ICYMI: Bulldozing Butterflies & More

A weekly roundup for busy people

By Paul Rauber

December 14, 2018

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Illustration by Peter Arkle

Bulldozers will clear a large swath of the National Butterfly Center in Texas for construction of a portion of President Trump’s border wall. 

Thirty-two “cold-stunned” Kemp’s ridley sea turtles rescued from their hypothermic state off Cape Cod are flown to the Florida Keys to warm up. 

The Trump administration proposes to severely limit which “waters of the US” are covered by the Clean Water Act. Under the proposal, federal protection would be lifted from more than half of US wetlands and at least 18 percent of streams. 

The US delegation to the climate summit in Katowice, Poland, joins Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait in blocking the body from “welcoming” the new UN report warning of dire global consequences if warming is not kept to 1.5ºC. 

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a strong supporter of the coal industry, will be the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. 

Three California wildfires last month will cost insurers more than $9 billion. Hurricane Michael cost Florida insurers $4.2 billion. 

The last five years in the Arctic have been the warmest on record.

Numbers of wild Arctic reindeer have fallen by half over the past 20 years. Some herds have declined by 90 percent.

Owing to an absence of predators, frogs from the rainforest that live in cities have longer, more alluring mating calls. 

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross that is the world’s oldest-known banded bird, returns to her nest on Midway Atoll and lays an egg. Wisdom is at least 68.

Highly toxic, long-lasting rat poison is found in the blood of 85 percent of California mountain lions, bobcats, and fishers tested. 

Juvenile Hawaiian monk seals are getting eels stuck in their noses. Scientists urge the seals to “make better choices.”