Natural Resources

"Drought is shrinking one of the country’s largest reservoirs, revealing a hidden Eden."

"For thousands of years, the gray whales of the eastern Pacific have undertaken one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal — starting in the cold waters of the Arctic, then down past the densely populated coasts and beaches of California before finally finding refuge in the warm, shallow estuaries of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. ... Starting in December 2018, this magnificent migration took a fatal turn."

"A Houston-based energy company is asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to walk away from its aging infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. Fieldwood Energy is attempting to shift responsibility for removing 1,715 wells, 276 platforms and 281 pipelines to oil and gas companies that previously held leases for the same area, according to court documents."

"Globally, numerous infectious diseases are being transmitted between wildlife, livestock and humans at escalating rates, including outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, dengue, HIV and others, as the threat of new emergent zoonotic diseases grows ever greater. The cost is huge in lives lost and ruined economies. The driver: human activities, particularly intrusion into wild landscapes and eating and trading wild animals."

"Human-driven planetary warming threatens to collapse a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean that regulate and impact weather across the globe, a new scientific study has found."

"Once the headquarters of Jean Lafitte and later the site of a U.S. military fort, West Grand Terre island now hosts a fleet of modern excavators and sand-pumping pipelines rather than smuggled treasure or cannon. The $102 million restoration of West Grand Terre, adjacent to Grand Isle, marks a milestone in Louisiana’s effort to fortify its first line of defense against hurricanes."

"The Biden administration laid out plans today [Friday] for scrapping and replacing a contentious Trump-era Clean Water Act rule that pulled back federal protections for millions of streams and wetlands."

"Douglas James stood Thursday on the Mall in front of the 25-foot totem pole he and a team had spent three months hand-carving and painting from a 400-year-old red cedar tree. James, a member of the Lummi Nation in Washington state, and a group of supporters and volunteers from his tribe hauled the pole on a flatbed truck more than 20,000 miles along the West Coast and across the Midwest before arriving in the other Washington, where the pole will stay as part of a campaign to protect sacred tribal lands."