"On a Panamanian beach long after dark, a group of undergraduate students dug into the sand to excavate a sea turtle nest, their lamps casting a soft red glow as they studied eggs, inventoried the success of the hatch and checked for any surviving hatchlings stuck at the bottom of the nest. Nearby, armed members of the National Border Service stood watch for protection in an area known for drug trafficking."

"America’s renewable energy drive needs more than a million miles of new transmission lines but emerging resistance includes opponents worried about building them in one of the country’s richest areas of ice-age fossils."

"Funders thought watching bats wasn’t important. Then she helped solve the mystery of a deadly virus."

"Numerous global reforestation efforts are underway, but research suggests getting long-term benefits is harder than it looks, and some projects can do more harm than good."

"The Biden administration has paused finalizing an environmental impact statement for a controversial copper mine in Arizona in order to meet with opposing tribes and review the Forest Service’s consultation."

"The seven states that depend on the Colorado River announced on Monday that they have reached an agreement on cutting water use from the river over the next three years to prevent reservoirs from falling to critically low levels."

"If there’s new hope, it’s blurry. What’s certain: The roller coaster tale of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a majestic bird whose presumed extinction has been punctuated by a series of contested rediscoveries, is going strong."

"Humanity is ramping up the risk of global health disasters by intruding deep into the world’s bat habitats, breeding grounds for deadly viruses."

"Festival organizers are trying to block plans to build a clean energy plant in the Nevada desert, highlighting the struggle to combat climate change and the cost of clean power."

"One of the darkest towns in America lies roughly 100 miles north of Reno, where the lights are few and rarely lit until one week each summer when pyrotechnics and LEDs set the sky and mountains aglow.

"It is one of the defining competitions of our age: The countries that can make batteries for electric cars will reap decades of economic and geopolitical advantages. The only winner so far is China."