Judge Vacates Oil and Gas Leases on 145,000 Acres in Montana - The New York Times

Another legal victory against Trump's insane clear-cut of environmental regulations and protections...

A federal judge, rapping the Trump administration for its weak environmental assessments, has vacated hundreds of oil and gas leases across a large swath of Montana.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday vacated 287 oil and gas leases on almost 150,000 acres of land in Montana, ruling that the Trump administration had improperly issued the leases to energy companies in 2017 and 2018.



Custer County in Montana is predominately covered by livestock grazing and agricultural use with drilling sites and resource extraction scattered throughout.Credit...Kristina Barker for The New York Times

The judge, Brian Morris of the United States District Court for the District of Montana, said the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately take into account the environmental impacts of the drilling. In particular, Judge Morris found that the officials had not accounted for the drilling’s impact on regional water supplies and the global impact that the increased drilling would have on climate change.

Continue reading at: Judge Vacates Oil and Gas Leases on 145,000 Acres in Montana - The New York Times

Will protecting 30 percent of Earth prevent the extinction crisis? | Science News

What is needed = at least 30% by 2030, 50% by 2050. How can we do this with 9 Billion people?



Nations are drafting a plan to protect 30 percent of Earth by 2030 to save biodiversity. The number reflects politics more than scientific consensus.

Nature needs to be protected, scientists agree, but how best to do it is up for debate.

For millions of years, giants graced the murky depths of China’s Yangtze River. The Chinese Paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), which could reach 7 meters in length, used its swordlike snout to sense the electrical perturbations made by smaller prey, snatching them in the dark. But no more.

The fish was declared extinct in 2019, a victim of overfishing and habitat loss.

Its story is being played out across the world. From winding rivers to the windswept tundra to the dense tropical forests of Borneo, nature is in trouble.

Plants and animals are increasingly threatened by human activities and habitat encroachment. One study estimates a million species face extinction within decades (SN: 5/8/19). That’s 1 million distinct, idiosyncratic answers to the basic question of how to make a living on planet Earth, gone.



Habitat loss and such human encroachment as this clear-cutting in the Amazon (shown) are a major threat to biodiversity worldwide. The United Nations is drafting an ambitious new set of conservation targets to safeguard species and prevent further losses. LUOMAN/E+/GETTY IMAGES PLUS



Continue reading at: Will protecting 30 percent of Earth prevent the extinction crisis? | Science News

Why Covid-19 Will Not Be The Last Pandemic - Alum Knight Partners - Medium

Zoonotic pathogens — those which transmit naturally between non-human animals to humans — have been the subject of extensive research for decades. These pathogens originate in a host or natural reservoir which is their natural habitat for survival and reproduction. Humans, animals and even the environment (plants, soil and water) are reservoirs of different types of pathogens (infectious agents). When a pathogen is transmitted under natural conditions to humans, the process is called zoonosis.

Over the last four decades, there has been an increase in emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in humans, and nearly three-quarters of them have been zoonotic infections. Zoonosis is not a new occurrence; the origins of a wide range of human diseases, including plague, influenza, anthrax, yellow fever and tuberculosis, can be traced back to animals, with most of them originating in domestic animals (including livestock) and poultry. However, recent emergences of infectious diseases are frequently being traced back to wild animals. Some of these pathogens transmit directly from the reservoir to humans, while others transmit via an intermediate animal host.



Continue reading at: Why Covid-19 Will Not Be The Last Pandemic - Alum Knight Partners - Medium

We are creating conditions for diseases like COVID-19 to emerge | Ensia

As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the novel coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics


Illicit Endangered Wildlife Trade in Möng La, Shan, Myanmar Photo courtesy of Dan Bennett from Wikimedia, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Continue reading at:We are creating conditions for diseases like COVID-19 to emerge | Ensia

Escaping Pandora’s Box — Another Novel Coronavirus: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2002106?query=TOC in the New England Journal of Medicine

Habitat Destruction And Biodiversity Loss at the Root of Emerging Infectious Diseases: https://www.ucdavis.edu/one-health/habitat-destruction-and-biodiversity-loss-root-emerging-infectious-diseases/

Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2736

Why Jane Goodall says human disregard for nature led to the coronavirus pandemic | PBS NewsHour

Many infectious diseases that have emerged in our lifetime — Zika virus, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), AIDS and Ebola, among them — have stemmed in some way from human interference with wildlife and their habitats, creating the conditions that allow new viruses, like COVID-19, to spill over from animals to people.

Continue reading at: Why Jane Goodall says human disregard for nature led to the coronavirus pandemic | PBS NewsHour

and here: https://thehill.com/homenews/coronavirus-report/492357-jane-goodall-blames-disregard-for-nature-for-coronavirus-pandemic

Scientific study warning about this in 2009: Biodiversity loss and the rise of zoonotic pathogens: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X14604122

Supreme Court Leaves the Clean Water Act Intact | Earthjustice

Victory: Court decision leaves in place vital protections for the nation’s oceans, rivers, lakes

APRIL 23, 2020

Washington, D.C. — Today the Supreme Court issued its opinion in County of Maui v. Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund siding with clean water advocates that point source discharges to navigable waters through groundwater are regulated under the Clean Water Act.

The following is a statement from David Henkin, Earthjustice attorney who argued the case defending clean water:

“This decision is a huge victory for clean water. The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s effort to blow a big hole in the Clean Water Act’s protections for rivers, lakes, and oceans.



A turtle surfaces offshore of Kahekili Beach Park, Maui, Hawaii. COURTESY OF DON MCLEISH

U.S. SUPREME COURT OPINION (p. 14)

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Continue reading at: Supreme Court Leaves the Clean Water Act Intact | Earthjustice

This is how Europe is helping companies and workers as the coronavirus crisis deepens | World Economic Forum

If Europe can help their people like that, why can the richest country on Earth, the USA not do the same?

This is how Europe is helping companies and workers as the coronavirus crisis deepens | World Economic Forum