Environment:
The totality of the natural world, often excluding humans.
A subset of the natural world; an ecosystem.
The combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence the growth, development, behavior, and survival of organisms.
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"Cellafredda is a hybrid photovoltaic module that combines the production of electrical and thermal energy in a single system. Installed behind photovoltaic panels, it integrates a hydraulic circuit that cools the solar cells, improving efficiency and extending their lifespan. At the same time, it recovers the produced heat and makes it available for thermal uses, such as domestic hot water or heating."
This story was originally published by Source New Mexico.
Danielle Prokop
Source New MexicoThree New Mexico Pueblos, Santa Ana, Zuni and Cochiti, recently received federal funding for tribal conservation programs and wildfire management that will be used to support efforts surrounding endangered birds, bald eagles and Bighorn sheep.
The awards, close to $200,000 each for Santa Ana and Cochiti, and approximately $180,000 for Zuni, come as part of $6.6 million distributed through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Tribal Wildlife Grants program, which funds more than 700 conservation programs operated by Native American and Alaska Native Tribes. The most recent grants, announced last week, will benefit 35 tribes.
“Tribes are vital partners in wildlife conservation, and we’re proud to support projects that reflect their connection to the land and leadership in protecting it,” U.S FWS Service Director Brian Nesvik said in a statement. “These investments support tribal sovereignty while advancing our shared conservation goals.”
Santa Ana Pueblo will use its funds to install wildlife recording devices along the Rio Grande to monitor two endangered birds: the Yellow-billed cuckoo and the Willow flycatcher.
Zuni Pueblo was granted the funds for Zuni Eagle Aviary, which houses debilitated gold and bald eagles. The funding will assess the facility’s wildfire risk, install safety systems and clear brush. Additionally, the funding will be used for expanding the aviary’s work to include “rehabilitation and release program” on site. Neither Santa Ana nor Zuni Pueblos responded to Source NM requests for comment.
Cochiti Pueblo will use its funds to track Bighorn sheep population, which the Pueblo and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish reintroduced in 2014 to the Cochiti canyon and the Jemez mountains after a century-long absence of herds in that area.
Specifically, Cochiti Pueblo will monitor the Bighorn sheep for the parasitic New World screwworm moving through Mexico.
The Pueblo will also restore the habitat devastated by the 2022 Cerro Pelado wildfires, which, in combination with drought, threatens the herd’s ability to move and much of their food, according to Earl Conway, the director of the Natural Resources and Conservation program at Cochiti Pueblo.
“These stressors combined have made it difficult for bighorn sheep to move safely across the landscape, maintain herd health, and sustain stable population levels,” Conway said in a statement.
The funding will help with targeted habitat restoration, replanting of fire-resistant vegetation and tracing the herd’s movements.
“Combined with wildfire prevention measures, these activities will reduce the risk of future habitat loss and ensure a more resilient and sustainable environment for Bighorn sheep herds,” he said.
The Endangered Species Act is the bedrock law that protects threatened plants and animals in the United States, and in the 50 years since it became law it has prevented thousands of resource-extraction projects — oil drilling, mining, and logging — from moving forward. The law is difficult to circumvent, but it does contain a key loophole. If the federal government wants to move forward with a project even though it will threaten an endangered species, it can convene a committee known as the “God Squad” — the heads of six executive agencies including the Interior Department, the EPA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — to vote on whether to override the law.
The “God Squad” loophole is onerous by design, and it has only ever been invoked a few times. In 1978, the committee voted to deny an exemption for a small Tennessee dam; the following year, it voted in favor of a small Wyoming dam despite concerns about whooping crane habitat. The committee met again in 1992 to grant an exemption for a few thousand acres of timber land sales in Oregon, overruling threats to the spotted owl. That exemption was withdrawn after a lawsuit.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration convened the “God Squad” for the first time in more than three decades, seeking to grant a far larger exemption than the committee has ever considered. In a morning meeting that lasted around 15 minutes, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made the president’s case. “We cannot allow our own rules to weaken our standing and strengthen those who wish to harm us,” Hegseth said.
The committee then voted unanimously to waive all Endangered Species Act regulations on oil and gas extraction in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration has itself noted that oil and gas production in the Gulf “is likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the Rice’s whale.” Its analysis concluded that the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 killed 17 percent of the whale’s population and that vessel strikes could kill multiple whales per year. The decision to override the Endangered Species Act could cause the extinction of the Rice’s whale, a species that only lives in the northern Gulf of Mexico and which has only about 50 living members.
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“It’s another example of this administration trying to figure out what the limits are on how far they can push the existing norms and authorities,” said Sally Jewell, who served as Interior Secretary under the Obama administration.
In granting the exemption, the committee cited a never-before-used section of the Endangered Species Act. The statute says in direct language that “the Committee shall grant an exemption for any agency action if the Secretary of Defense finds that such exemption is necessary for reasons of national security.”
As each member of the committee voiced their support for the waiver, they cited the national security implications of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, which Trump joined last month. The war has caused the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, blocked millions of barrels of oil from moving around the world, and raised fuel prices.
“Recent hostile actions by the Iranian terror regime highlights [sic] yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative,” said Hegseth during the committee meeting. “Production in the Gulf of America provides a vital buffer, insulating our economy and military from foreign instability and reducing the strategic leverage of our adversaries.”
The U.S. produces more oil than any other country, and the Gulf of Mexico only accounts for about 15 percent of the nation’s oil production, a far lower share than before the fracking boom and only around 2 percent of natural gas production. “Getting around environmental laws is not going to accelerate production and won’t solve any current challenge that our nation faces,” said Jewell. What’s more, the national security risk the administration cited would not exist were it not for Trump’s own decision to enter a conflict in Iran. “I just don’t view this as something that’s going to address any near-term national security crisis,” she said.
The Endangered Species Committee, or “God Squad”, meets in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Gulf of Mexico. Federal officials present included the Secretaries of Agriculture, Defense, and the Interior, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Department of the Interior
What, then, does the Trump administration consider to be such a dire threat to national security? The supposed threat, in this case, appears to be litigation from environmental groups. “I feel like it’s a solution in search of a problem, but in the most harmful way,” Steve Mashuda, a lead attorney for oceans at the environmental organization Earthjustice, told Grist.
Last year, the administration concluded that oil producers in the Gulf could prevent harm to the whales by using new whale detection technology. Environmental groups sued over that conclusion, arguing that the technology is speculative and on its own would be insufficient. Limits on ship speed, the plaintiffs argued, would be the most effective way to prevent whale deaths.
The state of Louisiana, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute also sued the federal government over the proposed requirement to use whale-detection technology — calling it too stringent and arguing the Rice’s whale is not as threatened as the federal government thinks. According to federal disclosures, BP, which is pursuing a new offshore oil and gas platform called Kaskida in the Gulf of Mexico, lobbied the White House and three federal agencies on the issue at least once a quarter last year. (BP didn’t respond to a request for comment. The American Petroleum Institute said in a statement to Grist that it did not advocate for the God Squad meeting.) A federal court overruled the administration’s proposed requirement to use whale detection technology in January, and at the moment there is no active Endangered Species Act restriction on vessel speed in the offshore oil industry.
In the end, the Trump administration’s attempt to avoid litigation has already brought on litigation. Earthjustice and other environmental groups said on Tuesday afternoon they’re going to sue over the God Squad’s decision.
Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
In the fall of 2004, Diane Miller, a tree-fruit specialist, began a two-part expedition on a Fulbright to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia, the birthplace of the apple. Her quest: to bring back seeds from the region’s wild apple trees that could infuse domestic breeding programs with biodiversity.
The American apple industry is concentrated almost entirely on a handful of varieties. Just 15 apples account for roughly 90 percent of the market. In contrast, Central Asia’s thousands of wild apple varieties offered untold diversity from trees that had borne fruit across centuries of cultivation.
On the second half of the expedition in 2005, Miller, accompanied by her teenage daughter, Amy, journeyed through dramatic Kyrgyz landscapes. The pair traversed alpine passes and arid valleys on the way to a mountainous area in the west that was blanketed by apple and walnut forests. They were awed by the breathtaking abundance.
There was something else, too: The steep, wooded slopes and sandstone bluffs, surrounded by a wash of dense greenery, reminded them of their home in Appalachian Ohio.
“If I squinted a little bit, I could have thought I was at home,” said Amy Miller, now a fruit grower and plant pathologist. “That was our first indicator that these trees might be well adapted to our region.”
“It can be the foundation to a future of apple growing that ensures clean water and biodiversity and the health of farmworkers.”
The Millers returned to Ohio with hundreds of seeds from trees whose longevity suggested they might carry disease resistance—a trait that could be bred into American varieties, potentially reducing domestic reliance on chemical sprays.
In spring 2007, they planted seedlings in a research plot at Dawes Arboretum, a 2,000-acre preserve in an agricultural community east of Columbus, Ohio. The seedlings became part of a much larger collection, spanning roughly 6,000 trees and 15 acres, including controlled crosses of domestic varieties and selections from previous U.S. Department of Agriculture collection trips to Kazakhstan.
At Dawes, the Kyrgyz apples thrived. For nearly two decades they’ve lived there, some 800 trees growing into a unique repository of wild apple genetics that many breeders and growers now view as critical for the future of the domestic apple industry. Apple growers face a host of challenges, including global competition, climate change, rising costs, and many more.
“It can be the foundation to a future of apple growing that ensures clean water and biodiversity . . . and the health of farmworkers,” said Eliza Greenman, a germplasm specialist at the agroforestry nonprofit Savanna Institute. “It’s a foundation to unlocking apple flavors, too—to extending the boundaries of what we think apples can taste like.”
That future, however, is now uncertain. In mid-December 2025, Dawes’ executive director, Stephanie Crockatt, sent Miller a letter asking for the trees to be removed by the end of March.
“We have made the decision to adjust our research priorities and land management strategies,” the letter stated.
The directive left only enough time for “triage,” Greenman said. More than 100 plant breeders, researchers, fruit growers, agroforesters, and nonprofits signed a letter, written by Greenman, that pleaded for an extension so the collection “can be used, studied, and evaluated for years to come.”
Dawes pushed its deadline out a year to March 2027. Even with the extension, Greenman said, the decision risks dismantling an unrivaled resource for apple breeders that could take decades to reassemble.
Diane Miller surveys the wild Kyrgyz apple collection at Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio. (Photo credit: Amy Miller)
Resilience Through Diversity
Diane Miller’s work is organized around a simple idea, she said: “genetic diversity for environmental resilience.” Through her work at Ohio State, the Midwest Apple Improvement Association, and the Midwest Apple Foundation, she’s long championed plant breeding that can increase disease resistance and reduce reliance on fungicides and insecticides.
Domestic apples are susceptible to pests like the codling moth and diseases like apple scab, a fungus that blemishes the fruit’s skin, and fireblight, a destructive bacteria that can rapidly kill trees. Because of these vulnerabilities, apples are sprayed with pesticides intensively, often weekly.
The domestic apple industry has veered toward a high-risk, high-reward model, Greenman said, accepting the added frustration and increased costs—in both sprays and systems—of working with delicate but delicious apples like Honeycrisp because the price they fetch can be three times that of sturdier alternatives.
In Kyrgyzstan, where the Millers gathered their genetic material, apples have been cultivated for centuries but never domesticated in isolation like American apples. In that wild setting, the trees remain largely unbothered by pests and disease. For the Millers, that made them invaluable for breeding programs that could cross their hardy traits with the intense sweetness and trademark crunch consumers crave from the Honeycrisp and numerous varieties it’s inspired.
“The future of the apple industry needs more disease resistance built in,” Greenman said, “or else breeding will be replaced by creating chemicals.”
“The future of the apple industry needs more disease resistance built in or else breeding will be replaced by creating chemicals.”
With American apple growers concentrated on a small range of varieties, “there’s a real risk of a genetic bottleneck,” said Matthew Moser Miller, an Ohio orchardist and cider maker who is familiar with the Dawes collection (and who is unrelated to Diane and Amy Miller).
A limited genetic pool can weaken disease resistance, making trees more vulnerable over time, he said. The Kyrgyz trees at the arboretum offer a safeguard—an immense variety of flavors and the promise of greater crop resilience.
As the seedlings grew into a forest of mature, 20-foot-tall trees, Diane Miller selected the best candidates for breeding, propagating them by grafting cuttings, called scionwood, onto rootstock and letting them grow. To cross two varieties, she applied pollen from the flowers of one to the flowers of the other.
Miller worked at this for years, promoting desirable qualities through generations of breeding while maintaining a library of traits breeders could use into the future. The Kyrgyz trees “have inherent vigor that is lacking in domestic apples,” she said. They also boast unusually high quantities of phenols, the chemical compounds that give fruits their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power.
But plant breeding is a long-term process that will be interrupted by the forced exit from the arboretum. Moving the entire collection would be impossible, and moving just a selection wouldn’t capture its diversity. Miller will spend the next year collecting scionwood to propagate clones from the planting, but she will lose mature trees whose age is an integral part of understanding their potential.
“It takes time to sort and sift all that out,” Miller said. “They don’t just jump out and say, ‘I’ve got multi-gene disease resistance. Take me.’”
An apple tree bred with wild Kyrgyz genetics from the Dawes Arboretum collection. With its disease resistance and large fruit, it’s a prime candidate for breeding with existing commercial varieties to produce a crisp, delicious, yet resilient apple. (Photo credit: Diane Miller)
Rebuilding a Repository
Despite the protests of the apple breeding community, Crockatt, who took over as Dawes’ executive director in November 2024, says genetic research and crop production no longer align with the arboretum’s priorities.
Although Dawes hosts other research collections, including for maple, buckeye, and witch hazel, those are governed by formal research agreements outlining responsibilities and expectations. The Kyrgyz apple collection hasn’t met those guidelines, Crockatt said.
“It really is a situation where we have been a host, not a partner,” Crockatt said.
The relationship between Dawes and the nonprofit Midwest Apple Foundation, whose members have tended and monitored the entire 15-acre collection since its planting, developed out of a handshake agreement between leaders who are no longer at their respective institutions, Amy Miller said.
The foundation tried to formalize an agreement with Dawes in 2024, while the arboretum was under interim leadership; its intention was to rehabilitate the full planting, replacing trees whose evaluation was completed with new seedlings to observe. With a funding plan in place and apparent support from Dawes, the Millers were optimistic about their proposal. But the next time they heard from the arboretum was the December letter, sparking frustration and a rush to find a new home for the plant material.
“The new leadership team didn’t show any interest in actually learning what we have there,” Amy Miller said. “They didn’t reach out with any questions or to get any background information on what is even going on there. They just suddenly said, ‘Pack your stuff and get out.’”
According to Crockatt, research had been concluded on one plot when she arrived and left unattended at another, allowing invasive species to proliferate and threaten nearby collections. The arboretum’s decision was “based on alignment to our nonprofit mission,” she said.
With no other recourse, the Millers are hoping to replicate through grafting the seedling orchard they first planted in 2007, perhaps with duplicates in multiple locations to ensure longevity. They have yet to identify suitable host sites.
In late February, Diane and Amy Miller visited Dawes, along with Matt Thomas, a conservation biologist and Amy’s partner, to collect scionwood from 120 trees to begin rebuilding the repository. They will have two more opportunities to do so—in late summer, when they can gather budwood, and again during the trees’ dormancy next winter.
The group won’t be able to salvage everything, and what they do collect will no longer be growing on its own roots, which diminishes their ability to fully evaluate a tree’s potential, Diane Miller said.
Once the Millers have rescued what they can from the collection next spring, Crockatt said the trees will all be taken to local zoos to be browsed on by animals.
“It’s not like they’re going to be destroyed and forgotten,” Crockatt said. “They will serve a purpose.”
For apple breeders and growers, though, the trees’ highest purpose would be to remain in the ground at Dawes, where they can continue to serve as a vast library of genetic material whose potential can be explored over time.
“While we have it, we should protect it and try to preserve it, lest we shortsightedly allow it to be lost,” Matthew Miller said. “At that point, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to recover those lost genetics.”
Under the warm light of a hanging lamp, Marty Landorf carefully crumbled the dried flower head of a black-eyed Susan between her fingers, teasing apart the chaff to uncover its puny black seeds. Each one was destined for long-term cold storage alongside roughly 46 million other seeds at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Every seed in the garden’s vault is different. Some seeds have hooks. Others verge on microscopic. A few carry a sharp, deterring scent. And some, like the airborne seeds of the milkweed, the host plant for monarch caterpillars, are fastened to silky fluff that drifts everywhere, hitching rides on volunteers’ clothes and following them home.
“Fluff is fun,” Landorf said laughing, seated alongside five other volunteers cleaning, counting, and sorting seeds at a long metallic table in the garden’s seed bank preparation lab.
Carolyn Kuechler, left, and Marty Landorf, volunteers at the Chicago Botanic Garden, work on separating the seeds from the chaff at the seed bank in the Carr Administrative Center. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ
For all their variation, these seeds share a common trait: They’re native to the Midwest. These species genetically adapted over thousands of years and sustain the region’s ecosystems. That evolutionary inheritance makes them indispensable for restoring the nation’s remaining prairies, wetlands, and woodlands.
The problem: Native seeds are in short supply. And climate change is intensifying demand.
“Climate change is affecting our weather and the frequency of natural disasters,” said Kayri Havens, chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “Wildfires becoming more common, hurricanes becoming more common — that increases the need for seed.”
In 2024, the Chicago Botanic Garden, a 385-acre public garden and home to one of the nation’s leading plant conservation programs, launched the Midwest Native Seed Network, a first step in improving the region’s fragile seed supply. The coalition now includes roughly 300 restoration ecologists, land managers, and seed growers across 150 institutions in 11 states. Together, they are researching which species are most in demand, where they are likely to thrive, and what it will take to produce them at scale and get them in the ground.
The collaborative is compiling information on seed collection, processing, germination, and propagation while identifying regional research gaps and planning collaborative projects to close them. For example, the network is currently collecting research on submerged aquatic plants such as pondweeds, and other species that are challenging to germinate, like the bastard toadflax, a partially parasitic perennial herb.
“We’re addressing these local, regional, and national shortages of native seed that are really just hindering our ability to restore really diverse habitats, build green infrastructure, and support urban gardens,” said Andrea Kramer, director of restoration at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Sarah Hollis, research assistant at the Chicago Botanic Garden, tours the seed bank in the Carr Administrative Center. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ
Last year, the network undertook its first major project: a large-scale survey of more than 50 partners across the region. The results were stark. They revealed that more than 500 native species in the Midwest are effectively unavailable for restoration. In some cases, it’s because no one grows them. In others, the seeds are available, but the cost — even at a couple of dollars per packet — becomes prohibitive when restoration projects require thousands of pounds. And for certain finicky species, the bottleneck is technical: Researchers and growers still don’t fully understand how to germinate them reliably or help them thrive in restoration settings.
Kramer said that, ultimately, the goal is to connect the people who need seeds with those who know how to grow them. While the network does not sell seeds, it works with organizations and partners that do. “We are using the network to help elevate what we all know and share what we know to make it easier,” she said.
The shortage itself is not new. In 2001, following sweeping wildfires in the West, Congress tasked federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — which, combined, manage approximately one-fifth of the nation’s public lands — to craft an interagency, public-private partnership to increase the availability of native seeds. But according to a 2023 report, which identified the lack of native seeds as a major obstacle for ecological restoration projects across the United States, those efforts remain unfinished.
Kayri Havens, vice president of science and chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, poses for a portrait in the Carr Administrative Center. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ
Wildfires have scorched more than 170 million acres in the U.S. between 2000 and 2025, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In 2020 alone, the Bureau of Land Management purchased roughly 1.5 million pounds of seed to rehabilitate burned landscapes. In a bad fire year, the agency can buy as much as 10 million pounds.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law dedicated $1.4 billion for ecosystem restoration over five years, including $200 million for the National Seed Strategy, a coalition of 12 federal agencies and various private partners established in 2015 to provide genetically diverse native seeds for restoration. The following year, the Inflation Reduction Act invested nearly $18 million to develop an interagency seed bank for native seeds. And in 2024, the Interior Department announced an initial round of $1 million for a national seed bank for native plants.
“The U.S. does have a major seed bank run by the [Department of Agriculture], and it mostly banks crops,” said Havens, the scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “But we don’t have that kind of infrastructure in place for native seed.”
Momentum for establishing a native seed bank stalled following funding cuts by the Trump administration. In early 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency cut 10 percent of the staff at the National Plant Germplasm System, which is home to one of the largest and most diverse plant collections in the world.
Andrea Kramer, senior director of restoration at the Chicago Botanic Garden, said the network’s goal is to connect those who have access to seeds to those who don’t. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ
“If something isn’t supported on a national level, then it becomes incumbent on states and regions to do that kind of work,” Havens said. “So that’s why we’re focusing right now in the Midwest.”
The network is the first of its kind in the Midwest, though similar initiatives have been active elsewhere in the country for years. Today, there are more than 25 similar networks operating across the U.S. In the western United States, these coalitions have come together in response to post-wildfire restoration projects.
“One of the reasons why we were among the first is because of this federal land ownership that we have in the West, whereas in the Midwest, it’s more private land,” said Elizabeth Lager, a professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and co-founder of the Nevada Native Seed Partnership. More than 90 percent of all federal land is located in 11 Western states.
Kramer said she hopes to run the seed availability survey again in 20 years and get a different response.
“I want them to say, ‘We have access to all the seed we need,’” said Kramer. “And we can move on to the next challenging question, like, ‘Why isn’t the seed establishing in my restoration? Or, how do we manage the next challenge coming with climate change?’”
Last Updated on February 28, 2026 Ecuador’s National Assembly has approved sweeping changes to the country’s mining framework, igniting opposition from Indigenous nations and their allies who say the reforms endanger biodiverse ecosystems and weaken Indigenous rights protections.
On Feb. 26, lawmakers passed the Organic Law for the Strengthening of the Strategic Mining and Energy Sectors by a 77–70 vote as part of a fast-tracked package promoted by President Daniel Noboa and his allies. Supporters argue the changes will ‘modernize’ regulation and make Ecuador’s mining sector more competitive.
But Indigenous leaders and civil society groups have condemned the measure as a threat to their lands and ways of life, raising alarms that the law erodes critical safeguards long championed in Ecuador’s constitution — including recognition of the rights of nature.
The national Indigenous federation CONAIE and regional Amazonian nations publicly rejected the legislation, saying it would accelerate mining activity in territories that have historically been protected from large-scale extractive projects.
They argue the law opens the door to expanded mining without meaningful free, prior and informed consent, a right that’s enshrined in Ecuador’s constitution and international agreements like ILO 169, which Ecuador ratified.
According to Amazon Frontlines, “the bill also conflicts with landmark rulings such as the 2022 Sinangoe decision [and] international agreements including the Escazú Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.”
Leaders from the Achuar, Kichwa, Shuar, Sápara and Waorani nations have emphasized that their territories comprise some of the most intact forests on Earth, playing a critical role in biodiversity conservation and climate stability. In a public statement issued ahead of the vote, they called on legislators to reject the law, warning that it would fuel conflict and environmental degradation in the Amazon.
“So-called ‘responsible mining’ does not exist. Where mining enters, so do deforestation, river pollution, violence, and organized crime. The data confirms this: in 2024, 4,926 hectares were registered as open-pit mining sites in 105 Indigenous territories, and at least 23 protected areas have lost approximately 14,660 hectares of forest between 2001 and 2024*. This law will only exacerbate this damage,” they said.
“By dismantling environmental safeguards and transferring oversight responsibilities to extractive-sector institutions, the new law deepens tensions between Ecuador’s economic development model and the protection of human rights, biodiversity, and the global climate,” said Amazon Frontlines.
It was sunny and warm for the end of November on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana. Joseph Eagleman was standing on a grassy hill looking at a 20-panel solar array in the backyard of a Chippewa Cree elder.
It was built under the Solar for All program, a Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act-funded project that distributed $7 billion to build residential solar across the country. Here on Rocky Boy’s, around 200 homes would have received solar funded by the federal dollars.
This home was the first to get panels in Queensville, a small community of modest homes in one of the reservation’s valleys. The home is brown, two stories, and fully electric, which is one of the requirements to qualify for Solar for All funding. Eagleman met me there to give me a tour of the panels that all but eliminated the resident’s $200–300 monthly electricity bills, according to Eagleman.
Eagleman is the CEO of the Chippewa Cree Energy Corporation, an organization that manages energy development for the tribe. Here in the northern Plains, a coalition of 14 tribes received a $135 million grant. The money would have provided around $7.6 million for each reservation to build residential solar, and Eagleman would have managed the Solar for All funds for the Chippewa Cree.
Then came President Donald Trump. His administration cut Solar for All in August of 2025.
Joseph Eagleman, standing beneath the solar array, looks out onto the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder“It’s terrible. We were getting ready to take off,” Eagleman said.
Residents had seen this solar array, which was built in the fall of 2024, and were excited about the possibility of free solar. Eagleman had a list of 40 households that were applying for the first round of the project. But only this home got a completed solar array before the program was stopped.
“It was a gut punch,” he said.
The reservation is about an hour and a half from the closest city, Great Falls, Montana, and has a population of 3,300. Driving down to meet Eagleman, I passed a cafe/casino/bar/gas station, a school, a skate park, and many residences, but little else. “There’s not a lot of opportunities, except for leaving the reservation,” said Eagleman.
Electricity costs are high on the reservation, as they are across rural America. Building and maintaining infrastructure without density drives up costs in these areas. Applicants showed Eagleman their bills to demonstrate why they wanted solar so badly, and some were up to $900 a month. Around 35 percent of the reservation’s residents live below the poverty line, more than double the rate for the United States. Solar installations like these cost thousands of dollars — money that most residents don’t have.
Eagleman had hired Zane Patacsil, a local resident who had experience installing solar, a month before the cuts. Patacsil joined us in the sunny backyard, overlooking the hills and valleys that make up the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.
Around 200 solar arrays would have been installed on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana with funding from Solar for All. This was the first, and ultimately the only one, installed in fall 2024. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
He said Solar for All would have brought some economic development to Rocky Boy’s and the other reservations that received the grant: an office and people to manage it, as well as training and hiring solar installers to do the labor.
“There were even members who were talking about starting their own solar businesses so they could be installing,” added Patacsil. “It was very disheartening to hear that news, because we lost all of that with it.”
A question of sovereignty
When protests raged against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016, Cody Two Bears was on the tribal council for the Standing Rock Sioux. He saw another layer to the dispute: energy extraction on tribal land that not only hurt residents, but also brought no relief for high energy bills.
Two Bears wanted to bring energy sovereignty to his community and other tribal nations. He started the nonprofit Indigenized Energy in 2017. “I do this because of energy and energy sovereignty as well, but it creates a sense of hope for our tribal nations,” he said.
Sovereignty and self-governance are what tribes allegedly gained in exchange for giving up traditional homelands when treaties were signed over the past centuries. Tribal sovereignty is not only about protecting culture and traditions; it’s also about self-sufficiency. It’s also legally protected by the U.S. Constitution. But that’s easier said than done without the resources to support true independence, which have been systemically removed by the U.S. government.
Native Americans are more food insecure and rely on Medicaid at higher rates than their white counterparts, depending on the U.S. government for subsidies while desiring the sovereignty that was promised. Energy independence is a way to regain a degree of that sovereignty, and Two Bears has made that his goal with Indigenized Energy.
Donica Brady outside Busby, Montana on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
“My ultimate goal is to work myself out of a job. I want to build so much capacity into these tribes where they don’t need Indigenized Energy anymore,” said Two Bears.
But the funding picture changed dramatically when Trump’s administration slashed solar spending.
Indigenized Energy had already been building residential solar on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation for a few years, and it ramped up to prepare for more work through Solar for All. But when the program was cut, Indigenized Energy laid off around half its staff, including Donica Brady, the coordinator for the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.
I first met Brady in September 2025, about a month after the layoff, and the pain of losing a job she loved was evident. Brady had spent the past couple of years building trust in a community where promises have been made and broken over and over again. Solar for All became yet another one.
Part of programs like Solar for All is job development within the solar industry. Brady was part of a training program through Red Cloud Renewable, funded by previous grants for solar on reservations. Solar for All would also have funded training and trade development on these reservations.
When I caught up with Brady again at her house in Busby, she was working two jobs, and the only time she had for me was at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, after her daughter’s choir recital. I found her in the garage with a kitchen knife in hand, skinning a deer her wife had shot a few days previously. She asked if I wanted to help and handed me a knife.
Donica Brady carves out meat from a deer in her garage in Busby, Montana. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
We chatted as we worked on the deer skin, cutting fat and sinew away from the dark red meat. She’d returned to her previous job as a bus driver and was hired by Freedom Forever, a solar installation company based in California. She’s still working in renewable energy, and Freedom Forever does work on reservations at times, but Brady’s job is no longer on the ground working with her community like she craves.
“I want my people to be able to be self-sufficient, not have to rely on funding or things like that that can be taken away,” Brady said. I heard this over and over: People don’t want to have to depend on the federal government for “handouts.”
As Brady cut out the tender backstraps and set them aside to give to her auntie, she talked about solar’s deeper meaning. “People call it progress, but I see it as going back to what we were taught, but in a new way,” she said. It’s more than just energy; it’s harnessing the sun, an important reflection of Northern Cheyenne culture.
The deer we were cutting up felt like a symbol summarizing everything we talked about. It was one way Brady could become self-sufficient and support those she loves. If only the power of the sun could be harnessed as easily as a deer skinned in a garage.
Residents are hurt most
Some time later, just outside of Lame Deer, Montana, the tribal headquarters of Northern Cheyenne, I got lost looking for Thomasine Woodenlegs’ house. My phone had no service, so all I had was Woodenlegs’ instructions: Look for a bright-green house at the end of the road. Many U-turns later, Woodenlegs welcomed me into her kitchen, where photos of loved ones covered the walls and two cats, one orange and one black, lounged on the couch.
Woodenlegs works for her tribe, and she has lived in this house for 50 years. She plans to pass it down to her family. But she knows she will be saddling them with a financial burden, too.
“How am I going to survive after I retire? And how is whoever inherits my house?” Woodenlegs asked. “I’ll need to warn them that the electricity runs like $400 or $500, and they’d have to have a really secure income to live here. Otherwise, they’d be without lights.”
Power lines cross the short grass prairie on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
Woodenlegs saw solar panels from previous grant programs like the White River Community Solar Project, funded by the Department of Energy, going up around the reservation in 2020 and 2021. Back then, Solar for All’s big allocation for Indigenous communities brought more hope. She put in her own applications, feeling jealous of friends and acquaintances who received them, wondering when it would be her turn. She’s still waiting.
Tina Cady, another Northern Cheyenne resident, lives just outside of Busby and has applied for solar panels multiple times. She worked for the Indian Health Service for 25 years until she went on disability. Now she lives on a fixed income of about $1,000 a month, and her husband picks up as many hours as he can as an adjunct professor at the tribal college. She showed me her October electric bill, which was $225.13.
Brady handled her application and told Cady what she’d learned in the field so far: Cady was a prime applicant for solar panels and she should be at the top of the list. “I’m an elder, and I’m disabled,” Cady said. Plus, she owns her own land. But Cady never heard anything more about it.
I asked whether she felt betrayed by the funding cuts, after so many previous letdowns to tribal communities. Cady said no, because it wasn’t her money to be betrayed. But she was disappointed and disenchanted. “I have seen them do this before. You get so you don’t trust anybody anymore.”
The fight continues
Four different lawsuits have been filed in federal courts against the Trump administration for ending Solar for All. It was terminated after the One Big Beautiful Bill Actrescinded “the unobligated funds for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” which had provided the funding for Solar for All.
The lawsuits claim that Solar for All was already a year into operation, so the funds were obligated, and that taking away already obligated funds is illegal.
All the lawsuits are still active. One from Climate United will move into oral arguments in February. Another from a coalition of 22 states is seeking an injunction to keep the Solar for All funds available.
Eagleman hopes to find additional funding to build residential solar arrays like this one for many more Chippewa Cree elders. Ilana Newman / Daily Yonder
But even without results from the lawsuits, solar installers like Cody Two Bears and Joseph Eagleman plan to continue to fight for solar development on northern Plains reservations.
Eagleman said he’s going to keep looking for funding to help bring affordable electricity to the Chippewa Cree on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation. He’s been looking at other public funding through the Department of Energy, as well as private philanthropic options.
Two Bears said he is moving forward with his company’s list of families awaiting solar. Indigenized Energy is ready to break ground on a project on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, which was next in line when the funding was cut. He said they found private funding for that project, as well as another solar array for the Rosebud Sioux.
“So even though the money is not there, we’re still finding alternative resources and funding to make these possible and make ’em feasible,” said Two Bears. “It’s just going to take longer.”
Michigan researchers have gone back in time to get a picture of how ice cover on the Great Lakes has evolved since the late 19th century.
Using historical temperature records from weather stations around the region, researchers improved their understanding of where ice might have formed and for how long it lasted — spanning the last 120 years.
Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Data last month. Researchers said this new data record would deepen understanding of how climate change has impacted the region over time and clarify what life under ice looks like for declining iconic species such as lake whitefish. The new data could also help improve ice cover forecasting in winter, making it safer for recreation and for people who go out on the ice.
“Lake ice is really part of the system, part of our life. It matters [for] our culture, regional weather, safety, everything,” said Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, one of the study’s co-authors and associate director for the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan.
There’s a “pretty good satellite record” of Great Lakes ice cover from the last 45 years, she said. But research into the region’s historical climate requires a longer timescale, and there isn’t good data specific to ice.
According to researchers, there’s a general gap in scientific knowledge about winter on the Great Lakes — data buoys get pulled out because of harsh conditions. There are good historic weather observations, though. And air temperature is a good proxy for ice cover on the lakes because ice typically forms when there’s been several cold days in a row.
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To peer into the past, researchers looked at temperature records from weather stations all around the Great Lakes, limiting their study to stations with the most consistent data since 1897.
They calculated ice cover using this information, and the end result was a dataset that can be compared to present-day conditions. Researchers said it can inform future research on how animals behave during the winter, for example.
“A lot of the biological conditions under ice are really poorly understood,” said Katelyn King, a fisheries research biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the study’s lead author. King is using the dataset to study the historic decline of whitefish in the Great Lakes, a regional species that’s important culturally and economically.
King said this dataset is a helpful baseline as the region continues to shift under climate change. Research shows that average temperatures in the region have increased in the last two decades, frost seasons are shortening, and heavy snow and rainstorms are becoming more frequent.
Still, year-to-year variability is the new normal. Ice cover on the Great Lakes was relatively close to average last winter, but followed historic lows the season prior.
So far this winter, cold temperatures in recent weeks have contributed to some of the highest ice cover on the Great Lakes in years, according to data tracked by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“These really extreme years where we have really cold weather or really warm weather is just a sign that long-term climate is changing,” King said. “It really affects all of us in our day-to-day.”
Kathleen Watts’ flowers bloom much brighter now that the wind no longer blows black. Pulling weeds in the garden outside her redbrick house, she recalled when coal dust would sometimes drift through her quiet corner of northern England, a rolling patchwork of farms and villages under the shadow of what was once the United Kingdom’s largest coal-burning power station.
“When the dust came our way, we’d have to come out and clean our windows,” said Watts, who has lived in the North Yorkshire village of Barlow for more than 30 years. “And when we’d get snow in winter, there’d be a lot of black over it.”
Thankfully, she said, the wind usually blew northeast, pushing the station’s smoke and dust toward Scandinavia. Locals liked to joke that the air pollution was mostly Norway’s problem. There, it caused bouts of acid rain that damaged forests and poisoned lakes.
The U.K. has quit coal — a lengthy process culminating in the closure of the country’s last deep-pit coal mine in 2015 and the shutdown of the U.K’s last coal plant in 2024.
The giant station near Barlow, however, is busier than ever, fueled now by American forests rather than English coalfields. Trees felled, shredded, dried, and pressed into pellets in Louisiana and Mississippi are shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, loaded onto trains, and then fed into the station’s immense boilers. Operated by Drax Group, the station gradually stopped burning coal until it made a full switch to wood in 2023. It now burns enough pellets to generate about 6 percent of the country’s electricity.
Purple flowers crowd a field near the Drax power station in Drax, England. The former coal plant now runs entirely on wood pellets, which the company markets as “sustainable biomass.” Tristan Baurick / Verite News
The U.K. government, in a bid to meet its ambitious climate goals, is giving Drax the equivalent of $2.7 million a day in subsidies to keep burning pellets, which the company touts as “environmentally and socially sustainable woody biomass.”
But a growing number of Brits aren’t buying it. After years of celebrating the shift away from coal, U.K. residents are realizing that wood pellets aren’t the cleaner, greener alternative they were supposed to be.
“I still have difficulties in my little brain figuring out how you can grow wood at the other end of the Earth, chip it, ship it to here … and then burn it, and say, ‘Isn’t that nice and green?’” said Steve Shaw-Wright, a former coal miner who serves on the North Yorkshire Council.
Burning wood for power instead of one of the dirtiest fossil fuels offers the illusion of sustainability and robust climate action, said William Moomaw, an emeritus professor of international environmental policy at Tufts University. But in reality, it’s doing more harm to the environment than burning fossil fuels, he said. “England is off coal — isn’t that wonderful?” Moomaw said. “But there’s no mention of the fact that it’s because they’re now burning wood from North America, which emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt of electricity than does coal.”
Sawdust piles up at Drax’s wood pellet mill near Urania, Louisiana. The mill presses sawdust into pellets that are burned in a former coal plant in Yorkshire, England. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
The Drax station in North Yorkshire emitted more than 14 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, making it the largest single source of CO2 in the U.K., according to a report last year from the climate research group Ember. That amount is more than the combined emissions from the country’s six largest gas plants and more than four times the level of the U.K.’s last coal plant.
A Drax spokesperson called Ember’s research “deeply flawed” and accused the group of choosing to “ignore the widely accepted and internationally recognized approach to carbon accounting,” which is used by the United Nations and other governments.
But several scientists say burning wood can’t help but produce more emissions. Wood has a lower density than coal and other fossil fuels, so it must be burned in higher volumes to produce the same amount of energy. Between 2014 and 2019 — a period when coal was in steep decline — the country’s CO2 emissions from U.S.-sourced pellets nearly doubled, according to a report by the Chatham House research institute in London. “Almost all of this U.K. increase was associated with biomass burnt at Drax,” the report’s authors wrote.
The station’s cross-continental supply chain is also heavy on emissions. For every ton of pellets Drax burns, about 500 pounds of CO2 are released just from making and transporting the product, according to Chatham House. About half of Drax’s supply chain emissions are tied to production, while transportation via trucks, trains, and ships accounts for 44 percent, according to the company’s estimates.
The switch from coal to pellets created a new pollution problem in Louisiana and Mississippi, where most of the station’s fuel is produced. Drax’s pellet mills have repeatedly violated air quality rules at its two Louisiana mills, located near Bastrop and Urania, and its mill in Gloster, Mississippi. The mills emit large quantities of formaldehyde, methanol, and other toxic chemicals linked to cancers and other serious illnesses, according to regulatory findings and public health studies. Residents of these poor, mostly Black communities say the mills’ dust and pollution are making them sick. In October, several Gloster residents sued the company, alleging that Drax has “unlawfully released massive amounts of toxic pollutants” in their community for nearly a decade.
The Drax spokesperson said the company is improving its mills’ pollution controls in line with a longstanding dedication to “high standards of safety and environmental compliance.” On its website, Drax says the company is “committed to being a good neighbor in the communities where we operate,” offering funding for environmental education programs, ensuring its wood is sourced from “well-managed forests,” and supporting land conservation efforts, including the establishment of a 350-acre nature reserve near Watts’ home in Barlow.
Much of the timber that Drax harvests comes from private lands in the Southern United States that function more as tree farms than natural forests. But in recent years, Drax has sourced an increasing share of its wood from western Canada, including from British Columbia’s treasured old-growth forests.
In 2024, Drax agreed to pay a nearly $32 million penalty after U.K. energy regulators determined the company had been misreporting data on where it sources its wood and how much of it comes from environmentally important woodlands. The practice of pelletizing Canada’s mature trees appears ongoing, according to a recent report by the environmental group Stand.earth. Citing logging data from 2024 and 2025, the group claims Drax has been accepting truckloads of trees from British Columbia that were hundreds of years old. Drax downplayed the report, emphasizing that the logs were legally harvested and of insufficient quality to go to sawmills.
Drax sees itself as one of the most environmentally conscious companies on the planet. “Sustainability is the cornerstone of long-term success and the transformation of our business,” said Miguel Veiga-Pestana, Drax’s chief sustainability officer, in a statement.
While most pellets Drax makes in the U.S. are derived from logged trees, the company also uses sawdust and other leftovers from lumber mills. The company supports forest thinning, a practice it says can ease crowding in densely planted timberlands, improve the health of the remaining trees, and diversify habitat for wildlife.
“By ensuring that we source sustainable biomass, and that we embed sustainable practices into every facet of our operations, we can build lasting value,” Veiga-Pestana said.
Water vapor escapes a cooling tower at the Drax power station in Drax, England. The station is the largest wood pellet-burning facility in the U.K. and was originally developed to burn coal. Gary Calton / The Guardian
The value of the entire utility-scale wood pellet industry depends on what many scientists call an “accounting loophole” entrenched in some of the earliest international policies aimed at combating climate change.
During the 1990s, the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol established land use and energy use as two separate categories for counting a country’s greenhouse gases. To avoid double counting wood burning across both land-use and energy-use categories, the U.N. assigned wood pellet emissions only to the land-use sector, believing that normal forest regrowth would keep pace with the modest harvests for pellet production. The wood pellet industry at the time was tiny, selling the bulk of its products to homeowners with small pellet-burning stoves. Any carbon released by burning would be balanced by new trees that work as natural CO2 absorbers, the thinking went.
The effect, though, was that regulators would count CO2 from burning oil and coal, but CO2 from burning timber could stay off the books.
“Drax and other bioenergy companies took that and said, ‘Look, we have no impact — we’re instantly carbon neutral,’” said Mary Booth, director of the environmental organization Partnership for Policy Integrity.
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This exemption was incorporated into the Kyoto Protocol, the first international treaty that set legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets. Experts were soon warning of troubling consequences. In a study published in the journal Science in 2009, scientists said the exemption was an “accounting error” that could spur deforestation and hinder attempts by governments to curb emissions.
“The error is serious, but fixable,” said Tim Searchinger, a Princeton University energy policy expert, in a statement at the time. “The solution is to count all the pollution that comes out of tailpipes and smokestacks whether from coal and oil or bioenergy, and to credit bioenergy only to the extent it really does reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Other scientists challenged the industry’s claim that planting trees would neutralize power station emissions. According to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it can take 44 to 104 years for forest regrowth to pay back the carbon debt from pellet burning. While the planet waits decades for the trees to regrow, glaciers melt, seas rise, and weather from droughts to hurricanes grows more extreme.
Trucks haul lumber in and out of the Amite BioEnergy wood pellet production facility operated by the Drax group in Gloster, Mississippi, on September 24, 2025. Kathleen Flynn / The Guardian
Despite these warnings, the European Union latched on to wood burning as a relatively quick and cheap way to meet tighter climate mandates. Rather than blanket the landscape with wind turbines and solar panels, countries could dust off old coal plants and put them on a diet of “carbon-neutral” pellets.
The shift toward bioenergy accelerated in 2009, when the European Union set a target of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020. Pellet demand in Germany, Belgium, Italy, and other European countries immediately began to increase, but in the U.K., the growth was explosive. Between 2012 and 2018, the U.K.’s pellet consumption surged by 471 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The U.K. left the European Union in 2020, and it remains the world’s biggest buyer of wood pellets. In 2024, the country imported nearly 10.3 million tons, a record high spurred partly by a dip in pellet prices.
Wood burning has helped the U.K. come within striking distance of its goal to eliminate oil and gas from its electrical generation by 2030. Nearly 74 percent of the national grid is powered by what the government calls “low carbon” energy sources. Wood pellets and other forms of bioenergy supply about 14 percent of the low-carbon mix, with wind, solar, and hydropower accounting for the rest.
Every workday, Ian Cunniff climbs into his orange overalls, pounds his helmet tightly on his head, and steps into a cage that drops 459 feet into a maze of dark tunnels littered with old machinery.
The stout Yorkshireman is one of the last miners still working in the coal pits, but now his job is to lead tours along the rich seams he once risked his life to dig out. Cunniff is a guide for the National Coal Mining Museum at Caphouse Colliery, a former West Yorkshire mine dating back to the 1790s. His last “real” mining job was at Kellingley Colliery, the U.K.’s last deep coal pit and a major feeder of Drax’s power station before it switched to wood.
In the depths of the Caphouse mine, Cunniff grew wistful over the coal still embedded in the walls. The seams once provided nearly everything a man and his family needed, he said. “It was your future; it was your retirement. So much of it has never been touched.”
Miners, union members, and the local community take part in a protest march in 2015 in Knottingley, England, marking the end of deep-pit coal mining in Britain.
Christopher Furlong / Getty ImagesWood pellets didn’t kill the U.K.’s coal industry. It began to wither as the country shifted from cheaper, imported coal in the 1980s to natural gas in the 1990s. Coal’s decline left gaping holes in Yorkshire’s economy and social fabric. The wood pellet industry has contributed some jobs and tax dollars, but it can’t replace what the region once had, said Shaw-Wright, the county council member.
“With coal, you didn’t really need to get an education much because you were going to get a job at the pit,” he said. “And if you had a job at the pit, you would have it for life.”
At its height between the two world wars, the industry employed 1.2 million people in the U.K. In some northern England counties, 1 in 3 residents was employed in coal mining. The Selby Complex, a group of deep-pit mines near the Drax power station, employed about 3,500 workers before it shut down in 2004. The industry also supported cooperative groups that funded social halls, communit
