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It's the gold that Pam Mortensen has come here to see. Mortensen, 52, is in charge of buying fine jewelry for Wal-Mart. And recently she has moved the world's largest retailer to the forefront of a loose alliance of businesses and environmental groups that have set out to clean up gold mining, one of the world's dirtiest industries.

Ever heard of Pel's flying squirrel? Its home in Ghana's forests is currently under threat from gold mining. US-based Newmont Mining Corporation wants to develop an open-pit gold mine that would destroy over a quarter of Ajenjua Bepo, a protected Forest Reserve in Ghana. The mine would eliminate habitat for many threatened species of plants and animals. The Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency is considering Newmont's proposal. Ominously, it seems to be ignoring the advice of environmental technical experts and the affected communities.

Vote in Alaska Puts Question: Gold or Fish? Just up the fish-rich rivers that surround this tiny bush town on Bristol Bay is a discovery of copper and gold so vast and valuable that no one seems able to measure it all. Then again, no one really knows the value of the rivers, either. They are the priceless headwaters of one of the world’s last great runs of Pacific salmon.

In Colorado, state regulators gave the go-ahead to Xcel Energy's plans for a green makeover: shutting down two coal-fired power plants in the state and building one of the world's largest utility-scale solar power plants.

A coalition of investors and environmental groups claimed yesterday that climate-change-related shareholder resolutions filed in the US this year had achieved breakthrough results, reflecting growing investor concerns over global warming.

Of 57 resolutions filed by socially concerned investors, almost half were withdrawn after companies ranging from Continental Airlines to El Paso made commitments on setting targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other issues.

A three-state panel that oversees the Susquehanna River from Cooperstown to the Chesapeake Bay is going to control how its water is used in a controversial drilling technique for natural gas.  Some environmentalists have warned that hydrofracking, which relies on a blend of water, sand and chemicals pumped into the ground, has left polluted water in other states like Colorado and New Mexico.

Use your consumer power!

Declare that the dirty energy industry needs to clean up its act.  Sign the No Dirty Energy pledge!

New No Dirty Energy campaign urges consumers to take a closer look at the source of their gasoline, other energy sources. Visit NoDirtyEnergy.org.  With the costs of America's addiction to fossil fuels now dominating the political debate, rising demand for gasoline has refineries in the United States increasingly turning to one of the world's dirtiest energy sources: Canadian tar sands.

Environmentalists from four East European countries Wednesday urged their governments to ban polluting effluents after a lake containing heavy metal waste spilt over in Romania following flash floods.

"Stop the pollution of our rivers with toxic mining waste," 45 environmental organisations said in a joint letter to the governments of Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine.

The letter also underlined the "vulnerability of the mining industry in extreme climate conditions" such as the torrential rains experienced recently in Romania and Ukraine.

Several First Nations groups met last week to unite on one issue ‹ mining.The meeting, hosted by the Williams Lake Indian Band on Friday, July 18, included chiefs, councillors, technical staff and band members of 11 bands from the Chilcotin, Shuswap and Carrier Nations from Williams Lake to Kamloops.The biggest issue discussed, says Joe Alphonse, director of government services for the Tsilhqot'in Nation Government, was the proposed Prosperity mine project, a project he says is touted as being a benefit to Williams Lake.

A newly filed lawsuit accuses the Department of Energy of violating federal law during agency approval of uranium leases in the Uravan mining district in Montrose, Mesa and San Miguel counties.Durango-based Energy Minerals Law Center and Western Mining Action Project in Lyons sued DOE¹s Office of Legacy Management in Denver¹s U.S. District Court Thursday for failure to follow the National Environmental Policy Act in assessing the environmental impacts of nearly tripling uranium mining leases to over 27,000 acres of land.

After an extensive one-year investigation, Mr. Devaney concludes, in language that is always blunt and at times incendiary, that both the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service have “put the public’s health and safety at risk” by failing to clean up or seal off abandoned mine sites. Several deaths and injuries have already occurred — one mine swallowed an entire vehicle, the report says — and “the potential for more deaths and injuries is ominous.”

The cooking at La Zucca Magica is vegetarian.

In itself this is not so extraordinary, but there is the matter of its location. (The French can be quite hostile to vegetarianism.)

Take a moment to think about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the nearby patches of Wisconsin, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan that border it. Picture the sparkling waterfalls, blueberries, brook trout and wave-washed shores there — the multitude of reasons so many think of this as God’s Country. New proposals for mining in the U.P. involve a method — metallic sulfide mining — known for its record of toxic water pollution.

Even the bighorn sheep will likely abandon the Silver Bell area once mining eliminates more of their habitat, said Krausman, a former University of Arizona professor. The study is becoming part of the debate today as wildlife officials and mining officials disagree over likely effects of the proposed Rosemont open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, southeast of Tucson.