National News

Why Are Puffins Vanishing? The Hunt for Clues Goes Deep (into Their Burrows). “Puffins are in trouble. The birds have been in precipitous decline, especially since the 2000s, both in Iceland and across many of their Atlantic habitats. The potential culprits are many: fickle prey, overfishing, pollution. Scientists say that climate change is another underlying factor that is diminishing food supplies and is likely to become more important over time. And the fact that puffins are tasty, and thus hunted as game here, hardly helps. Annette Fayet is trying to solve the mystery of the dwindling Atlantic puffins, and that is why she was reaching shoulder deep into a burrow here last month. She gently drew a puffin out, having snagged its leg with a thick wire she had curved into a shepherd’s crook. As she brought the croaking seabird into the light, it defecated copiously on her pants, which were, thanks to her long experience with birds, waterproof.” [New York Times, 8/29/18 (=)]

Republicans Say Iconic Endangered Species Act No Longer Working, Call for Major Makeover. “Conservative Republicans are targeting the iconic Endangered Species Act for a major makeover, arguing that the decades-old law is a failure. Their primary piece of evidence: Of the 2,493 species listed as threatened or endangered, only 54 have recovered enough to be removed from the list – a delisting success rate of less than 3 percent. ‘As a doctor, if I admit 100 patients to the hospital and only three recover enough under my treatment to be discharged, Governor, I would deserve to lose my medical license with numbers like that,’ said Sen. John Barrasso, of Wyoming, at a recent hearing on proposed reform legislation he drafted. The Republican lawmaker is a doctor. Democrats and environmental groups look at the law, passed in 1973 under a GOP president, and see a different picture.” [USA Today, 8/28/18] (=)]