Habitat Protection

For a second time a trio of South Florida environmental agencies are planning to sue the federal Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to designate a 10.5-million-acre safe haven for the endangered Florida bonneted bat. The creature is the largest bat in the state and the rarest one in the nation. The mammal it is at grave risk of being wiped out by a changing planet. “Florida bonneted bats cannot survive the onslaught of sea-level rise, development and pesticide use in South Florida unless their habitat is protected,” Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Monday.

New findings on the movement of nesting Loggerhead sea turtles in the Northern Gulf of Mexico challenge some long-held ideas about the threatened turtles’…