US Fish and Wildlife Service
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Trump administration rolls back protections for migratory birds, drawing bipartisan condemnation
Under the new interpretation, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act forbids only intentional killing -- such as hunting or killing birds to get their feathers -- without a permit.
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Critical List: Mitt Romney doesn’t believe in carbon; Halliburton’s profits are up
Mitt Romney doesn't think carbon is a pollutant and doesn't think the EPA should regulate it. But he has said that we should reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases. May he doesn't understand what those words mean?
The hybrid electric flying car! (Brought to you by the military-industrial complex.)
Climate change could wipe out whitebark pine trees in the West, but the Fish and Wildlife Service can't be bothered to list the trees as endangered, or even threatened. -
The Fish and Wildlife Service once again hearts critters
Sign No. 1 that the critter-huggers are now in charge at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Agreeing to consider whether they should protect the “boulder bunny” under the Endangered Species Act because climate change is disrupting its Alpine habitat. Sign No. 2: Valentine’s e-cards …
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Disappearing owls, threatened forests, and the city-country conflict
"Ghost" is a word field biologists use to describe a species near the end of its time on earth. Often these endangered species are birds, but in a spectacular essay in a newly internet-friendly issue of the English literary journal Granta, Robert MacFarlane slightly expands the meaning of the word. He visits an obscure low-lying […]
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Feds axe acreage of spotted owl habitat
The amount of old-growth forest designated as critical habitat for the northern spotted owl was slashed 23 percent, or 1.6 million acres, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday. One might think that means that spotted owls are doing well for themselves, but no: the spotted owl population is dropping by 4 percent […]
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Bush admin debuts final recovery plan for spotted owl
The Bush administration has released a final plan for helping out the northern spotted owl, after a prior plan was deemed to have been watered down by political interference. Critics admit the plan is an improvement over last year’s draft — which relied heavily on, ahem, taking out predator barred owls with shotguns — but […]
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So say Big Oil-friendly opponents of protecting them
You know, if you set aside the massive threats to their habitats posed by global warming and oil and gas development, polar bears are an "otherwise healthy" species.
That was the argument made Wednesday by William Horn, an attorney and former Assistant Interior Secretary for Fish and Wildlife in the Reagan administration, at a Capitol Hill hearing about the ongoing delay in whether to cover the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Horn's case was echoed by several Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
To listen to Horn, the 33-51 percent chance that the recently signed oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea on Alaska's northwest coast would result in a major offshore oil spill is no big deal. And Horn clung to outdated projections that widespread Arctic Sea ice loss is 45 to 50 years away when, just four months ago, a NASA scientist predicted the Arctic Sea could be ice-free in the summer as soon as 2012.
We all know the threats to polar bears posed by rapid climate change. But what would happen in the case of a major oil spill?
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New campaign plans to relocate polar bears to Antarctica
[UPDATE: This post is a joke, as is the Polar Bear Conservancy website. Happy April Fools’ Day!] While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dawdles over whether or not to list the polar bear as a federally protected endangered species, a nonprofit group is ready to act to save the fast-disappearing mammal. The Polar Bear […]
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Wolf recovery chief Ed Bangs talks about the species’ delisting
The gray wolf population in the northern Rocky Mountains is being dropped from the federal endangered species list on Friday, and on Thursday I just happened to run smack into Ed Bangs, the wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Such is life at the Aspen Environment Forum.) Bangs oversaw the celebrated […]