Biodiversity

"The younger generation of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are on average about three feet (one meter) shorter than whales were 20 years ago, drone and aircraft data show in a study in Thursday’s journal Current Biology."

"The birding community faces a difficult debate about the names of species connected to enslavers, supremacists and grave robbers".

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said on Thursday it will propose listing the Tiehm’s buckwheat flower as an endangered species, dealing a blow to ioneer Ltd’s proposed Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine in Nevada."

"A U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration improperly denied Endangered Species Act protections to Pacific walruses, animals reliant on diminishing Arctic sea ice for survival."

"AUSTIN, Texas — State wildlife officials are struggling to trace and halt the spread of deer infected with a contagious brain disease after breeders sold potentially infected animals to hundreds of buyers and released them on game ranches across the state."

"Environmental groups in Florida are warning that unusually high numbers of manatee deaths in the first five months of the year, blamed in part on resurgent algal blooms contaminating and destroying food sources, could threaten the long-term future of the species."

"From city centres to rural fields, human activity has decimated populations of France's most common bird species, scientists warned on Monday, citing data collected over 30 years by volunteer ornithologists."

"The Western monarch butterfly is disappearing before our eyes. The number of graceful, black-and-orange winged insects overwintering in coastal California this year dropped to under 2,000, compared with more than 29,000 the year before. And that was already a fraction of its previous population."

"U.S. commercial fishing practices must change to prevent the extinction of North Atlantic right whales, the administration of President Joe Biden said on Thursday, as it prepares a list of new regulations to prevent whale entanglements in lobster and crab gear."