Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Two interesting polar bear items caught my attention this week. First, last night BBC’s Science in Action had a fascinating piece on tests of polar bear hearing thresholds (that is, what is the spectrum of sound that polar bears can...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Over at Planet Gore, the gremlins are hard at work trying to make the case that yesterday’s announcement that summer Arctic sea ice minimums are only the second lowest on record is actually a good thing. According to Edward John...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Today’s AP reports that aerial surveys conducted by the Minerals Management Service on August 16 recorded 9 polar bears swimming far from shore or any pack ice. As Arctic sea ice disappears, recording incidents of such long-distance swimming is becoming...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has a wildly misleading op-ed in USA Today about his proposed regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act. The Secretary makes it sound like his sole concern when proposing these changes was preventing the...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Greg Pollowitz has posted a reply to my critique of his post on the discovery of 125,000 western lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. In his original post, Pollowitz seemed to argue that this discovery should undermine our confidence...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Just to expand a bit on David's very smart post about the White House's phony "regulatory train wreck" scaremongering over efforts to fight global warming with existing environmental laws, it's worth noting that one of the other laws that the...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
The dramatic signs of global warming's impact on the Arctic are everywhere these days, but an event last fall in a small Canadian town 100 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle has to rate as one of the most...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Just a quick note to report that NRDC, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Greenpeace filed a lawsuit this morning to compel the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make a final decision about whether to protect the polar bear...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
For years, scientists have been concerned about the substantial increase of mercury concentrations in Arctic marine mammals such as polar bears, beluga whales, and seals. In some places in Canada, for example, levels of mercury in the tissue of...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Solving Global Warming
Scientists, gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Annual Meeting in Boston, are expressing increased concern over the growing threat to some of the smallest seas creatures in the world, including tiny snails sometimes called pteropods...
