The emotional toll of fieldwork
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 04 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02301-5
The emotional toll of fieldwork
Nature Climate Change…
Closures of EPA’s regional environmental justice offices will hurt rural America
Environmental justice efforts at the 10 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional offices have stopped and employees have been placed on administrative leave, per an announcement from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin last month. Former EPA employees involved with environmental justice work across the country say rural communities will suffer as a result.
Before being shuttered in early March, the EPA’s environmental justice arm was aimed at making sure communities were being treated fairly and receiving their due protection under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Zealan Hoover, former senior advisor to the EPA administrator under the Biden administration, told the Daily Yonder that this work had big implications for rural places since there are pollution concerns in rural areas across the country.
“EPA was very focused on making sure that not just on the regulatory side, but also on …
Yellowstone’s gateway town fears for its future amid Trump funding cuts
On March 1, hundreds of people gathered in Gardiner, Montana, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. The crowd — which included residents from across the state and current and former public lands employees — was part of a nationwide protest against the layoffs of federal workers.
Roughly 5 percent of National Park Service workers have been caught up in the sweeping layoffs carried out by Donald Trump’s administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. This isn’t counting the hundreds of others who are taking the “fork in the road” offer to resign from their positions. The staffing crisis facing national parks is felt not only within the federal workforce itself but also in gateway towns like Gardiner, where the economy depends heavily on Yellowstone.
There, under the Roosevelt Arch — named for President Theodore Roosevelt, who laid …
China’s carbon sinks from land-use change underestimated
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 01 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02296-z
The terrestrial carbon flux—sources and sinks—under land-use change (LUC) is difficult to quantify. Here, using a LUC dataset drawing on remote sensing and forest inventory data, the authors show that in China the carbon sink from LUC (such as afforestation) may be underestimated.
Nature Climate Change…
Release: Cynthia Hayes Memorial Scholarship Now Accepting Applications
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Zaks, Associate Director of Communications and Development
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Release: Cynthia Hayes Memorial Scholarship Now Accepting Applications
The Cynthia Hayes Memorial Scholarship honors the co-founder of the first network for African American organic farmers in the United States.
Washington, DC, March 28, 2025 —Last week, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) and the Southeastern African American Farmers’ Organic Network (SAAFON) opened applications for their annual scholarship in honor and memory of the late Cynthia Hayes, co-founder and former director of SAAFON.
The scholarship welcomes applications from Black and Indigenous undergraduate and Masters students from all Tribal Nations, US states, and territories. Applicants should be prepared to discuss their interest in food justice, sustainable agriculture, and how these issues impact Black and Indigenous farmer communities in the United States.
…“SAAFON is proud to announce the 2025 Cynthia
1 in 8 Californians live in the most dangerous wildfire zones
Five years ago, California was reeling from the Camp Fire, the country’s deadliest wildfire in a century. State lawmakers responded by mandating new building requirements to protect homes in high-risk areas, but by their January 2025 deadline, the department responsible for the rules still hadn’t written them. Then, swaths of Los Angeles went up in flames, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of structures.
In early February, Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, ordered the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, to finish up the long-delayed regulations. Newsom’s executive order also instructed the state fire marshal’s office to create updated fire hazard maps, which hadn’t been redrawn for areas managed by local governments since 2011. These maps inform where the strictest fire-safety regulations will be enforced by placing land in one of three tiers …
Global distribution, quantification and valuation of the biological carbon pump
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 27 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02295-0
This study quantifies and values the carbon stored in the ocean due to biological processes. With uptake in the order of 2.8 Gt per year, valued at around US$ 1 trillion annually (at a carbon price of US$ 90 per ton of CO2), this service should be included in the global stocktake and climate actions.
Nature Climate Change…
Uninsured: Federal Crop Insurance Program Leaves Most Farms Unprotected
Crop insurance is the cornerstone of the farm safety net, insuring farms for losses from unpredictable weather, market fluctuations, and other risks. Consequently, the federal crop insurance program (FCIP) is the costliest part of agriculture production spending, as taxpayers subsidize the program to the tune of billions of dollars each year. Despite being a cornerstone program, crop insurance caters primarily to the largest farms while stifling the participation of those with specialty crop production, diverse production systems, and direct marketing models.
This post offers a deep dive into federal crop insurance coverage, looking at which farms are being left out of current coverage, why, and how the program can be strengthened to serve all American farmers.
How Does Federal Crop Insurance Work?
In the FCIP, agents working for private companies sell and service a …