The issue focused on the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which has said it would no longer refer policy decisions that impacted one of the National Wildlife Refuges to the agency's legal counsel and instead would handle the case on its own. The review was initiated in the first week of November after representatives from the League of Conservation Voters sent a letter to the agency to explain their concerns that it was not in the public interest.


Focusing on the use of scientific study to suggest