"The National Park Service on Monday reinstated mask requirements, ordering visitors at national parks around the country to don face coverings when they are inside buildings or in crowded outdoor spaces."

"Washington D.C is a river city, built at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia. Once upon a time, it was also a stream city, laced with a vast network of tributaries. Roughly 70% of those historic streams disappeared as the city developed, according to a new District-funded project to document and map the D.C.’s forgotten waterways."

"At the peak of the whaling industry, in the late 1800s, North Atlantic right whales were slaughtered in their thousands. With each carcass hauled on to the deck, whalers were taking more than just bones and flesh out of the ocean. The slaughtered whales had unique memories of feeding grounds, hunting techniques and communication styles; knowledge acquired over centuries, passed down through the generations, and shared between peers. The critically endangered whale clings on, but much of the species’ cultural knowledge is now extinct."

"How much natural gas drilling to allow near the 1,000-year-old architectural ruins of Chaco Canyon, important to many Pueblo people, may not be Deb Haaland’s best-known oil and gas dilemma as Interior secretary. But it is likely her most personal one."

"Billions have been spent to protect the beachfront. But inch by inch, water is winning the war."

"Conservationists are accusing federal land managers of illegally withholding information about environmental assessments used to justify plans to create fuel breaks to slow wildfires by clearing forests and shrubs across six western states with little if any public oversight."

"Soil acts as a carbon sink in the global carbon cycle because it locks away decomposed organic matter. But deforestation, various agricultural practices, and a changing climate are releasing it back into the atmosphere and oceans as carbon dioxide, resulting in an imbalance in global carbon budgets."

"There’s a forgotten history that should serve as a warning — wildfire isn’t unique to the West. Now the warming climate is increasing the risk of major wildfires across America. And more people are moving to fire-prone areas without realizing the danger."

"Drought is shrinking one of the country’s largest reservoirs, revealing a hidden Eden."

"For thousands of years, the gray whales of the eastern Pacific have undertaken one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal — starting in the cold waters of the Arctic, then down past the densely populated coasts and beaches of California before finally finding refuge in the warm, shallow estuaries of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. ... Starting in December 2018, this magnificent migration took a fatal turn."