"A huge poplar tree stands proud in Maribel Ek’s courtyard, adorned with a sign that reads: “Florece desde adentro” (“It blooms from within”). Deep underground, the tree’s long roots search for the water that makes this land special: a sinkhole lake, known as a cenote."

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"Human-caused global warming helped increase dry conditions on every continent, scientists said in a new report, as talks on halting desertification were underway in Saudi Arabia."

"A common pesticide coating on corn and soybean seeds has leached into Minnesota waterways, threatening pollinators and aquatic ecosystems, according to a report released this week by the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council."

"The Bureau of Land Management is required to auction off opportunities to drill in the Alaska wildlife refuge by the end of this year under 2017’s Tax Cuts and Job Act."

"After the loss of key federal wetlands protections in 2023, scientists are warning the damage this change could bring to wetlands would also bring billions of dollars of flood damage with it. According to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, there are 30 million acres of wetlands across the upper Midwestern United States providing crucial flood prevention benefits, whose loss could potentially cost the region more than $22 billion annually."

"The Biden administration is proposing to raise a key threshold determining how much of a pesticide that’s commonly used in the agriculture industry the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds concerning in the environment — spurring ire from some environmental advocates."

"In humanity’s war against rats, other animals are often collateral. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its final biological evaluation on rodenticides on Nov. 22 and found that the rat poisons are jeopardizing at least 78 endangered species such as black-footed ferrets and California condors."

"Marine biologist Monica Biondo has spent more than a decade studying the multibillion-dollar market for these colorful fish, which pulls thousands of species from the ocean each year."

"US regulators made “significant” errors in adopting a new rule four years ago around the release of genetically modified crops, and must now strengthen oversight, a federal court ruled this week."

"For millions of years, North America was home to a zoo of giants: mammoths and mastodons, camels and dire wolves, sloths the size of elephants and beavers as big as bears. And then, at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch about 12,000 years ago, most of them vanished."