National Geographic reported a number of skywatching events happening this month
A flurry of amazing sky-watching events visible from around the world will usher in the new year. With a prolific meteor shower and the moon posing with planets, there are definitely plenty of reasons to look up at the night sky this month.
Read article at New Year’s Shooting Stars and 6 More Great Sky Events in January
The State of North America’s Birds 2016
We continue to laud the importance of eBird on this site, gaining special importance as it becomes more and more clear that wildlife doesn’t acknowledge political borders. The data gleaned from tens of thousands of Canadian, Mexican and U.S. citizen scientists who contribute to eBird indicate that more than 350 species in North America migrate up and down Canada, the U.S.A, and Mexico over the course of a calendar year.
And according to the recently released State of North America’s Birds 2016 report, those three countries—their governments, and their societies—need to step up and do more to preserve our continent’s spectacular and shared natural heritage of birdlife. This report is the first-ever scientific conservation assessment of all 1,154 bird species in North America, and it was only possible because of the tremendous scale and big-data capabilities of citizen-science….
Among the many takeaways from eBird maps and models includes…
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GR: National Monuments provide imperfect protection to water and wildlife, but they are better than leaving lands entirely under standard Bureau of Land Misuse policies. The new administration members are already talking about privatizing Indian reservations. They will probably try to open the monuments to their corporate friends too. Preserving monuments will be one more battle we face in 2017. But there are only thousands of them–we are millions.
Photo: Browns Canyon National Monument, Colorado (Bob Wick, BLM)
“President Obama has accomplished a lot in eight years. Beyond reviving the economy and cutting unemployment, his legacy includes major environmental feats such as reducing air pollution, boosting clean energy and making the U.S. a global leader in fighting climate change.
“It also includes many smaller moves that add up to something pretty big: the creation and expansion of national monuments. These are federally protected areas that feature “objects of historic…
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The New York Times reported
China announced on Friday that it was banning all commerce in ivory by the end of 2017, a move that would shut down the world’s largest ivory market and could deal a critical blow to the practice of elephant poaching in Africa.
Read full story at Bans Its Ivory Trade, Moving Against Elephant Poaching – The New York Times
This video from the USA says about itself:
Meet Gold Butte: Nevada‘s Piece of The Grand Canyon
21 January 2015
Get to know a treasure of the Mojave Desert, and how you can help preserve it.
From the New York Times in the USA:
Obama Designates Two New National Monuments, Protecting 1.65 Million Acres
By CORAL DAVENPORT
DEC. 28, 2016
WASHINGTON — President Obama designated two new national monuments on Wednesday, protecting 1.35 million acres of federal land surrounding the Bears Ears Buttes in southeastern Utah and about 300,000 acres around Gold Butte in Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas.
In Gold Butte, there is ancient Native American rock art.
There are also fossils from the Palaeozoic and later fossil dinosaur tracks.
The monuments are Mr. Obama’s latest effort to protect public lands and waters from development and to nail down as much of his environmental legacy…
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December 2014 a federal judge ordered that wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan be placed back on the endangered species list. Currently, there is legislation being pushed to delist wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming. In Wisconsin several legislators, one being republican senator Tom Tiffany, began a campaign to delist wolves in Wisconsin and asked Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin to persuade her democratic colleagues in the senate to sign onto Republican senator Ron Johnson’s wolf delisting legislation. Unfortunately, senator Baldwin is now on board with the wolf delisting legislation.
I put out an urgent call to wolf advocates to write to Senator Baldwin in the hopes of changing the senator’s mind. I received many well thought out & fact filled letters and passed them on to the senator thru her aide. Here’s two well written letters, read on:
Dear Senator Baldwin,
I am writing to you regarding the push…
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NPR reported
President Obama has designated two areas in the deserts of southern Nevada and Utah as national monuments, after years of fighting and debate over the management of both areas.
The newly created Bears Ears National Monument will protect roughly 1.35 million acres of land in southeast Utah from future development. Gold Butte National Monument will give federal protections to roughly 300,000 acres in southwest Nevada, not far from the site where local ranchers and law enforcement had an armed standoff just two years ago.
Read full story at Obama Designates Two New National Monuments In Nevada And Utah : The Two-Way : NPR
This video from the USA says about itself:
22 December 2016
Killdeer running and hunting insects (Charadrius vociferus). They remind me of little roadrunners and although they are technically shorebirds in the Plover family they really like to spend their time running in open grassy and dirt areas. …
Fall migrants swell the Florida population July through November, and spring migration occurs primarily in March and April. The Killdeer is the most common and widely distributed shorebird in Florida. The absence of the species from most of mainland Monroe County is to be expected, as mangroves and saw grass are not preferred breeding habitats.
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Intently listening
Art, animals, and the earth 