Biodiversity

"Environmental groups flocked to court today to fight the Trump administration's new Endangered Species Act regulations, kicking off a high-stakes legal debate over the government's authority to make sweeping changes to how agencies protect rare animals and plants."

"The triennial summit of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), that began on Saturday, will tackle disputes over the conservation of great beasts such as elephants and rhinos, as well as cracking down on the exploitation of unheralded but vital species such as sea cucumbers, which clean ocean floors."

"New wildlife trade rules being discussed at CITES could affect 550 species, including elephants, rhinos and giraffes."

"Eleven state attorneys general are pushing back against an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal they say would weaken the process for determining whether pesticides are harmful to endangered species."

"The ghost orchid is one of the rarest and most mysterious flowers in North America. Until recently, scientists could only guess at how the 2,000 or so plants that cling to the trees in Florida’s remote old-growth swamp forests are pollinated—no one had ever photographed the event before."

"A tiny Alaskan island faces a threat as deadly as an oil spill — rats."

"California and Massachusetts say they’ll go to court to fight the Trump administration’s overhaul of the Endangered Species Act."

"The Trump administration took its final step Monday to weaken the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock law that brought the bald eagle, the American alligator, the California condor, the humpback whale and the grizzly bear back from the brink of extinction."

"Joshua trees have dotted the Mojave desert for 2.5m years, but even if humans take urgent action to combat the climate crisis, their decimation is all but ensured by the end of this century, a study has found."