This is our reality now

In just two years, President Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century. Mr. Trump enthusiastically promotes the changes as creating jobs, freeing business from the shackles of government and helping the economy grow.

Donald Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback.

The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real — frighteningly so, for some people — imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us.

Since Mr. Trump took office, his approach on the environment has been to neutralize the most rigorous Obama-era restrictions, nearly80 of which have been blocked, delayed or targeted for repeal, according to an analysis of data by The New York Times.

Read the story from The New York Times - “This is our reality now.”

Frydenberg stalls on woodlands protection after pressure from states and farmers

Farmers’ associations, the Tasmanian deputy premier and a Tasmanian Liberal senator lobbied the environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, not to grant critically endangered status to woodlands eligible for protection under Australia’s national environment laws.

Josh Frydenberg has put off deciding whether or not woodlands
 will be approved for national environment protection.

In 2017 the independent threatened species scientific committee, which provides scientific advice to the government about conserving threatened species, recommended two new woodlands be listed as critically endangered ecological communities under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

The first, poplar box grassy woodlands on alluvial plains, a type of grassy eucalypt woodland found in New South Wales and Queensland, was recommended for a critically endangered listing in April 2017.

Read the story from The Guardian by Lisa Cox - “Frydenberg stalls on woodlands protection after pressure from states and farmers.”