Loose Feathers #785

Song Sparrow / my photo

Birds and birding news

• Whooping Cranes that breed in the boreal forest and winter in Texas have benefited from conservation work.
• A pigeon found in Australia was wearing a fake leg band that made it appear to be a racing pigeon from the US.
• Gentoo Penguins benefit from marine protected areas around their breeding colonies.
• A vagrant Rufous Hummingbird was banded recently in Virginia.
  

Science and nature blogging

• On The Wing Photography: Mallard Hen On Slippery Ice
• 10,000 Birds: A Slacker's Guide to Bird Photography (Part Two)
• Project SNOWstorm: A Whole Lotta News  
• Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership: The Eagle Has Landed
  

Biodiversity and conservation

• Two beetles have been identified as biocontrols for the invasive Parthenium weeds.
• Gray whales on the US West Coast have continued their precipitous decline, falling from 27,000 migrating whales to 21,000 since 1996.
• Jaguars are returning to some parts of Argentina where they had been extirpated.
  

Climate change and environmental politics

• This week Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, and the new administration will have new environmental priorities. Initial actions include rejoining the Paris agreement, stopping border wall construction, cancelling the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, suspending new fossil fuel leases in the Arctic NWR and elsewhere, and instructing agencies to calculate the social cost of carbon and use that figure in cost-benefit analyses. Putting teeth back into the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act ought to be on the agenda as well. Another set of orders on climate policy will be issued next week.
• The new administration is staffed with climate experts, both in a new White House climate office and in many of the Cabinet-level departments. 
• There may be more public support for climate action than there was under Obama.
  
• The new administration will have a difficult time repairing the damage from the Trump administration's approach to public lands policy.
  
• Climate scientists and activists want people to stop focusing on new heat records and start thinking of the current year as being the coolest of the next century.
  
• Western wildfires worsen air quality, and particulate matter released by the fires harms people's health.
• The EU may impose a carbon tax on products from countries that are not reducing their carbon emissions. The point is to keep European companies from relocating to areas with fewer regulations.