This week in birds - #508

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

A Great Blue Heron just being a Great Blue Heron in coastal waters.

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Yellowstone National Park was seriously damaged in places by the June floods. In rebuilding the National Parks Conservation Association will be taking the effects of climate change into account. 

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The deforestation of the Amazon has reached a six-year high in Brazil. The area cleared in the first six months of 2022 is five times the size of New York City.

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And those who attempt to defend the Amazon must put their lives on the line. Sometimes those lives are lost as happened to an Indigenous leader recently in Venezuela.

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In our own country, it sometimes seems that the Supreme Court is determined to kill us all. A prime example is their decision this week which will keep the government and the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the environment by limiting harmful emissions.

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Recent tests of America's drinking water in nine different locations found more toxic "forever chemicals" than the EPA tests have shown.

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Parts of Yosemite National Park were closed to the public this week as firefighters battled a wildfire that had stretched over sixty acres.

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China, too, has been suffering heat waves and floods this summer which are affecting the nation's plans for dealing with a changing climate.

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Here in Texas, San Antonio recorded seventeen days of triple-digit temperatures in June. Houston had five such days and since we are right next door, I expect that was our record also.

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In Washington, the historic Tidal Basin has fallen into disrepair. The National Park Service is planning a massive restoration.

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Drought is devastating Somalia once again and nearly half the country's population is facing what the UN calls "acute levels of food insecurity." In other words, people are going hungry.

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Harvester ants might be said to be the archaeologist's friend. In Nebraska, they have unearthed thousands of bones and teeth which have led to the discovery of ten previously unknown species. 

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Clouds that glow. They are called noctilucent clouds and they've been plentiful in the night skies this summer.

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A jawbone fossil found by paleontologists in Spain is believed to be the oldest human fossil found in Europe. It is believed to be 1.4 million years old.

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Smith Island on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland has become a pelicans' paradise, but only twenty-five years ago pelicans were unknown on the island.

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Scientists have come to believe that the formation of Earth's iron core some 550 million years ago led to the explosion of life on the planet.

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Egypt's pyramids haven't been around quite that long; it just seems they are ageless.

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The heating up of Europe has led to the collapse of some of its glaciers, one of which in the Italian Dolomites crushed at least ten hikers.

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How about some good news about whales? In the Southern Ocean, the fin whales, our planet's second-largest creatures, have made quite a spectacular comeback. They have returned to their historic feeding grounds in the waters around Antarctica.

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A highly pathogenic avian influenza has been found in four seals stranded along the Maine coast over the last two months.

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A recent report found that wild species - plants, animals, fungi, and algae - support half the world's population of humans and their future use is threatened by overexploitation.

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Italy is suffering through its worst drought in seventy years.

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The beautiful Spix's Macaw, endemic to northeastern Brazil, is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week.

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New Zealand will embark on a program of eradication of introduced predators on ecologically significant Rakiura/Stewart Island, home of such species as the kākāpō.

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"Sea dragons" are very weird-looking creatures, but what made them that way?

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Grunions, the fish that wriggles ashore to spawn, have fascinated Californians for decades, but the future of the fish in a world with a changing climate may be in doubt.

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In Western Australia, a possum and a gecko have become roommates.