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Thirteen conservation and fisheries protection organizations today challenged the Bush administration’s eleventh hour decision to allow the timber industry to nearly quadruple its logging on public lands in western Oregon. The Western Oregon Plan Revision, known by the acronym WOPR, rezones 2.6 million of acres of federal public forests in Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Bush administration timber giveaway comes despite numerous scientific studies concluding that these dramatic increases in logging will harm clean water and healthy streams, push wildlife toward extinction, contribute to global warming, and destroy much of Oregon’s remaining old-growth forests.

“Santa” made an unexpected pole-to-pole visit today to the Antarctic, stopping an illegal whale catcher from whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. “Santa” is driving a Greenpeace inflatable boat which is positioned directly in front of an illegal Japanese whaling catcher Toshi-maru No.25. Santa’s visit comes on the third day of protest against Japanese whaling in the internationally agreed whale sanctuary. Yesterday, the whaling fleet’s “mother” ship, the Nisshin-Maru, rammed the Greenpeace vessel MV Arctic Sunrise in the remote and icy waters around Antarctica. The damage to the Greenpeace ship has been contained.

Environmental group indicted in unprecedented civil disobedience case.

Greenpeace today called for a criminal investigation into the failure of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to prevent the spill of more than 500 million gallons of coal ash sludge into the Emory River, a tributary of the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers. The spill followed the breach of a dike at a coal-fired power plant owned by the TVA, and covered as many as 400 acres of land with potentially toxic ash as high as six feet deep.

Today Greenpeace, American Oceans Campaign, and Sierra Club Alaska asked a federal court to exclude all groundfish trawl fishing from vital Steller sea lion habitat. This action follows the court's January decision that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is in continuing violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of its failure to adequately consider the combined impacts of the North Pacific groundfish trawl fleet on the survival and recovery of Steller sea lions.

As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on H.R. 1904, the legislative equivalent of President Bush's so-called 'Healthy Forest Initiative' (HFI), forest protection activists in Washington, D.C. delivered a 6-foot-diameter slab cut from the stump of a logged 440-year old tree to the Department of Interior today. A message on the slab read: 'Clear-Cut Cowboy says, ‘No Tree Left Behind' ' in protest of the president's wholesale dismantling of environmental laws.

Greenpeace today welcomed the rejection of four proposals by Japan and Norway to revive commercial whaling at the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), currently taking place in Nairobi, Kenya.

Today Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced the issuance of a new regulation further weakening the protections polar bears receive under the Endangered Species Act. The regulation, known as a "4(d) Rule," for section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act, purports to exempt greenhouse gas emissions and oil development, the two leading threats to the species, from regulation under the Act.

The White House today officially began the process for imposing economic sanctions against Japan for its continued whaling program. Greenpeace commends President Clinton and Secretary of Commerce Norman Mineta for taking this first crucial step in response to Japan’s expanded whale hunt. This year, the hunt in the North Pacific adds two species currently on the U.S. endangered species list, Bryde’s and sperm whales.

Activists, including the Executive Director of Greenpeace and several Alaska residents were arrested this morning at 10:00 a.m. (ET), following a protest at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The protesters lay down 12 tons of sod in front of the USDA building, headquarters of the U.S. Forest Service, in protest of the Bush Administration's plans to exempt the United States' largest national forest, the Tongass from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Following the sod delivery, the activists refused to leave until they were able to deliver a letter to Undersecretary Mark Rey, urging him not to exempt the Tongass from the Roadless Rule.