Biodiversity

"In a new letter to U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is warning that  Jeffrey Clark’s role as “Acting Administrator” of the Office of information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) and actions he has taken could be in legal jeopardy."

"Corn dominates U.S. farmland and fuels the ethanol industry. But the fertilizer it relies on drives emissions and fouls drinking water."

"On a jagged coastline in Central California, brown pelicans gather on rock promontories, packed in like edgy commuters as they take flight to feed on a vast school of fish just offshore. The water churns in whitecaps as the big-billed birds plunge beneath the surface in search of northern anchovies, Pacific sardines and mackerel."

"The revised watershed agreement extends pollution-reduction targets and bets on voluntary measures to achieve cleanup goals that have remained elusive for decades."

"Congressional lawmakers on Thursday voted to repeal a Biden-era policy that limited the amount of land in an Alaska wildlife refuge that could be leased for oil and gas development. The U.S. Senate voted 49-45 to approve a resolution that revokes the Interior Department's 2024 rule governing energy development on the 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

"How far back in evolutionary history does kissing go? Through phylogenetic analysis, an international team of scientists found that kissing was likely present in the ancestor of all apes – which lived 21 million years ago."

"Visiting a freshly logged forest in western Oregon earlier this fall, retired federal wildlife surveyor Erich Reeder stepped over mangled tree roots and dead limbs scattered across a denuded slope that was once an evergreen forest. He squatted over a foot-tall Douglas fir stump to count its rings: 120 years old."

"Whether people realize it or not, traces of the global wildlife trade are ubiquitous, from expensive reptile-skin boots in department stores to the colorful fish swimming around a tank in your dentist’s office."

"Governments at a wildlife trade conference have adopted greater protections for over 70 species of sharks and rays amid concerns that overfishing is driving some to the brink of extinction."