Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Sad news today that Lummi, the great-great-grandmother of a family of killer whales in Puget Sound known as the “K-Pod,” has gone missing and is presumed dead. She was believed to have been born in around 1910. When I read...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
I normally ignore the folks at Planet Gore (The National Review’s “environmental” blog). Well, ignore them is probably the wrong word. I read Planet Gore, but I just don’t bother responding to the sophomoric dialogue that passes for commentary on...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday the State of Alaska announced that they had filed a long-anticipated lawsuit challenging the polar bear’s Endangered Species Act protection in federal court in Washington, D.C.. Alaska’s case joins an earlier case, filed by the Safari Club and a...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Today Exxon Mobil announced record quarterly profits of $11.7 billion (this is not just a record for Exxon, mind you, but for all of United States corporate history). Yesterday, the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights law firm, filed a letter on...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
The Washington Post reports that viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease often described as “fish ebola,” has been discovered in southern Lake Michigan and a reservoir in Ohio. Hemorrhagic septicemia is an invasive species, most likely brought into the great lakes in...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
This case, like a cloud larger than a man’s hand, will hang over the northwest states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming until there has been a final determination of the complex issues presented.Thus begins Federal District Judge Donald Molloy’s much...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
Over at the ESA blog, Keith Rizzardi has a post up about NOAA Fisheries new “incidental take permit” for listed species of salmon and steelhead in Washington. Basically, because there are both listed and unlisted species of salmon and steelhead...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Despite the rather depressing fact that federal protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains have been stripped away by a misguided (and illegal) federal regulation and that states like Wyoming have responded by dramatically increasing their wolf-killing programs,...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
The Bush Administration always manages to top itself. No matter how inured I think I am to the blatant hostility this Administration has for environmental protections in general—and wildlife conservation in particular—they still sometimes manage to surprise me. Today we...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Living Sustainably , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Do we have any ethical obligations towards plants? Recently, a Swiss government panel addressed this very question--and concluded that we do. Conservative publications, like the Weekly Standard, were predictably derisive about the whole notion. But I’m not so sure. ...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
Last week I linked to one good reason for saving endangered plants and wildlife: wonder. But there are more practical reasons as well. As I've noted before, not least of these reasons is the fact that many of the...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Olivia Judson, a blogger on natural history and evolution for the New York Times has a terrific piece up today about wildlife extinction. Wandering though a display of extinct animals in the Natural History Museum of Paris, Judson muses:But to...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment
I'm a big fan of George Will. He's easily one of the most entertaining and articulate pundits on ABC's This Week and he's a damn fine writer. Besides, my Dad loved the guy. Which is why it was so...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Well, I don't know what they expected but NRDC and our allies at the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace certainly weren't going let the Bush Administration get away with trying to avoid dealing with greenhouse gas pollution and destructive...continued→
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Well, so much for a happy Endangered Species Day. Today, the BBC reports that, according to the Zoological Society of London, the world's wildlife populations have declined twenty-five to thirty-percent in the last thirty years. The editor and lead author...continued→
