Latest news with #EndangeredSpecies
Al Arabiya
4 days ago
- General
- Al Arabiya
Snakes on a plane: Authorities arrest Indian smuggler caught with venomous vipers
A passenger smuggling dozens of venomous vipers was stopped after flying into the financial capital Mumbai from Thailand, Indian customs officials said. The snakes, which included 44 Indonesian pit vipers, were 'concealed in checked-in baggage', Mumbai Customs said in a statement late Sunday. 'An Indian national arriving from Thailand was arrested,' it added. The passenger, details of whom were not released, also had three Spider-tailed horned vipers -- which are venomous, but usually only target small prey such as birds -- as well as five Asian leaf turtles. Mumbai Customs issued photographs of the seized snakes, including blue and yellow reptiles squirming in a bucket. The snakes are a relatively unusual seizure in Mumbai, with customs officers more regularly posting pictures of hauls of smuggled gold, cash, cannabis or pills of suspected cocaine swallowed by passengers. However, in February, customs officials at Mumbai airport also stopped a smuggler with five Siamang gibbons, a small ape native to the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Those small creatures, listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, were 'ingeniously concealed' in a plastic crate placed inside the passenger's trolley bag, customs officers said. In November, customs officers seized a passenger carrying a wriggling live cargo of 12 turtles, and a month before, four hornbill birds, all on planes arriving from Thailand. In September, two passengers were arrested with five juvenile caimans, a reptile in the alligator family.
E&E News
28-05-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
Greens sue for ESA action on a Nevada toad
Environmentalists on Wednesday stepped up the legal pressure on the Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether to protect a Nevada toad that's potentially vulnerable to the region's energy boom. The federal lawsuit filed in the state of Arizona by the Center for Biological Diversity challenges the Fish and Wildlife's Service's alleged failure to meet an Endangered Species Act deadline for the Railroad Valley toad. The agency said in January 2024 that the toads may warrant ESA protection but has yet to take the next step of either proposing to list the species or not. 'This lawsuit is a final lifeline for Nevada's embattled Railroad Valley toad,' said Megan Ortiz, staff attorney at the center, adding that the Trump administration's 'reckless push to 'drill, baby, drill,' could wipe these little toads off the face of the Earth.' Advertisement The group petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the toad as threatened or endangered in April 2022. In its initial finding issued in January 2024, the agency said the toad may warrant listing based on the petition's 'substantial scientific or commercial information' concerning potential threats from lithium production and oil and gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing.
E&E News
28-05-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
A Colorado cactus rebounds and becomes a Trump admin first
A Colorado cactus once thought vulnerable to oil shale development has now become the first plant to be removed from Endangered Species Act protections during the current Trump administration. Crediting a mix of 'ongoing conservation efforts' and 'improved scientific data,' the Fish and Wildlife Service announced its final decision to delist the previously threatened Colorado hookless cactus. The move completes a proposal initiated by the Biden administration in 2023. 'We determined that oil shale deposit development and gold mining, predation, herbicide and pesticide application, or collection and commercial trade are not threats to the existence of the species even though they were identified as such in the 1979 listing rule,' the FWS states in a final rule to be published Thursday in the Federal Register. Advertisement When the federal agency added the small, barrel-shaped cactus to the list of threatened and endangered species in 1979, it explained that the general region where the species occurs was 'potentially subject to future development of oil shale deposits or gold mining.'
CBC
24-05-2025
- Climate
- CBC
Habitat for endangered caribou threatened by eastern Manitoba wildfire
A wildfire around Nopiming Provincial Park has destroyed much of the habitat for a woodland caribou herd during the season in which females are giving birth. Experts are worried about the long-term effect on boreal woodland caribou, classified as threatened under Manitoba's Endangered Species Act.
E&E News
21-05-2025
- Science
- E&E News
Gulf of Mexico oil activity endangers Rice's whale, NOAA finds
NOAA Fisheries has determined that oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico could drive Rice's whale to extinction, unless regulators take new precautionary measures. The agency released its revised biological opinion Tuesday, one day before a court-ordered deadline. The 677-page biological opinion replaces the old analysis, which a federal judge tossed out in 2024 for violating the Endangered Species Act. There are only a few dozen Rice's whales left in the Gulf, which is their only habitat. NOAA Fisheries said its proposal, if followed, would make lethal vessel strikes 'extremely unlikely to occur' and would therefore sufficiently protect the species. Advertisement But environmentalists were unimpressed.
