The drama over Tiger King won’t quit. The docu-tainment series on Netflix followed the eccentric Joe Exotic, his private Oklahoma zoo full of tiger cubs, and a murder mystery. It caught the public’s attention just as the U.S. was locking down for the pandemic. Not long before Joe (real name Joseph Maldonado-Passage) was sentenced to prison on a murder-for-hire plot in January, his Ed Hardy-wearing, Las Vegas party bus-owning, Hummer-driving business partner, Jeff Lowe, convinced Joe to transfer the ailing zoo (pictured above in 2018) into his name.Even after it became clear tigers could get the coronavirus, Lowe kept the zoo open, Nat Geo reported, allowing throngs of visitors to cuddle baby tigers, all taken away from their mothers not long after birth (as depicted in a heart-wrenching scene in the fourth episode of Tiger King). But the zoo is no more. At two separate inspections over the summer, the USDA found underweight bears, arthritic wolves lying on concrete, big cats with open sores caused by maggots, and an unresponsive lion cub named Nala.Lowe’s license to exhibit animals to the public was suspended for these violations (“a litany of falsehoods,” he called the USDA inspectors’ findings on Facebook). Then he voluntarily gave up his license. Why? He has new business ventures with his animals planned, he says. Rather than run a zoo for paying visitors, he’s moving his operations online and to television. But as Natasha Daly reports this week, that’s probably against the law, too. That’s according to a USDA spokesperson and animal lawyers. The big question now is how (or whether) the USDA—not known for its swift or strict enforcement of animal welfare laws—will react.Do you get this newsletter daily? If not, sign up here or forward to a friend.

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Hurricane warnings issued: Approaching Hurricane Delta, strengthening in open water, has prompted hurricane warnings along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Delta is expected to make U.S. landfall on Friday, bringing up to 11 feet of water to some parts of Louisiana, CNN reports. The state is still reeling from Hurricane Laura, which left thousands of Louisiana residents homeless.Saving the jaguars: Last year, we made a big deal about the wildfires ravaging the Amazon. This year, with the West Coast wildfires and COVID-19, you may not have heard about the massive wildfires in Brazil’s western Pantanal region, home to the biggest wetlands in the world. The fires in the Pantanal this year are four times larger than the Amazon’s biggest blazes, Jill Langlois reports. Now, volunteers are coming to the region—which has the highest density of mammal species on Earth—seeking to save animals such as jaguars.Twin threats: Wild bees have it tough enough. Now a study reinforces that fighting two threats—food scarcity and pesticides—might be too much for them. The researchers studied the effects of widespread pesticides and a lack of flowering plants on the blue orchard bee. They found reproduction declined by 57 percent and resulted in fewer female offspring, Science Daily reports.Russian eco-mystery: First, surfers reported mild burns on their corneas from the water off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Then large numbers of seals, octopuses, and sea urchins washed up dead on a popular black-sand beach there. Now, experts are investigating two military sites where toxic chemicals were buried. The Guardian reports that those chemicals could include highly toxic rocket fuel.