"For millions of years, North America was home to a zoo of giants: mammoths and mastodons, camels and dire wolves, sloths the size of elephants and beavers as big as bears. And then, at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch about 12,000 years ago, most of them vanished."
The closest thing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has to a press policy is actually its scientific integrity policy. But as WatchDog Opinion writer Joseph Davis writes in the latest EJ TransitionWatch, the EPA’s scientific integrity policy is under direct attack by a powerful congressman. What’s behind the attack? And could the EPA’s science be under assault next?
Sea turtles are in decline across the globe, victims of coastal development, algal blooms and, perhaps cruelest of all, plastic pollution. Marine biologist Christine Figgener, in a new book part memoir and part field guide, recounts the less than glamorous but rewarding work to spare them extinction, from arduous field work to viral video epiphanies. BookShelf editor Tom Henry reviews “My Life With Sea Turtles.”
Might the incoming Trump administration attempt to blot out any data that undermines his environmental policies, especially around global warming? Many recall, for instance, the 2017 disappearing of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s informative climate change web pages. The new EJ TransitionWatch column explores the concern and offers a heartening assessment of the prospects of preserving these archives of essential information.
"Giraffe populations are declining at such an alarming rate — from habitat loss, poaching, urbanization and climate change-fueled drought — that US wildlife officials announced a proposal on Wednesday to help protect several of the species."
"Spear points, hammer stones and picks lost to history under layers of leaves, roots and rocks — it was the evidence Scott Ashcraft was looking for."
"North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is expected to implement President-elect Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” ethos on public lands and waters if confirmed to helm the massive Interior Department. But the self-styled CEO of North Dakota, who Trump revealed Thursday night he would nominate as Interior secretary, would have a role much broader than advancing drilling for oil."
"A federal court in D.C. has issued a ruling that curtails the White House’s ability to set government-wide rules pertaining to how environmental reviews can be conducted."
When Illinois downplayed the results of long-delayed PFAS testing in the state’s public water supply, Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne revisited a story he had first covered two decades before. His investigation uncovered dangerous practices threatening public health, won him accolades and moved the needle on state policy. How he went about it, in the new Inside Story Q&A.
"For this October, the month before the presidential election, Yale Climate Connections has identified enough timely titles to fill two bookshelves: one on climate action, the other on electoral politics."
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