Green & indigenous News

Coral reefs, the "rainforests of the sea," provide habitats for 25% of all marine life. Critical to global biodiversity, they are essential for food supply, culture and recreation and coastal protection from hurricanes for communities around the world and even contain a vast array of bioactive chemical compounds that could be critical to medical advances. But half of the world's coral reefs have been lost in the last 50 years and scientists fear that warming seas from climate change will decimate 70–90% of what remains by the end of this century.

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Antibiotic resistance in human and animal health is at the forefront of public debate, but it's a less well-known issue in plant agriculture. However, antibiotics are important tools in fruit production, and their efficacy hinges on avoiding resistance to disease-causing bacteria.

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If Europeans eat less meat and dairy, this will have major consequences for farmers. New research shows that many barns and machines could lose their value. With the right policies, these losses can be limited. This is shown by research from Leiden, Oxford and Vienna.

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Animal survival depends on effective attack and defense strategies, yet how these behaviors arise remains unclear. Addressing this question, a recent study shows that predator and prey behaviors emerge naturally as stable patterns shaped by simple sensory abilities and motor rules. These patterns correspond to Nash equilibria—states in which neither predator nor prey can improve its outcome by unilaterally changing behavior—providing a theoretical framework for understanding predator–prey interactions.

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A single enzyme that can generate all four nucleoside triphosphates, the building blocks of ribonucleic acid (RNA), has been identified by researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo. The study was published online in the journal Nature Communications.

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The first time Virgilio Viana saw the Amazon, he was a 16-year-old traveling with two school friends, moving along dirt roads, then continuing by boat as the forest rose around them. The trip set something in motion. It stayed with him through a forestry degree, a Ph.D. on the region, and later a professorship in São Paulo that he eventually left for the more complicated work of trying to help govern the forest itself. Viana served as secretary for the environment and sustainable development in Brazil’s Amazonas state, where he found himself in the thicket of politics, land disputes, and the slow work of explaining why conservation matters to people who already live inside the ecosystem outsiders imagine as empty green. It was during this period that he coined a phrase now repeated across Brazil: the forest must be worth more standing than cut. An economist’s idea, reduced to the kind of line that spreads because people recognize something true in it. Today, he leads the Foundation for Amazon Sustainability (FAS), built around a principle that sounds obvious but was long resisted by some big conservation organizations: local people first. Much of what remains standing in the Amazon is there because Indigenous peoples and local communities have protected it. Caboclos, quilombolas, ribeirinho families — they are the center of Viana’s argument that conservation without them will fail. In a recent exchange, he spoke bluntly about the risks ahead. Some parts of the region, he says, have already passed a tipping…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Organic matter carried in rivers to the Russian part of the Arctic Ocean may be creating more clouds and keeping the region cooler, a new study has found.

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Two Alaska school districts are suing the state over what they say is inadequate funding for public education, and Aniak’s junior and senior high school has been suddenly closed due to structural concerns in the school’s gymnasium.

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For most of modern history, the open ocean has been treated as a place apart. Beyond the 200-nautical-mile limits of national jurisdiction, it was governed by custom, fragmented rules, and the assumption that what lay far offshore was too vast to manage and too resilient to exhaust. That assumption has worn thin. Fishing fleets now range farther and stay out longer. Shipping lanes have thickened into highways. Interest in seabed minerals has grown. And the tools to extract value from the deep sea, including its genetic resources, have advanced faster than the institutions meant to oversee them. On January 17th 2026, a new United Nations agreement—the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction accord, or BBNJ—entered into force. It is the first global framework aimed explicitly at conserving life in the waters and seabed beyond national borders. It creates a process for establishing protected areas on the high seas, requires environmental impact assessments for new activities, sets out rules for sharing benefits from marine genetic resources, and commits to capacity building and technology transfer. The details will take years to settle. The shift in legal posture is immediate. The text is done. The hard part is turning it into practice. That is not a dramatic statement. It is simply where most treaties succeed or fail. The high seas cover roughly 60% of the ocean and more than 40% of the planet’s surface. They include deep trenches, seamount chains, and midwater ecosystems that regulate nutrient cycles and store vast amounts of carbon. Less than…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A tray of eyed chinook salmon eggs are seen in an incubator at the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery in snpink’tn (Penticton) on Jan. 16, a week after they were transferred from the Colville Confederated Tribes’ Chief Joseph Hatchery. As salmon grow in their eggs, the dark spots of their eyes become visible through its shell – a stage early in their development known as the “eyed eggs” period. Photo by Aaron Hemens

First Nations fish hatcheries on both sides of the “Canada-U.S.” border are celebrating 10 years of a collaboration to help salmon blocked from migrating by dams and other threats.

Earlier this month, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in “Washington” transferred more than 6,200 chinook salmon eggs from their Chief Joseph Hatchery to the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s (ONA) kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery in snpink’tn (Penticton), nearly 200 kilometres north.

This year marks one decade since the two tribal hatcheries started working together to restore the fish’s population throughout the Columbia River Basin.

The partnership has seen Colville Tribes send more than 115,000 eyed chinook eggs to the ONA over the past 10 years. One year alone, 2019, saw 40 per cent of those eggs transferred north.

“They don’t have to do that; they don’t have to give us anything,” said Tyson Marsel, a biologist at kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ hatchery and member of Lower Similkameen Indian Band.

“But for them to recognize that this is for the betterment of the environment and conservation, it’s not only helping us, but it’s also helping them.”

An educational tool features glass containers showing the stages of salmon fry development. Photo by Aaron Hemens

As salmon grow in their eggs, the dark spots of their eyes become visible through its shell – a stage early in their development known as the “eyed eggs” period.

Salmon have been a vital source of sustenance for Pacific Northwest Indigenous nations for thousands of years.

But several salmon species, particularly sockeye and chinook, have seen their runs and populations severely depleted across the Columbia River Basin in the last century.

As settlers built numerous dams along the waterway, they effectively blocked the fish from migrating up-river and into its tributaries.

Salmon populations have also been impacted by habitat loss, overfishing, and warming water temperatures linked to climate change.

Whether it’s sk’lwist (summer-run chinook) or ntitiyx (spring-run chinook), the fish have for decades become stuck at the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River in “Washington,” which lacks a fish passage route.

Opened downstream to the dam in 2013, the Chief Joseph Hatchery catches adult fish blocked by the dam to collect their eggs. It’s part of a broodstock, or fish-breeding, program that spawns nearly three million young chinook each year.

“They’ll be collecting millions of chinook eggs in a year,” Marsel said. “Versus us, our best year is 10,000 that we’ve collected from the Okanagan River here.”

A closeup of eyed chinook salmon eggs transferred from the Chief Joseph Hatchery on Jan. 8, now stored in an incubator at the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery in snpink’tn (Penticton). As salmon grow in their eggs, the dark spots of their eyes become visible through its shell – a stage early in their development known as the “eyed eggs” period. Photo by Aaron Hemens

The salmon eggs sent from the Colville Tribes’ hatchery roughly doubled the ONA hatchery’s chinook population compared to last year, when it had just 6,500.

kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery stores the transferred roe in an incubator, where water temperatures are gradually increased from 3 C to 10 C over the course of a few weeks, to help support their development.

The fish are expected to hatch around the end of this month, and will remain housed at the hatchery until June. Once they weigh between three to five grams, the ONA plans to release them into suwiw̓s (Osoyoos Lake).

The adult fish are expected to return between 2029-31.

Although much of the Okanagan River has been channelized — engineered to straighten the waterway — there’s a more naturally flowing portion north of Osoyoos Lake, in the town of “Oliver.”

It’s there that Marsel said the fish like to spawn.

Even if the fish can’t make it upriver past Osoyoos Lake, they’ll still reach the Chief Joseph Dam and Colville hatchery downriver.

“Some of our fish that we’ve released from our facility have gone into Chief Joseph Hatchery’s program,” Marsel said.

Baby chinook salmon swim in a raceway at the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s kł cp̓əlk̓ stim̓ Hatchery in snpink’tn (Penticton) on Jan. 16. Photo by Aaron Hemens

He added that “every fish counts,” especially when it comes to chinook. The species is a key cultural figure for the syilx Okanagan Nation, being ntytyix (Chief Salmon) of the Four Food Chiefs.

“People don’t realize how rare they are, and a lot of people don’t even know that there’s chinook in the system,” he explained.

While much attention has been paid to sockeye salmon restoration efforts, Marsel said chinook hold a particularly important place in the culture.

“For the syilx Nation and all the people here, it means so much more,” he explained. “Not that sockeye aren’t important, but ntytyix holds a lot more meaning.”

The partnership to help chinook recover by sharing eggs hasn’t just transcended the border, however. It might also be helping transcend some political divisions between First Nations.

In recent years, the Sinixt Confederacy of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation has at times been at odds with ONA, over legal and territorial claims related to the historically displaced Sinixt Nation, and which tribal council represents its descendants.

In recent years during the hatchery partnership’s decade, the tensions have resulted in chinook egg transfers being withheld, Marsel said — but he firmly believes the two tribal governments realize working together for salmon outweighs their inter-governmental disagreements.

“We have this same common goal,” he said. “Working together is what’s going to make it better.

“To have the collaboration is extremely important, not only for the people but definitely the environment, the salmon [and] everything that thrives off the salmon.”

But long before the two modern-day tribal organizations were formed, Marsel said Indigenous communities in the region always supported and traded with one another.

“We have family down in Colville Confederated Tribes,” he said. “There was trading constantly across that imaginary line that’s now put up.

“It’s not like this is a new thing where we’re working with Colville Confederated Tribes — but it’s exciting that now we’re working together for a common goal, and that’s conservation.”

The post Across a colonial border, First Nations share salmon eggs to bypass dams appeared first on Indiginews.

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Last Updated on January 22, 2026 A coalition of Nigerian and international environmental groups is calling for urgent action to protect Indigenous forest defenders and stop alleged illegal logging in the Ekuri Forest, a biodiverse rainforest once held up as a model of community-led conservation. The Global Forest Coalition (GFC), citing reports from the Emerging […]

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Corn is a colossal grain in the global food and feed chain, with the U.S. producing roughly 30% of the world's supply, or nearly 278 million metric tons in the 2024–25 growing season alone. But its journey from wild grass to staple crop began in central Mexico with teosinte (from the Nahuatl word "teocintli," meaning "sacred corn"). Over thousands of years, domestication and selective breeding transformed teosinte into the corn we enjoy at backyard barbecues today.

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For the ArchaeoSpain research team, it was a day just like any other on their dig at the castle of Zorita de los Canes (Guadalajara). They were working at the Corral de los Condes, where some knights from the Order of Calatrava are buried, when they came across some highly unusual human remains. Accompanying an apparently normal adult skeleton, was an extraordinarily narrow and elongated skull, 23 centimeters long and only 12 centimeters wide.

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Police and prosecutors from Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname have arrested nearly 200 people in their first-ever joint cross-border operation targeting illegal gold mining in the Amazon region, authorities said Thursday. The operation was backed by Interpol — the international police cooperation agency that helps law enforcement agencies in different countries share information and coordinate investigations — as well as the European Union and Dutch police specializing in environmental crime. Carried out in December, it involved more than 24,500 checks on vehicles and people across remote border areas and led to the seizure of cash, unprocessed gold, mercury, firearms, drugs and mining equipment, Interpol said. Among those arrested were three men detained in Guyana on suspicion of gold smuggling and money laundering after officers seized unprocessed gold and about $590,000 in cash. Investigators said the suspects are believed to be part of an organized crime group and may have links to a major gold exporting company in Guyana. Illegal gold mining has become a major driver of deforestation and river pollution in the Amazon, contaminating waterways with toxic mercury and damaging lands relied on by Indigenous communities. In recent years, the activity has expanded rapidly as global gold prices climbed to near-record highs, pushing miners deeper into remote forest regions and turning gold into one of the most profitable commodities for organized crime operating across borders. “Illegal gold mining is growing rapidly and causing serious harm to the environment and local communities, especially in remote and fragile areas,” Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said in a…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Men assess potential rivals that have a larger penis as more of a threat, both physically and sexually, according to a study by Upama Aich at the University of Western Australia and colleagues, published in PLOS Biology.

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The extension of the StrongHearts Native Helpline aims to keep culture and the reality of rural communities at the heart of its service.

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Emergency responders will offer people medication to help them make it through a critical window when overdose survivors are at high risk of dying.

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Political compromise isn't a reason to restrict free speech, Judge Adolf Zeman says in Thursday ruling.

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Alaska is set to receive $273 million per year for five years from the program, created as part of President Trump's spending- and tax-cut law passed this summer.

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Nonpartisan analysts say Mary Peltola has a fighting chance but that Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan has the edge in a state President Trump won handily.

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People have long said that "bread is life." Now, researchers at Tufts University are using the bubbling mixtures of flour and water known as sourdough starters to explore what shapes life at the microscopic level. Their findings, published in Ecology, demonstrate a simple way to predict how microbial species will live together, providing insights that could inform baking, food safety, and human health.

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The diversity of water strider species apparently developed as early as the Cretaceous period, much earlier than previously thought. SNSB researchers have succeeded in clarifying the phylogenetic history of this insect family, with molecular analyses providing comprehensive insights into their relationships and evolution. Their study has now been published in the journal Systematic Entomology.

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Mangroves, typical of tropical and subtropical latitudes, have become veritable natural traps for land- and sea-based waste. The roots of these trees, known as mangroves, have a great capacity to trap litter—from both land and sea—which gradually breaks down until it is buried in the muddy bottom.

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Our planet is unique for its ability to sustain abundant life. From studies of the rock record, scientists believe life had already emerged on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably much earlier.

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A new global study shows that increasing soil salinity is systematically reshaping the storage and distribution of soil inorganic carbon (SIC), a key but often-overlooked part of terrestrial ecosystems. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 20, provide the first comprehensive global assessment of how soil salinization influences inorganic carbon storage and highlight its implications for the global carbon cycle.

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