"At Yosemite National Park in California, one of the oldest and most popular U.S. natural preserves, the workforce is stretched so thin this season that nearly all staffers, even scientists, are required to take turns cleaning campground toilets, according to two people familiar with conditions there."
"President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration plans to “wean” states off Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance after this year’s hurricane season, offering in the most explicit terms yet his plans for states to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies on their own."
"World leaders, scientists and officials gathered on Monday to open the third United Nations Ocean Conference and launch a global appeal to save the world's oceans, which scientists say are in bad health." "Glaringly absent are U.S. scientific agencies like NASA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Their scientists weren't allowed to attend the summit, say organizers."
"Governments are meeting in France to discuss how to protect oceans from harmful fishing practices, like bottom trawling."
A private social media message piqued Arizona Republic reporter Joan Meiners’ interest in rural retirees’ efforts to block construction of a gas-fired peaker plant next to their homes. Her year-long, grant-funded investigation in 2024 uncovered questionable local government actions and utility executive motives, and concluded with action against the facility. Read Meiners’ account of how rural Arizonans became unlikely climate activists, in the latest FEJ Storylog.
Streamflow data gathered by thousands of U.S. Geological Survey gauges helps track the country’s floods and droughts. But it may be lost if the Trump administration follows up on a decision not to renew leases of USGS water science centers that read the gauges and disseminate the measurements. Reporter’s Toolbox on the value of this database and the risk of its loss.
"As a youngster, Barry McCovey Jr. would sneak through metal gates and hide from security guards just to catch a steelhead trout in Blue Creek amid northwestern California redwoods. Since time immemorial, his ancestors from the Yurok Tribe had fished, hunted and gathered in this watershed flanked by coastal forests. But for more than 100 years, these lands were owned and managed by timber companies, severing the tribe’s access to its homelands."
"Before the remnants of Hurricane Helene swamped this town, the Super 8 Motel, wedged between a highway and the Swannanoa River, provided affordable short and long-term housing for dozens of people who couldn't find affordable housing elsewhere."
"Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a congressional committee that the US National Hurricane Center was fully staffed even though key positions are going unfilled as hurricane season begins."
"Crater Lake National Park Superintendent Kevin Heatley has resigned, citing deep staffing cuts he says are unsustainable and damaging to one of the nation’s natural treasures."
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