Birds and birding news
Science and nature blogging
Environment and biodiversity
- According to NOAA's data, 2016 was the warmest year on record, the third record-breaking year in a row. See more discussion at Category 6 and RealClimate.
- Environmental issues came up during several executive branch nominee hearings this week. Nominees to head Interior and the EPA expressed skepticism about the human role in climate change. The Interior nominee also seems likely to expand fossil fuel extraction on federal land. The Education nominee suggested that schools needed guns to fight bears even though bear spray and other nonlethal deterrents are more effective.
- Audubon emphasizes the need for an effective EPA, which probably will not be the case under Scott Pruitt's leadership.
- Meanwhile four senators (including two Democrats) have introduced a bill to remove federal protection for Gray Wolves in midwestern states. The wolf bill signals a broader assault on the Endangered Species Act, possibly including full repeal. The record of successful recoveries under the law shows that tampering with or repealing the law would be a mistake.
- A crack in the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica will force scientists to close a research station there during the Antarctic winter.
- A review of the current status of all primate species found that three-quarters of primates are declining and 60 percent are threatened with extinction.
- At national parks like Yellowstone, there is a fundamental tension between the wildness of the animals and how safe the setting seems to a causal visitor.
- Repair of trenches dug by the Malheur occupiers cost over $100,000 because the area is archeologically significant.
- Pollinator species, like larger animals, need habitat continuity, and a conservationist in Seattle has been trying to create a wildlife corridor for them.
- A new species of poison dart frog, Ameerega shihuemoy, was discovered in Amazonian slopes of Andes in southeastern Peru.
- Here is a gallery of all the sites Obama has protected during his presidency.
- The Atlantic killifish living in the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers seem to have evolved resistance to the toxins that permeate those waters.
- Core samples taken from New York's Pelham Bay marsh show the danger to the city from sea level rise.