rivers

Fifty years ago, the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act with the goal of ensuring  “fishable, swimmable” water across the U.S. by 1983. Now, a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) finds the country has fallen far short of that goal. In fact, about half of the nation’s lakes and rivers are too polluted for swimming, fishing or drinking. 

The last known Irrawaddy dolphin in northeastern Cambodia has died, wildlife officials confirmed on Wednesday. The river dolphin, which lived in the Mekong River, was tangled in a fishing net. Also called the Mekong River dolphin, the Irrawaddy dolphin is an endangered species with an estimated 91 animals left, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. […]

Pharmaceutical drugs have polluted the world’s rivers and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health,” according to a new study by the University of York. The most extensive global study to date found that among the most polluted rivers were those in Bolivia, Pakistan and Ethiopia, while rivers in the Amazon rainforest, Iceland […]

In Scotland, the River Dee Board and Trust and fisheries are planting millions of trees along rivers to help save wild salmon from the effects of global warming. Scotland’s rivers are already becoming too warm in the summer for wild salmon to spawn, putting more pressure on these cold-water fish. Wild salmon prefer water temperatures […]

Microplastics — small pieces of plastic less than five millimeters long — are the most common type of debris found in the ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service. But before they make it into the ocean, a new study has found that they can become stuck in riverbeds for […]

What’s around five inches, olive yellow with dark blotches and apparently no longer extinct in the state of Ohio? The answer is the longhead darter, a small-to-medium size fish which was spotted in the state for the first time since 1939, as the Ohio Division of Wildlife announced on Facebook January 6. 

In Norilsk, the northernmost city in the world, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, but the permafrost and structural problems have not been caused by climate change alone. A smelting company has polluted rivers and destroyed boreal forest. Norilsk, population 176,000, is known by environmentalists and the Russian […]

Scientists have found microplastics in nearly every kind of aquatic ecosystem, from rivers and lakes down to the depths of the ocean. Now, new federal guidelines show how anyone interested in undertaking their own community science experiment can investigate their waterways — but their results may not perfectly represent what’s lurking underwater. Community scientists can […]