This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A 41-year-old man in New Hampshire died last week after contracting a rare mosquito-borne illness called eastern equine encephalitis virus, also known as EEE or “triple E.” It was New Hampshire’s first human case of the …
Read More »Wildfires Are Contaminating Water Supplies
If you stood on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the rumbling water may have appeared black. This slurry of ash and charred soil cascaded toward the reservoirs that supply drinking water for the downstream city of Fort Collins, home …
Read More »Jane Goodall Thinks It’s Not Too Late to Save the World
Jane Goodall understands better than most the impact humans have had on the planet. The world, the primatologist says, isn’t what it used to be. Having witnessed so much environmental deterioration during her lifetime, today Goodall is as much an activist as a scientist. She warns tirelessly of accelerating environmental …
Read More »No, the Seine Cleanup Wasn’t a Failure
When Olympic triathletes plunged into the Seine river close to the Alexandre III bridge in Paris on July 31, they were making history—and not just by going for gold. The event, which also saw the competitors cycle and run along the Champs-Elysées and past the Grand Palais, was far more …
Read More »Polluted Lakes Are Being Cleansed Using Floating Wetlands Made of Trash
On the banks of Nagdaha, a polluted and lotus-infested lake in Nepal, Soni Pradhanang is putting trash back into the water—on purpose. She carefully assembles a platform of styrofoam and bamboo mats, then weaves it together with zip ties and coconut fiber, refuse from nearby tech stores. Then, she pokes …
Read More »Mexico Is So, Hot Monkeys Are Falling to Their Death From Trees
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. Brown howler monkeys are dropping dead by the dozens in southern Mexico. Between May 4 and May 21, at least 138 died, with deaths occurring in places where temperatures have been abnormally high, exceeding 43 degrees …
Read More »In Defense of Parasitic Worms
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Chelsea Wood was a child, she would often collect periwinkle snails on the shores of Long Island. “I used to pluck them off the rocks and put them in buckets and keep them as pets …
Read More »The Earth Is About to Feast on Dead Cicadas
Brace yourselves, Midwesterners: A truly shocking number of cicadas are about to live, make sweet love, and die in a tree near you. Two broods of periodical cicadas—Brood XIX, which is on a 13-year cycle, and Brood XIII, on a 17-year cycle—have started to emerge together across the Midwest and …
Read More »The Honeybees Versus the Murder Hornets
A switch is flicked, and a pharmacy sign flickers to life with a green glare. But this clinic prescribes seeds, not pills. The glass jars lining the shelves of this compact unit in central Plymouth, on the south coast of England, are filled with cow parsley, red clover, and corn …
Read More »Europe Is Struggling to Coexist With Wild Bears
It was around 5 pm on March 15, and the light was fading fast, when Constantin and Tatiana were attacked by the bear. The young couple, aged 29 and 31 and identified in local media reports only by their first names, were Belarusians living in Poland. But Constantin had been …
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