Biodiversity

"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."

"The Trump administration is planning on making more acres of public land available for energy and mineral development in eight Western states, a move worrying environmentalists watching for the declining population of greater sage-grouse."

"On an isolated stretch of Texas coastline, conservation groups have acquired more than 3,000 acres of nearly pristine prairie to preserve as habitat for endangered whooping cranes, one of the rarest birds in North America."

"The Senate may vote on an amendment to spending legislation that critics say could lead to public lands sales."

"The House-passed National Defense Authorization Act would spur an investigation of whether the U.S. military bioengineered Lyme disease."

"For ecologists, the Covid-19 pandemic has presented a remarkable natural experiment in what can happen to wild animals when humans stay home."

"Costa Rica’s fuel subsidies are funding widespread poaching and overfishing in supposedly protected waters."

"Ice blocks drift past Tristen Pattee’s boat as he scans the banks of Northwest Alaska’s Kobuk River for caribou. His great uncle Ernest steadies a rifle on his lap. It’s the last day of September, and by every measure of history and memory, thousands should have crossed by now. But the tundra is empty, save for the mountains looming on the horizon — the Gates of the Arctic National Park."

"A federal lawsuit filed Thursday challenges an oil company’s new permit to explore for oil in a remote region of the Arctic in Alaska, arguing that such activity threatens the tundra’s ecosystem and the caribou herds that Native communities rely on for sustenance."