Tag Archives: ecology

Brooklyn Paper reports: The group gathering in the water between piers 2 and 3 at Brooklyn Bridge Park were taking part in a .8-mile open water swim to Pebble Beach Cove organized by the group Urban Swim. The group hosts several open water swims around New York Harbor to raise awareness of water accessibility and water health in the city. …

Via press release from Friends of the Earth: The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) and Oxitec, a British biotech company, will begin the first-ever U.S. release of genetically engineered (GE) Aedes aegypti mosquitoes this week. Despite scientific concerns and public outcry over the human health and environment risks, the field trial’s first phase will release up to 144,000 GE …

The New York Times reports: Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country, according to a new nationwide study that offers the first clear link between long-term exposure to pollution and Covid-19 death rates. In an analysis of …

Talking Points Memo reports: The White House announced on Friday President Donald Trump’s chosen nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste: Peter C. Wright, a corporate lawyer from The Dow Chemical Company. Tapped as the EPA’s assistant administrator, Wright would lead the agency’s efforts in responding to toxic spills and cleaning hazard waste sites. From the …

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration on Thursday moved to vastly expand offshore drilling from the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans with a plan that would open up federal waters off the California coast for the first time in more than three decades. The new five-year drilling plan also could open new areas of oil and gas exploration in …

MarketWatch reports: Regulators in the Trump administration are proposing to roll back safety measures put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a revision that would reduce the role of government in offshore oil production and return more responsibility to private companies. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which regulates offshore oil and gas drilling, estimates its …

Ad Age reports: Outdoor retailer Patagonia has been vocal about its efforts to keep protected federal land protected. That effort reached a new level on Monday following President Trump’s announcement that his administration will shrink the size of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by 85 percent. In response, Ventura, California-based Patagonia says it plans to sue the Trump …

EcoWatch reports: The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service released a recommendation Wednesday to lift former President Obama’s uranium mining ban in the watershed of the Grand Canyon. The move was made in response to President Trump’s sweeping “energy independence” executive order in March to ease regulatory burdens on energy development. “This appalling recommendation threatens to destroy one of the …

The Associated Press reports: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is recommending that four large national monuments in the West be reduced in size, potentially opening up hundreds of thousands of acres of land revered for natural beauty and historical significance to mining, logging and other development. Zinke’s recommendation, revealed in a leaked memo submitted to the White House, prompted an outcry …

The Hill reports: The Trump administration is proposing to repeal completely Obama-era standards governing hydraulic fracturing on federal land. The proposal from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is due to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register. The landmark 2015 regulation set standards in areas such as disclosure of fracking chemicals and integrity of well casing. It …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: President Donald Trump this week will order a review of national monument designations — including southern Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — as part of a wide look at a century-old law that allows presidents to set aside federal lands without congressional approval. On Wednesday, Trump will sign an executive order to demand that …

Hey! Actual good news! The Miami Herald reports: The manatee — for decades the poster mammal of environmental decline in Florida — is officially no longer an endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Thursday that the manatee will instead be designated “threatened” — a status change that reflects a boom in population over the last decade. …

CNN reports: The Senate voted to confirm Wednesday Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke to lead the Department of the Interior. he vote was 68-31. During his confirmation hearing, the Republican congressman promised to review Obama-era actions limiting oil and gas drilling in Alaska and said he rejected President Donald Trump’s past comment that climate change is a “hoax.” Like many of …

The Washington Post reports: Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma’s attorney general spent years suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its efforts to regulate various forms of pollution, was confirmed Friday as the agency’s next administrator. Pruitt cleared the Senate by a vote of 52-46, winning support from two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. …

The Hill reports: House Republicans are preparing to vote next week on two resolutions undoing pollution rules issued in the closing months of the Obama administration. Two Interior Department rules — one protecting streams from coal mining waste and another to cut methane emissions at oil and natural gas drilling sites — are the targets of Congressional Review Act resolutions …

The Hill reports: Utah’s attorney general says he is preparing a lawsuit against President Obama for his decision to designate a new national monument in the state. Attorney General Sean Reyes (R) on Wednesday said the lawsuit is one of numerous ways that he, Gov. Gary Herbert (R) and the state’s congressional delegation will fight the Bears Ears National Monument. …

The New York Times reports: President Obama announced on Tuesday what he called a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic Seaboard as he tried to nail down an environmental legacy that cannot quickly be reversed by Donald J. Trump. Mr. Obama invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, …

The Washington Post reports: Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference. The efforts include a “guerrilla archiving” event in Toronto, where experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at …

The Washington Post reports: Global warming — “it’s a hoax.” Donald Trump has said that more than once. So it’s understandable that the request by the president-elect’s transition team for the names of individual Energy Department employees and contractors who worked on the issue makes them worry that the trick could be on them. “There is major concern amongst my …

CNN reports: July was the world’s hottest month ever, according to NASA, the tenth month in a row to break temperature records globally. But help may be on the way in the form of a developing La Nina weather pattern — it just may not arrive until 2017. On Tuesday, NASA confirmed in a statement 2016 had seen the warmest …