"A destructive wildfire near Yosemite National Park burned out of control through tinder-dry forest on Sunday and had grown into one of California’s biggest blazes of the year, forcing thousands of residents to flee remote mountain communities."
"A burn scar in Northern California offers an unsettling glimpse into what forests across the Sierra Nevada could become. Bare tree carcasses are strewn across the dun-colored hills. Rock outcroppings jut out like bones."
"California’s Chinook salmon haven’t been able to reach the McCloud River since 1942, when the construction of Shasta Dam blocked the fish from swimming upstream and sealed off their spawning areas in the cold mountain waters near Mt. Shasta. After 80 years, endangered winter-run Chinook are about to swim in the river once again."
"The largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park was closed Friday and hundreds of people ordered evacuated nearby as a wildfire burning through dense forest became the latest in recent years to threaten the world’s largest trees."
"California regulators have begun curtailing the water rights of many farms and irrigation districts along the Sacramento River, forcing growers to stop diverting water from the river and its tributaries.
The order, which took effect Thursday, puts a hold on about 5,800 water rights across the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers’ watersheds, reflecting the severity of California’s extreme drought.
"Striking a blow against a pernicious form of pollution, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Thursday the nation’s most far-reaching restrictions on single-use plastics and packaging."
In 2006, a local government council in Pennsylvania concerned about sewage sludge dumping enacted the Western legal system’s first formal “rights of nature” instrument. Today, numerous countries have laws recognizing specific rights or even legal personhood for nature. As legal expert Alice Bleby explains, this new perspective arises from a wide range of contexts and plays out in many different ways.
"Forest pathologist Martin MacKenzie strode forward on a narrow path through California’s mythic bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains near the Nevada border, methodically scanning gnarled limbs for the invaders that threaten the lives of some of the world’s oldest trees."
"As California endures water restrictions due to widespread drought, a proposed $2.5-billion reservoir expansion project in Santa Clara County promises to increase the amount of freshwater for more than a million people."
"A bacteria outbreak in two state hatcheries is forcing the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to euthanize about 350,000 rainbow trout, which could affect fishing stock in some state waterways this summer."
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