More Protection for Most Endangered Whales; Scientists Call for Bee Protection; Large Bird Die-Off

Feds Agree to Protect More Habitat for East Coast’s Most Endangered Whales by 2016 . A deadline for expanding critical habitat protections for the North Atlantic right whale — one of the world’s most endangered whales — has been set in response to a legal settlement agreement. Each year most of the 500 North Atlantic right whales remaining on Earth migrate from their feeding and breeding grounds off the U.S. Northeast to their nursery areas off the Southeast. But only a tiny portion of this expansive range is protected as federally designated “critical habitat” under the Endangered Species Act, making the whales more vulnerable to threats that include commercial fishing gear, ship strikes and oil drilling.

100+ Scientists Call on Obama’s Bee Task Force to Take Action on Pesticides. The 108 scientists — whose areas of expertise include entomology, agronomy, ecology, ecotoxicology — called on Task Force co-chairs US Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Gina McCarthy and US Department of Agriculture Secretary Secretary Tom Vilsack to place a moratorium on use of neonicotinoid pesticides in the United States, and increase investment, research and funding for growers to adopt alternatives.

Large-scale die-off of small seabird along Sonoma Coast. Scientists up and down the West Coast are monitoring what appears to be a large-scale die-off of young Cassin’s auklets, small seabirds whose breeding grounds include a colony in the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco.