that document the experiences of those who survived such schools, as well as their descendants. $4 million from the NEH will also support an oral history project with those people.

That law bars efforts to misleadingly present products as having been produced by tribal members, and the changes would expand the definition of what constitutes an "Indian Product" under the law and in some cases allow for non-native labor in the making of such products.

The 83 projects are located in 11 mostly Western states, including Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico and Nevada.