"Half the world's natural pasture land has been degraded by overexploitation and the impact of climate change, putting food supplies and livelihoods in peril, the United Nations body in charge of fighting desertification said on Tuesday."
"A campaign to add 10 billion oysters to the bay by 2025 — naturally purifying the water — is on pace even as Virginia and Maryland contend with agricultural runoff and other pollutants."
"One of the big contributors to the record-breaking global temperatures over the past year—El Niño—is nearly gone, and its opposite, La Niña, is on the way."
"The proposed version of the $1.5 trillion omnibus unveiled last week by House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) includes several priorities of big agribusiness — proposals that frustrated both right-aligned groups such as the Heritage Foundation and left-leaning ones including the Environmental Working Group amid progressives’ and populists’ broader dislike of what they see as crony capitalism at the U.S. farmstand."
"Two conservation groups from Montana and Idaho sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week over commercial grazing agreements in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge that were renewed last year but which the groups say rely on an environmental analysis from 1994 in violation of federal law."
A massive data set that tracks greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is now newly updated, and the latest Reporter’s Toolbox calls it essential for informed reporting on U.S. climate policy. Its three decades-plus of measurements can help journalists track big emitters near them and from a variety of major sources ranging from landfill methane to industrial polluters.
"Swallows, swifts and house martins were once a common sight over UK towns and cities, dextrously catching insects on the wing. But these spring and summer visitors are becoming increasingly rare, according to the definitive survey of the country’s birds."
"California’s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion."
"Recently, the USDA updated its plant hardiness map for the first time in 11 years."
"More than half of Zimbabwe's population will need food aid this year following a devastating drought that led to widespread crop failure as humanitarian organisations seek funding to save many from hunger, the country's cabinet heard late on Tuesday."
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