SAN DIEGO—The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Dec. 20 declared one of Southern California’s rarest butterflies—the Hermes copper butterfly—as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The agency also designated 35,000 acres in San Diego County as a protected critical habitat. The butterfly declined from at least 57 historical populations to only 26 populations in a survey…

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard expert testimony Dec. 8 on the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA), a bipartisan wildlife protection bill that would be funded by fines and other money collected from environmental or natural resource-related violations. RAWA revises the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act, which gave the tax money collected on firearms and…

NEW ORLEANS—The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that it is proposing threatened status for the Pearl River map turtle, seeking to grant added federal protections to an at-risk species found only in Louisiana and Mississippi. “These native freshwater map turtles are at risk and need our help,” regional director Leopoldo Miranda-Castro said in…