The Colorado Riparian Association has awarded Patti and Ed Zink its Excellence in Riparian Management award for 2012. The recognition reflects the couple’s environmental stewardship, community service and their hours of volunteer time.

Millions of migrating ducks, geese and other waterfowl will find fewer rest stops on their way south this fall — more fallout from a drought that has parched marshes, ponds and wildlife refuges on flyways between North and South America.

A long-running battle over Clean Water Act policies took another turn this week, as the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted to block the Obama administration from implementing new policy guidance that would reinstate protections removed by the Bush administration.

In a case watched closely by energy companies and manufacturers, the Supreme Court is set to consider Monday whether to blunt one of the government's chief tools for enforcing the Clean Water Act.

A national wetlands inventory released this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that between 2004 and 2009, the lower 48 states lost a net average of 13,800 acres a year. That compared with a slight annual gain in wetlands during the previous six year-period.

Baylor University, in collaboration with the U.S Forest Service (USFS) Rocky Mountain Research Station, has developed a model that predicts the risk of wetland habitat loss based on local wetland features and characteristics of the landscape surrounding the wetland.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Harris Sherman today released the 2011 State of the Birds Report, the nation’s first assessment of birds on lands and waters owned by the American people.

More of the West's small streams and wetlands would be protected by the Clean Water Act under an Obama administration proposal announced Wednesday. The new guidance would replace policies of the President George W. Bush administration and clear up some of the legal murkiness created by two U.S. Supreme Court rulings that threw into question the reach of federal water pollution laws.

Some of the biggest names in the oil industry -- Exxon Mobil Corp., Marathon Oil Corp. and the American Petroleum Institute -- have waded into the fight to stop the Obama administration from strengthening Clean Water Act regulation of streams and wetlands.