For the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale, the year has begun badly. One young whale that had become entangled in fishing lines was found dead in January off Virginia. Worse, not a single newborn has yet been spotted by scientists flying over the…
GSA Issues New Position Statement: Geoscience And Energy Policy
GSA’s governing Council approved a new position statement, Geoscience and Energy Policy, at its October 2017 meeting in Seattle, Washington. “This has been a long time coming,” said GSA President Isabel Montañez. “I would like to thank the committee for…
RNRF Announces Special Edition of the Renewable Resources Journal: 2017 Congress on Contemporary Issues in Forest and Wildland Management
Forests and wildlands in the U.S. are under unprecedented pressures from climate change, budget constraints, and human development. These challenging new conditions are changing the way that citizens, land-management professionals and policymakers think about forest and wildland management practices. RNRF’s…
Harvard University Tracks Environmental Deregulatory Decisions by Trump Administration
Harvard Environmental Law Program Blog This fall, the Environmental Policy Initiative launched a deregulatory tracker to keep tabs on environmental rollbacks of the Trump administration. The idea for this project came from two high-level environmental law summits we hosted at…
American Meteorological Society Releases First-Ever Report Stating Anthropogenic Climate Change Caused Major Weather Extremes
Last year’s record global heat, extreme heat over Asia, and unusually warm waters in the Bering Sea would not have been possible without human-caused climate change, according to new research in Explaining Extreme Events in 2016 from a Climate Perspective,…
U.S. Withdraws from UNESCO Amid Criticism from Leading Scientific Organization
The United States has formally submitted its withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Based in Paris, UNESCO director-general Irian Bokova expressed “profound regret” at the Trump Administration’s decision and highlighted key collaborations with “the United…
2017 Golden Goose Awards – An Introduction To The Most Unusual Prize In Science
The Golden Goose Awards ceremony took place at the Library of Congress on September 27, 2017– the sixth annual celebration recognizing significant federally funded scientific research. Projects must meet two requirements to receive an award: 1) They must have made a…
The World is Facing a Global Sand Crisis
When people picture sand spread across idyllic beaches and endless deserts, they might think of it as an infinite resource. But as researchers discuss in a just-published perspective in the journal Science, over-exploitation of global supplies of sand is damaging the environment,…
Modernize or Maintain – What is the Best Way to Improve the Endangered Species Act?
By Orion McCarthy The Endangered Species Act, the landmark U.S. law for protecting imperiled species, has enabled the recovery of iconic species such as the bald eagle, American alligator, and Florida manatee. While lauded by some as the most successful environmental…
Final TSCA Framework Rules “Significantly Weakened” – EDF
(Washington, D.C. – June 22, 2017) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the final “framework” rules for implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as well as the “scopes” for the first 10 risk evaluations to be conducted, and…