Latest news with #U.S.DepartmentoftheInterior
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
As Trump officials visit Alaska, feds announce plans to remove some restrictions on Arctic drilling
A few snow drifts remain on June 18, 2004, on the Arctic coastal plain of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. (Photo by Craig McCaa/U.S. Bureau of Land Management) The Trump administration plans to lift environmental protections on roughly half of the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska's North Slope, reopening the area to possible oil and gas drilling. The new move would reverse actions taken during the Biden administration to restrict development in the 23 million-acre reserve. The plans, announced Sunday in Utqiagvik and formally on Monday by the U.S. Department of the Interior, open a public comment period, with final action to come later. The plans were announced as three of the Trump administration's top officials visit Alaska. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Lee Zeldin, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are in Alaska this week for a series of events, including a speaking engagement at Gov. Mike Dunleavy's annual sustainable energy conference, which begins Tuesday in Anchorage. During a brief question-and-answer session with reporters on Sunday, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, sat alongside the three cabinet members and called the effort to restrict development in NPR-A the 'most egregious effort of the Biden administration,' adding that 'one of the top priorities is to get the NPRA back to where it was supposed to be by the intention of Congress, to develop oil and to remove all the regulations that the Biden guys put on NPR-A, and that is a huge priority.' While large oil companies have expressed little interest to date in drilling within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which lies to the east of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, there has been interest in drilling within the reserve, which lies to the west. Since the first days of the second Trump administration, federal officials have said that they are prioritizing an effort to eliminate obstacles for companies interested in digging or drilling for natural resources in Alaska. Burgum, Wright and Zeldin traveled to the North Slope after meeting with state officials in Anchorage on Sunday and were scheduled to tour Pump Station No. 1 of the trans-Alaska Pipeline System before returning to Anchorage on Tuesday to participate in the governor's energy conference. The two-hour Anchorage event was largely closed to the public, but reporters were able to listen to closing remarks and ask limited questions at the end. There were no new details about the potential construction of a trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline, and officials did not address the Trump administration's decision to freeze or rescind grants awarded to renewable energy projects in Alaska. Burgum, speaking in Anchorage, noted that Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport offers direct flights to 16 countries and talked about the 'rise of the Pacific' in terms of global commerce. 'Alaska can play such a huge role in this, but we've got to get the federal government out of your way. That's what the three of us are here to do,' he said. In response to a question, Burgum said the administration plans to prioritize development of the planned Ambler Road, a 211-mile mining access road through the Brooks Range, and the proposed King Cove Road, an 11-mile road connecting King Cove to the Cold Bay airport, among other projects. On Monday, environmental groups responded to the NPR-A decision with scorn and concern. Grandmothers Growing Goodness, an environmental group that supports Indigenous communities in the Arctic, said that the repeal of the Biden administration protections would significantly impact Teshekpuk Lake and its surroundings, which are important for the Teshekpuk caribou herd. 'The area is also integral to Indigenous subsistence practices, supporting hunting, fishing, and gathering,' they said, in an email statement with the announcement Protest demonstrations are planned in Anchorage for Monday and Tuesday to oppose the proposed Alaska LNG pipeline project and 'other fossil fuel projects promoted by Gov. Dunleavy's 'sustainable energy conference,'' according to organizers. 'It's hard to overstate the havoc this could wreak on the Western Arctic's undisturbed habitat for caribou, polars bears and belugas,' said Marlee Goska, Alaska attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. 'Trump's fixation on plundering Alaska's ecosystems for short-term gain is matched only by the stupidity of turning this precious place into a fossil fuel extraction site. Alaska's vast expanses of wild lands are a big part of what makes our state so special, and we'll do everything possible to protect these places.'
Miami Herald
20-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Donald Trump Allows Major $5 Billion Wind Farm Project to Go Ahead
President Donald Trump has lifted a federal halt on Equinor's Empire Wind, a $5 billion wind farm off the coast of New York. The U.S. Department of the Interior imposed the stop-work order last month, saying information suggested the Biden administration approved the project without enough environmental analysis. The project, called Empire Wind 1, is a centerpiece of New York's renewable energy strategy and is expected to one day provide power for half a million New York homes. Equinor, a Norwegian firm, announced the Trump administration's decision to reverse the stop order on Monday, Reuters reported. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement, "I want to thank President Trump for his willingness to work with me to save the 1,500 good paying union jobs that were on the line and helping get this essential project back on track." "I knew this critical project needed to move forward and have spent weeks pushing the federal government to rescind the stop work order to allow the workers to return and ensure this important source of renewable power could come to fruition," Hochul said. "New York's economic future is going to be powered by abundant, clean energy that helps our homes and businesses thrive," she continued. "I fought to save clean energy jobs in New York—and we got it done." Equinor purchased the Empire Wind lease in 2017, during Trump's first administration, and the Biden administration approved the project in 2023. Equinor said it spent $50 million weekly to keep the project afloat during the suspension. The project, which is set to use wind turbines from Vestas, is now 30 percent complete, the company said. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued the stop order on April 16, citing a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that assessed the effects on marine mammals and fisheries. The U.S. has four operating offshore wind farms under construction: Empire Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Sunrise Wind off the coast of New York and Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island. Equinor CEO Anders Opedal said in a statement: "I would like to thank President Trump for finding a solution that saves thousands of American jobs and provides for continued investments in energy infrastructure in the U.S." New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement: "After countless conversations with Equinor and White House officials, bringing labor and business to the table to emphasize the importance of this project, I'm pleased that President Trump and Secretary Burgum have agreed to lift the stop work order and allow this project to move forward. Now, Equinor will resume the construction of this fully-permitted project that had already received the necessary federal approvals." With federal approval restored, Equinor is expected to move forward with the project. It said it would work with suppliers and regulatory bodies to minimize the effects of the delay. Related Articles Zelensky Issues Defiant Three-Word Response to Trump-Putin CallEddie Vedder Trashes Donald Trump Amid President's Bruce Springsteen FeudIran's Supreme Leader Speaks Out on Nuclear Deal With TrumpNATO Ally Gives Blunt Assessment of Trump-Putin Call 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Woolly mice and "dire wolves" are a distraction from attacks on endangered species, experts caution
On April 7, Colossal Biosciences, a biotech company founded in Dallas in 2021 with the goal of 'de-extincting' animals, announced it had brought back the dire wolf, a creature last seen in these parts around 10,000 years ago. That same day, the U.S. Department of the Interior sent a proposal to the White House to weaken the Endangered Species Act by removing a single, vital word – 'harm' – from the definition of what you can't do to an endangered species. And two days later, during a livestreamed town hall on Wednesday, April 9, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, told department employees, now concerned about threatened weakening of the ESA, to just 'pick your favorite species and call up Colossal,' explicitly tying the company's latest success to a change that employees and other conservation experts fear would make it easier for companies or governments to degrade or destroy habitats. 'You want dodos?' Burgum went on, rhetorically. 'Let's bring them back. You want kiwis? Bring them back.' The kiwi bird is not yet extinct. Though theoretically humans may have genetic science down that we could rescue any imperiled species, from sea otters to monarch butterflies, this has yet to be fully demonstrated. The question remains if this is a better strategy, if it will even work, than preventing species from being swept into the dustbin of extinction in the first place. Colossal Biosciences has been widely criticized for its somewhat huckster-ish style and the ease with which it's captured the attention of people like Burgum and a prominent investors, a criticism that may reveal a touch of envy – as well as for making claims that inflate the actual science involved to the point it's easy to pop. But the company is more than a pretty gimmick. Ben Lamm, the 43-year old who co-founded Colossal with synthetic biology pioneer George Church, a 70-year old genetics professor at Harvard and MIT, understands that ultimately, no press is bad press. What he wants the public to get though, is that behind the flashy image that has drawn wealthy and famous investors like honey draws flies, there is serious science, and a serious commitment to preventing the destruction of nature. Still, if it wants to be taken seriously when it says that conservation is as important an aspect of its work as de-extinction, the highly politicized times we live in mean that Colossal, and Lamm as its figurehead, are going to have to decide which side they're on. This is something they have tried ardently to avoid. The company has bounded into the spotlight on several previous occasions – when they were valued at $10.2 billion in January; with the proclamation in March of their first genetic modification poster mammal, the adorable, golden-furred, cold-adapted woolly mouse. But in April, Colossal announced a more substantial, still pretty cute achievement: the alleged de-extinction of the dire wolf, in the form of three wolfish pups named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi. The dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) was a species of canine that lived in what is now North America during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs. It had evolved to specialize in hunting megafauna — oversized, cold-tolerant, plant-eating mammals like mammoths and giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers. To that end, the dire wolf was bigger than the grey wolves that existed at the same time, with large, shearing teeth carrying an extremely strong bite force. While the more flexible grey wolf is still around today, its large, dire cousin died out some 12,900 years ago, probably as a result of mass extinctions of the megafauna to which it was so well adapted. As Colossal writes on its slickly Wired magazine-style website, "for many people, introduction to the dire wolf occurred through the lens of the world of entertainment, rather than the natural one. We find mention of this legendary prehistoric canid in role-playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons; video games, like 'ARK: Survival Evolved'; music, like the Grateful Dead's aptly-named song, 'Dire Wolf'; and most notably, the best-selling novel, 'A Song of Ice and Fire,' and its TV adaptation, 'Game of Thrones.'" While news of the dire wolf inspired Burgum to pitch de-extinction as an alternative to the Endangered Species Act, (what is perhaps the world's most successful pieces of legislation for preventing extinction), it soon also inspired something of a science media backlash. To put the scientific consensus in plain language, the reaction ran something along the lines of, "you haven't de-extincted squat." Other critiques have addressed the concrete implications of their approach for the extinction crisis in which, as Colossal correctly states, 'is a colossal problem facing our world,' with roughly 150 species driven to extinction every day and up to half of all species predicted to go extinct by 2050. While not the most high profile among the critics, fantasy writer Ian Smith nevertheless addresses their argument neatly on his blog, when he writes of de-extinction that 'it's not merely nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. It makes extinction sound like something that's solvable through scientific jiggery-pokery, an error that can be fixed without the arduous, inconvenient lengths that human beings need to go to to prevent extinctions happening, which is to stop killing life-forms through hunting, habitat-destruction, economic consumption and general greed, cruelty and ignorance.' Lamm has brushed off these criticisms. "Anytime you do something big and bold, you're gonna get criticism, right?" Lamm told Salon in a video interview. Colossal's chief animal officer, Matt James, was beside Lamm on the call. Lamm is a billionaire, with a net worth of $3.7 billion as of 2025, following the $10.2 billion valuation of Colossal. Church, the company's geneticist cofounder, is not a billionaire and holds no equity in Colossal, according to reporting by Forbes. But 'big' and 'bold' are words that can be applied to the pair. Church, whose genomic sequencing methods inspired the Human Genome Project in the '80s, has long been known for his maverick approach to science. (He's also founded around 25 biotech companies.) And the companies Lamm has founded share a hyperbolic, hyperactive naming trend: Hypergiant, Chaotic Moon, Team Chaos, and of course, Colossal."You know, sometimes people say 'Well, scientists criticize you,'" Lamm went. "It's like, we also have 172 scientists, and we have 95 scientific advisors that are Nobel laureates and that are a part of the National Academy of Sciences. It's not like we're just a bunch of technologists over here.' Lamm is correct. Colossal employs real life, highly-accomplished scientists. An obvious model or inspiration for Colossal's brash, ambitious, combative approach might be J. Craig Venter, who competed with the publicly financed Human Genome Project to be first to sequence the entire human genome — and ultimately proved that he could do what he promised. (But then, so could the Human Genome Project: both groups agreed that they reached the finish line together, in June of 2000). Like Venter, Lamm promises that the vast resources of his investors can do what publicly funded science cannot, and that he is willing to go where government scientists fear to tread. Like Venter back in the day, he also seeks (and, like Venter, Colossal's scientists have probably earned) scientific legitimacy, even as he characterizes the scientific enterprise with its cooperative processes and excessive regulation as stuffy, bureaucratic and hopelessly timid. Lamm uses the concept of open source software to explain to Salon what Colossal gives away for free (gene-editing and related techniques) and what he plans to turn a profit from: spinning off other companies, like Form Bio, which builds software for biologists to manage large data sets, and Breaking, which works on plastic degradation; by monetizing their gene editing and other techniques when applied to human health care; and by using these techniques, for governments who, instead of doing it themselves with publicly-funded scientists, might hire Colossal to carry out a conservation plan using these techniques in which they have experience, along with a willingness to think big, as Lamm might put it. He also hopes to get in on the developing market for biodiversity credits, and to patent software, wetware and hardware technology the company develops. The aforementioned critics have pointed out that the dire wolf cubs are actually grey wolf cubs with slight modifications to their genome to make them exhibit traits associated with the dire wolf. Despite the framing of Colossal's announcement, Lamm says that's what they meant all along. And he's right here, too. As he points out, Colossal's chief science officer, Beth Shapiro, has written a book called 'How to Clone a Mammoth,' but has been clear she does not, in fact, believe you can clone a mammoth. You can, however, she argues, engineer one. Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi were engineered, or made to resemble dire wolves, using gene editing techniques like CRISPR. Colossal's scientists made 20 changes to a total of 14 genes out of the grey wolf's 19,000 total genes. Their choices of what to edit were based on their observations of two ancient samples of dire wolf bone (a tooth, a bit of inner ear bone) from individuals that lived over 60,000 years apart. No actual genetic material of ancient dire wolf forms part of the new creatures. "That's always, always what we've always talked about," Lamm said. "We spent a lot of time and a lot of money on computational analysis and using AI to identify what genes were fixed in a dire wolf, or what genes were fixed in a mammoth. So if we were to make every change in an Asian elephant['s genome], probably a million changes, right? But there's about 85 genes that drive the core phenotypes, as well as the cold tolerance in the mammoth." Lamm argues that the tree of life we're all familiar with is organized mostly on the basis of phenotype anyway. Phenotype means the way our genes are expressed. That is, not the genetic instructions in DNA themselves, but the things the DNA codes for: the long fur of a mammoth, for example, or the large stature typical of a dire wolf. It's true that the first evolutionary trees that attempted to show relationships between different groups over time mostly involved scientists organizing fossil skeletons on the basis of similarities in appearance, also using evidence from embryology and other evidence, like similar behaviors: classing a flying fox as closer to a bird because they both fly, for example. But this is 2025. Scientists interested in evolution or conservation now understand that the genotype more accurately reflects evolutionary relationships. The familiar tree of life has therefore been rewritten to express this, with organisms that seem quite different revealed as having more similar genomes than superficially closer-seeming relatives. We understand, for example, that humans are genetically more closely related to dolphins than dolphins are to fish, that a flying fox is more closely related to a whale than to a bird, and that the property of flight in bats and birds arises from their ancestors adapting to similar environments, not from sharing a long evolutionary history. Meanwhile, proponents of gene editing tend to follow Venter's conception in which life is kind of like a great book (a database, actually) from which you can pick and choose whatever genes you want. (Last year, Colossal achieved the milestone of making 300 precision edits to a single cell in their pursuit of a 'de-extincted' thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger.) This, of course, throws the entire tree of life based on evolutionary relationships into disarray (as does the real-world prevalence of horizontal transfer, a process by which bacteria and viruses promiscuously trade bits of their genetic material.) Perhaps more relevant is a simpler question. What use is cold tolerance on a heating planet? The outbreak of 150-year old anthrax that killed thousands of perfectly cold-adapted reindeer and one human in Siberia in 2016, for example, was largely the result of permafrost thawing along with pathogens in the frozen carcasses of dead reindeer, plus the sort of heat wave that is increasingly common in this closest thing to the woolly mammoth's ancestral biome. It's not just Siberia and an engineered 'woolly mammoth' we should worry about, though. According to new research, climate change has become the principal driver of species diversity decline in the United States. Researchers examined 2,766 imperiled U.S. species and five drivers of diversity loss to determine what most negatively affects the diversity of species within a given group, such as amphibians, for example. Although they separated drivers of species loss into those five categories, habitat loss, which is close behind, is really inseparable from climate change anyway due to multiple interactions between them. To their credit, Lamm and Shapiro are all too aware of the conservation issue. Lamm lists the ways in which Colossal is working right now on conservation initiatives, including a certain amount of traditional conservation work, such as their participation with local stakeholders in Mauritius and Tasmania to identify restoration areas where, for example, a de-extincted dodo or thylacine (both projects Colossal is working on) might live, and fencing or otherwise protecting these areas. More often, the initiatives involve attempts to genetically engineer greater robustness or diversity in endangered populations. (Technologically-speaking, Colossal works across the fields of computational biology, advanced embryology such as work to create artificial wombs, cellular engineering, multiplex editing, assembly of ancient DNA and cloning.) In October, Colossal raised $50 million to launch a non-profit, The Colossal Foundation, that will develop AI- and drone-based wildlife monitoring techniques, a global biobank to preserve tissue samples from endangered species, and other projects. (Matt James is its executive director). And Colossal is indeed using genome editing in fascinating ways. Work on the dire wolf, for example, resulted in figuring out how to isolate, gene edit, and clone endothelial progenitor cells from blood, allowing for the process to be done with a simple blood draw instead of the far more invasive tissue sample previously required for cloning. It's already being used for their red wolf conservation projects. The goal, they say, is not just to bring extinct creatures back to life, but to recover populations nearing extinction. "From a population biologist perspective, we focus on this idea that for a robust group of individuals, you're looking for 50 unrelated animals, and that can recover a population with loads of genetic diversity," James explained to Salon. "Now, zoos that have been saving animals from extinction for decades have shown that you can actually go down lower than that: 25, five, in some cases, two, three individuals, because inbreeding is only bad if it results in negative alleles, right?" James is likely referring to the concept of the "minimal viable population" that can allow a species to persist over time, and geneticist Ian Franklin's 50/500 rule, according to which "genetic effective population size should not be less than 50 in a short term and 500 in a long term" if the population is to persist without inbreeding depression. Other estimates of MVP, which more often vary by species, certainly can go lower than 50. But such estimates, like James' even lower ones, fail to take into account the devastating impact environmental catastrophes — including those like hurricanes, floods, wildfires or droughts, that are predicted to occur ever more frequently with global heating — can have on very small populations. Habitat loss could certainly fall into the category of the sort of catastrophe that could easily wipe out a tiny population, and species with reduced or fragmented habitats are also more vulnerable to other catastrophes. As the multiple authors of a global map of species at risk of extinction due to environmental hazards noted in their publication in the journal PNAS last June, "species with advantageous sets of traits may still fail to recover after facing climatic or geological events if their populations have already declined to small numbers or have been confined to a small geographical area. This may especially be problematic if combined with degraded habitat and fragmented landscapes. Notably, human-modified landscapes often have restricted connectivity, which limits the ability of individuals to flee and establish populations in other locations." Zoos, of course, provide climate-controlled and stable environments — but in the increasingly unstable real world, a population of three individuals is unlikely to get the chance to rebuild, even if gene editing has increased hardiness or restored some of the population's lost genetic diversity. The idea that a small, carefully selected or gene-edited set of individuals, so long as they don't have 'harmful alleles' (harmful gene variants), might be the best way to rescue an endangered population has also been challenged, in part based on the fact that a gene variant that poses a problem in one environment might prove helpful in another. "The whole thing seems like such a racket to me, like a circus sideshow is how I think of it," Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, told Salon in a video interview about the dire wolf and other de-extinction projects. Under the ESA, a species is considered recovered if it meets a range of requirements for robustness. To get endangered species off the list, that is, they must no longer be endangered. And achieving that difficult task will become immeasurably more difficult if the proposed changes to the act happen. The legislation conservation experts are concerned about was actually proposed by the department's Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and posted for comment April 17. Comments close May 19. Experts say if it passes, the Trump administration — represented by Burgum, when it comes to the ESA — will essentially make it impossible to protect the ecosystems endangered species inhabit. A paper published earlier this month takes a look at three decades of the ESA, pointing out multiple ways in which transparency and consistency have already been lacking in the Habitat Protection Plans required under the current legislation in order for any non-federal entity — such as a state, local or tribal government, or a private company — to be issued an 'incidental take permit.' These permits protect them from legal liability if they, for example, kill an endangered (listed) animal in the process of carrying out an activity like developing land, extracting natural resources or generating energy. This research suggests a need for better data management, more clarity, and better monitoring of these habitat protection plans — not making them unnecessary because 'harm' done to an endangered species' habitat has been removed from the definition of what you might need a take permit for. The Trump administration, however, would prefer to remove species from the list by simply … removing them from the list. Because habitat is a deeply political concept. Greenwald said that accommodating dire wolves is 'preposterous.' "Even if they had created dire wolves — which they didn't — it's just that, where are they going to live?" Greenwald said, noting that "We struggle to accommodate grey wolves on the current landscape." 'That leads right into what the Trump administration is doing. They have proposed to rescind the definition of harm that's been applied to the Endangered Species Act for over 40 years," Greenwald added. This definition of harm, he explained, is really the heart of habitat protections in the ESA. This echoes a scathing statement put out by a subcommittee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission in April in response to the dire wolf announcement: "Editing the genome of a grey wolf to produce individuals that resemble an extinct species that has no ecological niche and that will not restore ecosystem function, does not follow the guiding principles on creating proxies of extinct species for conservation benefits put in place by the IUCN SSC. Indeed, creating phenotypic proxies of the dire wolf does not alter its conservation status, and may threaten the conservation status of extant species, like the grey wolf in the USA," the task force wrote. Colossal responded to the IUCN with a thread on X, which stated the organization and the IUCN SSC 'share a common goal-to preserve biodiversity' and 'far from undermining the urgency of efforts to conserve existing species, this project highlights the extraordinary effort needed to reverse such an extinction, underscoring the urgency to conserve existing species through habitat protection, population protection, and, if necessary, using modern genetic engineering tools like those developed through projects like this one.' Lamm posted a letter on X clarifying Colossal's stance and commitment to existing methods of conservation, including the vital importance of habitat. "Colossal was happy to meet with the Department of Interior to showcase how technologies can help protect existing species, engineer new resilience into species populations, and even bring back once recently lost species," he wrote. And Lamm told Salon that he has told Burgum 'very clearly that we think that the Endangered Species Act is an important piece of legislation, and we agreed with it.' Lamm told Salon that, in fact, 'I don't know Secretary Burgum as well as I think people think I do, but in my experience with him, he's a huge conservationist.' This is a little disingenuous in light of detailed reporting in The Washington Post, science magazine Undark, and others. A New York Times article from last November quotes the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity as saying "Burgum will be a disastrous secretary of the interior who'll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry's profits." The story describes in detail Burgum's increasing embrace of oil and gas interests and his role in connecting petrochemical executives to Trump's second presidential campaign. And, as reported by TechCrunch in March, Lamm told audiences at SXSW that the company meets with federal government agencies on a quarterly basis and that the government has "invested" in Colossal — although he emphasized to Salon that 'From our experience, because we also can't speak for the Trump administration – we get no funding … We don't have government contracts. We have no incentive there – Secretary Burgum is a big conservationist. And cares about conservation, at least in our experience.' Burgum's office did not respond to Salon's request for comment. "It's incredibly ill-timed that we have the Trump administration," Greenwald said. "We're facing these really serious twin crises of extinction and climate change. And I think people really fail to realize how intertwined they are ... I mean, burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause, but land clearance is up there with burning of fossil fuels as a cause of emissions and habitat destruction is also the biggest cause of extinction. And so both of these things really threaten to undermine our quality of life and the quality of life that future generations can expect to have. The time is now to address both of them ... We just don't have time for this. I see the dire wolf in that context of just this unfortunate sideshow to what really needs to happen, which is protecting more of the natural world and transitioning away from fossil fuels." Interestingly, Lamm's argument for much of Colossal's work is exactly that: We don't have time. While some might see his approach as "move fast and break things," as coined by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lamm sees Colossal as doing what other scientific organizations lack the resources or the guts to do. It's not clear whether providing conservation services privately to desperate (or innovative) governments will divert scarce resources from national conservation budgets, but given the extremely inadequate resource allocation to conservation currently, it's hard to imagine that paying a private company isn't going to starve government research and conservation departments or institutes of resources, or put them out of work altogether. There's also a lack of evidence, other than the extinction crisis itself, that conservation focused on habitat doesn't work. Would Colossal's investors — celebrities like Paris Hilton, Tony Robbins, and Peter Jackson, and companies and serial investors whose investments reflect their policy aims — be equally interested in supporting the company's gene-editing-based and related conservation work if it didn't come with thylacines and woolly mammoths (or mice) and Pleistocene wolves better known for their role in 'Game of Thrones?' Does it matter? It might, if some of those investors are using their influence and money to stymie meaningful action to protect existing species and their habitats. Church received an initial, though inadequate, $100,000 in seed money from Peter Thiel, a major donor to the U.S. political Right currently in power and working on eviscerating the ESA. Now, though, cryptocurrency-focused Winklevoss brothers are big investors, as is TWG Global, whose Gecko Robotics has holdings in oil and gas among other habitat-destroying industries. Gecko's partners, along with the U.S. Air Force and Navy, include a host of other petrochemical companies. Three years ago, the CIA decided it was in their interest to invest in Colossal, by means of their venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel. We're in a moment in which science in or funded by the United States is threatened as never before. Increasingly, Salon and other publications are encountering scientists anxious about anything they might say that could result in funding being denied to research projects or cut from their institutions. As a company not dependent upon such funding, Colossal is perhaps in a unique position of influence and safety to speak out. It's one thing to play at conservation, arguing correctly, as Lamm does, that historically both Republicans and Democrats have initiated or strengthened important legislation to protect species and their habitats. It's another to be fully aware that just as we're no longer in the Pleistocene, we're also no longer in the 20th century, and it is disingenuous to maintain that ideology and influence are not putting the entire planet on the path to loss of hundreds of thousands of species in coming decades. (The Center for Biological Diversity says one species becomes extinct every hour, while on their website Colossal puts the figure at six per hour.) Incidentally, the kiwi that Burgum suggested Colossal might bring back has a current population of about 68,000 individuals — a far cry from the original 12 million. According to Save the Kiwi, the bird owes its current non-extinct status to 'management.' That is, conservation of the traditional kind. As it faces habitat loss and fragmentation of its remaining habitat as well as the ravages of invasive species like domestic dogs, unmanaged kiwi populations are continuing to decline by 2% every year. By contrast, 'In areas where kiwi are being managed, the situation is improving and many populations are stable or increasing. These places include Department of Conservation kiwi sanctuaries, community-led projects (many of them sponsored by Save the Kiwi), and offshore island sanctuaries,' the environmental organization writes on their website. Perhaps fittingly, one of Colossal investor TGW Global's partners is the fossil fuel company HF Sinclair Corporation, which appropriates a dinosaur as a logo and is listed as DINO on the New York Stock Exchange. Whether we should see this as a neat bit of symbolism about de-extinction or a defiant, stubborn reference to industries that ought to have died out long ago is an open question.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Hunting and Fishing Access Expanded on Refuges and Fish Hatcheries in 11 States
The U.S. Department of the Interior just expanded public hunting and fishing opportunities across more than 87,000 acres in 11 states. The changes apply to areas in Alabama, California, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. According to the official release, the move adds or expands access at 16 national wildlife refuges and one national fish hatchery. Among the updates, the Southern Maryland Woodlands National Wildlife Refuge will offer its first-ever hunting access. Massachusetts' North Attleboro National Fish Hatchery will also open for sport fishing for the first time. This marks one of the largest expansions in recent years. The Department of the Interior says the goal is to make public lands more available for outdoor recreation, especially as interest in hunting and fishing continues to climb. Outdoor activities aren't just fun. They're also a serious economic engine. In 2022 alone, hunting, fishing, and related recreation generated over $394 billion in consumer spending. Hunters and anglers made up $144 billion of that total. But it's not just about buying gear or booking trips. Hunters and anglers directly fund conservation in a way few other user groups do. Through excise taxes collected under the Pittman-Robertson Act, they've contributed more than $16 billion to wildlife conservation since the program's inception in 1937. That money supports everything from habitat restoration and wildlife research to hunter education and public land access. Every time someone buys a box of ammo, a new rifle, or fishing tackle, a portion of that purchase goes back into preserving wild places and the species that live there. Expanding access ensures those dollars continue flowing into the system. Opening more areas to the public directly supports rural communities. It also gives more Americans a chance to connect with nature while contributing to local economies and conservation efforts. The new opportunities follow state fish and wildlife regulations. The Interior Department says it'll continue working with states to ensure consistent management, especially on controversial topics like lead ammunition and tackle use. While those updates aren't coming yet, they're expected to be part of future federal planning efforts. This move builds on the Department's 2019 effort that expanded access on over 1.4 million acres across the country. That push opened opportunities on 77 national wildlife refuges and 15 national fish hatcheries. Planning to Hunt Utah? Expect Fees to Double
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Yahoo
Florida Man, 47, Gored by Bison in Yellowstone National Park
A man was injured after he was attacked by a bison in Yellowstone National Park on Sunday, May 4, the National Park Service (NPS) said in a Wednesday, May 7, news release. Around 3:15 p.m., the man, 47, was gored by a bison after he approached it too closely in the Lake Village area of the Yellowstone National Park. The location of the incident, which includes dining and lodging, is where bison are commonly found in the park. The man, who was from Cape Coral, Fla., sustained minor injuries and was treated by emergency medical personnel. The NPS is investigating the incident. This is the first reported incident of a person injured by a bison in 2025. There were two reported incidents in 2024, the first of which occurred in April. The animal attacked a 40-year-old man after he kicked the bison. He was arrested and charged with four counts, including disturbing wildlife. Shortly after, in June 2024, an 83-year-old woman was seriously injured after a bison gored her near Yellowstone Lake. Bison are known to defend their space if they feel threatened. Additionally, bison have injured more people than any other animal in Yellowstone. 'They are unpredictable and can run three times faster than humans,' per the NPS news release. American bison are the largest animals in North America. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, they can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, reach heights of six feet, jump high fences and are strong swimmers. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The NPS advises park visitors to stay more than 25 yards away from all large animals, which include bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose, and coyotes. The park also states people should keep a distance of at least 100 yards from bears and wolves. 'Wild animals can be aggressive if people don't respect their space,' the NPS said in the news release. 'If wildlife approach you, move away to always maintain these safe viewing distances.' Read the original article on People
