PLANET IN PERIL

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Photo by  Rémi Bigonneau UBC scientists say mammal threatened by climate change. More here.

TheConversation The plan to build a massive hydropower dam in Sumatra as part of China’s immense  Belt and Road Initiative  threatens the habitat of the rarest ape in the world, which has only 800 remaining members. More here. Photo by   Tim Laman

BirdLife INTERNATIONAL A White-crowned sparrow. Photo by  Wolfgang Wander The 2018 State of the World’s Birds report, which provides a comprehensive look at the health of bird populations globally, has found that the extinction crisis has spread so far that even some well-known species are now in danger. More here.

The Guardian A ring-necked pheasant on the Canadian Prairies. Will they be next? PinP photo. The experimental study is the first to directly show harm to songbirds, extending the known impacts of neonicotinoids beyond insects. More here. RELATED:  "New Studies Show Farm Chemicals Are Affecting More Than Bees. Bird Populations are Declining, Too.Is modern agriculture's hold on nature becoming a death grip?"

TheGuardian The energy-friendlly agenda inside Trump's iinterior department is revealed in rccords obtained by the Guardian and the watchdog groups, Documented and the Western Values Project.    More here.

EcoWatch PinP photo. The yearly count of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico, released Monday, shows a decrease from last year's count and confirms the iconic orange and black butterfly is still very much at risk.  Story here.

The Guardian Scientists are alarmed by a rise in mass mortality events – when species die in their thousands. Is it all down to climate change? More here.

EcoWatch The North Atlantic right whale is already one of the most endangered whales, with fewer than 450 of the iconic marine mammals left on the planet. More here. A right whale with calf. Photo by NOAA.

BBC News Some of Europe's key animals have made a comeback over the past 50 years, a report suggests. More here.

Science News A baby pangolin. Pinterest photo - author unknown. Animal traffickers are taking advantage of remote ivory trade routes to smuggle pangolins – one of the world’s most endangered animals – out of Central Africa, a new study has found. Story here.

Science Magazine A dorado, somtimes called mahi-mahi. A Wikimedia photo. Once upon a time, thousands of dorados, a giant among catfish, would swim more than 3000 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River to spawn in Bolivia's Mamoré River, in the foothills of the Andes. But the dorado, which can grow to more than 2 meters in length, is disappearing from those waters, and scientists blame two hydropower dams erected downstream a decade ago. As countries seek new energy sources to drive economic growth, a surge in dam construction on the eastern flank of the Andes could further threaten fish migration and sediment flows, scientists warn this week in  Science Advances . The main consequence of proliferating dams is habitat fragmentation. The dorado's disappearance suggests fragmentation is already taking a toll. Barbara Fraser is a freelance journalist in Lima. Full story here.

World Wildlife Fund WWF’s first  Polar Bear Scorecard  found that Canada has shown leadership by investing in subpopulation monitoring. But two years into the 10-year, five-nation Circumpolar Action Plan for the Conservation of Polar Bears (CAP) it has not met its goals in identifying critical habitat nor in setting out best practices for tourism operators and for oil spill response. Story here. Photo by  Ansgar Walk

nature Photo by  Andreas Weith Melting sea ice makes it hard for the Arctic predators to consume enough calories to survive. More here.

EcoWatch Say good-bye to the "ghost cat." This week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the eastern cougar ( Puma concolor couguar ) to be extinct and removed it from the endangered species list.  Story here. Photo credit - Pexels.

by Larry Powell A "Snowy" swoops down on its prey (probably a lemming). Photo credit - Government of Quebec. The beautiful Snowy Owl, like so many other wild creatures on Earth, faces an uncertain future. The  “Red List,”  a British agency, has just put the graceful, white bird of prey on the “vulnerable” list for the first time. It has drastically downgraded earlier estimates of 200 thousand individuals, worldwide, to as low as 10 thousand.  Snowy Owl numbers have proven hard to judge since they fluctuate so widely, depending on the availability of food. Factors in their decline may include illegal hunting, collisions with vehicles and power lines and climate change, which can affect the availability of prey. So the agency’s prognosis is a somber one.  “This species faces a high risk of extinction in the wild in the medium-term future.”  Snowy Owls nest in the Arctic, but have a range that spans the northern hemisphere.”  A conservation spe

ScienceNews Any species in the eastern or midwestern United States could potentially be at risk. Story here. A mating ball of garter snakes. Oregon State University. Will they be next?

|NATIONAL OBSERVER The British Columbia government announced on Monday it was ending the trophy hunt of grizzly bears throughout the province. Story here. Grizzlies in Yellowstone Park. Chris Servheen/USFWS

EcoWatch The U.S. Senate has passed a Republican tax-reform package that contains a provision to authorize oil drilling on the coastal plain of Alaska's  Arctic  National Wildlife Refuge, placing the biological heart of one of our last pristine, untouched places in severe peril. Story here. Barrenground caribou, Nunavut.  Ansgar Walk photo. RELATED: Proposed oil development threatens yet another caribou herd.

Common Dreams "For all of you still trying to hold a ridiculous 'debate' about whether there's something wrong with our planet, please watch this, if you can." Story here. A starving polar bear in  the Norwegian Arctic. Photo by  Andreas Weith

Nature Tracking study suggests the Arctic whales are particularly vulnerable to human disturbance. Story here. Image by  Pixabay.