endangered species

Climate change has set off the largest mass movement of species, since the last ice age, about 25,000 years ago, says a study published in the journal Science. “Land-based species are moving polewards by an average of 17km per decade, and marine species by 72km per decade,” said Professor Gretta Pecl at the University of Tasmania in Australia, the study’s lead author.

Long considered ecological foes, some kinds of livestock grazing might actually benefit endangered sage grouse, says a study in the journal Ecological Applications.

Created during the Nixon era, the Endangered Species Act "is not working today," said Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in opening a hearing modernizing the law. The Washington Post says the hearing brought "round after round of criticism from Republican lawmakers who said the federal effort to keep species from going extinct encroaches on states’ rights, is unfair to landowners and stymies efforts by mining companies to extract resources and create jobs."

The number of endangered and threatened species affected by climate change is dramatically higher than previously thought, say researchers in the UK, Australia, Italy and the U.S. “New analysis has found that nearly half (47%) of the mammals and nearly a quarter (24.4%) of the birds on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species are negatively impacted by climate change – a total of about 700 species,” reports The Guardian.

Conservationists are worried that new Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke will hurt the recovery of endangered species in the U.S., says The Huffington Post.

Scientists are learning how to interpret “environmental DNA” (eDNA), the DNA that marine species naturally shed in water, which will help them track endangered species, check for invasive plants and manage fisheries.

The EPA failed to consult with the Interior Department over the risk to endangered species before approving use of the Monsanto weedkiller dicamba on GE cotton and soybeans, say four farm and environmental groups in a federal lawsuit. The groups want the U.S. appellate court in San Francisco to order the EPA to consider again if the herbicide merits approval.

By a 3-to-1 margin, the Senate passed and sent to President Obama a water infrastructure bill that changes how much water is shipped to Southern California and San Joaquin Valley farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The bill was criticized by environmentalists and the fishing industry, reports the Los Angeles Times, and a court challenge is likely if Obama signs the bill into law.

Months after removing the lesser prairie chicken from its list of threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will "reconsider the status of a grouse found in pockets across the Great Plains," said the Associated Press. The agency agreed to conduct the review after environmentalists filed a petition that argued that emergency protection is needed for the lesser prairie chicken.

The fish on the menu may be mislabeled, but there's a good chance it's less endangered than the real things, says Grist. About 30 percent of fish is misnamed, whether because of fraud or human error. But when University of Washington researchers collected data from 43 studies that DNA-tested fish for mislabeling, they found that on average the actual fish on the plate were 3 percent cheaper and nearly 10 percent better in terms of conservation status, according to extinction risk data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

After 70 million years on earth, the fate of the pallid sturgeon depends on what officials decide to do about a a single dam, says High Country News. A prehistoric-looking fish with ghostly white skin, the species is down to fewer than 125 wild-born adults in Montana’s upper Missouri River Basin.

The rampant destruction of rainforest by the Indonesian palm-oil industry is leaving villagers with few options but to poach species like the Helmeted Hornbill to extinction, says Jocelyn Zuckerman in FERN’s latest story, published with Audubon Magazine.

Humans have destroyed a tenth of the world’s remaining wilderness — an area the size of two Alaskas — in the last 25 years, says a study, "Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets," out in Current Biology.

More than half of California’s reservoirs are contaminated with high levels of mercury, says the Los Angeles Times. Nine local water boards and state authorities have called for a statewide plan to lower mercury levels in 180 of the state’s 300 reservoirs and warn fishermen that their catch may be poisonous.

The fate of a fish as old as the dinosaurs is being decided in Montana, says The New York Times. The Missouri River used to team with pallid sturgeon, but today only 125 of the fish, which can grow up to 6-feet and live as long as the average human, remain. Most environmentalists blame dams built to irrigate farmland for the species’ demise, since they block sturgeon eggs from moving downstream. “The eggs end up trapped in reservoirs like Lake Sakakawea, with a lot of sediment, a lot of bacteria and very little oxygen. There they suffocate and die,” says the Times.

As the gray wolf population rises in the West, "states are trying to walk the line between the ranchers, who view the animals as an economic and physical menace, and environmentalists, who see their reintroduction as a success story," says a Stateline story reprinted by Route Fifty. The issue is drawn most starkly in Washington State, which allotted $3.3 million and invested thousands of hours of staff time in wolf management.

Under terms of a settlement, the Interior Department will rule by June 30, 2019, whether the monarch butterfly, which has suffered a huge drop in population, deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, said two environmental groups. The groups say without help, the well-known orange-and-black insect is at risk of extinction.

Makers of the insecticide chlorpyrifos will modify their product labels to reduce runoff and spray drift of the pesticide into the habitat of endangered species and to limit the areas of the country where the chemical is used, said the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday. The EPA also said it would propose a regulation limiting the use of chlorpyrifos to 11 crops.