"A new generation of pesticides is making honeybees far more susceptible to disease, even at tiny doses, and may be a clue to the mysterious colony collapse disorder that has devastated bees across the world, the US government's leading bee researcher has found. Yet the discovery has remained unpublished for nearly two years since it was made by the US Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory."
"The Trump administration is weighing how to take control of water in California — including setting aside endangered species protections — framing its mission in a new executive order as necessary to prevent future wildfires like those that recently swept across Los Angeles."
"Over the past century, the biodiversity of apple trees has declined sharply in the United States. Monoculture orchards have erased the mature forested orchards that once served as habitat for dozens of bird species such as bluebirds, northern flickers, and scarlet tanagers. There once were some 16,000 named apple varieties in the US alone. We’ve now lost more than half of those varieties, with only 3,000 remaining."
"US environmental regulators are planning to change allowable levels of a weedkiller linked with reproductive health problems to a concentration critics say discounts years of documented health and environmental risks — potentially marking a new battlefront within the Trump administration."
"The latest data from the CDC and USDA show the continued devastating effects of bird flu outbreaks across the United States – with Iowa, the nation's leading egg producer, suffering substantial losses."
To many, plants are a merely green backdrop, indistinguishable and inconsequential. But, freelancer Karen Mockler says that such “plant blindness” belies an urgent need for our notice. More than a third of the world’s trees and thousands of other plant species face extinction. Their plight — and their many blessings — offer perceptive journalists a wealth of reporting and storytelling opportunities. Mockler on why to write about plants.
"In one of the first acts of his second term, President Trump is seeking to put his stamp on California water policy by directing the federal government to put “people over fish” and send more water from Northern California to the Central Valley’s farms and Southern California cities."
"A former chemical-industry executive who fought against stronger regulations under the first Trump administration is returning to take a critical role at the Environmental Protection Agency, two people with knowledge of the appointment said, raising concerns of corporate influence on chemical safety regulations."
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to withdraw its interim regulatory decision on paraquat, announcing that it needs more time to examine the potential health effects of the weed killing chemical that has been widely used in agriculture for decades, but also linked for years to the incurable brain ailment known as Parkinson’s disease."
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