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The war with Iran has brought shipping traffic to a virtual standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Persian Gulf channel through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows. That has sent fossil fuel prices surging — and with them, the potential for profit.

The price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, is up more than 10 percent since the conflict started almost a week ago, and natural gas prices in some places, especially Europe, have doubled. U.S. consumers are already feeling the effects, with gasoline around 27 cents per gallon higher than before the war. But industry analysts say that, at least in the short-term, higher prices could be a windfall for producers that aren’t dependent on Persian Gulf supplies, such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and the French company Total.

“If you are operating, if you’re producing, and you’re going to enjoy higher prices for your product, you are going to benefit,” said Abhi Rajendran, who leads oil market research at the analysis firm Energy Intelligence and is a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “These high prices are going to be good for energy companies in general.”

Energy stocks are to some degree reflecting those price jumps, with firms like Venture Global and Cheniere Energy seeing notable gains this week. An analysis by the EnergyFlux newsletter, for example, found exporters and traders of American liquified natural gas are set to earn nearly $1 billion more per a week based on higher prices. Refineries in the region have sustained damage that will make that business more profitable for companies located elsewhere too.

The stock gains aren’t ubiquitous. Exxon Mobil, for example, is down slightly and Chevron has been hovering around its pre-war price. Those more tepid responses could be due to a range of factors, such as geopolitical uncertainty or increased refining costs that come with high prices, but even those companies are probably selling their product for more than they were last week.

“You are opportunistic in a sense. You see a price spike and you want to capture that upside,” said Vincent Piazza, senior equity analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. At the same time, he said, “I don’t think anyone is happy with volatility.”

Shell declined to comment, and none of the other companies named in this article responded to requests for comment. But Piazza said long-term oil and gas futures show that investors expect stabilization, meaning that the gains companies are seeing now may not last. “It provides them with a modest short-term windfall,” he said. In the 12-month futures market,“prices in the latter months haven’t changed.”

Both Piazza and Rajendran made comparisons to the war between Russia and Ukraine. Energy prices skyrocketed at first — far more than they have so during the Iran conflict — but eventually moderated. That also implies, of course, that there is still plenty of room for the current situation to continue to escalate before it improves.

President Trump has said US and Israeli strikes could continue for four to five weeks. More than a thousand people have died in Iran since the United States and Israel launched their attack Saturday. Iran’s retaliatory strikes throughout the region have killed more than a dozen civilians and six American troops.

The energy impacts have so far been relatively temporary, said Piazza, and confined mostly to delays in delivery. Prices are already coming down off their initial spikes. But if, say, a major gas port in Qatar or oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is severely damaged or destroyed, that would drastically change the outlook. A prolonged war could also cause countries like Iraq to shutter production that couldn’t easily reopen. EnergyFlux says that if Qatari gas remains offline into the summer, companies could see as much as $20 billion more in profit each week compared to before the war.

“What’s delayed, what’s disturbed, and what’s destroyed, I think that’s the whole key,” Piazza said of the benchmarks he’s watching as the conflict continues. “Think of it as a massive storm hitting the Gulf Coast as opposed to a tsunami that wipes out entire sections of infrastructure.”

Rajendran also warns that prices could rise high enough that demand slumps, and it backfires on producers.  “Once you start getting to $100 or $100-plus range, then it starts becoming economically disruptive even for the oil companies,” he said. For now, he says, “as long as oil prices remain where it doesn’t become disruptive and destructive, oil companies are going to benefit.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Iran war is driving up energy prices. These companies are profiting. on Mar 6, 2026.

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Thousands of birds, including beloved purple martins, died in "The Great Texas Freeze" of 2021. A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution led by biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, reveals not only the extent of the die-off—up to 27% of the birds' breeding population in Texas and Louisiana—but that recovery may take decades, and that we can expect weather-driven mass mortality events, increasingly common in the era of global climate change, may increasingly wreak havoc on animal populations.

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Miles Morrisseau
ICT

Crystal Shawanda burst onto the Canadian music scene nearly 20 years ago with a hit debut country record, a certified classic, charting on both sides of the border.

Despite big record company pressures to keep making hit country records, however, she went to the blues to find her joy.

The blues brought her a whole new group of fans worldwide, along with additional recognition from her peers and the music industry. Her latest release, “Sing Pretty Blues,” is nominated for a 2026 Juno Award for Best Blues Album of the Year at the upcoming music celebration of the best in Canadian music.

Shawanda, Ojibwe/Potawatomi, believes that the new record is connecting with audiences who are looking to find joy in resilience.

 “This new album is called ‘Sing Pretty Blues,’ and I think there’s like a commonality of strength and resilience and finding the courage to feel joy again when you’ve been through so much,” Shawanda told ICT from her home in Nashville, Tennessee, about the title track.

“We wrote this song about a conversation I had with a photographer as I came off stage. He was like, ‘Hey, Crystal, that was a fantastic show, think I got a good shot of you, but I’m not really sure because you don’t really sing pretty. So sometimes it’s hard to get a good pic of you,’” she said.

Shawanda was at first angered by the comment, but then turned it into a positive and agreed with it.

“I don’t sing pretty,” she said. “When I get up on stage, I’m very passionate and I make all kinds of weird faces. I don’t really care what I look like because, you know, it’s not just a show,” she said. “I’m healing a different part of myself, and healing is not always pretty.”

It has been this honesty in her work that has helped her cultivate fans around the world. In Canada, she is among the most iconic First Nations female Indigenous artists in history.

‘Very eclectic’

Shawanda didn’t just show up; she exploded.

Her first single is a certified country classic,  a Canadian version of “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the George Jones song that can break you at moments of weakness.

Another song, “Let Go Now,” from her first record, “Dawn of a New Day,” tells of signature times in life when a loving father understands that his daughter is growing up and he “can let go,” from riding a bike, to getting married and to a final death bed scene. The song charted on both sides of the border and has remained an important part of her repertoire.

“I still get messages every day from people who are just discovering the song now. And that’s incredible,” she said. “You know, I hear stories at my meet and greets, of what the song has meant to people. It’s been really good medicine for a lot of people. And I feel like people hear it when they’re meant to hear it, when they need to hear it.”

First Nations singer Crystal Shawanda performs on-stage during the 2012 Canada’s Walk of Fame on Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012, in Toronto. Credit: Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP

Shawanda grew up in the Wikwemikong Unceded territory on Manitoulin Island, the largest freshwater island in the world, in a house filled with music.

“I grew up in a home where we listened to all styles of music. It wasn’t just one genre.” she said. “There was just good music and bad music. And my family had very high standards of what they listened to.”

Her parents listened to traditional country music, such as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline. Her oldest brother listened to B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Etta James. Another brother listened to Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Steve Earle.

“It was very eclectic,” she said. “I’m very much a product of that.”

It is the blues, however, that is the foundation of the contemporary music that has connected most deeply to Shawanda at this point in her career. She believes that Indigenous people connect with music because of a shared history of oppression with African-Americans who created the sound.

“The Black community, they created this genre of music to inspire themselves, to keep themselves going when life got tough. And I think we as Indigenous people really connect to that because we know what it’s like, “Shawanda said. “We’re looking for inspiration, ‘How do we rise above our oppression?’”

Looking ahead

Shawanda has been nominated and won numerous awards throughout her career. In 2008 she won Female Artist of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Awards and a Canadian Radio Music Award for Best New Country Artist the following year. She has won numerous Aboriginal People’s Choice awards and Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards.

In 2013, she took home her first Juno in the category of Best Aboriginal Album of the Year for her release, “Just Like You.”

She won the Blues Album of the Year in 2021 for “Church House Blues.” and was nominated again in that category in 2022 for her album, “Midnight Blues.”

The Juno Awards will include events in Hamilton, Ontario, throughout the final weekend in March, including the Indigenous Honoring Ceremony on Saturday March 28. The awards show is on Sunday, March 29, and will be broadcast live on CBC and CBC Gem.

The post First Nations artist Crystal Shawanda sure does ‘Sing Pretty Blues’ appeared first on ICT.

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You might appreciate snowpack as something to sled, ski, or snowboard on. But beyond the slopes, vast masses of snow melt as winter turns to spring, feeding rivers and streams, which go on to hydrate towns and cities and crops. We’re talking incredible amounts of water: California, for instance, gets 30 percent of its supply from the snowpack in its Sierra Nevada mountains.

But across the American west, that bounty is in trouble as the climate quickly changes: The region is currently in the grip of a severe snow drought, as more precipitation falls as rain. At the same time, higher temperatures are desiccating the landscape, fueling massive wildfires once all that snow melts away. Not helping matters is a long history of fire suppression — quickly stamping out blazes has allowed dry vegetation to accumulate, adding yet more fuel to the flames.

Scientists seem to have found a way to help alleviate the West’s fire and ice problems simultaneously, at least in Washington state. Working in the forests of the Cascade Mountains, researchers divided plots on the south and north slopes of a ridge and thinned their vegetation to varying degrees: Trees like ponderosa pine and Douglas fir were left different distances apart, for instance, determining how dense the growth could be. (The image above shows what the landscape looked like to start, and the two below show different intensities of thinning.) After the pack formed, they measured the thickness and density of the snow in each plot. That way, they could show the difference between an area where trees were, say, 15 feet apart versus 30 feet, and compare those plots to ones that hadn’t been thinned at all.

Western states will no doubt be interested in what these researchers found: up to 30 percent more snowpack on the thinned plots compared to the areas left unkempt. Scaled up, that would mean an additional 4 million gallons of water per 100 acres of forest. Furthermore, the researchers identified a sweet spot, where foresters would get similar benefits with a tree spacing anywhere between 13 and 52 feet. “It gives foresters a lot more flexibility in how they can manage their trees, depending on what species are there,” said Emily Howe, an aquatic ecologist at the Nature Conservancy, who coauthored a new paper describing the research. (The Conservancy owns the property where the study occurred.)

This density mimics what happened naturally on these landscapes before humans showed up, when vegetation would grow and die back, accumulating as tinder. All it took was one lightning strike to get a conflagration going. “We’re not talking like big, catastrophic wildfires that burn everything in their path, because it happened so frequently,” said Susan Dickerson-Lange, director of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington and coauthor of the paper. “These fires naturally clear out some of the underbrush. They burn some of the trees, but not all of the trees, leaving this very sort of patchy dynamic.”

Scientists compared snowpack in forest areas that underwent moderate thinning (left) compared to heavy thinning (right), which increasingly opened up the landscape. John Marshall

That gentler ecological reset would do two things: Prevent the giant, landscape-obliterating blazes we’re coping with today, and boost biodiversity by making space for new vegetation, which would in turn attract grazing animals like deer. Indigenous peoples knew this well, and have a long history of using controlled burns to mimic the natural wildfire process. Indeed, they’ve been instrumental in getting fire agencies to do more of this kind of management lately.

In Washington, these researchers did their work with lidar, in which an airplane or drone fires lasers at the ground and measures what bounces back. Because scientists know the speed of light, a laser pulse traveling just a fraction of an inch farther comes back as a reading of a different elevation. The researchers first created a map of the area without snow, then another with the pack in place — combining the two provided an extremely detailed look at the depth of all that white stuff at any one spot. Lidar also mapped the tops of the trees, providing a snapshot of the vegetation. “It’s pretty neat — it’s almost like as if you drape a sheet over all of the trees,” Dickerson-Lange said. “So we could both look at how the canopy changed from forest thinning, as well as how the snow changed from forest thinning.” (Figuring out the density of the snow required a bit more work: The researchers had to actually visit the site and take samples.)

Previous research has found that depending on where you are on the landscape, a forest can either accelerate or delay the melting of its snow. Shade, for instance, will preserve it, but the trees also absorb and radiate solar energy, which melts it in unshaded spots. “That snow pack on the ground, even if it’s discontinuous in patches in between trees and the open gaps, it’s serving as a nice time-release storage mechanism of water,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist who studies weather and wildfires at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, but wasn’t involved in the research.

Overall, the new research finds that thinning this particular forest led to a net gain of snowpack. That’s because if the trees were crammed together, their crowns would intercept more snow, some of which would evaporate away without touching the ground. With more gaps, more snow can reach the forest floor and accumulate through the winter.

Still, scientists will have to do more research to figure out if the same goes for other regions — not only does every state have its own unique climates, but every forest is unique, too. And even different parts of the same forest will interact with snowpack in different ways. “This is why this is a very complex topic, and it’s very difficult to take the results from one site and try to generalize and apply that over a large spatial scale,” said Safeeq Khan, a hydrologist at the University of California, Merced, who wasn’t involved in the research but does similar experiments.

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Interestingly, the researchers found a significant difference between the plots on the north and south slopes: While the former saw that boost of 30 percent, the latter saw about half that. Dickerson-Lange said that forest managers have tended to do more thinning on south-facing slopes, because they have a tendency to be drier and more prone to burn. “But these data suggest that there’s potential for greater water benefit to do heavier, more intense thinning on the north-facing slopes,” Dickerson-Lange added.

The urgency here is real, as climate change dramatically alters how much snow falls on the American west (the Cascades could lose half of its annual snowpack in the next 70 years), how long it lasts, and how much of the water eventually makes it to human populations. For researchers, then, snowpack is a rapidly moving target. “Eventually we are going to move to a point in a couple of decades where these snow-dominated ecosystems become rain-dominated, and now those dynamics are going to be different,” Swain said. “This winter is a great example of a year where, unfortunately, this effect was largely irrelevant, because really, there’s just no snow pack at that level at all.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why thinning a forest could get you more drinking water on Mar 6, 2026.

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It infects nearly one-third of the global population, yet its microscopic size makes the parasite difficult for scientists to study. That parasite is Toxoplasma gondii, a widespread organism that infects humans and animals. To better understand how it functions, infectious disease researchers at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine adapted a fluorescent imaging system typically used to study human cells to observe the parasite's growth in real time—paving the way for future treatments.

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Civil Eats has long told the stories of people whose valuable contributions to the food system are overlooked. As we approach International Women’s Day this Sunday, March 8th—during the United Nations’ International Year of the Woman Farmer—we want to shine a spotlight on women farmers and food producers shaping the food system.

Women are in the minority in U.S. agriculture, comprising 36 percent of farmers, according to the most recent (2022) U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Because of historic and systemic discrimination, only 5 percent of farmers are people of color, making BIPOC women in agriculture even rarer. 

Despite the numbers, women in ag make an outsized impact: Whether ranching, farming, raising oysters, beekeeping, or building farmworker power, women often take a collaborative approach that brings others along and benefits both their communities and the environment.

Here are our most important stories about women farmers from the last several years, in chronological order.

Debbie Clay is a farmer in Stony Creek, Virginia. When her father died in 1998, Clay inherited 110 acres. (Photo credit: Kate Medley)

The Inspiring Women Reshaping the Food System
From farmworkers and graziers to entrepreneurs and advocates, these women are leading the change for more just and sustainable food.

Once on the Sidelines of Farming, Women Landowners Find Their Voices
Half a million American women rent land to tenant farmers. Now, a handful of conservation groups are working to empower these rural stakeholders to prioritize the air, water, and land.

How an Oregon Rancher is Building Soil Health—and a Robust Regional Food SystemFourth-generation rancher Cory Carman holistically manages 5,000 acres, creating a model for sustainable meat operations in the Pacific Northwest.
Female Farmers are Coming into Their Own—and Networking is Key to Their Success

New data shows more than a third of all U.S. producers are women, and many are supporting each other through in-person connections.

In the Central Valley town of Lindsay, Irma Medellin (left) and Isabel Arrollo-Toland, the mother-daughter team behind El Quinto Sol de America, a farmworker support organization. (Photo credit: Twilight Greenaway)

Meet the Women Building Political Power for Farmworkers in the Central ValleyIn farm country, the mother-daughter team behind El Quinto Sol de America have spent the last 15 years helping their region’s poorest residents advocate for the health and safety of their communities.

Women Chefs and Farmers Are the Backbone of Detroit’s Food SystemHome to an often-unsung network of women and non-binary leaders, the city was a backdrop for a recent dinner series that put them in the spotlight.

After #MeToo, This Group Has Nearly Erased Sexual Harassment in Farm FieldsOn big farms, protecting women and men from sexual violence has required a cultural shift. Our reporter spent weeks with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, documenting their effective methods of education, monitoring, and enforcement.

Meet the Black Women Driving New Ag Policy

A new generation of elected officials is working to benefit disadvantaged farmers and African Americans in their states by serving on agriculture committees, introducing legislation to promote equity in agriculture, and fighting food insecurity.

Lora Kinkade. (Photo credit: Mizzica Films)

Civil Eats TV: Women in Wool
We profile women working the land, with animals, and with wool to create a local fiber shed: ‘If you care about where your food comes, you should care about where your fiber comes from.’

Can Aquaculture Help Women Secure a New Foothold in the Seafood Industry?
Women have long played a crucial role in global fisheries, yet their work remains largely invisible. As a growing number start aquaculture businesses, it’s unclear if the industry will provide a path toward more independence and recognition.

Planting a Life—and a Future—After Prison at Benevolence Farm
The residential and employment program on a North Carolina organic farm helps women adjust to life after prison and learn a vocation.

A Black-Led Agricultural Community Takes Shape in Maryland
An urban farm trailblazer begins building a Black agrarian corridor in rural Maryland, fostering community and climate resilience. Land access was the first step.

Southern Black Farmers Sow Rice and Reconciliation
Jubilee Justice grows rice regeneratively while reclaiming the past.

Kennady Lilly represents the eighth generation to tend her family’s 32-acre farm, Lillyland, in Hempstead, Texas. (Photo credit: Nicole J. Caruth)

This Queer Couple Supports LGBTQ+ and BIPOC Farmers’ Mental Health
LGBTQ+ farmers are at high risk for depression and anxiety, and farmers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color face additional stress. Here’s how two determined farmers in Texas care for their community.

What Bees Can Teach Us About Survival and Well-being
‘The Wisdom of the Hive,’ a new book by two women beekeepers, explores the short, selfless lives of honey bees, defined by mutual caretaking and attunement to the larger ecosystem.

Meet the Women of the ‘Alt Food System’
In her new book, ‘Reaping What She Sows,’ author Nancy Matsumoto documents the women designing systems that benefit communities and the environment.

In Oregon, a Local Seafood Movement Connects Consumers to the Coast
The Winter Waters event series, created by three Portland women, invites Oregonians to understand, appreciate, and support the region’s ocean bounty.

The post Celebrating Women in Agriculture appeared first on Civil Eats.

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The rising popularity of songbird singing competitions in Indonesia has led to the dramatic decline of the white-rumped shama, a bird known locally as murai batu. Mongabay Indonesia video contributor Rizky Maulana Yanuar recently reported that keeping such birds is deeply rooted in local culture. In Javanese society, a man is considered to be successful when he has a job, a house, a vehicle, a wife and a bird, Yanuar reported. Murai batu (Copsychus malabaricus) are highly coveted for their melodic voice and beauty. In contests, the birds are judged on the duration of their song, volume, rhythm, showmanship and physical presentation. Winning these prestigious contests significantly increases a bird’s market value. Champion birds can sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and prizes for the owners can even include cars. While there are plenty of facilities breeding the birds in captivity, buyers say wild-caught birds are superior. This high demand has created a financial lifeline for rural residents facing economic uncertainty. “As a farmer, harvests are very uncertain. Sometimes I have work, sometimes I don’t,” says Peni Mak Lajang, a Sumatran native who turned to poaching murai batu because of the high prices. Peni sold his first murai batu for 800,000 rupiah ($48), back when he could capture five birds in a week. Now, he considers it a “blessing” if he can catch even one in a month. Constant pressure to collect wild murai batu for singing contests has caused them to vanish from most forests across Java and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Wild animal species respond very differently to human development, and as a result, they use ecological corridors in agricultural and urban areas in distinct ways. This emerges from research in Botswana by ecologist Marlee Tucker of Radboud University published in Integrative Conservation.

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This story was originally published by Grist.

Alleen Brown
Grist

The Canadian oil pipeline giant Enbridge will pay Wisconsin law enforcement for riot suits, training, and hours spent policing protests, according to an agreement approved by two counties last week. The secretive arrangement offers an uncapped funding source to local sheriffs as the company prepares for disruptive, Indigenous-led resistance to the controversial Line 5 reroute.

Last Tuesday, Enbridge began construction on a 41-mile segment of Line 5, which carries around 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily from a transfer point in Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. The pipeline is designed to send fossil fuels from Canada’s tar sands region and the Bakken fracking fields to U.S. refineries before shipping much of the refined products back into Canada.

The proposed reroute comes after the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa fought for years to force Enbridge to shut down an existing 12-mile segment of the pipeline that passes through the tribe’s reservation. After several of the pipeline’s easements expired in 2013, the Bad River Band declined to renew them over concerns about a potential oil spill. Enbridge continued operating, and in 2023, a federal judge ruled that the company was illegally trespassing and ordered it to shut down the reservation segment by June 2026.

Enbridge appealed, and last Friday, the same judge that issued the trespass decision lifted the June deadline until the appeal is resolved. Bad River’s leaders want the pipeline stopped altogether, arguing that the reroute would surround the reservation and threaten the tribe’s treaty-protected watershed and wild rice beds. Tribal nations have also joined the state of Michigan in demanding that a separate section of corroding Line 5 pipeline be shut down under the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. However, under President Donald Trump, the federal government has repeatedly weighed in in favor of keeping Line 5 oil flowing. Shortly after taking office, Trump declared a national energy emergency to speed up the development of fossil fuel projects. Under this directive, the Army Corps of Engineers expedited a permit last spring to build a tunnel for Line 5 under the straits. The move prompted several tribal nations in the region to withdraw from pipeline talks in protest.

Anticipating significant public pushback against the reroute construction, Enbridge and the Wisconsin Counties Association negotiated the Public Safety Expense Reimbursement Agreement. The agreement is designed specifically to address the cost of potential protests, allowing police and public safety agencies along Line 5 to submit invoices for an array of expenses. Eligible costs include daily patrols of the construction area, crowd control, police coordination with Enbridge, education programs, and Enbridge trainings on “human trafficking and cultural awareness” — an attempt to thwart transient construction workers who use trafficked women for sex. Firearms, tasers, K-9 units, and recording devices will not be reimbursed.

An account manager appointed by the Wisconsin Counties Association will review the reimbursement requests before Enbridge pays the police via an escrow account.

At Ashland County’s Board of Supervisors meeting last week, about a dozen people spoke out against the account. Riley Clave, a community member, told the board the agreement “would be turning our public service into private security.” Another commenter, Soren Bvennehe, called the agreement “a blatant conflict of interest,” arguing that paying the sheriff’s office incentivizes preferential treatment for the company.

Wenipashtaabe Gokee, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, raised concerns about the disproportionate policing of Indigenous people in the area. She noted that the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office, which would be tasked with policing Indigenous-led protests against Line 5, already has a presence on the Bad River Reservation — in 2017, her 14-year-old nephew, Jason Pero, was killed by an Ashland County sheriff’s deputy in front of his home. “We’re already targeted,” Gokee said during the hearing. She also pointed to a 2019 state law making it a felony to trespass on the property of oil pipeline companies, part of a wave of anti-protest legislation passed nationwide following the 2016 Dakota Access pipeline protests.

Those in favor of the agreement repeatedly expressed their desire to avoid raising taxes or using sparse county resources to police the pipeline. County officials asserted that they would rather have local law enforcement respond to protests than private security. Andy Phillips, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Counties Association, estimated the counties will face “millions” in pipeline-related public safety expenses. The agreement includes no cap on reimbursements and does not specify that the money has to come from Enbridge. “We didn’t care where it came from,” Phillips said, so long as the burden did not fall on taxpayers.

Bayfield County Sheriff Tony Williams noted his chief deputy is already making a list of equipment, including helmets and shields. “I think that cost was up to $60,000,” Williams said, adding, “I don’t know if it’s fair to put the cost back on the community and the taxpayers if we can get a billion-dollar company to pay us back.”

Ashland and Iron counties ultimately approved the agreement, while Bayfield County rejected it.

The approved agreement includes a clause stating that all communications regarding the reimbursements are highly confidential, citing unspecified risks to public health and safety. “The clause in the agreement is wildly over broad,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, arguing that it looks like an attempt to “tip the balance” of the state’s public records laws.

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said, “Enbridge does not believe local communities and taxpayers should be saddled with these extra costs associated with Line 5 construction and offered a constructive solution.”

Funding arrangements like this emerged after the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, which cost North Dakota $38 million in policing and other protest-related bills. The state spent years in court attempting to get the federal government to pay the costs, even after Energy Transfer donated $15 million to offset the bill. In 2019, South Dakota, under then-governor Kristi Noem, drafted legislation to establish a protest-policing fund for the Keystone XL pipeline, before the project was canceled by the Biden administration.

The model was successfully tested in Minnesota during construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion. There, the state Public Utilities Commission established an Enbridge-funded escrow account that ultimately reimbursed $8.6 million to 97 public agencies for everything from energy drinks to zip ties and porta potties.

In the aftermath of Line 3, several people arrested during the protests pursued legal motions arguing that the escrow account created an unconstitutional police bias that violated their rights to due process.

While Minnesota’s escrow manager was state-appointed, Wisconsin’s manager will be appointed by the Wisconsin Counties Association — an organization that a judge ruled in 2014 is not subject to public records requests. The Wisconsin Counties Association did not reply to requests for comment.

Dawn Goodwin, a White Earth Nation member who worked with the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network to fight Line 3 in Minnesota, attended the recent Ashland County meeting. She said she watched trust in law enforcement deteriorate in counties that accepted Enbridge’s reimbursements. In her own county, however, the sheriff decided not to submit any invoices to the company.

“Our sheriff told me he took an oath to uphold the First Amendment,” Goodwin recalled. ”He held to that.”

The post Enbridge paid police to protect one pipeline. Now it wants to do it again in Wisconsin. appeared first on ICT.

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Planting trees is a vital strategy to combat both climate change and the biodiversity crisis. As forests grow, they sponge carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide renewed habitat for threatened animals, plants, fungi and countless unseen lifeforms. That ability of forests to help slow climate change has driven a push to reforest degraded lands or even plant new forests where none existed before. It’s also spurred other strategies, like the cultivation of bioenergy crops coupled with carbon capture. But these approaches require a lot of land, and they could potentially put pressure on the species that live in these spots — if a forestation project or hectares of bioenergy row crops subsume native grasslands, for example. A recent analysis shows that around 13% of globally important, biodiversity-rich land overlaps with areas earmarked for these types of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects. “It’s unfortunate that we face multiple global problems all at once, including both climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Mark Urban, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut in the U.S., who wasn’t involved in the research. “When we try to fix one, we can make things worse for the other.” Agroforestry in Ethiopia. Image by Trees ForTheFuture via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, used five existing models that guide climate action in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to map out locations tabbed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Woodpeckers are well known for striking tree trunks with remarkable force and precision. These birds deliver thousands of high-speed impacts per day, generating mechanical loads that would destabilize the skulls of most other birds. For decades, this performance has often been attributed primarily to shock absorption mechanisms or unusually resistant skull tissues. A new study led by researchers from the National University of La Plata and Johns Hopkins University suggests that this explanation is more complex than previously thought.

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During the year she spent leading the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, Kristi Noem faced a torrent of criticism. Lawmakers from both parties assailed her for lying about the shooting of protestors in Minneapolis and spending millions of dollars on television commercials. Government audits concluded that she “systematically obstructed” investigations and created security risks at airports.

Now she has become the first cabinet-level official fired by President Donald Trump during his second term. After a combative hearing this week, during which Noem seemed to mislead Congress about whether Trump approved her ad spending, the president fired her.

As DHS Secretary, Noem also raised eyebrows for the unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. She paused most FEMA payments, leading to extensive delays for disaster recovery, and sought to slash the agency’s on-call workforce by thousands of employees. She also expressed a desire to downsize or eliminate the agency entirely, shifting the burden of disaster relief onto the states.

A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal. This week, two Senate Democrats released a report alleging that Noem’s blanket freeze on FEMA payments violated federal law. At the same time, lawyers for a federal workers’ union argued to a federal judge in California that Noem’s workforce cuts also violated the law. In both cases, critics pointed to legislation passed after Hurricane Katrina, which prohibits DHS from interfering with FEMA.

“I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly,” said Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican representing North Carolina, during his questioning of Noem this week.

These accusations will remain relevant if Noem’s apparent successor, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, continues her quest to make permanent changes to FEMA’s structure — a goal that the president has frequently suggested he supports. Though President Trump has in many cases been able to make unilateral cuts to federal programs on a rapid timeline — as with the Department of Education and U.S. Agency for International Development — the post-Katrina law may put FEMA on stronger footing for the rest of the president’s term.

“To my knowledge, DHS has never been involved in decision-making about the FEMA workforce,” said MaryAnn Tierney, a former FEMA official who led the agency’s regional office on the eastern seaboard for more than a decade.

The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 emerged from a series of federal investigations into the agency’s failures after the devastating storm, which killed more than 1,400 people and submerged much of New Orleans. A bipartisan select committee in the House of Representatives found that the agency’s leaders had dithered for days before activating key response measures, and that there were numerous breakdowns in the agency’s chain of command.

Congress also found that FEMA had withered after the Bush administration placed it under the newly-created Department of Homeland Security, where leaders were focused on combating terrorism in the wake of 9/11. As a result, they did very little planning for a major natural disaster like Katrina. State emergency managers testified to Congress that FEMA was “emaciated and anemic” and had been “lost in the shuffle” at DHS.

Congress tried to fix this in 2006 with a law requiring that FEMA leadership have experience in emergency management and giving the agency the ability to report directly to the president during disasters. The law also stated that “the Secretary [of DHS] may not substantially or significantly reduce the authorities, responsibilities, or functions … or the capability of the Agency.”

Noem attempted to do just this. Trump has not nominated anyone to lead FEMA since he assumed office last year — the law requires a FEMA administrator with at least five years of emergency management experience — and has instead designated three different acting administrators, avoiding Senate confirmation and the emergency management experience requirement. The most recent, Karen Evans, has been in office since December. It appears that all three of these acting administrators have taken direct orders from DHS, allowing Noem to fill the leadership vacuum.

“I think Congress never anticipated [that] what has happened would happen, or they would have probably put in more clarity,” said W. Craig Fugate, who led FEMA under the Obama administration and earlier served as the head of Florida’s emergency management agency.

In June, Noem asserted direct approval authority over all FEMA spending transactions that exceeded $100,000 — a total that, given the nature of disaster response, includes most of the agency’s payments. The policy led to an immediate freeze in payments to cities that were rebuilding after recent floods and fires and an almost total halt in new infrastructure projects that will protect against future disasters.

A report released this week by Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Andy Kim of New Jersey found that the spending pause delayed more than 1,000 disaster-related projects. These included the opening of a call center after the July 4 floods that devastated the Texas Hill Country, temporary housing for survivors of Hurricane Helene and the Maui wildfires, and housing inspections for storm victims in places like Missouri. The senators argue that this blanket spending policy violates the post-Katrina law by depriving FEMA of autonomous control over its disaster spending. (After Senator Tillis berated Noem during her Senate appearance, FEMA released around $80 million in Hurricane Helene recovery funding to his state.)

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican representing North Carolina, gestures at a chart during his questioning of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The spending freeze isn’t the only way in which Noem may have violated the 2006 law. In recent months, she also tried to downsize FEMA’s workforce, and in particular its Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery Employees, or CORE workers, who assist with recovery and response operations during major disasters. These workers tend to have their contracts renewed pro forma, but DHS ordered the non-renewal of around 200 such employees’ terms in January. Noem was reportedly targeting a broad cut of 11,000 workers — half the agency’s workforce.

A union of federal employees sued over the recent firings, arguing that they violate the post-Katrina law. In a hearing on Tuesday, a federal judge at first said she was inclined to let the firings go forward, but she changed her mind after a federal government lawyer failed to provide even basic information about who is making decisions for FEMA. FEMA’s acting administrator herself said in a sworn declaration that “DHS decided” not to renew the core workers, but the lawyer denied that was the case.

If confirmed as the new DHS secretary, Senator Mullin’s approach to FEMA will face extreme scrutiny from judges and lawmakers. A bipartisan group in the House of Representatives is pushing a bill that would extricate the agency from DHS, giving it full cabinet-level status. New leadership at DHS might also increase the pressure on Trump to appoint a permanent FEMA administrator.

If Trump does move to install a permanent leader, that person will have a lot of work to do to prepare the agency for hurricane season, according to Fugate.

“[Noem] has already broken them,” he said of the agency’s leadership, adding that the loss of many senior officials could leave it vulnerable during a big disaster. “There’s still good people at FEMA, but I just don’t know if there are enough of them, and if DHS has the sense to get out of the way.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Kristi Noem all but killed FEMA. Will her departure save it? on Mar 5, 2026.

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A new study published in Science is challenging long-held assumptions about how we measure genetic risk in endangered species. Researchers analyzed whole genomes from hundreds of koalas, finding that populations previously considered most at risk are now showing early signs of genetic regeneration.

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Little Punch, a seven-month-old Japanese macaque living in the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan, has captured hearts on the internet. Abandoned by his mother in the first few days of his life and raised by the keepers at the zoo, he has had some trouble integrating into the group of around 60 Japanese macaques.

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Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) is among the most damaging pests affecting soybean crops around the world, with current management strategies relying primarily on a very narrow set of resistant soybean varieties, along with crop rotation and chemical nematicides. Now, researchers at the North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, part of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, in Brookings, South Dakota, report new evidence that the key to stronger protection may lie not just in plant genetics or chemicals but in the soil microorganisms surrounding the roots.

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Certain species of wasps and frogs share a pain and inflammation peptide similar to one found in vertebrates to help defend against predators—a discovery that contributes to a shifting view of how evolution works, say researchers. Their paper is published in the journal Science.

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Can the bend of a banana give us insight into cancer? What does the shape of a rice grain have to do with infertility? The proteins that give plants their shape and structure are also involved in human disease. A team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, has mapped out the structure of a key player, augmin, in exhaustive detail. Their work is published in the journal Nature Communications.

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Scientists have discovered a new species of chiton, an ancient marine mollusk that has remained virtually unchanged for the last 300 million years. Chitons have an elongated oval shape with a shell composed of eight interlocking plates that resemble suits of armor. They are found all over Earth, from tropical waters to the polar regions, inhabiting tidal pools and the deep sea. Around 940 living species are known to science.

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Drones flying above the waters of Shetland have captured rare footage of harbor porpoises gathering in unusually large groups and engaging in mating behavior. The footage, gathered between 2019 and 2023, provides one of the most detailed records of harbor porpoise mating behavior ever documented in UK waters.

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The flowering times for many plant species have shifted due to climate change, with most of the change occurring in temperate zones. Researchers assumed the tropics, which are largely the same temperature year-round, would be insulated from such climate change-driven changes to flowering times. However, a new study challenges that assumption. Researchers examined more than 200 years of flowering plant data from herbarium collections of tropical plants across Africa, Asia and South America. They identified 33 plant species with distinct annual flowering times, and recorded data from 8,000 individual plant specimens collected between 1794 and 2024. They found that the flowering times shifted by an average of two days per decade; approximately one-third of the species flowered earlier and two-thirds shifted later. However, there were some anomalies. Brazilian amaranth trees (Peltogyne recifensis), for example, now flower 80 days later than they did in the 1950s. By 1995, the Ghanaian rattlepod shrub (Crotalaria mortonii) flowered 17 days earlier than it did in the 1950s. Study lead author Skylar Graves, from the University of Colorado Boulder in the U.S., said the findings show that herbarium specimens can be used to examine the climate impacts on plants over time. “Herbarium specimens are functionally a global and multigenerational dataset of plants,” she told Mongabay by email. “These specimens can be used for countless purposes, and with enough collections taken … you can use them to compare anything you want at any scale.” The shifts observed in tropical plant flowering times is comparable to those…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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Between 2023 and 2025, more than 30 million hectares burned in Canada due to wildfires. The threat from increasingly frequent and intense wildfires goes beyond fire and smoke—the heat can also transform naturally occurring metals in soil into more toxic forms that could pose a threat to human health.

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The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) recently released a draft report for its fourth recertification of krill fishing in Antarctica by Aker QRILL Company. The certification would allow Aker to put an MSC label on its products that tells consumers the krill came from a sustainable well-managed fishery. However, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), a U.S.-based advocacy group, issued a formal objection to that determination, citing concerns about overfishing of a critical resource in a sensitive ecosystem. “Everything that lives in Antarctica either eats krill or eats something that eats krill,” Holly Parker Curry, ASOC’s marine protected areas campaign director, told Mongabay in a video call. It’s the base of the food chain but krill biomass has . That’s roughly when people started harvesting the tiny crustaceans for aquaculture fish food and dietary supplements for people. Climate change and shrunken sea ice are also contributing the dramatic drop in krill populations; krill depend on sea ice for part of their life cycle. In its said, “Antarctic krill is one of the best managed species in the world … [and] the total catch is limited to below 1% of the total biomass.” Curry said that assessment is strictly accurate, but the devil is in the details. “It’s not just about how much is caught, that’s important too, but it’s really where it’s caught,” Curry said. “A lot of the fishing for krill in the Southern Ocean, it all happens essentially in the Antarctic Peninsula, and in the past two years, it’s become increasingly…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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A new study reveals that habitat fragmentation can lead to sudden "tipping points" where a species' genetic health unexpectedly collapses after appearing stable for long periods. By merging network theory with population genetics, the research identifies detectable "early warning signals" in genetic data that can alert conservationists to an approaching crisis before it becomes irreversible. These findings provide a practical toolkit for monitoring wildlife populations and protecting the genetic diversity essential for animals to survive a changing environment.

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Populations of Rüppell’s vultures have fallen by more than 90% over the past four decades. Knowing exactly where these critically endangered birds breed can allow conservationists to put protective measures in place. But Rüppell’s historically occupied a vast swathe of West, Central and East Africa; finding their remaining colonies is a daunting task. A team of researchers says it has successfully tested a way to find vulture colonies remotely, pinpointing dozens of potential sites across seven countries using open-access satellite imagery. The vultures helped. Like other cliff-nesting birds, their droppings lavishly daub cliff faces below their nests with whitewash. Bulgarian ornithologist Ivaylo Angelov, zoomed in on satellite images of mountainous areas across more than 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles), seeking out cliffs over 20 meters (65 feet) high as well as sites documented in old bird atlases of the region. Ivaylo Angelov studies a Rüppell’s vulture nesting colony in Ethiopia in 2009. Image courtesy of Nikolay Terziev. Angelov and his colleagues pinpointed 232 previously undocumented nesting sites. Most of these were in Sudan, South Sudan and Chad, but they found others in the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. The work took weeks but was “immensely satisfying.” “I love geography, I love travel, and it was an absolute joy for me to zoom in and check all these incredible mountains,” Angelov says. “I had the feeling that I’m there.” In the region surrounding Sudan’s Jebel Marra mountains, in the southwest of the country, the team located…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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March 5, 2026 – The House Agriculture Committee has advanced a 2026 Farm Bill, as Democrats failed to scale back Republican SNAP cuts and to remove protections for pesticide companies against individual lawsuits.

After more than 20 hours of debate, the panel passed the “Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026,” in a 34-17 vote, with seven Democrats joining all Republicans supporting the bill.

The last time the committee advanced a farm bill, in 2024, only four Democrats sided with Republicans. That measure was never brought to the House floor. The latest package includes many of the same provisions from the 2024 proposal. It could face similar hurdles in getting to the full House for a vote.

Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) previously told reporters that House leadership would bring the bill to the floor for a full vote, likely by Easter. But it could also face some challenges within the Republican caucus, over provisions related to pesticides that the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has pressured lawmakers to reject.

Through two days of debate this week, Democrats attempted to roll back policies passed in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) last year that are expected to remove millions of dollars from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In total, the panel spent more than five hours discussing nutrition-related amendments.

Democrats pushed to roll back provisions from the OBBB that add financial burden to states, add work requirements, and otherwise shrink the program. None of these amendments passed.

By leaving the OBBB SNAP cuts in place, lawmakers risk future farm bills, Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) warned members. These cuts have “destroyed” the farm bill coalition that has been key to bipartisan farm bills and that benefit both farmers and families, she said.

“The bill before us today, which continues SNAP cuts, increases hunger in America, could very well be the last farm bill in the traditional sense of the word,” Craig said during debate. “We can be driving the last nail in the coffin of this coalition today.”

Thompson responded to Craig and other Democrats’ critiques by arguing that the food programs of the farm bill represent the bulk of funds in the package. The nutrition title makes up 81 percent of farm bill mandatory spending, according to a 2024 Congressional Budget Office estimate.

“That doesn’t seem like a really strong coalition,” Thompson said. “We disadvantaged the people for decades who actually grow the food that’s consumed.”

During the markup, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) introduced an amendment to cut language protecting pesticide companies from legal claims that their products cause cancer and other illnesses.

Pingree has been successful in stripping similar language from annual appropriations. This time, her amendment failed. The inclusion of the pesticide language in the bill received backlash from some in the MAHA movement, including food activist Vani Hari, who on X called it an “abomination.”

The farm bill must now pass the full House before going to the Senate. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) has said he plans on proceeding with his own farm bill in coming months.  (Link to this post.)

The post House Agriculture Committee Advances a Farm Bill Proposal appeared first on Civil Eats.

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