Biodiversity

"The Trump administration’s decision to use the US Supreme Court’s unraveling of Chevron deference to delete the word “harm” from the Endangered Species Act is likely to expose the government to swift legal challenges seeking to restore environmental protections for endangered habitats."

"The world’s largest meat company is backing away from its climate and deforestation commitments after claiming for several years that reducing its greenhouse gas emissions was a key goal."

"President Donald Trump on Monday sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, undoing protections established by former presidents on public lands that are sacred among many Native Americans. Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that state officials want made available for development."

"A year before Greenwater Services got a $1.7 million contract to clean the algae-infected Reflecting Pool, it had received another no-bid government contract to deploy at the trash-plagued Tijuana River."

"Destroying an imperiled species’ nest or habitat is no longer illegal unless it’s intentional under the Trump administration’s rollback of the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act finalized Friday."

"‘Sea cures’ are not new but the idea that exposure to oceans, rivers and lakes can be medicine for the brain is gaining traction"

"Large concentrated hog farms that send manure contamination into local waterways not only impact human health but threaten the existence of more than a dozen endangered species, according to a new study."

"Deep-sea mining threatens to drive to extinction more than half of the snails and other mollusks that rely on hydrothermal vents, according to the latest update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the global scientific authority on the status of species."

"Plastic pollution and drug-resistant infections are usually regarded as separate global crises. But emerging research suggests links between them: Microplastic particles in the environment are colonized by bacteria, and those bacteria develop antibiotic resistance at an unprecedented rate."

"A homegrown catnip lotion has proven “just as effective as Deet” as a mosquito repellant in trials carried out in Uganda."