Tag Archives: Conservation of Resources

The Trump administration is proposing a drastic reimagining of how public lands across the United States are used and managed, according to an Interior Department document leaked to the public in late April. The document, a draft of the department’s strategic plan for the next five years, downplays conservation in favor of an approach that seeks to maximize economic returns, …

When Don Pike takes his daily walk, he laces up his brown hiking boots, grabs his walking stick and bucket hat and heads outside. Ten feet later, he carefully slips past barbed wire and enters the Tonto National Forest. Unlike other parts of the Tonto, where the ground between native plants and trees is covered with dry grasses, the earth …

The 36-page official national strategy document bears the presidential seal and involves 10 agencies from across the federal government. It isn’t the government’s policy on tariffs or border security. It’s President Trump’s master plan to eradicate paper straws and bring back plastic. “My Administration is committed,” the document declares, to “ridding us of the pulpy, soggy mess that torments too …

Life at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is slow, dark and quiet. Strange creatures glitter and glow. Oxygen seeps mysteriously from lumpy, metallic rocks. There is little to disturb these deep-ocean denizens. “There’s weird life down here,” said Bethany Orcutt, a geomicrobiologist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Research in the deep sea is incredibly difficult given the extreme …

Farmers in Africa that produce some of the world’s most prized coffee are in a scramble to comply with new European Union environmental rules that require them to document the origin of every shipment of beans. The new measure, coming into force at the end of this year, is designed to prevent deforestation driven by agricultural expansion. To comply, farmers …

A South Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to importing sperm whale teeth and bones from four countries and selling them in the United States, federal prosecutors said. The man, Lauren H. DeLoach, 69, of St. Helena Island, S.C., pleaded guilty to Lacey Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act charges for importing and selling sperm whale parts, according to the …

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.” In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve …

Congratulations are in order for Mommy, a Galápagos tortoise and a longtime resident of the Philadelphia Zoo, who recently became a first-time mother at the estimated age of 100. Mommy, who has lived at the zoo since 1932, laid 16 eggs in November. Four of them have since hatched — the first successful hatching for her species at the zoo, …

50 States, 50 Fixes The air is filled with birdsong, the land a tableau of soft greens and gentle light. This is Ho‘oulu ‘Āina, a 100-acre preserve with an unusual twist. Linked to a community health center, it is a place where patients come to heal the land, and themselves. As climate change accelerates and the Trump administration abandons the …

The folk song “Frog Went a-Courtin’” recounts the efforts of a sword- and pistol-toting frog to woo a mouse, who warns him that without the consent of her Uncle Rat she “wouldn’t marry the president.” The courtship rituals of Darwin’s frogs, in the cool, temperate rainforests of southern South America, are not nearly as conditional. What sets their hookups apart …