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Tag: Climate and environment

  • Regulators approve disputed $6.2B takeover of Minnesota Power by investment group

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    MINNEAPOLIS — MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota regulators voted unanimously Friday to approve an investment group’s takeover of a power company over the objections of the state attorney general, big industrial electricity buyers and consumer advocates.

    In voting for the takeover of Duluth-based Minnesota, the five members of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission said they believe the conditions imposed on the deal will protect the public interest and shield customers from rate increases. Opponents warned that the private equity group is only interested in squeezing bigger profits from regular ratepayers.

    The approval came as electricity bills are rising fast across the U.S., and growing evidence suggests the bills of some residential customers are increasing to subsidize the rapid build-out of power plants and power lines to supply the gargantuan energy needs of Big Tech’s data centers and the boom in artificial intelligence.

    Raising the stakes is the potential that Google could build a data center in Minnesota Power’s territory in the northern part of the state, a lucrative prospect for the utility’s owner.

    Opponents also expressed fear that the sale would encourage more such deals across the U.S.

    Under the planned buyout, a BlackRock subsidiary and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board will take over the publicly traded company Allete, parent of Minnesota Power, which provides power to 150,000 customers and owns a variety of power sources, including coal, gas, wind and solar.

    The buyout price is $6.2 billion, including $67 a share for stockholders at a 19% premium, and assuming $2.3 billion in debt. In its petition, Allete told regulators that Minnesota Power’s operations, strategy and values wouldn’t change under BlackRock and that the deal’s cost wouldn’t affect electric rates.

    Building trades unions and the administration of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who appointed or reappointed all five of the utility commissioners, sided with Allete and BlackRock.

    The state Department of Commerce, Minnesota Power and the investors negotiated a package of modifications this summer that included additional financial and regulatory safeguards. The department’s attorney, Richard Dornfeld, told the commission the changes will protect the public interest.

    The commission’s chair, Katie Sieben, agreed.

    “Because of the collective work of partners, stakeholders, labor, environmental groups and others, we’ve made the overall package better for Minnesota Power customers,” Sieben said.

    Opposing the deal were the state attorney general’s office and industrial interests that buy two-thirds of Minnesota Power’s electricity, including U.S. Steel and other iron mine owners, Enbridge-run oil pipelines, and pulp and paper mills.

    Allete argued that BlackRock will have an easier time raising the money that Minnesota Power needs to comply with a state law requiring utilities to get 100% of their electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040.

    Previously, an administrative law judge recommended that the commission reject the deal, saying that the evidence revealed the buyout group’s “intent to do what private equity is expected to do — pursue profit in excess of public markets through company control.”

    Commissioner Audrey Partridge said she started with “a high degree of skepticism and I would say even cynicism,” and “assumed the absolute worst in these investors.” But she said the added safeguards, and the over $100 million that the investors will provide for relief for ratepayers and investments in clean energy, will protect the public interest.

    Opponents said they were dismayed by the approval.

    “Private equity ownership of Minnesota Power will likely mean higher bills, less accountability, and more risk for Minnesotans,” Alissa Jean Schafer, climate and energy director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, said in a statement. The national nonprofit says it seeks to bring transparency and accountability to the private equity industry.

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    Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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  • Feds reimburse Florida $608 million for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ costs

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    Federal officials on Friday confirmed that Florida has been reimbursed $608 million for the costs of building and running an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, exposing “Alligator Alcatraz” to the risk of being ordered to close for a second time.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in an email that the state of Florida was awarded its full reimbursement request.

    The reimbursement exposes the state of Florida to being forced to unwind operations at the remote facility for a second time because of a federal judge’s injunction in August. The Miami judge agreed with environmental groups who had sued that the site wasn’t given a proper environmental review before it was converted into an immigration detention center and gave Florida two months to wind down operations.

    The judge’s injunction, however, was put on hold for the time being by an appellate court panel in Atlanta that said the state-run facility didn’t need to undergo a federally required environmental impact study because Florida had yet to receive federal money for the project.

    “If the federal defendants ultimately decide to approve that request and reimburse Florida for its expenditures related to the facility, they may need to first conduct an EIS (environmental impact statement),” the three-judge appellate court panel wrote last month.

    The appellate panel decision allowed the detention center to stay open and put a stop to wind-down efforts.

    President Donald Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations.

    Environmental groups that had sued the federal and state governments said the confirmation of the reimbursement showed that the Florida-built facility was a federal project “from the jump.”

    “This is a federal project being built with federal funds that’s required by federal law to go through a complete environmental review,” Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “We’ll do everything we can to stop this lawless, destructive and wasteful debacle.”

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    Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

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  • Goodall’s influence spread far and wide. Those who felt it are pledging to continue her work

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    In her 91 years, Jane Goodall transformed science and humanity’s understanding of our closest living relatives on the planet — chimpanzees and other great apes. Her patient fieldwork and tireless advocacy for conservation inspired generations of future researchers and activists, especially women and young people, around the world.

    Her death on Wednesday set off a torrent of tributes for the famed primate researcher, with many people sharing stories of how Goodall and her work inspired their own careers. The tributes also included pledges to honor Goodall’s memory by redoubling efforts to safeguard a planet that sorely needs it.

    “Jane Goodall is an icon – because she was the start of so much,” said Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France.

    She recalled how many years ago Goodall answered a letter from a young aspiring researcher. “I wrote her a letter asking how to become a primatologist. She sent back a handwritten letter and told me it will be hard, but I should try,” Crockford said. “For me, she gave me my career.”

    Goodall was one of three pioneering young women studying great apes in the 1960s and 1970s who began to revolutionize the way people understood just what was — and wasn’t — unique about our own species. Sometimes called the “Tri-mates,” Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas spent years documenting the intimate lives of chimpanzees in Tanzania, mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and orangutans in Indonesia, respectively.

    The projects they began have produced some of the longest-running studies about animal behavior in the world that are crucial to understanding such long-lived species. “These animals are like us, slow to mature and reproduce, and living for decades. We are still learning new things about them,” said Tara Stoinski, a primatologist and president of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. “Jane and Dian knew each other and learned from each other, and the scientists who continued their work continue to collaborate today.”

    Goodall studied chimpanzees — as a species and as individuals. And she named them: David Greybeard, Flo, Fifi, Goliath. That was highly unconventional at the time, but Goodall’s attention to individuals created space for scientists to observe and record differences in individual behaviors, preferences and even emotions.

    Catherine Hobaiter, a primatologist at St. Andrews University who was inspired by Goodall, recalled how Goodall carefully combined empathy and objectivity. Goodall liked to use a particular phrase, “If they were human, we would describe them as happy,” or “If they were human, we would describe them as friends –- these two individuals together,” Hobaiter said. Goodall didn’t project precise feelings onto the chimpanzees, but nor did she deny the capacity of animals besides humans to have emotional lives.

    Goodall and her frequent collaborator, evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff, had just finished the text of a forthcoming children’s book, called “Every Elephant Has a Name,” which will be published around early 2027.

    From the late 1980s until her death, Goodall spent less time in the field and more time on the road talking to students, teachers, diplomats, park rangers, presidents and many others around the world. She inspired countless others through her books. Her mission was to inspire action to protect the natural world.

    In 1991, she founded an organization called Roots & Shoots that grew to include chapters of young people in dozens of countries.

    Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist and founder of the nonprofit Saving Nature, recalled when he and Goodall were invited to speak to a congressional hearing about deforestation and extinction. Down the marble halls of the government building, “there was a huge line of teenage girls and their mothers just waiting to get inside the room to hear Jane speak,” Pimm said Thursday. “She was mobbed everywhere she went — she was just this incredible inspiration to people in general, particularly to young women.”

    Goodall wanted everyone to find their voice, no matter their age or station, said Zanagee Artis, co-founder of the youth climate movement Zero Hour. “I really appreciated how much Jane valued young people being in the room — she really fostered intergenerational movement building,” said Artis, who now works for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    And she did it around the world. Roots & Shoots has a chapter in China, which Goodall visited multiple times.

    “My sense was that Jane Goodall was highly respected in China and that her organization was successful in China because it focused on topics like environmental and conservation education for youth that had broad appeal without touching on political sensitivities,” said Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles expert on China and the environment, who previously worked in Beijing.

    What is left now that Goodall is gone is her unending hope, perhaps her greatest legacy.

    “She believed hope was not simply a feeling, but a tool,” Rhett Butler, founder of the nonprofit conservation-news site Mongabay, wrote in his Substack newsletter. “Hope, she would tell me, creates agency.”

    Goodall’s legacy and life’s work will continue through her family, scientists, her institute and legions of young people around the globe who are working to bridge conservation and humanitarian needs in their own communities, her longtime assistant said Thursday.

    That includes Goodall’s son and three grandchildren, who are an important part of the work of the Jane Goodall Institute and in their own endeavors, said Mary Lewis, a vice president at the institute who began working with the famed primatologist in 1990.

    Goodall’s son, Hugo van Lawick, works on sustainable housing. He is currently in Rwanda. Grandson Merlin and granddaughter Angelo work with the institute, while grandson Nick is a photographer and filmmaker, Lewis said. “She has her own family legacy as well as the legacy through her institutes around the world,” said Lewis.

    In addition to her famed research center in Tanzania and chimpanzee sanctuaries in other countries, including the Republic of Congo and South Africa, a new cultural center is expected to open in Tanzania late next year. There also are Jane Goodall Institutes in 26 countries, and communities are leading conservation projects in several countries, including an effort in Senegal to save critically endangered Western chimpanzees.

    But it is the institute’s youth-led education program called Roots & Shoots that Goodall regarded as her enduring legacy because it is “empowering new generations,” Lewis said.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP’s climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Study shows the world is far more ablaze now with damaging fires than in the 1980s

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    WASHINGTON — Earth’s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands, a new study found.

    A study in the journal Science looks at global wildfires, not by acres burned which is the most common measuring stick, but by the harder to calculate economic and human damage they cause. The study concluded there has been a “climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires.”

    A team of Australian, American and German fire scientists calculated the 200 most damaging fires since 1980 based on the percentage of damage to the country’s Gross Domestic Product at the time, taking inflation into account. The frequency of these events has increased about 4.4 times from 1980 to 2023, said study lead author Calum Cunningham, a pyrogeographer at the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania in Australia.

    “It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we do have a major wildfire crisis on our hands,” Cunningham said.

    About 43% of the 200 most damaging fires occurred in the last 10 years of the study. In the 1980s, the globe averaged two of these catastrophic fires a year and a few times hit four a year. From 2014 to 2023, the world averaged nearly nine a year, including 13 in 2021. It noted that the count of these devastating infernos sharply increased in 2015, which “coincided with increasingly extreme climatic conditions.” Though the study date ended in 2023, the last two years have been even more extreme, Cunningham said.

    Europe and North America lead in the number of these economically damaging fires. It’s especially worse in the Mediterranean around Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal and in the Western United States around California, because of the climate prone to sudden dryness, worsened by global warming, Cunningham said.

    The researchers also found a tripling in how often a single fire killed at least 10 people, such as 2018’s Paradise fire, 2023’s Lahaina fire and those in Los Angeles in 2025.

    Cunningham said often researchers look at how many acres a fire burns as a measuring stick, but he called that flawed because it really doesn’t show the effect on people, with area not mattering as much as economics and lives. Hawaii’s Lahaina fire wasn’t big, but it burned a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people so it was more meaningful than one in sparsely populated regions, he said.

    “We need to be targeting the fires that matter. And those are the fires that cause major ecological destruction because they’re burning too intensely,” Cunningham said.

    But economic data is difficult to get with many countries keeping that information private, preventing global trends and totals from being calculated. So Cunningham and colleagues were able to get more than 40 years of global economic date from insurance giant Munich Re and then combine it with the public database from International Disaster Database, which isn’t as complete but is collected by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

    The study looked at “fire weather” which is hot, dry and windy conditions that make extreme fires more likely and more dangerous and found that those conditions are increasing, creating a connection to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

    “We’ve firstly got that connection that all the disasters by and large occurred during extreme weather. We’ve also got a strong trend of those conditions becoming more common as a result of climate change. That’s indisputable,” Cunningham said. “So that’s a line of evidence there to say that climate change is having a significant effect on at least creating the conditions that are suitable for a major fire disaster.”

    If there was no human-caused climate change, the world would still have devastating fires, but not as many, he said: “We’re loading the dice in a sense by increasing temperatures.”

    There are other factors. People are moving closer to fire-prone areas, called the wildland-urban interface, Cunningham said. And society is not getting a handle on dead foliage that becomes fuel, he said. But those factors are harder to quantify compared to climate change, he said.

    “This is an innovative study in terms of the data sources employed, and it mostly confirms common sense expectations: fires causing major fatalities and economic damage tend to be those in densely populated areas and to occur during the extreme fire weather conditions that are becoming more common due to climate change,” said Jacob Bendix, a geography and environment professor at Syracuse University who studies fires, but wasn’t part of this research team.

    Not only does the study makes sense, but it’s a bad sign for the future, said Mike Flannigan, a fire researcher at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Flannigan, who wasn’t part of research, said: “As the frequency and intensity of extreme fire weather and drought increases the likelihood of disastrous fires increases so we need to do more to be better prepared.”

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • What to know about the life and legacy of Jane Goodall

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    Famed primatologist Jane Goodall was renowned for her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees but dedicated her life to helping all wild animals — a passion that lasted until her death this week while on a U.S. speaking tour.

    She spent decades promoting humanitarian causes and the need to protect the natural world, and tried to balance the grim realities of the climate crisis with hope for the future, admirers said.

    Those messages of hope “mobilized a global movement to protect the planet,” said former President Joe Biden, who awarded Goodall the Presidential Medal of Freedom just before he left office.

    Here are some things to know about Goodall’s life and legacy:

    Despite Goodall’s enduring passion to observe wild animals in Africa, she didn’t have a college degree when she arrived there in 1957, starting as an assistant secretary at a natural history museum in Nairobi.

    Famed anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey gave her the job and later invited her to search for fossils with him and his wife at the Olduvai Gorge. After seeing her grit and determination, Leakey asked if she would be interested in studying chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania.

    She told The Associated Press in 1997 that he chose her “because he wanted an open mind.”

    It wasn’t until 1966 that she earned a Ph.D. in ethology — becoming one of the few people admitted to University of Cambridge as a Ph.D. candidate without a college degree.

    While first studying chimpanzees in Tanzania in the early 1960s, Goodall didn’t spend her days simply observing the animals from afar and giving them numbers like other scientists.

    She immersed herself in every aspect of their lives, feeding them and giving them names and forming what can only be described as personal relationships with them. The approach was criticized by some scientists who saw it as an alarming lack of scientific detachment.

    Goodall documented chimpanzees in a wide array of activities widely believed at the time to be exclusive to humans, including showing their ruthlessly violent side during what she described as “warfare.”

    She described seeing a group systematically hunt down and kill members of a smaller group over the course of four years. The war ended only after every member of the smaller group was dead.

    “It was a shock to find that they could show such brutal behavior,” she said in 2003. “That made them seem even more like us then I thought before.”

    In another instance, she recalled a dominant chimpanzee brushing a younger chimp aside to get fruit. When the second chimp screamed, its big brother stepped in to rescue him. And then when those two chimps started screaming, a female two trees away stepped in.

    Since Goodall could crawl, she’d had a fascination with animals. When she bought her first book at the age of 10 — Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes” — her vision for the future started to solidify. She planned to travel to Africa and live with the wild animals.

    But her dreams did not involve becoming a scientist. She told The Associated Press in 2020 that she planned to be a naturalist and write books about animals. But that vision shifted as she learned more.

    “I always wanted to help animals all my life. And then naturally that led to ‘If you want to save wild animals, you have to work with local people, find ways for them to live without harming the environment and then getting worried about children and what future they could have if we go on as business as usual,’” she said.

    Goodall has said watching a disturbing film in 1986 about experiments on laboratory animals pushed her into advocacy — a calling that lasted until her death.

    ″I knew I had to do something,″ she said later. ″It was payback time.″

    She was still traveling almost 300 days a year giving lectures to packed audiences and was in the midst of a U.S. speaking tour when she died of natural causes in California, the Jane Goodall Institute said. She had been scheduled to meet with students and teachers on Wednesday to kick off a tree-planting effort in wildfire burn zones in the Los Angeles area.

    When she couldn’t travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, she began podcasting from her childhood home in England. She spoke with guests including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, author Margaret Atwood and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on dozens of episodes of the “Jane Goodall Hopecast.”

    Admirers said Goodall inspired generations of young people, particularly women and girls.

    Jeffrey Flocken, chief international officer of Humane World for Animals, recalled how Goodall once spent two hours telling his young daughter stories about “her adventures with animals and the challenges of being a young woman pioneering biological research in the field when conservation was still an emerging profession.”

    “Chimps, pangolins, elephants and more. Jane cared about all animals passionately. And she was able to use that passion to inspire others — children in particular,” Flocken said.

    University of St. Andrews primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, who studies chimpanzee communication, said that her view of science was transformed when she was a young researcher and first heard Goodall speak.

    “It was the first time … that I got to hear that it was okay to to feel something,” Hobaiter said.

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    AP Science Writer Christina Larson contributed to this story.

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  • In the cool of a Portugal night, it’s time to pick the grapes

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    VIMIEIRO, Portugal — Under a moonlit sky and the glow of headlamps, workers gingerly pluck grape clusters while much of Portugal sleeps.

    They harvest in the Alentejo region, sometimes called the “Tuscany of Portugal” for its rolling vineyards, olive groves and forests that supply cork for the wines. In this vineyard about a 90-minute drive east of Lisbon, the cool autumn night carries the smell of ripe fruit. The workers’ laughter blends with the sound of rustling leaves.

    The night harvest is a time-honored practice in viticulture, meant to preserve the freshness of grapes and shield them from the adverse effects of daytime heat, sunlight and oxidation. As summers in Portugal grow longer, hotter and more unpredictable — in part due to climate change — the practice has become more common here.

    Bárbara Monteiro, co-owner and manager of the Herdade Da Fonte Santa vineyard said she struggled at first to convince her harvesters to work at night — midnight to 8 a.m. They began doing so in 2019.

    “Today, we can say they actually prefer this schedule, as they can often work almost another day, enjoy the day, and avoid the extreme heat we often experience here,” she said.

    The wine harvest in Spain, Italy and Portugal generally takes place between late August and October, with variations based on the region, type of grapes and weather conditions.

    Some vineyards have been harvesting at night for years. In parts of Italy, others have for more than a decade. The El Coto de Rioja vineyard in Spain’s famed La Rioja region opts for early morning harvests, beginning at 5 or 6 a.m., according to César Fernández, the vineyard’s technical director and winemaker.

    In Portugal’s Alentejo region, daytime temperatures particularly in August can reach 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). At night, they can drop by as much as 20 C (36 F) or more.

    Grapes are naturally sensitive to temperature shifts. Warmer weather can make them reach sugar maturity before developing a full flavor and ripeness, leading to higher alcohol levels but less complex wines. Intense heat also speeds up acid loss and can trigger early fermentation as wild yeasts and bacteria become more active.

    By harvesting at night, vintners can lock in more vibrant flavors that improve the quality of the wine produced.

    “Climate change has greatly influenced our harvest and the process and we’ve adapted over the years,” Monteiro said.

    Harvesters, too, don’t mind the gentler temperatures.

    Foreman Vitor Lucas, 55, says he prefers the night harvest, even though there are some warm nights at the start of August.

    Around 3 a.m., workers take a short break to rest and enjoy a meal known as a “bucha,” consisting of cheese, olives, chorizo, bread and even a bit of wine. Then they return to the fields for another four hours before heading home.

    The wine harvest here usually ends in September or October. That late in the season, temperatures have cooled significantly when foreman Lucas and nearly 10 others work the fields.

    “It’s a harvest we enjoy doing,” he said.

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    Naishadham reported from Madrid.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Swiss glaciers shrank 3% this year, the fourth-biggest retreat on record

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    GENEVA — Switzerland’s glaciers have faced “enormous” melting this year with a 3% drop in total volume — the fourth-largest annual drop on record — due to the effects of global warming, top Swiss glaciologists reported Wednesday.

    The shrinkage this year means that ice mass in Switzerland — home to the most glaciers in Europe — has declined by one-quarter over the last decade, the Swiss glacier monitoring group GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences said in their report.

    “Glacial melting in Switzerland was once again enormous in 2025,” the scientists said. “A winter with low snow depth combined with heat waves in June and August led to a loss of 3% of the glacier volume.”

    Switzerland is home to nearly 1,400 glaciers, the most of any country in Europe, and the ice mass and its gradual melting have implications for hydropower, tourism, farming and water resources in many European countries.

    More than 1,000 small glaciers in Switzerland have already disappeared, the experts said.

    The teams reported that a winter with little snow was followed by heat waves in June — the second-warmest June on record — which left the snow reserves depleted by early July. Ice masses began to melt earlier than ever, they said.

    “Glaciers are clearly retreating because of anthropogenic global warming,” said Matthias Huss, the head of GLAMOS, referring to climate change caused by human activity.

    “This is the main cause for the acceleration we are seeing in the last two years,” added Huss, who is also a glaciologist at Zurich’s ETHZ university.

    The shrinkage is the fourth-largest after those in 2022, 2023 and back in 2003.

    The retreat and loss of glaciers is also having an impact on Switzerland’s landscape, causing mountains to shift and ground to become unstable.

    Swiss authorities have been on heightened alert for such changes after a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down a mountainside that covered nearly all of the southern village of Blatten in May.

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  • 5 homes collapse into the surf of the Outer Banks as hurricanes rumble in Atlantic

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    Five unoccupied houses along North Carolina’s Outer Banks collapsed into the ocean Tuesday as Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda rumbled in the Atlantic, the National Park Service said, marking the latest private beachfront structures to fall into the surf there in recent years.

    The homes, once propped on high stilts, collapsed in the afternoon in Buxton, a community on the string of islands that make up the Outer Banks, said Mike Barber, a spokesperson for the park service.

    No injures were reported, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore said in a post on social media.

    In videos shown by the local station 13News Now, homes teetered on stilts battered by the waves before plunging into the surf. The shoreline was clogged with debris, two-by-fours, cushions and an entire home as wave after wave rolled in from the Atlantic.

    The post said that more collapses were possible given the ocean conditions, and urged visitors to avoid Tuesday’s sites, including areas several miles south to stay clear of debris.

    North Carolina’s coast is almost entirely made up of narrow, low-lying barrier islands that have been eroding for years as the sea level rises. Seventeen privately owned houses have collapsed on Seashore beaches since 2020, the park service said.

    The first 15 were north of Buxton in Rodanthe, but a Buxton home fell into the surf two weeks ago.

    The threat to these structures often builds when storms affect the region, as is the case with the two latest hurricanes, even as they headed further out in the Atlantic.

    Portions of eastern North Carolina were subject to coastal flood advisories and warnings, the National Weather Service said, while dangerous surf conditions were expected in the area through the rest of the week.

    Ocean overwash on Tuesday also prompted the state Transportation Department to close a portion of North Carolina Highway 12 on Ocracoke Island. The ferry connecting Ocracoke and Hatteras islands also was suspended Tuesday, the department said.

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  • How to shop secondhand clothing sustainably and look cool doing it

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    More online platforms are giving secondhand shopping a digital upgrade, rolling out features like livestream shopping and AI-powered search to make thrifting faster and more exciting.

    Although choosing secondhand over new is often the more sustainable option, experts say it’s not a license to overconsume. They warn that resale has its limits, since buying more than you need still fuels waste, and shopping online can add emissions from servers and shipping, thrifted or not.

    Here’s how industry experts and fashion-forward shoppers shop secondhand sustainably — and how to find quality pieces that last while looking cool, too.

    At eBay’s secondhand runway shows in New York and London, models wore pre-loved designer pieces that guests could shop live. Secondhand items like those make up 40% of the company’s sales, said Alexis Hoopes, eBay’s vice president of fashion.

    “One of our big priorities is making secondhand just as good as shopping in the primary market,” she said.

    ThredUp and The RealReal have reported record sales this year, signaling that the online resale market is growing quickly. Live-auction apps like Whatnot are giving shoppers more platforms to bid on used clothing.

    Shoppers navigating growing online options with an eye toward sustainability can still end up buying more than they need.

    “People who buy secondhand clothing were found to buy more clothing than people who don’t,” said Meital Peleg Mizrachi, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University who researches textile waste. “Not only that, they tend to get rid of those clothes faster than other consumers. So they’re ending up creating more textile waste because they’re buying more and using that clothing for a shorter period of time.”

    Less than 20% of clothing donations to charities are resold in their stores, according to the Council for Textile Recycling. The rest is downcycled, exported — often to countries in the Global South — or ultimately discarded in landfills.

    Online resale also generates emissions from shipping and packaging, and running massive e-commerce platforms consumes energy, all factors that need to be considered, said Alana James, a fashion professor at Northumbria University. But all of that pales in comparison to the environmental impact of producing a new garment, she said.

    Experts say truly sustainable fashion requires breaking away from the fast-fashion mindset — the constant pressure to “buy now” and the manufactured sense of scarcity that fuels overconsumption.

    “Haul” culture — the social media trend of showing off massive shopping sprees — shows overconsumption in a new way, said Katrina Caspelich, communications director for Remake, an advocacy group for human rights and climate justice in fashion.

    “Responsible secondhand shopping means choosing pieces you’ll truly wear, investing in quality and resisting the pull of endless trend cycles,” she said.

    It can be difficult to determine quality when shopping online, but asking the seller about the garment’s composition can help, said Wisdom Kaye, a menswear content creator.

    Natural fabrics are a good place to start, said Caspelich.

    “Look for silk, cotton, bamboo — things that breathe and last — versus synthetics like polyester or nylon,” she said.

    Shoppers should look for items that are lined and make note of the quality of the stitching, said Julian Carter, a menswear content creator.

    Other secondhand buyers want to buy heftier clothing made before the mid-1990s, when more U.S. products were made without outsourced labor or a lot of cost-cutting, said Wesley Breed, a fashion history content creator.

    From the year to the color, shoppers sifting through hundreds of thousands of search results online should be very specific about what they want, said Aimee Kelly, a fashion content creator.

    “It helps you find the cooler pieces,” she said. “And have patience — look around, you’re gonna find it.”

    Finding the right item is only the first step — caring for it ensures it stays in circulation.

    Stuff bags to maintain their shape, keep clothing in garment bags, and use muslin bags and lavender sprays to keep out moths that eat natural fabrics like silk, wool and fur, said Liana Satenstein, host of eBay’s Endless Runway secondhand fashion show.

    People can also wear clothes more between washes, spot-clean and air-dry clothes, and learn to sew.

    “You’d be shocked how many people just toss a cardigan because a button fell off,” Caspelich said.

    Secondhand sustainability isn’t just about keeping clothes out of landfills.

    People who try to sell or give away their clothes should be mindful of where they’re going, said Mizrachi, the Yale researcher.

    “Try to give them to smaller community stores or shelters — places that you know are happy to get those clothes,” Mizrachi said.

    Zara, H&M and other brands have launched recycling programs.

    eBay recently partnered with British retailer Marks & Spencer for a take-back program that lets shoppers return items in-store to be resold on eBay.

    But the most sustainable choice is simply buying less, Mizrachi said. The only way to make fashion companies change how they do business is to make overconsumption unprofitable — which means buyers need to change their habits, she said.

    “We can’t purchase our way out of the climate crisis,” Mizrachi said.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ weaken, scientists warn of worsening droughts

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    BOGOTA, Colombia — Droughts have withered crops in Peru, fires have scorched the Amazon and hydroelectric dams in Ecuador have struggled to keep the lights on as rivers dry up. Scientists say the cause may lie high above the rainforest, where invisible “flying rivers” carry rain from the Atlantic Ocean across South America.

    New analysis warns that relentless deforestation is disrupting that water flow and suggests that continuing tree loss will worsen droughts in the southwestern Amazon and could eventually trigger those regions to shift from rainforest to drier savanna — grassland with far fewer trees.

    “These are the forces that actually create and sustain the Amazon rainforest,” said Matt Finer, a senior researcher with Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), which tracks deforestation and climate threats across the basin and carried out the analysis.

    “If you break that pump by cutting down too much forest, the rains stop reaching where they need to go.”

    Most of the Amazon’s rainfall starts over the Atlantic Ocean. Moist air is pushed inland by steady winds that blow west along the equator, known as the trade winds. The forest then acts like a pump, effectively relaying the water thousands of miles westward as the trees absorb water, then release it back into the air.

    Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre was among the early researchers who calculated how much of the water vapor from the Atlantic would move through and eventually out of the Amazon basin. He and colleagues coined the “flying rivers” term at a 2006 scientific meeting, and interest grew as scientists warned that a weakening of the rivers could push the Amazon into a tipping point where rainforest would turn to savanna.

    That’s important because the Amazon rainforest is a vast storehouse for the carbon dioxide that largely drives the world’s warming. Such a shift would devastate wildlife and Indigenous communities and threaten farming, water supplies and weather stability far beyond the region.

    The analysis by Finer’s group found that southern Peru and northern Bolivia are especially vulnerable. During the dry season, flying rivers sweep across southern Brazil before reaching the Andes — precisely where deforestation is most intense. The loss of trees means less water vapor is carried westward, raising the risk of drought in iconic protected areas such as Peru’s Manu National Park.

    “Peru can do everything right to protect a place like Manu,” Finer said. “But if deforestation keeps cutting into the pump in Brazil, the rains that sustain it may never arrive.”

    Nobre said as much as 50% of rainfall in the western Amazon near the Andes depends on the flying rivers.

    Corine Vriesendorp, Amazon Conservation’s director of science based in Cusco, Peru, said the changes are already visible.

    “The last two years have brought the driest conditions the Amazon has ever seen,” Vriesendorp said. “Ecological calendars that Indigenous communities use — when to plant, when to fish, when animals reproduce — are increasingly out of sync. Having less and more unpredictable rain will have an even bigger impact on their lives than climate change is already having.”

    Farmers face failed harvests, Indigenous families struggle with disrupted fishing and hunting seasons and cities that rely on hydroelectric power see outages as the rivers that provide the power dry up.

    MAAP researchers found that rainfall patterns depend on when and where the flying rivers cross the basin. In the wet season, their northern route flows mostly over intact forests in Guyana, Suriname and northern Brazil, keeping the system strong.

    But in the dry season — when forests are already stressed by heat — the aerial rivers cut across southern Brazil, where deforestation fronts spread along highways and farms and there simply are fewer trees to help move the moisture along.

    “It’s during the dry months, when the forest most needs water, that the flying rivers are most disrupted,” Finer said.

    Finer pointed to roads that can accelerate deforestation, noting that the controversial BR-319 highway in Brazil — a project to pave a road through one of the last intact parts of the southern Amazon — could create an entirely new deforestation front.

    For years, scientists have warned about the Amazon tipping toward savannah. Finer said the new study complicates that picture.

    “It’s not a single, all-at-once collapse,” he said. “Certain areas, like the southwest Amazon, are more vulnerable and will feel the impacts first. And we’re already seeing early signs of rainfall reduction downwind of deforested areas.”

    Nobre said the risks are stark. Amazon forests have already lost about 17% of their cover, mostly to cattle and soy. Those ecosystems recycle far less water.

    “The dry season is now five weeks longer than it was 45 years ago, with 20 to 30% less rainfall,” he said. “If deforestation exceeds 20 to 25% and warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, there’s no way to prevent the Amazon from reaching the tipping point.”

    Protecting intact forests, supporting Indigenous land rights and restoring deforested areas are the clearest paths forward, researchers say.

    “To avoid collapse we need zero deforestation, degradation and fires — immediately,” Nobre said. “And we must begin large-scale forest restoration, not less than half a million square kilometers. If we do that, and keep global warming below 2 degrees, we can still save the Amazon.”

    Finer said governments should consider new conservation categories specifically designed to protect flying rivers — safeguarding not just land but the atmospheric flows that make the rainforest possible.

    For Vriesendorp, that means regional cooperation. She praised Peru for creating vast parks and Indigenous reserves in the southeast, including Manu National Park. But, she said, “this can’t be solved by one country alone. Peru depends on Brazil, and Brazil depends on its neighbors. We need basin-wide solutions.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Endangered whooping crane dies of avian flu at Wisconsin wildlife refuge

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    MADISON, Wis. — Ducky is dead.

    The International Crane Foundation announced Monday that Ducky, an endangered female whooping crane the foundation planned to release into the wilds of Wisconsin this fall, died on Thursday after becoming infected with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, a strain of avian flu.

    Foundation officials said in a news release that Ducky’s death marks the first time the strain has killed a whooping crane.

    Only about 700 wild whooping cranes are left in North America, according to the foundation. Ducky’s death translates to a 1% decline in the eastern migratory population, which stands at fewer than 70 birds.

    “We are deeply saddened by the loss of Ducky,” Kim Boardman, the foundation’s birds curator, said in the release. “Each Whooping Crane is invaluable — not only to our organization, but to the survival of the entire species.”

    Ducky hatched in May and was part of the Baraboo-based foundation’s breeding and reintroduction program. She was reared by foundation staff outfitted in crane costumes in an effort to prevent her from imprinting on humans, boosting her chances of survival in the wild. She was among a group of eight cranes set to be released into the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge in October.

    Diana Boon, the foundation’s director of conservation medicine, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Ducky’s group has been at the refuge since August acclimating to the area and learning survival behavior. Ducky became sick early last week, becoming lethargic and stumbling before she finally died.

    Boon speculated that Ducky may have come into contact with an infected bird or through environmental exposure to the HPAI virus as she explored the refuge. Wild birds, including waterfowl such as ducks, geese and swans, can carry the virus, often without showing symptoms, and shed it through feces, which in turn can contaminate water sources.

    Staff at the marsh have taken to wearing personal protective equipment beneath their crane costumes and are keeping their distance from the rest of Ducky’s group to avoid getting sick, but so far none of the other chicks have shown any symptoms, Boon said. Foundation staff planned to meet Monday afternoon to decide whether to go ahead with releasing them as planned.

    Avian flu killed several thousand sandhill cranes in Indiana earlier this year.

    The International Crane Foundation was founded in 1973. It works to protect whooping cranes around the globe through a network of experts in 50 countries.

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  • A raptor with no qualms about eating its opponents wins New Zealand’s annual bird election

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    WELLINGTON, New Zealand — WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand ’s annual bird election is contested by cheeky parrots, sweet songbirds and cute, puffball robins. This year’s winner was a mysterious falcon that wouldn’t think twice about eating them.

    Kārearea, the Indigenous Māori name for the New Zealand falcon, was crowned Bird of the Year on Monday. But the annual poll, run by conservation group Forest & Bird, is no ordinary online vote.

    The fiercely fought election sees volunteer (human) campaign managers apply to stump for their favorite bird. Feathers fly as avian enthusiasts seek to sway the public through meme battles, trash-talking poster campaigns and dance routines performed in bird costumes.

    “Bird of the Year has grown from a simple email poll in 2005 to a hotly contested cultural moment,” said Forest & Bird Chief Executive Nicola Toki. “Behind the memes and mayhem is a serious message.”

    The contest draws attention to New Zealand’s native bird species, with 80% designated as being in trouble to some degree. But it attracts passionate fandom because New Zealanders are bird-obsessed.

    In a country with no native land mammals except for two species of bat, birds reign supreme. They appear in art, on jewelry, in schoolchildren’s songs, and in the name New Zealanders are known by abroad, “kiwis.”

    Beloved birds include alpine parrots that harass tourists and pigeons which get so drunk on berries that they sometimes fall out of trees.

    “This is not a land of lions, tigers and bears,” said Toki. “The birds here are weird and wonderful and not what you would expect to see perhaps in other countries.”

    The first contest two decades ago attracted fewer than 900 votes. More than 75,000 people in the country of 5 million cast ballots this year.

    It was the highest-ever voter turnout apart from an episode when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver volunteered as a campaign manager in 2023, prompting mostly joking accusations from New Zealanders of American interference. Perhaps inevitably, Oliver’s bird, the pūteketeke or Australasian crested grebe, won in a 290,000-vote landslide.

    Other controversies have struck the poll. In 2021, there was mild uproar when a bat won the title, despite not being a bird.

    The vote was ruffled by a foreign influence scandal in 2018 when self-styled comedians in Australia cast hundreds of fraudulent votes for a bird that shares its name with an Antipodean slang term for sex. Voters must now verify the email addresses used to cast their votes.

    Forest & Bird said 87% of the votes in this year’s poll came from New Zealand. The falcon’s more than 14,500 votes appeared to have been won fair and square.

    The majestic kārearea can fly at speeds of more than 200 km (124 miles) per hour and swoops to capture its prey, often smaller birds. The endemic species is threatened in New Zealand, vulnerable to electrocution on wires and loss of their forest habitats.

    “They’re a mysterious bird and that’s partly because they’re cryptic, they’re often well-hidden,” said Phil Bradfield, a trustee of Kārearea Falcon Trust in Marlborough, on New Zealand’s South Island.

    Official figures suggest between 5,000 and 8,000 New Zealand falcons remaining, although the true number is unknown. Bradfield said the “fast and sneaky and very special” raptor was a deserving Bird of the Year winner.

    Other campaigns knew victory on Monday would take a miracle. Birds that are ugly — but not ugly enough to be funny — unknown or perceived as boring face an uphill slog.

    That doesn’t deter bird lovers. The year 2025 was the first that all 73 bird competitors attracted campaign managers, with some electing to stump for contenders they knew would lose.

    One was Marc Daalder whose scrappy, grassroots campaign for the tākapu, or Australasian gannet, drew 962 votes — about a 15th of the falcon’s.

    “Running a campaign for one of the less popular birds is a more satisfying experience because you know the votes your bird received are a result of your hard work,” said Daalder, who is a (human) political journalist and three-time (bird) campaign manager.

    Despite the near-record voter turnout, Toki from Forest & Bird said she feared New Zealanders would give up on some of the most threatened species as they grew more costly to protect, particularly from predators such as cats, rats and stoats.

    “Successive governments in New Zealand have cumulatively reduced investment in conservation, which is the cornerstone of New Zealand’s economic prosperity,” she said, referring to tourism campaigns promoting the country’s scenic landscapes.

    “People come here to see our native birds and the places they live in,” she said. “They’re not coming here to see shopping malls.”

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  • 3 dead and others believed missing after flooding in rural Arizona community

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    GLOBE, Ariz. — Three people have died and others are believed missing after flooding in a rural community in Arizona, officials said Saturday.

    Carl Melford, the Gila County Division of Emergency Management manager, told KPHO-TV that two of the people who died were found in a vehicle and a third person was found elsewhere after flooding on Friday in Globe, a city of about 7,250 people about 88 miles (142 kilometers) east of Phoenix.

    “I grew up here, and I don’t recognize the town that I grew up in right now,” he said.

    Searchers looked for people missing all night, and more help arrived Saturday to continue the search, city officials said on Facebook. They urged people to stay away from the historic downtown of the former mining town because of compromised buildings and hazardous chemicals and debris, including propane tanks swept away in the floodwaters.

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  • Seychelles president seeks a second term as people vote in African tourist haven

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    VICTORIA, Seychelles — The people of Seychelles voted Saturday in an election to choose a new leader and parliament, with President Wavel Ramkalawan seeking a second term in Africa’s smallest country.

    Ramkalawan’s chief political rival, Patrick Herminie of the United Seychelles Party, is a veteran lawmaker and parliamentary speaker from 2007 to 2016.

    Polls opened at 7 a.m. in a sign of what was expected to be a strong voter turnout in the tourist haven, where the president is elected for a five-year term.

    Long lines formed at many polling stations across the country Saturday. Electoral authorities said all stations opened on time and voting was proceeding smoothly.

    Most polling stations closed after 7 p.m. local time, with counting underway. Results are expected on Sunday.

    Ramkalawan, an Anglican priest who later became involved in politics, became the first opposition leader since 1976 to defeat the governing party when he made his sixth bid for the presidency in 2020.

    The governing Linyon Demokratik Seselwa party campaigned on economic recovery, social development and environmental sustainability.

    If no contender receives more than 50% of the vote, the two top candidates go into a runoff. Just over 77,000 people are registered to vote in Seychelles.

    The 115-island archipelago in the Indian Ocean has become synonymous with luxury and environmental travel, which has bumped Seychelles to the top of the list of Africa’s richest countries by gross domestic product per capita, according to the World Bank.

    The economy also has fueled a growing middle class and opposition to the governing party.

    A week before the election, activists filed a constitutional case against the government, challenging a recent decision to issue a long-term lease for part of Assomption Island, the country’s largest, to a Qatari company for a luxury hotel development.

    The lease, which includes reconstruction of an airstrip to facilitate access for international flights, has ignited widespread criticism that the agreement favors foreign interests over Seychelles’ extended welfare and sovereignty over its land.

    With its territory spread across about 390,000 square kilometers (150,579 square miles), Seychelles is especially vulnerable to climate change, including rising sea levels, according to the World Bank and the U.N. Sustainable Development Group.

    Another concern for voters is a growing drug crisis. A 2017 U.N. report described the country as a major drug transit route. The 2023 Global Organized Crime Index said that the island nation has one of the world’s highest rates of heroin addiction.

    An estimated 6,000 people out of Seychelles’ population of 120,000 use the drug, while independent analysts say addiction rates approach 10%. Most of the country’s population lives on the island of Mahé, home to the capital, Victoria.

    Critics say Ramkalawan has largely failed to rein in the drug crisis. His rival, Herminie, also was criticized for failing to stem the addiction rates, while serving as chairman of the national Agency for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation from 2017 until 2020.

    ___

    For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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  • UNESCO designates 26 new biosphere reserves amid biodiversity challenges and climate change

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    An Indonesian archipelago that’s home to three-fourths of Earth’s coral species, a stretch of Icelandic coast with 70% of the country’s plant life and an area along Angola’s Atlantic coast featuring savannahs, forests and estuaries are among 26 new UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves.

    The United Nations cultural agency says the reserves — 785 sites in 142 countries, designated since 1971 — are home to some of the planet’s richest and most fragile ecosystems. But biosphere reserves encompass more than strictly protected nature reserves; they’re expanded to include areas where people live and work, and the designation requires that scientists, residents and government officials work together to balance conservation and research with local economic and cultural needs.

    “The concept of biosphere reserves is that biodiversity conservation is a pillar of socioeconomic development” and can contribute to the economy, said António Abreu, head of the program, adding that conflict and misunderstanding can result if local communities are left out of decision-making and planning.

    The new reserves, in 21 countries, were announced Saturday in Hangzhou, China, where the program adopted a 10-year strategic action plan that includes studying the effects of climate change, Abreu said.

    The new reserves include a 52,000-square-mile (135,000-square-kilometer) area in the Indonesian archipelago, Raja Ampat, home to over 75% of earth’s coral species as well as rainforests and rare endangered sea turtles. The economy depends on fishing, aquaculture, small-scale agriculture and tourism, UNESCO said.

    On Iceland’s west coast, the Snæfellsnes Biosphere Reserve’s landscape includes volcanic peaks, lava fields, wetlands, grasslands and the Snæfellsjökull glacier. The 1,460-square-kilometer (564 square-mile) reserve is an important sanctuary for seabirds, seals and over 70% of Iceland’s plant life — including 330 species of wildflowers and ferns. Its population of more than 4,000 people relies on fishing, sheep farming and tourism.

    And in Angola, the new Quiçama Biosphere Reserve, along 206 kilometers (128 miles) of Atlantic coast is a “sanctuary for biodiversity” within its savannahs, forests, flood plains, estuaries and islands, according to UNESCO. It’s home to elephants, manatees, sea turtles and more than 200 bird species. Residents’ livelihoods include livestock herding, farming, fishing, honey production.

    Residents are important partners in protecting biodiversity within the reserves, and even have helped identify new species, said Abreu, the program’s leader. Meanwhile, scientists also are helping to restore ecosystems to benefit the local economy, he said.

    For example, in the Philippines, the coral reefs around Pangatalan Island were severely damaged because local fishermen used dynamite to find depleted fish populations. Scientists helped design a structure to help coral reefs regrow and taught fishermen to raise fish through aquaculture so the reefs could recover.

    “They have food and they have also fish to sell in the markets,” said Abreu.

    In the African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, a biosphere reserve on Príncipe Island led to restoration of mangroves, which help buffer against storm surges and provide important habitat, Abreu said.

    Ecotourism also has become an important industry, with biosphere trails and guided bird-watching tours. A new species of owl was identified there in recent years.

    This year, a biosphere reserve was added for the island of São Tomé, making the country the first entirely within a reserve.

    At least 60% of the UNESCO biosphere reserves have been affected by extreme weather tied to climate change, which is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas, including extreme heat and drought and sea-level rise, Abreu said.

    The agency is using satellite imagery and computer modeling to monitor changes in coastal zones and other areas, and is digitizing its historical databases, Abreu said. The information will be used to help determine how best to preserve and manage the reserves.

    Some biosphere reserves also are under pressure from environmental degradation.

    In Nigeria, for example, habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat as cocoa farmers expand into Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest and one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The forest is also important to help combat climate change.

    The Trump administration in July announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO as of December 2026, just as it did during his first administration, saying U.S. involvement is not in the national interest. The U.S. has 47 biosphere reserves, most in federal protected areas.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • After massive shrimp recalls, the FDA finds radioactive contamination in spices too

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    Federal regulators have detected possible radioactive contamination in a second food product sent to the U.S. from Indonesia, even as recalls of potentially tainted shrimp continue to grow. The discovery adds to questions about the source of the unusual problem.

    U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials last week blocked import of all spices from PT Natural Java Spice of Indonesia after federal inspectors detected cesium 137 in a shipment of cloves sent to California.

    That follows the import alert imposed in August on the company PT Bahari Makmuri Sejati, or BMS foods, which sends millions of pounds of shrimp to the U.S. each year.

    Here’s what you need to know about potential cesium 137 contamination:

    Cesium 137 is a radioactive isotope created as a byproduct of nuclear reactions, including nuclear bombs, testing, reactor operations and accidents. It’s widespread around the world, with trace amounts found in the environment, including soil, food and air.

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials detected cesium 137 in shipping containers of shrimp sent by PT Bahari Makmur Sejati to several U.S. ports. CBP officials flagged the potential contamination to the FDA, which tested samples of the shrimp and detected cesium 137 in one sample of breaded shrimp.

    The company has sent about 84 million pounds (38 million kilograms) of shrimp to U.S. ports this year, according to data from Import Genius, a trade data analysis company. It supplies about 6% of foreign shrimp imported in the U.S.

    This month, FDA officials detected cesium 137 in one sample of cloves exported by PT Natural Java Spice, which sends spices to the U.S. and other countries. Records show the company sent about 440,000 pounds ( 200,000 kilograms) of cloves to the U.S. this year.

    No food that triggered alerts or tested positive has been released for sale in the U.S., FDA officials emphasized.

    But hundreds of thousands of packages of imported frozen shrimp sold at Kroger and other grocery stores across the U.S. have been recalled because they may have been manufactured under conditions that allowed them to be contaminated, the agency said.

    Although the risk appears to be small, the foods could pose a “potential health concern” for people exposed to low levels of cesium 137 over time.

    The levels of contamination detected are far below the level that could trigger the need for health protections, but long-term exposure could raise the risk of certain cancers.

    It’s not clear whether there’s a common source of contamination for the shrimp and the spices. FDA and CBP officials said their investigations are continuing. The two processing facilities appear to be about 500 miles (800 kilometers) apart in Indonesia.

    Contaminated scrap metal or melted metal at an industrial site near the shrimp processing plant in Indonesia may be the source of the radioactive material, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear regulators in Indonesia said they detected the radioactive isotope at the site outside Jakarta.

    It’s possible that that type of contamination could come from recycling old medical equipment that contained cesium 137, according to Steve Biegalski, a nuclear medicine expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

    Contaminated transport containers or shipping methods, such as trucks, boats or shared materials could also be a source, he said.

    For now, consumers should avoid eating or serving shrimp recalled for possible cesium 137 contamination, the FDA said.

    To date, four firms have issued recalls of shrimp since August, including those listed here.

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  • After global aid cuts, nonprofits seek new energy and new partners on the UN sidelines

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    NEW YORK — A passing comment in a hotel hallway at one of the many conferences on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly’s annual high-level meetings this past week may have turned into a solution.

    A global antipoverty nonprofit executive, recently returned from Zambia, mentioned that a hospital there had just one incubator, warmer and resuscitator for the fifty-some babies born daily.

    The conversation could’ve ended there with an empathetic response. But in this case, leaders of a corporate-nonprofit alliance providing medical equipment to those in need heard the story. And in this case, Children International President Susana Eshleman said help may come by year’s end.

    “It’s very encouraging and inspiring to be here,” she said. “It feels like a shot in the arm sometimes when the work that we’re doing is hard and the global situation, given all the recent developments, is particularly hard.”

    In a year marked by significant foreign aid pullbacks from the U.S. and other wealthy countries, the exchange provides a glimpse into the unique connective tissue that still draws foundations, nonprofits, corporations and international actors to what attendees call UNGA week.

    The meetings at Manhattan ballrooms and intimate townhouse dinners solidify relationships and hasten coordination, made even more impactful by the sheer number of parties. This year, attendees described more pragmatic, focused and galvanizing discussions than before, placing a greater emphasis on the roles companies and philanthropies must play in shaping an uncertain future.

    Conversations, in private and on stages, would generally open with the impact of aid cuts on a particular organization, but quickly move to the group’s pivots and current needs. Former President Bill Clinton began the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting with a list of the world’s issues currently worrying him. But he ended it with the message: “Be caught trying.”

    Philanthropists’ interest in engaging with the private sector was evident in some of the heaviest hitters’ announcements.

    At his global forum on Wednesday in The Plaza Hotel, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg unveiled a new partnership with the African Development Bank Group to bring more investment to the continent.

    “There’s certainly no shortage of challenges to discuss over there,” said Bloomberg, referencing the U.N. headquarters. “But the truth is, in a world that’s more interconnected and fast-moving than ever, the biggest problems can’t be solved by national governments alone.”

    At the Clinton Global Initiative, which retooled this year’s meeting to focus on working groups, ballrooms across the New York Hilton Midtown were packed with hundreds of front line workers, policy experts, foundation donors and NGO representatives divided into groups of 10 to discuss specific problems and potential solutions.

    The working groups yielded numerous new initiatives, ranging from a social enterprise fund from Kiva Microfunds alongside corporate foundations to a new Global Network for National Service.

    At Rockefeller Foundation headquarters, former heads of state, major foundations’ leaders and global health experts gathered around a table Monday to reimagine international development systems weakened by foreign aid cuts.

    The Rockefeller Foundation committed $50 million to the effort. Rajiv Shah, the foundation’s president, said that includes upgrading a critical famine early warning system, created by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and diversifying its financing so no one political party can take it away.

    The Clinton Health Access Initiative announced its partnership with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Unitaid, and Wits RHI to provide Gilead Sciences’ HIV prevention drug lenacapavir in 120 low- and middle-income countries. The Gates Foundation announced a similar deal with Indian pharmaceutical manufacturer Hetero Labs.

    Bill Gates also announced the foundation would pledge $912 million to the Global Fund’s replenishment campaign to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

    But, for all the talk of non-governmental funders’ importance, philanthropic leaders emphasized they cannot do it alone. Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said he hopes their commitment to the Global Fund spurs the U.S. and other countries to step up.

    “There is no possible way any philanthropy, any combination of philanthropies, can fill the gap,” Suzman said Wednesday.

    International Rescue Committee CEO David Miliband, who reported losing $600 million in U.S. grants, said aid is being spread too thin. He called on his sector to more effectively deliver assistance with new technologies and find alternative financing streams.

    “We’ve got to embrace innovation. And we’ve got to persuade newly wealthy countries — like those in the Gulf would be one example — that there’s a real potential to have lifelong impact on the people we’re helping,” Miliband said. “And we also have to appeal to philanthropy in the countries where we’re working.”

    Whether they work in health, climate, migration or any other issue facing funding setbacks, nonprofit leaders reported a different feel to this year’s programming.

    Conversations carried a heightened urgency and like-minded groups were forced to better coordinate their goals. Some advocates trod lightly between rallying their cause and avoiding any missteps that might suggest opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. Concerns about obtaining visas prompted some to travel with fewer staff than usual.

    There was real worry that “we wouldn’t have UNGA,” according to USA for UNHCR Executive Director Suzanne Ehlers.

    Her nonprofit had already begun developing a $15 million campaign to fund refugee women’s scholarships. But with everything “thrown up in the air,” she said, many questioned the point of coming.

    “And here we are,” said Ehlers, who announced the campaign this week. “It’s actually more consequential than ever, I would say.”

    The challenge is identifying who has financial resources in this new aid landscape, said Charity Wallace, a past adviser to former first lady Laura Bush. Her consulting firm, Wallace Global Impact, focuses on cross-sector solutions to world problems.

    “Frankly, some people bemoan, as if it was still February and we wish that USAID still existed,” said Wallace, adding that many now see “they have to step up in a different way” in this different reality.

    Matt Freeman, executive director of Stronger Foundations for Nutrition, said previous UNGA weeks have been filled with concurrent events where advocates fight for the same limited audience. He sensed a stronger spirit of collective action this year.

    “That’s been really heartwarming,” he said. “Because you could imagine in a moment of scarcity that everyone’s elbows become sharper and they’re fighting for the pie.”

    Kitty van der Heijden, the deputy executive director of partnerships at the United Nations Children’s Fund, said her week on the sidelines had been a mix of disappointment and excitement. She said UNICEF, which faces at least a 20% cut in revenue next year, will cut staff and look for other ways to save money.

    On one hand, she said there was both “withdrawal from governments” and “depression” the state of the multilateral system. On the other hand, she said she saw many philanthropic and private sector actors “really trying to lead now in difficult times.”

    “I have no time for depression,” she added. “I only have time to build more partnerships, to be out there, to deliver, because I know that we can. And we cannot do it alone.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Thalia Beaty and Glenn Gamboa contributed to this report.

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Helene interrupted this town’s outdoor tourism makeover. How businesses are doing a year later

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    OLD FORT, N.C. — Morning mist is still burning off the surrounding mountains when they appear: Small groups of helmeted riders on one-wheeled, skateboard-like contraptions, navigating the pitched streets, past the 30-foot granite Arrowhead Monument on the town square.

    They are among the 400 or so people converging on this Blue Ridge foothills town for FloatLife Fest, which bills itself as “the ORIGINAL and LONGEST RUNNING” gathering dedicated to motorized Onewheel boards. Swelling Old Fort’s normal population by half, the mid-September festival is injecting much needed money and hope into a town still recovering a year after it was inundated by the remnants of Hurricane Helene.

    “We should definitely come back again,” says Jess Jones, a 34-year-old marine biologist from Edinburgh, Scotland. “The vibe and the welcome that we got there was really nice.”

    That the festival occurred at all is a tribute to the area’s natural beauty, and the resilience of its people.

    Signs of progress are mixed with still-visible scars from Helene in this town about 24 miles (39 kilometers) east of Asheville. Most of Old Fort’s shops have reopened, even as workers continue clawing away at a debris pile downtown and some homes remain unlivable.

    Like other businesspeople in this tourist-dependent mountain region, bike shop owner Chad Schoenauer has been banking on a strong fall leaf-peeping season to help get him back on track after Helene. But many seem to assume Old Fort is still a wasteland.

    “‘Oh, I didn’t know that you were open,’” he says is a typical reaction.

    When Helene swept through, Old Fort was well on its way to remaking itself as an outdoor destination, especially after furniture manufacturer Ethan Allen laid off 325 workers when it converted its factory there into a distribution center in 2019.

    “When the Ethan Allen layoff happened, local leaders started coming together and saying, `How do we use these beautiful natural assets that we have to diversify the manufacturing economy?’” says Kim Effler, president and CEO of the McDowell Chamber of Commerce.

    Named for a Revolutionary War-era stockade, the town decided to become a world-class destination for hiking, running, horseback riding and, most notably, mountain biking.

    “We have a red clay that makes some of the best trails in the country,” FloatLife founder Justyn Thompson says. “The trails are epic.”

    In 2021, the G5 Trail Collective — a program led by the nonprofit Camp Grier outdoors complex — got the U.S. Forest Service to agree to 42 miles (68 kilometers) of new multi-purpose trails. The effort began paying dividends almost immediately.

    “For every trail that we were able to open, we saw a new business open up in town,” says Jason McDougald, the camp’s executive director.

    The collective had just completed the 21st mile (34th kilometer) of trail when Helene, in Schoenauer’s words, hit “the reset button” by washing away trails and damaging businesses.

    When the storm blew through on Sept. 27, 2024, the Catawba River converged with the normally placid Mill Creek, leaving much of downtown under several feet of muddy water.

    Schoenauer, who opened his Old Fort Bike Shop in 2021, says it took two days before he could make it to town to assess damage to the business housed in a refurbished 1901 former general store.

    “I was numb coming all the way here,” he says. “And as soon as I got off the exit, I started crying.”

    The water rose more than 3 feet (1 meter) inside the shop, leaving behind a 10-inch (25-centimeter) layer of reddish-brown mud. The beautiful heart pine floors buckled.

    Schoenauer says he suffered about $150,000 in uninsured losses.

    At the Foothills Watershed mountain biking complex along the Catawba, the storm took 48 large shade trees and an 18,000-square-foot (1,672-square-meter) track built with banks and jumps.

    “We had a septic field, a brand-new constructed septic field for the business that was destroyed,” says Casey McKissick, who spent the last three years developing the bike park. “Never been used; not even turned on yet. And it all went right down the river.”

    McKissick says the business didn’t have flood insurance because it was too costly, and the threat of a catastrophic event seemed too remote.

    The damage amounted to $150,000. Worse yet was the loss of eight months of business, including last year’s foliage season.

    “We lost that really critical fourth quarter of the year, which is a beautiful fall,” McKissick says.

    Gov. Josh Stein recently announced that travelers had spent a record $36.7 billion in the state last year. But that boom eluded the counties worst hit by Helene.

    Visitor spending in Buncombe County — home to Asheville — was down nearly 11% last year compared to 2023, according to the state Department of Commerce.

    In McDowell, tourist spending dropped nearly 3% in that same period. Effler says this June and July, foot traffic at the county’s largest visitor center was down 50% from last year.

    She blames much of that on damage to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is consistently one of the most-visited of the national parks. About 35 miles (56 kilometers) of the North Carolina route — including long stretches in McDowell County — aren’t slated to reopen until fall 2026.

    McDougald says nearly every trail in the Old Fort complex was damaged, with landslides taking out “300-foot sections of trail at a time.”

    They’ve managed to reopen about 30 miles (48 kilometers) of trail, but he says about that many miles remain closed.

    Schoenauer reopened his shop in December, but traffic was down by about two-thirds this summer.

    “My business, revenue-wise, has shifted more to the repair side,” he says. “People trying to still recreate, but use the bike that they have just to keep it going and have some fun.”

    The Watershed complex opened in June, but without the planned riverfront gazebo and performance stage. And they’ve moved the bike jumps to higher ground.

    “It’s changed our way of looking at the floodplain, for sure,” McKissick says.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Helene interrupted this town’s outdoor tourism makeover. How businesses are doing a year later

    [ad_1]

    OLD FORT, N.C. — Morning mist is still burning off the surrounding mountains when they appear: Small groups of helmeted riders on one-wheeled, skateboard-like contraptions, navigating the pitched streets, past the 30-foot granite Arrowhead Monument on the town square.

    They are among the 400 or so people converging on this Blue Ridge foothills town for FloatLife Fest, which bills itself as “the ORIGINAL and LONGEST RUNNING” gathering dedicated to motorized Onewheel boards. Swelling Old Fort’s normal population by half, the mid-September festival is injecting much needed money and hope into a town still recovering a year after it was inundated by the remnants of Hurricane Helene.

    “We should definitely come back again,” says Jess Jones, a 34-year-old marine biologist from Edinburgh, Scotland. “The vibe and the welcome that we got there was really nice.”

    That the festival occurred at all is a tribute to the area’s natural beauty, and the resilience of its people.

    Signs of progress are mixed with still-visible scars from Helene in this town about 24 miles (39 kilometers) east of Asheville. Most of Old Fort’s shops have reopened, even as workers continue clawing away at a debris pile downtown and some homes remain unlivable.

    Like other businesspeople in this tourist-dependent mountain region, bike shop owner Chad Schoenauer has been banking on a strong fall leaf-peeping season to help get him back on track after Helene. But many seem to assume Old Fort is still a wasteland.

    “‘Oh, I didn’t know that you were open,’” he says is a typical reaction.

    When Helene swept through, Old Fort was well on its way to remaking itself as an outdoor destination, especially after furniture manufacturer Ethan Allen laid off 325 workers when it converted its factory there into a distribution center in 2019.

    “When the Ethan Allen layoff happened, local leaders started coming together and saying, `How do we use these beautiful natural assets that we have to diversify the manufacturing economy?’” says Kim Effler, president and CEO of the McDowell Chamber of Commerce.

    Named for a Revolutionary War-era stockade, the town decided to become a world-class destination for hiking, running, horseback riding and, most notably, mountain biking.

    “We have a red clay that makes some of the best trails in the country,” FloatLife founder Justyn Thompson says. “The trails are epic.”

    In 2021, the G5 Trail Collective — a program led by the nonprofit Camp Grier outdoors complex — got the U.S. Forest Service to agree to 42 miles (68 kilometers) of new multi-purpose trails. The effort began paying dividends almost immediately.

    “For every trail that we were able to open, we saw a new business open up in town,” says Jason McDougald, the camp’s executive director.

    The collective had just completed the 21st mile (34th kilometer) of trail when Helene, in Schoenauer’s words, hit “the reset button” by washing away trails and damaging businesses.

    When the storm blew through on Sept. 27, 2024, the Catawba River converged with the normally placid Mill Creek, leaving much of downtown under several feet of muddy water.

    Schoenauer, who opened his Old Fort Bike Shop in 2021, says it took two days before he could make it to town to assess damage to the business housed in a refurbished 1901 former general store.

    “I was numb coming all the way here,” he says. “And as soon as I got off the exit, I started crying.”

    The water rose more than 3 feet (1 meter) inside the shop, leaving behind a 10-inch (25-centimeter) layer of reddish-brown mud. The beautiful heart pine floors buckled.

    Schoenauer says he suffered about $150,000 in uninsured losses.

    At the Foothills Watershed mountain biking complex along the Catawba, the storm took 48 large shade trees and an 18,000-square-foot (1,672-square-meter) track built with banks and jumps.

    “We had a septic field, a brand-new constructed septic field for the business that was destroyed,” says Casey McKissick, who spent the last three years developing the bike park. “Never been used; not even turned on yet. And it all went right down the river.”

    McKissick says the business didn’t have flood insurance because it was too costly, and the threat of a catastrophic event seemed too remote.

    The damage amounted to $150,000. Worse yet was the loss of eight months of business, including last year’s foliage season.

    “We lost that really critical fourth quarter of the year, which is a beautiful fall,” McKissick says.

    Gov. Josh Stein recently announced that travelers had spent a record $36.7 billion in the state last year. But that boom eluded the counties worst hit by Helene.

    Visitor spending in Buncombe County — home to Asheville — was down nearly 11% last year compared to 2023, according to the state Department of Commerce.

    In McDowell, tourist spending dropped nearly 3% in that same period. Effler says this June and July, foot traffic at the county’s largest visitor center was down 50% from last year.

    She blames much of that on damage to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is consistently one of the most-visited of the national parks. About 35 miles (56 kilometers) of the North Carolina route — including long stretches in McDowell County — aren’t slated to reopen until fall 2026.

    McDougald says nearly every trail in the Old Fort complex was damaged, with landslides taking out “300-foot sections of trail at a time.”

    They’ve managed to reopen about 30 miles (48 kilometers) of trail, but he says about that many miles remain closed.

    Schoenauer reopened his shop in December, but traffic was down by about two-thirds this summer.

    “My business, revenue-wise, has shifted more to the repair side,” he says. “People trying to still recreate, but use the bike that they have just to keep it going and have some fun.”

    The Watershed complex opened in June, but without the planned riverfront gazebo and performance stage. And they’ve moved the bike jumps to higher ground.

    “It’s changed our way of looking at the floodplain, for sure,” McKissick says.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Scientists find marine life thriving on World War II explosives in the Baltic Sea

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — An undersea submersible has spotted crabs, worms and fish thriving on the surfaces of World War II explosives thought to be toxic to marine life.

    At a former weapons dump site in the Baltic Sea, scientists found more creatures living on top of warheads than in the surrounding seabed.

    “We were prepared to see significantly lower numbers of all kinds of animals,” said study author Andrey Vedenin with the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany. “But it turned out the opposite.”

    Past conflicts have left their mark on the world’s oceans, Vedenin said. German waters alone contain about 1.6 million tons (1.5 million metric tonnes) of dumped weapons, mostly from the two world wars in the 20th century. Dumped relics can contain nuclear and chemical remnants as well as explosives like TNT.

    It’s the latest example of wildlife flourishing in polluted sites. Previous research has shown shipwrecks and former weapons complexes teeming with biodiversity.

    In the new study, researchers filmed networks of anemones, starfish and other underwater life in the Bay of Lübeck off the coast of Germany. They were lurking on pieces of V-1 flying bombs used by Nazi Germany.

    “Normally, one does not study the ecology of bombs,” said University of Georgia ecologist James Porter, who was not involved with the research.

    The research was published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.

    Why would sea creatures make their home on contaminated weapons? They could be drawn to the hard surfaces, which are in short supply in the Baltic Sea. The seafloor is mainly a flat bed of mud and sand because stones and boulders were fished out of the water for construction in the 1800s and 1900s, Vedenin said.

    The area is also fairly isolated from human activity because of the chemicals, creating a somewhat protective bubble for the critters to thrive despite some toxic tradeoffs.

    Scientists hope to calculate how much contamination was absorbed by sea life. Another important next step is to see what happens after the critters settle and whether they’re capable of reproducing, Porter said.

    Studies like these are a testament to how nature takes advantage of human leftovers, flipping the script to survive, said marine conservation biologist David Johnston with Duke University. He recently mapped sunken World War I ships that have become habitats for wildlife along the Potomac River in Maryland.

    “I think it’s a really cool testimony to the strength of life,” Johnston said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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