In 2011, the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that the gray wolf population in the Great Lakes had recovered enough to be removed from the endangered species list, causing environmentalists everywhere to rejoice. However, a federal court has recently ruled that this celebration may be premature. In 2014, a U.S. district judge overruled Fish and Wildlife's declaration, and just recently his ruling was upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington D.C.. With this new ruling, the hunting and trapping of gray wolves is no longer permitted in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin and they are once again considered an endangered species.
This news is good for the safety of the wolves, however, they are certainly not out of the metaphorical woods yet. With this ruling to continue keeping wolves on the endangered species list comes the knowledge that their population is being threatened and we need to do more to help them come back. Some states still don't consider wolves to be endangered despite their low numbers. In Wyoming, it is legal to shoot a gray wolf on sight. Wolves are critically important predators in the ecosystems they inhabit. They keep prey populations under control, which in turn helps the vegetation and the environment as a whole. As such, the fate of their survival in the wild is something we can't ignore.
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The National Institute of Health has long been regarded as a reputable source for health facts and data. However, the institute has recently been caught "scrubbing" details from their site. An article titled "Climate Change and Human Health" had a word removed so that the title now reads "Climate and Human Health". A seemingly harmless edit, yet it changes the meaning of the article entirely. The NIH is not the only scientific source doing things like this - other reputable sources are making similar changes. According to the article, "In April, the EPA took down several website pages that contained detailed climate data and scientific information".
With the new Trump administration, many are afraid that his disregard for much of the scientific community will translate into global repercussions for the environment. The NIH and the EPA, both government-run institutions, now fall under the Trump umbrella. These changes are just small examples of the effects of his and much of his cabinet's insistence that climate change is a hoax. Whether or not one agrees with Trump's stance on climate change, the blatant censorship of data on behalf of the EPA or even something as seemingly trivial as the change in diction on the NIH's site may be only a precursor of what is to come. Censorship of information is a serious topic in the United States, and if Trump's EPA can delete pages of data with no repercussions, who's to stop them from deleting more? Similarly, influencing the public's opinion by removing the word "change" from the headline of the NIH's article means less people might find out about climate change and its meaning, so they can decide for themselves if they think it's fact or fiction. To care for the environment, citizens must be properly educated about how it works. If this new era is heralded by a blatant lack of interest in whether or not people care for the environment, the environment itself may suffer the consequences in years to come. |