Petco announced it will not sell dog or cat food and treats containing artificial colors, flavors and preservatives by May 2019. [node:read-more:link]

The Senate action follows more than 100 cases of megaesophagus in dogs correlated with a specific pet food.

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Medical marijuana advocates say they are exploring legal action challenging the Legislature’s move to replace Proposition 2 “at the behest” of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Although Utah voters this month approved the medical cannabis initiative by about 52 percent-48 percent, lawmakers are expected to meet in a December special session to overwrite the measure with a marijuana proposal acceptable to Prop 2 opponents, including the church. [node:read-more:link]

New Nevada tax data shows marijuana revenues are continuing to grow and top records in the state. The Nevada Department of Taxation said Wednesday that marijuana tax revenues at the retail and wholesale levels generated $8.1 million in August.That's a record and $3.2 million higher than the same month in 2017.The previous record was $7.9 million in July. [node:read-more:link]

The ‘new normal’ of a year-round wildfire season is a problem of our own making.Violent wildfires like the ones we’re witnessing today are of our own making. They’re the accidental yet catastrophic side effects of the way we live our lives; witness Redding, California, where the rim of a flat tire scraped the asphalt on a highway, causing the sparks that started the Carr Fire. They’re the result of people moving into fire-prone areas, along with forestry practices that suppress natural fires and human-caused global warming. Speaking to the media, Gov. [node:read-more:link]

In his classic book, A Sand County Almanac, conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote of ecological communities, “A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.” Congress essentially agreed with Leopold when it passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, with only 12 dissenting votes in the House and none in the Senate.Today, private landowners and industry in the West are calling for Congress and the president’s [node:read-more:link]

Luckily, museum curators around the world have had the good sense to hold onto massive plugs of earwax pulled from dead whales over the centuries.Thanks to those plugs, scientists have now discovered a record, hidden in earwax, of how human activities have stressed out whales over the past century and a half. Stephen Trumble, a comparative physiologist at Baylor University, and his colleagues published the findings this month in Nature Communications.It turns out we’re incredibly stress-inducing—from whaling to war to climate change, our actions have been affecting [node:read-more:link]

Green Plains Inc, the nation’s fourth-largest ethanol producer, has permanently shuttered a Virginia production plant and cut output at several other facilities as it tries to navigate a supply glut that has pummeled biofuel profits. Green Plains announced that it was closing a plant in the town of Hopewell that had capacity to produce 60 million gallons annually. Thirty-one jobs will be cut, it said in a news release. [node:read-more:link]

Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett today announced that USDA is investing $501 million in 60 projects to help improve health care infrastructure (PDF, 170 KB) and services in rural communities nationwide. “Creating strong and healthy communities is foundational to increasing prosperity in rural America,” Hazlett said. [node:read-more:link]

Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is asking deer hunters to have their kills checked professionally for chronic wasting disease (CWD). CWD is a contagious and a fatal neurological disorder that affects members of the deer family known scientifically as cervids. The state said import restrictions have been designed to protect these native herds, which include white-tailed deer and elk in Tennessee. "It’s possible that every deer you kill will have to be taken first to a mandatory check-station for sample collection. [node:read-more:link]