"On a recent afternoon, deep in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and less than an hour’s drive from Shenandoah National Park, a tricolored bat was moving its mouth rapidly, as if it was trying to chew something. In fact, it was echolocating, using its mouth to shape and direct pulses of ultrasonic sound as a way to survey its surroundings."
"In a map update posted last month to U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s website, the agency charted a major expansion of the border wall. It included terrain belonging to one of America’s most iconic wild areas, Big Bend National Park, an 800,000-acre desert landscape that includes the entire Chisos mountain range and more than 100 miles of the Rio Grande."
"Defenders of Wildlife released its 2025 Conservation Report Card for the 119th Congress, measuring members’ commitment to upholding federal laws that protect wildlife conservation during its first session."
"A coalition of organizations has again sued the Trump administration for its 'giveaway' of federal lands in Alaska for industrial purposes. At issue are the steps the administration has taken to allow a 211-mile-long road across a pristine stretch of the state, passing through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and crossing the Kobuk Wild River, to access the site of a proposed copper mine."
"Florida conservation groups say they plan to sue after the federal government greenlit another development that threatens the habitat of the panther, the official state animal."
"The National Park Service has proposed a regulation that would defer to state regulations in managing wildlife in Alaska’s national preserves. It is similar to a 2020 regulation put forward by the first Trump administration, which removed bans on bear baiting, using artificial light to spotlight dens to kill black bears, taking wolves and coyotes during denning season, and more."
"Bristol Water said it wants to improve diverse wildlife at Blagdon Lake, a 440-acre reservoir and trout fishery in the Mendip Hills, Somerset. A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), the work includes restoring thinning hedgerows by laying trimmed base stems horizontally."
"When scientists recently analyzed hundreds of studies of ecosystems, they were surprised to see a marked slowing in the rate of species turnover. If new species don’t replace old ones, they say, ecosystems may have less flexibility to respond to habitat loss and climate change."
"Researchers led by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery have made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: that two charismatic marsupial species that had been thought extinct for 6,000 years are alive in rainforest in remote West Papua."
"High along the Southwind Nature Trail, the tallgrass prairie waves in all directions, a mix of present-day reality and historical mirage stretching to the horizon much as it did more than 150 years ago." "Today, the vast majority of what was an estimated 140 million to 170 million acres of tallgrass prairie is gone, plowed under by 19th century agricultural sprawl and the development that followed."
