skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

PA Designates Official State Amphibian

play audio
Play

Wednesday, April 24, 2019   

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Tom Wolf will let the Eastern hellbender breathe a little easier, and help Pennsylvania's water get cleaner.

Senate Bill 9 officially designated North America's largest salamander as the official state amphibian. The two-year effort to win that distinction for the hellbender was led by students who have studied the salamanders and wrote the bill.

Emma Stone, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Student Leadership Council in Pennsylvania, said more is at stake than recognition of a unique species.

"This designation will serve as a clean-water legacy here in Pennsylvania," she said. "Hellbenders need cool, fast water that is obviously clean. Our hope is that this will give us cleaner water throughout the Commonwealth."

The loss of tree cover along many stream banks has degraded hellbender habitat and drastically reduced their numbers in streams where they were plentiful just 30 years ago.

Stone said trees not only shade the water from the sun but also stop sediment and pollution from reaching streams.

"Having very vegetative riparian buffers helps aid that," she said, "and so our hope is that there will be more efforts for streambank restoration."

In 2017, the Department of Environmental Protection reported almost 20,000 miles of environmentally impaired rivers and streams in Pennsylvania.

While designation as the state amphibian doesn't bring any legal protections for the species, Stone said, the legislation and the student efforts that brought it about have put a spotlight on the hellbender as an indicator of the health of Pennsylvania's waterways.

"Our hope," she said, "is that, in turn, there will be more of an awareness and more of a care and a drive to save the species."

More information is online at cbf.org, and details of SB 9 are at legis.state.pa.us.

Disclosure: Chesapeake Bay Foundation contributes to our fund for reporting on Energy Policy, Rural/Farming, Sustainable Agriculture, Water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.


get more stories like this via email
more stories
Corporate partners sign contracts to offer a graduate assistantship and pay the students. In turn, MSU pays the graduate assistant's tuition, fees and salary, so the assistantship is directly tied to the academic experience. (pressmaster/Adobe Stock)

play sound

By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Missouri News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Col…


Social Issues

play sound

A new report brands Connecticut's tax system as "regressive" for low- to middle-income residents and uses a report from the state to make its point…

Environment

play sound

Backers of a new federal rule said it will increase fairness for livestock and poultry producers, in North Carolina and across the country. The U.S…


A study by the advocacy group Inseparable showed one in five adults said at any given time, they consider their mental health to be either 'fair' or 'poor.' (Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Mental health care advocates are encouraging federal agencies to adopt a proposed update to regulations which would expand access to psychological car…

Social Issues

play sound

With hotter summers bringing hotter working conditions, the Maryland Department of Labor is implementing a heat stress standard to protect workers …

Social Issues

play sound

By Jimmy Cloutier for OpenSecrets.Broadcast version by Roz Brown for Texas News Service reporting for the OpenSecrets-Public News Service Collaboratio…

Environment

play sound

Recreational fishermen in New England say commercial trawlers are threatening the survival of smaller businesses relying on a healthy stock of Atlanti…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021