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USA Today
28-07-2025
- USA Today
18-year-old swimmer drowns at Assateague Island weeks after request for more lifeguards
Maryland Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen had recently asked the Trump administration to add lifeguard positions at the national park. An 18-year-old man died while swimming at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland according to the National Park Service. The drowning death came weeks after senators urged the Trump administration to fill vacant lifeguard positions at Maryland's portion of the national park. On Thursday, July 24, at around 4:15 p.m. local time, a relative of the victim "ran down the beach" to inform lifeguards that a pair of swimmers were well off the shore and "struggling in the water," the National Park Service stated in a press release. The two were swimming at Chincotague Beach, around 145 miles southeast of Annapolis. "Although the area of the incident is 150 yards south of the lifeguarded zone," the on-duty lifeguards quickly responded, the NPS said. One swimmer was successfully rescued, but the other man was pulled out of the water unconscious and unresponsive and was administered CPR immediately. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead upon arrival, according to NPS. The names of the deceased victim and the swimmer he was with were not released. Law enforcement from the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, contracted lifeguards, and the state of Virginia assisted with the search and rescue. Senators asked for lifeguards in the area: 'Drownings happen in minutes' Less than two weeks before the drowning, on July 11, 2025, U.S. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to the Trump administration requesting lifeguard positions in the Maryland portion of Assateague Island National Seashore to be filled after budget cuts and staffing shortages left them vacant, according to Delmarva Now, a part of the USA TODAY Network. "Drownings happen in minutes, and there is no substitute for attentive lifeguards specifically assigned to monitoring water safety at Assateague," the letter stated. The vacancy started in June 2025. In the statement, the NPS reminded visitors to "never venture too far from shore and pay attention to wind and currents, which can transport you long distances quickly." Contributing: Olivia Minzola, Salisbury Daily Times Julia is a trending reporter for USA TODAY. Connect with her on LinkedIn, X, Instagram and TikTok: @juliamariegz, or email her at jgomez@
Miami Herald
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
24,485 creatures known for ‘jewel-like' eyes flown to Puerto Rico. Here's why
A team in Florida individually counted over 24,000 tiny aquatic animals once believed to be extinct before packing them in boxes and sending them on their way to their native Puerto Rico. The tadpoles of the Puerto Rican crested toad — also called the sapo concho — are expected to bolster the critically endangered population of the only toad native to the Caribbean island. The Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens announced in a July 9 Facebook post the release of 24,485 crested toad tadpoles, bringing the total introduced into the wild by the zoo to 51,117. 'Each year, our herpetology team simulates seasonal cues like temperature drops and rainfall to help encourage natural breeding behaviors in our crested toads,' the zoo said in the post. 'Once tadpoles hatch, they're carefully transported to Puerto Rico, where U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Puerto Rican officials reintroduce them into protected wetlands.' The toads average 2.5 to 4.5 inches and are known for a 'bony crest' on the top of their heads, as well as their 'jewel-like eyes,' owing to their gold-colored irises, according to the FWS. The team hand counted each tadpole then placed them in specialized coolers, each containing about 1,500 tadpoles. A consortium of zoos with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has been working to hatch the crested toad tadpoles in captivity and release them in the wild, where they face threats such as 'habitat loss, sea level rise, invasive species and disease,' the Jacksonville Zoo says. The situation became so dire, the species was believed to be extinct by the 1960s, according to the Puerto Rican Crested Toad Conservancy. Efforts to raise awareness about the species include a short film from Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny, in which an animated version of the tiny toad helps highlight some of the issues Puerto Rico faces. 'Bad Bunny has provided us a way to show people what a Sapo concho looks like so we can effectively teach others about the toad's rarity, threats to its survival and enable Puerto Ricans to become involved in its conservation,' said Diane Barber, Fort Worth Zoo's senior curator of ectotherms, per a news release earlier this year. The sapo concho program is the longest ongoing reintroduction amphibian effort in the history of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Jacksonville Zoo says.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Wandering wolf gives birth to a pack of pups
Jun. 4—Asha first captured public imagination when the endangered wolf twice wandered outside the bounds of the wolf recovery area in 2023, but the female Mexican gray wolf just embarked on a new adventure: motherhood. Female Mexican wolf 2754 — nicknamed Asha — gave birth to five pups on May 8, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Asha and her captive-born mate, M1966, are first-time parents. The two were paired at the Sevilleta Wolf Management Facility near Socorro in December 2023. "Plans are in place to release the full pack onto private land in New Mexico this summer," the agency said in a statement on social media. The wolf pups are all in good health and Asha had a typical pregnancy and birth. The agency does not know the gender of the pups, as they are minimizing disturbances to the den to maximize Asha's success in raising her first litter. The baby wolves have to be 6 weeks oldbefore getting their first round of vaccinations. Afterward, they will be moved to an acclimation pen, then released into the wild when elk are calving in the area to encourage the wolves' natural hunting behavior, according to Fish and Wildlife. The details of their release later this month are still being finalized, although the initial 2025 release and translocation proposal suggests placing the family on the Ladder Ranch, managed by Turner Enterprises, which focuses on ecotourism and conservation. While wild-born Asha has a history of roaming north, she also had no documented conflicts with humans or cattle, according to the proposal. That experience as a wild wolf should reduce the risk of her pack killing livestock. But if the pack relocates to an area with livestock and her mate causes trouble, Fish and Wildlife is prepared to recapture him and place him back into captivity, according to the proposal. 17 foster pups placed Asha's pups aren't the only endangered baby wolves moving out. U.S. Fish and Wildlife placed 17 captive-born Mexican wolf pups in wild dens this year, Arizona Game and Fish Department announced Monday. Six pups were placed in one Arizona den, and 11 were placed in three New Mexico dens. Nine of those wolves were also born at Sevilleta. Although the government agencies working on Mexican wolf recovery previously released wolf family units semi-regularly from 1998 to 2006, and relocated a pack onto the Ladder Ranch in 2021, pack releases aren't typical these days. Instead, they usually place pups under 2 weeks old in wild wolf dens with similarly aged wild wolf pups, so the captive-born baby wolves can learn the hunting and socialization skills they need to survive in the wild. Fish and Wildlife originally released adult wolves with their offspring from captivity for the sake of establishing a wild population and increasing the wolf population. But fostering captive-born pups is the strategy now that the wild population is larger, because it improves genetic diversity and eliminates nuisance behavior captive-born adult wolves exhibit, according to the proposal. "Meeting the genetic recovery goals as outlined in the 2022 Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan is essential," Clay Crowder, assistant director of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, said in a statement. "The fostering program is achieving these goals faster than was predicted, with 21 of the 22 required fosters having reached breeding age. Also of note from the foster program is that we now have at least 13 fosters having produced 31 litters, all of which are important to contributing to the genetic health of the wild population. With these successes, we are approaching the criteria to begin evaluating potential downlisting of Mexican wolves." Environmental activist groups have long advocated for releasing bonded adult pairs with their pups — a wolf pack — instead of only fostering captive-born wolf pups, and have argued that pack releases are avoided in deference to the livestock industry. "If we look at the longer-term goals of the cross-foster program, which is to increase genetic diversity in the entire wild lobo population, it's imperative that the wolves survive to breeding age and then go on to breed, so that those genes are permitted to continue in the wild population and increase the genetic diversity and make the lobos more genetically resilient moving forward," said Leia Barnett, Greater Gila New Mexico Advocate with WildEarth Guardians. Since the fostering program began in 2014, Fish and Wildlife has identified 30 out of 110 fostered pups that survived their first year. Four of the surviving fosters were born in the wild and 26 were born in captivity.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A rare desert songbird sounds 'red alert' for endangered bird species in Arizona
Arizona's desert birds are in decline, according to a national conservation report tracking long-term bird populations, prompting one conservation group to ask the federal government to take action on behalf of a quickly disappearing, rare songbird. The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Bendire's thrasher under the Endangered Species Act. The Bendire's thrasher is one of the nation's fastest declining birds, according to the petition, losing almost 90% of its population over the past 50 years. Over half of the species' population lives in Arizona, where threats like urban sprawl and climate change have caused significant habitat loss. The call to list the Benshire's thrasher reflects a larger trend of bird population decline across the country. Nationally, about a third of all bird species found in the U.S. are at risk due to small or declining populations and other threats, according to the U.S. State of the Birds Report. The report is an assessment of the nation's bird populations compiled by scientists from several bird conservation groups. Data sources for the report include U.S. Fish and Wildlife population surveys, National Audubon Society's bird counts, U.S. Geological Survey's Breeding Bird Survey and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird Status and Trends project. Of the 31 desert-dwelling bird species tracked in the report, more than half showed declining populations in the last 50 years. None of those arid land bird species in the report showed an increasing population. 'The fact that we're seeing such a decline in the Bendire's thrasher population signals high levels of degradation in the ecosystem and declines in other species,' said Krista Kemppinen, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. 'The Bendire's thrasher has an ecological role, but it's also an indicator of changes that may be happening in less studied species and of changes yet to come,' said Kemppinen. Birds at risk: 'Rarer creatures': Elegant trogons, hummingbirds alter flight paths as drought persists The Bendire's thrasher was named after Charles Bendire, a U.S. Army Lieutenant and naturalist who came across the unknown bird in the 1870s. The medium-sized desert songbird has a dusty brown plumage, bright yellow eyes and a long tail. Found in shrubby desert and grassland habitats, the thrasher spends much of its time skittering on the ground searching for its next meal with its tail cocked in the air. The term 'thrasher' is used to describe birds that forage on the ground and 'thrash' leaf litter or dirt in search of their next meal. The Bendire's thrasher is a shy bird, except during breeding season, when the male thrashers sing a rich but jumbled song. The U.S. State of the Birds Report categorizes the Bendire's thrasher as one of 42 red-alert tipping point species, meaning the species requires immediate conservation action to ensure recovery. One of the biggest threats facing the species is sprawl from population centers in the state. The flat, shrubby desert land where the thrashers live is also a prime location for development projects, like the proposed Interstate 11 corridor, a 280-mile highway that would stretch from Wickenburg to Nogales. 'The reason why unchecked development into desert habitat is a concern, is because it destroys the habitat and resources that the thrasher needs for breathing, nesting and overall survival,' said Kemppinen. 'It also serves to increase the fragmentation of existing habitat into smaller and smaller patches. That ultimately become so small that they're unable to support viable populations of native species.' If you like reading about birds: Sign up for AZ Climate, The Republic's weekly environment newsletter Conservationists have been tracking the thrasher's decline for over a decade. In 2010, a diverse coalition of environmental groups and state and federal agencies formed the Desert Thrasher Working Group, a project under the Borderlands Avian Data Center, to study population trends and create management practices for the Bendire's thrasher, LeConte's thrasher and loggerhead shrike. Initially focused on developing survey protocols for the elusive birds, in recent years, the group has begun creating best practices for solar energy projects seeking to develop thrasher habitats. 'These are attractive areas for solar. They don't have a lot of tall trees and the land's rather flat,' said Jennie MacFarland, the director of bird conservation with Tucson Bird Alliance, who is a part of the Desert Thrasher Working Group. 'It looks like this is empty desert, and it's not. It's home for birds like Bendire's and LeConte's thrashers. Caring for condors: At a remote Arizona wildlife center, biologists treat endangered birds Simply having a small population doesn't mean a species meets the requirements to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. The federal law lists five factors to determine whether a species is at risk of extinction. The Bendire's thrasher meets four of those five factors, according to the center, including destruction or threats to habitat, disease or predation, inadequacy of existing regulations, and other manmade or natural factors that threaten the species' existence. If the Bendire's thrasher is listed under the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Fish and Wildlife will craft a recovery plan that will contain specific actions to conserve the species in the wild. The petition is only the first step. Now that the center's petition has been submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the federal agency will have 90 days to respond. If the agency moves forward, a multi-year scientific analysis and environmental review will be conducted before the Bendire's thrasher is officially listed under the Endangered Species Act. In the meantime, as multiple desert bird species see population decline, MacFarland points to the public's willingness to adapt their properties to bird-friendly habitats as a positive development for conservation. 'One of the biggest bright spots is seeing how many people are interested in turning their yards, their human habitat, into suitable habitat for the species that are willing to live in more urban areas,' said MacFarland with Tucson Bird Alliance. 'Tons of people that are really interested and committed to it, and do a lot of work to make their properties and yards good for birds and wildlife.' John Leos covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Group seeks endangered status for Bendire's thrasher, desert songbird
Japan Today
22-05-2025
- General
- Japan Today
Why protecting wildland is crucial to American freedom and identity
By Leisl Carr Childers As summer approaches, millions of Americans begin planning or taking trips to state and national parks, seeking to explore the wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities across the nation. A lot of them will head toward the nation's wilderness areas – 110 million acres, mostly in the West, that are protected by the strictest federal conservation rules. When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, it described wilderness areas as places that evoked mystery and wonder, 'where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.' These are wild landscapes that present nature in its rawest form. The law requires the federal government to protect these areas 'for the permanent good of the whole people.' Wilderness areas are found in national parks, conservation land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, national forests and U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuges. Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider allowing the sale of federal lands in six counties in Nevada and Utah, five of which contain wilderness areas. Ostensibly, these sales are to promote affordable housing, but the reality is that the proposal, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican, is a departure from the standard process of federal land exchanges that accommodate development in some places but protect wilderness in others. Regardless of whether Americans visit their public lands or know when they have crossed a wilderness boundary, as environmental historians we believe that everyone still benefits from the existence and protection of these precious places. This belief is an idea eloquently articulated and popularized 65 years ago by the noted Western writer Wallace Stegner. His eloquence helped launch the modern environmental movement and gave power to the idea that the nation's public lands are a fundamental part of the United States' national identity and a cornerstone of American freedom. Humble origins In 1958, Congress established the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to examine outdoor recreation in the U.S. in order to determine not only what Americans wanted from the outdoors, but to consider how those needs and desires might change decades into the future. One of the commission's members was David E. Pesonen, who worked at the Wildland Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He was asked to examine wilderness and its relationship to outdoor recreation. Pesonen later became a notable environmental lawyer and leader of the Sierra Club. But at the time, Pesonen had no idea what to say about wilderness. However, he knew someone who did. Pesonen had been impressed by the wild landscapes of the American West in Stegner's 1954 history 'Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.' So he wrote to Stegner, who at the time was at Stanford University, asking for help in articulating the wilderness idea. Stegner's response, which he said later was written in a single afternoon, was an off-the-cuff riff on why he cared about preserving wildlands. This letter became known as the Wilderness Letter and marked a turning point in American political and conservation history. Pesonen shared the letter with the rest of the commission, which also shared it with newly installed Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Udall found its prose to be so profound, he read it at the seventh Wilderness Conference in 1961 in San Francisco, a speech broadcast by KCBS, the local FM radio station. The Sierra Club published the letter in the record of the conference's proceedings later that year. But it was not until its publication in The Washington Post on June 17, 1962, that the letter reached a national audience and captured the imagination of generations of Americans. An eloquent appeal In the letter, Stegner connected the idea of wilderness to a fundamental part of American identity. He called wilderness 'something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people … the challenge against which our character as a people was formed … (and) the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men.' Without wild places, he argued, the U.S. would be just like every other overindustrialized place in the world. In the letter, Stegner expressed little concern with how wilderness might support outdoor recreation on public lands. He didn't care whether wilderness areas had once featured roads, trails, homesteads or even natural resource extraction. What he cared about was Americans' freedom to protect and enjoy these places. Stegner recognized that the freedom to protect, to restrain ourselves from consuming, was just as important as the freedom to consume. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, wilderness was 'an intangible and spiritual resource,' a place that gave the nation 'our hope and our excitement,' landscapes that were 'good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.' Without it, Stegner lamented, 'never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.' To him, the nation's natural cathedrals and the vaulted ceiling of the pure blue sky are Americans' sacred spaces as much as the structures in which they worship on the weekends. Stegner penned the letter during a national debate about the value of preserving wild places in the face of future development. 'Something will have gone out of us as a people,' he wrote, 'if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.' If not protected, Stegner believed these wildlands that had helped shape American identity would fall to what he viewed as the same exploitative forces of unrestrained capitalism that had industrialized the nation for the past century. Every generation since has an obligation to protect these wild places. Stegner's Wilderness Letter became a rallying cry to pass the Wilderness Act. The closing sentences of the letter are Stegner's best: 'We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.' This phrase, 'the geography of hope,' is Stegner's most famous line. It has become shorthand for what wilderness means: the wildlands that defined American character on the Western frontier, the wild spaces that Americans have had the freedom to protect, and the natural places that give Americans hope for the future of this planet. America's 'best idea' Stegner returned to themes outlined in the Wilderness Letter again two decades later in his essay 'The Best Idea We Ever Had: An Overview,' published in Wilderness magazine in spring 1983. Writing in response to the Reagan administration's efforts to reduce protection of the National Park System, Stegner declared that the parks were 'Absolutely American, absolutely democratic.' He said they reflect us as a nation, at our best rather than our worst, and without them, millions of Americans' lives, his included, would have been poorer. Public lands are more than just wilderness or national parks. They are places for work and play. They provide natural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water and recreational opportunities to small towns and sprawling metro areas alike. They are, as Stegner said, cures for cynicism and places of shared hope. Stegner's words still resonate as Americans head for their public lands and enjoy the beauty of the wild places protected by wilderness legislation this summer. With visitor numbers increasing annually and agency budgets at historic lows, we believe it is useful to remember how precious these places are for all Americans. And we agree with Stegner that wilderness, public lands writ large, are more valuable to Americans' collective identity and expression of freedom than they are as real estate that can be sold or commodities that can be extracted. Leisl Carr Childers is Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University. Michael Childers is Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University. 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