Welcome to our news edit of interesting, pertinent articles.  We encourage you to read, learn and share.

We were in a cataclysmic age of mass extinction and climate instability before the election. Now the climate denier in chief is poised to gut the environmental protections that do exist.
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/opinion/climate-endangered-animals-humans
An extreme heat wave off California’s coast seemed like an anomaly 10 years ago. But as the ocean warms, the catastrophe may be a glimpse of the future.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/climate/california-farallones-ocean-warming
The tallest land animals in the world are declining so precipitously that they should be protected under the United States Endangered Species Act, federal wildlife officials said Wednesday.
\www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/climate/giraffes-threatened
For organisms that have evolved to migrate under the cover of darkness, the effects of light pollution can be deadly.
https://aeroecolab.com/uslights
Thinking about raking freshly fallen leaves into a pile? Think again, scientists and naturalists say.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/us/raking-leaves.html
Researchers have discovered a kind of “sperm whale phonetic alphabet” embedded in the strings of “click” sounds the whales use to communicate and hunt.
www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/05/07/sperm-whale
Poultry Giants Cull and Cash In. Big poultry farms have received millions of dollars for their losses. Animal welfare groups contend that aid reinforces inhumane cullings of birds exposed to the virus.
www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/science/bird-flu-aid-animal-welfare
In Brazil, wildfires have roared across the Pantanal, a maze of rivers, forests and marshlands that sprawl over an area 20 times the size of the Everglades.
www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/world/americas/pantanal-wildfires
Scientists and officials spent days at sea searching for vaquitas, shy porpoises threatened by fishing gear.
www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/climate/vaquita-porpoise-survey
Human development has led to the destruction of a quarter of a million acres of estuarine habitat around the world over the past 35 years
https://geographical.co.uk/news/study-reveals-extent-of-human-led-destruction-to-estuaries
Firefly populations appear to be in decline around the globe. 14 percent of assessed species — including 18 North American species — are at risk of extinction.
www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/fireflies
Tens of millions of farm animals cross state lines every year, traveling in cramped, stressful conditions that can facilitate the spread of disease.
www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/health/livestock-disease-transport
More than almost anything else we put into our mouths, meat matters. Our appetite for meat is hurting the world.
www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/climate/lab-grown-meat-future
To mitigate bird collisions, enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
www.pnas.org
Researchers said that the blue whale song that crackled through the team’s underwater recordings was unlike any they had heard.
www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/science/blue-whales-indian-ocean
“There is no reason to think that in 30 years much of anything will be as it is today,”
www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/climate/arctic-climate-change
Wild cats play vital roles in almost all the environments where they occur. For that reason, aiding their recovery can also help to achieve quantifiable progress on many of our planet’s urgent environmental goals.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions
We need Congress and the Biden administration to immediately restore protections for birds with an incidental take permitting program under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
www.nrdc.org
WILDLIFE IS DISAPPEARING around the world, in the oceans and on land. The main cause on land is perhaps the most straightforward: Humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there before.
www.nytimes.com/climate/biodiversity-habitat-loss-climate
WILDLIFE IS DISAPPEARING around the world, in the oceans and on land. The main cause on land is perhaps the most straightforward: Humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there before.
www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/climate/crucial-talks-on-preserving-nature-are-on-now-here-are-the-key-issues
On a species level, it’s easy for people to say, “What’s one less squirrel?” But there is something in even the bitterest human heart that can’t help responding to the suffering of another living thing.
www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/opinion/wildlife-rescue-human-kindness.html
Scientists are unearthing a quiet truth about the woods: Where trees grow, or don’t, depends in part on the quirky decisions of small mammals.
www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/science/climate-forests-seeds-mice
President Biden has promised to reinstate more than 100 rules and regulations aimed at environmental protection that his predecessor rolled back. It won’t happen overnight.
www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/climate/biden-environment
In a little discussed pending Supreme Court case, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, the conditions of pork production are being debated.
www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/opinion/pig-farming-cruelty
A jury in southern Utah let me walk free earlier this month after I took two injured piglets from a farm in the middle of the night that I had no permission to be on.
www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/opinion/animal-rights-factory-farming
Scientists warn of ongoing global insect abundance losses and say we lack a full understanding of invertebrate extinction causes and synergies.
news.mongabay.com
The latest update to an important assessment found that populations had declined by an average of 69 percent since 1970. But that might not mean what you think.
www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/climate/living-planet-index-wi
Many crop seeds are coated with toxic insecticides called neonicotinoids, which threaten seed- and insect-eating birds while providing few benefits to crops in most cases.
abcbirds.org/news/epa-pesticide-coated-seed-decision-2022/
The Pale-headed Brushfinch was rediscovered in a dry inter-Andean valley in west-central Ecuador almost 25 years ago — following three decades without a record of the species.
abcbirds.org/blog/question-of-habitat/
Environmental destruction and violence threaten one of the world’s most extraordinary insect migrations.
www.newyorker.com/magazine
Given the loss of nearly 3 billion birds in the U.S. and Canada since 1970, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is encouraging action to help birds survive and thrive. Here are ways to help:
https://abcbirds.org
The horses have charmed New York City tourists since the 19th century, but detractors say there is abuse and exploitation. Drivers say they are animal lovers doing their best.
www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/nyregion/carriage-horses
An investigator went under cover and brought back disturbing video from a farm growing those famous birds.
www.nytimes.com
Sturgeon are disappearing from North American rivers where they thrived for millions of years. And the quest to save them is exposing the limits of the Endangered Species Act.
www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/magazine/they-outlasted-the-dinosaurs-can-they-survive-
Gray wolf lost protections last year; a recent hunt that killed at least 216 wolves far exceeded quota.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/wisconsin-wolves-killings
Just 50 or so remain, eking it out in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/opinion/discovery-whale-extinction
Bison once numbered in the tens of millions in the United States. Now, a nonprofit is working to restore the shortgrass prairie, where the American icons and their ecosystem can thrive again.
www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/science/bison-prairie-grassland
Immense flocks of sandhill cranes — 15,000 at Wheeler alone — spend winter at several wildlife refuges within a few hours’ drive of Nashville.
www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/opinion/sandhill-cranes-migration
...live footage of pigs being gassed to death flashed across my screen. The footage was coming from hidden cameras I had placed the night before
www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/animal-rights-slaughterhouse
a California activist recently sneaked into a slaughterhouse at night and installed spy cams inside a gas chamber to record this supposedly humane process. The resulting videos are horrifying: They show the pigs squealing desperately, thrashing about and gasping for air
www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/opinion/meat-pork-animal-farm
Politics of predators poised to revive practices that virtually exterminated wolves from Montana.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/us/montana-wolves-grizzlies-hunting
Between the ribs of a dead camel buried in the sands of Dubai, a mass of 2,000 plastic bags as big as a large suitcase were where the animal’s stomach would have been.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions
Forests fed us, housed us, and made our way of life possible. But they can’t save us if we can’t save them.
www.newyorker.com/what-we-owe-our-trees
Africa’s elephants counted as two species for the first time, highlighting the dire threat to forest elephants.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/science/elephants-africa-endangered
Americans have cultivated nonnative plants and flowers for so long it has skewed our experience of spring.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/opinion/immigrant-plants-ecosystem
Conserving marine areas would not only safeguard imperiled species but sequester vast amounts planet-warming carbon dioxide, too.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/climate/climate-change-oceans
Experts are concerned that a new global disease outbreak might begin any day. The virus that worries them is H5N1, a form of avian influenza, or bird flu.
www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/opinion/bird-flu
A creative collaboration in word and image with photographs by Christopher Valentine and text by Lydia Millet.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/21/opinion/earth-day-climate-change-poem.html
Ecologists are being forced to do triage, deciding what to safeguard — and what to let slip away.
www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/national-parks-climate-change
Only One State in America Includes the Study of Climate Change for All Grades
www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/opinion/books-children-climate-change
The bill would allow the state to hire contractors to kill the wolves, which supporters say are threatening the livelihoods of Idaho’s ranchers.
www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/us/idaho-wolves
The long-term needs of ecosystems should come before our knee-jerk expectations about infrastructure.
www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/opinion/infrastructure-biden-nature
In a new study, ecologists document the impact that the world’s brightest city has on the insect population.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/science/vegas-light-pollution-ecology-grasshoppers
Highway BR-262 is among the deadliest in the world for wildlife. Biologist Wagner Fischer has been monitoring its grim toll for more than two decades.
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/science/brazil-roadkill
A shiny glass condo property in the city has become notorious for deadly crashes, so some residents are pushing for change.
www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/climate/new-york-birds-windows.html
Myanmar’s security forces have killed more than 40 children since February. Here is the story of one, Aye Myat Thu. She was 10.
www.nytimes.com/2021/04/04/world/asia/myanmar-coup-deaths-children
Another humpback whale was spotted dead late Monday, floating near a shipping channel between New York and New Jersey, the 13th whale found in the two states in three months.
www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/nyregion/east-coast-whale-deaths
This is the story of a 9-year-old girl and the goat she loved. But it’s also the story of hard hearts and broken hearts. Finally, it is the story of a dead goat.
www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/opinion/goat-girl-slaughtered-california.html
We think of scavengers as gross—but they clean up nature’s messes, and they need saving.
https://id.condenast.com
Is our pleasure in seeing wild animals up close is worth the price of their captivity?
www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/zoos-animal-cruelty.html
A bargain cashmere sweater comes at a steep cost to one of our most fragile environmental systems — the grasslands of the Mongolian Plateau in Central Asia.
https://www.nytimes.com
Each year, billions of animals die for human ends. In two new books, Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer insist that we stop the suffering.
https://www.newyorker.com
With a rope wrapped around it off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., a rare event that had scientists worrying about the future of the critically endangered species with about 360 remaining animals.
https://www.nytimes.com
Endangered North Atlantic right whales are approaching extinction.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov
An early estimate points to a huge die-off along the Pacific Coast, and scientists say rivers farther inland are warming to levels that could be lethal for some kinds of salmon.
www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/climate/marine-heat-wave
Activists in Berkeley, which has no factory farms, hope other cities will follow suit – but not everyone is convinced
https://www.theguardian.com
We Might Be One Step Closer to Saving America’s Amazon
www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/opinion/alabama-coal-ash
Last month, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology released an updated version of its Merlin Bird ID app, which allows users to identify birds by song.
www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26
On the island of Sumatra, a devoted group of conservationists is grasping for a solution that will benefit both the animals and the people who live around them.
www.nytimes.com/2021/08
Few apex predators fare well in the built human environment, and Flaco was an apex predator who had never been taught to hunt.
www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/opinion/flaco-owl-dead
The population of kelp forests, which help clean the air, has fallen dramatically. That has environmentalists worried.
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/07/05/kelp-forests-destroyed-sea-urchins/
Florida spring breakers fight for their right to party with huge brawl erupting on the beach
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13185803/What-crackdown
John Barnett, 62, was found dead in his truck in a hotel parking lot Saturday
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13185019/Boeing-whistleblower-josh-barnett-dead
Theodore Roosevelt National Park has looked to slash the wild horses on the site But it has sparked fury among locals who say they are a huge tourist boost there
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13185019/Boeing-whistleblower-josh-barnett-dead
In Georgia, where state officials are poised to approve a strip mine on the southeastern edge of the magnificent Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/opinion/okefenokee-strip-mine-georgia
The year of the first Earth Day, 1970, was the year I stopped eating meat.
www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/earth-day-climate-change-meat-vegan
Poaching of the big cats is on the rise, and a new study links their slaughter to corruption as well as investment from Chinese companies.
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/science/jaguars-poaching-china
People on both sides of the aisle want to drink clean water and breathe clean air. People on both sides of the aisle want to keep living things alive.
www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/opinion/extinction-bipartisan-conservation
Carversville Farm believes that everyone deserves high-quality food, so they donate most of theirs to kitchens feeding the neediest in Philadelphia.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/dining/pennsylvania-carversville-farm-food-donation
National Park Service is about to allow 12 hunters who will be allowed to kill one bison each into the supposed sanctuary of Grand Canyon National Park.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/opinion/Hunt-bison-Grand-Canyon
Her caretakers hope DNA testing may help return her to the wild with her family.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/science/nania-elephant
On This German Farm the cows don’t have to produce milk. The pigs sleep late. No animal on this former dairy farm serves a human need. Their only purpose is to live peacefully — and provoke questions about how we eat.
www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/world/europe/germany-cow-retirement-home
Climate change has started pushing Lake Michigan's water levels to uncharted territory.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/07/07/climate/chicago-river-lake-michigan
Scientists hope this new kind of perennial grain offers a taste of what environmentally friendly farming could look like.
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/bread-baking-sustainable-grain-kernza
The animals and one plant had been listed as endangered species. Their stories hold lessons about a growing global biodiversity crisis.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/climate/endangered-animals-extinct
The collapse of biodiversity, the sum of all things living on the planet.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/opinion/animal-extinction
The most important animal-rights case of the 21st century revolves around an unlikely subject.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/happy-elephant-bronx-zoo-nhrp-lawsuit
Some of these stories will horrify you. Some may even inspire you. Climate change is real.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/opinion/climate-change-effects-countries.html
A Long Island couple say fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity starts at home.
www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/climate/climate-change-biodiversity.html
Wilder winds are altering currents. The sea is releasing carbon dioxide. Ice is melting from below.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/climate/antarctic-climate-change.html
The reef, which resembles roses is just under two miles long and is in “pristine” condition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/science/tahiti-coral-reef.html
He said no, and in a final rebuff, he gave it to a conservancy.
https://wapo
...a developer knocked down a perfectly good house, along with nearly every tree on the deeply treed lot.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/opinion/trees-environment.html
Records show that some people who are paid $1,000 a head by the government to give legally protected mustangs “good homes” are sending the horses to auction once they get the money.
ww.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/wild-horses-adoptions-slaughter.html
The impacts of global warming are appearing faster than expected, according to a major new scientific report. It could soon become much harder to cope.
www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/climate/climate-change-ipcc-un-report.html?
Enter a chicken farm and see how your cheap dinner strips the dignity of both the chicken and the farmer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/opinion/factory-farming-chicken.html
A new study finds that if fossil fuel emissions continue apace, the oceans could experience a mass extinction by 2300. There is still time to avoid it.
https://www.nytimes.com/OceanExtinctions
Trump’s wall hasn’t stopped people from crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, but it has wreaked havoc on the wildlife populations and natural systems of the borderlands.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/the-ecological-destruction-from-the-border-wall-in-american-scar
Biodiversity loss presents risks to human prosperity & well-being. There must be a comprehensive, worldwide effort to value, protect, & restore nature.
www.paulsoninstitute.org
“The decline of coral reefs is accelerating so quickly that we may live to see the end of them.”
www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/03/24/in-hot-water-tim-flannery-coral-reefs/
Braving tigers and other dangers, frontline workers face difficult working conditions as they try to keep the peace between humans and wildlife.
www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/asia/india-forest-rangers.html
American agriculture is ravaging the air, soil and water. But a powerful lobby has cleverly concealed its damage.
hwww.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/opinion/climate-sustainability-agriculture-lobby.html
An experimental video about a gorilla yields insight into the violence of motherhood.
www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/magazine/gorilla-milk-motherhood
In India, the large mammals see trash in village dumps as a buffet, but researchers found they are inadvertently consuming packaging and utensils.
www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/science/india-elephants-plastic
Now rescued, they climb trees and eat lasagna.
https://wapo.st/3AQjdvD
Trump to auction drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before the inauguration of Joe Biden, who has vowed to block oil exploration there.
www.bloomberg.com
The underwater skyscraper discovered in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef teems with sea life and had been overlooked in past surveys of the reef system.
www.nytimes.com
The warming at the top of the globe, a sign of climate change, is happening much faster than previously described.
www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/climate/arctic-global-warming
Twenty-four countries and the E.U. have agreed to create three marine parks, which would ban fishing and other industrial activity. But to become a reality, China must also agree. – By John F. Kerry
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/opinion
Efforts to limit global warming often focus on emissions from fossil fuels, but food is crucial, too, according to new research.
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05
Repairing the country’s extensive peatlands could help the world mitigate climate change. It could also make a fast-fashion billionaire even richer.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/05/headway/scotland-peatlands
These Items in Your Home Are Harming America’s Sea Animals
www.nytimes.com
The breakneck pace at which construction is continuing all but assures that the wall, whatever Mr. Biden decides to do, is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28
The border wall is set to cut through a butterfly sanctuary. Some of the U.S.'s highest concentrations of butterflies can be found at the 100-acre center.
www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/border-wall-set-to-cut-through-butterfly-center/
Scientists solve mystery of mass coho salmon deaths. The killer? A chemical from car tires.
www.latimes.com
In an unusual experiment, a team of locals rushed in protect the Mexican reef against hurricanes and repair the devastated corals, piece by piece.
www.nytimes.com
Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another?
www.nytimes.com
Two new reports highlight how badly countries have been missing their biodiversity targets
www.economist.com
Today the people of the Amazon are living through the most extreme versions of our planet’s most urgent problems.
www.nytimes.com/interactive
The world is losing its mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, and with them, the security of ecosystems that have supported humanity since it first emerged.
www.bloombergquint.com
“I don’t have any faith that the N.I.H. is using taxpayer resources wisely for the humane treatment of these chimps.”
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/science/lab-chimps-experiments
As animals get to market DNA tests show an increase in the number of animals with positive tests for some coronaviruses from the time they are trapped until they arrive on someone’s dinner plate.
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/science/coronavirus-rats-vietnam.html
Trump ’s plan to drill off the Atlantic Coast is on the brink of collapse; a court development Thursday blocked the first steps to offshore oil and gas exploration.
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/01/offshore-drilling-atlantic/
In secretly recorded meetings, executives with the Pebble Mine project said the operation could run nine times longer than outlined in their permit filings.
www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/climate/pebble-mine-alaska
President Trump on Wednesday unilaterally weakened one of the nation’s bedrock conservation laws, the National Environmental Policy Act.
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/climate/trump-environment
The move reverses an Obama-era ban on hunting methods like baiting bears with doughnuts and shooting swimming caribou.
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/climate/trump-bear-hunting
More than just a national issue, the graphic killing in Belize seemed indicative of a rise in jaguar poaching across the species’ range, from Mexico to Argentina.
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11
Last Saturday, The remote Siberian town of Verkhoyansk claimed a new record: the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic: 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit—the same temperature recorded that day in Las Vegas.
www.newyorker.com
Huge numbers of migratory birds are dropping dead around New Mexico as scientists scramble to determine what is triggering one of the Southwest’s largest bird die-offs in recent memory.
www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/dead-birds-new-mexico-colorado
The idea of rewilding jaguars grew out of a project of Kristine and Douglas Tompkins, who ran the outdoor equipment and clothing companies Patagonia and the North Face before turning full time to environmental causes.
www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/world/americas/Jaguars-argentina-ibera
This year is raising the unsettling possibility that fire seasons that begin much earlier than average and end later — and affect delicate Arctic ecosystems — could soon be the new normal.
www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/14/record-arctic-fires
Jonathan Slaght – one of the world’s only experts on the massive, salmon-eating, frog-devouring Blakiston’s fish owl
www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2016/mar/03/owl-blakistons-fish-russia-tigers-forest
By century’s end, polar bears worldwide could become nearly extinct as a result of shrinking sea ice in the Arctic if climate change continues unabated, scientists said.
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/climate/polar-bear-extinction
The Trump administration finalized its plan to open about nine million acres of the pristine woodlands of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and road construction.
httwww.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/climate/tongass-logging.html
If you care about the working poor, about racial justice, and about climate change, you have to stop eating animals.
www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/coronavirus-meat-vegetarianism.html
Some environmental groups are pushing to end the wildlife trade, arguing doing so could help prevent future pandemics.
www.thehill.com/two-green-groups-call-for-end-to-wildlife-trade-to-prevent-next
Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced Thursday that she would be co-sponsoring Sen. Cory Booker's bill to phase out large-scale factory farming by 2040.
www.newsweek.com/elizabeth-warren-cory-booker-join-forces-bill-ban-most-factory-farming-
Four poachers were arrested this week in connection with the killing of a rare silverback gorilla in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/world/africa/rafiki-silverback-gorilla-poachers
Homeowners use up 10 times more pesticide per acre than farmers do. But we can change what we do in our own yards.
www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/opinion/lawn-pesticides-insect-extinction
Some conservationists see a chance to do lasting damage to criminal networks in the wake of the pandemic, but poaching may also rise.
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/science/coronavirus-disrupts-illegal-wildlife-trafficking-for-now.html
The conditions that lead to the emergence of new infectious diseases are the same ones that inflict horrific harms on animals.
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/animal-cruelty-coronavirus.html
The coronavirus isn’t just a public-health crisis. It’s an ecological one.
www.newyorker.com
The ban covers only land animals. It punishes consumers but does not tackle corrupt ties among government officials, corporate interests and “breeders” who use permits as a cover for illegal trade
www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-04-02/why-china-wildlife-ban-not-enough-stop-coronavirus-outbreak
Two months before the novel coronavirus began, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists.
www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus
The conditions that lead to the emergence of new infectious diseases are the same ones that inflict horrific harms on animals.
www.nytimes.com
A Trump Policy ‘Clarification’ All but Ends Punishment for Bird Deaths
www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/climate/trump-bird-deaths
Proposed regulation would codify a legal opinion which declares the 'incidental' killing of birds during the course of business is no longer punishable.
www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/climate/trump-bird-deaths.html
“Something’s going on in early spring,” a professor said, and researchers are trying to solve the mystery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/science/monarch-butterfly.html
The Agriculture Department gave its final approval to the first of three rules that will ultimately cut more than three million from the food stamp rolls.
www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/food-stamps.html
An Australia in flames tries to cope with an ‘animal apocalypse.’ Could California be next?
www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-14/australia-fires
Habitat loss and pesticides are threatening firefly populations, a new study has found. It also cited a problem unique to glowing bugs: light pollution.
www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/fireflies-mating-light-pollution.html
An alarming number of humpbacks are getting entangled in fishing gear that cut into their flesh and often led to death.
www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-27/crab-fishing-whale-entanglement-study
“They’re affecting the ecosystem in ways we’re not aware of,” Dr. Deheyn said.
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/science/microfibers-plastics-ocean-biology.html
Court decision leaves in place vital protections for the nation’s oceans, rivers, lakes
https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2020/decision-on-supreme-court-clean-water-case
Jair Bolsonaro is moving aggressively to open up the Amazon rainforest to commercial development, posing an existential threat to the tribes living there.
hwww.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-amazon
Grizzly's main food source, salmon, is at an all time low in the area. Fishermen are calling this the worst salmon season in nearly 50 years.
www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/americas/emaciated-grizzly-bears
To survive global warming, Mojave Desert birds will need a lot more water — and they probably won't get it
www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-04/global-warming-mojave-desert-birds-water\
A scientific review of 52 studies recently concluded that humans on average consume a credit card’s worth of microplastic each week.
latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/california-microplastics-ocean-study
Climate change is severely straining the world’s oceans, creating profound risks for coastal cities and food supplies, a U.N. report finds.
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/climate/climate-change-oceans-united-nations.html
Warming waters and a series of dams are making the grueling migration of the Chinook salmon even more deadly — and threatening dozens of other species.
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/science/chinook-salmon-columbia.html
Countries agreed to rein in emissions in an effort to avert climate catastrophes. They've failed, according to the latest United Nations report.
www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-carbon.html
The skies are emptying out. The number of birds in the United States and Canada has fallen by 29 percent since 1970, scientists reported on Thursday. There are 2.9 billion fewer birds taking wing now than there were 50 years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/opinion/crisis-birds-north-america.html NT
During her girlhood, Tarzan was her role model. When she realized how chimpanzee habitats were being destroyed, she turned into a crusader. At 85, she’s still preaching.
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/business/jane-goodall-corner-office.html
The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win We have the tools. Now we are building the political power.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/opinion/al-gore-climate-change.html?searchResultPosition=1 NT
Trees could reduce carbon in the atmosphere to levels not seen in nearly 100 years
www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-07-04/
If the proposal is adopted, the government would no longer require oil and gas companies to inspect for and repair methane leaks from wells and pipelines.
www.nytimes.com/2019/08
In the Santa Barbara Channel, an underwater sound system tries to keep whales and ships apart
www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-14
The Trump administration announced far-reaching revisions to the Endangered Species Act, which was first enacted in 1973.
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/climate/endangered-species-act-changes.html
Indonesia has promised to stop clearing jungle for plantations. So why are endangered apes still on the front lines of the conservation battle?
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/world/asia/orangutan-indonesia-palm-oil.html
The Trump administration is attempting to eliminate public voice from the management of national forests. We must speak up.
www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/opinion/forest-service-trump.html
The original moon shoot inspired billions. Calling climate action a moon shot isn’t a perfect parallel — but maybe we should try it anyway.
www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/climate/moon-shot-climate-change.html
The North Atlantic right whales all were found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence recently, dealing a setback to the shrinking population.
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/science/right-whale-death-endangered-species.html
New data leave little doubt that the illegal ivory trade has reached the country, scientists say.
www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/science/elephants-poaching-botswana.html
Where the United States entombed waste from nuclear testing almost four decades ago, contamination is spreading from the site’s tainted groundwater into the ocean and the food chain.
www.latimes.com/science/environment/la-me-marshall-islands-dome-is-leaking-radiation-20190528-story.html
Captive wild animal encounters are hugely popular, thanks partly to social media. But our investigation shows many creatures lead dismal lives.
www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/06/global-wildlife-tourism
Happy, age 44, lives alone at the Bronx Zoo, separated from the zoo’s two other elephants for her protection.
www.nytimes.com/the-bronx-zoos-loneliest-elephant\
Give the Bronx Zoo’s pachyderm freedom. Soon the Bronx County Supreme Court will have the opportunity to consider the rights of a species loved and respected around the world for the extraordinary beings they are: elephants.
htwww.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-what-happy-the-elephant-deserves
Experience our planet's natural beauty and examine how climate change impacts all living creatures in this ambitious documentary of spectacular scope.
www.ourplanet.com/en/
“One Planet” appeals to the sense of wonder as viscerally as any of its predecessors, but to a purpose. Here is this beautiful, rare thing, each episode says. It didn’t used to be rare! But it is now. And here is how we’re responsible. And here is a tangible thing we might do to fix it. The arc of each installment runs from beauty to loss to a concrete, hopeful example of a battered ecosystem that’s recovered.
www.nytimes.com/arts/television/our-planet-netflix-review.html
A dire United Nations report, based on thousands of scientific studies, paints an urgent picture of biodiversity loss and finds that climate change is amplifying the danger to humanity.
www.nytimes.com/climate/biodiversity-extinction-united-nations.html
A proposed Alaskan mine threatens the planet’s largest spawning ground for sockeye salmon and lays bare Trump's gaslighting of American sportsmen.
www.nytimes.com/opinion/pebble-mine-alaska-trump.html
In his free time, Ivan Valencia documents animals rescued from traffickers to champion these creatures and expose the industry.
www.nytimes.com/lens/trafficked-animals-colombia.html
Scientists once ridiculed the idea of a living planet. Not anymore. By Ferris Jabr Every year the nearly 400 billion trees in the Amazon rain forest and all the creatures that depend on them are drenched in seven feet of rain — four times the annual rainfall in London. This deluge is partly due to geographical serendipity.
www.nytimes.com/opinion/sunday/amazon-earth-rain-forest-environment.html
On Rennell, an impoverished Pacific island, mining had already scarred the land. Now an oil spill has polluted the water and threatens a World Heritage site.
www.nytimes.com/world/asia/oil-spill-rennell-mining-solomons.html
Time may be running out for California’s most infamous fish. Despite a decades-long rescue effort, the tiny delta smelt appears closer than ever to vanishing from its only natural home, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Now, some worry it won’t be long before the only place the once-abundant species exists is within the confines of an artificial tank.
enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx
Global warming has caused such extensive damage to the Great Barrier Reef that scientists say its coral may never recover. According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, baby coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef have declined by 89% due to mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017.
www.cbsnews.com/news/great-barrier-reef-dying-climate-change-caused-decrease-in-new-coral-study-says/
Federal wildlife officials are proposing to strip endangered species protections from the gray wolf populations in the Lower 48 states, citing significant increases in their numbers across much of the nation. The decision, announced on Wednesday by David Bernhardt, the acting secretary of the Interior Department, is likely to set off another round of court battles.
https://www.nytimes.com/science/gray-wolf-protection.html
The 18-wheeler’s driver listlessly stared ahead as about 60 animal rights activists, who had silently amassed across from the huge slaughterhouse, swarmed his double-decker livestock trailer. Baby boomers and millennials, black-clad anarchists and Patagonia-sporting Westsiders pushed water bottles through the trailer’s grates to the startled hogs. People with pump-action sprayers splashed the upper deck. Two men lighted everyone with floodlights as others recorded the action, took photos or offered gentle massages to doomed 250-pound Yorkshires.
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article
National Butterfly Center employees are watching in horror as their 100-acre butterfly sanctuary in Mission, Texas, faces immediate seizure by the federal government for the erection of Trump’s “beautiful” border wall.
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion-rsn-crushing-blow-to-butterflies-as-border-wall-construction-starts-at-sanctuary
Over the last week, Marianna Treviño Wright has watched work crews drive through her butterfly sanctuary in Texas to a nearby site where brush is being cleared for a planned six-mile stretch of border wall. Homeland Security has planned to build an 18-foot-tall steel and concrete barrier across the National Butterfly Center, cutting it in half. Those plans were blocked, at least for now, in the spending bill that Congress passed and President Trump signed Friday, which specifically bars construction at the 100-acre site.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-border-waive
Despite reforms, the territory is a linchpin in the global traffic in illegal animal parts.
https://www.nytimes.com/science/hong-kong-wildlife-trafficking.html
Officials in Hong Kong said on Friday that they had intercepted a shipment of nine tons of scales from pangolins, the largest seizure the city has ever made of products from one of the most frequently trafficked mammals in the world. A thousand elephant tusks were in the same shipment, officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com//world/asia/pangolin-smuggling-hong-kong.html
The Thwaites Glacier on Antarctica’s western coast has long been considered one of the most unstable on the continent. Now, scientists are worried about the discovery of an enormous underwater cavity that will probably speed up the glacier’s decay.
www.nytimes.com/climate/thwaites-glacier-antarctica-cavity.html
Earth’s oceans had their warmest year on record in 2018, a stark indication of the enormous amount of heat being absorbed by the sea as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, scientists reported Wednesday. The analysis by an international team of scientists confirms that the oceans are heating up much faster than previously recognized and that the pace of warming has accelerated sharply since the 1990s.
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity
As the fight continues over President Trump’s demand to extend the border wall between the United States and Mexico, one thing is clear: Whatever the wall’s effect on immigration might be, it would have an impact on the environment of the borderlands.
www.nytimes.com/climate/border-wall-wildlife.html
In “Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future,” Joel Wainwright, a professor of geography at Ohio State University, and Geoff Mann, the director of the Center for Global Political Economy at Simon Fraser University, consider how to approach a problem of ... international dimensions.
www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-governments-react-to-climate-change-an-interview
What should we eat? Depends on who is eating. That’s one of the principal conclusions of a comprehensive report that sets out targets on how to feed the world in a way that’s good for human health and the health of the planet. Its lightning-rod recommendation is around beef and lamb, the two forms of livestock that require enormous amounts of land and water and produce heaps of methane.
www.nytimes.com/climate/meat-environment-climate-change.html
Greenland’s enormous ice sheet is melting at such an accelerated rate that it may have reached a “tipping point” and could become a major factor in sea-level rise around the world within two decades, scientists said in a study published on Monday.
www.nytimes.com/climate/greenland-ice.html
They arrive in California each winter, an undulating ribbon of orange and black. There, migrating western monarch butterflies nestle among the state’s coastal forests, traveling from as far away as Idaho and Utah only to return home in the spring.
www.nytimes.com/science/monarch-butterfly-california.html
Scientists say the world’s oceans are warming far more quickly than previously thought, a finding with dire implications for climate change because almost all the excess heat absorbed by the planet ends up stored in their waters.
www.nytimes.com/climate/ocean-warming-climate-change.html
In just two years, President Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century. Mr. Trump enthusiastically promotes the changes as creating jobs, freeing business from the shackles of government and helping the economy grow.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/politics/donald-trump-environmental-regulation
Greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are growing at an accelerating pace this year, researchers said Wednesday, putting the world on track to face some of the most severe consequences of global warming sooner than expected.
www.nytimes.com//climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions
Persistent warming in the Arctic is pushing the region into “uncharted territory” and increasingly affecting the continental United States, scientists said Tuesday. The Arctic has been warmer over the last five years than at any time since records began in 1900, the report found, and the region is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet.
www.nytimes.com/climate/arctic-warming
For decades, opposition to drilling has left the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits. Now the Trump administration is hurriedly clearing the way for oil exploration.
www.nytimes.com/oil-drilling-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge.html
In the video, Ms. Gill zoomed in on a six-foot-long, stiff, glistening dolphin carcass, its mouth frozen into a toothy smile. The creature was one of more than 20 dead bottlenose dolphins that had washed up on local beaches in recent days.
www.nytimes.com/business/media/climate-change-news-media-red-tide-florida.html
The underwater forests — huge, sprawling tangles of brown seaweed — are in many ways just as important to the oceans as trees are to the land. Like trees, they absorb carbon emissions and they provide critical habitat and food for a wide range of species. But when climate change helped trigger a 60-fold explosion of purple urchins off Northern California’s coast, the urchins went on a feeding frenzy and the kelp was devoured.
www.nytimes.com/climate/kelp-climate-change-california.html
In a pilot study with a small sample size, researchers looked for microplastics in stool samples of eight people from Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Austria. To their surprise, every single sample tested positive for the presence of a variety of microplastics.
www.nytimes.com/health/microplastics-human-stool.html
The Trump administration has rescinded an Obama-era ban on the use of pesticides linked to declining bee populations and the cultivation of genetically modified crops in dozens of national wildlife refuges where farming is permitted.
www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildlife-pesticides/trump-administration-lifts-gmo-crop-ban-for-u-s-wildlife-refuges
Authorities keep arresting people said to be bosses of wildlife trafficking, but that isn’t making a dent in the problem.
www.nytimes.com/science/poaching-conservation-rhino-selephants.html
An estimated 7,000 to 14,000 lions are held in captivity and bred in South Africa. Increasingly, the animals are slaughtered for their bones and other body parts, many of which are sold in Asia for their purported — and scientifically discredited — health benefits.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-ongoing-disgrace-of-south-africas-captive-bred-lion-trade
Rising sea levels are bringing more nest-flooding tides that threaten to push the birds that breed in coastal marshes along the Atlantic Coast to extinction.
www.nytimes.com/science/saltmarsh-sparrow-extinction.html
The Eastern monarch is in trouble, and this is the time to help (no science degree needed).
www.nytimes.com/opinion/to-save-monarch-butterfly-plant-milkweed-now.html
Eight critically endangered black rhinos are dead in Kenya following an attempt to move them from the capital to a national park hundreds of miles away, the government said Friday, calling the toll "unprecedented" in more than a decade of such transfers.
www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-rhinos-
Tiffany Rose is a quiet force who has created a constellation of do-gooders. Each week she leads a small group of acolytes to skid row, where they give out food and clothing.
https://enewspaper.latimes.com
Hundreds of turtles, dolphins and whales become stranded every year on Thailand’s beaches after plastic impedes their mobility or clogs their insides. Some are lifeless on arrival, biologists say, and their deaths barely register with the public.
www.nytimes.com/world/asia/thailand-whale-plastics-pollution.html
This year's list includes a rare great ape, a hitchhiking beetle, an extinct omnivorous marsupial lion and many species that are critically ...
www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-new-species-top-10-20180523-htmlstory.html
Conservation superstar Jane Goodall talked about her early life and the need to protect other species and our environment and ecosystems.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DUBaWzVziA&feature=youtu.be
A worldwide catastrophe is underway among an extraordinary group of birds — the marathon migrants we know as shorebirds. Numbers of some species are falling so quickly that many biologists fear an imminent planet-wide wave of extinctions.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/shorebirds-extinction-climate-change.html
Something ominous was happening in the turquoise waters of Sepetiba Bay, a booming port outside Rio de Janeiro. Beginning late last year, fishermen were coming across the scarred and emaciated carcasses of dolphins, sometimes five a day, bobbing up to the surface.
www.nytimes.com/world/americas/brazil-dolphins-sepetiba-bay.html
In the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, hundreds of miles from any major city, plastic bottles, children’s toys, broken electronics, abandoned fishing nets and millions more fragments of debris are floating in the water — at least 87,000 tons’ worth, researchers said Thursday.
www.nytimes.com/climate/great-pacific-garbage-patch.html
On his first day as Secretary of the Interior, last March, Ryan Zinke rode through downtown Washington, D.C., on a roan named Tonto. When the Secretary is working at the department’s main office, a staff member climbs up to the roof of the building and hoists a special flag.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/the-damage-done-by-trumps-department-of-the-interior
How Myanmar forces burned, looted and killed in a remote village On Sept. 2, Buddhist villagers and Myanmar troops killed 10 Rohingya men in Myanmar's restive Rakhine state. Reuters uncovered the massacre and has pieced together how it unfolded. During the reporting of this article, two Reuters journalists were arrested by Myanmar police.
www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rakhine-events/
Around half of all orangutans living on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo — nearly 150,000 in all — vanished during a recent 16-year period. The causes included logging, land clearance for agriculture and mining that destroyed their habitats, according to a study in Current Biology released on Thursday.
www.nytimes.com/science/orangutans-endangered-species.html
The Asian nation is a hot spot of biological diversity, but local and international conservation groups are struggling to halt what amounts to animal genocide.
https://www.nytimes.com/travel/vietnam-wildlife-species-ecotravel-tourism.html
Thomas Edison once said, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” The sun keeps rising and the costs keep falling! ...[T]he cost to produce one megawatt-hour of solar fell an incredible 86 percent between 2009 and 2017... solar in 2017 was less than half the price of coal the same year.
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/fact-solar-energy-keeps-getting-more-affordable
After years of effort, scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service had a moment of celebration as they wrapped up a comprehensive analysis of the threat that three widely used pesticides present to hundreds of endangered species, like the kit fox and the seaside sparrow.
READ MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/politics/endangered-species-david-bernhardt.html
Less than two dozen of the tiny porpoises remain in the wild. But there’s plenty the government can do to avert its extinction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/opinion/mexico-porpoise-extinction.html
A beached whale found in the Philippines on Saturday died with 88 pounds of plastic trash inside its body, an unusually large amount even by the grim standards of what is a common threat to marine wildlife.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/asia/whale-plastics-philippines.html
An endangered orangutan who rescue workers named Hope was found blinded and near death last week on an oil palm plantation in Indonesia after she was stabbed and shot 74 times by an air rifle, according to the Orangutan Information Centre, a conservation group. Her malnourished month-old baby was by her side, it said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/asia/orangutan-shot-gun.html
The Northern Rockies are surely near the top of the list of the world’s most spectacular landscapes. Its ranges contain one of the last great expanses of biodiversity left in the continental United States, including most of the species that were there when Lewis and Clark first passed through in 1805 on their journey of discovery.
https://www.nytimes.com/opinion/northern-rockies-carole-king.html
A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”
https://www.nytimes.com/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html
Over decades, armed conflict has reduced animal populations in Africa more than any other factor, according to new research.
https://www.nytimes./science/africa-war-animals-conservation.html