NPR News - Environment

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Breaking news on the environment, climate change, pollution, and endangered species. Also featuring Climate Connections, a special series on climate change co-produced by NPR and National Geographic.
Updated: 6 hours 41 min ago

Trump picks former Rep. Lee Zeldin to be his EPA administrator

Mon, 2024/11/11 - 2:54pm

President-elect Donald Trump said the New York Republican would help push deregulation and support American businesses. Environmental groups decried the nomination.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)

Categories: Environment

Trump's reelection casts a shadow over the start of global climate negotiations

Mon, 2024/11/11 - 4:00am

Trump's return to the White House raises questions about whether the country will continue working on global climate initiatives.



(Image credit: Sergei Grits)

Categories: Environment

'How Wild' podcast explores the history of the wilderness and its future

Sat, 2024/11/09 - 4:39pm

A new podcast from KALW, explores the history of wilderness and its future.

Categories: Environment

Scientists try to repopulate shorelines with an endangered snail

Sat, 2024/11/09 - 5:58am

On a rare undeveloped point of the California coast, scientists are trying to repopulate shorelines with an endangered marine snail. This type of experimental conservation is becoming more necessary. This story first aired on All Things Considered on November 7, 2024.

Categories: Environment

Scientists try to repopulate shorelines with an endangered snail

Thu, 2024/11/07 - 3:31pm

On a rare undeveloped point of the California coast, scientists are trying to repopulate shorelines with an endangered marine snail. This type of experimental conservation is becoming more necessary.

Categories: Environment

Trump’s victory promises to shake up U.S. energy and climate policy, analysts and activists say

Wed, 2024/11/06 - 12:57pm

Despite Donald Trump’s focus on fossil fuels, his return to the White House won’t derail clean energy, analysts and activists say.

(Image credit: Evan Vucci)

Categories: Environment

Communities in the Amazon struggle amid the second year of a devastating drought

Mon, 2024/11/04 - 3:04pm

A prolonged drought, now in its second year, is devastating large swaths of Brazil's Amazon rainforest. Whole communities and the Amazon’s largest city are struggling under the parched conditions.

Categories: Environment

At the U.N.'s global biodiversity convention, nations pledge to reverse deforestation

Sun, 2024/11/03 - 5:48am

A recent biodiversity meeting acknowledged the serious problem of deforestation while a new report on global environmental threats to trees offered a startling estimate.

Categories: Environment

An Ecological Disaster in the Past and One in the Making

Thu, 2024/10/31 - 1:56pm

We go to the borders between Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan to see the dried up shores of what was once one of the largest lakes in the world, the Aral Sea. Mismanagement of the rivers that fed the sea because of demand for irrigation in the dry region, caused the Aral Sea to slowly disappear. And now an irrigation project being undertaken by the Taliban government in Afghanistan threatens to disrupt the ecological and economic balance of one of the main sources of water in the region.

Categories: Environment

Unprecedented flooding in Spain kills at least 158 people

Wed, 2024/10/30 - 10:33pm

Crews in Spain searched for bodies in stranded cars and sodden buildings as people tried to salvage what they could from homes following monstrous flash floods.

(Image credit: Alberto Saiz)

Categories: Environment

Central Asia’s Ticking Time Bomb: Water

Wed, 2024/10/30 - 2:00am

The Aral Sea has nearly disappeared over the last 60 years. Now, its source rivers are depleting.

(Image credit: Claire Harbage)

Categories: Environment

A wastewater recycling program could be a model for regions where water is scarce

Tue, 2024/10/29 - 2:58pm

The Orange County Water District's wastewater recycling program uses ponds, manmade waterfalls and technology to keep wells from running dry -- a model for other regions facing water scarcity.

Categories: Environment

The story of a village in Kazakhstan that sits on the Aral Sea's shrinking shores

Mon, 2024/10/28 - 2:09pm

Once one of the worlds largest inland lakes, Asia's Aral Sea has evaporated into desert, dried by Soviet era irrigation plans. One village in Kazakhstan sits on the shrinking shores of the Aral Sea.

Categories: Environment

A small, silver lining to the Colorado River drought

Sun, 2024/10/27 - 3:12pm

Land re-emerging from dried out reservoirs seems to be thriving with native plants. They're out-competing invasive weeds that are choking the river elsewhere.

Categories: Environment

The small team caring for some of the last of Hawaii's native snail species

Fri, 2024/10/25 - 12:00am

More than a million species are at risk of extinction, many within decades, because of human actions. Among them? The kāhuli, Hawaii's native tree snails that are some of the most endangered animals on the planet. At one point, there used to be about 750 species of snails in Hawaii — almost all of them found nowhere else. Now, they are rapidly disappearing. NPR climate reporters Lauren Sommer and Ryan Kellman join host Emily Kwong to tell the story of the small team caring for the last of some of these snail species — and their fight against extinction.

Read more of Lauren and Ryan's reporting.

Curious about other biodiversity news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org and we might cover your topic on a future episode!

Categories: Environment

Are biodiversity efforts keeping up with the effects of climate change?

Thu, 2024/10/24 - 2:18pm

This week and next, world leaders are gathering in Colombia for the 16th United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to check up on their collective progress in slowing biodiversity loss.

Can they successfully turn those plans into action against what the United Nations is calling "humanity's senseless and suicidal war with nature?"

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

(Image credit: LARS HAGBERG)

Categories: Environment

A ship will set one more record when it becomes the world's largest artificial reef

Thu, 2024/10/24 - 1:30pm

The SS United States, the fastest ocean liner to ever cross the Atlantic, is preparing for one final voyage. Then it'll be sunk and turned into the world's largest artificial reef.

Categories: Environment

North Carolina government calculates Hurricane Helene damages, needs at least $53B

Wed, 2024/10/23 - 10:07pm

The estimate includes damages and potential investments to prevent similar destruction in future storms.

(Image credit: Mike Stewart)

Categories: Environment

Dengue fever is rare in L.A. That could start to change because of climate change

Tue, 2024/10/22 - 3:10pm
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes have spread into Southern California in the past decade, likely introduced from the U.S. Southeast, where technicians photographed these mosquitoes trapped on a sticky pad. Unlike California's native mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti are capable of spreading dengue fever— a disease common in the tropics, but still rare in most of the United States. Last year was the first time the disease spread locally in Southern California.'/>

Several people caught dengue fever locally in Los Angeles this fall. Climate change and invasive mosquitoes have made that possible, experts say.

(Image credit: John Moore)

Categories: Environment

The Greek island paradise of Amorgos is wrestling with a water shortage

Tue, 2024/10/22 - 3:01pm

Most visitors to Greece's Amorgos don’t know though is that on the island itself, water for household use and irrigating crops is far from abundant. Farmers are struggling to grow crops.

Categories: Environment