Wildlife

"The National Park Service is moving to prohibit hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting black bears with doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot hibernating bears and cubs in their dens, techniques allowed by the Trump administration but considered inhumane by conservationists."

"Emperor penguins and reindeer were among the species highlighted in a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report as severely threatened by  the cascading impacts of climate change."

"Colorado could be less than a year away from the state’s first relocation of gray wolves to parts of the Western Slope, as required by a ballot initiative passed by voters in 2020."

"Federal wildlife officials have proposed that more than 275,000 acres of forest across Hawaii be designated critical habitat for the ‘i‘iwi bird, one of about a dozen native honeycreeper species currently headed toward extinction."

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 263, known as the “Big Cat Public Safety Act,” which puts a slew of new amendments on an older law that regulates wildlife trafficking. The legislation bans private citizens from breeding, purchasing, and transporting big cats, mandates owners register animals they already own, effectively phasing out private ownership of big cats."

"Brazil inaugurates its new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on Sunday. Facing investigations, former President Jair Bolsonaro has taken refuge in Orlando."

"A new rule revives an older set of protections for rivers, marshes and waterways, setting aside changes in the Obama and Trump administrations that led to years of legal wrangling." "The Biden administration is working to complete a clean water regulation before a Supreme Court ruling that could complicate the government’s ability to protect wetlands and other waters."

"A globetrotting bird, a crab that’s not a crab, a marine snail and a fish whose reproduction is so mysterious it fascinated Freud — they all walk into a sandbar. Unbeknownst to them, their future — no joke — hung in the balance of a decision made this November by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission."

"The Sahtu ́K’aowe Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area is set to move ahead and conserve the world’s eighth largest lake, after an announcement at COP15 biodiversity conference".

"A bevy of amateur birders and professional ornithologists is racing to prove the ivory-billed woodpecker still exists, before federal officials remove it from the endangered species list".