Turtles Have Led Us to Their Secret Seagrass Meadows
P.Lindgren/Wikimedia Commons Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Far from shore, the ocean floor is more than an unbroken swath of sand and mud: It can be blanketed with lush, green carpets of seagrass. These wavy expanses are…
Large-Scale Animal Agriculture Is Threatening Rural Communities. Congress Is About to Make it Worse.
dhughes9/Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Residents of tiny Lone Jack, MO, are fighting a proposal by a local ranch to expand its feedlot from around 600 cows to nearly 7,000. It is the latest in a series of communities pushing back against a national trend toward concentrated animal agriculture.…
The Trouble With Tuna Poke Bowls
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. My first Thanksgiving in the Bay Area, a new friend invited me to share the holiday with her family. Before the potluck meal kicked off, my friend’s Hawaiian grandmother unveiled a bowl of treasure: cubes of succulent raw ahi, or tuna, lightly seasoned with sesame…
The Trump Administration Is Taking Aim at This Amazing Bird So Oil Companies Can Drill Public Land
A sage-grouse male struts to attract a mateBob Wick/ZUMA Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. One weird western bird is again at the center of a battle between conservationists and the federal government. Now, like a lot of environmental causes under the Trump administration, the greater sage-grouse—once a candidate for the…
Your Organic “Cage-Free” Eggs Might Come From Hens Locked Up All Day
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. When you pay up for certified-organic eggs, do you picture a flock of hens scratching outdoors in the grass? If so, I’m here with a sobering reminder: As I reported in 2015, under the letter of organic code, which is developed and enforced by the…
These Popular Pesticides Are Really Bad for the Birds and the Bees
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. As spring approaches, US farmers are gearing up to plant about 180 million acres in corn and soybeans—a combined land mass nearly twice the size of California, mostly in the Midwest. The great majority of the seeds they sow will be coated with neonicotinoid pesticides: synthetic chemicals…