Biodiversity

"Surrounded by fires, parched by drought, and shut down by the pandemic – residents of California’s scenic South Lake Tahoe thought they’d endured everything. That was until this week, when the US Forest Service announced it was closing several popular sites after discovering bubonic plague in the chipmunk population."

"This summer's low-oxygen dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico along the Louisiana coast covered 6,334 square miles - 10 times the size of Lake Pontchartrain and well above the average size for the past five years, researchers said Tuesday."

"The Interior Department today said it will restart an environmental review of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s oil and gas program, following its determination earlier this year that the Trump administration’s assessment was flawed."

"Washington's endangered orca whales received new habitat protections from the federal government on Friday. The National Marine Fisheries Service finalized rules to expand the orca's critical habitat from the Canadian border all the way down to Point Sur in California, adding 15,910 square miles of foraging areas, river mouths and migratory pathways."

"The Biden administration laid out plans today [Friday] for scrapping and replacing a contentious Trump-era Clean Water Act rule that pulled back federal protections for millions of streams and wetlands."

"Gulf Coast researchers are raising alarms about a $1.4 billion coastal restoration project’s potential to kill and injure bottlenose dolphins. Now, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries employee whose job it was to count dolphin deaths in the state says she was fired in 2019 because her work reaffirmed the potential of the project to devastate a dolphin population."

"This week, scientists unveiled a new standard for assessing the status of plant and animal species. Instead of focusing on decline, this new approach aims to measure recovery."

"In Wisconsin, hunters are allowed to use hound dogs to kill wolves. In the midst of a politically volatile context, activists are now filming the hunts to raise the alarm".

"A hydrophone reveals a vital Antarctic feeding and breeding ground for the world’s second-largest whale."