Green & indigenous News

The indigenous Bugkalot people of Nueva Ecija call it "kelli": a plant with white, starburst-like flowers and oval-shaped leaves that are traditionally mashed and mixed with food to treat ailing dogs. But despite this local familiarity, science has only now been able to identify it as a distinct species and given it a formal scientific name.

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Simon Fraser University researchers have uncovered fiberglass contamination in a key estuary on Vancouver Island, raising concerns about how an as-yet-overlooked contaminant could affect aquatic birds, marine life and coastal communities that rely on shellfish and seafood.

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PERU — The film uncovers the connection between one of Peru’s most iconic cultural traditions and one of its most endangered marine species. In northern fishing communities, the rostral teeth of the largetooth sawfish, once thought extinct in the waters off Peru, have long been carved into razor-sharp spurs for cockfights. Today, even as the practice becomes illegal and increasingly discouraged within the sport, the teeth still circulate through informal markets, fueled by economic desperation and cultural pride. Through the perspectives of a fisherman who accidentally captured a massive sawfish at sea, a young scientist who fought to save one on a chaotic dock, a biologist documenting the species’ decline, and a cockfighting leader pushing to eliminate animal-based spurs, the film reveals a complex conservation story. Mongabay’s Video Team wants to cover questions and topics that matter to you. Are there any inspiring people, urgent issues, or local stories that you’d like us to cover? We want to hear from you. Be a part of our reporting process—get in touch with us here! Banner image: Collage featuring cockfighting and a largetooth sawfish. The man who risked everything to steal bird eggsThis article was originally published on Mongabay

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Hike north on the Appalachian Trail and the scenery slowly transforms. Rugged, steep ridgelines in Tennessee and Virginia soften into the broad summits and smooth peaks of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. According to new research from William & Mary Assistant Professor of Geology Joanmarie Del Vecchio, this contrast speaks to an ancient past.

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One of the best forms of heat relief is pretty simple: trees. In cities, as studies have documented, more tree cover lowers surface temperatures and heat-related health risks. However, as a new study led by MIT researchers shows, the amount of tree cover varies widely within cities, and is generally connected to wealth levels. After examining a cross-section of cities on four continents at different latitudes, the research finds a consistent link between wealth and neighborhood tree abundance within a city, with better-off residents usually enjoying much more shade on nearby sidewalks.

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When the developer Novva first announced that it was building Utah’s largest data center campus just south of Salt Lake City, the company’s CEO touted the many advantages of the region: among them a low risk of disasters, an expanding international airport, no sales tax on equipment, and the high altitude cold of the desert landscape, which would help keep cooling costs down. Perhaps most importantly, power would be cheap. Utah has some of the lowest electricity costs in the country.

“We believe Utah is a hidden gem for one of the largest wholesale colocation campuses in the United States,” CEO and founder Wes Swenson said in a 2020 press release.

But the company quickly ran into trouble. Rocky Mountain Power, the local utility, was not able to provide the full amount of energy that the data center needed until 2031 — and even then it wasn’t guaranteed. How exactly that power would be transmitted to the remote facility was also uncertain.

Locked out of options with Rocky Mountain, Novva decided to build its own natural gas plant near its data center to provide 200 megawatts of power. But even that would take until 2027. By 2025, with the generative artificial intelligence explosion in full swing, Novva had secured a contract with a so-called hyperscaler — the tech industry term that refers to one of the massive companies building out global cloud computing. That undisclosed customer wanted to use the facility as soon as possible. So Novva turned to a solution that, despite being inefficient and highly polluting, could be deployed much more quickly: a fleet of diesel- and gas-fired generators.

To operate these generators — which produce nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and far more carbon dioxide emissions than a typical natural gas plant per unit of energy — Novva would need permission from the state. The permits it received from the Utah Division of Air Quality came with strict limits. They capped the volume of emissions the gas-fired generators could produce, and the diesel generators could only be operated 42 hours a year.

With these limits on its ability to satisfy the hyperscaler’s extreme demand for power, in March of last year, Novva appealed to a higher authority: President Donald Trump.

The EPA had just announced that it would consider providing so-called presidential exemptions to companies requesting reprieves from environmental regulations, and Novva jumped at the opportunity. A company representative wrote to the EPA arguing that exempting the data center from Clean Air Act standards was in the United States’ national security interests. (The federal agency had created a special email account just to field the companies’ requests.) As one of the largest data center clusters, it could help the administration with its stated goal to ensure that AI is responsibly developed, the representative noted. At the time, DeepSeek-R1, China’s answer to ChatGPT, had recently been released, fueling concerns that the U.S. adversary’s AI capabilities were rapidly catching up.

“We ask that you provide this exemption to assist in ensuring the United States’ Al supremacy,” the letter reads.

Novva’s plea was one of hundreds submitted to the EPA’s presidential exemption inbox last spring. Grist obtained copies of these letters by filing a records request under the Freedom of Information Act. The vast majority were submitted by coal-fired power plant operators, refineries, petcoke plants, medical sterilizers, and steel manufacturers. Novva was one of two data center developers that requested exemptions. The other, Thunderhead Energy Solutions, requested exemptions for 11 data centers consuming a combined 23 gigawatts of energy across Texas, Montana, and Illinois.

Thunderhead’s request was far more brazen than Novva’s. It proposed building a 5,000-megawatt gas-fired plant in Winkler County in West Texas — a facility far larger than the state’s largest power plant, the roughly 3,700-megawatt W.A. Parish Generating Station. So far, the company has only publicly announced plans for a 250-megawatt plant in neighboring Ector County.

Novva sought a two-year exemption to run 96 diesel generators without any limits while it finishes construction of its natural gas plant, which already has approval from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. But company CEO Wes Swenson told The Salt Lake Tribune and Grist that he never heard back from the feds and wasn’t granted the exemption. Whatever power it currently uses is primarily sourced from the grid.

But these exemption requests demonstrate some of the challenges that data center developers eager to capitalize on the AI boom are facing — and the steps they’re considering to circumvent regulatory hurdles. In the rush to secure power, many companies are installing solar arrays and batteries on-site in addition to building their own natural gas plants and deploying fleets of inefficient generators. This type of “behind-the-meter” generation is becoming increasingly common, with at least 54 data centers using this approach, according to one analysis.

Novva’s data center campus lies in the greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which is regularly plagued by so-called wintertime inversion pollution, an event where warm mountain air traps colder air and pollution in the valley. The area also grapples with summertime ozone smog, which forms when pollutants get baked by the sun. A spokesperson for Utah’s air quality regulator said the agency wasn’t aware of Novva’s attempt to obtain relief from federal regulations, which the state is charged with enforcing.

Swenson said he learned of the possibility of Clean Air Act immunity after his “webcrawlers picked it up.” He asserted that Trump created the presidential exemption for Elon Musk, after the billionaire built a data center in Memphis and was granted exemptions from permitting requirements. (In fact, it’s not clear if Musk’s company ever applied for federal relief, and it may be unlikely given that it was granted a separate exemption by local regulators.)

“To fast track it, they created that exemption,” Swenson said. “Why wouldn’t we apply?”

Though Novva did not receive its exemption, an analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund found that of the more than 500 exemption requests that the organization was able to obtain records for, roughly a third were granted. (The group did not have complete information for an additional one-third of requests.)

The ultimate status of Thunderhead Energy’s request is uncertain; a representative for Thunderhead did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency “played no role” in determining whether to grant the exemptions and directed questions to the White House. The White House directed questions back to the EPA.

The EPA required that companies applying for exemptions meet two criteria: establish that the technology to comply with the Clean Air Act rule in question is not available, and that the facility’s operation is in the national security interests of the country. The data center developers claimed they met both criteria. Novva claimed that by granting the exemption, “the United States makes a significant step forward to ‘tackl[ing] some of the world’s most pressing challenges’” while Thunderhead made the argument that its projects were “significantly accelerating national security-related computing capacity.”

“Almost everybody would claim it’s some kind of national security issue,” Swenson said in an interview. “American data should stay in America.”

Both companies also claimed that they had installed the best available technology to curb emissions but still needed an exemption to emit above allowable limits. Novva’s air quality permit from the state sets strict caps on emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds. The technology to meet those requirements while installing additional generators just wasn’t available, the company claimed in its letter.

“For Novva to be able to install any additional diesel-fired generators, the associated control technologies would have to be so effective that each additional generator would effectively have zero emissions,” the company noted. “Currently, a control technology this effective is not available.”

Novva’s natural gas plant is expected to be operational in the coming months. The company is currently working on upgrading its state air quality permit. If the company is able to secure the updated permit, it will likely be allowed to increase its emissions.

Leia Larsen contributed reporting to this story.

Editor’s note: Environmental Defense Fund is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers play no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline These data center developers asked Trump for an exemption from pollution rules on Feb 24, 2026.

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The Great Unconformity is a major gap in Earth's geologic record. The missing layer between Precambrian and Cambrian rocks represents a gap of around a billion years of history. Among much debate surrounding the cause of the gap, a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the timing of the erosion leading to the Great Unconformity aligns with the assembly of the Columbia supercontinent, and that glaciation only contributed minimally.

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As you read this, the screen is probably flashing over 240 times per second, yet, as a human, you won't notice this flickering light. However, to a fruit fly hovering above your head, the screen would represent a strobe light fit for an Ibiza rave. This is because the way different species sample time, and the rates at which they can perceive it, varies greatly across the animal kingdom.

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Pesticides can harm aquatic ecosystems and human health, so scientists need to understand how they move from farm fields into streams. A management tool commonly implemented is riparian buffers—strips of vegetation, like shrubs or grasses, bordering streams—that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advises can reduce the amount of nutrients, sediment and pesticides getting into waterways. But it's unclear how effective buffers actually are at stopping pesticides from entering streams, according to a multidisciplinary team led by Penn State researchers. To find out, the researchers conducted a study on a small agricultural stream, finding that adding buffers likely reduces the amount of specific pesticides from reaching the stream, but not others.

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Last Updated on February 24, 2026 From Parliament Hill to community gathering spaces across the country, Indigenous peoples and their allies are rallying across Canada to call on Parliament to adopt legislation that would make forced and coerced sterilization a criminal offense. At the center of those calls is Bill S-228, proposed legislation that would […]

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Liquid crystal monomers (LCMs) are critical components of laptop, television, and smartphone screens. Given their ubiquity in the environment, these compounds are considered persistent pollutants, posing threats to marine life that scientists want to understand. Research published in Environmental Science & Technology provides initial evidence that LCMs from household electronics or electronic waste (e-waste) can accumulate in dolphin and porpoise tissues, including blubber, muscle, and brain, demonstrating their ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.

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Limestone karst is like an island. Each rocky formation rises distinctly out of the surrounding landscape. Over time, an array of highly specialized species, each adapted to that particular landform’s jagged forests and dark caves, have evolved. As a result, many karst species are endemic and perilously rare. Myanmar is home to Southeast Asia’s second-largest area of limestone karst, after Indonesia; its rugged peaks cover a total of more than 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles. The area hosts the entire global population of Popa langurs (Trachypithecus popa), one of the world’s most recently described primates, and scores of gecko species described only in the past decade. Scientists say countless others likely remain tucked away in obscurity, waiting to be discovered. Yet despite its biodiversity, less than 1% of Myanmar’s limestone karst is formally protected, prompting concerns from conservationists about fragile wildlife populations that are facing mounting pressure amid a boom in clandestine mining and deforestation across the country to meet rising demand for cement, minerals and timber. Now, a recent census of cave-dwelling bats in northeast Myanmar’s Shan state indicates many karst caverns are becoming increasingly inhospitable for the winged mammals due to human disturbance, posing risks to both bats and people. “Bats are natural reservoirs for many viruses, including coronaviruses,” said Thura Soe Min Htike, conservation officer at the Nature Conservation Society–Myanmar and a co-author of the study. “Understanding how bats interact with their environment, and how humans interact with bats, is an important first step in preventing…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Bottlenose dolphins usually live in small to medium-sized groups in coastal and open-sea waters, but every once in a while, a dolphin might leave its pod behind, flock to coastal areas and approach human settlements. While this is a relatively rare occurrence, cases of dolphins entering coastal or urban areas are well documented.

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While air conditioning protects people from dangerous heat, it also significantly worsens global warming—by 2050, potentially producing more carbon dioxide than the current annual emissions of the United States, a new study reveals.

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Steven Sloan and Steve Peoples
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he has a lot to talk about tonight.

He’s returning to Congress to deliver a State of the Union address at a consequential moment in his presidency, with his approval ratings near an all-time low and restive supporters waiting for him to deliver more tangibly on their struggles with the cost of living.

On top of that, the Supreme Court just declared illegal the tariffs that have been central to his second term. And the foreign policy challenges he promised to fix easily now don’t look so simple with another potential military strike against Iran looming.

The narrow Republican majority in Congress that has done little to counter Trump’s expansive vision of power is at risk of falling away after this year’s midterm elections, when their respective self interests may collide.

Here are some questions we’re thinking about heading into the speech.

How awkward will things get with the Supreme Court?

Trump did little to hide his rage last week when the Supreme Court struck down his far-reaching tariff policy. He didn’t just say that the justices who voted against one of his signature issues — including two who he appointed — were wrong in their legal reasoning. He said they were an “embarrassment to their families.”

Now many of those justices are likely to be seated at the front of the House chamber as Trump delivers his address.

Will Trump criticize the justices to their faces? Will he somehow show restraint in keeping his criticism limited to the decision itself?

Trump would not be the first president to use a State of the Union address as a chance to criticize the court. During his 2010 address, President Barack Obama said the Court’s Citizens United decision — which opened the way for millions of dollars in undisclosed political spending — would “open the floodgates for special interests,” prompting Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head and mouth “not true.”

Since then, attendance by Supreme Court justices has become more sporadic. Alito began skipping them after the 2010 speech, joining fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who has long argued the speeches are too partisan. By last year, when Trump delivered a special address to Congress, just four members of the Court — Chief Justice John Roberts along with Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were in the House chamber.

At the time, Trump greeted the justices warmly, even telling Roberts “thank you again, I won’t forget it.” The comment was interpreted as Trump showing appreciation for the Court’s decision granting broad-based immunity to the presidency. But Trump said on social media he was merely thanking the chief justice for swearing him in.

Regardless, justices who don’t want a televised bashing from the president may decide to steer clear on Tuesday.

How will Democrats respond?

Democrats were still adjusting to Trump’s return to power when he last addressed Congress — and it showed.

During his 2025 joint address, Democrats entered the chamber with signs containing messages ranging from “Save Medicaid” and “Musk Steals” to simply “False.” Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, heckled Trump at one point, prompting his ejection from the chamber.

The signs were widely criticized as contrived and Green’s protest was something of a distraction. For voters who were outraged by Trump’s aggressive use of power during his opening months in office, the scene didn’t offer much confidence that Democrats were in a position to serve as an effective check on the White House.

Democrats are aiming to avoid a repeat of last year’s tumult. Expect fewer signs and possibly fewer Democrats in the chamber at all. Dozens of lawmakers have said they won’t attend the speech, with some planning to attend rival events in Washington.

That may help avoid some of last years theatrics. But it might do little to encourage frustrated voters that Democrats have a coherent, effective message a decade into Trump’s political rise.

And after Democratic governors boycotted a White House dinner with Trump over the weekend, skipping the State of the Union may only reinforce the sense that America’s two main political parties are charting fundamentally different courses.

Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s newly inaugurated governor, will give the Democrats’ official response to Trump.

How will Trump address affordability and immigration?

Trump will deliver his speech at the outset of a challenging election year for his fellow Republicans, who are holding on to a tenuous grip of Congress. Much of the GOP’s challenge has centered on a sense among voters that the party hasn’t done enough to bring down prices.

The White House insists it is aware of the economic anxiety among voters and is working to address it. But Trump consistently has trouble staying on message. During a trip to Georgia last week that was intended to focus on the economy, the president instead highlighted debunked claims of election fraud and pushed his proposal for voter identification requirements. When he addressed affordability, he said it was a problem created by Democrats that he has now “solved.”

Trump’s tone on immigration could also be notable. Republicans found themselves on defense after two U.S. citizens were killed in Minneapolis last month by federal agents who were conducting an aggressive immigration enforcement operation. While Trump has kept up his hardline rhetoric on undocumented immigrants, his administration has begun to draw down agents in Minneapolis. The president told New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week that he would direct future immigration enforcement surges where they were wanted.

What does he say about foreign policy?

Trump promised a quick and easy end to conflicts across the globe when he was elected. A year later, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage, there’s a fragile ceasefire in war-torn Gaza and Trump is threatening a major military strike against Iran just eight months after he claimed the U.S. had “obliterated” the nation’s nuclear facilities.

And let’s not forget about his military action in Venezuela less than two months ago in which U.S. forces snatched leader Nicolas Maduro. Trump has said repeatedly that he’s going to run the country.

Trump supporters may cheer his America First rhetoric, but the Republican president is showing far more globalist tendencies one year into his second term.

And the prospect of war with Iran is real. Trump has already built up the largest U.S. military presence in the Middle East in decades. Last week he warned the Iranian regime that “bad things will happen” soon if a nuclear deal is not reached.

How long will he go?

Trump is rarely one to self edit. His speech last year — technically a joint address and not the State of the Union — clocked nearly one hour and 40 minutes. That was the longest speech to a joint session of Congress — and Trump may want to notch another record.

“It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” he said on Monday.

The post 5 questions heading into Trump’s State of the Union address appeared first on ICT.

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The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state or federal court will have the final say on the future of the controversial Line 5 pipeline, which carries crude oil and natural gas liquids across the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan.

The case dates to a 2019 lawsuit by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who moved to shut down the pipeline by revoking the easement that allows it to cross the Straits, citing risks to the Great Lakes. (Over its 73-year lifetime, Line 5 has spilled over a million gallons of oil along its inland route.) A shutdown is supported by all 12 federally recognized tribes in Michigan, though they are not involved in the suit. Many tribal nations say the pipeline threatens their waters, treaty rights, and ways of life.

On Tuesday, the justices asked tough questions of both the attorney general’s team as well as lawyers representing the Canadian pipeline company, Enbridge Energy, on the opposing side. Though the question before the Supreme Court is a procedural one — whether courts can excuse Enbridge from missing the deadline to request moving the case to federal court — the justices recognized that the decision could have far-reaching ripples, including for U.S.-Canada relations. (The Canadian government opposes the pipeline’s shutdown, as Line 5 provides half of the oil supply for Ontario and Quebec.)

“If this proceeds in state court, and the state court issues a preliminary injunction against continued operation of the pipeline, it could be a long time before this issue involving treaty rights, which is a federal question, could be reviewed here,” noted Justice Samuel Alito.

Since 1953, Line 5 has transported oil and natural gas liquids 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario — with a critical 4 1/2-mile segment along the bottomlands in the Straits between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Enbridge wants to move the case to the federal court, which the company argues is better suited to weigh in on federal pipeline safety regulations and international agreements.

On the opposing side, Nessel argues that Line 5 belongs in state court because the pipeline concerns state laws around the use of natural resources for the good of the public. Nessel and anti-pipeline groups worry about the environmental, economic, and health consequences of an oil spill in the Great Lakes.

Ryan Duffy, a spokesperson for Enbridge, said in a statement before the oral arguments that there would be “significant implications for energy security and foreign affairs if the attorney general continues to pursue the lawsuit now in state court.”

Enbridge first argued that the case should be moved to federal court in 2021, sparking litigation around whether the company had missed the typical 30-day deadline to change venues. A federal district court judge in western Michigan ruled in favor of Enbridge due to “exceptional circumstances” around related lawsuits involving the pipeline. However, later the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the state.

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The Supreme Court hears a Line 5 oil pipeline case with high stakes for treaty rights

Anita Hofschneider

On Tuesday, Enbridge lawyer John Bursch compared the deadline to a statute of limitations and argued that exceptional circumstances could justify an extension.

“I don’t think it was clear to anyone that there was necessarily federal jurisdiction at the outset of the state court case,” Bursch said.

Ann Sherman, a lawyer representing the state attorney general, argued that the 30-day deadline is a firm rule on court venue, unlike the statute of limitations. “Enbridge seeks an atextual escape hatch,” she said.

A decision from the Supreme Court on Line 5’s jurisdiction is expected before the court term ends in summer. If the court rules in favor of Michigan, it would uphold the Sixth Circuit’s decision that Enbridge missed the deadline and make Line 5 an issue for state court, said Andy Buchsbaum, a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School.

However, “if the court decides that there is wiggle room in the 30-day deadline, there’s lots of ways this could go,” he said. The justices would likely settle on a standard allowing the deadline to be excused. From there, they could ask the Sixth Circuit to reevaluate the facts of the case with the new standard in mind, as Enbridge’s lawyer argued before the Supreme Court. Or the justices could apply their own standard and come to a decision for or against the state.

“To know what’s at stake and hear the court considering that just on a procedural basis, gives me a lot of concerns,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, after oral arguments. The tribal nation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is involved in separate litigation against Line 5.

“Line 5 continues to remain a clear and present danger to the Great Lakes and every tribal nation in every community that relies on them,” Gravelle said.

While the Supreme Court case plays out, Enbridge is moving ahead with plans to replace the existing dual-pipeline infrastructure in the Straits with a tunnel that would house a new segment buried under the lakebed. The company is awaiting permits from federal and state agencies. Separately, next month the Michigan Supreme Court will consider a lawsuit from tribes and environmental groups seeking to overturn an existing state permit.

Enbridge insists that Line 5 is safe and the tunnel project would make the pipeline segment even safer. Line 5 opponents like Liz Kirkwood, executive director of the Michigan-based legal nonprofit For Love of Water, disagree.

“We should be thinking about the future and the transition away from fossil fuel. And move towards a future that is sustainable and more equitable,” Kirkwood said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A tough Supreme Court hearing brings little clarity on Line 5 pipeline’s fate on Feb 25, 2026.

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DeWitt is running as an independent. She is the 17th person to announce a campaign for Alaska's top executive office.

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Countries with stricter and better-targeted climate policies cut carbon emissions faster, according to a major new study by researchers in the UK and EU. The study draws on the most comprehensive climate policy dataset ever assembled, using over 3,900 policies adopted since 2000 in 43 leading economies responsible for well over three quarters of global emissions. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

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Indigenous leader José Albino Cañas Ramírez was recently shot and killed by two unknown individuals in Colombia’s Caldas department. Indigenous authorities suspect it was a targeted attack linked to his work in defense of one of the oldest Indigenous reserves in Colombia, the Resguardo of Colonial Origin Cañamomo Lomaprieta (RCMLP). It’s a 37.6-square-kilometer (14.5-square-mile) reserve established in 1540 but has been threatened by illegal miners and armed groups for decades. According to a statement released by the RCMLP, the two individuals arrived at the shop attached to the home of Cañas Ramírez at approximately 8:50 p.m. on Feb. 16. As Ramírez prepared to attend to them, they shot him four times and fled along the community’s roads toward Supía, a neighboring municipality. Ramírez died several minutes later, the statement said. Ramírez was an active member of the resguardo’s governing council (cabildo) and an Indigenous authority from the community of Portachuelo, one of 32 Embera Chamí Indigenous communities in the reserve. Ramírez’s responsibilities included territorial protection, conflict resolution and the promotion of cultural preservation within the Portachuelo community. As part of his work, he encouraged young people to stay away from drugs, which has been a growing concern in the community, Hector Jaime Vinasco, a member of the resguardo’s governing council, told Mongabay over a phone call. Illegal mining and armed conflict have threatened the local communities for many years. In recognition of the threats and violence they face, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted the Embera people precautionary measures…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A study published in Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology reveals a surprising link between cellular aging markers and survival in black-legged kittiwakes (members of the gull family). In the work titled "Who's coming home? Shorter early-life telomeres predict return to the natal colony in an Arctic seabird," researchers have found that kittiwake chicks with shorter telomeres were more likely to return to their birthplace as adults, contradicting predictions that longer telomeres would indicate better survival prospects.

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Last Updated on February 24, 2026 Santarém, Pará, Brazil – On Monday, February 23, Brazil’s government announced the revocation of Decree 12,600/2025, which opened the door to the privatizing the Tapajós, Madeira, and Tocantins rivers for industrial waterways in the Amazon. The government confirmed the decision following a meeting in Brasília between Indigenous leaders Sônia […]

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From summer evenings to global disease prevention, mosquito repellents are a daily defense for billions of people, yet until now, scientists didn't fully understand how mosquitoes themselves perceive these "keep away" signals. A new study has pinpointed an odorant receptor that helps mosquitoes detect a repellent odor and steer away. The researchers found that activating this receptor switches on a dedicated neural pathway that can override the insects' attraction to human scents, producing clear avoidance behavior.

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The lions that roamed the plains of northern Botswana were dying. One by one, the big cats were succumbing to poisoned bait planted by exasperated villagers. The lions had been chipping away at their livelihood, feasting on the cattle that they left to graze along the Okavango Delta. By the end of 2013, around 30 lions — more than half of the northern Okavango population — had been killed in just one year. More than a decade later, the situation is radically different. The lion population has rebounded. Cub survival rate is up. And cattle losses are dramatically down. It’s the result of years of hard work: restoring traditional herding practices, collaring and tracking lions, and, most recently, establishing a market for ‘wildlife-friendly beef.’ This serves as a model, wildlife advocates say, for other parts of southern Africa where modern grazing practices have collided with big cats’ appetites. “It can be adapted to just about anywhere,” said Andrew Stein, the founder of Communities Living Sustainably Among Wildlife (CLAWS) Conservancy, which is based in Botswana. In the last 25 years, more than half the lions have vanished from the plains of Africa, largely due to conflicts with communities. As human populations have expanded, the animal’s range has shrunk, leaving remnant isolated groups. Today, there are fewer than 25,000 lions left across the continent. But in southern Africa, one large continuous population still roams the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), the world’s largest transnational land-based protected area, which runs across Angola,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Forests are great and all, but in one way, they don’t come close to the raw power of peatlands. Sprawling in the Arctic and elsewhere, like tropical regions, these soils are loaded with plant matter that’s resisting decay, turning into ultra-concentrated carbon. Though they comprise just 3 percent of Earth’s area, peatlands store 600 billion metric tons of the stuff — more than all the planet’s forests combined — making them critical tools for preventing even more global warming.

On the face of it, then, we might welcome the findings of a new study that shows these carbon sinks are indeed expanding in the Arctic, as scientists have suspected. The region is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, encouraging the growth of plants, just as precipitation up there is also increasing, creating waterlogged conditions that slow decomposition. But the carbon stored in all that new vegetation could still one day return to the atmosphere as a sort of carbon burp, and the degradation of peatlands threatens to release loads of planet-warming gas sooner than that.

“What is clear is that the more extreme climatic changes that we have, the more likely it is that they will release more carbon into the atmosphere,” said Angela Gallego-Sala, a biogeochemist at the University of Exeter and coauthor of the paper, which published earlier this month. “We see already in extreme dry years, these peatlands are going up in fire.”

Blame this on a phenomenon known as Arctic greening. As the far north warms, it loses ice on land and sea, which exposes darker earth and water, which absorb more of the sun’s energy, which drives more warming. This encourages the northward expansion of plant species, especially shrubs, which take advantage of warmer temperatures and increased rainfall. (That’s also due in part to decreased sea ice: Without that glare bouncing sunlight back into space, more seawater evaporates, loading the atmosphere with moisture.) “Things are getting greener, but they’re also getting wetter,” said paleoecologist Josie Handley, lead author of the paper, who did the research while at the University of Exeter but is now at the University of Cambridge. “That’s all really good conditions for the formation of peat.”

Extra plant material, especially sphagnum moss, is contributing to this expansion, the study found. Because peat is difficult to identify by satellite — given that it’s accumulating belowground, unlike a forest standing tall on the surface — the researchers had to venture into the Arctic, sampling the ground in transects. And because the vegetation accumulates year by year in layers, they could determine the age of the material by dating both the carbon and lead content.

Handley and Gallego-Sala found that indeed, peatlands have been expanding in these areas in recent decades, and they may now cover a greater area than anytime in the last three centuries. But there’s also a feedback loop here, in which peat becomes self-sustaining: Because sphagnum moss excels at retaining water, even when dead, it hydrates the landscape, providing conditions for yet more moss to accumulate and resist decay.

At the same time, frozen soil, called permafrost, is thawing, unlocking still more ancient carbon long locked in ice. Glaciers, too, are receding, opening more land for peat to colonize. “If you’ve got areas where you can retain that moisture,” Handley said, “and it gets more waterlogged, and then also if you’ve got the kind of fringes are greening because there’s more plant productivity and that sort of thing going on, then you meet all your components to make your peat.”

Indeed, the researchers found that peatlands can start as small “nuclei” that, if conditions are correct, expand and eventually merge with other nuclei. And as the Arctic warms, the growing season is lengthening, giving all this moss longer to grow and accumulate. “What’s really interesting is that they’re also showing that it isn’t all climate, that it’s also sort of local hydrology can help initiate the formation the peat,” said Mike Waddington, an ecohydrologist who studies peat at McMaster University but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “They’re hypothesizing that the peatlands, although they’re quite shallow, also are creating the conditions to continue to accumulate peat.”

Just as the Arctic and boreal regions are warming, extreme heat is periodically drying them out. That’s driving massive wildfires that are chewing through shrubs and trees, but also burning up dried peat. These extraordinarily persistent fires smolder for weeks or even months, releasing carbon all the while. They’re so relentless, in fact, that they’ll burn underground as snow covers them through the winter, only to pop up again in the spring. Hence their nickname “zombie fires.”

We’ve got an elemental tug of war, then: As the far north rapidly and radically changes, how much carbon will these expanding peatlands sequester in the Earth, but how quickly will that carbon return to the atmosphere if these new peatlands dry out and catch fire? Only time — and scientists traipsing through the Arctic — will tell.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How a greening Arctic might be kick-starting a dangerous feedback loop on Feb 24, 2026.

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