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    Trump falsely claims wind turbines lead to whale deaths by making them ‘batty’

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    Donald Trump has launched a lengthy and largely baseless attack on wind turbines for causing large numbers of whales to die, claiming that “windmills” are making the cetaceans “crazy” and “a little batty”.Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, used a rally in South Carolina to assert that while there was only a small chance of killing a whale by hitting it with a boat, “their windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. No one does anything about that.”“They are washing up ashore,” said Trump, the twice-impeached former US president and reality TV host who is facing multiple criminal indictments. “You wouldn’t see that once a year – now they are coming up on a weekly basis. The windmills are driving them crazy. They are driving the whales, I think, a little batty.”Trump has a history of making false or exaggerated claims about renewable energy, previously asserting that the noise from wind turbines can cause cancer, and that the structures “kill all the birds”. In that case, experts say there is no proven link to ill health from wind turbines, and that there are far greater causes of avian deaths, such as cats or fossil fuel infrastructure. There is also little to support Trump’s foray into whale science.“He displays an astonishing lack of knowledge of whales and whale strandings,” said Andrew Read, a whale researcher and commissioner of the Marine Mammal Commission, of Trump. “There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that wind turbines, or surveying for wind turbines, is causing any whale deaths at all.”The US has been slow, compared with other countries, to develop offshore wind farms but several projects are now under way off the east coast, enthusiastically backed by Joe Biden as a way to boost clean energy supply and combat the climate crisis.Critics of this push, including some environmentalists, have warned that whales are being imperiled by work to install these new offshore turbines, but scientists have largely dismissed these claims. “At this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could cause mortality of whales,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has noted.Read said that there are some “broad concerns” about the overall industrialization of the oceans, but that the main threats to whales come from their being hit by boats and becoming entangled in fishing gear, and from warming oceans due to the climate change.“The population of humpback whales, in particular, is recovering from being hunted and they are coming closer to the coast to feed on prey, which means they are being hit as they come into shipping lanes, or being caught up in nets,” said Read.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spate of dead whales that washed up along New York and New Jersey’s coasts earlier this year has fueled opposition to wind turbines, however, with Republicans in New Jersey attempting to halt construction of turbines.This opposition has been embraced not only as another culture war battle but also as a way to help businesses keen to stymie clean energy, with several rightwing groups funded by fossil fuel interests linked to seemingly organic community protests against wind farms.“It’s particularly sad to see well-meaning people who care about whales being persuaded that wind turbines are a risk to them,” said Read. “They are being manipulated by fossil fuel interests who see wind energy as a threat to those interests.” More

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      Wealthy California town cites mountain lion habitat to deny affordable housing

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      Wealthy California town cites mountain lion habitat to deny affordable housing Officials in Woodside – a mansion-filled, tech entrepreneur enclave – claim wildcat land keeps them from building multi-unit homes At first glance, the town of Woodside may look more like a sprawl of mansions built on big-tech billions than crucial habitat for threatened California mountain lions.But town officials might suggest looking again.The wealthy San Francisco Bay area suburb has said it cannot approve the development of new duplexes or fourplexes to ease the statewide housing shortage because it encompasses the habitat of the elusive wildcats.Crow-plagued California city turns to lasers and boomboxes to clear the airRead moreResidents in Woodside had long bristled at SB 9 – a new California measure that makes it easier to build multi-unit housing in neighborhoods previously reserved for single-family homes. But a clause in the measure exempts areas that are considered habitat for protected species. “Given that Woodside – in its entirety” is habitat for mountain lions that environmental groups are petitioning to list as threatened or endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act, “no parcel within Woodside is currently eligible for an SB 9 project”, the town’s planning director wrote in a memo on 27 January.Critics of the town council, including many housing advocates, have accused the town of cynically using environmental concerns to avoid compliance with state law. “This is nimbyism disguised as environmentalism,” said Scott Wiener, a California senator who co-authored SB 9. “The notion that building duplexes hurts mountain lions – it’s just ridiculous.”Woodside is not only a habitat for mountain lions, but also for notable tech entrepreneurs including the Intuit co-founder Scott Cook and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The latter modeled his 23-acre Woodside estate on a 16th-century Japanese imperial palace. The median home price in the town is $5.5m, and the median household income is more than $250,000. The landscape is scattered with sizable mansions and estates as well as sprawling ranches.Mountain lions – also called pumas, cougars and panthers – have been known to wander into suburbs and cities across California, and may occasionally traverse the town. “You can see there’s a fair amount of habitat in the undeveloped areas around the city,” said Winston Vickers, director of the Mountain Lion Project at the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center.“Any development should be done with careful consideration of whether it is going to impact a nearby travel corridor, green belt or large adjacent habitat area for mountain lions,” Vickers said. “But to say that any expansion of housing, anywhere in a given city, would likely impact mountain lions is likely a bit of a stretch.”Woodside’s mayor, Dick Brown, declined an interview request from the Guardian. “We love animals,” he told AlmanacNews. “Every house that’s built is one more acre taken away from [mountain lions’] habitat. Where are they going to go? Pretty soon we’ll have nothing but asphalt and no animals or birds.”As far as wildlife biologists know, mountain lions are not especially comfortable on land zoned for single family homes, nor are they particularly put off by two-story apartment buildings.The biggest challenge that mountain lions are facing is “ex-urban development pushing into the wild areas that they need, and major roadways cutting through those habitats,” said Josh Rosenau, a conservation advocate with the Mountain Lion Foundation, one of the organizations seeking to have the mountain lions in the south and central coast listed as threatened or endangered under the California Endangered Species Act.In most cases, “increasing [housing] density where possible, is going to be better for mountain lions ultimately”, he said, than expanding construction further into wildland areas.As California pushes to expand housing amid a crisis of housing affordability and homelessness, communities across the state have resisted efforts to build more densely, often using the state’s strict environmental laws as a shield. With SB 9 taking effect this year, cities across the state also sought to pass design restrictions, or designate historic districts and sites in a scramble to find loopholes in the law.Earlier last month, Woodside had passed an ordinance prohibiting basements in SB 9 developments, capping their size to 800 square feet – the minimum required by the law – and prohibiting their construction in “very high fire severity zones, for health and safety reasons”.“My hope is that Woodside thinks better of its position, and figures out how to comply with this new law,” Wiener said.Or there’s an option that some critics have offered: return all the land to the mountain lions that once prowled there freely.TopicsCaliforniaWildlifeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Victory for spotted owl as Trump-era plan to reduce habitat is struck down

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      WildlifeVictory for spotted owl as Trump-era plan to reduce habitat is struck down Biden administration move halts plan to allow logging in forests where imperiled bird lives Gabrielle Canon and agencies@GabrielleCanonTue 9 Nov 2021 22.18 ESTFirst published on Tue 9 Nov 2021 18.19 ESTIn a victory for the northern spotted owl, the Biden administration has struck down a Trump-era plan that would have removed more than 3.4m acres of critical habitat for the imperiled bird and opened the old-growth forests where it lives to logging.The population of the small chocolate-brown owl, which lives in forested areas in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, has been in decline for decades and has already lost roughly 70% of its habitat. Its numbers have plummeted 77% in Washington state, 68% in Oregon, and close to half in California, according to studies by the US Geological Survey, and biologists fear that further habitat reduction would put them on the path to extinction.A controversial decision made by Trump’s interior secretary just five days before leaving office was widely viewed as a parting gift to the timber industry. The Fish and Wildlife Service has since found that there was “insufficient rationale and justification” to reduce the threatened owl’s habitat.‘Wondrous and amazing’: female California condors can reproduce without malesRead moreUnder the new plan, roughly 204,000 acres – approximately 2% of the 9.6m acres designated as habitat for the owls in 2012 – will be made available for development while more than 3m will be restored and protected. The agency claims the exclusion of those lands from habitat designation will enable federal land managers to meet obligations to the logging industry and help limit catastrophic wildfires that continue to threaten forests in the west.“The exclusions we are proposing now will allow fuels management and sustainable timber harvesting to continue while supporting northern spotted owl recovery,” said Martha Williams, principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in a statement issued when the rule revision was proposed in July.Wildlife advocates, government agencies and the timber industry have sparred for decades over the northern spotted owl. Federal habitat protections imposed in 2012 were meant to avert the bird’s extinction. They’ve also been blamed for a logging slowdown that’s devastated some rural communities.The logging industry has pushed back against the revision, arguing that more thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, which devastated 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) of spotted owl habitat last fall. Most of that area is no longer considered viable for the birds.In the agency’s analysis of the rule-change, officials note that timber harvesting doesn’t lessen the risk of severe burns, writing that fuel reduction treatments – where smaller, less lucrative vegetation is strategically culled from the landscape – should instead be used to restore forest health. Federal land managers can still conduct these treatments in designated critical habitat, the agency concluded.Timber interests also say some of the land set aside under Tuesday’s announcement isn’t actually spotted owl habitat or is broken up into parcels too small to support the owl. As such, the smaller habitat designation issued under Trump was “legally and scientifically valid”, said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a group that represents about 100 manufacturing and logging operations in five western US states.“The federal government cannot set aside critical habitat unless it is habitat for the species. That’s the critical concern,” he said.But the federal biologists found significant issues with the science used to push the previous rule through. David Bernhardt, Trump’s interior secretary, and Aurelia Skipwith, the former Fish and Wildlife service director, dismissed their concerns and underestimated the threat of extinction, according to documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Democratic lawmakers from Oregon, Washington and California in February called for an investigation into the removal of spotted owl protections, citing “potential scientific meddling” by Trump appointees.Bernhardt has defended his handling of the matter, telling AP that Congress gave the interior secretary authority to exclude areas from protection. Environmental advocates championed the move, but continue to have concerns that the agency would allow any amount of logging on the land.“We’re glad the Biden administration repealed the ridiculous and politically driven decision to strip 3m acres from the spotted owl’s critical habitat” said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It needs all the habitat it can get if it’s going to make it.” But, he called the exclusions that remain, “disappointing”.“The Biden administration is condoning the cutting of old growth forests on BLM land,” he said. “It is definitely not what the owl needs and it’s not what our climate needs.”Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsWildlifeBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsAnimalsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden suspends Trump-era oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge

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      The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by Donald Trump and reviving a political fight over a remote region that is home to polar bears and other wildlife – and a rich reserve of oil.The interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in office. Biden’s 20 January executive order suggested a new environmental review was needed to address possible legal flaws in a drilling program approved by the Trump administration under a 2017 law enacted by Congress.After conducting a required review, interior said it “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives” required under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.The remote, 19.6m-acre refuge is home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities, for drilling. Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican plan to allow drilling in the refuge in 1995, when he was president, and the two parties have been fighting over the region ever since.The US bureau of land management, an interior department agency, held a lease sale for the refuge’s coastal plain on 6 January, two weeks before Biden took office.Eight days later the agency signed leases for nine tracts totaling nearly 685 sq miles. However, the issuance of the leases was not announced publicly until 19 January, former president Donald Trump’s last full day in office.Biden has opposed drilling in the region, and environmental groups have been pushing for permanent protections, which Biden demanded during the 2020 presidential campaign.The administration’s action to suspend the leases comes after officials disappointed environmental groups last week by defending a Trump administration decision to approve a major oil project on Alaska’s north slope. Critics say the action flies in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change.The justice department said in a court filing that opponents of the Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations. The filing defends the reviews underpinning last fall’s decision approving project plans.Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, hailed suspension of the Arctic leasing program, which she said was the result of a flawed legal process under Trump.“Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction, and we commend the Biden administration for committing to a new program analysis that prioritizes sound science and adequate tribal consultation,” she said.More action is needed, Miller said, calling for a permanent cancellation of the leases and repeal of the 2017 law mandating drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain.The drilling mandate was included in a massive tax cut approved by congressional Republicans during Trump’s first year in office. Republicans said it could generate an estimated $1bn over 10 years, a figure Democrats call preposterously overstated.Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Nation steering committee, thanked the president and interior secretary Deb Haaland and said that tribal leaders are heartened by the Biden administration’s “commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life”. More

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      California governor candidate under investigation over 1,000lb bear sidekick

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      Turns out campaigning across California with a 1,000lb bear is not a foolproof political plan.John Cox, a candidate vying to replace Gavin Newsom in the state’s gubernatorial recall vote, is under investigation for violating a San Diego city law that bans anyone, except zoos, from bringing wild animals – including lions and tigers and bears – into the area. The San Diego Humane Society’s law enforcement division confirmed it was conducting the investigation of Cox, who has made several appearances at lecterns with his ursine companion, Tag, wandering behind him.The stunt has drawn condemnation from animal rights groups and state lawmakers. “Gone should be the days when wild animals were treated as toys or props,” said People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, adding that “dangerous wild animals” should not be part of publicity grabs. Ben Hueso, a San Diego Democratic representative, said a 2019 law barring the use of most animals in circuses should apply, in “spirit”, to Cox’s campaign.Cox defended the treatment of the bear. “Every care was taken to ensure Tag’s comfort and safety with the approval of several government agencies. California needs beastly change and that may ruffle some feathers of leftwing activists,” the campaign said in a statement, sticking firmly to Cox’s animal theme – he has positioned himself as the “beast” to Gavin Newsom’s “beauty” and is demanding “beastly” behavior via website, voteforthebeast.com, and his Twitter account, @beastjohncox.Thus far, despite Tag’s involuntary endorsement, Cox’s campaign isn’t exactly a roaring success. A recent poll put him neck and neck with the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, with support from 22% of respondents. That compares with 49% who support keeping Newsom, a Democrat, in office. More

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      Idaho is going to kill 90% of the state’s wolves. That’s a tragedy – and bad policy | Kim Heacox

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      Nothing embodies wildness like wolves, our four-legged shadow, the dogs that long ago refused our campfire and today prefer freedom and risk over the soft sofa and short leash. The dogs that howl more than bark, add music to the land, and – if left alone to work their magic – make entire ecosystems healthy and whole.Witness Yellowstone, a national park reborn in the 1990s when wolves, absent for 70 years, were reintroduced. Everything changed for the better. Elk stopped standing around like feedlot cattle. They learned to run like the wind again. Streamside willows and other riparian vegetation, previously trampled by the elk, returned as well, and with it, a chorus of birds. All because of wolves.Yet in the state of Idaho, new legislation signed days ago by Governor Brad Little will allow professional hunters and trappers to use helicopters, snowmobiles, ATVs, night vision equipment, snares and other means to kill roughly 90% of the state’s wolves, knocking them down from an estimated 1,500 to 150. A group of retired state, federal and tribal wildlife managers wrote to Little asking him to veto the wolf kill bill, saying statewide livestock losses to wolves have been under 1% for cattle and 3% for sheep. The group further noted that the overall elk population has actually increased since wolves were reintroduced into Idaho more than two decades ago. It made no difference.Why exterminate the wolves? To make the country safe for cattle and sheep; more productive for deer, elk, caribou and moose. To better fill hunters’ freezers with winter meat. To sell the pelts.But there’s something more. Something nobody talks about.“The wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination,” wrote the nature writer Barry Lopez in Of Wolves and Men. “It takes your stare and turns it back on you.”Maybe the wolf, freer than you or I will ever be, reminds us too much of our own self-domestication. That in a rush to create a stable environment, we’ve put ourselves in stables, and that paradox haunts people who see wolves as something to be feared, hated, destroyed.America’s demonization and slaughter of wolves has been going on for centuries – fed by myths, fairytales, Disney films and more – and continues today, full throttle from Wisconsin to Idaho to Alaska. This is our true forever war – the war on Nature, specifically on wildness and its sinister poster child. The wolf could be out there right now, sneaking under the barbed wire, stalking our profits.In November 2020, the Trump administration, as part of its rollback of environmental regulations, ordered the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list. Western ranchers and farmers were pleased; wildlife advocates called the decision “willful ignorance”. EcoWatch reported that the de-listing occurred “despite the enduring precarity of wolf populations throughout much of the country. According to the most recent USFWS data, there are only 108 wolves in Washington state, 158 in Oregon, and 15 in California, while wolves are ‘functionally extinct’ in Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.”“Wisconsin’s brutal wolf hunt in late February generated outrage – and for good reason,” Jodi Habush Sinykin, an environmental attorney, and Donald Waller, an ecologist and conservation biologist, wrote in the Washington Post. “Throngs of unlicensed hunters joined those with licenses with packs of dogs, snowmobiles and GPS technology. The wolves stood no chance. This unprecedented hunt took place during the breeding season, killing pregnant females and disrupting family packs at a time critical to pup survival. A full accounting of the hunt’s biological toll is impossible, as the state declined to inspect carcasses.”Who are we, as a species? Are we global gardeners, or might we be good guardians as well?As for Alaska: if you want to see a wolf this summer, skip Denali national park, where the Toklat pack – Alaska’s most famous wolf pack, studied since the late 1930s – has been decimated by hunters and trappers who bait the animals just outside park boundaries. The legendary wildlife biologist Adolph Murie, who studied the Toklat pack for three years and teased apart more than 1,700 scat samples, came to a stunning conclusion: wolves that prey on caribou and Dall sheep primarily take the old or infirm. In effect, they create strong prey populations. Wolves are nature’s chisel and lathe.And wolf attacks on humans are so rare as to be statistically non-existent.Over the past half-century, wildlife around the world has dropped 68%. The human race, together with our livestock, now accounts for more than 95% of all mammal biomass on Earth. Everything else – from whales to wolves to lions, tigers and bears – adds up to only 4.2%. And that percentage continues to fall.Knowing that, who are we, as a species? Are we global gardeners who manage everything – plant and animal – as crops on a sustained yield basis, where wildlife is game and wolves are pests? Or might we be good guardians as well, caretakers who regard others beyond ourselves as capable of love; of celebrating their young and mourning their dead?While writing Of Wolves and Men in the late 1970s, Barry Lopez raised two hybrid red wolves, Prairie and River, an experience that he said gave him “a fundamental joy”. He concluded: “I learned from River that I was a human being and that he was a wolf and that we were different. I valued him as a creature, but he did not have to be what I imagined he was. It is with this freedom from dogma, I think, that the meaning of the words ‘the celebration of life’ becomes clear.”
      Kim Heacox is the author of many books, including The Only Kayak, a memoir, and Jimmy Bluefeather, a novel, both winners of the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives in Alaska More

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      Political animal: California governor hopeful greets voters with 1,000lb bear

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      The businessman John Cox lost California’s last governor’s race to Gavin Newsom by 24 points. Now he’s back, and this time, he’s got a bear.As Newsom faces a recall election, the Republican has launched a new campaign against him, attempting to portray the well-groomed governor as a “beauty” and himself as a “beast”. To drive home this message, he has employed some nonhuman staff, including an enormous bear – an apparent homage to the California flag.The bear appeared at a press event on Tuesday in Sacramento. The campaign had hyped the moment by promising the 1,000lb creature as a “special guest”. As part of his Meet the Beast Bus Tour, Cox appeared at a podium in front of a vehicle emblazoned with his face next to that of a ferocious-looking bear. In reality, however, the animal appeared fairly uninterested in politics, lumbering around a few feet behind Cox before flopping on to the ground, panting heavily. It did not offer an endorsement, unless not eating the candidate counts as support.A handler occasionally fed the bear while Cox – who uses Twitter as @BeastJohnCox – took questions from reporters, decrying Newsom as a “pretty boy politician”. He said the bear was there to help him get his message out, and also addressed the animal’s welfare: “We made sure that everything about this bear is taken care of in the utmost.”Cox is gunning for a recall election expected to take place in the autumn after Newsom opponents gathered enough signatures to force a vote. The beast is one of an unusual collectionof contenders, who also include Caitlyn Jenner, a former Facebook executive, and a billboard model.The bear is not the only animal Cox has pressed into service. In a campaign ad titled “Meet the BEAST”, a macaw repeatedly mocks Newsom as a “pretty boy” as it wolf-whistles. “We chose pretty over accomplished,” a voiceover warns Californians of Newsom, who grew up with dyslexia, launched a wine business, became the mayor of San Francisco, rose to lieutenant governor and won the 2018 governor’s race with nearly 62% of the vote – though he does have slicked-back hair. Images of the bird are interspersed with shots of a bear thundering through the forest, suggesting Cox would do the same in the halls of the capitol.At the press conference, however, the docile bear appeared far less likely to bring about significant legislative change. Cox noted that it had been raised in captivity, meaning its “mother didn’t have an opportunity to teach it how to fish”.“If it were out in the wild, it would die very quickly,” he said. More

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      Can red wolves come back from the brink of extinction again?

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      There are perhaps no more than 10 red wolves left in the wild, and they are all in just one place: North Carolina.
      It is an astonishing statistic for a species once hailed as undergoing the most successful reintroduction programme in the US, providing the blueprint for Yellowstone national park’s much-lauded grey wolf rewilding project.
      “The [red wolf] programme has almost entirely crumbled since I’ve been working here,” says Heather Clarkson, who works with the environmental charity Defenders of Wildlife. “It took about 20 years to get the programme to a strong place, that’s the really sad part. Because now it’s crashed. Disappointed barely scratches the surface.”
      In January, following legal action by conservation groups including Defenders of Wildlife, the district court for the eastern district of North Carolina ruled that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which had cancelled the red wolf reintroduction programme, must resume the release of wolves into the wild. This month the USFWS presented a new plan to the judge and he has given the groups that launched the lawsuit two weeks to lodge any objections.
      Start of the rewilding scheme
      The plan to boost the number of red wolves in the wild began in 1973, when the USFWS set out to capture as many of the remaining wolves as possible to establish a captive-breeding programme.
      In 1980, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild. Seven years later the first reintroduction was made at the 60,000-hectare (152,000-acre) Alligator River national wildlife refuge in North Carolina. A breeding pair was released, and captive-bred pups were later fostered by the pack.
      At its peak, in 2011, there were as many as 130 red wolves back roaming the marshes, swamps and coastal prairies. Their recovery was the first time in the US that a large carnivore had been declared extinct in the wild and then successfully reintroduced. More

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      California has environmental allies once again with Biden in the White House

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      California has led the resistance to Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations in the past four years, with the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, filing a whopping 122 lawsuits challenging Trump administration rules, most of them focused on climate and public health.Now, following Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s swearing in on Wednesday, the Golden state once again has allies in the White House when it comes to environmental protections.Faced with a host of challenges caused by the climate crisis, including growing water scarcity, intensifying heat waves and an ever more dire wildfire risk, environmental regulations are high on California’s policy priority list. The Biden administration shares many of the state’s concerns, and isn’t wasting any time in addressing the deregulation efforts of the previous administration.On his first day in office, Biden released a long, non-exclusive list of Trump policies that will be up for review as part of his new initiative to prioritize public health and climate change. The list is intended as a roadmap for US officials, especially those at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Interior where Trump made significant headway in gutting regulations, and shows how the president plans to use his ambitious environmental goals to bring the country back in line.Many of his outlined priorities neatly align with California’s goals and will ring familiar in the state. “The really ambitious goals that [Biden] has in his plan, a lot of them are modeled on California,” said Jared Blumenfeld, the state’s top environmental regulator, told Politico. “We really want to work with the administration to show what is possible. Whether it’s his goal of getting 2035 carbon-free energy or how we think about zero-emission vehicles or building standards or all the things we’ve done over the last 30 years, what we want to do is work with him to scale that.”Here’s a look at some of the key environmental issues for California in Biden’s plan.Vehicle standardsCalifornia has long set its own pace for climate policy, but the Trump administration sought to stomp out the state’s attempts, particularly when it comes to fuel-efficiency regulations. The EPA revoked the state’s Clean Air Act waiver, barring California from setting its own greenhouse gas standards on vehicles.Biden is expected to reverse that decision and his presidency will pave the way for California to have more control on car manufacturers, a crucial part of the state’s carbon-cutting plan. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has proposed a plan to stop the sale of gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks in the next 15 years, a move that, if approved, will push the industry to move faster toward electric.Oil and gas drillingUnder Trump, the Bureau of Land Management changed its evaluation process for leasing to the oil and gas industry to fast-track and expand development on public lands. At the end of 2019, the agency, which is housed under the US Department of the Interior, moved forward with a plan to open up roughly 1.2m acres across California’s central valley for oil and gas drilling. Environmentalists are hopeful the Biden administration will reset the rules and revoke leases that are already underway.California also challenged Trump’s repeal of regulations governing hydraulic fracturing – the process more commonly known as “fracking” that uses high-pressure injections of water, chemicals, and other substances, to extract natural gas housed in underground rock formations. The process has been tied to increases in seismic activity and can cause dangerous substances to leach into the water supply. Trump overturned regulations that required companies to detail plans to prevent leakage and data on chemicals used, and those repeals are now under review.Water warsTrump waded deep into California’s complex water wars with a plan to divert more of the scarce and valuable water resource from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farmers in the central valley, who are among his strongest supporters in the state. Trump openly ridiculed California’s conservation policies, including protections for a fish called the delta smelt, which is nearing extinction from long periods of drought. California officials bristled at the intervention, arguing that it would harm delicate ecosystems and the endangered fish, and fishermen also filed a suit to challenge the rules. Biden’s review list includes the changed determination for the smelt, and California officials may have the final word.Protecting animalsThe Trump administration in 2019 revised the Endangered Species Act of 1973, adding new criteria for listing and removing animals that may be at risk. The changes increase the opportunity to remove some animals from protection or weigh commercial and corporate needs when considering how to designate critical habitat. Biden has put the rule change up for review, as well as some specific cases where changes in designation have already been made. The northern spotted owl, an inhabitant of the forests in the Pacific north-west, had 3.5m acres – more than a third of its habitat – slashed to give the timber industry more access. The monarch butterfly, which migrates across the US to Mexico each year, didn’t make the list last year even though less than 2,000 were counted in an annual tally taken along California’s coast this year. That marks a 99.9% drop since the 1980s. Protections for the sage-grouse, an imperiled bird known for their unique mating dances that lives in a geographically isolated area along the California-Nevada border, were eased by the Trump administration to pave the way to open up mining and drilling in the area. More