Environment

“Change Can Be Made”: Largest US Dam Removal Project Is Complete

In a momentous victory for Indigenous tribes and environmentalists, the nation’s largest-ever dam removal project reached completion this year. The last of the four dams in the Klamath River along the California-Oregon border was demolished on Aug. 28, opening the door for a thriving salmon population.
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“The biggest thing for me, the significance of the dam removal project, is just hope — understanding that change can be made,” Brook Thompson, a member of the Yurok Tribe, told the Los Angeles Times.
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The milestone followed a two-decade-long campaign to save the Klamath River after an estimated 70,000 salmon perished due to toxic algae in 2002. Aside from driving the species to near extinction, this also prevented local Native tribes from engaging in core parts of their culture and fishing traditions.
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But the path to restoration is now in sight as the river can flow freely again, reopening up to 400 miles of salmon spawning and nursery habitats — and reminding youth that progress is possible. “They’re able to see the tribe has made progress, and they see they can be part of solutions,” Thompson told USA Today.

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Environment

Food Banks Prevented 1.8M Metric Tons of Carbon Emissions Last Year

Food banks play a crucial role in keeping communities fed across the globe. Another vital but lesser-known benefit? They’re helping to fight climate change, with a recent impact report outlining the link between food banks and a reduction in carbon emissions.
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Breaking down the numbers, food banks associated with The Global FoodBanking Network provided 1.7 billion meals to over 40 million people last year. That’s the equivalent of mitigating an estimated 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
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Without these organizations, perfectly edible ingredients — recovered from farms, grocery stores, and other food businesses — would head straight to a landfill, where they’d create greenhouse gas emissions and squander the efforts that went into producing the food in the first place (think: water use, land use, transportation costs, and more).
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Instead, food banks come to the rescue and redirect those ingredients to nourish people in need, addressing inequality and helping the environment all at once. Read some tips on preventing food waste in your own home.​

Environment

“Oregon Outback” Is Now the World’s Largest Dark Sky Sanctuary

As part of an ongoing effort to preserve the northern region of the Basin and Range Province in the western U.S., the so-called “Oregon Outback” became the world’s largest International Dark Sky Sanctuary in March. The area, comprising 2.5 million acres in the southeastern part of the state, is remote and sparsely populated — meaning that at night, the stars put on quite a show.
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“It’s surprising sometimes to see that many stars all at once. It catches you and it makes you pause because you feel like you can touch it,” Bob Hackett, the executive director of Travel Southern Oregon, told The Guardian, adding, “That vastness of the whole cosmos up there — it almost makes you get closer to the people you’re with on the ground.”
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​Hackett’s description perfectly encapsulates why the high-desert region is an ideal Dark Sky Sanctuary, a certification that will earn it greater protections. “As the population of Oregon and the trend of light pollution continue to rise, the unparalleled scale and quality of the Outback’s dark skies will long serve as a starry refuge for people and wildlife alike,” Dawn Nilson, an environmental consultant who wrote the application for the designation, said in a statement.
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​Explore other dark sky places around the world.​

Environment

This Tiny Plant Has the Largest Genome on the Planet

Scientists discovered the organism with the largest genome on Earth — and the plant itself is actually quite small. The New Caledonian fork fern, which grows about 2-4 inches tall and is native to several Pacific islands, has 160 billion DNA base pairs, per a study published in May. For reference, the human genome has 3 billion base pairs.
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Stretched out, the fork fern’s genome would be taller than the tower that houses Big Ben in London, researchers said in a press release from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The genome sequencing is just the beginning of the story, though: Now, the team must figure out why the species has so many DNA base pairs.
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“Who would have thought this tiny, unassuming plant that most people would likely walk past without notice, could bear a world-beating record in genome size?” said co-author Ilia Leitch, adding, “This discovery also raises many new and exciting questions about the upper limits of what is biologically possible, and we hope to solve these mysteries one day.”

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Quote of the Day

“The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That’s key, and that underlies everything else.”

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– JANE GOODALL