A running list of endangered rivers becomes an annual starting point for strong local coverage of critical water issues. This week’s TipSheet spotlights the latest additions to an inventory of trouble spots around the United States, plus key angles and issues for coverage, and a selection of top resources.
The Great Lakes are not only the largest fresh water system in the world, supplying drinking water to tens of millions. They also face a range of environmental woes that make them ready fodder for reporters. This week’s TipSheet runs down some ongoing developments, plus key resources to cover them.
"Omirserik Ibragimov fixed his gaze on the hole he had carved out from the frozen Aral Sea. The 25-year-old’s hands moved steadily, pulling out a fishing net that he and his father had left under the solid, snow-covered surface just three days earlier."
"Organizations suing to eliminate the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean have gotten the OK to proceed with a suit designed to reopen the area to commercial fishing, which environmentalists fear could jeopardize preservation efforts."
"A new study says that even in the ‘unrealistic’ event of a total halt to the flow of agricultural chemicals the damage will persist for 30 years".
"A pair of dams in Lane County are at the heart of a lawsuit focused on declines of salmon and steelhead in the Willamette River and its tributaries."
"While the orcas of Puget Sound are sliding toward extinction, orcas farther north have been expanding their numbers. Their burgeoning hunger for big fish may be causing the killer whales' main prey, chinook salmon, to shrink up and down the West Coast."
"Global fisheries output will slump by 20 percent by 2300 and by 60 percent in the worst-hit North Atlantic region if governments fail to slow long-term global warming, a U.S. team of scientists said on Thursday."
"The Chesapeake Bay restoration plan is fueling the most robust resurgence of underwater grasses and submerged aquatic vegetation in the world, according to a new study."
"The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and its partners want to add 10 billion oysters to the bay and its tributaries in Virginia and Maryland over the next seven years."
