The House Agriculture Committee passed H.R. 2, the 2018 Farm Bill, Wednesday on a party-line basis. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), includes dozens of poison-pill riders that would gut fundamental environmental safeguards. Most significantly it would completely exempt the use of pesticides from the Endangered Species Act, effectively dooming hundreds of endangered […]
A sperm whale found dead in southern Spain was killed after ingesting 64 pounds of mostly plastic garbage, a necropsy of the marine mammal recently revealed. The 6-ton, 33-foot-long juvenile male beached near a lighthouse in Cabo de Palos in the region of Murcia in February. Región de Murcia An examination of its digestive tract […]
By Michael T. Luongo The buzz about Detroit has been its resurgent development. Historic buildings are being renovated into bars and hotels as new stadiums rise along Woodward Avenue, the city’s central corridor. But there’s a literal buzz as well: Detroit is home to a healthy population of bees, both wild and domestic. A team […]
By John R. Platt April, goes the old saying, is the cruelest month, so perhaps it should be no surprise that one of the most anticipated books being published this month is about the infamous death-by-dentist of Cecil the lion. But that’s not all, and the rest isn’t necessarily cruel—April will also see the publication […]
In all the media attention gobbled by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt, it’s important to remember that Trump’s appointed Department of Interior (DOI) leader Ryan Zinke is also extremely dangerous for the environment. Before being chosen to head the DOI, Zinke was a Montana representative with a three percent environmental voting record […]
In response to a legal victory by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today gave Endangered Species Act protection to a freshwater mussel that lives in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. The yellow lance is threatened by pollution from agriculture, logging and urban development, as well as by climate change. […]
In defiance of international protests, Japanese whaling vessels returned to port with another 333 minke whales on Saturday after its months-long hunt in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in Antarctic waters. According to the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research, among the whales collected, 152 were male and 181 were female. About 60 percent of the […]
By Mikaela Weisse and Katie Fletcher This edition of Places to Watch examines forest clearing detected between Nov. 9, 2017, and Jan. 31, 2018 in Indonesian Papua, Cameroon and Brazil. Due to occasional cloud cover that can obscure satellite recognition, some loss may have occurred earlier. Oil Palm Plantation Encroaching on Primary Forest in Indonesian […]
The authors of the most in-depth biodiversity study in a decade warned that the loss of species and habitats is as great a risk to global flourishing as climate change, The Guardian reported Friday. The report, a compilation of four regional assessments on the status of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Americas, Asia and […]