"Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the desert Southwest."

"A Washington resident who was the first human case of bird flu in the U.S. since February died on Friday, state health officials said. The person was an older adult with underlying conditions and had been hospitalized since early November with a strain that was previously reported in animals but never before in humans."

"The Trump pick to lead the land management agency has ties to anti-government extremists"

"New data is adding to regulatory concerns about potential human health risks from the weed killer paraquat, leading the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to seek more information from manufacturers of the pesticide."

"More than 300 lobbyists for food and farming organisations have participated at this year’s United Nations climate talks, known as COP30, taking place in the Brazilian Amazon, where agribusiness is the leading cause of deforestation, a new investigation has found."

"State officials are failing to protect the health and safety of thousands of young field laborers, an investigation has found."

"To many locals, the Los Angeles River — hugged by concrete embankments and heavy vehicle traffic — hardly seems like a river at all. ... But when Doug Rosenberg came upon a shopping cart tipped over in the river's shallow waters back in 2020, he saw the potential to meet nature halfway."

"President Donald Trump’s administration moved Wednesday to roll back protections for imperiled species and the places they live, reviving a suite of changes to Endangered Species Act regulations from the Republican’s first term that were blocked under former Democratic President Joe Biden."

"California farms applied an average of 2.5m lb of Pfas “forever chemicals” per year on cropland from 2018 to 2023, or a total of about 15m lb, a new review of state records shows."

"In some states, more than 90 percent of wetlands could be excluded from safeguards provided by the Clean Water Act."