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Explore local news, plus state, national, and global environmental developments—including scientific research and good news.
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Explore local news, plus state, national, and global environmental developments—including scientific research and good news.
A coalition of environmental groups scored a win Monday (3/30/26)in a long legal battle when a federal court in California tossed out a set of regulatory rollbacks that undercut Endangered Species Act protections. The ruling comes after nearly a decade of legal combat that began under the first Trump administration…
We are proud to announce that we have achieved accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the highest national recognition afforded to the nation's museums! Accreditation signifies excellence to the museum community, to governments, funders, outside agencies, and to the museum-going public.
Two new analyses show that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has routinely failed to require cancer warnings on pesticide products — even when its own assessments found a high cancer risk for those products. The Center for Biological Diversity looked at labels for all currently approved pesticides, finding that the EPA put cancer warnings on only 69 of 4,919 products …
At Heritage Growers, every acre is being cultivated to repair ecosystems and help the Golden State meet its ambitious conservation goals. This native seed farm in Colusa is tackling one of the most fundamental — and least visible — environmental recovery challenges facing the American West: the shortage of locally adapted native seeds needed to restore damaged ecosystems at scale.
The State of the Global Climate report highlights the significance of record-high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. For the first time, it includes a metric called Earth’s Energy Imbalance as a key climate indicator, measuring the rate at which energy from the sun enters and leaves the planet.
World Wildlife Fund Mexico recently reported that the overwintering population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) increased by a whopping 64% from winter 2024-2025 to winter 2025-2026, as illegal logging has been nearly eliminated in the Monarch Reserve…
In Antarctica a remarkable comeback is taking place. In the very same waters of the Southern Ocean where whalers slaughtered more than 2 million whales during the 20th century, pushing a number of species to the brink of extinction, populations are recovering.
Heat batteries are growing fast in the U.S. MIT spin-off startup Electrified Thermal Solutions, recently unveiled the Joule Hive system, a superhot industrial heat battery which uses custom-designed metal oxide firebricks to convert grid surpluses into storable heat…
A massive 300 MW / 30 GWh iron-air battery system in Minnesota, utilizing technology from Form Energy, is set to become the largest battery system by energy capacity announced globally, providing a blueprint for how Big Tech intends to firm up intermittent renewables to meet the relentless power demands of the AI era….
Chinese researchers have developed a biodegradable bamboo plastic that not only rivals but surpasses traditional petroleum-based plastics in strength and thermal stability while decomposing naturally within 50 days. The breakthrough….. could revolutionize manufacturing by offering a fully biodegradable, renewable, recyclable, and high-performance alternative
Beneath the surface of the planet’s rivers and lakes, the historically heaving migrations of freshwater fish are thinning out. The blubbery-lipped Siamese giant carp of Asia’s Mekong River, the mottled brown goonch of India’s Ganges and the ancient-in-appearance beluga sturgeon of Europe’s Danube River are declining…
Marine scientist Caroline Casey explains how underwater noise from ships and industry disrupts communication among seals, whales, and dolphins. Sound travels vast distances in the ocean, but human noise shrinks this range, impacting survival. Using data and initiatives like Blue Whales Blue Skies, researchers work to reduce noise and protect marine ecosystems.
A sweeping new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) lays out an ambitious, but achievable, economic transformation: investing in the health of the planet could generate at least $20 trillion in annual benefits by 2070…
Changes in the Gulf Stream, a strong ocean current in the Atlantic, could serve as an early warning of the imminent collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is a massive system of ocean currents that acts as a conveyor belt, moving heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic….
Scientists have discovered that American kestrels (Falco sparverius, North America’s smallest falcons) provide substantial benefits to commercial cherry growers in the state of Michigan by eating, scaring off, and generally reducing the local population density of cherry-eating birds like grackles in orchards.
Caltrain successfully electrified 51 miles of track in the Bay Area in 2024. The new electric trains cut 23 minutes off the travel time from San Francisco to San Jose, which has allowed new stops to be added and reduced the time interval between trains at any given station. Overall ridership grew by 60% last year…
Join us for the global film premiere of Katô: Dreams of Dark Earth. This is the fifth film in the Wisdom of the Ancestors series and is set in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
March 18 - A federal judge in Alaska dismissed a timber-industry lawsuit seeking to allow old-growth logging on the Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest temperate old-growth rainforest. Viking Lumber, Alcan Timber, and the Alaska Forest Association sued the Department of Agriculture in an effort to overturn an Obama-era forest management plan for the Tongass…
March 15 …Phoenix, Arizona, obliterated its previous (winter) record (a record set last year) by almost 3 degrees, a pummeling of a record in the realm of three-month temperature data. (When a record is broken) for a three-month stretch.... it should be by a tenth of a degree. That’s how statistics (used to) work on a stable planet. Three degrees is insane.
As of March 1, 2026, 28 states plus DC are considering Utah-style plug-in solar bills as this newsletter long advocated! After months of hard work, a nationwide wave is building to make 2026 the year when plug-in solar becomes accessible in states across America!…
Mike Beck is being honored as the 2025 Innovator of the Year for advancing nature-based solutions that protect coastlines and communities from climate-driven storms and flooding. As director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience, Beck has emerged as a global leader in quantifying how ecosystems such as mangroves, coral reefs, and wetlands reduce storm damage and flood risk….
Santa Cruz startup Wonderfil has set its sights on helping reduce reliance on single-use plastic bottles by making it easier for consumers to refill bottles for products like shampoo, laundry detergent and hand soap. The solution: special refill stations that allow users to use the containers of their choice…
March 11 - Trump may have ordered Washington’s last coal-fired power plant to stay open, but it’s unlikely ever to operate ever again thanks to a crafty bit of policy the Evergreen state just passed. Washington’s Governor Bob Ferguson is expected to sign a bill today that accomplishes one very narrow goal: It taxes the hell out of any electricity generated by the TransAlta Centralia coal plant, effectively pricing it out of the market
The EPA lost more than 4,000 employees in the first year of Trump’s second term, bringing its staffing down to a total of 12,849 — a level not seen since the Reagan administration. That represents a reduction of 24 percent, more than double the rate of losses across the entire federal workforce…
Scientists say warming is increasing faster than at any time in at least 3 million years. There is no guide for what comes next. If humans keep heating the planet with greenhouse gas pollution, the climate swing could lock Earth into a hothouse trajectory, as parts of the system feed on their own momentum, even if emissions are reduced later….
March 5 - Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind assessment of the health of nature in the United States when President Trump returned to the White House. He canceled the report. The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their own and just released a 868-page draft for public comment and scientific review. Many of the preliminary findings are grim…
March 5 - Following the exciting rediscovery of the Santa Cruz kangaroo rat (Dipodomys venustus venustus) in Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve in 2019, Midpen and collaborators at UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo launched a five-year genetics research project to learn more about kangaroo rat populations in Central California….
March 4 — The Department of Interior announced that there were zero bids in today’s Big Beautiful Cook Inlet (BBC1) oil and gas lease sale. This lease sale, held by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), was a product of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s six mandated lease sales in Lower Cook Inlet…
The Brazilian Amazon is on pace to see forest clearing hit a record low this year, government figures show. Officials credit the decline to stepped-up enforcement against illegal deforestation.
The Seymour Marine Discovery Center’s new podcast, “Science, Solutions, Santa Cruz,” debuted March 3, marking the first production to come out of Seymour Studios, a newly built, state-of-the-art recording space located on UC Santa Cruz’s Coastal Science Campus. It was designed to make professional audio and video storytelling accessible to people across the community who lack the technical experience and equipment to produce it themselves.