Green & indigenous News

In the upper reaches of the Mahakam River, inside one of the last intact rainforest corridors of Borneo, the Dayak Bahau community of Long Isun has been fighting a long, layered battle for justice. Their history on the land predates the Indonesian state, yet on official maps their existence is reduced to an administrative code printed on a sheet of paper, with no record of the rivers they follow like family, the sacred groves where their elders are buried, the hills that hold ancestral stories. In the documents that decide the fate of their territory, their cosmology disappears beneath lines drawn to serve other interests. Erasure becomes technical: their land is not seen, so their rights are not acknowledged. The consequence is real. When companies arrive with permits approved in distant government offices, those papers speak louder than generations of lived governance. And now, international climate finance mechanisms have entered this same forest, treating the landscape as a source of carbon emission reductions while the people who protected it have yet to see their rights recognized. In November 2025, representatives from Long Isun filed a formal grievance against the World Bank’s Emission Reduction (ER) Program in East Kalimantan province, arguing that the project infringed upon their rights, ignored unresolved territorial conflicts, and failed to uphold a meaningful process of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). The complaint is not a sudden reaction, but is the culmination of more than a decade of resistance, from daily patrols and adat (customary laws…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research shows. Moths' attraction to artificial light, such as streetlights, is common knowledge and has been much studied. But, as many people will have observed, moths may also remain still if they land near a light, apparently "trapped."

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Snow has returned to the Philadelphia region, and along with it the white residues on streets and sidewalks that result from the over-application of deicers such as sodium chloride, or rock salt, as well as more modern salt alternatives.

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Researchers at the University of Kansas have shown the National Severe Storms Laboratory's Warn-on-Forecast System (WoFS) has potential to help weather forecasters issue warnings to emergency managers and the general public well before tornado formation. Their study appears in the peer-reviewed journal Weather and Forecasting.

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Amelia Schafer
ICT

Jose “Beto” Ramirez, a Red Lake Nation descendant who was taken into immigration custody in early January, said he’s now facing federal charges for allegedly assaulting an officer while being detained.

Ramirez, 20, was forcibly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Jan. 8, despite being a U.S. citizen and a Red Lake Nation descendant.

Now, facing charges under United States Code 18 section 111, is accused of hitting an immigration agent while being detained on Jan. 8.

Ramirez is being represented by Minnesota-based Attorney Jordan Kushner and supported by the Native American Rights Fund and Sacred Defense Fund.

“Jose is innocent of this charge and is a victim of retaliation following his unlawful assault and detention,” a NARF spokesperson told ICT. “Jose is a United States citizen that is being terrorized by ICE. He will continue to defend his rights in court.”

The Native American Rights Fund provides legal assistance to tribes, tribal organizations and Native individuals. The Sacred Defense Fund is a nonprofit organization which provides media assistance, legal aid and community organizing efforts to Indigenous nations and individuals.

Ramirez was detained by immigration agents on Jan. 8 while driving to his aunt’s home in Robbinsdale, a northwestern Minneapolis suburb. Ramirez was released more than six hours later from the Bishop Henry Whipple Building in Fort Snelling.

‘I felt like I was kidnapped’: Ojibwe man recounts ICE detainment

Then, on Jan. 23, ICE agents came to Ramirez’s home with guns drawn demanding he exit the home. After receiving no response, officers unplugged the home’s front camera and left, according to the Native American Rights Fund.

Agents went to Ramirez’s home again on Jan. 24 and called him on the phone, threatening to arrest him “the easy way or the hard way,” the NARF statement said.

The agents told him they had obtained a warrant for his arrest under U.S. Code 18 section 111, which pertains to resisting, assaulting or impeding federal officers. The warrant was secured using sealed testimony of an ICE agent, according to the Native American Rights Fund.

When Ramirez did not come out of the house, the agents left again.

On Monday, Jan. 26, Ramirez voluntarily turned himself in to authorities and was released later that afternoon.

Because the warrant and indictment are both sealed, ICT was unable to view the court documents through federal court databases.

ICE did not respond to requests for information on why Ramirez was pursued on Jan. 8.

Editor’s note: ICT identifies Ramirez as a descendant because his maternal great-grandparents were enrolled members of the Red Lake Nation. The tribal nation’s enrollment criteria is one-quarter blood quantum.

The post Red Lake Nation descendant charged with assaulting ICE agent during detainment appeared first on ICT.

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It goes without saying that the Twin Cities are in turmoil. For many residents, particularly immigrants, the simple act of leaving home no longer feels safe or reasonable after the Department of Homeland Security began cracking down on the area’s immigrant population and have killed two people.

The world is watching Minnesota. Thousands are wondering what will happen next—and what they can do to help. In response, Civil Eats is shining a light on local institutions, many of them with a long history of mutual aid, that are stepping up to make sure people stay fed and safe.

Here is a list of those organizations, all vetted by Civil Eats. They are all accepting donations.

Calvary Food Shelf
Based in Minneapolis, the Calvary Food Shelf has organized an Emergency Response Fundraiser to expand their regular grocery distribution services.

Casa Maria
Operating out of St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, Casa Maria is a Minneapolis-based food pantry delivering groceries to vulnerable families. Last week, more than 500 families requested food.

Instagram images courtesy of La Guadalupana Supermercado.

Community Aid Network MN
According to their website, Community Aid Network MN is a local mutual aid organization that delivers food and other household necessities to Minneapolis families. They also offer a weekly food and supply distribution on Thursday evenings. Donations can be made to their Venmo.

Dios Habla Hoy
Dios Habla Hoy, a Minneapolis church, is running a large food assistance program. According to their website, they’ve worked with over 3,000 volunteers and have served 14,000 families. Residents can sign up for grocery deliveries here. They’re also accepting more volunteers, monetary contributions, and food donations.

La Guadalupana Supermercado
This St. Paul-based grocery store is currently providing grocery deliveries for families in need. Co-owner Alexander Pina told Civil Eats that they’ve served hundreds of households over the past week. The store has a GoFundMe donation link on Instagram and  provides an online grocery request intake form in Spanish.

La Viña
Located 15 miles south of Minneapolis, La Viña Community Church is providing free groceries for families in the Twin Cities area. More information about volunteer opportunities and donations can be found on their website and Instagram.

ICAThe Intercongregation Communities Association (ICA) is offering emergency bags of groceries that include protein, milk, bread, fresh produce, and shelf-stable items that can be picked up at ICA’s K-Tel location. Multiple bags can be picked up by community members helping several families. More information about monetary contributions, food donations, and volunteer opportunities can be found here.

Twin City Food Justice
Twin City Food Justice, a local nonprofit focused on food waste and hunger relief, is working with donor partners and schools to deliver groceries to households and facilitate food drives. Their Instagram includes more information on how to organize a food drive with them. Donations can be made here.

The post These Minneapolis Groups Offer Food Aid as ICE Surges appeared first on Civil Eats.

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An international team of researchers including scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) have developed a way to reveal the smallest of malfunctions in the biochemical machinery that makes proteins in our bodies. According to the researchers, these malfunctions, however small, can trigger neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, as well as cancer and developmental disorders.

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Across Mediterranean Europe, olive groves are in decline from a range of factors, from disease to depopulation. In Italy alone, there are roughly 440 million abandoned olive trees, and the ecological, cultural and socioeconomic impacts from the loss are devastating, explains the latest guest on the Mongabay Newscast. Still, solutions exist to help turn the tide of this under-discussed problem. Federica Romano is the program coordinator and UNESCO Chair on Agricultural Heritage Landscapes at the University of Florence. She discusses the drivers of the degradation and abandonment of olive groves, how ecological factors and human-induced climate change exacerbate these, and the consequences for biodiversity and wildlife in Europe, where olive oil isn’t just an economic institution, but also a significant cultural one. “Olive groves hold [a] deep cultural significance that goes far beyond agriculture [and] food production across Europe,” she says. “Olive trees have symbolized peace, resilience and continuity through thousands of years, appearing in religious contexts, but also in arts and historical narratives.” The decline of olive groves is exacerbated by recent rural depopulation, as fewer people remain in rural areas to tend them. Romano highlights solutions to combat this, such as adoption schemes by organizations like Abandoned Grove, where people can adopt an olive tree and receive a liter of olive oil in return. Other schemes that she says need urgent attention include implementing tourism-based restoration and agroforestry. “Tree adoption programs, agricultural practices, economic incentives, rural tourism, education training, digital monitoring — so these all can support growth…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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The architecture of the body is not encoded as a formal blueprint; rather, it's the tightly orchestrated activation and deactivation of genes that coordinate body development. Many of these processes are not fully understood, but RIKEN researchers have made important headway toward reconstructing how critical building blocks within a vertebrate embryo take shape.

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In its natural state, peatland is one of the largest carbon stores in nature. This is because the soil is so waterlogged and low in oxygen that dead plant material breaks down very slowly. The plants do not fully decompose but instead accumulate over thousands of years, forming thick layers of peat. When a peatland is drained for agricultural use, the water level drops and oxygen enters the peat layer. Microorganisms can then break down the old plant material much faster, releasing carbon that has been stored for many years as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).

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Chromosomes are masters of organization. These long strings of DNA fold down into an ensemble of compact structures that keep needed parts of the genome accessible while tucking away those that aren't used as often. Understanding the complexity of these structures has been challenging; chromosomes are large systems, and deciphering the structure and dynamics requires a combination of experimental data and theoretical approaches.

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Astronomers use the term dark energy to refer to energy in the universe that is unaccounted for by ordinary matter but necessary to explain cosmology. Astronomy, however, isn't the only field with missing energy. Rice University professor Peter Wolynes and postdoctoral researcher Carlos Bueno, along with Universidad de Buenos Aires collaborators Ezequiel Gaplern, Ignacio Sánchez and Diego Ferreiro, recently published a paper describing the "dark energy" found in the structural protein universe. This missing energy comes from the tension between the form of a protein and its function.

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If you have had strep throat or an ear infection, there's a good chance you received amoxicillin or penicillin to effectively kill the troublesome bacteria. These drugs, which belong to a broad group of antibiotics called beta-lactams, are commonly used to treat various bacterial infections, from urinary tract infections to pneumonia and sepsis.

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A new tool developed by Washington State University researchers could someday provide daily or weekly forecasts of water availability in the mountains similar to a weather forecast that agencies could use for important water management decisions.

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New cutting-edge research, led by Academy Professor Otso Ovaskainen of the University of Jyväskylä and David Dunson at Duke University, combines citizen bird observations with artificial intelligence and the computing power of supercomputers at CSC—IT Center for Science. The international and multidisciplinary research team has developed the world's most accurate prediction model, capable of anticipating even small shifts in bird occurrence almost in real time.

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A deep freeze is gripping large swaths of the United States after a monster storm killed dozens of people from the Northeast to the Deep South, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and sent air travel into chaos.

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How many tiny pieces of plastic are currently inside your body? A series of headline-grabbing studies in the last few years have claimed to have found microplastics throughout human bodies—inside blood, organs and even brains.

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A young mountain lion spotted roaming the streets of San Francisco has been located near a park where wildlife officials are trying to capture it, authorities said Tuesday.

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Researchers from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), have uncovered how a high-risk class of genetic vectors can efficiently spread antibiotic resistance within the gut, enabling even highly virulent bacteria to acquire drug resistance under real-world conditions.

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What makes spider silk so extraordinarily strong and elastic at the same time? This was the focus of recent investigations carried out by researchers from the University of Greifswald, the University of Bonn and the Museum of Natural Science in Buenos Aires. In material and behavioral analyses, they discovered that net-casting spiders modulate their silk microstructurally—combining immense elasticity with robustness. The results of the international study, published on 26 January 2026 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will enable new approaches for the industrial production of synthetic fibers.

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Researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) have led a study, recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution, on the diet of individuals at the Sima de los Huesos site (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos) by reconstructing their eating habits based on dental wear. In addition, the study examined whether the dental wear reflects the environmental conditions of the glacial period known as MIS 12, one of the coldest globally, which would have favored a significant expansion of semi-arid vegetation on the Iberian Peninsula around 450,000 years ago.

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What does it take to spur individuals to act as a group with a shared purpose on climate change? According to a new Stanford-led study, the key is to show them how collective actions on climate have made a difference and often generate good vibes for participants.

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A University of California, Riverside team of scientists has found that Toxoplasma gondii, a common parasite affecting up to one-third of the global population, is far more complex than previously believed. The findings, published in Nature Communications, offer new insight into how T. gondii causes disease and why it has been so difficult to treat.

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When families decide where to buy a home, when cities approve new development, or when governments decide where to invest billions in resilience, they increasingly turn to climate-risk scores for guidance.

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Millions of dogs enter U.S. animal shelters each year, and while many eventually find new homes, the experience can be deeply stressful. Loud kennels, erratic routines, and isolation all take a toll on their well-being.

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