More than 17,000 acres around the Klamath River in Northern California, including the lower Blue Creek watershed, have returned to the Yurok Tribe, completing the largest landback deal in California history. The Yurok people have lived, fished, and hunted along the Klamath for millennia. But when the California gold rush...
How 3 years of war have ravaged Ukraine’s forests, and the people who depend on them
Twenty-two-year-old software developer Artem Motorniuk has spent his entire life in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, living in the north and visiting his grandparents in the south. It’s been almost four years since he’s seen them in person. “My grandparents right now are under occupation,” he says. “We can reach...
The sneaky way even meat lovers can lessen their climate impact
It is virtually impossible for the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate targets without producing and consuming dramatically less meat. But demand for plant-based alternatives, like the imitation burgers sold by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, has steadily declined in recent years — all while global meat consumption continues...
Funding to protect American cities from extreme heat just evaporated
Straddling the border with Mexico along the Rio Grande, the city of Laredo, Texas, and its 260,000 residents don’t just have to deal with the region’s ferocious heat. Laredo’s roads, sidewalks, and buildings absorb the sun’s energy and slowly release it at night, a phenomenon known as the urban heat...
Cuts to USAID severed longstanding American support for Indigenous peoples around the world
Miguel Guimaraes Vásquez fought for years to protect his homeland in the Peruvian Amazon from deforestation related to the cocaine trade, even laboring under death threats from drug traffickers. A leader in an Indigenous rights group, Vasquez said such efforts were long supported by financial assistance from the U.S. Agency...
A world built on fossil fuels is loud. Here’s how advocates are defending peace and quiet.
Having grown up in the Southeast, I’ve always loved a good summer thunderstorm. Sure, thunder can be loud and sometimes scary, but I associate storms with a feeling of coziness. We would seek shelter in the safety of our home, me and my brother hoping the power would go out...
The smoke from Canada’s wildfires may be even more toxic than usual
More than 200 wildfires are blazing across central and western Canada, half of which are out of control because they’re so hard for crews to access, forcing 27,000 people to evacuate. Even those nowhere near the wildfires are suffering as smoke swirls around Canada and wafts south, creating hazardous air...
Uber’s new shuttles look suspiciously familiar to anyone who’s taken a bus
Every few years, a Silicon Valley gig-economy company announces a “disruptive” innovation that looks a whole lot like a bus. Uber rolled out Smart Routes a decade ago, followed a short time later by the Lyft Shuttle of its biggest competitor. Even Elon Musk gave it a try in 2018...
The Supreme Court just blew up a major environmental law
The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of a controversial Utah railway project that critics say erodes the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a bedrock of environmental law for the past half century. The case centered on a proposed 88-mile railway that would connect the oil fields of northeastern...
Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining
Millions of acres of Alaska wilderness will lose federal protections and be exposed to drilling and mining in the Trump administration’s latest move to prioritize energy production over the shielding of the U.S.’s open spaces. Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said on Monday that the government would reverse an order issued...