"Today, under authority of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Real ID Act, the new Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin waived 29 environmental and conservation laws in the Big Bend Sector."

"In administrative cases before DOI, Interior Secretary Burgum intervened to make policy changes that involved or benefited the former legal clients of Karen Budd-Falen, one of his top deputies."

"In a scrubby forest an hour outside the Lithuanian capital on a recent day this spring, excavators were digging ditches and tree harvesters were whirring in an effort to restore a waterlogged, mosquito-infested ecosystem that was drained in the Soviet era. The reason is twofold: to help the climate and to defend the country from invasion."

"Climate change is causing oceans worldwide to warm. But that year, summertime sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico began heating up at about twice the rate seen in the global oceans."

"The Devils Hole pupfish, a critically-endangered species and an icon of conservation, ekes out a precarious existence in Death Valley National Park. There, in the scorching desert, guarded by fences and video surveillance, this fish swims around in a sunken fishbowl made of rock that's been its only natural home for millennia."

"Scott Boyd walks through deep mud where the Stillaguamish River empties into Puget Sound, an arm of the Pacific Ocean."

"In Benin, mangroves are said to be protected by the Zangbéto. In the Vodun belief, this deity forbids wood cutting, under penalty of a curse. As a result, in 10 years, more than 500 hectares (1,200 acres) of mangroves have been preserved thanks to this spiritual practice, which protects fragile and vital ecosystems."