By Deborah Moore, Michael Simon and Darryl Knudsen There’s some good news amidst the grim global pandemic: At long last, the world’s largest dam removal is finally happening. The landmark agreement, which was finalized in November 2020 between farmers, tribes and dam owners, will finally bring down four aging, inefficient dams along the Klamath River […]
By Tara Lohan In 1999 a cheering crowd watched as a backhoe breached a hydroelectric dam on Maine’s Kennebec River. The effort to help restore native fish populations and the river’s health was hailed as a success and ignited a nationwide movement that spurred 1,200 dam removals in two decades. The era of building large […]
By Hans Nicholas Jong Construction of a hydropower plant in the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan species on the Indonesian island of Sumatra might be delayed for up to three years due to COVID-19 and funding issues. Muhammad Ikhsan Asaad, who oversees the project for state-owned utility PLN, said the Batang Toru […]
By Tara Lohan The conclusion to decades of work to remove a dam on the Middle Fork Nooksack River east of Bellingham, Washington began with a bang yesterday as crews breached the dam with a carefully planned detonation. This explosive denouement is also a beginning. Over the next couple of weeks, crews will fully remove […]
By Sonya Angelica Diehn Dams are often touted as environmentally friendly. Although they do represent a renewable source of energy, a closer look reveals that they are far from green. DW lays out the biggest environmental problems of mega-dams. 1. Dams Alter Ecosystems Water is life — and since dams block water, that impacts life […]
Around 10,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes in central Michigan after heavy rain prompted what the National Weather Service called “catastrophic failures” at two dams. The Edenville and Sanford dams collapsed Tuesday night, threatening to drench the town of Midland, Michigan under nine feet of water, Reuters reported. The flooding comes as Michigan […]
Removing one gigantic dam can have a massive effect on restoring a river ecosystem. But bringing down more than 80 smaller dams? That can also cause a transformation. This spring the Forest Service, aided by U.S. Marine Corps members, will blast apart 13 more dams in the Trabuco ranger district in Southern California’s Cleveland National […]
The devastating wildfires in Australia that have claimed the lives of more than a billion animals, by some estimates, are just one of the effects of global climate change the country’s wildlife is grappling with. Australia is also currently in the grips of an extreme drought, and the nationwide average daily temperature recently hit nearly […]
Scientists have concluded of the largest freshwater fish species in the world is now extinct because of human activity. The Chinese paddlefish, sometimes called the “panda of the Yangtze River,” was found to have been lost to overfishing and habitat destruction, Phys.org reported Wednesday. Its extinction was announced and documented by researchers at the Chinese […]