"For environmental groups who have come out very strongly against this House rule, it’s seen as a larger effort to shift some state land back to private control: the states and the counties with fewer environmental controls." Credit: Getty Images On the first day of its new session, the U.S. House of Representatives changed its own rules, easing the transfer of federally held lands to state governments and localities. This was one small, mostly symbolic step to give more power to the states, a goal a GOP-held government has long wished for. We asked David Dana, the Kirkland & Ellis…

Conservation International’s M. Sanjayan holds his dinner on an expedition led by the Dene people on the Thelon River in Canada's Northwest Territories. Sanjayan believes that hunting and fishing for food can teach valuable lessons in environmental stewardship. Credit: Conservation International / Ami Vitale There’s a climate denier in the White House, an oil executive nominated for Secretary of State, and a Congress that wants to effectively stop solar power’s progression and bring back coal. And yet M. Sanjayan, the former host of Earth: A New Wild, “the scientist” on Years of Living Dangerously, and Executive Vice President at Conservation…

Credit: Getty Images In his last weeks in office, President Obama has extended his legacy to include national monuments in keeping with presidential traditions going back over a century. Two large tracts of land with more than 1.6 million acres in Nevada and Utah will now be preserved for future generations.“Today, I am designating two new national monuments in the desert landscapes of southeastern Utah and southern Nevada to protect some of our country’s most important cultural treasures,” the president said in a statement, “including abundant rock art, archeological sites, and lands considered sacred by Native American tribes. Today’s actions…