"A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration's efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles."
"Environmentalists are questioning spending by wildlife managers who oversee a conservation effort for the lesser prairie chicken after money was used on a building and salaries rather than on projects to help the bird."
"Scientists say the Trump administration’s proposed program to cut down trees to gain an upper hand over wildfire and protect the sage-grouse bird may in fact do the opposite: increase the wildfire threat and risk ecosystem “collapse.”"
"Environmental groups are suing the Trump administration, accusing it of failing to protect a mysterious marsh bird that has recently been found to have a small and fragile population on the Louisiana coast."
"Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, visibly shaking and combative during a Senate hearing Wednesday, defended the Interior Department’s plan to re-interpret the Migratory Bird Treaty Act so that oil companies would not be fined for killing birds due to oil spills."
"The Path of the Pronghorn is a 170-mile migration route that the antelope-like creatures have traveled annually for 6,000 years. It is one of North America’s last remaining long-distance terrestrial migration corridors. And it is at risk."
"The Interior Department plans to cement into regulation its 2017 opinion that the accidental killing of migratory birds isn’t a criminal act—a reversal of prior federal policy that prosecuted unintentional bird killings as a misdemeanor, Interior officials said Thursday."
"There’s a lot of ocean out there, and boats engaging in illegal fishing or human trafficking have good reason to hide." "Researchers outfitted 169 seabirds with radar detectors to pinpoint vessels that had turned off their transponders."
"A House committee rebuked the Trump administration’s 2017 conclusion that the century-old Migratory Bird Act doesn’t criminalize the accidental killing of migratory birds by industry."
"Wildlife groups and industry are closely watching fast-moving legislation slated for markup Wednesday that would amend a landmark law to protect migratory birds."
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