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

An investigator went under cover and brought back disturbing video from a farm growing those famous birds.
www.nytimes.com
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
We think of scavengers as gross—but they clean up nature’s messes, and they need saving.
https://id.condenast.com
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
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/
“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/
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/
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
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
Politics of predators poised to revive practices that virtually exterminated wolves from Montana.
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/us/montana-wolves-grizzlies-hunting
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
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
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/
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
These Items in Your Home Are Harming America’s Sea Animals
www.nytimes.com
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
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
An experimental video about a gorilla yields insight into the violence of motherhood.
www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/magazine/gorilla-milk-motherhood
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
Endangered North Atlantic right whales are approaching extinction.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov
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
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
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
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-
Activists in Berkeley, which has no factory farms, hope other cities will follow suit – but not everyone is convinced
https://www.theguardian.com
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/
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
Her caretakers hope DNA testing may help return her to the wild with her family.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/science/nania-elephant
Now rescued, they climb trees and eat lasagna.
https://wapo.st/3AQjdvD
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
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
Scientists solve mystery of mass coho salmon deaths. The killer? A chemical from car tires.
www.latimes.com
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
...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
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
The collapse of biodiversity, the sum of all things living on the planet.
www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/opinion/animal-extinction
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Scientists warn of ongoing global insect abundance losses and say we lack a full understanding of invertebrate extinction causes and synergies.
news.mongabay.com
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
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
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
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
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
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
Biodiversity loss presents risks to human prosperity & well-being. There must be a comprehensive, worldwide effort to value, protect, & restore nature.
www.paulsoninstitute.org
Environmental destruction and violence threaten one of the world’s most extraordinary insect migrations.
www.newyorker.com/magazine
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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\
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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-
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
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
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
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