Trump Replaces Casey Means With Fox News Doctor as Surgeon General Pick: President Trump withdrew Casey Means’ stalled surgeon general nomination and replaced her with Nicole B. Saphier, a Memorial Sloan Kettering breast radiologist, Fox News contributor, and herbal supplement entrepreneur. Means, a MAHA-aligned wellness influencer backed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced Senate concerns over her lack of active medical license, unfinished residency, vaccine views, and promotion of dubious wellness products. Trump blamed Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate HELP Committee, calling him disloyal and urging Louisiana voters to remove him. Saphier’s nomination may also face scrutiny. Though she has called vaccines effective, she has criticized vaccine schedules, echoed misleading claims about COVID school mandates, and questioned some federal vaccination recommendations under Kennedy’s leadership. (Ars Technica)
Hidden Piece of Pangaea Revealed Beneath Appalachia: A 20-year geophysical survey has produced a final underground map of the United States, revealing ancient structures buried deep beneath the continent. The Magnetotelluric Array, made up of 1,800 temporary stations, measured how electricity moves through deep rocks, exposing features that seismic surveys missed. One major discovery is the Piedmont Resistor, a 200-kilometer-thick slab of crust stretching from Maine to Georgia, likely formed during volcanic eruptions as Pangaea broke apart 200 million years ago. The project also mapped subduction zones, crustal boundaries, mineral-rich seams, and regions where geology can intensify solar-storm risks to electrical grids. Scientists say the data may guide mineral exploration, though U.S. magnetotelluric research itself is now declining. (Science)
Orangutan Bridge Offers Hope Against Fragmented Forests: For the first time, conservationists have filmed a critically endangered Sumatran orangutan using a human-made canopy bridge in Indonesia. The rope crossing spans a public road in North Sumatra that cuts through habitat used by roughly 350 wild orangutans, separating the Siranggas Wildlife Reserve from the Sikulaping Protection Forest. The video matters because forest gaps can isolate arboreal animals, increasing risks of inbreeding and long-term population decline. Conservation groups built five bridges after road upgrades widened the canopy break, and camera traps had already recorded gibbons, langurs and macaques using them. The orangutan footage now confirms that the largest tree-dwelling mammal will also use the structures. (Smithsonian Magazine)
A Last-Ditch Rescue for “Timmy” the Humpback Whale: A stranded humpback whale nicknamed Timmy has become the focus of an extraordinary rescue effort off Germany after spending more than a month trapped in the Baltic Sea. Humpbacks normally avoid the Baltic’s shallow, low-salinity waters, so researchers suspect illness, injury or disorientation may have pushed the whale into danger. Earlier attempts to help failed, and the International Whaling Commission warned that the latest operation could add stress with little chance of success. Still, rescuers loaded the whale onto a specialized barge to move it toward the North Sea. Even if Timmy does not survive, scientists say the public response could redirect attention toward broader whale threats, including fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes. (Scientific American)
Delaware Bay’s Ancient Horseshoe Crab Spectacle Returns: Every spring, Delaware Bay becomes the center of one of the planet’s great marine wildlife gatherings as horseshoe crabs arrive by the thousands to spawn. The animals, more closely related to spiders and scorpions than true crabs, crawl onto beaches during high tides, especially around new and full moons in May and June. Females can lay thousands of eggs at a time, feeding migrating red knots and other shorebirds that depend on the seasonal pulse of nutrition. The story also highlights why the spectacle is fragile. Horseshoe crabs face pressure from overfishing, habitat loss and coastal erosion, while their blue blood remains important in biomedical testing for bacterial contamination in vaccines and other drugs. (Discover Wildlife)
First Wild Photo of Newly Hatched California Giant Salamanders: A National Park Service fisheries biologist surveying juvenile coho salmon in California’s Olema Creek captured what may be the first photograph of newly hatched California giant salamanders in the wild. The tiny animals were clustered beneath rocks, still carrying pale yolk sacs, suggesting they had only recently emerged from eggs. That detail makes the observation unusually valuable for a species that is large as an adult but elusive across much of its life cycle. California giant salamanders can reach 6 to 12 inches, yet their nesting and early larval habitat remain poorly documented. The image gives biologists a rare data point for understanding breeding sites, stream conditions and the hidden life history of a little-known amphibian. (Smithsonian Magazine)
U.S. Avian Flu Detections Drop, but Wild Birds Still Test Positive: CIDRAP reports that U.S. avian flu detections fell sharply over the past week, according to updates from USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Only one new poultry detection was reported, a small South Dakota facility affecting 60 birds. Over the past 30 days, APHIS tracked infections in 15 commercial flocks and eight backyard flocks, totaling 660,000 affected birds. February remains the year’s most severe month so far, with 11.41 million poultry affected. The wildlife side remains important: APHIS logged 12 wild-bird detections in the past week, including gulls in San Diego County, California, and a bald eagle in Clay County, Florida. The trend is encouraging, but surveillance remains essential. (CIDRAP)
Warming Rivers Make Invasive Pike Hungrier for Salmon: In Southcentral Alaska’s Deshka River, warming water appears to be intensifying the threat that invasive northern pike pose to native salmon. Researchers compared pike stomach contents collected in 2021 and 2022 with samples from roughly a decade earlier and found that pike of all ages were eating more fish as temperatures rose. The effect was especially sharp among year-old pike, whose fish consumption increased by 63 percent. The mechanism is straightforward but worrying: warmer water speeds predator metabolism, pushing pike to hunt more. The study, published in Biological Invasions, adds an indirect climate pressure to salmon recovery. Salmon are not only responding to warming themselves; their predators are changing too. (ScienceDaily)
Atlantic Forest Jaguars Face a Hidden Prey Crisis: A new study warns that jaguars in South America’s Atlantic Forest face a less obvious extinction risk: their prey is disappearing, even inside protected areas. Researchers used camera traps across nine protected areas to estimate the abundance and biomass of 14 prey species, including peccaries, agoutis and deer. The results suggest that hunting pressure and human access are reducing the prey base that jaguars need to survive. That matters because the Atlantic Forest may now hold fewer than 300 jaguars, and researchers warn the biome could become the first in the world to lose a top predator. The findings complicate the usual conservation formula: parks matter, but protection without prey recovery may not be enough. (Phys.org)
Extreme Weather Could Hit a Third of Land Animal Habitats: By 2085, 36 percent of current terrestrial animal habitats could be exposed to multiple types of climate-driven extreme events if warming continues into the second half of the century, according to a Nature Ecology & Evolution study summarized by Phys.org. The analysis looked beyond gradual temperature change, modeling threats such as heat waves, wildfires, droughts and river floods. The projections are stark: by 2050, 74 percent of current land animal habitats could face heat waves, while wildfire exposure emerges as a major blind spot in conservation planning. The hopeful part is equally clear. In a rapid emissions-reduction scenario, habitat exposure to multiple extreme events by 2085 could fall to just 9 percent. (Phys.org)
New York’s East River DNA Reveals Wildlife and Wastewater Clues: Environmental DNA from New York City’s East River is giving scientists a surprisingly detailed picture of urban ecology. Researchers sampled water weekly for a year and found seasonal patterns in fish DNA, including signals from migratory species moving in and out of the harbor. Summer samples contained about 10 times more eDNA than winter samples, reflecting shifts in biological activity. The method also detected wildlife living around the river, including rats, beavers and raccoons. More unexpectedly, researchers found DNA from humans and food animals such as chickens, cows, turkeys and non-local fish. Because those signals correlated with human DNA, the team concluded that wastewater was carrying traces of city diets into the river. (Discover Wildlife)
Saving the Little-Known Galápagos Petrel: Mongabay spotlights the Galápagos petrel, a rarely seen but critically endangered seabird found only in the Galápagos archipelago. The species faces a difficult conservation problem: it nests on land but depends on the ocean, so threats can come from both directions. On islands, invasive predators, habitat degradation and disturbance can undermine breeding success. At sea, environmental change and food availability shape survival. The article follows conservation work by Ecuadorian NGO Jocotoco and others trying to protect nesting colonies and improve the bird’s long-term prospects. The petrel is not a household-name Galápagos species like tortoises or finches, but its status makes it an important test case for protecting less charismatic island endemics before they vanish quietly. (Mongabay News)