rss

Despite being the world's most trafficked animal, the European eel receives surprisingly little sympathy. It lacks the mammalian charisma of the creatures whose plights dominate conservation campaigns; among them the shy, helpless pangolin and the stoically intelligent elephant. By contrast, the eel is viewed by many as a source of revulsion: a slimy, writhing reason to stay out of the water. Yet behind inscrutable eyes, it harbors many secrets. This is the story of how an elusive and often misunderstood fish found itself at the center of an international smuggling network.

---

From blog via This RSS Feed.

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune.

Berenice Garcia
The Texas Tribune

McALLEN, Tex. — Conservation groups are trying to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from exchanging hundreds of acres of land with SpaceX.

This month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife allowed a land swap deal with SpaceX to move forward that would give SpaceX 715 acres of land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in exchange for 683 acres of private land that is adjacent to another refuge, the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

The conservation groups suing include the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, and the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. They are joined by the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, a nonprofit indigenous group that considers the land that SpaceX is now occupying and seeks to develop as sacred. However, the tribe is not officially recognized by the federal government.

The groups said they hope to preserve the land to protect the diverse wildlife there, including the endangered ocelot. They argue SpaceX’s presence in the area has also begun degrading the land, particularly through rocket test launches that send debris onto refuge lands.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to questions about the land exchange.

“Our protected public lands are being gifted for the benefit of the world’s richest man, who could trash them while playing with his exploding rockets,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge was built by decades of conservation work and funded by millions of taxpayer dollars to protect our vulnerable wildlife like ocelots and piping plovers.”

Jordahl added: “We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands just to give Elon Musk another payday.”

In the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, the groups argued that the land swap is inconsistent with the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, a law that lays out the mission and management of refuge lands, and that by approving the exchange, the Fish and Wildlife Service violated the National Historic Preservation Act, a statute enacted to protect historical sites from development.

They also argued that the environmental analysis of the land exchange did not meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, and accused the agency of working with SpaceX to come up with “unfounded” scores to rate the land they would be giving up against the land the agency would be obtaining.

As part of an environmental assessment published in May, the agency evaluated habitat quality using “Biological Importance Scores.” A score was assigned to each parcel of land based on three equally weighted criteria: habitat quality, refuge connectivity, and critical habitat. The refuge land proposed to be given to SpaceX scored lower than the land the Fish and Wildlife Service would obtain.

Additionally, the conservation groups argued that the agency’s analysis of the swap didn’t meet the requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act, alleging that they did not consider reasonable alternatives and did not take a hard look at the impacts the deal would have due to SpaceX’s expansion.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, declined to comment on active or pending litigation.

Environmental assessment

In June, the Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the land exchange would not have significant adverse effects on public health or safety, historic or cultural resources, tribal sacred sites for federally recognized Tribes, ecologically critical areas, wetlands or floodplains, or on designated wilderness or research and natural areas.

The agency began holding talks with SpaceX over a potential land exchange in 2023. The goal, the agency said in their May environmental assessment, was to reduce the fragmented ownership of the land and consolidate them.

The assessment looked at whether the land exchange furthered the purpose of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, whether it fulfills the conservation mission of the National Wildlife Refuge System, and whether it provides a net conservation benefit to the refuge.

Most of the land being offered up by the agency was acquired in the 1990s through condemnation for the protection of natural resources located on them, including endangered species habitat, coastal wetlands and barrier islands.

Industrial development

Since then, the surrounding area has experienced significant industrialization and development, especially because of SpaceX’s presence and expansion there. The industrial activity and the fragmented pattern of private land ownership led to increased disturbance from noise and lights and elevated levels of habitat fragmentation. The agency said those factors diminished the value of the land for purposes of conservation.

“The resulting changes in land use and landscape context have impacted the ability of these parcels to function as effective components of the regional conservation network,” the agency said.

Those parcels of land are also fragmented by private land owned by SpaceX, including the SpaceX Massey Test Site used for tests of space launch vehicles and land being developed by SpaceX for residential, commercial and possibly other uses.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it expects SpaceX will use the acquired land for residential, commercial, or institutional development in addition to infrastructure or other manufacturing activities.

The parcels that SpaceX would be giving the agency in return are adjacent to the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

One set of land parcels is known informally as “Las Palomas” and is surrounded by land belonging to the Lower Rio Grande Valley refuge. Another set of parcels lies between the communities of Laguna Heights and Laguna Vista. That set of land is contiguous with a portion of the Laguna Atascosa refuge.

The conservation groups pointed out that the refuge land that would be handed over to SpaceX include portions of the Palmito Ranch Battlefield National Historic Landmark, the site of the last Civil War battle, and warned that SpaceX could choose not to preserve its historic values.

However, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it signed a contract, known as a programmatic agreement, with SpaceX, the Texas Historic Commission and the National Park Service on May 11. A programmatic agreement allows federal agencies to continue managing historic properties.

In 2024, SpaceX was in talks with Texas Parks and Wildlife on a different land swap deal that would have given SpaceX 43 acres from Boca Chica State Park.

In exchange, SpaceX would have transferred 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa refuge. The conservation groups sued to stop that land deal as well before SpaceX pulled out of the deal.

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

The post Conservation groups sue to stop SpaceX land deal appeared first on ICT.

---

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

FIFA’s discrimination monitoring team has called for World Cup VAR official Shaun Evans to be removed from duty after he appeared to make a hand gesture resembling a white supremacist sign during Germany’s 7-1 win over Curacao.

The moment was captured on the official broadcast when cameras cut to the VAR booth. Evans, an Australian official assigned to the match, briefly formed an “OK” gesture with his right hand near his leg, a symbol that has been co‑opted by white extremist groups. 

The gesture was quick, but it was enough to trigger immediate concern from FIFA’s anti‑discrimination unit, which monitors all matches for offensive behaviour. The monitor formally requested that Evans be stood down from further involvement in the tournament pending review. 

FIFA response

FIFA has not yet announced disciplinary action, but the governing body confirmed that the incident is under assessment. The organisation’s discrimination monitoring system, expanded for the 2026 tournament. 

This is what it was designed to flag, any behaviour that could undermine the sport’s commitment to inclusivity. The call for Evans’ removal came directly from this unit, which has the authority to recommend sanctions or suspensions. 

The match in question, Germany’s emphatic opening win over debutants Curacao, had already drawn attention for its lopsided scoreline. But the focus quickly shifted from the pitch to the VAR booth once the footage circulated.  

The broadcast clip showed Evans standing alongside fellow officials as the camera panned across the VAR team. His right hand formed the “OK” sign this is the thumb and forefinger touching, three fingers raised. 

The discrimination monitor’s concern centred on the potential interpretation of the gesture rather than any confirmed intent. There has been no public comment from Evans as yet, and FIFA has not indicated whether he has been interviewed as part of the review.

Wider context at the World Cup

The 2026 World Cup has already seen several officiating‑related talking points, including the use of advanced VAR technologies such as connected ball data and waveform detection, systems that played a role in other matches across the opening days.  

But this incident has added a different layer of scrutiny. FIFA’s anti‑discrimination protocols were strengthened ahead of the tournament, with monitors assigned to every match and empowered to escalate concerns immediately. Their recommendation to remove Evans underscores the seriousness with which the organisation treats any gesture that could be interpreted as discriminatory or extremist.

The footage spread quickly among fans and analysts, prompting debate about intent, context and the responsibilities of match officials on the world stage. 

While some argued the gesture may have been innocuous, others stressed that officials must avoid any action that could be misinterpreted, especially during a global event watched by billions.

Sky Sports’ reporting emphasised that the discrimination monitor acted swiftly, reflecting FIFA’s zero‑tolerance stance. The request for Evans’ removal is not a final ruling but a procedural step designed to protect the integrity of the tournament while the matter is reviewed.  

Will FIFA do the right thing?

FIFA’s next move will determine whether Evans continues in his role. The organisation typically reviews broadcast footage, interviews involved parties, and consults its anti‑discrimination experts before issuing a decision. If the monitor’s recommendation is upheld, Evans could be replaced for the remainder of the tournament.

The incident also raises broader questions about training and awareness for officials. With global audiences and heightened sensitivity around discriminatory symbols, governing bodies face increasing pressure to ensure that all match personnel understand the implications of gestures, language and behaviour.

The World Cup is built on the idea of global unity, and FIFA has repeatedly emphasised its commitment to combating discrimination in all forms. Any incident that threatens that image, especially one based on a gesture openly declares ‘white power’ becomes a real risk.

By moving quickly, the discrimination monitor has signalled that vigilance is non‑negotiable. The coming days will reveal whether FIFA agrees that Evans’ continued involvement poses a risk to the tournament’s integrity.

The call to remove Shaun Evans marks one of many major off‑field controversies of the 2026 World Cup. While the investigation continues, the incident highlights the intense scrutiny placed on officials and the importance of maintaining clear, unambiguous standards of conduct.

FIFA now faces a decision that will set the tone for how it handles similar issues throughout the tournament, a reminder that, in the modern game, you won’t be accepted for being racist.

Featured image via Ian Walton/Getty Images

By Faz Ali

---

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

A large property containing a unique wetland system in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin was transferred into long-term Indigenous ownership in 2026 for conservation. The 33,000-hectare (81,545-acre) property contains most of the Great Cumbung Swamp, located at the end of the Lachlan River in the state of New South Wales. The swamp has a mix of open water and reed beds, bordered by river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) woodlands, and is an important habitat for waterbirds, frogs, fish and reptiles. The Nari Nari Tribal Council (NNTC), an Indigenous conservation land management organization, purchased the property in January 2026 following joint fundraising efforts by the conservation NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and NNTC. James Fitzsimons of TNC recently wrote about the sale of the property in Oryx. Fitzsimons told Mongabay by email that the Great Cumbung Swamp “acts a refuge when the rest of the landscape is dry,” He added that it supports threatened species such as the Australasian Bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus), Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii) and the southern bell frog (Litoria raniformis). Each year, approximately 11,500 waterbirds visit the swamp. The wetland is not only of local, state and national significance, but has been evaluated to be listed as a Ramsar wetland of international significance, Fitzsimons said. The property had experienced decades of logging and cattle grazing. In 2019, TNC and the Tiverton Agricultural Impact Fund jointly purchased it to prevent future agricultural intensification and further degradation of the ecosystem. Fitzsimons said grazing pressures have reduced since the purchase. This, combined with…This article was originally published on Mongabay

---

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

The first published live observations of the rare goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) in its natural deep-ocean habitat were reported in a new paper by a University of Hawai'i at Mānoa-led team of oceanographers. In the past, goblin sharks were filmed and reported alive only after being hooked on a fishing line and hauled to the surface, where divers could observe them and where they soon died. The new study, published in Journal of Fish Biology, documents two live observations of one of the most elusive yet iconic sharks on the planet—one at a seamount near Jarvis Island and another on the slope of the Tonga Trench.

---

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Walking through the savanna-woodland landscape of Boé National Park, Guinea-Bissau, you might encounter a tree covered in gnarled scars, with an accumulation of rocks surrounding its base.

---

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Israel has abducted the sister of Irish president Catherine Connolly during its criminal assault on the Gaza-bound humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF). Margaret Connolly, a physician, is among eight Irish citizens kidnapped in international waters by the genocidal occupation.

President Connolly promptly condemned the abduction, describing it as “upsetting”, adding that:

I’m very worried about her, and I’m also very concerned about her colleagues on board.

Fifty GSF vessels were attempting to break Israel’s war crime, a brutal starvation blockade of Gaza. At least a dozen of the ships were attacked yesterday and their crews abducted. The Irish government condemned Israel’s actions as “wrong” and “unacceptable”.

UK citizens are also among the victims, but UK PM Keir Starmer has still kept silent about Israel’s crimes. Abductees in previous flotillas have been beaten and tortured, and at least one has been raped. The occupation regime regards rape as a weapon of war. Its routine and brutal rape of Palestinian prisoners has begun even to catch the attention of US ‘mainstream’ media, but is still mostly ignored by UK ‘msm’ – though a few have noted Israel’s threat to sue the New York Times for covering it.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

---

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Massive volumes of digital data are generated every day from AI training, big data analytics and smart devices. As conventional hard drives and cloud storage are increasingly constrained by high costs, limited capacity, high power consumption and short lifespans, molecular data storage has emerged as a breakthrough storage alternative.

---

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

“Tell you what,” Drew Maciel told his Instagram followers in April, “I’m sick of finding dead moose.” He zoomed in on a dead bull moose lying prone on the ground, running the camera over clusters of ticks nestled within every crevice of the corpse.

Maciel is a shed hunter, meaning he collects antlers that have been naturally “shed” by wildlife. But a winter tick feeding frenzy in Maine, driven by rising temperatures, means that this year he kept finding dead animals. Up to 90 percent of the moose calves tracked by scientists in recent years have been bled to death by ticks — an ongoing crisis in a state that prizes these largest of all deer species.

But where scientists see the hand of climate change at work — average temperatures in Maine have risen 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1985 — others see the designs of a global cabal.

“Human engineered biological warfare,” read a comment on Maciel’s video posted by Dries Van Langenhove, a far-right former member of the Belgian government who was recently convicted of violating the country’s Holocaust denial laws. The comment got 32,000 likes. “It’s Bill Gates,” someone else posted.

Chuck Lubelczyk, a vector-borne ecologist with Maine Medical Center, collects ticks at a site in Cape Elizabeth. John Ewing / Portland Press Herald / Getty Images

These posts are part of a wave of tick-related conspiracy theories garnering millions of views online. In April, a self-proclaimed holistic doctor on Instagram claimed to have spoken with multiple farmers in the Midwest who told her that they were finding boxes of ticks dumped on their properties. “Something is happening with ticks right now, and farmers are starting to talk,” she posted alongside a video that got 10 million views across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The MAHA Moms Coalition, a nationwide group inspired by the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, reposted the claim asking affected farmers to come forward.

The theory dates back to 2023, with viral claims that Pfizer and Valneva, pharmaceutical companies developing a vaccine for Lyme disease, were planting boxes of ticks on farms to drum up demand for their product.

A separate theory that gained traction around the same time linked a British research program to genetically modify cattle ticks, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to rising cases of red meat allergies in the U.S. The biggest problem with that theory is that the allergy, Alpha-gal syndrome, is caused by the bite of a Lone Star tick — a completely different species from the cattle ticks in the research program.

While all these conspiracies involve different ticks, different diseases, and different alleged culprits, they are often treated as interchangeable evidence of the same broader claim: that rising tick encounters are a part of a nefarious human plot.

The theories are right about one thing: Ticks are getting worse. Some of the same ecological changes fueling Maine’s winter tick boom are also making tick encounters more common in broad swaths of the U.S. The arachnids are showing up earlier in the year, expanding into new terrain, and biting people more often than they used to. But the force driving those shifts is not a clandestine bioweapons program, a vaccine plot, or Bill Gates — it’s climate change.

A screenshot of an Instagram post furthering the unproven claim that Midwestern farmers are finding boxes of ticks left behind on their properties. Instagram

Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, said a warming world is “bringing ticks out earlier in the year” in states like New York, where he lives. “It used to be we were pretty safe in the month of May,” he said. “Now, not so much.”

Tick season is off to an unusually early start across most of the U.S. this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, said in an alert published late last month. Emergency room visits for tick bites in four of the five geographic regions the agency tracks are the highest they’ve been for this time of year since the CDC started keeping tabs on tick-borne illness rates in 2017.

While the CDC hasn’t said what’s behind the uptick in bites this spring, ample snow cover earlier in the year helped insulate adult ticks from the cold of winter, and an early spring bloom across much of the U.S. likely brought those hungry adults out of the leaf litter earlier than normal. But regardless of the specific dynamics at play this year, rising average temperatures will lead to more robust tick exposure on balance. That’s because warmer temperatures both coax ticks north into territory that was once too cold to host them and also extend the length of time that ticks are active every year.

More tick bites mean more opportunities for infection — and the list of infections doctors are watching for is getting longer. Positive tests for alpha-gal syndrome have increased 100-fold since 2013; nearly half a million people in the U.S. now carry an allergy to red meat. Cases of anaplasmosis, a disease carried by black-legged ticks that hospitalizes roughly 30 percent of the people who contract it, increased 16-fold between 2000 and 2017. Babesiosis, a malaria-like illness also carried by black-legged ticks, has risen roughly 10 percent year-over-year since 2015. It’s not uncommon now for a single tick to carry two or more diseases.

Ecologists who study ticks see an interwoven mix of factors driving these increases. Land-use and wildlife changes are increasing contact between humans and ticks, invasive and expanding tick species are bringing different disease risks to new parts of the country, and better testing and reporting of tick-borne illnesses is making diseases more visible. But there is widespread agreement in the scientific community that those trends are unfolding against the backdrop of climate change.

Ostfeld worries that the complexity of the factors that lead to higher rates of tick-borne disease, paired with the allure of online conspiracies, will make it harder for people to understand why backyards in some parts of the country are getting more dangerous. “The more I read about people actually believing some of these conspiracy theories, the more I worry that even moderately complex explanations or phenomena we care about — like how likely we are to get bitten by a tick — might be too much,” he said.

Scientists collect Lone Star ticks, which can cause an allergic reaction to red meat, for research. Ben McCanna / Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

It doesn’t help that conspiracies about ticks have now been legitimized by federal government officials. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has at various times in his career opined that Lyme disease, which now affects an estimated half a million Americans every year, was created as a byproduct of vaccine research and originally used as a military bioweapon. (This flies in the face of genomic evidence that the bacteria causing Lyme has existed in North America for at least 60,000 years.)

Both Kennedy and Tucker Carlson, one of America’s most prominent Republican-aligned media figures, have hosted the writer Kris Newby on their podcasts in recent years. In both cases, Newby espoused debunked claims about the military origins of Lyme.

The idea that Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses were created by a U.S. military bioweapons program is so pervasive that a formal initiative to investigate the origin has twice been introduced by lawmakers in the House of Representatives. Chris Smith, a Republican representative from New Jersey who spearheaded those efforts, was successful on his second attempt. A directive in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, signed by President Donald Trump last December, includes a provision requiring the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, to investigate whether the military used ticks as biological warfare agents in the middle of the twentieth century.

“GAO will be fully empowered to leave no stone unturned, and now it’ll have a congressional mandate to get to the bottom of it, because they were weaponizing ticks,” Smith said at a Lyme disease roundtable convened by Secretary Kennedy last year.

But away from the congressional roundtables and viral videos, the plot begins to lose some of its drama. Even in the Midwest, where millions of social media viewers have been told that boxes of ticks are being dumped on unsuspecting farmers, evidence of foul play is hard to find. Terry Hoerbert and her husband Bob own Little Brown Cow Dairy, a small dairy farm in Delavan, Illinois. The lane down to the farm is short, Terry said, so she would have seen someone dropping off packages of ticks. Had the Hoerberts heard of any other farms in the area receiving packages of live ticks?

“We have not,” Terry told me. “You are the first to enlighten us.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As tick bites surge, conspiracy theories follow on May 14, 2026.

---

From Grist via This RSS Feed.

I took my first ride in a Chinese car recently. Not in the U.S., of course, since sky-high tariffs have made them almost impossible to import. I was visiting family in the U.K., and we rented a BYD Sealion SUV. And let me tell you: I saw immediately why American car companies are desperate to have these things kept out of this country. It was elegantly designed, incredibly comfortable, and a smooth ride.

---

From blog via This RSS Feed.

Reforestation done right could be key to helping rebuild habitat connectivity for Javan leopards on an island with one of the highest human densities on Earth, a new study says. It frames strategic forest restoration — linking up fragmented patches of forest to create contiguous corridors — as offering a rare pathway to balance rapid infrastructure expansion with the conservation of the endangered big cat. “And to implement this, strong commitment from various stakeholders is needed, given Java’s highly fragmented landscape; this will undoubtedly be a significant challenge,” study lead author Andhika C. Ariyanto, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, told Mongabay by email. Camera-trap image of a Javan leopard on Mount Sanggabuana, West Java province. Image courtesy of Sanggabuana Wildlife Ranger. The study is the first to produce an islandwide model of habitat connectivity for the Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas), offering conservationists a new tool to identify which forest corridors should be protected and restored as infrastructure development expands across Java, Andhika said. By comparing the impact of new roads and railways with a scenario in which degraded forests were restored, Andhika and his colleagues found that replanting trees in key areas could help reconnect fragmented habitats throughout Java and give wildlife, including leopards, more room to move and survive. They looked at key forest areas used by leopards across Java, an island half the size of the U.S. state of Texas with five times its population. This high human population density has…This article was originally published on Mongabay

---

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.