By Lance Williams 23 March 2019 (Reveal) – Gathered for a private meeting at a beachside Ritz–Carlton in Southern California, the oil executives were celebrating a colleague’s sudden rise. David Bernhardt, their former lawyer, had been appointed by President Donald Trump to the powerful No. 2 spot at the Department of the Interior. Just five […]
By Elizabeth Shogren 8 April 2019 (Reveal) – Under Republican and Democratic presidents from Nixon through Obama, killing migratory birds, even inadvertently, was a crime, with fines for violations ranging from $250 to $100 million. The power to prosecute created a deterrent that protected birds and enabled government to hold companies to account for environmental […]
By Kendall Teare 4 March 2019 (Yale News) – As humans continue to expand our use of land across the planet, we leave other species little ground to stand on. By 2070, increased human land-use is expected to put 1,700 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals at greater extinction risk by shrinking their natural habitats, […]
By Lindsey Feingold 7 April 2019 (NPR) – Up to 1 billion birds die from building collisions each year in the United States, and according to a new study, bright lights in big cities are making the problem worse. The study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, examined two-decades […]
By Johnny Simon 22 March 2019 (Quartz) – On 24 March 1989 the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. It was the worst oil spill in US history until 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster pumped nearly 20 times that amount into the […]
By Steve Lundeberg30 January 2019 CORVALLIS, Oregon (OSU) – One hundred forty-three species of large animals are decreasing in number and 171 are under threat of extinction, according to new research that suggests humans’ meat consumption habits are primarily to blame. Findings published today in Conservation Letters involved an analysis of 292 species of “megafauna” […]
By Beatriz Alvarado 6 February 2019 MISSION, Texas (Corpus Christi Caller Times) – Amid a legal battle to stop the federal government from erecting a 36-foot “wall system” topped with steel bollards through its property, the National Butterfly Center is conducting business as usual. On a Wednesday morning, the parking lot at the 100-acre wildlife […]
By Nomaan Merchant 4 February 2019 HOUSTON (AP) – The U.S. government is preparing to begin construction of more border walls and fencing in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, likely on federally owned land set aside as wildlife refuge property.Heavy construction equipment was expected to arrive starting Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. A […]
17 January 2019 (Radboud University) – Currently approximately 600 species might be inaccurately assessed as non-threatened on the Red List of Threatened Species. More than a hundred others that couldn’t be assessed before, also appear to be threatened. A new more efficient, systematic and comprehensive approach to assess the extinction risk of animals has shown […]
By Marlowe Hood14 January 2019 (Phys.org) – In a world where climate change, air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, ozone depletion, and other environmental problems overlap, a fix in one arena can cause trouble in another. Here are a few examples of what might be called Earth’s “zero-sum” dilemma in the 21st century. […]
