"Democratic lawmakers and environmental advocates are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to support a bond measure to help pay for billions of dollars in climate programs endangered by the state’s record deficit and deepening budget cuts."

The goldspotted oak borer has spread across Southern California since its discovery in 2008 in San Diego County, where it has slaughtered more than 80,000 trees.

"California has moved a step closer to banning the controversial weed killing chemical paraquat after a key state legislative committee on Thursday [May 16] allowed the measure to proceed."

"On May 7, Patrick Robinson took a boat out to Año Nuevo Island to survey the sea lions that come to birth on this rocky outcropping north of Monterey Bay. The shore was littered with dead pups — babies that looked as though they’d been delivered too early and therefore were too weak and small to nurse, or had been dead at birth."

"Jade Stevens stands at the edge of a snowy cliff and takes in the jaw-dropping panorama of the Sierra. Peaks reaching more than a mile high form the backdrop to Bear Valley, a kaleidoscope of green pastures mixed with ponderosa pines, firs, cedars and oak trees."

"California’s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion."

"An unusual surge in flu viruses detected at wastewater treatment plants in California and other parts of the country is raising concerns among some experts that H5N1 bird flu may be spreading farther and faster than health officers initially thought."

"Beyond a chain-link fence topped with spiraled barbed wire, swaying coastal grasses conceal a cache of buried radioactive waste and toxic pesticides from a bygone chemical plant."

"A coalition of Republican state attorneys general on Tuesday announced two lawsuits against the Biden administration and the state of California challenging emissions rules for trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles."

"State officials reported the presence of deadly chronic wasting disease in two wild California deer earlier this week. This is the first time the disease, which has plagued other areas of the nation for years, has appeared in the state’s deer or elk population."