America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reportedly removed dozens of references to climate change from its website, along with resources to help local governments from tackling the issue.
New analysis from The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), a watchdog which monitors federal environmental agency web pages found one EPA website - which previously offered climate and energy resources for state and local governments - has had references and links to climate science and policy removed.
Other we bsites taken down in April have returned to the EPA’s site with references to climate change omitted, it said. Other references have also been removed.
Six months ago, the EPA began overhauling its archive of climate change resources, stating they were being updated to reflect the new administration under Donald Trump’s leadership.
It previously contained tools to help governments use renewable energy and implement climate change policies.
The group highlights the site is now a page on “energy resources” - but misses around 15 mentions of the phrase “climate change”.
“Large portions of climate resources that were formerly found on the previous website have not been returned, and thus have ultimately been removed from the current EPA website,” it said.
Many of these resources can still be found in a snapshot of the EPA website taken on 19 January, the day before Mr Trump’s inauguration.
“The new website launch was done without an accompanying news release and the decision not to include particular climate resources was not explained,” the report states.
The EDGI said in the half a year since the overhaul of the EPA’s website began, certain subdomains - such as epa.gov/climatechange and epa.gov/climate-impacts - have remained removed.
However, an EPA. spokesman told The New York Times the original pages have been archived and remain available by searching through the agency’s web archive, a link to which is at the top of its energy resources page.
