Wildlife

"Barry the Barred Owl, whose majestic presence and unusually extroverted demeanor made her a beloved Central Park celebrity, died early Friday in a collision with a Central Park Conservancy maintenance vehicle."

"Globally, numerous infectious diseases are being transmitted between wildlife, livestock and humans at escalating rates, including outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, dengue, HIV and others, as the threat of new emergent zoonotic diseases grows ever greater. The cost is huge in lives lost and ruined economies. The driver: human activities, particularly intrusion into wild landscapes and eating and trading wild animals."

"Agricultural pesticides sold to farmers ready-mixed into "cocktails" can kill twice as many bees, according to an analysis of 90 studies."

"Surrounded by fires, parched by drought, and shut down by the pandemic – residents of California’s scenic South Lake Tahoe thought they’d endured everything. That was until this week, when the US Forest Service announced it was closing several popular sites after discovering bubonic plague in the chipmunk population."

"With climate change threatening the sea ice habitat of Emperor penguins, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday announced a proposal to list the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act."

"The Interior Department today said it will restart an environmental review of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s oil and gas program, following its determination earlier this year that the Trump administration’s assessment was flawed."

"The Bureau of Land Management is prepared to ramp up wild horse and burro gathers over the next two months as extreme heat and drought conditions across much of the West threaten the safety of thousands of federally protected animals."

"Washington's endangered orca whales received new habitat protections from the federal government on Friday. The National Marine Fisheries Service finalized rules to expand the orca's critical habitat from the Canadian border all the way down to Point Sur in California, adding 15,910 square miles of foraging areas, river mouths and migratory pathways."

"Gulf Coast researchers are raising alarms about a $1.4 billion coastal restoration project’s potential to kill and injure bottlenose dolphins. Now, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries employee whose job it was to count dolphin deaths in the state says she was fired in 2019 because her work reaffirmed the potential of the project to devastate a dolphin population."

"This week, scientists unveiled a new standard for assessing the status of plant and animal species. Instead of focusing on decline, this new approach aims to measure recovery."