"The Brazilian Amazon is hemorrhaging illegally traded wildlife according to a new report released Monday. Each year, thousands of silver-voiced saffron finches and other songbirds, along with rare macaws and parrots, are captured, trafficked and sold as pets. Some are auctioned as future contestants in songbird contests. Others are exported around the globe."
"Even for a pandemic, Main Street is quiet, maybe the quietest it's been during the decade of furious construction that built western North Dakota's Bakken oil fields into the second largest oil-producing region in the nation."
"The destruction of critically-important wetlands by politically-connected developers in Cambodia threatens to flood more than one million Phnom Penh residents, ruin the city’s wastewater system, force hundreds of families from their homes, and trigger environmental devastation, a new report has warned."
"The Trump administration on Thursday moved to streamline water rules on uranium mining, in a move environmentalists said allows the Environmental Protection Agency to give up authority on regulating water pollution."
"Both Republican and Democratic Ohio lawmakers are pushing to repeal the state’s nuclear bailout bill after this week’s release of a federal criminal complaint against House Speaker Larry Householder and others. Clean energy advocates say that would be a start, but more is needed to address eight years of lawmakers’ actions to slow the growth of renewables in the state."
"The Trump administration is working to transfer ownership of federal water infrastructure to California's Westlands Water District, the country's largest irrigation provider and a former lobbying client of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt."
"Insurer Zurich has decided not to renew cover for the Canadian government’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline, said a spokeswoman for the project, which is opposed by environmental campaigners and some indigenous groups."
"Climate change threatens to create turmoil in the financial markets, and the Federal Reserve and other regulators must act to avoid an economic disaster, according to a letter sent on Tuesday by a group of large investors."
"The messages, made public in a lawsuit, suggest the E.P.A. rescinded a requirement on methane at the behest of an executive just weeks after President Trump took office."
"WASHINGTON — Not long after President Trump’s inauguration, the head of a fossil fuels industry group requested a call with the president’s transition team. The subject: Barack Obama’s requirement that oil and gas companies begin collecting data on their releases of methane.
That outreach, by Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, appeared to quickly yield the desired results.
