“It’s going to be years until the tentacles of industry can be unwrapped.”
Jim Robbins
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This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
“The Trump administration was smart,” says Charles Wilkinson, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado Law School and an expert in public land law. “They went underground and did not have broad policies, but just took all kinds of actions opening up public lands to exploitation. The most dramatic was oil and gas leasing. By and large it was parcel by parcel, and program by program. And they got away with a lot.”
The oil and gas shopping spree reached its peak in the last few months of the Trump administration. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the sale of 1,400 leases out of 3,000 applications, primarily in New Mexico and Wyoming — the most of any three-month period of Trump’s presidency. The rapid-fire leasing blitz was an effort to get ahead of incoming President Joe Biden’s plans to end new drilling on federal lands as part of a sweeping climate change strategy, conservationists say.
“Give it all away before you go,” said Jayson O’Neill, director of the Western Values Project, a nonprofit that monitors the relationship between public lands and special interests. “It’s been four years of administratively rushed approval processes and a legal morass. It’s going to be years until the tentacles of industry can be unwrapped from every action that [the] Interior [Department] took.”
The Trump administration made at least 125 rule changes to favor special interests on public lands.
The list is long. Protections for migratory birds, clean water, and endangered species have been cut back. Just last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it would remove 3.4 million acres of protected habitat for the spotted owl, which conservation groups say is endangered and needs more, not fewer, protections.
Mother Jones-Sleek. Legendary. Huge. Vulnerable. Orcas Are Under Threat.
Here’s why that’s such a big deal.
Luna Shyr
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This story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Sleek. Legendary. Huge. Extremely vulnerable. That is the picture emerging from new research on killer whales from California to British Columbia to Alaska. Revered by some indigenous cultures as guardians of the sea and reincarnations of chiefs, orcas are apex predators whose numbers have dwindled. The new study is one of the first in-depth examinations into the causes of their mortality.
Known as “killer whales” for their ability to prey on larger whales, orcas in the Pacific Northwest have suffered from fatal encounters with ships and other vessels, malnutrition, disease, and accidental stranding due to sudden shifts in tides, according to the study, recently published in PLOS One. The goal of the research, led by the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and involving multiple agencies and institutions in Canada and the United States, is to offer insights to help improve conservation and management efforts.
The study analyzed pathology reports in 53 cases of orcas found stranded in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Hawaiʻi between 2004 and 2013, and determined the cause of death in about half of the cases. Fatalities involving human interaction occurred in every age category, the researchers found.
“About 40 percent of the southern residents died of a ship strike,” says lead author Stephen Raverty, referring to an endangered group that ranges from Southern California to central Vancouver Island in British Columbia. “They migrate seasonally, going off-shore in fall/winter and then returning in large numbers to feed in areas that coincide with salmon runs. Many of these salmon runs occur in areas with active fisheries, and where there may be large shipping lanes.”
Commentaire:
Le Deal de la Droite: Detruire les terres des autres pour ensuite venir polluer l’air dans les villes? (Sables bitumineux???) Dire qu’ici, la droite declare que c’est pas important les lois dans l’economie. Elle passe son temps a rediger des textes de lois pour leurs amis.
