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    ‘This bill protects our precious waters’: how a Florida environmental group scored a win against big oil

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    The giant and catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the BP oil spill, didn’t reach Apalachicola Bay in 2010, but the threat of oil reaching this beautiful and environmentally valuable stretch of northern Florida’s Gulf coast was still enough to devastate the region’s economy.The Florida state congressman Jason Shoaf remembers how the threat affected the bay.“It harmed our commercial fishing, aquaculture operations, and just the threat of oil kept tourists away for months,” Shoaf recalls. “Businesses were forced to close, jobs were lost, and the disaster reshaped our region forever.”Those memories were freshly triggered in April 2024, when the Florida department of environmental protection (DEP) granted a permit to Louisiana-based Clearwater Land and Minerals for exploratory oil drilling on the Apalachicola River basin. So area residents, along with environmental and business groups, formed a Kill the Drill coalition to oppose the permit.A year later, the coalition’s efforts and an administrative challenge to the DEP’s permit by the non-profit Apalachicola Riverkeepers prevailed when Judge Lawrence P Stevenson recommended the department deny the permit.In May, the DEP reversed course and denied the permit.But that was not enough to convince those seeking to preserve the region’s environment. Shoaf, who represents Florida’s north-eastern Gulf coast region, applauded the DEP’s decision but says the threat of oil exploration and drilling near north Florida’s inland waterways would only be ended by a permanent ban. So to prevent future threats and the DEP from issuing other oil exploratory drilling permits, Shoaf and state representative Allison Tant co-authored House Bill 1143.“While the permit to Clearwater Land and Minerals was denied, we can’t assume the next one will be,” Shoaf says. “HB 1143 protects our precious water resources and the ecosystems that depend on them by prohibiting drilling, exploration and production of oil, gas and other petroleum products within 10 miles of a national estuarine research reserve in counties designated as rural areas of opportunity. It also requires the Florida department of environmental protection to ensure natural resources are adequately protected in the event of an accident.”In April, the legislature overwhelmingly passed HB 1143 with only one dissenting vote in the Senate. It was presented to Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, on 18 June. And, despite a poor recent record on protecting the environment, DeSantis signed the bill last week – handing the coalition that lobbied for it a cheering victory.The area now saved from the oil industry is invaluable both to nature and the people who live there. The Apalachicola River, formed by the meeting of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, flows 160 miles (258km) to the Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf. Both the river and bay are critical to the region’s tourism and seafood production industries.For environmental campaigners, the success of their efforts might help lay to rest the ghosts of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, which released nearly 3.19m barrels of oil into the gulf.“Oil from the BP spill didn’t reach our coasts, but the damage caused by the threat was enough,” Tant says. “We’ve seen what can happen. We’ve lived it. This is not theoretical. It was a perilous time for small businesses and for those who lived in the area. It stopped tourism and shuttered small businesses. So it defies logic to think it’s a good idea to drill for oil along the Apalachicola River.”Adrianne Johnson is executive director of the Florida Shellfish Aquaculture Association which represents more than 350 shellfish farmers in Florida. Johnson, an Apalachicola native, became involved in the Kill the Drill movement for personal and business reasons.“This region has a deep collective memory of how the Gulf oil spill devastated the regional economy and collapsed the oyster industry in Apalachicola Bay,” Johnson explains. “And that was just the threat of oil. The majority of the state’s oyster farms operate across Wakulla, Franklin and Gulf counties, and these areas downriver would be most impacted by oil drilling upriver (at the proposed site in Calhoun county). If there were to be a spill upriver because of drilling in the basin, it would have catastrophic environmental and economic impacts on the area that would be felt for generations.”Johnson also points to the region’s frequent weather-related natural disasters, such as hurricanes, as another reason why drilling had to be banned in the region.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our shellfish farmers are still recovering from the multiple hurricanes of 2024,” she explains. “But the reality of being a Florida farmer is having to contend with these weather-related events. Hurricanes and natural disasters are outside of our control. Permitting oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas is very much within our control and is an unnecessary threat to our industry.”Tant agrees.“We are a hurricane-prone state,” she says. “We can’t get away from that. It’s not a question of will we get hit by a hurricane because we know it’s going to happen. But an oil spill caused by a hurricane would make the disaster 100 times worse.”According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the Deep Horizon oil spill caused the loss of 8.3 billion oysters, the deaths of nearly 105,400 sea birds, 7,600 adult and 160,000 juvenile sea turtles, and a 51% decrease in dolphins in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay.Craig Diamond, current board member and past president of Apalachicola Riverkeeper, says another factor behind the ban was the river system itself.“A spill would be highly impactful given the existing stresses in the system,” says Diamond, who has worked with the Northwest Florida Water Management District and taught graduate courses on water resources at Florida State University. “Apalachicola Bay Riverkeeper and its allies believe the long-term risks of fossil fuel exploitation in the floodplain or bay (or nearshore) far outweigh the short-term benefits.”Shoaf says he was inspired to write HB 1143 by the community’s grassroots efforts to defend the region’s natural resources.“This bill is essential to prevent unnecessary and irreparable harm to Apalachicola Bay, as well as the economies and ecosystems that depend on it,” he says.After DeSantis signed the bill into law, the threat of drilling has now receded into the distance for the foreseeable future. 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      Trump administration moves to narrow protections for endangered species

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      The Trump administration is planning to narrow protections for endangered species, in a move that environmentalists say would accelerate extinction by opening up critical habitats for development, logging, mining and other uses.The proposal is the latest deregulatory effort by Donald Trump, who has made it a priority to dismantle endangered species protections as part of a broader quest to boost energy extraction and industrial access, even in the US’s most sensitive and vulnerable natural areas.The new proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service offers a new interpretation of the of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which would strike habitat destruction from regulations.At issue is a long-standing definition of two terms in the Endangered Species Act: “harm” and “take”. “Harm” has meant altering or destroying the places those species live. “Take”, meanwhile, is a term used in regulations to denote any actions that include hunting, capturing, wounding or killing a protected species, which has included altering or destroying the places those species live.The US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said in a proposed rule, issued on Wednesday, that habitat modification and destruction should not be considered “harm” because it is not the same as intentionally targeting a species, which is defined as “take”.“The existing regulatory definition of ‘harm,’ which includes habitat modification, runs contrary to the best meaning of the statutory term ‘take,’” the proposal says.Challenges to the legalese could enable a much more limited application of the regulations, which would free industry to continue or begin activities that would impact habitat.But habitat loss is considered the strongest driver of species loss. Striking the word or changing these definitions could cause catastrophic damage to species already close to the brink.“If [you] say harm doesn’t mean significant habitat degradation or modification, then it really leaves endangered species out in the cold,” Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity said, adding that the proposal “cuts the heart out of the Endangered Species Act”.Environmentalists argue that the definition of “take” has always included actions that harm species, and the definition of “harm” has been upheld by the US supreme court.Spotted owls and Florida panthers both are protected because the current rule forbids habitat destruction, Greenwald said. The legislation has helped safeguard more than 1,700 species and their habitats, preventing 99% of those listed from going extinct, most famously the bald eagle.But if the new rule is adopted, someone who logs in a forest or builds a development would be unimpeded as long as they could say they didn’t intend to harm an endangered species.The proposed rule was expected to be published in the Federal Register on Thursday, kicking off a 30-day public comment period. Environmental groups are already planning to challenge the rule in court if it’s adopted. Questions remain about whether the Trump administration is legally able to repeal a rule already upheld by the supreme court.The proposal “threatens a half-century of progress in protecting and restoring endangered species”, said Drew Caputo, an attorney at Earthjustice. He added that the law currently “recognizes the common-sense concept that destroying a forest, beach, river, or wetland that a species relies on for survival constitutes harm to that species”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt’s not the first attempt by the administration to undermine protections. One of Trump’s first executive orders after returning to the White House in January, declared a national energy emergency even amid a record glut of oil and gas drilling, and calls for the endangered species committee, a group nicknamed the “God squad”, to meet at least quarterly.This committee, which would be led by US interior secretary Doug Burgum, five other senior officials from different government agencies and a representative from an affected state, has rarely been used but has the power to override the Endangered Species Act even if it results in the extinction of a species, hence its existential nickname.Changing the rule could prove an easier strategy to override protections. It could also threaten conservation areas kept safe because of the species that call them home.The issue is of particular concern in Hawaii. The islands have more endangered species than any other state – 40% of the nation’s federally listed threatened and endangered species – even though Hawaii has less than 1% of the land area of the US, according to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.Maxx Philips, Hawaii and Pacific Islands director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said removing these safeguards will accelerate Hawaii’s extinction crisis and erode the biological and cultural heritage of the islands.She pointed to the example of tiny native bees that forage on and pollinate coastal dune plants. Very little oceanfront property remains undeveloped and what is left tends to be fragmented pockets. Other listed species living on the shoreline – like green sea turtles – could also lose their homes if protections are removed.“Habitat is life, right?” she said. “And without it, there is no recovery and without recovery, there is only extinction.”Oliver Milman and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      The pink protest at Trump’s speech shows the Democrats aren’t coming to save us

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      Pretty (pathetic) in pinkHappy International Women’s Day (IWD), everyone! I’ve got some good news and some bad news to mark the occasion.The bad news is that a legally defined sexual predator is leading the most powerful country on earth and we’re seeing a global backlash against women’s rights. “[I]nstead of mainstreaming equal rights, we are seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said in his IWD message.The good news, for those of us in the US at least, is that the Democrats have a plan to deal with all this. Or rather, they have wardrobe concepts of a plan. On Tuesday night, Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol. Some members from the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC), including Nancy Pelosi, decided to protest by … wait for it … wearing pink.“Pink is a color of power and protest,” the New Mexico representative Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the DWC, told Time. “It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear.”The pink outfits may have been loud but the message the Democrats were sending was far from clear. They couldn’t even coordinate their colour-coordinating protest: some lawmakers turned up wearing pink while others wore blue and yellow to support Ukraine and others wore black because it was a somber occasion.Still, I’ll give the DWC their due: their embarrassing stunt seems to have garnered at least one – possibly two – fans. One MSNBC columnist, for example, wrote that the “embrace of such a traditionally feminine color [pink] by women with considerable political power makes a stunning example of subversive dressing”.For the most part, however, the general reaction appears to have been that this was yet another stunning example of how spineless and performative the Democrats are. Forget bringing a knife to a gunfight – these people are bringing pink blazers to a fight for democracy. To be fair, there were a few other attempts at protest beyond a pink palette: the Texas representative Al Green heckled the president (and was later censured by some of his colleagues for doing so) and a few Democrats left the room during Trump’s speech. Still, if this is the “opposition”, then we are all doomed.Not to mention: even the pink blazers seemed a little too extreme for certain factions of the Democratic party. House Democratic leadership reportedly urged members not to mount protests and to show restraint during Trump’s address. They also chose the Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin to give the Democratic response to Trump’s speech. While Slotkin tends to be described as a sensible centrist voice by a lot of the media, she’s very Trump-adjacent. Slotkin is one of the Democratic senators who has voted with Trump the most often and, last June, was one of the 42 Democrats to vote with the GOP to sanction the international criminal court (ICC) over its seeking of arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for destroying Gaza. Human rights advocacy groups have warned that attacking the ICC like this undermines international law and the ability to prosecute or prevent human rights violations across the world. It speaks volumes about the US media and political class that a senator standing against international law can be called a centrist.This whole episode also speaks volumes about the Democrats’ plan for the future: it’s growing increasingly clear that, instead of actually growing a spine and fighting to improve people’s lives, the Democratic party seems to think the smartest thing to do is quietly move to the right and do nothing while the Trump administration implodes. I won’t caution against this strategy myself. Instead, I’ll let Harry Truman do it. Back in 1952, Truman said: “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.”Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that the Democrats are not coming to save us. We must save ourselves. That means organizing within our local communities and learning lessons from activists outside our communities. It means being careful not to normalize creeping authoritarianism and it means recognizing the urgency of the moment. The warning signs are flashing red: we need to respond with a hell of a lot more than a pink wardrobe.Make atomic bombings straight again!DEI Derangement Syndrome has reached such a fever-pitch in the US that a picture of the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan has been flagged for deletion at the Pentagon. Apparently, it only got the job because it was Gay.Can a clitoris be trained to read braille?The Vagina Museum addressed this very important question on Bluesky.One in eight women killed by men in the UK are over 70A landmark report by the Femicide Census looks at the deaths of 2,000 women killed by men in the UK over the last 15 years and found that the abuse of older women hasn’t had as much attention as it should. “We have to ask why we see the use of sexual and sustained violence against elderly women who are unknown to the much younger men who kill them,” the co-founder of the Femicide Census told the Guardian. “The misogynistic intent in these killings is clear.”Bacterial vaginosis (BV) may be sexually transmitted, research findsWhile this new study is small, its findings are a big deal because BV is super common – affecting up to a third of reproductive-aged women – and has long been considered as a “woman’s issue”. Treating a male partner for it, however, may reduce its recurrence.How astronaut Amanda Nguyen survived rape to fight for other victimsAfter being assaulted at age 22, Nguyen got a hospital bill for $4,863.79 for her rape kit and all the tests and medication that went along with it. She was also informed that it was standard practice for her rape kit to be destroyed after six months. “The statute of limitations is 15 years because it recognises that trauma takes time to process,” Nguyen told the Guardian in an interview. “It allows a victim to revisit that justice. But destroying the rape kit after six months prevents a survivor from being able to access vital evidence.” After her traumatic experience, Nguyen successfully fought for the right not to have your rape kit destroyed until the statute of limitations has expired, and the right not to have to pay for it to be carried out.Female doctors outnumber male peers in UK for first timeIt’s a significant milestone in what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession.There’s an Israeli TikTok trend mocking the suffering of Palestinian childrenThis is one of those things that would be front page of the New York Times if it were directed at Israelis but is getting relatively little attention because of how normalized the dehumanization of Palestinians is. It’s also just the latest in a series of social media trends mocking Palestinian suffering.Florida opens criminal investigation into Tate brothers“These guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world,” the state attorney general said.The week in pawtriarchyJane Fonda, a committed activist, has always fought the good fight. But she’s also apparently fought wildlife. The actor’s son recently told a Netflix podcast that Fonda once “pushed a bear out of her bedroom”. While that phrase may mean different things to different people, in this instance it was quite literal. Fonda apparently scared off a bear who had entered her grandson’s room and was sniffing the crib. Too bad nobody was there to snap a photo of the escapade – it would have been a real Kodiak moment. More

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      Elephants and rhinos at increased risk of poaching due to Trump funding cuts, groups say

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      Environmentalists have urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision to cut off funding for key conservation work aimed at saving iconic at-risk species, including anti-poaching patrols for vulnerable rhinos and elephants.International conservation grants administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) have been frozen by Trump, throwing conservation non-profits around the world into disarray. These grants, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, help protect imperiled species in countries that lack the US’s financial muscle to combat threats such as poaching.An environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, said it would sue the FWS if the funding isn’t restored. It said the money is vital for patrols safeguarding rhinos in Africa, which have suffered a 94% population decline over the past century, as well as efforts to reduce human-elephant conflict and help conserve species such as freshwater turtles and monarch butterflies.“The Trump administration’s funding freeze for anti-poaching patrols and other international conservation work is maddening, heartbreaking and very illegal,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the center.“These Fish and Wildlife Service funds help protect elephants, rhinos and other animals across the globe that Americans love. No one voted to sacrifice the world’s most iconic wildlife to satisfy some unelected billionaire’s reckless power trip.”In a letter to the FWS, the center said that the funding halt violated the US Endangered Species Act, which requires the government to consider at-risk species in its decisions, and flouted proper agency procedure in rescinding funding. “This insanity has to stop or some of the world’s most endangered animals will die,” said Uhlemann.The freeze on grants is part of a broader crackdown on US foreign aid by Trump and his billionaire backer Elon Musk. A judge has ordered the freeze to be reversed, although the administration has yet to comply with the directive.In his previous term in office, Trump sought to weaken the Endangered Species Act and has set about trying to bypass the conservation law during his latest term. The president has demanded that a little-known committee, nicknamed “the God squad” due to its ability to decide if a species becomes extinct, help push through fossil fuel and logging projects in the US even if they doom a species.Experts have said that the use of the committee in this way is likely illegal. A court case may now unfold over the stymying of FWS grants for international conservation, too.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlongside illegal poaching, legal hunting tours in Africa are popular with some Americans, including Donald Trump Jr, who was pictured holding a severed elephant’s tail more than a decade ago.The FWS was contacted for comment on the potential lawsuit. More

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      Trump signs order to bring back plastic straws claiming paper ones ‘explode’

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      On Monday, Donald Trump took aim at a “ridiculous situation” that directly affects his daily life: paper straws.He signed an executive order that rolls back a Biden administration policy to phase out federal purchases of single-use plastics, including straws, from food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035.“It’s a ridiculous situation. We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump told reporters at the White House as he signed the order. “These things don’t work,” he said, referring to paper straws. “I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode.”But Trump, such a fan of drinking Diet Coke that he has installed a button in the Oval Office in order to summon staff to deliver the drink, has long railed against any restrictions upon plastic straws. When attempting to gain re-election in 2020, his campaign sold reusable straws on its website claiming that “liberal paper straws don’t work”.View image in fullscreenWhile plastic straws have been blamed for polluting oceans and harming marine life, Trump said on Monday that he thinks “it’s OK” to continue using them. “I don’t think that plastic is going to affect the shark very much as they’re … munching their way through the ocean,” he said at a White House announcement.White House staff secretary Will Scharf, who presented the executive order to Trump, told him the push for paper straws has cost the government and private industry “an absolute ton of money and left consumers all over the country wildly dissatisfied with their straws’.’The order directs federal agencies to review procurement processes to allow use of plastic straws. “It really is something that affects ordinary Americans in their everyday lives,” Scharf said.The plastic manufacturing industry applauded Trump’s move.“Straws are just the beginning,” Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, said in a statement. “‘Back to Plastic’ is a movement we should all get behind.”The world is undergoing a glut of new plastic production, and a summit among countries last year failed to come to a deal to address this despite growing recognition of the harm caused by waste that takes hundreds of years to break down. Global annual plastic production doubled in the two decades since 2000 to about 460m tonnes and is expected to quadruple again by 2050.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenLess than 10% of this plastic waste is now being recycled. The rest invariably ends up in the environment, with the equivalent of one truck filled with plastic dumping its contents into the ocean every minute, according to experts’ estimates. Much of this trash is composed of single-use plastics, such as straws, which make up about 40% of plastic production.The result of this boom has been a world riddled with plastics, with large or microscopic fragments of the material found in every corner of the planet, even in the air. Plastics choke and throttle marine creatures and birds and microplastics have been found deep within the bodies of animals, including humans. Research has found plastics present in people’s brains, testicles, blood and even placentas.More than 390m straws are used every day in the United States, mostly for 30 minutes or less, according to advocacy group Straws Turtle Island Restoration Network. Straws take at least 200 years to decompose and pose a threat to turtles and other wildlife as they degrade into microplastics, says the group.“To prevent another sea turtle from becoming a victim to plastic, we must make personal lifestyle alterations to fight for these species,’’ the group said in a statement.Oliver Milman contributed to this report More

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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