Wcbs butterfly

By The Washington Post | February 12, 2019 at 5:29 pm By Katie Zezima | Washington Post The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, has asked a federal judge to stop the U.S. government from building a border wall on its property. In a motion for a restraining order, filed Monday night, the center argues that the government must not take any action on the organization’s land, which runs along the border with Mexico. The center’s director alleges in court documents that Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies have been driving heavy machinery through the center’s property without permission or notice. The director, Marianna Trevino Wright, also alleges that the number of law enforcement officers on the butterfly center’s land has dramatically increased since early February, something that is “intimidating” and “restrains” the movement of guests and staff. “Border wall construction is beginning on land … [Read more...] about Butterfly center sues over Texas border wall plans

An iconic American butterfly needs protection as an endangered species because of climate change, the widespread use of a herbicide that has eliminated much of its food supply, and other factors, advocacy groups contend.Joined by scientist Lincoln Brower, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety and the Xerces Society filed a petition (PDF) on Tuesday with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service seeking protection for the monarch butterfly, whose population has dwindled from 1 billion to 35 million over the past 20 years.Familiar to millions who have seen the orange-and-black butterfly emerge from its chrysalis as part of an elementary school project or spotted it fluttering around flowers at their homes, the monarch is suffering because of genetic engineering of crops and pesticides that have greatly reduced its habitat and the milkweed on which it feeds, the petitioners contend. They also cite climate change, disease and predation and a lack of effective … [Read more...] about Iconic monarch butterfly needs protection as endangered species, advocacy groups say in US petition

For three years in a row, Dallas plaintiffs lawyer Windle Turley followed one of his passions to Mexico and photographed the results.Turley photographs monarch butterflies, according to stories by the Dallas Business Journal and the Tex Parte Blog. He followed their winter trek to Mexico for three years beginning in 2005. Now hundreds of his photos are being published in a new coffee table book, The Amazing Monarch: The Secret Wintering Grounds of an Endangered Butterfly.According to the Dallas Business Journal, butterflies are not the only wildlife photographed by Turley. He has “tracked orangutans in Borneo, gorillas in Africa and polar bears in places still cold enough to have them,” the story says.Turley plans to donate proceeds from his new book to the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center. … [Read more...] about Flight of Fancy: Dallas PI Lawyer Publishes Butterfly Book

By Washington Post | PUBLISHED: July 21, 2018 at 5:15 pm | UPDATED: July 22, 2018 at 12:34 am By Matt Schudel, (c) 2018, The Washington Post Lincoln Brower, one of the foremost experts on the monarch butterfly, who spent six decades studying the life cycle of the delicate orange-and-black insect and later led efforts to preserve its winter habitat in a mountainous region of Mexico, died July 17 at his home in Nelson County, Virginia. He was 86. He had Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Linda Fink. Dr. Brower, who taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts and the University of Florida before becoming a research professor at Virginia’s Sweet Briar College in 1997, began studying the monarch butterfly in the 1950s. He made key discoveries about how it protected itself by converting a toxic compound from its sole food source, the milkweed plant, into a chemical compound that sickened its predators, primarily birds. In the 1970s, other scientists discovered that monarchs … [Read more...] about Lincoln Brower, scientist and protector of the monarch butterfly, dies at 86

0 Have your say How did a peaceful protest about rare butterflies get wrongly linked to ‘lurid’ – but totally unsubstantiated – allegations about attempts to injure council contractors? Chris Burn reports. A butterfly flaps its wings and one year later, a review exonerating controversial police tactics in the Sheffield tree-felling saga comes under major scrutiny. This is the story of how ‘lurid’ allegations that anti tree-felling campaigners were attempting to seriously injure council contractors by cutting safety ropes, studding trees with nails and glass and using oil which could cause chainsaws to slip came to be prominently highlighted in a public report – despite there being no proof the claims were actually true. And it all begins with an endangered butterfly. ****“It was all good-natured,” Anne Barr recalls of the chilly day in February 2018 when she was part of around 40 anti tree-felling … [Read more...] about The Butterfly Effect: How false allegations about peaceful protest put Sheffield tree policing tactics back in spotlight