Green & indigenous News

Antibiotic treatments are losing effectiveness against a range of common bacterial pathogens, including E. coli, K. pneumoniae, Salmonella and Acinetobacter, according to a warning issued by the World Health Organization last October. For the microbe that gives rise to tuberculosis, a team of researchers from Penn State and The University of Minnesota Medical School found that a potential solution may be chemically changing the structure of a naturally occurring peptide—a building block of proteins—to make it a more stable and effective antimicrobial agent, while reducing potential toxicity to human cells.

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Yereth Rosen
Alaska Beacon

Originally published on Alaska Beacon.

The Trump administration is offering 5.5 million acres in Arctic Alaska for exploration in an oil and gas lease sale to be held next month.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Thursday announced the lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the 23-million-acre land unit on the western North Slope. Bids are to be opened on March 9, the BLM said. Details of the sale are to be released once the sale notice is published in the Federal Register, according to the agency.

The sale is the first of five mandated over the next 10 years in the reserve under the sweeping tax and budget bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress last summer.

“The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska plays a vital role in advancing America’s energy independence, and Congress has repeatedly made clear their intent for timely leasing and responsible development in the region,” acting BLM Director Bill Groffy said in a statement. “This lease sale – the first in the reserve since 2019 – marks another exciting milestone as we work to unlock the full potential of this area.”

The budget bill mandated a series of oil and gas lease sales in federal territory elsewhere in Alaska as well. The first of six Cook Inlet federal offshore lease sales mandated through 2032 will be held on March 4 by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, another Department of the Interior agency. Meanwhile, the BLM has taken initial steps toward scheduling a lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also part of a series mandated by the bill.

Unlike the federal waters of Cook Inlet or the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve has drawn keen industry interest in the past.

Parts of the Indiana-sized reserve are believed to hold high potential for oil, thanks in large part to a geologic feature called the Nanushuk formation that underlies it. About 1.6 million acres in the reserve are already under lease there, according to the BLM.

Two animals in the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd are seen on June 27, 2014. The herd uses the area around vast Teshekpuk Lake for calving. (Photo by Bob Wick/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

The biggest development underway in the reserve is ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, which is expected to start producing in 2029, with an output that is expected to peak at 180,000 barrels a day. There are other fields in the reserve that began producing in the last decade. The first to come online was ConocoPhillips’ CD5 drill site, which is located on Native land within the reserve boundaries; it started production in 2015. ConocoPhillips’ Greater Mooses Tooth 1 site started producing in 2018 and its Greater Mooses Tooth 2 site started producing at the end of 2021.

The Obama administration had a policy of holding annual NPR-A lease sales that were timed to coincide with the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas’ annual areawide North Slope lease sales. The last NPR-A lease sale, held during the first Trump administration in 2019, offered nearly 4 million acres and drew 92 bids and close to $11.3 million in high bids.

The Trump administration’s upcoming sale offers more land than most of the past sales held since 1999 by different administrations. The last Obama-era lease sale, held in 2016, offered about 1.45 million acres and yielded $18.8 million in high bids, according to a BLM sale recap.

The Trump administration, through a new management plan, opened 82% of the reserve to oil development, compared to the Obama and Biden administration management plans that allowed leasing in about half of the reserve.

Among the areas the Trump administration opened up to development is the sensitive Teshekpuk Lake area in the reserve’s northeast corner, though with some narrow stipulations. Teshekpuk is the North Slope’s largest lake, and its adjacent wetlands have held various levels of protective status for decades, dating back to the Reagan administration. The area holds important habitat for the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd, migrating birds and other resources that support traditional Indigenous subsistence harvests.

The Trump administration’s management plan, approved in December, jettisoned protections for the lake and its surrounding area, including one negotiated by residents of Nuiqsut, the Inupiat community nearest to existing development.

The lease sale announcement and the possibility of Teshekpuk Lake oil development drew quick criticism Thursday from The Wilderness Society.

The sale is part of the administration’s pattern of selling off public lands “for corporate profits at the expense of the American people, beloved wildlife, and Alaskans who depend on nearby fish and game,” Matt Jackson, the group’s Alaska senior manager, said in a statement. “The Teshekpuk Lake area in the Western Arctic is home to the largest congregation of migratory birds nesting in the entire global Arctic and the calving ground of the Teshekpuk Lake Caribou Herd. It is one of the last places on Earth we should be leasing.”

The post Feds schedule first lease sale in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve since 2019 appeared first on ICT.

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AYACUCHO, Peru — High in the Peruvian Andes, a group of Indigenous Quechua women is transforming long-standing conflict with wildcats into a model of coexistence, conservation and cultural revival. A puma (Puma concolor) captured by a camera trap in the mountains of Ayacucho, Peru. Image courtesy of Mujeres Quechua por la Conservación. A new film, Women Secure a Future with Pumas in the Andes, examines how the fear of predators like the puma (Puma concolor), pampas cat (Leopardus garleppi) and Andean cat (Leopardus jacobita) once shaped daily life in the high-altitude community of Ccarhuacc Licapa. For generations, community members hunted these wildcats in retaliation for livestock losses, particularly alpacas, the community’s primary source of income. Antonio Torres, a former vicuña guard, holds the skin of a puma killed in retaliation for livestock losses. He is now a member of the local conservation group. Image courtesy of Cristina Hara. An alpaca herd grazes near the highland community of Licapa, where livestock is central to local livelihoods. Image courtesy of Cristina Hara. The documentary follows shepherd Ida Auris Arango, whose life was marked by a traumatic encounter with a puma, and biologist Merinia Mendoza Almeida, founder of the local women-led conservation association Mujeres Quechua por la Conservación. Together with dozens of Quechua women, they began using camera traps to document the area’s wildlife, helping families — especially mothers and children — see the wildcats not as enemies, but as part of a shared ecosystem. Shepherd Ida Auris Arango, a member of Mujeres…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has introduced a soil amendment called humic acid-modified bentonite (HAMB). This amendment effectively enhances a soil's ability to hold onto ammonium while significantly reducing harmful nitrogen losses. These results were published in the Journal of Soils and Sediments on January 14.

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Modern armor systems do not do a good enough job of protecting humans from blast-induced neurotrauma (brain and eye damage). To improve them, we may have to look to nature. In particular, a tiny shrimp that is able to protect itself from the shockwaves it generates to stun prey and rivals.

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“The land is the greatest asset we have,” said Luzineth Pataxó, a Pataxó leader from the Caramuru-Paraguaçu Indigenous Territory, in the Atlantic forests of Brazil’s Bahia state. “Our people have always taken care of our territory and forests because it is from them that we derive our livelihoods … and connect with the sacred beings that inhabit them.” These efforts have paid off, some research suggests. A recent study comparing different land tenure regimes in the Brazil’s Atlantic Forest found that Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements have greater restoration gains than private properties. “As part of the study, we isolated and compared many different land tenure regimes to private properties through our analysis design, and the staggering result was for Indigenous lands,” said Rayna Benzeev, one of the study authors. The research comparison included Indigenous lands, territories of descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway enslaved people (Quilombola), agrarian-reform settlements, protected areas and private properties. “There are [on average] 189 hectares [467 acres] more long-term restoration gains on Indigenous lands compared to private properties.” While the study found positive outcomes on Indigenous lands, Benzeev noted that the study did not directly measure the factors driving these results. After analyzing restoration gains and reversals across 1.9 million territories in the Atlantic Forest from 1985 to 2022, the authors also found that Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements had higher rates of restoration reversals (restored forests later deforested). Each had 21 hectares (52 acres) and roughly 4.5 hectares (11 acres) more restoration reversals than private properties,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A major new international review co-authored by Professor Gemma Harvey, Professor of Physical Geography in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Queen Mary University of London, highlights how species that physically modify freshwater environments interact with climate change, and why understanding these processes is becoming increasingly important.

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UK winters are becoming significantly wetter mainly due to warming driven by human burning of fossil fuels releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, a Newcastle University study reveals. The research shows that for every degree of global or regional warming, winter rainfall increases by a compounding 7%, increasing the risk of flooding. And the scientists warn it is happening much faster than most global climate models predict.

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Marine animals, such as the extremely simple flatworm Trichoplax, are ideal model organisms for studying the early evolutionary origins of animal life processes. Despite measuring only a few millimeters and lacking true organs or nervous system, this animal interacts effectively with bacteria. A highly efficient enzyme, goose-type lysozyme (PLys, GH23), plays a key role in this process. Trichoplax uses this enzyme specifically during digestion to degrade bacterial cell walls and neutralize ingested bacteria.

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It's been a good few months in the press for the rakali (known as moytj in Noongar)—Australia's native water rat. These long-whiskered rodents finally received the recognition they deserve, with the ABC's National Science Week poll crowning the rakali the nation's most underrated animal.

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Geologic reservoirs that trapped petroleum for millions of years are now being repurposed to store the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. New research is improving how we monitor this storage and verify how much CO2 these reservoirs have stored.

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Scientists have long known that Earth's core is mostly made of iron, but the density is not high enough for it to be pure iron, meaning lighter elements exist in the core, as well. In particular, it's suspected to be a major reservoir of hydrogen. A new study, published in Nature Communications, supports this idea with results suggesting the core contains up to 45 oceans' worth of hydrogen. These results also challenge the idea that most of Earth's water was delivered by comets early on.

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A cyclone packing violent winds killed at least 20 people as it struck Madagascar, toppling houses and causing major flooding, the Indian Ocean island's disaster authority said Wednesday.

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A U.S. federal agency is considering allowing companies to lease more than 45.7 million hectares (113 million acres) of waters off Alaska for seabed mining. Alaska is the latest of several places President Donald Trump has sought to open to the fledging industry over the past year, including waters around American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Like those Pacific islands, Alaska is home to Indigenous peoples with ancestral ties to the ocean, and the proposal is raising cultural and environmental concerns. Deep-sea mining, the practice of scraping minerals off the ocean floor for commercial products like electric vehicle batteries and military technology, is not yet a commercial industry. It’s been slowed by the lack of regulations governing permits in international waters and by concerns about the environmental impact of extracting minerals that formed over millions of years. Scientists have warned the practice could damage fisheries and fragile ecosystems that could take millennia to recover. Indigenous peoples have also pushed back, citing violations of their rights to consent to projects in their territories. Trump, however, has voiced strong support for the industry as part of his effort to make the United States a leader in critical mineral production. He has also pushed for U.S. companies to mine in international waters, bypassing ongoing global negotiations over international mining regulations. Kate Finn, a citizen of the Osage Nation and executive director of the Tallgrass Institute Center for Indigenous Economic Stewardship in Colorado, said she worries the seabed mining industry will repeat the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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For decades, southern right whales have been celebrated as one of conservation's success stories.

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Scientists say that multiple Earth system components appear closer to destabilization than previously believed, putting the planet in increased danger of following a "hothouse" path driven by feedback loops that can amplify the consequences of global warming.

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Microbes could help oak trees cope with environmental change. Publishing in Cell Host & Microbe, a study observing oaks growing in a natural woodland found that the trees' above- and below-ground microbiomes were resilient to drought, nutrient scarcity, and exposure to pathogenic beetles and bacteria. The trees showed subtle changes to their root-associated microbiota after prolonged drought, suggesting they can recruit beneficial bacteria under stressful conditions.

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Human activity has lessened the resilience of modern coral reefs by restricting the food-fueled energy flow that moves through the food chains of these critical ecosystems, reports an international team of researchers in the journal Nature. Examining otoliths—fish ear stones that are preserved in marine sediments across millennia—the team developed and applied a nitrogen isotope method to 7,000-year-old fossils in order to reconstruct ancient reef food webs directly for the first time, according to Boston College Senior Research Associate Jessica Lueders-Dumont, a lead researcher on the project.

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For blackberry breeders, white and pink flowers on blackberry plants are more than something to admire; they are a key early measure of the season's productivity.

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The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA)—the statutory agency responsible for planning the Basin's water resources—has just shared the starkest news yet about the Basin's future: the Basin is almost certainly going to get hotter, drier, and more volatile in the future, with reduced river flows.

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For the first time, scientists have recorded how baby dunnarts, tiny carnivorous marsupials from Australia, reach their mother's pouch not long after being born. While much is known about how many other marsupial babies go from the birth canal to the pouch, such as kangaroos (climb through their mother's fur) and quolls (swim through a birth fluid), the dunnart's journey remained something of a mystery until now. This is largely because the young are so small, about the size of a grain of rice, and the process happens so quickly.

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A study reveals that sticklebacks with complete bony plates have survival rates several percentage points higher than those with reduced plates, indicating ongoing natural selection. Moreover, the strength of selection appears to have intensified between 2016 and 2022. These findings, published in Evolution, demonstrate that natural selection can drive rapid evolution in natural populations.

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Slimy, snake-shaped and yellow-brown, freshwater eels swim the rivers, estuaries and the coastal waters of Asia, Oceania, Europe, Africa and North America. Despite what their name says, these fish have strong ties to the oceans: They spawn at sea and the babies drift to their freshwater habitats, piggybacking on ocean currents. Though there are 19 known species, more than 99% of eels eaten worldwide belong to three species: the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), American eel (Anguilla rostrata) and Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica). They are coveted as delicacies in East Asia, primarily in Japanese, Korean and Chinese cuisines, where they are consumed once they grow to at least 30 centimeters (1 foot) long. In Japan, where it’s known as unagi, the fish is eaten grilled or smoked, as sushi or with rice. Most of the global harvest, however, is for finger-sized, transparent baby eels, also called glass eels or elvers. They’re caught the world over and shipped to aquaculture facilities, primarily in China, where they are reared for a year or two before being sold as food. With unrelenting demand, all three eel species have perilous conservation status, teetering on the brink of extinction. The European eel is critically endangered; the other two are endangered. In the last three months, two back-to-back efforts to protect these disappearing species failed. At the November CITES meeting of 184 countries and the European Union, delegates rejected a proposal to regulate international commercial trade in all freshwater eels. Another proposal by the Dominican Republic to monitor…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A new study may change the way scientists think about the distance traveled by tiny bubbles carrying signals between cells that are embedded in tissue. These particles, called extracellular vesicles, are known to safely carry signaling cargo as a communication method between cells in bodily fluids and within tissue, and to influence health and disease. Understanding how the properties of these vesicles differ in normal versus diseased tissue could make them outstanding biomarkers for early disease detection, researchers say.

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A strikingly handsome emerald-green moth, lost to science for nearly one-and-a-half centuries, has been rediscovered in South Africa by citizen scientists who posted photographs of it online. The moth, Drepanogynis insciata, whose body and wing margins look as though they’ve been stained with red wine, was thought to be extinct. The species hadn’t been recorded since two male specimens were collected near the Western Cape town of Swellendam around 1875. Scientists only knew of the moth from those two faded specimens, which are kept in London’s Natural History Museum. However, according to a recent article in ZooKeys, a dozen separate sightings were recorded in four different locations between 2020 and 2023 and uploaded onto iNaturalist, the citizen science website. They were the first photographs ever taken of live specimens. Male specimens of Drepanogynis insciata have now been observed in the Gondwana Private Nature Reserve on four occasions. Image courtesy of Mikael Englund. When the first of those photographs, taken by Cameron Scott in the Gondwana Private Game Reserve, around 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Swellendam, was uploaded to the site in September 2020, South African lepidopterist Hermann Staude got a tip-off about his intriguing picture. “I looked, and there it was — insciata — [a] living animal,” Staude told Mongabay. “That was quite an incredible feeling, to all of a sudden see something that you thought might have been extinct.” Staude asked Scott to catch a moth if he saw another, which he did. The specimen was kept in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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