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Animals
Sockeye salmon in Little Redfish Lake Creek, Sawtooth National Recreation Area, Idaho. Neil Ever Osborne / Save Our Wild Salmon

Appeals Court Affirms Order to Spill More Water Over Dams to Help Salmon Survive

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with almost a dozen conservation and fishing organizations, the Nez Perce Tribe and the State of Oregon in their efforts to improve wild salmon and steelhead survival as the fish migrate to the Pacific Ocean.

Almost a year ago, in April 2017, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ruled that federal dam managers on the Columbia and Snake Rivers have to meet higher spill requirements in the spring when baby salmon are migrating to the ocean—meaning they must allow more water to flow over the dams between April and mid-June, to help facilitate safe passage for young salmon.

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Aftermath of the 2015 Benito Rodrigues dam disaster in which an iron-ore mining dam failed, leading to Brazil's largest environmental disaster. Senado Federal / Flickr

Controversial Amazon Gold Mine Close to Getting Permit, Say Activists Raising Alarm

The activist group Avaaz has launched a petition against the Canadian Belo Sun Mining Company's Volta Grande gold mine in Brazil's Amazon region, claiming that the company is close to getting the permits it needs for the controversial project, MINING.com reported March 30.

The project has already been denied a construction license more than once since 2013 for failing to adequately assess the impact of the mine on nearby indigenous communities, according to MINING.com.

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Renewable Energy
Shutterstock

Stanford Engineers: Here's How 139 Countries Can Avoid Blackouts With 100% Clean Energy

By Taylor Kubota

Renewable energy solutions are often hindered by the inconsistencies of power produced by wind, water and sunlight and the continuously fluctuating demand for energy. New research by Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and Aalborg University in Denmark finds several solutions to making clean, renewable energy reliable enough to power at least 139 countries.

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Climate
A team from Greenpeace Africa has been studying tropical peatland near Lokolama. Kevin McElvaney / Greenpeace

Climate Change and Deforestation Threaten World’s Largest Tropical Peatland

By Daisy Dunne

Just over a year ago, scientists announced the discovery of the world's largest intact tropical peatland in a remote part of the Congo's vast swampy basin.

The Cuvette Centrale peatlands stretch across an area of central Africa that is larger than the size of England and stores as much as 30 billion tonnes of carbon.

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Insights

Large Dams Fail on Climate Change and Indigenous Rights

Brazil has flooded large swaths of the Amazon for hydro dams, despite opposition from Indigenous Peoples, environmentalists and others. The country gets 70 percent of its electricity from hydropower. Brazil's government had plans to expand development, opening half the Amazon basin to hydro. But a surprising announcement could halt that.

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The Puelo River in Patagonia. Katalin Szarvas / xinature.com

Patagonia’s Puelo and Cuervo Rivers Win Crucial Protections in Supreme Court of Chile

By James Blair

Local residents and environmentalists in Chile are enjoying a prolonged New Year's celebration, thanks to two major legal decisions that will protect the country's free-flowing rivers. Chile's justice system put a final stop to two controversial large hydroelectric dam developments in Chilean Patagonia: 1) Mediterráneo S.A.'s run-of-the-river project proposed on tributaries of the Puelo River near the city of Cochamó; and 2) Energía Austral SpA's three-dam power plant proposed on the Cuervo River in the Aysén region.

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Animals
Elephants in Ruaha National Park. tony (tickspics) / Flickr

Will Tanzania Save the Great Ruaha River?

By Brennan PetersonWood and Adam C. Stein

The Great Ruaha River in southern Tanzania is the lifeblood of Ruaha National Park, one of the last strongholds of major elephant and lion populations in Africa. Flowing through Ruaha National Park before emptying into the Rufuji River, the Great Ruaha and associated river systems also provide a massive economic service to the whole of Tanzania.

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Animals
A new mole species named Euroscaptor orlovi discovered in northern Vietnam. WWF

115 New Species Discovered in Greater Mekong

Not every newly-discovered species becomes a cartoon character. But the Vietnamese crocodile lizard (Shinisaurus crocodilurus vietnamensis) has achieved such fame as "Shini," a lizard who teaches the importance of protecting his species to local schoolchildren.

The lizard is just one of 115 species—including a snail-eating turtle and a horseshoe bat—discovered in the Greater Mekong region in 2016. That's an average of more than two new species found each week. A new WWF Report, Stranger Species, documents the work of hundreds of scientists around the world who have discovered previously unknown amphibians, fish, reptiles, plants and mammals in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

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Insights
garywockner.com

Colorado Water Plan Has Become 'Colorado Dam Plan'

You'd have thought the earth moved exactly two years ago with all the ballyhoo at the State Capitol when Gov. John Hickenlooper unveiled the final Colorado Water Plan. I stood in the west foyer of the Capitol as every TV camera in the city pointed at Hickenlooper and his then-Colorado Water Conservation Board director, James Eklund. Bold promises were made that the plan was going to save our rivers, farms, cities, and the whole state from the coming catastrophe of population growth.

I was deeply involved in the Colorado Water Plan process, and at the time I issued a big word of caution in the form of a newspaper column that was printed in seven outlets across the state.

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