Biodiversity

"A year before Greenwater Services got a $1.7 million contract to clean the algae-infected Reflecting Pool, it had received another no-bid government contract to deploy at the trash-plagued Tijuana River."

"Destroying an imperiled species’ nest or habitat is no longer illegal unless it’s intentional under the Trump administration’s rollback of the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act finalized Friday."

"‘Sea cures’ are not new but the idea that exposure to oceans, rivers and lakes can be medicine for the brain is gaining traction"

"Large concentrated hog farms that send manure contamination into local waterways not only impact human health but threaten the existence of more than a dozen endangered species, according to a new study."

"Deep-sea mining threatens to drive to extinction more than half of the snails and other mollusks that rely on hydrothermal vents, according to the latest update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the global scientific authority on the status of species."

"Plastic pollution and drug-resistant infections are usually regarded as separate global crises. But emerging research suggests links between them: Microplastic particles in the environment are colonized by bacteria, and those bacteria develop antibiotic resistance at an unprecedented rate."

"A homegrown catnip lotion has proven “just as effective as Deet” as a mosquito repellant in trials carried out in Uganda."

"At Ashawaug Farm in southwest Rhode Island, Dawn and Cassius Spears preserve their Indigenous knowledge of agriculture through the cultivation and keeping of three Narragansett heritage crops: white corn, succotash beans and crookneck squash."

"Alabama officials are seeking federal permission to fill a stretch of wetlands and streams to move forward on the Birmingham Northern Beltline, a decades-long highway project that critics say is unnecessary and will destroy huge swaths of sensitive forests, wetlands and streams."

"The birds are particularly vulnerable to high temperatures, and France’s torrid June took a heavy toll."