dams

Construction sites for hydroelectric dams are popping up all over southeast Europe and endangering mountain rivers and the region’s unique biodiversity, according to researchers. More than 2,700 hydropower plants are in the planning phase across the Balkans, with 37 percent of dams slated to be built on land with “high protection status,” according to Save […]

By Heather Smith To get to the largest surviving population of wild Spring Chinook salmon on the Klamath River, I drive farther north than I’ve ever been in California, then turn right. Gradually, the highways disappear, and the roads narrow. Commerce becomes more improvisational. Grocery stores and restaurants disappear and in their place there is […]

We look at shocking revelations released Tuesday that link the assassination of renowned Honduran indigenous environmental leader Berta Cáceres to the highest levels of the company whose hydroelectric dam project she and her indigenous Lenca community were protesting. We speak with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Malkin, who has read the new report by a […]

By Sabrina Gyorvary Auntie Punleu has spent most of her life on Koh Dambang, an island set in the middle of the Mekong River in Cambodia. A small, grandmotherly woman, she paints an idyllic picture of life there. “We catch fish as our main food every day. We eat fish nearly six days a week,” […]

A new WWF and Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development report, released Aug. 30, reveals that a new animal or plant species is discovered in the Amazon every two days, the fastest rate to be observed this century. The findings come as huge parts of the forest are increasingly under threat, sparking further concern over the […]

By Tim Radford What’s considered by some to be clean energy could devastate the Amazon, according to new research. A massive increase in hydropower from a series of planned Amazon dams could harm the world’s most important rainforest all the way from the slopes of the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. Altogether, 428 dams are […]

There are an estimated 84,000 dams in the U.S., blocking more than 17 percent of rivers in the nation. Dams are interrupting wildlife habitats, damaging the ecosystem and impacting the global climate cycle, according to a new study in Nature Communications. Researchers from the University of Waterloo and Université libre de Bruxelles, reveal that nearly […]

Donald Trump finally opened his mouth about dams and hydropower last week. The result is as bad as you can imagine. Daniel Dale, Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, tweeted what Trump had to say: “Hydropower is great, great, form of power—we don’t even talk about it, because to get the environmental permits are virtually […]