Green & indigenous News

Centromeres play virtually the same central role across the entire tree of life: They ensure the faithful segregation of chromosomes during cell division. Yet the striking diversity in centromere architecture—from large, repeat-rich DNA arrays to the minimalistic "point" centromeres in yeast—combined with their rapid evolution has puzzled scientists for decades.

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The Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru are home to many seabird species that cover their island homes with thick layers of poop, or guano. New research now suggests that ancient Peruvians in the Chincha Valley on the Peruvian mainland hunted these seabirds, collected their guano, and used it to fertilize their maize crops, which helped expand pre-Inca societies. The researchers analyzed ancient cobs of maize (Zea mays), some of them more than 2,200 years old, collected from archaeological sites in Peru. They found nitrogen levels in the maize that were much higher than natural soil conditions would allow. However, those nitrogen levels matched the levels found in 11 seabird species collected from the area, including the Peruvian booby (Sula variegata), Peruvian pelican (Pelecanus thagus) and guanay cormorant (Leucocarbo bougainvilliorum). The match suggested that guano from seabirds that was used to fertilize the maize, which allowed the Chincha Kingdom to grow into a major civilization of 100,000 people. The Inca Empire farther inland took notice of the Chincha Kingdom’s crop success. “The height of guano use was likely around AD 1250, which also represents the height of the Chincha Kingdom,” Jacob Bongers, lead author of the study with the University of Sydney in Australia, told Mongabay in an email. Bongers, a digital archaeologist, said it’s difficult to confirm details, but the Inca later controlled the Chincha Valley and “Chincha became the guano supplier for the Inca during this time.” Jordan Dalton, an archaeologist at the State University of New…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Strong social networking plays an important role in human relationships. New research on female red deer shows that those bonds are also crucial for their reproductive success and survival. The study, which looked at more than 40 years of data for free-ranging adult female red deer on the Isle of Rum in Scotland, was recently published in Royal Society Open Science.

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Alaska farmers and food security advocates are asking the state legislature to continue a program that lets SNAP recipients double their buying power at farmers markets.

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Last Updated on February 19, 2026 The Ontario government has moved to accelerate the approval process for a major gold mine in the province’s northwest, a decision critics say could heighten environmental risks for Indigenous communities already burdened by decades of industrial contamination. Premier Doug Ford’s government has granted the proposed Great Bear gold project […]

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February 19, 2026 – President Donald Trump issued an executive order late Wednesday directing the Secretary of Agriculture to boost the domestic supply of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, in the name of national security.

The order emphasizes increasing domestic production of elemental phosphorus, which is created by mining phosphate, to make glyphosate. Bayer currently imports most of its phosphate; its domestic supply comes from a long-running mine in Idaho that is nearly tapped out. But in October, Trump’s Bureau of Land Management approved the company’s proposal to build a new mine nearby, which will cover more than 1,800 acres of public and private land.

It’s not clear exactly what Wednesday’s executive order will mean for Bayer, but it essentially promises federal support for expanding glyphosate production.

“As the most widely used crop protection tools in United States agriculture, glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy, allowing United States farmers and ranchers to maintain high yields and low production costs,” Trump said in the order.

The directive was met with dismay among prominent supporters of Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). On X, toxicologist Alexandra Muñoz called it “outrageous and unacceptable” and anti-glyphosate advocate Kelly Ryerson said glyphosate is the pesticide “MAHA cares about most.”

Kennedy told The New York Times he supported the president’s decision.

The order, signed Wednesday night, comes at a fraught moment in the debate over the most widely used weedkiller in history.

This week, Bayer proposed a $7.25 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits in which individuals claim using its product gave them non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The company has worked to change state and federal laws to prevent future lawsuits. House Republicans included an immunity clause in a draft farm bill last week, and the Trump administration has sided with Bayer in a case the Supreme Court will hear in April.

The new order directs the Agriculture Secretary to consult with the Secretary of War to determine the materials, services, and facilities needed nationwide “to ensure a continued and adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides.”

It also waives the liability of companies complying with the order and says that the Secretary of Agriculture will ensure “that any order, rule, or regulation issued under this section does not place the corporate viability of any domestic producer of elemental phosphorus or glyphosate-based herbicides at risk.”

House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) put out a statement calling the order a “vital step forward” in ensuring glyphosate remains available to farmers. But environmental groups and MAHA supporters expressed anger, and some said the order showed the Trump administration is not serious about improving Americans’ health.

“If anyone still wondered whether ‘Make America Healthy Again’ was a genuine commitment to protecting public health or a scam concocted by President Trump and RFK Jr. to rally health-conscious voters in 2024, today’s decision answers that question,” Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said in a statement. (Link to this post.)

The post Trump Directs USDA to Boost Production of Glyphosate appeared first on Civil Eats.

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DNA is the blueprint of life. Genes encode proteins and serve as the body's basic components. However, building a functioning organism also requires precise instructions about when, where, and how much those components should be produced.

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A research team at the IPK Leibniz Institute has developed a method that enables the detailed observation of female meiosis—the process by which germ cells are formed—in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The FeM-ID (Female Meiotic cell IDentification) method overcomes a significant hurdle in plant biology. Until now, female meiotic cells were difficult to access, forcing most studies to focus on male cells. The results of the study have now been published in the journal The Plant Cell.

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Pittsburgh-based Alcoa will pay the Australian government a settlement the company put at $36 million for “unlawfully” clearing tracts of endangered forest without approvals between 2019 and 2025. The metals giant began mining bauxite — the raw ingredient for aluminum — from beneath Australia’s Northern Jarrah forest in the 1960s, but its footprint has swelled in recent years, drawing new scrutiny from regulators and the public. Senator Murray Watt, Australia’s environment and water minister, said the payment — $55 million in Australian dollars — settles a longstanding question of whether Alcoa should enjoy exemptions from federal environmental processes. “We are committed to responsible operations and welcome this important step in transitioning our approvals to a contemporary assessment process that provides increased certainty for our operations and our people into the future,” Alcoa President and CEO William F. Oplinger said in a statement. “We’re proud of our more than 60 years as a leading Australian aluminum producer and the role we are now playing in support of critical minerals production.” “It’s well and truly the largest amount that’s been paid by way of an enforceable undertaking around the environment laws nationally,” Watt said in an interview with Australian broadcasters Feb. 18. Alcoa maintains it has complied with federal law but agreed to the payments to “acknowledge historical clearing.” The agreement includes an 18-month exemption for the company to operate while seeking those approvals. Last year, Pittsburgh’s Public Source traveled to Australia to investigate Alcoa’s plans for the forest, environmental effects and community concerns. Alcoa, a…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Each year, the world's leading climate scientists evaluate the most critical evidence on how our planet is changing. Their assessments draw heavily on data from Earth-observing satellites—and the latest report delivers a stark warning: the planet's energy balance is drifting further out of alignment, ocean warming is now accelerating, and the land's capacity to absorb carbon is declining, along with other troubling trends.

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Species numbers alone do not fully capture how ecosystems are changing. In a global study, scientists analyzed long-term data from nearly 15,000 marine and freshwater fish communities. They found that fish food webs have changed substantially over recent decades, even in places where the number of species (species richness) has remained stable. Published in Science Advances, the study shows consistent shifts in species composition, body size, and feeding relationships, highlighting that changes in species traits such as body size and interactions can alter ecosystem structure without obvious changes in species richness.

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In a 2023 paper on hypoxia and glucose metabolism, our lab showed how organisms rewire their metabolism to adapt to low oxygen levels—such as those found at high altitudes. One of the most striking observations from that work was a dramatic drop in circulating blood sugar.

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Officials in Argentina are considering a reform to the country’s glacier protection law, a change critics say would weaken environmental regulations and clear the way for expanded mining in some of the country’s most fragile ecosystems. The bill to reform the glacier law is scheduled for a vote in the Senate later this month; if passed, it would then move on to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the National Congress. Lawmakers will have to decide whether they want to scale back protections that currently restrict mining and other development near glaciers in the Andes and beyond. “This reform, if approved, would set a negative precedent for other environmental protection regulations and puts at risk strategic resources for the provision of freshwater and the regulation of watersheds that supply different localities and jurisdictions in our country,” the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), an NGO, said in a statement. Argentina has 8,484 square kilometers (3,276 square miles) of ice cover spanning 12 provinces and 39 river basins, according to the National Glacier Inventory, a scientific registry and map database overseen by the Argentine Institute of Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA). Glaciers are important freshwater reserves, supplying water for drinking, agriculture and other needs throughout the country. They feed into around 40% of the country’s watersheds and provide access to water to 7 million residents, or around 18% of Argentina’s population, according to FARN. A tourist takes pictures of the Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Science has made it clear: The prospect of heat waves without end, increasingly destructive floods, relentless drought, rapidly rising sea levels, and the risk of “point of no return” tipping points require humanity to swiftly stop burning fossil fuels to avoid catastrophe. But with political will and action lagging, some researchers say now is the time to evaluate the safety and feasibility of geoengineering. These are a suite of proposed technologies that could potentially delay the worst warming or sequester carbon, thus buying civilization time as it struggles to slash fossil fuel emissions. One place scientists are looking for geoengineering solutions is the world’s oceans, which store vast amounts of carbon, including about a quarter of anthropogenic emissions. Some researchers are especially interested in a set of geoengineering methods collectively dubbed marine carbon dioxide storage (mCDR). Still others are looking at ways to artificially cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight into space, especially above oceans. One major concern with all these untried technologies is that, if widely implemented, they could profoundly impact marine ecosystems, says Kelsey Roberts, a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in the U.S. In a recent Reviews of Geophysics paper, Roberts and co-authors examined eight geoengineering interventions most likely to directly impact marine ecosystems, identifying knowledge gaps and risks. “If we implement some of these insane science fiction-sounding technologies, what would happen to the fish? What would happen to the megafauna … and particularly, [what’s] the importance for global food security?” Roberts asks. Illustration…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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There may be twice as many vertebrates on the planet as previous estimates claimed, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. That's not because of any errors or miscalculation, but because thousands of species have been hiding in plain sight. These are so-called cryptic species that appear identical to our eyes but are actually very different genetically.

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In a world-first use of medical imaging technology, scientists have revealed the earthquake-generating potential of faults in the Hamilton and Hauraki areas. The study shows that hidden geological faults in Hamilton city and newly studied faults in the Hauraki district are capable of generating moderate to large earthquakes, and have done so in the past 15,700 years.

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Pygmy sperm whales (Kogia breviceps) are among the ocean's most enigmatic inhabitants—rarely seen and largely unstudied. They live far offshore in small groups, diving in search of squid and fish. Their quiet behavior and elusive nature have made it difficult to study them in the wild. Pygmy sperm whales are rarely encountered free-swimming. Most scientific knowledge about them has come from stranded individuals—especially along the southeastern coast of the United States, where these whales strand more frequently than nearly any other large marine mammal species.

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Despite decades of industrial deposition, nitrogen availability in the boreal forest is steadily declining. In a new study published in Nature, researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences using decades of unique, stored data have found that atmospheric CO₂ is the main driver.

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In the realm of entomology, few creatures command as much fascination as the mantis. Throughout history, these striking insects have been deeply woven into local myths and legends, sometimes respected as mystical soothsayers that can guide lost travelers home, and other times feared as little devils.

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Western Australian hydrothermal and magmatic deposits that formed several hundred kilometers apart more than two and half billion years ago share more commonalities than previously thought.

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New research from Cranfield University has analyzed the environmental impact of fresh apples sold in the U.K., comparing the greenhouse gas emissions and blue water scarcity across domestic production and imports from Europe and the Southern Hemisphere. The study examined nine years of supply chain data, assessing impacts from orchard to cold storage and transport.

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Western Australia's jarrah forests were unevenly impacted by the record-breaking 2023–2024 heat wave and subsequent drought, with some areas experiencing more severe tree die-off than others, according to a new study.

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Erica AyisiPBS Wisconsin+ICT

“I share with you my Anishinaabe name: Woman Who Leaves Tracks Where She Walks,” said Nicole Boyd, chairwoman of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa at the start of Wisconsin’s 2026 State of the Tribes Address.

Boyd highlighted achievements and challenges of the state’s 11 federally recognized Native American tribes, focusing on tribal sovereignty and government to government partnerships.

“We are not here simply to take. Our ancestors knew this, they fought for this, and they left us the teachings of reciprocity,” she said.

Boyd asked to work together with the state in preserving water rights on tribal lands —  referencing concerns about the Enbridge Line 5 oil and gas pipeline running through and plans to reroute it around the reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

“Why is it wrong to expect that the feasibility of projects of this magnitude be ecologically sound and ensure the water will be protected?” she asked.

Paul Smith of the Oneida Nation said Boyd’s message to protect waterways on and around tribal lands could bring more visitors to northern Wisconsin.

“The national shoreline that she wants to protect with the Frog Bay National Park, with protections of Lake Superior and the protections around the waters through Bad River — it’s all those things are connected to tourism,” he said.

Boyd also asked for more tribal input with a bill to change the designation of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore to become a national park, which is close to the Red Cliff Band’s reservation.

“Were we wrong to request that there be meaningful due diligence as part of the decision-making promise?” Boyd asked.

Relating to Gov. Tony Evers’ Executive Order Relating to Tribal Treaty Rights and the Protection of Wild Rice, Boyd asked that manoomin —  wild rice — be elevated to become the state’s official grain.

“Wild rice has seen a significant decline over the last many years, and promoting it will allow us a platform to continue our efforts to restore and protect this vitally important resource,” she said.

Sagen Lily Quale of the Red Cliff Band said Boyd’s call to make rice the official state grain has deeper cultural connections as a living relative for the tribal community.

“To be able to rely on that relative as not only medicine that connects us to place and space, but also connects us to ancestry and tradition is really beautiful,” she said.

On economic development, Boyd touted positive gains for tribal nations and the Wisconsin economy through cultural events and gaming, noting the collaboration with the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay with the Oneida Nation.

“This event brought in an astronomical $105 million to the state of Wisconsin,” she said.

Brian Wilson Jr. of the Oneida Nation said Boyd’s message on tribal economic contributions to the state resonates with his 100 percent Indigenous-owned small business.

“We are adding to our employees, and with health benefits and retirement programs,” he said.

Boyd asked for legislation for online sports betting wagered through Wisconsin’s tribes to be approved.

“The state will see increased revenue through the state gaming compacts, and consumers will have the legal protection needed to ensure they receive fair play,” she said.

In health care, Boyd pointed to an increase in wellness and treatment centers on the Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River and Mole Lake reservations, and said drug overdose deaths are on the decline, though vaping nicotine and gun violence among youth is increasing.

Boyd added that rural tribes need more law enforcement investigative agents and emergency medical resources to save lives.

“Pretending that the northern part of the state doesn’t have this need is harmful and deadly,” she said.

To assist in opioid recovery, chronic pain and other illnesses, Boyd is asking for bipartisan support for medical cannabis in the state.

“For centuries, Indigenous people have used this plant medicine for various medical and ceremonial purposes,” she said.

Boyd also said the state task force to address Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives needs improved policies that includes helping survivors heal.

“We must invest the resources needed to prevent violent crimes against women and children,” she said.

In tribal education, Boyd said several nations are integrating language teaching and cultural learning at every level and is requesting the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Tribal Educational Promise Program be extended to tribal colleges in the northern part of the state.

“Including the College of Menominee Nation and the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University would also provide tribal members an opportunity to attend college close to home that strongly supports their identities,” she said.

Boyd closed the State of the Tribes Address with a message of resiliency for Wisconsin’s tribal members and partnership among state and tribal leaders.

“This is the place our ancestors fought for and are buried within,” she said, “and we will continue to exercise our treaty rights in perpetuity.”

This report is in collaboration with our partners at PBS Wisconsin.

The post Wisconsin’s tribal nations state their priorities for 2026 appeared first on ICT.

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Protecting vulture populations in Africa presents some unique challenges for conservationists. These slow-breeding and ecologically vital scavengers range over vast territories and are vulnerable to poisons targeting other species and expanding infrastructure like power lines. Creating “vulture safe zones” has emerged as a way to address these broad and varied threats, but putting them into practice is proving difficult. South Africa’s oldest vulture safe zone is centered in Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, in the southern Kalahari Desert. Since the 114,000-hectare (282,000-acre) safe zone was established in 2019, on land owned by the wealthy Oppenheimer family, its managers have taken steps to protect critically endangered white-backed vultures (Gyps africanus) and endangered lappet-faced vultures (Torgos tracheliotos) nesting there. Establishing the reserve as a safe zone involved things like covering reservoirs with nets to prevent drowning, and halting the use of lead ammunition. Wendy Panaino, an ecologist at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, told Mongabay that, ultimately, the aim is to make this 120,000-hectare (296,000-acre) reserve a safe haven for threatened species like the white-backed, lappet-faced and white-headed vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis). “Tswalu was a massive success,” says Linda van der Heever, species project manager at BirdLife South Africa. “It really is, in many senses, a textbook vulture safe zone.” A vulture in Tswalu-Kalahari Reserve, South Africa. This reserve was designated as vulture safe zone in 2019. Image courtesy of Duncan MacFadyen / Tswalu-Kalahari Reserve. In the past decade, several safe zone projects of this kind have kicked off in Africa, each adopting a variety of measures…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Permits revoked, lawsuits filed, the threat of state takeovers. Deadly flooding in Indonesia has prompted unprecedented government action against companies accused of environmental destruction that worsened the disaster.

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