"The House passed a final spending bill on January 8 with deep cuts to the Department of the Interior. While the bill holds steady the budget for the National Park Service, it cuts the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s listing budget by 44 percent, bringing it to 2004 levels. The legislation will now head to the Senate where it is expected to pass."
"When the chills, body shivers, and pounding headache first hijacked my system, I was 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, midway through a 14-hour flight to Manila in the Philippines."
"Every animal with a brain needs sleep — and even a few without a brain do, too. Humans sleep, birds sleep, whales sleep and even jellyfish sleep."
"A court invoked Ecuador’s rights of nature laws in halting a highway project to protect the Jambato harlequin toad, requiring the government to prove construction won’t drive the species to extinction."
"Pacific Grove is known as ‘Butterfly Town USA’ for its role as an overwintering spot. As the insect’s population plummets, residents are coming to its rescue"
Seattle’s heavily polluted Duwamish River is no place to catch fish — except for salmon, which pass quickly through these troubled waters on their way from the sea to their freshwater spawning grounds. With fishing pole in hand, environmental journalist Alex Brown joins jostling crowds of industrial-zone anglers and catches a firsthand view of a spectacle that is both anomalous and awe-inspiring.
"Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere."
"Will lawmakers put a man who has argued that “we do not even need” the vast majority of federal lands in charge of 250 million acres of them?"
"Preventing illegal road building could help protect tropical forests. New research tries to identify which areas are most at risk."
"The rule banning new roads in some forests protects prime bear habitat and was part of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s justification for its failed attempt to delist grizzlies in 2017."
