Earth Island Journal

On the last remnants of Missouri’s prairie, a six-person nonprofit is tracking the disappearance of North America’s fastest-vanishing birds — and looking for a way to save them. Quentin Septer August 25, 2026 BEFORE DAWN, WHILE most of Missouri is still asleep, Matt Longabaugh is already walking a prairie. He wakes around 4 a.m., drives to whatever grassland his crew is surveying that morning, and tries to be in position half an hour before sunrise.

The state’s iconic conifers are regenerating robustly post wildfire, yet a quasi-governmental coalition is pushing to repopulate forests with nursery-raised saplings. Paul Koberstein August 20, 2026 IN OCTOBER 2025, veteran Los Angeles Times reporter Doug Smith stepped into the charred sequoia forests of the southern Sierra Nevada expecting to find a tree species in retreat.

Almost 45 million acres of national forests could potentially be opened to road construction, drilling, and logging. Mark Oliver The Guardian August 19, 2026 The Trump administration said on Tuesday it plans to rescind the “roadless rule” that has protected old-growth forests in the United States for 25 years, potentially opening up almost 45 million acres of national forests to road construction, drilling, and logging.

While rivers across Europe are being restored, Italy’s free-flowing Tagliamento could soon be dammed. Sofia Turati August 18, 2026 ALESSANDRO CIRIANI MOVES like a mountain goat along the rocky spurs that overlook Pinzano Gorge, a couple hours northeast of Venice, Italy. This gorge is the narrowest point of the Tagliamento River, which nearly disappears here before resurfacing across a bed of sand and gravel, shimmering in countless shades of blue.

The West faces extremely high fire potential this season, with a number of major wildfires already burning across the region. No single fire is the same as any other, yet public information about wildfires often lacks geographic specificity and historical context — which are critical to understanding both specific fires and our broader fire reality.

Cross-border conservation collaborations between US and Mexican communities remain unbroken. Gary Paul Nabhan August 13, 2026 ON THE 104-DEGREE Fahrenheit afternoon of July 26, 2026, nearly one hundred people piled in 30 cars, vans, and buses had braved a one-hour drive from Ajo, Arizona to the Quitobaquito oasis at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Pediatric asthma is common in Calipatria, where young athletes compete despite extreme heat and air pollution. Some worry a lithium boom could make things worse. This article originally appeared at Capitol and Main. Rebecca Plevin and Zoë Meyers August 12, 2026 ON A BASEBALL DIAMOND about five miles from the southeastern shores of California’s Salton Sea, 12-year-old Christopher Leon steps up to the plate.

Magazine : Summer 2026 : 1000 words Flows, Old and New Though data is essential to Daniel Coe’s process, his art is also the product of happy accidents and time as a river guide. Mississippi River Meanders Pragathi Ravi DARK, VIOLET CONTOURS emerge atop an orange-hued patchwork of fields. The snaking lines, which follow the meandering course of the Mississippi River, diffuse into lighter purples and lavenders studded with pockets of blinding white, while smaller veins softly branch out.

The Israeli army is unlawfully using deadly white phosphorous and other chemical weapons to destroy farmlands and forests in southern Lebanon, reports reveal. Margaux Seigneur August 6, 2026 ON THE MORNING of October 9, 2023, Oday Abousari, 31, was working on his land in Dhayra, a village in southern Lebanon, when several bombs struck nearby. The farmer’s eyesight quickly became blurred, and a suffocating smell spread around him. “I immediately ran home to take shelter and close the windows.

But electrification poses its own problems, chiefly that batteries powerful and plentiful enough to run everything from cars to homes to industry require vast quantities of critical minerals like graphite and cobalt. And at present and projected rates, we won’t be able to mine these critical minerals fast enough. Consider an optimistic scenario in which we need 85 terawatt-hours (TWh) of battery storage (compared with 140 TWh or more by some estimates) to electrify the global economy.