Biodiversity

"The Green Revolution helped feed a surging global population, but at the cost of impoverishing crop diversity. Now, with climate change increasingly threatening food supplies, the need for greater agricultural resilience means restoring endangered crop and food varieties."

"Advocates of animal rights want the Bronx Zoo to release Happy, an elephant smart enough to recognize herself in a mirror."

"EPA to approve plan for four types of neonicotinoid chemical to be used on US farmland – despite being banned in Europe".

"U.S. wildlife officials reversed their previous finding that a widely used and highly toxic pesticide could jeopardize dozens of plants and animals with extinction, after receiving pledges from chemical manufacturers that they will change product labels for malathion so that it’s used more carefully by gardeners, farmers and other consumers."

"Let your eyes wander to the areas of this map that deepen into red. They are the places in the lower 48 United States most likely to have plants and animals at high risk of global extinction."

"Ten bills in Congress would add conservation protections to 7,000 miles of river to safeguard drinking water, biodiversity and recreation."

"When Hurricane Irma ravaged south Florida in September 2017 it inundated homes, knocked out electricity for millions and killed more than 30 people. The devastation was not confined to humans, however."

"A forest pest that bedevils Maine residents and tourists with hairs that cause an itchy rash appears to be spreading due to warming temperatures, a group of scientists has found."

"Botanist Maria Jesus has made a career out of trying to protect wild places where rare plants are making their last stand, and field work can mean bivouacking alone in a pup tent. Take the Inyo rock daisy, which only grows in the crevices of cliff walls in two largely roadless areas of the southern Inyo Mountains near Death Valley National Park."