DENVER – Depending on who’s talking, beavers can be any of the following: unsung ecological heroes, nuisance rodents bent on wreaking havoc, cute creatures brimming with charisma — or a hunting target.

Now it’s Colorado wildlife officials’ task to create a statewide management plan that acknowledges all the roles beavers play in the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A string of early season storms that drenched Californians last week lifted much of the state out of drought and significantly reduced the risk of wildfires, experts say.

It’s been the wettest November on record for Southland cities such as Van Nuys and San Luis Obispo. Santa Barbara has received an eye-popping 9.5 inches of ...Read more

The next trip to space for Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner spacecraft won’t have a crew on board after NASA announced changes to the commercial crew contract that also slashes the total number of missions to the International Space Station.

NASA on Monday announced the update to the 2014 contract that originally called for six operational ...Read more

A judge in Tallahassee rejected today a plea from a Central Florida bear advocacy group to halt the state’s planned bear hunt.

Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey ruled against Bear Warriors United after more than two hours of testimony and arguments from the Seminole County group’s lawyer, Thomas Crapps, and lawyers for the Florida Fish & ...Read more

The number of confirmed cases of EHV-1, the deadly horse virus, has grown to 17 across eight Texas counties, authorities said Monday. Two horses have died.

The counties affected are Bell, Hood, Wise, Erath, Wharton, Fort Bend, McLennan and Montgomery, according Equine Diseases Communication Center.

The outbreak was first detected last week ...Read more

If there was any doubt that the current U.S. administration is the world’s greatest threat to action on climate change, President Donald Trump removed it on Sept. 23 when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly and called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and a threat promoted by “stupid people.”

He ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — While SpaceX continues to test its Starship and Super Heavy rocket in Texas, Space Force officials in Florida are preparing for a first launch as early as mid-2026.

SpaceX is awaiting the completion of a pair of environmental impact statements for its plans to launch from both Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39-A and ...Read more

Almost 200 nations gathered in Brazil for the United Nations’ annual climate summit capped two weeks of fraught negotiations with an agreement Saturday on new efforts to help guide their transition away from the fossil fuels driving global warming.

However, the accord dodged an explicit mention of the oil, gas and coal responsible for driving...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — When Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley began pursuing a carbon fee in 2022, she saw it as a promising way to cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions and raise revenue for climate-related projects.

Wonsley succeeded in passing the carbon fee last year, making Minneapolis the only major city in the Midwest to do so. ...Read more

In a recent episode of the podcast "Acquired," venture capitalists and hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal argued that the horrible roll-out of Google’s Bard AI chatbot in February 2023 — which led the company’s stock to drop 8% in a day — was a blessing in disguise. That’s because two years later, after a U.S. federal judge ruled ...Read more

When Columbia University law and MBA student Michelle Ritter met former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt in 2020, she said she wanted to pitch a potential investment in a sports tech startup she had been developing.

That dinner blossomed into far more, a romance and business partnership in which she says the 70-year-old billionaire invested ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Fall is the time of year when bears really begin to think with their stomachs.

Some will double their weight to prepare for wintertime hibernation, often scavenging for calories for up to 20 hours per day. This feeding frenzy, called hyperphagia, drives them farther from their usual range and into neighborhood dumpsters in ...Read more

Floridians are not used to hearing the word “extinct” applied to species that play significant roles in the state’s ecological and economic landscape.

So last week, when researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the grim news that two key species in Florida’s iconic coral reefs had become “...Read more

In one of the most important state environmental decisions this year, California air regulators adopted new rules designed to reduce methane leaks and better respond to disastrous underground fires at landfills statewide.

California Air Resources Board members voted 12-0 on Thursday to approve a batch of new regulations for the state’s nearly...Read more

California lawmakers on Thursday denounced the Trump administration’s proposal to open up six offshore lease sales in federal waters off the California coast, with Gov. Gavin Newsom calling the proposal “idiotic” and “reckless,” asserting it will not gain any traction in the state.

The development follows reports earlier this month of...Read more

LAS VEGAS — For Las Vegas to keep its taps flowing, Rep. Susie Lee says this one drought measure must survive federal spending purges: water recycling.

Lee, D-Nev., and Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., introduced the Large-Scale Water Recycling Reauthorization Act in Congress on Thursday to reauthorize a federal grant program that will sunset in...Read more

The Trump administration released new plans Thursday that could push offshore oil drilling closer to Florida shores in a move that many environmental critics argue will be detrimental to the state’s coastal economy and further threaten imperiled wildlife.

The plan calls for opening up a swath of the eastern Gulf of Mexico that has been ...Read more