Green & indigenous News

Kevin FrekingAssociated Press

WASHINGTON — The House refused Thursday to override President Donald Trump’s veto of two low-profile bills as Republicans stuck with the president despite their prior support for the measures.

Congress can override a veto with support from two-thirds of the members of the House and the Senate. The threshold is rarely reached. In this case, Republicans opted to avoid a fight with the president in an election year over bills with little national significance. The two vetoes were the first of Trump’s second term.

One bill Trump vetoed was designed to help local communities finance the construction of a pipeline to provide water to tens of thousands in Colorado.

The other designated a site in Everglades National Park as a part of the Miccosukee Indian Reservation. On the Colorado bill, 35 Republicans sided with Democrats in voting for an override. On the Florida bill, only 24 Republicans voted for the override.

The White House did not issue any veto threats prior to passage of the bills, so Trump’s scathing comments in his veto message came as a surprise to sponsors of the legislation. Ultimately, his vetoes had the effect of punishing those who had opposed the president’s positions on other issues.

The water pipeline bill came from Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a longtime Trump ally who broke with the president in November to release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The bill to give the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians more control of some of its tribal lands would have benefited one of the groups that sued the administration over an immigration detention center known as ” Alligator Alcatraz.”

Florida officials didn’t disclose funding request for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ facility, lawsuit says

Republicans take sides

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said leadership was not urging — or “whipping” — members on how to vote. He said he would personally vote to sustain the vetoes and the president’s message opposing the bills “sounded very reasonable to me.” He said he understood the concerns of the Colorado lawmakers about the veto and would work to help them on the pipeline issue going forward.

Boebert said she has been talking to colleagues individually about overriding Trump’s veto, but wasn’t sure about hitting the two-thirds threshold. Some colleagues “don’t want to go against the president,” she said.

On the House floor, Boebert told colleagues that the communities targeted through the bill could see the cost of their drinking water triple without the legislation.

“This bill makes good not only on a 60-year plus commitment without wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local and federal investments, but it also makes good on President Trump’s commitment to rural communities, to Western water issues,” Boebert said.

When asked by a reporter if the veto was in response to her signing a discharge petition to release the Epstein files, she said, “I certainly hope not.”

Trump did not allude to Boebert in his veto of her legislation, but raised concerns about the cost of the water pipeline, saying “restoring fiscal sanity is vital to economic growth and the fiscal health of the Nation.”

Rep. Jeff Hurd, another Colorado Republican, also urged colleagues to override the veto, saying the vote was not about defying Trump but defending Congress.

“If Congress walks away from a 60-year commitment mid-project, then no Western project is truly secure,” Hurd said.

The Florida legislation had been sponsored by Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez, whom Trump has endorsed. In his veto message, Trump was critical of the tribe, saying, “The Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected.”

Before the House voted to pass his bill, Gimenez said it would simply allow an inhabited tribal village to be included in the Miccosukee Reservation, empowering the tribe to manage water flow into the Everglades and raise structures within the camp to prevent flooding. He did not speak on the floor prior to the vote.

Instead, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida urged colleagues to vote to override.

“This bill is so narrowly focused that (the veto) makes absolutely no sense other than the interest in vengeance that seems to have emanated in this result,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, said he would vote to override the president’s vetoes.
“They passed unanimously,” Bacon said of the bills. “And I don’t know if I agree with the explanations for the veto.”

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-New York, said she would vote to sustain the vetoes.

“My constituents want me to stand with Trump,” Malliotakis said.

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Martha Bellisle
Associated Press

SEATTLE — A man who held himself out as a Native American activist was sentenced Wednesday to 46 years in prison for drugging and raping women in a case that inspired calls for changes in Washington state law to prohibit defendants who represent themselves from directly questioning their accusers.

Redwolf Pope, who had apartments in Seattle and Santa Fe, New Mexico, was arrested in 2018 after guests at his Seattle apartment gave police videos from his iPad that showed him raping several women who appeared to be unconscious, court documents said. Police also found a secret camera in Pope’s bathroom that was used to capture video of women in the shower.

“I’ve had the horror of witnessing the scale of violence Pope inflicted on multiple women over many years. It will never leave me,” Erica Elan, a survivor who discovered the hidden cameras and video evidence of the crimes, said in a news release.

The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of sexual abuse except in cases where they publicly identify themselves or share their stories openly.

Pope, 49, was found guilty of rape and voyeurism by a Santa Fe jury in 2020. He was sentenced to four years in prison, with credit for over two years already served. Pope claimed that encounter was consensual.

After his release from prison, he was extradited to Washington state to face charges from incidents that occurred in 2016 and 2017. He pleaded not guilty and represented himself during his September trial, cross-examining one of his victims for multiple days.

The jury found him guilty on Sept. 3, 2025.

Survivors have called on the Washington State Legislature to change laws that allow defendants who represent themselves to directly cross-examine their victims. They want lawmakers to update the Crime Victim Bill of Rights to provide an alternative to cross-examination of victims by perpetrators serving as their own lawyer.

They want judges to have the ability to allow an accuser to be cross-examined by a court-appointed designee rather than by a self-represented defendant.

“We must refine the outdated systems that cause further harm to survivors in their pursuit of justice,” Elan said.

Pope, who has claimed Western Shoshone and Tlingit heritage, is an activist who has appeared as a spokesperson for the Seattle-based United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. His LinkedIn page lists him as an attorney who has worked for the Tulalip Tribal Court for over a decade.

But his heritage and resume came under scrutiny after his arrest. While he received a law degree from Seattle University, the Washington State Bar Association previously confirmed he was not a licensed lawyer, and the Tulalip Tribes said he never worked as an attorney there.

Several tribes with Tlingit and Shoshone members also have said they’ve found no record of Pope’s enrollment, though it’s unclear whether he has claimed membership to any particular tribe.

Abigail Echo-Hawk, the executive vice president of the Seattle Indian Health Board and an advocate for Native women’s rights, has said Pope created a “false identity and posed as a Native man to infiltrate Native communities and prey upon our Indigenous women.”

Echo-Hawk, who is a national leader in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls crisis and advocate for victims of sexual violence, said Pope not only inflicted harm until he was caught, but “was allowed to take advantage of our legal system and continue to traumatize his victims for years after.”

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This story was originally published by the Nevada Current.

Jeniffer Solis
Nevada Current

Tribes across the West have worked with states to protect the Colorado River and conserve enough water to raise elevations in the river’s two largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead, a move that has helped states during critical droughts.

Now tribes want to make it clear that any future agreements on how to manage the river’s water must include their input and an acknowledgment that they intend to develop their water rights.

“It’s high time that tribes begin to really begin to flex their sovereignty,” said Mike Natchees, a member of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee.

The Ute Indian Tribe holds significant senior water rights, including 500,000 acre-feet in the Green River basin in Utah, but faces challenges with unused water flowing downstream due to lack of infrastructure and funding.

“It just continues to flow downstream. We are uncompensated for it. It is undeveloped. And again, that is unacceptable for the Ute Indian Tribe,” Natchees said.

That sentiment was shared among representatives for dozens of tribes who spoke at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in December.

Western states that rely on the Colorado River have less than two months to agree on how to manage the troubled river. The seven Colorado River Basin states — Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — have until Feb. 14 to reach a new water sharing agreement before current operating rules expire at the end of 2026 —or the federal government will step in with their own plan.

But the Ute Indian Tribe, whose reservation is located in Northeastern Utah, emphasized that any new agreement will have a significant impact on tribes across the Colorado River basin.

One of the biggest disagreements between the Upper and Lower Basin states is over which faction should have to cut back on their water use during dry years. Historically, Lower Basin states have used nearly all their 7.5 million acre-feet Colorado River allocation under current Colorado River guidelines, compared to the 4.5 million acres-feet used by the Upper Basin states.

Natchees said the impact of water cuts to tribes in the Upper Basin have not been discussed enough during negotiations, adding that he hopes tribes will one day have a seat on the Upper Colorado River Commission, an interstate water administrative agency that represents Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.

“The bottom line is that the Lower Basin is just simply over allocated. They’re overusing and they’re doing it with no regard to anyone in the Upper Basin, which feeds their system, and that needs to change,” Natchees said.

Tribes have continued to be a part of the solution when it comes to conservation on the river, said President of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, Jonathan E. Koteen.

In 2025, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe signed an agreement to conserve 13,000 acre-feet of water to bolster elevations in Lake Mead, and contributed additional water savings through its ongoing seasonal fallowing agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Those water savings helped California reach its goal of conserving 1.6 million acre-feet in Lake Mead a year ahead of schedule.

“Tribal inclusion must be formal, meaningful and permanent. Tribes are not new participants. We are original stewards of the river, and our voices must be part of shaping the future family,” Koteen said.

Conservation efforts by tribes have also been innovative, said Koteen. The Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe secured funding to line the Reservation Main Canal, reducing seepage and improving efficiency for water deliveries to large portions of the Yuma Project Reservation Division.

Another example of an innovative solution was when the Jicarilla Apache Nation entered a landmark 10-year water-sharing agreement with New Mexico and The Nature Conservancy in 2023 to lease up to 20,000 acre-feet of its Colorado River water annually, supporting endangered fish habitat and water security for the state by strategically releasing water into the San Juan River.

“It’s increasing water security for the state of New Mexico, allowing the state to meet its obligations under whatever framework that we end up coming up with in post 2026, so it’s a great project,” said Jenny Dumas, the water attorney for the Jicarilla Apache Nation.

But Dumas emphasized that not every tribe can replicate such an agreement, and every tribe has their own unique needs that must be considered when settling on a new water sharing agreement.

Councilmember for Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Conrad Jacket said the tribe’s Bow and Arrow Farm is a major economic driver. While tribes in California, like the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, are able to reduce crops for payment, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe can not.

“This year, we did have to cut back,” Jacket said. “And that’s not good on our part. That is not good on all this whole region’s part.”

Instead, the tribe would benefit more from flexible tools that allow the tribe’s water to be set aside in good water years, while contributing to additional release in dry years.

Tribes said they were committed to helping states reach a seven-state consensus on how to share the river’s water, in order to stabilize the river and secure their rights.

During the conference, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Gila River Indian Community and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, which manages the Central Arizona Project, signed a major proclamation to work together to protect the Colorado River.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes is Arizona’s largest and most senior Colorado River water rights holder.

“All of us who live in Arizona, native and non-native alike, are connected by water, for without water, there is no life.  And it is that common thread that binds us, which has us here today, pledging to work together for the greater good of all who live in Arizona,” said Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores.

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Environmental crime used to be treated as a niche concern, a worry for park rangers, customs officers and a handful of conservation lawyers. Not anymore. From Vienna to Belém, a once technical debate about “crimes that affect the environment” is edging closer to the mainstream of multilateral diplomacy, and, more importantly, beginning to reshape enforcement and action on the ground. Environmental crime is a catch-all term for illegal activities that harm nature and the people who depend on it. It covers illegal land grabbing and logging, illicit mining, illegal fishing, wildlife trafficking, and the dumping of toxic waste. Increasingly, it also encompasses newer frontiers such as illegal sand extraction, fraudulent “green” or carbon projects, infiltration of biofuel supply chains, and exploitation of critical minerals and rare earths. From the Amazon to the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia, environmental crimes are anything but minor or opportunistic. They operate at industrial scale, generating hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars annually, embedded in complex global supply chains and financial systems. These crimes are often tightly intertwined with other serious offenses including drug trafficking, extortion, corruption and money laundering, and are often enforced through violence and intimidation against Indigenous and local communities, environmental defenders and journalists. A large illegal gold mine in Aceh, Indonesia. Image by Junaidi Hanafiah/Mongabay Indonesia. Environmental crime is also getting worse. Even as governments and international organizations have strengthened laws and enforcement over the past decade, these illicit markets are expanding, not shrinking. The reasons are depressingly familiar. On the one hand, profits are high: gold is trading…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Last year began with the costliest wildfires in American history, as a series of blazes tore across Los Angeles for nearly all of January. A parade of other catastrophes followed: severe storms across the southern and northeastern United States, tornadoes in the central states, drought and heat waves through the western expanse of the country.

All told, the U.S. notched 23 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2025, which claimed 276 lives and caused $115 billion in damages, according to a new analysis from the research group Climate Central. Only 2023 and 2024 recorded more of these events, and 2025 was the 15th consecutive year with an above-average number. (Since 1980, the annual average has been nine events costing $67.6 billion. In that time, the country tallied 426 total billion-dollar disasters, costing more than $3.1 trillion.) Last year was the ninth most expensive on record for billion-dollar disasters.

The clear signal here is climate change: It’s worsening wildfires, causing heavier rainfall and flooding, and supercharging hurricanes. In the 1980s, billion-dollar disasters happened on average every 82 days, according to the analysis, but over the last decade that window has tightened to just 16 days. In 2025, Americans endured one of these events every 10 days on average — an almost nonstop cavalcade of suffering.

Last May, the Trump administration announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would no longer update the federal government’s own billion-dollar disaster database, to the alarm of experts who call it an essential tool for determining risk and adapting to climate change.

In October, Climate Central revived that database, hence its release of these figures for 2025. “The continuation of this dataset, like other datasets, is important because it helps demonstrate the economic impact of extreme weather and climate events,” said Adam Smith, senior climate impacts scientist with the organization, who’s leading the program and was formerly the lead scientist for NOAA’s version. That, in turn, can give policymakers and the general public more information for “a more enhanced decision-making process, as we try to learn from these events and rebuild after these extremes that we know will continue into the future.”

At $61.2 billion in damages, the Los Angeles fires accounted for more than half of the losses from the 23 total events in 2025, according to the analysis. That outbreak brought a public health crisis that’s harder to calculate: Hundreds of people likely died from inhaling smoke, even if they were many miles away from the flames. Wildfire smoke already exacerbates conditions like heart disease and cardiovascular disease, but this smoke was especially toxic because the fires were chewing through houses and cars, melting plastic and metal.

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For the folks who survived inhaling the smoke but nonetheless experienced complications, medical costs add yet more to that $61.2 billion that Climate Central reported. Add still more when you factor in the trauma of surviving such a disaster, and the associated mental health costs. “Even though we have a very robust, comprehensive estimate based on the data that’s available, it’s still conservative with respect to what is truly lost, but cannot be completely measured,” Smith said.

Elsewhere across the U.S., communities struggled with unruly weather: hail events in Texas and Colorado, and severe storms all across the South and Northeast. (Of the 23 events, 21 were related to tornadoes, hail, or high wind events. When considering only severe storms, 2025 was the second most costly year for billion-dollar disasters, after 2023.) Generally speaking, the warmer the atmosphere, the more moisture it can hold and then dump as rain. In addition, the Gulf of Mexico was extra hot in 2025, which added still more moisture to storms that marched across Southern states. (Scientists are still working out how climate change might be influencing tornadoes, like the six separate billion-dollar outbreaks that struck the U.S. in 2025.)

In addition to climate change making weather and wildfires more catastrophic, human factors are adding to the growing costs of billion-dollar disasters. In the West, for example, communities have been expanding into the “wildland-urban interface,” where structures butt up against forests. So there’s more to burn, while at the same time climate change is amplifying the blazes. “You’re supercharging some of the ingredients that when they’re aligned in a certain way — with the dryness of the fuels and the near hurricane-force winds, and then, of course, some ignition source — it’s literally impossible to stop,” Smith said.

But if climate change is worsening disasters, why didn’t 2025 see more billion-dollar events than the two years before it? And why was it the ninth most expensive, not the first? That’s largely because for the first time in a decade, no hurricane made landfall in the U.S. last year, thanks to an atmospheric quirk above the Southeastern states that created a sort of force field that bounced storms back out to sea. That was fortunate — both for human lives and economic losses — because hurricanes tend to be the costliest of weather and climate extremes. “If you talk about major hurricanes making landfall, you can easily approach or exceed $100 billion,” Smith said. “The $115 billion could have been $215 billion.”

Although the U.S. got lucky, the hurricane season was still extreme. Only five Atlantic hurricanes spun up, but four of them — or 80 percent — reached major strength, while in a typical year it’s 40 percent. In addition, 2025 was the second year to have produced three or more Category 5 storms, at least in recorded history.

That’s where climate change comes in: It’s boosting hurricanes by warming up the ocean waters the storms use for fuel. And indeed in 2025 those temperatures reached record highs: Hurricane Melissa, which ravaged the Caribbean, fed on waters made hundreds of times more likely by climate change, which increased wind speeds by 11 mph and extreme rainfall by 16 percent. All that oceanic fuel helped the storm undergo “extreme rapid intensification,” its maximum sustained wind speeds jumping from 70 mph to 140 mph in 18 hours.

So just because no hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. last year doesn’t mean that the storms won’t get more powerful from here. To prepare, Smith said that Climate Central will be improving the billion-dollar disaster database, for example reexamining historic data to dig more deeply into individual events like wildfires. “By this time next year,” Smith said, “if we’re having a conversation, I think that it’ll be even a much more useful and helpful data resource.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In 2025, the US suffered a billion-dollar disaster every 10 days on Jan 8, 2026.

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Graham Lee Brewer
Associated Press

An important cultural site is close to being returned to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians after a city council in North Carolina voted unanimously Monday to return the land.

The Noquisiyi Mound in Franklin, North Carolina, was part of a Cherokee mother town hundreds of years before the founding of the United States, and it is a place of deep spiritual significance to the Cherokee people. But for about 200 years it was either in the hands of private owners or the town.

“When you think about the importance of not just our history but those cultural and traditional areas where we practice all the things we believe in, they should be in the hands of the tribe they belong to,” said Michell Hicks, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “It’s a decision that we’re very thankful to the town of Franklin for understanding.”

Noquisiyi is the largest unexcavated mound in the Southeast, said Elaine Eisenbraun, executive director of Noquisiyi Intitative, the nonprofit that has managed the site since 2019. Eisenbraun, who worked alongside the town’s mayor for several years on the return, said the next step is for the tribal council to agree to take control, which will initiate the legal process of transferring the title.

“It’s a big deal for Cherokees to get our piece of our ancestral territory back in general,” said Angelina Jumper, a citizen of the tribe and a Noquisiyi Initiative board member who spoke at Monday’s city council meeting. “But when you talk about a mound site like that, that has so much significance and is still standing as high as it was two or three hundred years ago when it was taken, that kind of just holds a level of gravity that I just have no words for.”

In the 1940s, the town of Franklin raised money to purchase the mound from a private owner. Hicks said the tribe started conversations with the town about transferring ownership in 2012, after a town employee sprayed herbicide on the mound, killing all the grass. In 2019, Franklin and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians created a nonprofit to oversee the site, which today it is situated between two roads and several buildings.

“Talking about Land Back, it’s part of a living people. It’s not like it’s a historical artifact,” said Stacey Guffey, Franklin’s mayor, referencing the global movement to return Indigenous homelands through ownership or co-stewardship. “It’s part of a living culture, and if we can’t honor that then we lose the character of who we are as mountain people.”

Noquisiyi is part of a series of earthen mounds, many of which still exist, that were the heart of the Cherokee civilization. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians also owns the Cowee Mound a few miles away, and it is establishing a cultural corridor of important sites that stretches from Georgia to the tribe’s reservation, the Qualla Boundary.

Noquisiyi, which translates to “star place,” is an important religious site that has provided protection to generations of Cherokee people, said Jordan Oocumma, the groundskeeper of the mound. He said he is the first enrolled member of the tribe to caretake the mound since the forced removal.

“It’s also a place where when you need answers, or you want to know something, you can go there and you ask, and it’ll come to you,” he said. “It feels different from being anywhere else in the world when you’re out there.”

The mound will remain publicly accessible, and the tribe plans to open an interpretive center in a building it owns next to the site.

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In India, arguments about nature are often treated as friction in the path of progress. Madhav Gadgil insisted they were arguments about power: who gets to decide what happens to a forest, a river, a hillside, and on what evidence. He made that case as a scientist, and then made it again as a citizen who did not care much whether officials found it convenient. Gadgil, an ecologist associated most closely with the Western Ghats and with a democratic approach to conservation, died on January 7, 2025. He was 83. He was born in Pune and grew up with two unusual advantages: access to books and access to the living world. His father, Dhananjaya Ramchandra Gadgil, bought him binoculars and helped him learn birds “in the pre-pesticide days.” A neighbor, the anthropologist Irawati Karve, shaped his outlook in a different way, encouraging him to grow up without religious, caste, or class prejudices. When Gadgil was nine, he accompanied Karve on fieldwork to Kodagu, where he saw wild elephants and a sacred grove at Talakaveri, near the origin of the Kaveri River. It was an early lesson in how landscapes hold meaning beyond their market price. As a young man he was physically tough and competitive—running, swimming, and playing racket sports—traits that suited a field naturalist who preferred to learn by looking closely. Another early lesson arrived through development. In Jawaharlal Nehru’s India, dams were “temples of modern India.” Gadgil learned at 14 about forest destruction and displacement linked to the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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ARAÇUAÍ & BELÉM, Brazil — When Aécio Luiz was younger, finding wild beehives was routine in his rural Afro-Brazilian community of Córrego Narciso. A farmer turned beekeeper, he recalls their buzzing was easy to spot when he worked around his property in Brazil’s Jequitinhonha Valley. “Now, that has become a rarity,” he tells Mongabay. Although Luiz and other locals are uncertain of the cause, they started to notice changes in various bee species’ behavior around 2021, when Sigma Lithium, a Canadian company producing lithium used in electric vehicles, began building a plant in the region. It was the latest in a wave of economic activity, including the arrival of other lithium projects and eucalyptus plantations, altering the valley’s landscape. “In the past four years or so, we basically stopped coming across wild [native] bees and their nests,” says resident Osmar Aranã, of the Aranã Indigenous people. “Before then, you’d see them flying around all over the place.” Researchers say the issue raises questions about the impacts of critical mineral mining on bee species and how this interacts with global climate goals. Lithium, for example, powers renewable technologies to mitigate climate change, which bees can be vulnerable to. “Any small alterations to the microclimate of such a vulnerable region could spark a domino effect on vegetation, biodiversity — and on bees,” says André Rech, a professor at the Federal University of the Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys and an expert in pollination ecology. But lack of sufficient studies and regulation on the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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After facing sustained pushback from environmental groups, Ghana revoked a 2022 law that had empowered the president to allow mining in the country’s forest reserves. In December, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, introduced in Parliament the Environmental Protection (Mining in Forest Reserves) Revocation Instrument, which nullified the powers vested in the president by Legislative Instrument 2462, also known as L.I. 2462. L.I. 2462 amended earlier mining regulations, allowing mining activities in forest reserves. Environmental groups argued that the regulation undermined decades of forest protection policies and contradicted Ghana’s Forest Development Master Plan (2016-2036), which seeks to phase out mining in forest reserves by 2036. Speaking to the press, Minister Buah said the public outcry led the government to amend L.I. 2462. During his electoral campaign for Ghana’s 2024 general elections, then-opposition leader John Dramani Mahama promised to repeal L.I. 2462 if elected. He won and assumed office Jan. 7, 2025. “This clearly must send a message that this government is committed to basically ensuring that we continue to protect our pristine forest reserves and our environment,” Buah said. Destroyed trees inside the Apamprama reserve. Image by Awudu Salami Sulemana Yoda. A coalition of civil society organizations (CSOs) and public interest groups commended the government and Parliament for the rollback of L.I. 2462, describing the move as a major victory for forest protection and environmental governance. In a statement, the coalition noted that L.I. 2462 exposed Ghana’s forest reserves, including globally significant biodiversity areas, to serious…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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CAPE TOWN — Western leopard toads have been listed as endangered since 2016. Andrew Turner, scientific manager for CapeNature, the government body that manages protected areas and conservation in South Africa’s Western Cape province, says the species was once more widely found across the Cape Peninsula as well as Kleinmond, Betty’s Bay and the Agulhas Plain. But over the last 20 years, much of its habitat has been lost to urban development, though no quantitative data exist. Leopard toads spend most of their time away from water, but during the breeding season, from late July until September, the amphibians need to reach ponds where they mate and lay their eggs. In an urban environment, this now requires them to cross busy roads. “Roads and toads are not a great combination,” Turner told Mongabay. “A lot of people don’t see them, or are traveling too fast to avoid them, and then you end up with squished toads.” Turner spoke to Mongabay in Cape Town. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Western leopard toad. Image by Barry Christianson. Mongabay: Western leopard toads are threatened because of extensive habitat loss in the past two decades. Has that stabilized now? Andrew Turner: So, I wouldn’t say it’s stabilized. Habitat loss has continued, but it has obviously decelerated a lot, because over time, the opportunities for further development have declined. There’s not that much natural habitat left that can be developed, so applications for development that do happen within the western leopard toad’s…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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President Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the global fight against climate change has gone further than almost anyone expected.

During the first year of his second term in office, the president and his administration have cut foreign aid for climate resilience, pressured countries to delay crucial carbon tax agreements, and removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 accord that saw the world’s nations come together around a plan to limit global warming.

Some of this was anticipated, but on Wednesday Trump took arguably his most dramatic step yet against global climate action. In a brief memorandum, he announced that he would “effectuate the withdrawal” of the U.S. from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, the bedrock treaty that first brought countries together to discuss the climate crisis more than three decades ago.

In other words, Trump hasn’t just skipped out on the world’s plan for tackling climate change — he’s also decreeing that the U.S. will no longer take any part in international talks on the subject. And this latest move may prove far more durable than leaving the Paris accord. Because of ambiguity in U.S. law, future presidents may not be able to reverse withdrawal from the UNFCCC even if they want to.

If Paris was a contract to stop climate change, the UNFCCC was akin to the boardroom in which countries hashed out that contract. Trump’s withdrawal from the latter is an even more extreme measure because it means that the U.S. government will no longer be eligible to attend global climate talks, known as COPs, and will be the only country in the world that is unable to participate in multilateral debates about climate change.

“This is a short-sighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” said Gina McCarthy, who was the White House climate advisor to former President Joe Biden, in a statement. “The Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate leadership and global collaboration.”

The UNFCCC also has a stronger basis under domestic law than the Paris Agreement ever did. The U.S. Senate ratified the convention as a formal treaty in 1992 by a vote of 92 to 0, and it was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. (By contrast, the Obama administration used executive action to join the Paris Agreement without needing congressional approval.) Trump did not attempt to leave the treaty during his first term, and indeed no nation has ever attempted to do so.

No one knows for sure how a future president could rejoin the UNFCCC. Some experts believe that a future president could rely on the 1992 Senate vote to justify rejoining, but others say that Trump’s withdrawal this week annuls that vote, requiring a new Senate vote with two-thirds support — a tall order in a far more polarized political environment.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution says that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” But the document is silent about who has the authority to leave and rejoin those treaties; some legal scholars have argued that the president has unilateral power to terminate treaties, but others have argued the opposite. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat and a leading climate hawk, said in a statement Thursday that only the Senate can withdraw from Senate-ratified treaties and that Trump’s move was illegal. The question of who has the authority to rejoin a treaty is even murkier. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue. In 1979, after evaluating a legal challenge to then-President Jimmy Carter’s termination of a defense treaty with China, the Court referred to the issue as a “political question” not subject to judicial authority.

In their initial reactions to Trump’s move, climate experts offered a range of different views on the question of rejoining the UNFCCC, reflecting the extreme uncertainty on the issue. Sue Biniaz, who served for decades as a lead U.S. negotiator in climate talks, said that she believes the country “could rather seamlessly rejoin.” Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert at Columbia University, said by email that there are competing theories about Senate consent for rejoining treaties — and that he didn’t know immediately which theory was correct.

“I want to try to pin this down,” he said.

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Experts also said it’s not even certain if Trump did withdraw from the treaty in a legal sense. His memo says that it pulls the U.S. from more than 60 international agreements covering everything from cyber security to cotton. It declares that “For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law.” It is unclear if this means the U.S. will submit a formal withdrawal notice to the U.N. governing body, which is what would make the move official, or will simply not participate in negotiations for the remainder of Trump’s tenure. (The State Department did not immediately respond to Grist’s request for comment and clarification on the withdrawal.)

If the withdrawal goes forward, it could take the U.S. out of the international climate fight for far longer than the remainder of Trump’s term. Trump has cemented opposition to any form of climate action as a core commitment of the Republican party. And given that Republicans hold a durable advantage in the Senate, where rural states hold disproportionate sway, a future vote to rejoin the agreement looks remote. If a future president tried to rejoin the UNFCCC without Senate consent, anti-climate groups would likely file a legal challenge to the move by citing the Senate’s treaty authority.

For now, the other 197 countries that are party to the UNFCCC will continue to negotiate global agreements on climate change, albeit with the world’s largest economy missing. This was already the case in Brazil last year during the COP30 conference, which the Trump administration skipped even though the United States was still technically a party to the Paris agreement at the time.

John Kerry, the former U.S. secretary of state and the lead climate envoy under the Biden administration, has said the move would further isolate the U.S. on the world stage.

“This is par for the course,” he said in a statement. “But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a gift to China and a get-out-of-jail-free card to countries and polluters who want to avoid responsibility. It’s another self-inflicted wound on the world stage.”

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Some climate advocates echoed this view, saying that the absence of the U.S. could make it harder to achieve consensus at COPs. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, the United States played a crucial role in securing the Paris deal and a 2023 agreement to phase out fossil fuels, helping to overcome hesitation from countries including Saudi Arabia and China. A long-term withdrawal could empower large emitters to frustrate agreements on fossil fuels. This already happened at COP30, where a group of oil-producing countries tanked talks to produce a “road map” on transitioning away from oil and gas.

“It is sad to attend international meetings and see an empty space where the United States should be,” said Kaveh Guilanpour, the vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a leading expert on climate talks. “This is harmful to the world, because the enormous energy, innovation, and authority of the United States is missed.”

Some negotiators from developing countries downplayed the significance of the U.S. exit, in part because they’ve seen administrations from both political parties obstruct important global climate action, whether or not those presidents endorsed the Paris Agreement. Over the past decade, developing countries have grown more vocal in demands for trillions of dollars in financial assistance from the rich countries that have emitted the most carbon dioxide. This money would help poor nations transition away from fossil fuels and adapt to climate disasters, but the U.S. and Europe have said that they can’t afford to pay up.

“The absence of the U.S. is unfortunate, but I don’t think it is going to reverse global progress,” said Ali Mohamed, the lead climate envoy for Kenya, in an interview with Grist. “You have seen how in many countries, from Europe to Southeast Asia to Africa, the revolution of renewables is overtaking fossil fuels, because it makes business sense. International policy will continue to evolve and be developed by the coalition of the willing.”

Other observers said the withdrawal announcement was just paperwork confirming what was already apparent in Trump’s actions.

“The Trump Administration has de facto already halted cooperation and dialogue in this space,” said Allison Lombardo, former State Department deputy assistant secretary for international organization affairs in the Biden administration. “This formalizes what has already become a reality.”

Zoya Teirstein contributed reporting to this story.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump just took his most dramatic step yet against global climate action on Jan 8, 2026.

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Southeast Alaska has seen record snowfall –and avalanche experts say the risk is high.

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They’ve been called “bubble chasers,” and “seep seekers,” though they sometimes call themselves “flare hunters.” They’re a small group of scientific specialists searching the world’s oceans for tiny streams of methane gas-filled globules rising from seafloor sediments. On expeditions ranging from the Arctic to Antarctica, carried out in shallow waters to thousands of meters below the sea’s surface, their studies reveal how these tiny globules can potentially add to global warming while also creating unique ecosystems. But even when deploying advanced modern technology, finding these cold-ocean methane seeps isn’t easy. And it may be even harder to determine exactly how seafloor methane releases could factor into the future of humanity and the planet. Map showing the known global occurrences of methane-derived carbonates used to compile a study of seafloor methane seepage across the last 150 million years. Image courtesy of Oppo et al. (2020). Bubbles flowing from a methane seep at El Quisco, off the coast of Chile. Researchers found the seeps using sonar-based bubble mapping, bathymetric mapping, tracking in situ methane concentration measurements, and visual surveys with the ROV SuBastian. Image by ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute (CC BY-NC-SA). Hunting telltale bubbles “These seeps are fascinating and extreme environments,” said Claudio Argentino, a sediment biogeochemist at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, whose fieldwork started at ancient methane seep sites in Italy’s Apennine Mountains in 2015, during his doctoral studies, and now takes him to the Arctic Ocean. “We want to know how much gas is escaping the seafloor sediment…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Last Updated on January 8, 2026 On September 5, 2025, Nayarit’s governor Miguel Ángel Navarro Quintero called for an immediate halt to cartel violence after reports that criminal groups were testing explosive devices on Indigenous children. Nayarit, a coastal state wedged between Sinaloa and Jalisco, is home to the Naayeri peoples and other Indigenous nations […]

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The middle-of-the-night kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shocked the world on Saturday. Military helicopters bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, as U.S. special forces breached Maduro’s residence, captured him, and flew him to New York to stand trial on unproven charges of narcoterrorism. President Donald Trump has offered several justifications for Maduro’s ouster, including the collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry. But the very conditions Trump has been pointing to were exacerbated by the actions of past U.S. presidents — including Trump himself. If the Venezuelan oil industry is in tatters, it’s at least partially because of U.S. policies dating back at least a decade.

On Wednesday, Trump’s Department of Energy put out a “fact sheet” stipulating that the U.S. is “selectively rolling back sanctions to enable the transport and sale of Venezuelan crude and oil products to global markets.” This outcome is doubly ironic because U.S. sanctions are one of the reasons the Venezuelan oil industry is diminished in the first place. The announcement also states that the U.S. will market Venezuelan oil, bank the proceeds, and disburse the revenue “for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the U.S. government.”

Maduro first drew the ire of President Trump in 2017 after the Venezuelan government stripped powers from the opposition-controlled legislature and violently suppressed mass protests. Trump responded by imposing sanctions on Maduro, several senior officials, and Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, significantly broadening the targeted sanctions that the Obama administration first imposed in 2015. Speaking to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that August, Trump said he would not rule out a “military option” in Venezuela.

Two years later, after Maduro secured a second term in a contested election, the Trump administration dramatically escalated its pressure campaign, announcing a full oil embargo on the country. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces a kind of heavy crude used to make diesel fuel and petrochemicals. At the time, the United States received roughly 40 percent of Venezuelan oil exports. The embargo severed not only that trade but also exports to European Union countries, India, and other U.S. allies. Suddenly, Venezuela was largely cut off from global markets.

By the time sanctions kicked in, Venezuela’s oil production was already slipping. Low oil prices in the early 2010s caused instability for an industry that had long been plagued by mismanagement, corruption, and underinvestment. But the sanctions delivered a devastating blow.

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“When they cut off the ability of the government to export their oil and access international finance, it was all downhill from there,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, an economic policy think tank. “It was economic violence to punish Venezuelans.”

Even as global oil prices rose again, the sanctions had limited Venezuelan exports and prevented the country from rebuilding its oil sector. With few buyers and little access to financing or technology, oil output collapsed by nearly 80 percent by the end of the decade, compared to its 2012 peak. Most of those sanctions remained in place under the Biden administration, and experts say the cumulative effect was the near-total collapse of Venezuelan oil production — damage that President Trump is now using as justification for his military strike against the country this week.

While the Trump administration’s precise motivations are not entirely clear, the president has described Venezuela’s oil industry as a “total bust” in interviews following the U.S. capture of Maduro.

“They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place,” Trump said on Saturday. He added that U.S. oil companies will spend billions of dollars to “fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

But there are few signs that oil companies are eager to return. For one, prices are hovering around $60 a barrel, which is roughly the breakeven point for many companies. And without political stability, oil majors are unlikely to commit the billions of dollars necessary to restart production in Venezuela’s oil fields. The Trump administration has reportedly scheduled a meeting with oil companies for later this week to discuss a possible reentry. For now, Chevron is the only U.S. company with active operations in the country.

The sanctions reshaped the global flow of oil. When the U.S. banned Venezuelan oil, the U.S. Gulf Coast refiners who specialize in heavy crude turned to new suppliers in Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. Elsewhere, countries that had depended on Venezuelan oil increasingly turned to Russia. Other oil-producing countries also increased their production to make up for the declining exports from Venezuela.

The sanctions also had ripple effects far beyond the oil sector. By cutting off Venezuela’s ability to access international finance, they dealt a huge blow to an economy highly dependent on imports. Unable to borrow, the country struggled to purchase basic necessities such as food and medicine. At the same time, the oil embargo blocked the export of its most profitable asset. The result was a stranglehold on the country’s economy that drove poverty and deaths. Patients with HIV, diabetes, and hypertension were not able to access life-saving drugs. One study at the time estimated that some 40,000 additional deaths could be attributed to the economic conditions caused by the sanctions.

“When you can’t get the things that you need to produce electricity and clean water, all kinds of diseases get worse,” said Weisbrot.

Even before the latest attacks against Venezuela, the United States’ sanctions against the country were described as “economic warfare” by a former United Nations rapporteur and other international law experts. While it’s unclear how the Trump administration plans to proceed, restoring the semblance of a functional economy in Venezuela and undoing the damage of past U.S. policy may take decades.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump invaded Venezuela to restore an oil industry he helped destroy on Jan 8, 2026.

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Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

In 1994, the federal government undertook the Northwest Forest Plan in an effort to protect the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. The entire plan revolved around protecting the old growth trees that the endangered birds made their nests or roosted in.

“When you manage for a singular species, there’s usually side effects for other species that were unintentional,” said Cody Desautel, executive director of the Colville Tribes.

As has become all too common, tribal leaders, whose nations have stewarded the Northwest forests for millenia, were not consulted or even privy to the conversations in 1994. Tribal leaders in the Pacific Northwest are ensuring that doesn’t happen again as the plan gets updated and amended. They are also advocating for co-land management.

“When we look at people that are doing positive management that’s benefiting species — that’s happened in Indian Country,” said Desautel. “You should have your best managers at the table giving recommendations and suggestions about what management of federal land should look like because what we do benefits not just the tribes but all of the constituents of this country, these states and the species that exist there.”

The lack of consultation with tribal nations isn’t limited to the Northwest Forest Plan but is another example of how Indigenous perspectives have been left out of important federal amendment and plan processes. Historically, the U.S. Department of Interior’s 2007 Interim Guidelines, which acted as a drought contingency plan for the Colorado River, also didn’t include tribal leaders — even though 10 tribes collectively hold 20 percent of the river’s water rights.

Tribal consultation is required under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriaction Act, and through former President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 13175-Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments.

There are a number of issues with the tribal consultation process. Two of them are that consultation doesn’t require consent of tribal nations, and that if tribes don’t respond to a “reasonable and good faith effort” to engage, the federal government’s obligation is considered fulfilled.

The Northwest Forest Plan, which provides management direction for nearly 25 million acres managed by the federal government, is up for renewal and there are three main stages that must be completed. This time around, the U.S. Forest Service has made an effort to consult with tribal leaders but having them at the table during decision-making would be more impactful, according to members of the Intertribal Timber Council, a national consortium of almost 60 tribal nations committed to improving the management of natural resources.

“You just don’t make all the decisions then come to our tribal communities and expect that we’re just going to go along,” said Phil Rigdon, superintendent of the Yakama Nation’s Department of Natural Resources.

During this process, tribal leaders have been advocating for co-land management, like being able to set the management standards for old-growth forests known as Late Successional Reserves, and removing bureaucratic barriers like the “Survey and Manage” step that delays action.

“It (management standards) still doesn’t account for succession through time. We know that forests aren’t static. We think tribes should have the ability to continue to do that management, to set up what that next cohort of (old-growth forests) will be,” Desautel said. “The ones we have now won’t be there forever. We should have others coming up with the right age, and structured demographics, so that we always have that type of habitat in place.”

Currently, tribal nations aren’t part of the land management team for the Northwest Forest Plan. Essentially, tribal leaders are brought in as consultants who give their expertise but ultimately have no decision-making power in the Northwest Forest Plan.

“Our goal is that co-stewardship will lead to a place where we’re part of the team, working with our federal partners, working with the Forest Service and with anybody else to find the right solutions — to do the right (work) on the land and treat (it) in the manner that we should. Hopefully the Northwest Forest Plan will move into that direction,” said Rigdon, who also serves as vice-president of the Intertribal Timber Council.

The Regional Interagency Executive Committee, that governs the Northwest Forest Plan, doesn’t include tribal nations. The committee does include a representative from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a federal agency tasked with protecting trust assets of American Indians and Alaska Natives. However, the agency has been mired in scandal from losing tribal funds to officials lining their own pockets.

Tribal nations retained their hunting, fishing and gathering rights, ratified through treaties – the highest laws of the land. In exchange for ceded territories, many tribal nations retained their inherent right to hunt, fish and gather on their ancestral lands.

“As you create a plan, that treaty has to be part of your thoughts and not just something that is secondary,” Rigdon said.

Bureaucratic barriers

The Northwest Forest Plan includes a “Survey and Manage” procedure. It requires the Forest Service to survey nearly 400 different species in old-growth forests, before any management actions can take place in that area, and could limit any action based on the findings.

This procedure was created to protect rare species in old-growth forest habitats. However, none of these species are listed as endangered, but there is limited knowledge of them, according to a preamble in the 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture Planning Rule.

“A number of tribes have said they would like to see the elimination of the Survey and Manage protocols, because they delay action,” said Calvin Mukumoto, executive director of the Intertribal Timber Council. “There are mechanisms in the 2012 Planning Rule that allows them to look at species of concern so you don’t have to go out and survey and manage everything before you make plans.”

The other issue in the Northwest Forest Plan are land allocations, which were created to meet the habitat requirements of the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and salmon. Each land allocation comes with its own unique management standards and guidelines. The extra regulations, especially land allocations close to sovereign lands, hinder a tribe’s ability to manage their own land.

“Land-use allocations are overly prescriptive in their requirements, and we should be looking at ecological-based approaches,” Mukumoto said.

For example, extra regulations in Riparian Reserves, a land allocation that creates a protective buffer along streams, lakes and wetlands, delay the thinning of forests or prescribed burns. One way to protect sovereign lands from devastating wildfires is to control the amount of fuel in nearby federally managed forests.

Dense forests lead to high rates of tree mortality. Dead trees, dry leaves, fallen pine needles or dry grass can fuel wildfires, which is a concern for many tribal nations in northern California, Oregon and Washington.

“They (tribal nations) are concerned about some of the riparian barriers and other restrictions within close proximity of tribal communities because of the fire danger that’s out there from lack of action,” Mukumoto said. “I think they’d like to see more active management, not necessarily just timber production, but active management that reintroduces fire into these ecosystems to reduce vegetation.”

The amendment process has five main stages. The Regional Interagency Executive Committee has completed the third phase and is moving into the fourth, where the draft record of decision and final environmental impact statement will be published. Then, the objection process will begin – offering one last public comment period before the amendment is signed and approved.

Intertribal Timber Council members and staff remain hopeful that the new amendments will acknowledge and honor treaty rights, traditional ecological knowledge and, in a just world, include co-management with tribal nations.

“In my experience working with tribes, is that they believe in holistic management that respects all the parts in the forest and wants to maintain complexity, but seeks balance,” Mukumoto said.

The post Tribes seek holistic Northwest forest management appeared first on ICT.

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This story was originally published by South Dakota Searchlight.

Meghan O’Brien
South Dakota Searchlight

NORRIS, South Dakota — As the last round of students filters in from the school van to the main hallway, Principal Brian Brown greets each student by name, with a high five and an “I’ve been waiting for you all morning.”

After students arrive, they’re served breakfast, and Brown leads a boys’ group and girls’ group in singing Lakota songs to get the day started.

This is the morning routine at Norris Elementary, part of the White River School District in rural southwestern South Dakota. The school borders the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, and serves about 50 students from kindergarten through fifth grade who are predominantly Native American.

Norris is an unincorporated community in Mellette County, one of the most impoverished counties in the state. About a third of the students are raised by their grandparents, Brown said.

“We’ve still got kids that live in houses with no running water,” he said. “So, we have our struggles, we have our hardships.”

Three years ago, barely half of the school’s students were coming to class regularly. That struggle is common for schools serving Native American students in the state, according to data from the state Department of Education. Last school year, nearly half of Native American students were chronically absent, more than double the statewide rate.

But now, Norris’ attendance is above 90 percent. That’s higher than both the district and state averages. It’s been achieved by engaging one-on-one with students and families and implementing Lakota language and cultural programming.

The improvement is a source of pride for Brown and his staff.

“We can do it,” he said. “We can be successful, we can show people that we care about school and that we want to be the best that we can be.”

South Dakota Secretary of Education Joseph Graves has noticed the improvement. He said keeping students engaged through culturally relevant lessons and communication is an important part of replicating what’s happening at Norris.

“But it’s also that leadership, those people who are willing to make that happen, engage with kids,” Graves said. “You put those two together and it’s proven to be a very strong factor in the success.”

Graves said he wants to keep watching the school, to see if the trend continues and if it leads to increased proficiency and graduation rates.

The geographic isolation at Norris makes it difficult to hire and recruit teachers and staff. Two teachers are in dual-grade classrooms, the school’s head custodian and office administrator are also the school’s bus drivers, and Brown steps in at lunchtime to help serve food.

“We kind of have to make and manipulate our own resources just to get the kids what they need,” Brown said. “It’s been challenging, but then also, it’s been eye-opening to address the needs of the kids out here at Norris.”

Norris is one of many schools across the state trying to fill teaching positions. As of July, there were 144 open teaching positions, according to data from Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

A part of Brown’s morning routine is checking in with teachers during breakfast to ask which students they haven’t seen yet. If they aren’t there for roll call, Brown hits the road for a home visit.

He would’ve been doing that on a recent morning, he said, if he wasn’t talking to a reporter.

“I probably would’ve already went out this morning, and probably would have went and visited at least two houses this morning to parents and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going? What do you need? How can I help you?’” he said.

It’s not just about getting the kids to school. It’s about them wanting to come to school, Brown said.

In a small community, it takes everyone to keep students involved, said Wendy O’Brien, who teaches fourth and fifth grade at Norris.

“If you get the community members involved, and they come into the classroom and see what the kids are doing, I think they’re more supportive,” she said.

She wants students to form habits of good attendance. It’s especially important for students in her two-grade classroom.

“When they miss school, they miss learning,” O’Brien said. “Working with two grades, you don’t have time to reteach lessons.”

It’s also important to make the kids feel seen, Brown said. After taking over as principal in 2022, Brown, who works to preserve Lakota language, songs and philosophy, started finding ways to include Lakota culture in the school day.

Now, the morning announcements are followed by a group of students leading the school in Lakota songs. He also teaches Lakota studies to each grade once a week, and started the school’s first traditional Lakota drum group: the Black Pipe Singers.

“When children know their identity, they know who they are, where they come from, they will excel better academically and in basic life skills,” Brown said.

It’s one of the ways he can set students up for success before they get to high school, where more than one-third of Native American students in public schools don’t graduate, according to recent state data.

Brown calls the habits learned in elementary school the “bread and butter” of a student’s academic journey.

“It’s important to go to school every day, be on time, do the best that you can and work hard,” he said. “It promotes a more successful life for the children, and that’s what we try to establish here at Norris.”

The post ‘We can do it’: A rural school near two reservations nearly doubles its attendance appeared first on ICT.

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In December 2022, nearly 200 nations committed to protecting 30% of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030. As of 2025, about 9.6% of the world’s oceans are now covered by marine protected areas, according to the latest global tracking data by the World Database on Protected Areas. This marks a 1.2% increase in 2025, up from 8.4% coverage in 2024. There are now 16,608 marine protected areas (MPAs) globally, covering nearly 35 million square kilometers (13.5 million square miles) of the ocean — an area more than twice the size of Russia. However, only 3.2% of these areas are considered highly or fully protected, according to the Marine Conservation Institute’s MPAtlas. This raises concerns about areas that are protected on paper only, including ones that allow bottom trawling and other highly destructive activities. Mongabay chronicled some of the progress made toward protecting the oceans in 2025: French Polynesia announces world’s largest marine protected area In June, French Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), an autonomous territory in the Pacific that’s a part of the French Republic, announced it would protect the territory’s entire exclusive economic zone, amounting to 4.8 million km2 (1.9 million mi2) of its waters. Of this, more than 1 million km2 (nearly 420,000 mi2) is set to be highly and fully protected, where no extractive fishing or mining is allowed. The announcement has not yet been written into law. Coral hotspot off Philippines’ Panaon Island In August, the Philippines created the Panaon Island Protected Seascape, protecting 612 km2 (236 mi2) within the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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France on Wednesday officialized a ban on food imports containing traces of five pesticides currently banned in the EU, a move aimed at easing farmers' opposition to the Mercosur trade deal with four South American nations.

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Desertification threatens 24% of the world's land area spanning 126 countries and impacts 35% of the global population. Yet mainstream global efforts to tackle desertification prioritize short-term vegetation greening over addressing resource constraints and local livelihoods, creating hidden barriers to achieving the United Nations' long-term Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Municipal bonds are a time-honored way to fund roads, schools, bridges and other public projects while paying investors interest, usually at tax-free rates.

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When oily plastic and glass, as well as rubber, washed onto Florida beaches in 2020, a community group shared the mystery online, attracting scientists' attention. Working together, they linked the black residue-coated debris to a 2019 oil slick along Brazil's coastline. Using ocean current models and chemical analysis, the team explains in Environmental Science & Technology how some of the oily material managed to travel over 5,200 miles (8,500 kilometers) by clinging to debris.

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Lush green fields of alfalfa spread across thousands of acres in a desert valley in western Arizona, where a dairy company from Saudi Arabia grows the thirsty crop by pulling up groundwater from dozens of wells.

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In the last century, synthetic fertilizers have changed the face of the planet. The current world population might be halved if not for this useful development.

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When a 2018 fire burned across 73,000 hectares (180,000 acres) of the Santana Indigenous Territory, located in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, the local Bakairi people waited helplessly for authorities who came far too late. That devastating experience was a turning point. The community mobilized to create a volunteer fire brigade, largely composed of Indigenous women, Mariana Rosetti and Paola Churchill reported for Mongabay in October. “It’s not just young girls,” Edna Rodrigues Bakairi, a local educator and member of the brigade, told Mongabay. “There are women aged 40, 45, 50 who can fight the fires. They come from all age groups, and they all act with courage.” Of the 45 trained volunteers, 25 are women ranging from teenagers to grandmothers. They were trained by Paulo Selva, a retired colonel from the Mato Grosso state fire department who recognized the urgent need to empower Indigenous communities to defend their territories from the growing threat of wildfire. “The fire department only addresses issues related to fires that occur within its areas of operation, but more than 45% of forest fires occur outside of that legal condition,” Selva said. To help fill that gap, Selva created the nonprofit Environmental Operations Group Institute.  With the organization, he travels to Indigenous communities across the region to offer trainings on firefighting and prevention, first aid and survival skills. During a visit to the Santana Indigenous village in 2021, Selva found that women were an obvious choice for the role. They tend to spend more time in the community,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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