Conservation News ~ 12 June 2020

• Forest Service to expedite logging and habitat clearance in proposed wilderness on Pine Mountain
• Elimination of Mexican Gray Wolf pack a blow to conservation efforts
• NWT First Nations shares prestigious UN prize for environmental work
• Report finds environmental activists worldwide face high risk of criminalization and violence
• Plastic Rain is the new Acid Rain
• Canadian conservation officer fired for refusing to kill bear cubs wins legal battle
• Brazil revises deforestation data – Amazon loss topped 10,000sq km in 2019
• Supertrawlers making a mockery of UK’s protected sites
• Nature provides roadmap to potential breakthroughs in solar energy technology
• Senegal rejects 52 new foreign fishing licenses
• Four new species of millipedes discovered in Colorado Caves
• White House trashes 50 year old environmental law, blaming COVID
• Oregon Minnow saved by the Endangered Species Act
• BHP to destroy at least 40 aboriginal sites, up to 15,000 years old, to expand mine
• Marine energy devices likely pose minimal impacts to marine life
• Milkweed, only food source for Monarch caterpillars, ubiquitously contaminated
• Nicaraguan beef, grazed on deforested and stolen land, feeds global demand
• China bans pangolin scales in traditional medicine
• After 130 years, the rarest and thought to be extinct Dwarf Kingfisher was photographed in the Philippines
• Saudi Aramco exec: capturing carbon emissions can help combat climate change
• Two new species of iguanas found in Southern Antilles
• NSW environment minister walks back suggestions clean air strategy has been dropped
• Federal Court rejects EPA approval of widely used herbicide
• COVID disrupts global fight to save endangered species
• White House faces suit on order lifting endangered species protections
• Report names the banks financing destructive oil projects in the Amazon
• New list of animals on the brink of extinction
• China has suspended debt repayment for 77 developing nations
• Russian oil spill reaches pristine Arctic lake
• Greta Thunberg calls Bolsonaro a ‘failure’ on COVID as NGOs sue his administration over Amazon destruction
• 10% of Chinese White Dolphins – 3 of remaining 32- have been killed in just 5 days
• EPA Clean Air Panel dismisses his oil industry ties, slams Harvard study connecting air pollution and COVID risks
• China may deploy ducks to battle locust
• A new Riffle Beetle from Kyushu, Japan
• Scientists propose new naming system for uncultivated bacteria and archaea
• A new beetle species has been named after the Beatles
• Endangered Status sought for Death Valley Region fish
• Shuttered zoos are hemorrhaging money, and they want federal help for endangered species work they do
• In COVID lockdown, Glossy Ibis finds prime nesting conditions in Sri Lanka
• Lockdown allowed illegal fishing to spike in Philippines, satellite data suggests
• Rare finless porpoises sighted in Hing Kong waters
• Elizabeth Mrema is Convention on Biological Diversity new Executive Secretary
• Powerful petrochemical lobbying group advanced anti-protest legislation amid pandemic
• Ex-astronaut Kathy Sullivan dives to lowest point on Earth
• Scientists discover strange new Tarantula species with ‘horn’ on its back in Southwestern Africa
• Largest species of Asianopodus footprints found in Xinjiang
• Eighteen rare, endangered horses born in China’s Xinjiang
• Nearly half of Americans breathing unhealthy air
• A massive oil spill in the Arctic has turned a river red
• White House allows fishing in New England marine monument
• Scientists use drones to capture striking footage of colony of 64,000 Green Sea Turtles
• Two new dinosaurs found in fossils at State Museum of Pennyslvania
• New species of carnivorous plant found in Kerala
• Two new species from New Mexico help fill in Evolution of horned dinosaurs