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All in Environment
April is a busy month for a certain dog on South Padre Island, Texas. Magpie, a mixed breed rescue pup just over a year old, is on her new job of sniffing out endangered sea turtle nests buried in the sand.
This week a committee of Trump administration officials voted unanimously to exempt the oil and gas industry from requirements of the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf of Mexico. The exemption – which will lift protections for endangered whales, turtles, and other species – is being invoked now for “national security.”
Move over, Burmese python. There’s another invasive species chomping through Florida: the Nile monitor, a big omnivorous lizard naturally found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Like the invasive python, the Nile monitor has been on the loose in Florida for decades, likely escapees from the exotic pet trade.
The endangered Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is rarely seen in the wild, but this year the world’s largest big cat is making unwelcome appearances in Russia’s far east. The tigers are preying on dogs, livestock, and in a few cases, humans.
he Mexican government was all set to eradicate the spiny-tailed iguana on Clarion Island. But now researchers have discovered that the reptile is in fact a native of the remote island and not an invasive species.
The world’s most endangered porpoise species clings to existence in the Sea of Cortez off San Felipe, Mexico. There are only between seven and 10 vaquitas alive, but a survey last month revealed some good news: a newborn calf (with maybe another on the way).
At least three weirdly colored dogs have been spotted in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the abandoned area around the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster site. This month, researchers from Dogs of Chernobyl recorded canines with blue fur, and they’re not sure how it happened.
Cougars once roamed freely throughout much of North America but were exterminated in many states by the 20th century, including Michigan, which killed off its last wild specimen in 1906. In recent years the predator has been seen again on the Upper Peninsula and wildlife experts wonder if the species can re-establish a breeding population here.
A small group of lions have left their traditional stomping grounds in the Namibian desert and have found new life – and plenty of seals to eat – on the country’s Atlantic coast. The 12 lucky lions now prowling the Skeleton Coast are part of a population of maybe 80 stuck in the Namib Desert which features massive sand dunes and the weird Welwitschia plant which can live for 2000 years.
Conservationists in southeastern Australia have figured out a non-intrusive way to monitor platypus in the wild. To navigate the waterways where the aquatic mammals live, they’ve trained paddleboard-riding dogs to sniff out the critters without disturbing them.
The USDA revoked a federal tree-planting grant in Indianapolis earlier this year because it ran afoul of the government’s anti-DEI initiatives. The problem was that the project pushed for diversity, which is to say biodiversity … of trees.
Marine biologists in the north Pacific have observed orcas taking the killer whale version of a spa day: using kelp to massage each other. The behavior, which involves fashioning a tubular piece of seaweed and using it for a planned purpose, marks the first time a marine animal has been seen using tools.
The pangolin is easy to catch and nice to eat. This week the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed federal protections for several pangolin species in Asia and Africa. Listing under the Endangered Species Act would give law enforcement resources to protect the world's most trafficked mammal.
When we last checked in on the axolotl, the bizarre little amphibian was beset on all sides by threats to its existence. Climate change, pollution, a shrinking habitat, and especially the exotic pet trade have all conspired to bring the creature to the brink of extinction.
An ostrich farm in British Columbia is under court order to cull the flock – or wobble, in ostrich-speak – as the birds have come in contact with a strain of the deadly avian flu virus, H5N1.
Floridians have been in a land war with invasive Burmese pythons for years, but there’s another interloper in the Sunshine State that is probably as bad as the snakes, the Nile monitor. The six-foot predatory lizards hail from the Nile River in Africa, but they’ve found an agreeable habitat in the canals of Palm Beach County.
No one was happier to hear the news that scientists had “resurrected” a long-extinct wolf species than the US Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum.
Although the company Colossal Biosciences did not actually clone a dire wolf, which went extinct more than 10,000 years ago, Secretary Burgum was quick to leap on the idea that “de-extinction” can make the Endangered Species List obsolete.
A biotech company in Dallas says it has brought back an extinct animal that last walked the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago. Colossal Biosciences, the startup that’s also trying to resurrect the extinct wooly mammoth and the dodo, announced this week that they’ve brought three dire wolves into the world.
A gated community in Argentina – built on a wetland along the Luján River, north of Buenos Aires – is home to about 45,000 wealthy residents and at least 1000 capybaras. The humans who live in Nordelta are about to deploy assorted birth control methods on the growing rodent population.
Last week the Centers for Disease Control released some startling information about the bird flu virus, namely that it can be spread between cats and humans. The data appeared briefly online, then vanished.
