ICYMI: Rights for Lake Erie, Killer Balloons, Kidnapped Otters & More

A weekly roundup for busy people

By Paul Rauber

March 8, 2019

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Illustration by Peter Arkle

The people of Toledo, Ohio, vote to grant Lake Erie—the drinking water source for 11 million people—the right to a healthy life.

Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, cuts down a dozen mature trees and dumps them in the Potomac River, creating a hazard for kayakers and other boaters—for which Loudon County fines the club $600.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service wants to remove endangered-species protection for the gray wolf.

Four more Canadian wolves are brought to Isle Royale National Park in Michigan to augment its dwindling wolf population.

Atmospheric CO2 measured by the observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, registers 411.8 parts per million, surpassing 2018’s high of 411.2 ppm.

A huge tornado kills 23 people in Lee County, Alabama, including 10 from one family.

Sea ice in the Bering Sea is at an unprecedented low for this time of the year.

Russia moves weapons systems into its thawing Arctic region.

A four-month investigation clears Christine Lehnertz—brought in as superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park to change its culture of bullying and harassment—of any wrongdoing after a senior official accused her of bullying male employees.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem proposes legislation to stop further protests against the Keystone XL pipeline.

Coal ash contaminates the groundwater at more than 90 percent of the coal-fired power plants that monitor such data.

The Senate confirms former coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Operators of the Navajo Generating Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in the western United States, abandon negotiations with a potential buyer and say the plant will close later this year.

The UK government will radically expand use of offshore wind power, hoping that it will provide a third of the UK’s electricity by 2030.

Three river otters are kidnapped from a North Carolina animal sanctuary.

Peoples’ estimation of how large a fish must be to be considered a “whopper” has diminished over time.

Extreme weather linked to climate change has caused a 57 percent drop in Italy’s olive harvest.

Food giant General Mills says that it is committed to bringing carbon-storing “regenerative agriculture” to a million acres of US farmland by 2030.

Alston’s singing mice, a species found in the mountains of Central America, “converse” with each other in long strings of chirps, using their cortex to control their vocalizations in a way previously thought to be unique to human speech.

Balloons or balloon fragments are the marine debris most likely to kill seabirds.