"Hundreds of Arctic rivers and streams are turning bright red-orange, not from chemical pollution, but from naturally occurring iron spilling from long-frozen ground as temperatures warm."
"Costa Rica’s fuel subsidies are funding widespread poaching and overfishing in supposedly protected waters."
"Regulators voted Thursday to extend a shutdown preventing New England fishermen from catching shrimp, a historic industry that has recently fallen victim to warming oceans."
"Alaska’s Republican senators are splitting with the Trump administration over an expansive offshore lease plan that would open large swaths of the state’s waters to drilling."
Explore our 10th annual Journalists’ Guide to Environment + Energy, as we scour the beat to identify 15 top stories to put on your radar for 2026. Our updated format for the special report provides a quick read and a broad scope — with insights on climate change and environmental justice, bird and insect declines, data centers and deep sea mining, deregulation and PFAS and much more. Get started here.
"On a jagged coastline in Central California, brown pelicans gather on rock promontories, packed in like edgy commuters as they take flight to feed on a vast school of fish just offshore. The water churns in whitecaps as the big-billed birds plunge beneath the surface in search of northern anchovies, Pacific sardines and mackerel."
"The revised watershed agreement extends pollution-reduction targets and bets on voluntary measures to achieve cleanup goals that have remained elusive for decades."
"Governments at a wildlife trade conference have adopted greater protections for over 70 species of sharks and rays amid concerns that overfishing is driving some to the brink of extinction."
"Eels are the stuff of nightmares — slimy, snakelike creatures that lay millions of eggs before dying so their offspring can return home to rivers and streams. ... Yet they’re also valuable seafood fish that are declining all over the world, leading to a new push for restrictions on trade to help stave off extinction."
"When the Trump administration began freezing federal funding for climate and ecosystem research, one of the programs hit hard was ours: the U.S. Geological Survey’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers." "The centers have been helping to track invasive species, protect water supplies and make agriculture more sustainable in the face of increasing drought conditions. They’re improving wildfire forecasting, protecting shorelines and saving Alaska salmon, among many other projects."
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