"Brooke Rollins believes she is waging a new American Revolution, leading a crusade against Biblical darkness and guiding U.S. agriculture into a “golden age.” In her first six months as the nation’s top agriculture official, Rollins has reshaped the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s focus — “more farmer, less climate,” she summarized."
"Stepping onto an old wooden duck blind in the middle of the York River, Bryan Watts looks down at a circle of sticks and pine cones on the weathered, guano-spattered platform. It’s a failed osprey nest, taken over by diving terns."
"The Bird Banding Laboratory has turned duck hunters into citizen scientists. What happens if it is defunded?"
"Two federal programs that experts consider indispensable for bird research and conservation in the United States could be eliminated under the Trump administration’s proposed budget for 2026."
"Window collisions and cats kill more birds than wind farms do, but ornithologists say turbine impacts must be taken seriously. Scientists are testing a range of technologies to reduce bird strikes — from painting stripes to using artificial intelligence — to keep birds safe."
"Companies plan to build more than 100 new gas-fired power plants in Texas in the next few years amid a race to meet enormous electrical demand from energy-hungry industries, according to a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit."
"Against the black night, the darker-than-night silhouettes of Monument Valley buttes graced the horizon. Overhead, stars were scattered across the sky—a prank by Coyote, according to Navajo legend—and the stripe of Milky Way stars arced brilliantly across the sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon."
"The Department of Health and Human Services is pulling millions of dollars it had committed to give Moderna to aid the effort to develop a vaccine to combat the bird flu in humans, the company announced Wednesday.
"After rebounding in recent decades due to conservation efforts, the number of once-imperiled peregrine falcons in the U.S. has been dropping again in some places due to the bird flu that has decimated other avian populations in recent years."
"The Trump administration has moved to end federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a showy grouse with the misfortune of inhabiting southern and central grasslands long sought-after for agriculture and energy development."
