Biodiversity

"More than 80 years ago, a beautiful butterfly called Xerces Blue that once fluttered among San Francisco’s coastal dunes went extinct as stately homes, museums and parks ate up its habitat, marking the first butterfly species in the United States to disappear due to human development."

"Earlier this spring, California dairy farmers noted a puzzling drop in milk production in Texas, New Mexico, Idaho, Ohio, Kansas and Michigan. Weeks later, news broke that several herds in these states, as well as North Carolina, had been diagnosed with avian influenza — the same strain that has devastated bird populations across the globe and shown a troubling ability to jump to mammals."

"Coral reefs around the world are experiencing global bleaching for the fourth time, top reef scientists declared Monday, a result of warming ocean waters amid human-caused climate change."

"Screechy, gangly bird gorges on invasive apple snails, helping wetlands and crawfish farms".

"Albania’s Vjosë River is known as Europe’s last wild river, and its pristine delta is a haven for migratory birds. As plans for luxury developments there — spearheaded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — move ahead, conservationists are sounding the alarm."

"Worldwide over the past 35 years, dams and land reclamation activities have converted 250,000 acres of estuary — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — to urban land or agricultural fields, with most land conversion and estuary loss in rapidly developing countries, a new study finds."

"They look a little like cockroaches and have bulging orange eyes, and trillions of them are about to erupt from the earth in much of the midwestern and eastern United States. The emergence of two groups of cicadas will assemble a chorus of the insects not seen in several hundred years, experts say."

"A prediction, several years in the making, came true on Monday when an alliance of nearly a dozen conservation groups filed suit against the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management, seeking to restore protections for gray wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming arguing that the  states’ aggressive hunting policies imperils the populations."

"When it was time to outline their vision for managing America’s federal lands under a future Republican presidency, pro-Donald Trump conservatives turned to a man who has spent his career advocating for those very lands to be pawned off to states and private interests."

"A total eclipse isn’t just a spectacle in the sky. When the moon consumes the sun on April 8, day will plunge into twilight, the temperature will drop — and nature will take notice."