Gale A Norton

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department. The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp.

Gale A. Norton, the Bush administration's leading advocate for expanding oil and gas drilling and other industrial interests in the West, resigned Friday after five years as secretary of the Interior Department. Norton's departure ends a controversial tenure viewed as largely favorable to energy and mining interests at the expense, critics say, of environmentally sensitive areas and a tradition that used to give more weight to science than politics.

Bird flu is likely to arrive this year in the United States, with the increased testing of tens of thousands of wild birds expected to reveal dozens of suspected cases, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said. Officials will test 75,000 to 100,000 wild birds this year, according to a government plan. The government also plans to quarantine and destroy any poultry flocks where the virus appears.

Guidelines issued by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton on Wednesday will make it easier for counties to lay claim to old trails and closed roads they would like to open across federal lands in the West, including national parks in Southern California.

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records from Royal Dutch Shell PLC as part of a Justice Department investigation into corruption allegations against former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, according to sources close to the investigation. The subpoenas and the inclusion of a grand jury are signs of escalation in the investigation, which focuses on whether Norton violated a federal law barring government officials from overseeing any process that could financially benefit a company that the official is negotiating with for future employment.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton will launch a half-century effort Monday to return native trees, fish and wildlife to a lower Colorado River system profoundly altered by man's thirst. Environmental groups are skeptical, however, that the transformation can stick without fundamental changes in the river's flow.

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton signed off on a plan Thursday for managing 8.8 million acres of Alaska's North Slope and opening most of the acreage to oil and gas development. Some of the drilling could occur in areas important for migratory birds, whales and wildlife. The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management will use the plan to manage a northwest portion of the government's 23.5-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Environmental groups are suing Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton to block a plan to open 8.8 million acres to oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Plaintiffs include the National Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and the Alaska Wilderness League. The lawsuit was delivered to the federal court clerk's home Monday because it was a federal holiday, and is considered filed in U.S. District Court in Juneau.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton declared unwavering support Thursday for efforts to modernize visitor facilities in Yosemite National Park's congested, mile-wide valley, just days after a federal court blocked the bulk of the rehabilitation work. Paying an Earth Day visit to one of America's most beloved and beleaguered national parks, Norton expressed confidence that several suspended construction projects would go forward, despite lawsuits by two environmental groups.