Green & indigenous News

River deltas are among the most complex and productive environments on Earth. Yet, they face serious threats from upstream industrialization and climate change, which alter supplies of water, sediment and contaminants. Even deltas distant from densely populated and industrialized areas are not immune to these stressors.

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During Australia's unprecedented heat wave in late January, air temperatures reached 50°C in inland South Australia.

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The carbon footprint of the Olympic Games remains substantial, despite reforms by the International Olympic Committee. A new study by the University of Lausanne shows that the Olympic model needs further reform to comply with the Paris Agreement and outlines possible courses of action.

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Corals living in coastal bays with strongly fluctuating temperatures and environmental conditions are better able to withstand heat and other stressors than their counterparts on more stable reefs. This is shown by research conducted by marine biologist Sarah Solomon, whose thesis offers valuable insights into the mechanisms and trade-offs associated with the resilience of coral reefs in a rapidly changing climate. She will defend her Ph.D. thesis on Thursday, February 19, at the University of Amsterdam.

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Some time around 1683, amateur Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek scraped the plaque from between his teeth and peered at it through a home-made microscope.

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Setting sail from the busy port of Plymouth in Devon, the tall ship Pelican of London takes young people to sea, often for the first time.

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A University of Alberta research team has identified a new drug target to treat harmful E. coli bacteria—which cause nearly 250,000 deaths a year from urinary tract infections (UTI) and are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Their recently published research in Nature Communications shows how the protease known as GlpG, located in the cellular membrane, is central to the bacteria's ability to infect human cells and resist treatment.

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Corralling a wild rhinoceros into a small chute to give it eyedrops might seem like a crazy plan. But if it’s crazy and it works, then it’s not crazy. Animal behaviorists partnering with the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society in Florida traveled to Africa in August to help an endangered white rhino with a life-threatening, parasitic eye infection. Daniel Terblanche, a security manager with Imvelo Safari Lodges, said no one in Zimbabwe would have come up with the plan. “Believe me, we didn’t think of it; it was a completely ridiculous idea to us,” Terblanche said. “But without trying all of the things that we could to rectify that situation, we would have been in trouble, I think.” Outside of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the Community Rhino Conservation Initiative, with support from Imvelo Safari Lodges, engages local communities to reintroduce southern white rhinos to communal lands for the first time in the nation’s history. Palm Beach Zoo CEO and President Margo McKnight was visiting the area last year when Imvelo Safari Lodges managing director Mark Butcher told her a health scare with a male rhino named Thuza could jeopardize the future of the program. “This rhino had bleeding eyes. He was rubbing his eyes,” Butcher said. “And I was looking at a potential where this guy was gonna lose his eyesight. And this is in a pilot project that’s got fantastic vision for a future for conservation throughout Africa.” Thad and Angi Lacinak, founders of Precision Behavior, traveled…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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To stay in the air when hovering over a flower, bumble bees continually flap their wings rapidly, a metabolic process that generates a massive amount of internal heat. Their flight muscles work so intensely that they can raise the insect's body temperature by 30°C to 35°C above the surrounding air. On a scorching summer day, this can put them at risk of overheating, which may be fatal.

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The Amazon Rainforest is approaching a dangerous threshold. Scientists warn that continued deforestation could push the world’s largest rainforest past a tipping point, transforming it into a degraded, fire-prone savanna that emits more carbon than it stores. One of the most effective barriers preventing that outcome is now being dismantled. For nearly 20 years, the Amazon Soy Moratorium has helped protect millions of hectares of forest. It stopped major traders from buying soy grown on land deforested after 2008, breaking the link between agricultural expansion and forest destruction. Earlier this month, following sustained lobbying and political pressure, Brazil’s leading soy industry association withdrew from the agreement, effectively collapsing a system that had become the backbone of responsible soy production in the Amazon. The moratorium helped drive a nearly 70% reduction in deforestation across monitored regions, even as soy production soared. It proved that strong rules and monitoring, backed by market pressure, can protect forests while supporting livelihoods and economic growth. A section of the Amazon rainforest stands next to soy fields in Belterra, Para state, Brazil, on Nov. 30, 2019. Image by AP Photo/Leo Correa. If it collapses fully, the consequences will be devastating. Researchers estimate that Amazon deforestation could rise by 30% in the coming decades, wiping out years of progress and pushing the rainforest closer to irreversible collapse. That would release billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and accelerate the climate and biodiversity crises already devastating communities worldwide. The unraveling of the moratorium is not happening…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A woman is dead after being struck by a vehicle in Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood, and A Bering Sea storm is wreaking havoc on this year’s Iron Dog snowmachine race

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PAU BRASIL, Brazil — Indigenous leader Fábio Titiah recalls the night he walked the trail to the village of Água Vermelha, in the Caramuru-Paraguassu Indigenous Territory. At around 10 p.m., a shadow burst from the undergrowth and sprang across the road. He says he saw, startled, its glistening, pitch-black pelt and recognized it as one of the rarest animals of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest: a black jaguar (Panthera onca). For Titiah, one of the 21 caciques (chiefs) of the Caramuru-Paraguassu territory in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, the fleeting sighting of the big cat was a spiritual encounter and a sign of changes afoot in Indigenous lands. “There was a time when we started the reclamation process, when we [re]occupied our territories, and found a large part of our land transformed into cattle pasture,” Titiah tells Mongabay at his house in the municipality of Pau Brasil, adjacent to the Caramuru-Paraguassu territory, where he’s a city councilor. “Then our people left a good part of these areas to regenerate. Some animals that hadn’t been seen here before started appearing. The jaguar started to return.” The transformation of the Caramuru-Paraguassu territory has been enabled in part by Ywy Ipuranguete (“beautiful lands” in the Tupi-Guarani language), a nationwide project to strengthen and support Indigenous stewardship across 15 Indigenous territories. Building on the recognition of Indigenous lands as vital for wildlife and ecosystems, Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples launched the initiative to safeguard about 6 million hectares (15 million acres) of some of Brazil’s most…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A new Perspective article from an SDSU researcher advocates improving wheat and other staple foods through agricultural techniques, making the food people love to eat healthier. Ali Parsaeimehr, assistant research professor in South Dakota State University's Department of Biology and Microbiology, is a leading co-author in an effort to find new ways to boost public health without relying on individuals to give up foods they love. This shift to make staple foods healthier is a goal of the Foundation for Innovation in Healthy Food, whose members are co-authors.

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A fossil on display at Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies reveals how dinosaurs in the Tyrannosaurus genus may have subdued prey, and the specimen is the focus of a new collaborative research publication between scientists at MSU and the University of Alberta in Canada. The giant carnivorous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus roamed the region that is now Montana at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, about 66 million years ago. It lived alongside other large dinosaurs, including plant-eaters like Triceratops and the duck-billed Edmontosaurus.

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Plants don't just respond to light and water, they also run on an internal daily timekeeper known as the circadian clock. Researchers have now discovered that the plant circadian clock can regulate electrochemical signals in specific cells that help determine whether growth is invested above ground or below ground.

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New research has identified optimal design for artificial habitats to support restoration of oyster reefs, based on a detailed understanding of natural oyster reef geometry. Published in the global journal Nature, the Sydney-based study shows the complex shapes of natural oyster reefs are not random—their structure and arrangement optimize the establishment and survival of developing oysters and their protection from predators.

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Male caregiving is rare. Of the nearly 6,000 mammalian species, fewer than 5% of fathers stick around to raise their own young. Most are even instinctively hostile. Even among the mammals that pitch in with caregiving duties, including humans and a handful of rodents, there's still a range in caregiving quality, from contenders for "dad of the year" to—at worst—abusive.

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The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the arrival of all complex life on Earth has had an unsolved mystery at its heart. According to the theory, all plants, animals and fungi, known collectively as eukaryotes, are thought to have evolved after two very different types of microbes came together. The problem was in figuring out how the two were in such close proximity in the first place, given that one of the microbes requires oxygen for survival and the other was known to live in spaces without oxygen.

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Indonesian scientists have attached a satellite tag onto an endangered pygmy blue whales for the first time by drone. The tag’s data not only revealed a new feeding site for the species (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda), but also a previously undocumented path it takes to the South Antarctic. Unlike Antarctic blue whales, pygmy blue whales prefer tropical waters and are found in the Indian Ocean. They’re known to migrate between the west coast of Australia and Indonesia. However, their journey south between Indonesia and Australia is rarely documented and their habits are more of a mystery. A pygmy blue whale is observed by a research drone during the Marine Migratory Species Expedition 2025 in the North Wetar Sea, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, Oct. 9, 2025. (HO/Konservasi Indonesia) From Oct. 5-16, 2025, a team of 20 scientists from Konservasi International, Thrive Conservation, the Elasmobranch Institute and universities from Indonesia and Timor-Leste focused their research on the Lesser Sunda landscape, which is part of the Coral Triangle. The study area also includes the Ombai Strait, known as one of the most important migratory corridors for pygmy blue whales. In December 2025, Indonesia created the new 325,238 hectare West Wetar Marine Protected Area, found within the Lesser Sunda seascape, the scattering of Indonesian islands closest to Australia. During the expedition, the team also gathered data to help the government create an offshore marine protected area in the Banda Sea. The pygmy blue whale’s biggest threats include ship strikes in busy shipping lanes, ocean noise…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Experts have warned that extensive storm damage caused to one of South Devon's most iconic routes is likely to become more frequent as global sea levels rise and the impacts of extreme wave events increases. Members of the University of Plymouth's Coastal Processes Research Group have been conducting detailed measurements and visual assessments along Start Bay for the past 20 years.

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Dan Ninham
Special to ICT

Chip George has a ringside seat like few others at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy.

Tapped to be a volunteer for the Olympics, the retired teacher has been working at the women’s and men’s hockey games keeping track of shots.

“It’s been great watching the best hockey players in the world,” said George, Mohawk from Akwesasne, also known as Tehaonkohton (He digs things up).

“We’ve worked three of the U.S women’s hockey games,” he said. “They have a very strong team. The men’s games we’ve worked have [National Hockey League] players as well as national players that help form very formidable teams.”

International credentials

George’s journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics began with athletic team development for a few decades back home on the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory in Canada.

“I traveled with The Mohawk Express basketball team, winning many championships in Indian Country,” George said. “A member of the 1998 Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse team that competed in the World Games of 1998 in Baltimore. Played Senior B Box Lacrosse winning the President’s Cup in 1997 with the Akwesasne Thunder. Played two seasons of Senior A box lacrosse.”

The international athletic credentials helped him gain the recent milestone.

“While watching the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, I looked up the upcoming Winter Olympics site,” said Chip.  “I was very happy to find out it was in Milan, as my family hosted an incredible young lady from Milan as an exchange student 18 years ago. I contacted her prior to applying to ask to stay with her. She was happy to host me.”

The process was slow, but worth it.

“Applications opened in the fall of ‘24,” George told ICT via email. “I didn’t hear anything for months. In May of ‘25, I received an email asking if I could join a Zoom call interview in June. I thought it went well. I received my acceptance in October ….

“I think what helped me was the fact that I’ve volunteered at two Men’s Lacrosse World Championships (Denver ‘14 & San Diego’ 23) and one Women’s World Championships of Lacrosse (‘22 Towson, MD) and the FISU World University Games in Northern NY in ‘23,” he said.

The assignment of game-day duties was specifically statistics-minded. A number of volunteers were working with each other, with the reward being able to do quality work with the most elite hockey players in the world.

“I was assigned to the Rho Hockey Arena for my stay,” George said. “I’m inputting all shots for one team throughout the game. I work with a ‘spotter’, and together, we record all shot attempts as: Shots on Goal, Missed shots, and blocked shots. Coaches and broadcasters use this information on the spot. We’ve mostly worked the women’s hockey but we’ve done two men’s games as well.”

A lifetime of teaching

George was born in Syracuse, New York, the middle of three sons.  He has dual citizenship, and lives and works in Canada, though the border with the U.S. runs through Akwesasne.

George earned a bachelor’s in math and education at SUNY Potsdam and a master’s in educational administration from Penn State University.

Chip George, Mohawk from Akwesasne, right, gets a snapshot at the 2026 Winter Olympics, where he is working as a volunteer with the men’s and women’s hockey teams. Credit: Photo courtesy of Chip George

Now 60, he spent 31 years as a teacher working entirely on the Mohawk territory, first as a math and science teacher for 7th and 8th graders for 15 years, and then the last 16 years with a program that helps high school-aged students and adults earn their high school diplomas.

“I retired in 2023, and the next day, drove cross-country to San Diego where I volunteered at the men’s World Championships of Lacrosse as a penalty box timer,” he told ICT.

He recently has been working part-time at an elementary school focusing on helping Mohawk students with classwork and assignments. He also began volunteering recently with the Oherokon “Under the Husk” program, which helps Akwesasne youth reconnect with their culture and environment.

George and his wife of 41 years have four adult children, three daughters and a son. Over the years, the family hosted four Rotary exchange students, from Italy, Belgium, Germany and Spain. His family was not able, however, to join him in Italy for the Winter Olympics.

Beadwork for Snoop Dogg

During his time at the Olympics, George has been caught up in the exchange of pins, a common practice for teams in international competitions.

“Many of us have been collecting and trading Olympic pins from all over the world,” George said. “It has been fun and challenging trying to track down specific pins.”

Chip George, a Mohawk from Akwesasne who is working as a volunteer at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, displays the Snoop Dogg pin he got from the media personality in exchange for his own beadwork that he brought to the games. Credit: Photo courtesy of Chip George

 Before he left home for Italy, George worked on beadwork projects so he could take his own offerings to the Winter Olympics.

“This past winter, I started to bead lanyards, keychains, etc.,” he said. “I made a few to bring as gifts. Two of these were a U.S. flag design. I joked with the family that [it] was earmarked for Snoop Dogg if I see him.”

And he did.

“While visiting the Duomo of Milan, I saw Snoop Dogg standing inside the broadcast center located near the Duomo,” he said. “He was looking out over the crowd of people through the tinted window. I held up the USA keychain and pointed to him, signaling it as a gift for him. Five minutes later, his representative came down with a pin and we traded. It was very cool.”

A wooden lacrosse stick was also a popular offering in the international arena, he said.

“I know lacrosse is a budding sport here in Italy, with their women and men’s teams working hard to improve as they qualify for larger tournaments and possibly the Olympics,” he said.

“I messaged the women’s team representative online and asked if anybody would want a wooden stick, as a friend of mine, Evan Cree of Traditional Lacrosse, makes them in Akwesasne,” he said. “One person ordered a stick and I decided to bring three sticks with me. One will be a gift to my host. The other will be a gift to the women’s team to use as a fundraiser.”

An opportunity to observe lacrosse games in Italy couldn’t be passed up, he said.

“I saw on their Instagram that there were a couple of men’s games being held in Bologna, Italy, on one of my days off,” he said. “I decided to take the train down to watch them play. It was entertaining. They have a long way to go, but the love of lacrosse is there and each of these teams is trying to grow the game in Italy and attract new players, coaches, referees, etc. It is nice to see.”

Looking ahead

His experience as a volunteer for the Winter Olympics equates to lifelong friendships.

“I have been working closely with five others on the Shots Operating Team,” George said. “We have become good friends. One is from the United States, one from Slovakia, one from France, and two Canadians. We have spent many hours inside the rink, but also hours touring Milan and seeing many of the sites.”

“It has been great making new friends,” he said, “and I’m sure we will keep in touch.”

He is hoping to repeat the experience. His oldest daughter has been accepted as a volunteer with the FIFA World Cup, and he’s waiting to see if he is accepted.

His son, 26, now lives in Los Angeles, where the next Olympics will be held.

“I hope to volunteer,” he said.

The post How Snoop Dogg got Indigenous beadwork at the Winter Olympics appeared first on ICT.

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A man has gone missing in the Loire River in the flood-hit west of France, an official said, as the country on Wednesday marked a record-breaking streak of 35 consecutive days of rain.

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Since 10 January 2026, the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) has received reports of hundreds of "whumpfs" (i.e., sounds indicating a collapse in the snowpack) and of remote triggering events—unmistakable signs of a critical avalanche situation involving a weak snowpack. A whumpf is where snow sports enthusiasts cause a fracture in a weak layer of the snow, which within seconds propagates as a crack across the terrain. If the crack reaches steep terrain, this may trigger an avalanche—a remote triggering event.

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In a new study, University of Rhode Island Ph.D. graduate Kyle McElroy and Marine Affairs Professor Austin Becker explore the role of data and biases, as well as the challenges and decision-making processes used by U.S. municipalities in integrating flood risk management into urban planning. Their paper, "Factors Influencing Flood Risk Management Integration in U.S. Municipal Planning: An Expert Mental Model Approach," was published earlier this month in the Journal of Flood Risk Management.

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A research team at the University of Würzburg has deciphered another aspect of poxviral gene activation. They have revealed a unique viral mechanism: A molecular ring anchors the viral copying machine to the DNA. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

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