Slowly but Surely, U.S. School Buses Are Starting to Electrify
About 20 million students in the United States ride to school each day on the familiar yellow bus. The vast majority of the nation’s roughly 490,000 school buses — which…
Jared Kushner Has Big Plans for Delta of Europe’s Last Wild River
It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host…
Plastics Reckoning: PVC Is Ubiquitous, But Maybe Not for Long
The word “vinyl” might sound innocuous, bringing to mind everyday items like LP records, flooring, pipes, or shiny plastic pants. The plastic this name refers to — polyvinyl chloride (PVC)…
To Fight Plastic Waste, an Indonesian Campaign Aims High
For the industries that make and use disposable plastic packaging, developing countries are huge growth markets. But nations such as Indonesia are struggling to cope with the vast tide of…
For 60,000 Years, Australia’s First Nations Have Put Fire to Good Use
Australia’s unprecedented bushfires of 2019 to 2020 burned an area larger than the United Kingdom, killed at least 33 people, killed or displaced close to 3 billion animals, and destroyed…
Solomon Islands Tribes Sell Carbon Credits, Not Their Trees
When head ranger Ikavy Pitatamae walks into the rainforest on Choiseul Island, the westernmost of the nearly 1,000 islands that make up the South Pacific archipelago of Solomon Islands, he…
Brazil Hopes to Make the Amazon a Model for a Green Economy
“We must ensure that taking care of the forest is more profitable than cutting down the trees.” So declared Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a pitch to…
As Ocean Waters Warm, a Race to Breed Heat-Resistant Coral
After seven years of experimentation, a team of researchers at the Coralassist Lab at Newcastle University, in the United Kingdom, finally achieved its goals. Through selective breeding, they had for…
The ‘Internet of Animals’ Could Transform What We Know About Wildlife
Field biologists tend to be a patient lot, often resigned to long days and weeks in the field and committed to experiments that take years to yield results. But even…
How DNA from the Dead Is Helping Boost Species on the Brink
When Evelyn Jensen visits a museum to scrape bone from a long-dead Galápagos tortoise, she has two hopes in mind. First, that the specimen’s genetic material will be well-preserved. Second,…