Free Republic

On Thursday, the Biden administration restored rules to protect imperiled plants and animals that had been rolled back under former President Trump. Among the changes announced, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened. That means officials won’t have to craft time-intensive plans to shield each individual species while protections are pending, as has been done recently with North American wolverines and alligator snapping turtles in the southeastern U.S. and spotted owls. The blanket protection regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes...

The government of Israel accused the United Nations (UN) on Wednesday of putting Palestinian civilians in danger by allowing terrorists to use UN facilities in Gaza to launch attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy delivered a lengthy statement at the start of a press briefing in which he rebuked Paula Gaviria Betancur, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, who had claimed the day before that Israel was trying to expel Palestinians from Gaza.

Former Vice President Mike Pence says in his new book that he was angry, not frightened when a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol chanting for him to be hanged on Jan. 6, 2021. The 63-year-old Pence’s memoir, “So Help Me God,” was released Tuesday and is the first full recounting of the Capitol riot in the former Indiana governor’s own words. “They had come to protest the result of the election and to prevent Congress from fulfilling its responsibility to open and count the Electoral College votes,” Pence writes of the rioters. “And, as I later...

Kenya's worst dry weather in forty years has killed almost two percent of the world's rarest zebra in three months. Over the same period, 25 times more elephants died than usual, as well. The drought is starving Kenya's famed wildlife of usual food sources and driving them closer to population centers. The ever-widening search for food can result in deadly conflict between animals and people. Without interventions to protect wildlife or rain, animals in many parts of the East African country could face a crisis, conservationists say. "It's a serious threat to us," said Andrew Letura, an animal observation officer...

Conservationists are seeking Endangered Species Act protection for a tiny snail half the size of a pea that is known to exist only in high-desert springs near a huge lithium mine planned in Nevada along the Oregon state line. The Western Watersheds Project filed the listing petition last week with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Kings River pyrg, a springsnail found in 13 isolated springs around Thacker Pass 200 miles (321 kilometers) northeast of Reno. It says the biggest threat to the snail’s survival is disruption of groundwater flows as a result of the 370-foot-deep (113-meter), open-pit...

What a bad year to be a Florida manatee. For the first time on record, more than 1,000 of the sea mammals have died in a calendar year — and it’s not even December yet. That could amount to 1 in every 7 of the state’s manatees gone in less than 11 months. Many of them starved, thanks to a die-off of seagrass, a problem worsened by human-made pollution. In the short run, Florida owes it to this iconic mammal to find ways to mitigate the damage. It’s also time to put the manatees back on the endangered species list,...

Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” network chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta sounded off on President Donald Trump’s treatment of the media during his presidency. According to Acosta, Trump’s “hostility” towards the media was absorbed by his supporters, who he said made members of the media “feel endangered” with “death threats.”

At approximately 9:30 this morning, Sheriff's Office deputies,Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue and Sea Pines Security personnel responded to a lagoon off of Wood Duck Road in Sea Pines Plantation to a report of an alligator attacking a woman inside of a lagoon. When they arrived, fire personnel located the deceased woman inside of the lagoon and recovered her body, while deputies interviewed witnesses. Witness accounts indicate that the woman—who will be identified after her next of kin are notified—was walking her dog near the lagoon when she was attacked and pulled underwater by the alligator. The Sheriff's Office Environmental...

It sports a green mohican, fleshy finger-like growths under its chin and can breathe through its genitals. The Mary river turtle is one of the most striking creatures on the planet, and it is also one of the most endangered. The 40cm long turtle, which is only found on the Mary river in Queensland, features in a new list of the most vulnerable reptile species compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Despite the turtle’s punk appearance – derived from vertical strands of algae that also grow on its body – its docile nature made it historically popular as...

California Democrats are readying themselves to battle Republicans in Congress over potential attempts to roll back regulations under the Endangered Species Act. Last month, the Oroville Dam’s spillway malfunctioned, sending gallons of water rushing through an area affecting nearly 200,000 residents. The damage — beyond the spillway itself — is estimated to be in the millions.

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) said she voted for Donald Trump in her state's Republican primary on Tuesday. (SNIP) She will also face a primary challenge from fellow Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.), who currently represents the state's 13th district.

The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics. Now playing also on station KWEL in Midland-Odessa! Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant...

South American, Colombian Parakeet (Perija) that is listed as critically endangered, threatened species, quoting biblical scriptures, from the Old and New testament.

The Interior Department said Tuesday that the greater sage grouse, a ground-dwelling bird whose vast range spans 11 Western states, does not need federal protections ... The fight over whether to list the bird as endangered or threatened recalled the battle over the spotted owl 25 years ago, where federal protection greatly impeded the logging economy. ... could help defuse a potential political liability for Democrats heading into the 2016 election; ... House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop said Tuesday's announcement was a "cynical ploy" intended to mask the fact that the Obama administration has imposed limits on development...

Windhoek (AFP) - A US hunter who paid $350,000 to kill a black rhinoceros in Namibia successfully shot the animal on Monday, saying that his actions would help protect the critically-endangered species. Corey Knowlton, from Texas, downed the rhino with a high-powered rifle after a three-day hunt through the bush with government officials on hand to ensure he killed the correct animal. Knowlton, 36, won the right to shoot the rhino at an auction in Dallas in early 2014 -- attracting fierce criticism from many conservationists and even some death threats. He took a CNN camera crew on the hunt...

Sales of leases on 8.1 million acres of federal oil and gas parcels — an area larger than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined — are on hold because of worries that drilling could harm greater sage grouse... the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s delay on the parcels underscores just how much is at stake for an industry that finds its future inextricably intertwined with a bird once known primarily for its elaborate mating display. The grouse’s huge range, covering portions of 11 states and an area more than four times as big as New England, includes vast oil, gas and...

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the meadow jumping mouse as an endangered species. Now, the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees the Santa Fe National Forest, is considering erecting a series of 8-foot high fences to protect the mouse’s habitat. The Luceros, members of the San Diego Cattleman’s Association and holders of grazing permits with the federal government, say the fences will lock out their cattle — as well as those of other permit holders — from ever returning to the meadow where the livestock graze for 20 days in the spring and up to 40 days...

Gov. Jan Brewer will not give ranchers and their employees permission to kill endangered Mexican gray wolves on federal lands. The measure vetoed Tuesday was crafted by Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford. She has been a vocal foe of the program by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce the wolves into sections of Arizona and New Mexico, saying they are endangering not only cattle but also pets and children. SB1211 would have spelled out that ranchers could “take” a wolf — legalese for killing — that was killing, wounding or biting livestock. It also would have legalized a guard...

By now you’re familiar with the standoff between the federal government, i.e. the Bureau of Land Management, and 67 year-old rancher Cliven Bundy. .. The BLM asserts their power through the expressed desire to protect the endangered desert tortoise, a tortoise so “endangered” that their population can no longer be contained by the refuge constructed for them so the government is closing it and euthanizing over a thousand tortoises. The tortoises, the excuse that BLM has given for violating claims to easements and running all but one lone rancher out of southern Nevada, is doing fine. In fact, the tortoise...