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Scott writes about the Interior Department and related agencies. He has reported on a wide range of topics during a 25-year reporting career, including U.S. EPA regulation of oil refineries, the potential health risks posed by toxic chemicals in household items and the role of federal lands in renewable energy development. Before joining E&E in 2009, he was an environmental reporter with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and before that with the Pensacola News Journal. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the Scripps Howard Foundation's Edward J. Meeman Award for environmental reporting and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers winner for special projects.
The Bureau of Land Management wants to adjust how compliance is gauged on grazing permits across the West, drawing praise from the livestock industry and concern from conservationists.
The Interior Department is set to reopen millions of acres of sensitive greater sage grouse habitat across six Western states to mining activity when a two-year moratorium on new mining claims ends Sunday.
The Bureau of Land Management is transferring its communications director to another agency, though a BLM spokeswoman said the move is not related to the Interior Department's much broader reorganization effort that began in June.
A conservation group wants the Trump administration to keep oil and natural gas drilling, mining and other development away from more than a dozen federal sites, including two national monuments Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended cutting in size.
A senior Bureau of Land Management law enforcement official who was found to have violated federal ethics rules at the Burning Man festival and to have mishandled criminal evidence in a separate case is no longer with the agency.