Native American communities rode, cared for and lived alongside horses nearly a century earlier than European records suggest, a new study has found. The study, published in the journal Science, shatters the conventional narrative of how — and when — horses came into the Indigenous communities of the American West. The study draws on a…
Author: Saul Elbein
New study finds plants ‘scream’ when stressed or injured, raising questions about communication
Tomato and tobacco plants make distinctive sounds when cut or dehydrated, a new study has found. Those sounds change depending on the plant emitting them and the type and severity of the threat that prompts them, according to the study in Cell. The findings shatter the common perception of plants as silent, passive background players to the animal life in their environments. Instead, they…
Texas bills would set state against federal oil and gas regulation, renewables
A Texas bill would bar state officials from helping enforce any federal oil and gas law that contradicts the state’s own laws. If signed into law, the bipartisan bill would potentially hamstring attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate pollution by the oil and gas industry, putting the state — by far the nation’s largest…
Texas Observer staff raise $300K in bid to stay open
The staff of the Texas Observer has raised $276,000 in small donations since Monday in a hail-mary attempt to keep the progressive publication open The crowdfunding campaign comes as the magazine’s board — which voted on Sunday to shut it down for lack of funds — deliberates on whether to keep publishing. As of press…
California’s desert trees can’t take the heat: study
Some of the Southwest’s most iconic desert trees are running for their lives in what could be a grim harbinger for more temperate ecosystems across the West. A study in Functional Ecology offers evidence that desert ecosystems, long perceived as the most resilient to climate change, may be hitting their limits. Researchers at the University of California Riverside found that…
Legislators, lobbyists look to farm bill to save American forests
Congress and the U.S. Forest Service are looking to the farm bill to pour new life into the nation’s fire-plagued forests. Against the backdrop of looming threats such as wildfires, legislators and lobbyists alike want to use the mammoth bill, worth more than a trillion dollars, to garner federal funding and create markets to pay for…
Five fights brewing in the crucial $1.4 trillion farm bill
Read The Hill’s full Future of Farming series The future of American food production is up for grabs this year. With the nation’s farm bill expiring this September — along with a wide array of crucial programs that put food on American plates — lawmakers are on the clock to craft a farm bill that…
How an algae bloom could put Florida’s spring break at risk
Before spring break season is over, beaches across the Gulf Coast will begin to stink. By mid-April, as businesses in South Florida and across the Gulf Coast juggle an influx of vacationers, the region’s beaches will likely face another unwelcome visitor: enormous mats of rotting sargassum seaweed. The leading edge of several thousand mile long…
Support for small farms won’t hurt big ones, Vilsack tells lawmakers
Will the coming farm bill support big farms or small? That was a question that repeatedly came up during a Senate Agriculture committee hearing Thursday featuring Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who was also grilled about topics ranging from rural broadband to bird-flu vaccine mandates. To the question of ‘big or small’, both Vilsack and…
Ukrainian activist behind Russian oil embargo blocked from attending top climate conference
An award-winning Ukrainian climate activist was barred from a major energy conference the day before it began — after flying to Houston to attend. Svitlana Romanko, an environmental lawyer, said she had planned to lobby delegates at CERAWeek, — a world-leading energy conference with deep roots in the fossil fuel oil and gas industry hosted…