"Fewer than 100 Rice’s whales remain on Earth. Here’s what they sound like when they communicate. They live only in the Gulf of Mexico, where air guns firing sonic blasts are used to survey the ocean floor for oil and gas. The low frequency of the blasts overlaps with the frequency of the calls of the whales."
"National Park Service officials repeatedly raised legal and environmental concerns over the Trump administration’s plan to lease public parkland, including the site of a professional tennis tournament, to a private operator widely expected to be the tournament’s operator, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post."
"In 1782, when the United States adopted the bald eagle as its national symbol, anecdotal accounts stated that the country may have had as many as 100,000 nesting eagles. By the mid-1900s, habitat destruction, illegal shooting, and DDT contamination had driven bald eagles near extinction."
"Executive orders limiting off-road vehicle access to federal lands signed decades ago by Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter have been revoked by President Donald Trump, drawing concerns over possible impacts to Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands and perhaps some in the National Park System."
"Trackers that ping satellites every time a whale surfaces for air. Thermal cameras that can detect the animals day and night. Acoustic devices that monitor their calls." "Innovative systems to keep ships from hitting North Atlantic right whales are coming into use. The Trump administration is weighing whether they can replace a bedrock protection."
"Brazil’s government announced Wednesday that it will invest $75 million in the BR-319 highway cutting through the Amazon rainforest, a project environmentalists say could accelerate deforestation and worsen climate change."
"Scientists have planted American trees in China, Korea and elsewhere to attract hungry insects. Their hope is to identify the most damaging bugs before they cross the ocean."
"The Interior Department plans to expand hunting and fishing access across national parks and wildlife refuges." "The hunting and fishing expansions would occur at refuges in 32 states, while Interior also removed some restrictions on hunting at certain national parks."
"Plans for a celebrity-backed “hyperscale” data center in rural Utah, so massive that it would consume more than double the state’s current electricity use, have generated an intense public and political backlash in a state where the motto is “industry” and a Republican supermajority tends to be deferential to development."
"A controversial land swap orchestrated by the megarich could be “a harbinger of what’s to come” for public lands under Trump."
