Biodiversity

"The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a request by BP, Shell and Hilcorp oil companies to block the start of a state court lawsuit filed by Cameron Parish seeking as much as $7 billion in compensation for coastal erosion damages."

"Interstate fishing regulators are limiting the harvest of a primordial species of invertebrate to try to help rebuild its population and aid a threatened species of bird."

"The two lappet-faced vultures had been together for just a few months, yet the massive birds, with their watchful, featherless gargoyle faces and their dark mottled body plumage so plush it looks like fur, had already mastered the avian version of monkey-see-monkey-do."

"Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon dropped by 22.3% in the 12 months through July, government data showed on Thursday, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made good on a pledge to rein in the destruction that happened under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro."

"Ever looked up at the clouds and wondered where they came from? That's exactly what atmospheric researcher Lubna Dada studies at the Paul Scherrer Institute. She is part of an international project called CLOUD, wherein she and fellow atmospheric scientists study how clouds form and the role they play in the climate."

"Cheetahs are usually daytime hunters, but the speedy big cats will shift their activity toward dawn and dusk hours during warmer weather, a new study finds. Unfortunately for endangered cheetahs, that sets them up for more potential conflicts with mostly nocturnal competing predators such as lions and leopards, say the authors of research published Wednesday ... ."

"This is what happens when an apex predator collides with an ecosystem engineer."

"Beavers are influential. By cutting trees and damming streams, these rodents change the world around them, raising water levels and creating habitats for diverse plants, insects, fish and more. They are some of the world’s best-known ecosystem engineers, a term for species that produce outsize effects on their environments.

"Congress appears unlikely to pass a new farm bill by the end of this year amid standoffs over Republicans’ push to extend subsidies to three specific Southern crops — at the potential cost of billions in both food aid and popular farm conservation programs."

"In her new book, Endangered Eating, Sarah Lohman chronicles disappearing foods – and why they need protecting".

"The American buff goose. Amish deer tongue lettuce. The Nancy Hall sweet potato. The mulefoot hog. When food historian Sarah Lohman stumbled on these fantastical-sounding ingredients in a database of vanishing foods called the Ark of Taste, she set off on a journey across the United States to discover more ingredients and traditions that had been abandoned in the annals of history.