People & Population

"Using satellite imagery and data on dozens of factors — including air and noise pollution, park space, open water and tree canopy — NatureQuant has distilled the elements of health-supporting nature into a single variable called NatureScore. Aggregated to the level of Census tracts — roughly the size of a neighborhood — the data provide a high-resolution image of where nature is abundant and where it is lacking across the United States."

"The House on Tuesday approved a package aimed at boosting the nation’s access to outdoor recreation. The bipartisan EXPLORE Act contains provisions that seek to open up more opportunities for spending time in national parks, forests and other public lands."

"With fires growing in size and duration, federal officials in charge of juggling resources and dispatching crews are pivoting to a new business model they describe as the biggest shift in wildfire management in decades."

"Europe's top human rights court ruled on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change, in a decision that will set a precedent for future climate lawsuits."

"Many Yanomami, the Amazon’s largest Indigenous tribe in relative isolation, have been contaminated with mercury coming from widespread illegal gold mining, according to a report released on Thursday by Brazil’s top public health institute."

"Driving slowly on his snowmobile, reindeer herder Nils Mathis Sara spreads animal feed for hundreds of his reindeer gathered in the Finnmark mountain plateau in Arctic Norway - something he wished he did not have to do."

"When a governing body of the International Union of Geological Sciences voted down a proposal to name a new epoch in Earth’s history, it ignored conclusive evidence that for the first time, a single species — humans — has fundamentally altered the planet."

"Delicately and with intense concentration, Zanyiwe Ncube poured her small share of precious golden cooking oil into a plastic bottle at a food aid distribution site deep in rural Zimbabwe." "They’re aiming to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late 2023."

"A highly virulent bird flu first detected in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas this week has spread to additional herds, bringing the number of affected states to five and adding evidence the virus may be spreading cow-to-cow."