The US Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledges that the iconic monarch butterfly should be designated as a threatened species but declines to do so, saying it has to focus limited resources on higher-priority species. The agency similarly refuses to renew endangered-species protection for the northern spotted owl.

Fish and Wildlife greatly reduces the chances for recovery of endangered and threatened species by limiting its definition of the creatures’ “habitat” that must be protected.

Once nearing extinction, populations of bowhead whales in US waters have rebounded and are now approaching precommercial whaling numbers. 

An expedition to the Zongo Valley in Bolivia’s Andes reveals 20 new species, including a new pit viper, the Lilliputian frog (one centimeter in length), and a snake in the colors of the Bolivian flag (red, yellow, and green).

Joe Biden pledges to rejoin the Paris climate accord when he becomes president on January 20, 2021.

Biden picks New Mexico representative Deb Haaland to be the nation’s first Native American interior secretary and Michael Regan, head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Outgoing interior secretary David Bernhardt tests positive for the coronavirus.

The US death toll from COVID-19 passes 300,000, to 309,334. On Wednesday, December 16 alone, 3,538 people die, a single-day record. COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the United States.

New Zealand ends coronavirus restrictions, declaring itself COVID-free.

A snow leopard at the zoo in Louisville, Kentucky, tests positive for the coronavirus. So does a wild mink in Utah, the first wild animal known to have contracted the virus.

Apalachicola Bay, Florida, source of 10 percent of US oysters, is closed to oystering for five years in hopes of rebuilding its dwindling stocks.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is employing two python-sniffing Labrador retrievers in its invasive-snake eradication efforts. Last week a dog named Truman found his first snake, an eight-foot Burmese python. 

Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy wants the state to sever ties with the numerous banks that have rejected financing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic Refuge. These include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Ansel Adams’s iconic The Grand Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming sells at auction at Sotheby’s for nearly a million dollars.

Nearly half of the West is in extreme or exceptional drought.

Amazon used enough plastic bubble wrap in 2019 to encircle the globe 500 times. 

The French entertainment company Canal Plus claims to have trademarked the word “planet.”