Green & indigenous News

For decades, ecologists have theorized that the extinction of one important species could set off a chain reaction of losses throughout an ecosystem. Now, new research offers some of the clearest real-world evidence that this idea of coextinction is not just theoretical.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

May 29, 2026 – A document President Donald Trump filed with the Office of Government Ethics last week shows his portfolio managers purchased stock in a long list of food and agriculture companies during the first three months of 2026, some of which have had direct dealings with the administration. Among other agriculture companies, Trump […]

The post Trump Stock Purchases Include John Deere and Major Food Companies appeared first on Civil Eats.

From Civil Eats via This RSS Feed.

MANNAR, Sri Lanka — Each year, the arrival of greater flamingos transforms the lagoons of northern Sri Lanka into a mesmerizing spectacle of pale pink and white. Their synchronized movements across the shallow waters of Mannar attract birdwatchers, photographers, tourists and nature lovers from around the country and abroad. But behind this beauty lies a growing crisis. Recently, three flamingos were killed in Mannar after a collision with overhead power lines that crossed their flight path. Initial reports suggested electrocution, but according to Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) veterinary surgeon Balachandran Giritharan, who conducted the necropsies, the birds were not electrocuted. Instead, their long necks were slashed mid-flight when they struck the cables. The incident has renewed concerns among conservationists who have previously warned against energy infrastructure cutting across sensitive wetland habitats such as Vankalai Sanctuary, another Ramsar wetland in Mannar. Environmentalists had identified large waterbirds such as flamingos as being vulnerable to collisions. The latest flamingo deaths also add to the mounting environmental concerns surrounding development projects, particularly in Mannar, including proposed wind power projects. The issue drew international attention after the withdrawal of developer Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) from a disputed wind power project in Sri Lanka earlier this year. The Mannar region, with its strategic wind resources, has increasingly become a battleground between renewable energy expansion and biodiversity conservation. Flamingos are more vulnerable to collisions with power cables during dusk and early morning hours. Image courtesy of Indika Jayathissa. A global threat to flamingos Across the world,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

The once-majestic oak tree is all but dead: battered by repeated heat waves, it has shut down vital functions to conserve water and is slowly dying in a French forest.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Sitting at the northwestern edge of North America, Alaska stretches across a vast Arctic land of wilderness, culture, and wealth beneath the surface. Among its resources is the Donlin Gold deposit, located in southwestern Alaska's Kuskokwim River basin. As one of the world's largest undeveloped gold mines, it holds an estimated 39 million ounces worth more than $170 billion at today's prices.

From Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change via This RSS Feed.

It's tricky to make an exact copy of yourself. Or at least it is for cells undergoing mitosis, where cells replicate everything inside of them, including their neatly packaged DNA, then split in half. Rice University professor Peter Wolynes is interested in how the packaged DNA, called a chromosome, changes its structure during replication, going from a ball shape to a cylinder shape that can be transported easily to the daughter cell.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Orangutans have one of the slowest life histories among mammals, and a new study now shows just how long orangutan mothers continue to breastfeed their offspring. An international team has demonstrated that wild orangutan juveniles keep consuming their mother's milk continuously until at least six and a half years of age, confirming one of the longest breastfeeding periods known among mammals.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are tiny eight-legged animals that can survive in extreme environments, where humans and most other animals would die. This resistance to extreme conditions, including intense heat, very high or low temperatures, radiation and low oxygen levels is called "extremotolerance."

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

The summer of 2021 was one for the record books as the now-infamous "heat dome" settled over the Pacific Northwest from late June through early July, resulting in triple-digit temperatures and hundreds of deaths.

From Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change via This RSS Feed.

The price of financial stability should not be environmental destruction. Yet when countries turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help, their forests may quietly suffer. The IMF is currently reviewing the design of its lending programs, and it is time for change. Its recipe for getting economies back on track often features required reforms such as cutting government expenditure, increasing revenue collection through taxes or utility tariff increases, winding down public ownership of state-owned enterprises and encouraging the private sector to step up: austerity in other words. These policies are meant to restore stability in times of crisis, but growing evidence shows that IMF programs often fall short in helping countries break out of the cycle of economic and financial distress. Instead, they can trigger collateral damage in the form of negative health outcomes, worsened poverty and inequality and eroded social protection. Image by Forster et al., 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Our new research provides evidence that these programs also have an important and often overlooked environmental dimension, revealing that countries experience 9.2% higher annual tree cover loss during years in which they are under an IMF program. In a typical three-year IMF program, this amounts to forest loss the size of Barbados. This finding comes as no surprise as IMF programs are known to generally cut government spending, and environmental protections are often the first to go. These conditions that come in exchange for financial assistance are a major shortcoming when it comes to effects on forests,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

A newly released book documenting urban forestry efforts across Africa argues that trees and green spaces are no longer a luxury for African cities, but a critical response to climate change, biodiversity loss, and urban inequality. Published by Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ), Urban Forests and Green Spaces in Africa: Case Studies and Lessons from Across the Continent brings together 34 case studies from 14 African countries, covering everything from restoring biodiversity around wetlands in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, creating Miyawaki forests (forests with native trees planted closely together) in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, greening heat-stressed neighborhoods in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, transplanting baobabs in Senegal to rehabilitating degraded urban land in South Africa. Hot days, hot nights, and heatwaves have become more frequent across Africa, concludes the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most authoritative scientific assessment on climate change. The report also finds that coastal cities are vulnerable to floods related to rainfall events and sea level rise. Palm-lined trees provide near-continuous canopy cover along a boulevard in Bahir Dar, the capital of Ethiopia’s Amhara region. The book notes that canopy closure along some of the city’s main streets approaches 100%, making Bahir Dar one of the most heavily treed urban centers in Africa. Image courtesy of Cathy Watson/CIFOR-ICRAF. As African cities experience rising temperatures, worsening floods, biodiversity loss, and rapid urbanization, the book argues that urban forests and green infrastructure are essential tools for climate resilience. Beyond storing carbon, trees and green spaces…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

As climate change intensifies drought conditions across the Southwest, researchers at The University of New Mexico are examining how agricultural water is used in one of New Mexico's most critical river systems.

From Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change via This RSS Feed.

There is a forever chemical lurking in the world's oceans that could be fundamentally altering the biology of marine life before it even hatches. PFOS, a notorious member of the PFAS family of chemicals, is known for its ability to bioaccumulate, binding specifically to proteins in the blood and liver. While it's long been recognized as a pollutant, scientists are only beginning to understand how it changes an organism from the inside out.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. Conservation journalists are facing a new issue: AI-generated wildlife imagery. The issue is not just that fake images exist. That has long been true. What has changed is how convincing synthetic wildlife photos and videos have become, how cheaply they can be made, and how quickly they can spread. A clip can move through Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, or even LinkedIn before anyone has checked whether it shows a real animal, a real place, or a real event. That matters because wildlife images carry an implicit claim. A photograph of a rare animal, a camera-trap still, or a video of unusual behavior usually tells the viewer: this happened. As generative AI improves, that assumption needs more scrutiny. The risks are not theoretical. False videos of animal attacks can deepen fear in places where human-wildlife conflict is already difficult to manage. Fabricated images of wild animals behaving like pets can feed demand for the exotic pet trade. Misleading footage of rare species can absorb the time of researchers, journalists, NGOs, and public agencies that have to determine whether an event actually occurred. It also changes the work of newsrooms. At Mongabay, we now spend more time looking at sourcing, provenance, metadata, reverse-image searches, forensic tools, and whether a photographer, researcher, or institution is known and trusted. AI detectors can occasionally help in some cases, but they cannot settle the question. False positives and false negatives…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

A newly released report alleges that well-placed elites in Cameroon’s government are enabling a cluster of timber and agribusiness companies to log primary forest in the country. These companies include Sextransbois, which was awarded a controversial 68,000-hectare (168,000-acre) logging concession in the Ebo Forest in 2023. The report by Swiss-based advocacy group Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) also named SCIEB, which controls another concession in the Ebo Forest covering 65,000 hectares (161,000 acres). The report used corporate registry documents, trade records, and sources in Cameroon’s forestry sector to link both companies, along with Boiscam and Camvert, to prominent businessman Aboubakar Al Fatih. According to an “informal broker” who has worked to connect logging companies with forestry officials and was interviewed by GI-TOC, Al Fatih’s companies have benefitted from his ties to the minister of economy, Alamine Ousmane Mey. Mey is considered an ally of Cameroonian President Paul Biya’s eldest son Franck, who reportedly recommended him for a cabinet post in 2011. Sextransbois was incorporated by relatives of Franck Biya’s in 2014, before being transferred to then-20-year-old Mahmoud Mourtada, Al Fatih’s half-brother. The report implies that Al Fatih’s connections to figures in Franck Biya’s circle helped Sextransbois and SCIEB obtain their concessions in the Ebo Forest. Those concessions were awarded despite a global campaign to protect the forest, which is a biodiversity-rich habitat for threatened gorillas and chimpanzees. After initially walking back its decision to reclassify the forest as government land in 2020, the government quietly reissued the two…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

The relationship between predators and prey in the wild is underscored by an evolutionary arms race spanning millions of years, but new research has found modern human activity is reshaping the rules.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Residents in the East Java province of Indonesia scattered flowers, paid their respects and prayed at the edge of a mud lake on Friday, the 20th anniversary of the eruption of the Lusi mud volcano that inundated villages and killed at least 14 people.

From Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change via This RSS Feed.

In 2008, while investigating a clandestine drug lab, forensic scientists from WA's ChemCentre found something odd—a pile of wet bark, stripped from a wattle tree and stewed.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Reducing methane emissions will slow climate change but could also slow the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer, new research from the University of Reading shows.

From Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change via This RSS Feed.

CONCEPCIÓN DE SOLUTECA, Honduras — In the 1970s, the Honduran government granted a piece of land in the mountains of Concepción de Soluteca to Roberto González’s parents. They duly grabbed a chainsaw and a machete to clear the forest. On the 12 hectares (30 acres) they received as part of a land reform, they planted corn, beans and bananas, the basic staple foods. It was a hard life up in the mountains, allowing the farmers and their families to just survive. There wasn’t much public infrastructure, and most children had to help with farmwork early on. This included González, who only attended elementary school for three years. When González inherited the land 20 years later, coffee cultivation was just taking off. Middlemen promised the farmers good money for the export crop, and the banks provided loans for cultivation. At first, this worked well, González, now 39, remembers. Coffee helped the farmers to generate income and improve living conditions. But it didn’t last long. They grew coffee much the same way they did other crops, without adequate soil or shade management. When harvests dwindled, they expanded their area, cutting the last standing forests and damaging water sources. Around 2012, they faced an outbreak of coffee rust, a fungal disease. It was a complete disaster: many farmers were thrown into poverty and forced to migrate. “We destroyed the foundations of our livelihoods, but it was out of ignorance; we just didn’t know better,” González tells Mongabay. Under the EUDR, coffee farmers step…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.

Julie Watson and Morgan Lee
Associated Press

TECATE, Mexico (AP) — White sage burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semicircle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel its presence.

“This is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist,” said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation tribal leader who explains that in its creation story a shaman transformed into the mountain. “Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world.”

Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the crushing of rock. U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa, which straddles both countries, to make way for new sections of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Indigenous leaders say that in the Trump administration’s rush to build border walls, contractors are desecrating Native American sacred places and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.

Federal crews set off blasts on sacred mountain

Barrier construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws.

In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.

“We feel that in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, adding that “body” and “land” are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action.

“No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Burgueno said.

The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico’s Baja California.

In Arizona, DHS contractors last month carved through a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called “Las Playas Intaglio.” The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru’s Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

The Tohono O’odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.

“This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,” Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States’ history, one none of us can ever get back.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps.

Members of the Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot (6-meter) secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot (9-meter) bollard wall planned on Tohono O’odham tribal lands. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, the Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement.

Hundreds of miles are under contract

The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) of the border.

Trump’s “ big, beautiful bill ” devoted over $46 billion to the effort.

CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on over 600 miles (966 kilometers) of new border wall, with companion surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction along another 370 miles (596 kilometers).

In Arizona, where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O’odham, who consider the species “spiritual guardians,” Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the DHS waivers.

In Sunland Park, on New Mexico’s border with Mexico, crews this year set off blasts on Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone crucifix.

CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church for wall construction. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to deny the land transfer as an affront to religious liberties and the “faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey.”

In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.

“There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don’t know how to interpret,” said Skiles, describing the drawings on his family’s ranchlands.

After community backlash, CBP’s online planning map showed the 30-foot-wall plans were scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. A segment in the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park would rely on technology alone.

CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the construction’s impact, including leaving drainage gates open in wildlife corridors for animal passage. Illegal border crossings have littered, polluted and trampled sensitive habitat, the agency says.

CBP also says 535 miles (860 kilometers) of remote, rugged border terrain will solely rely on detection technology.

Many tribes would prefer that to walls.

Desecrating Native American sites is a felony

Tribes along the border “are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”

Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Kuuchamaa Mountain, also called Tecate Peak, in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that “discarding or disturbing the mountain’s natural state would be sacrilegious.”

Rising 3,885 feet (1,184 meters) above sea level, Kuuchamaa has also captivated non-Native people.

Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain’s healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, which she now runs.

“There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain,” she said.

Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.

Traditionally, young men would spend 40 days at its base in a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. Today’s rituals are shorter. People suffering from a death, debt, divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa’s healing, she said.

“It’s sad they are ruining the mountain,” she said. “We’ll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over.”

Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The post US-Mexico border wall construction is desecrating sacred sites, Indigenous leaders say appeared first on ICT.

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

Conservationists are in a race against time to prevent one of the world's rarest island plants from disappearing forever, after seeds collected from the only surviving wild Dendroseris neriifolia tree arrived at the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Kew Wakehurst in Sussex last month.

From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology via This RSS Feed.

Dear Leslie,

A lot of my work in therapy for anxiety has focused on recognizing catastrophic thinking and assessing what is more realistic. How would you suggest adapting this for a world where reality itself is increasingly becoming more catastrophic, and science suggests things will get worse in the future?

—  Anonymously Anxious

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

Dear Anonymously Anxious,

Your question points to something I’ve had to reckon with in my own practice as a therapist. Before I became more aware of the impacts of climate change, I used the same framework you describe — I helped clients recognize their distorted thinking and recalibrate toward what’s realistic.

But as I came to understand the actual science, I had a striking realization: For climate-aware clients, their anxiety isn’t distorted at all. It’s a healthy response to real destruction and the inadequate efforts to address it. Shifting toward “what’s realistic” isn’t what we’re after to manage climate anxiety. Instead, it’s about navigating high-stakes uncertainty by developing new skills — helping people stay grounded and functional while channeling their distress into meaningful action with others.

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

I think part of what you’re asking is how to distinguish a clear-eyed view of the climate crisis from catastrophizing. First, we need to understand the human tendency to catastrophize. Part of what shapes our perception of reality is something less visible than the daily news. We all have cognitive biases operating mostly beneath our conscious awareness. One in particular is relevant here: the negativity bias, which causes us to register threatening situations three to five times more intensely than positive ones. That might have been useful for our evolutionary survival, but it can also have a distorting effect — especially in the age of doomscrolling, when it’s altogether too easy to overwhelm ourselves with bad news.

That’s why a balanced view also requires staying current on the real progress being made: dam removals, renewable energy growth, youth litigation wins, communities building resilience. This kind of news often gets less attention, so finding it can take some effort. But seeking out these stories may help to remind you that there are answers to the problems we face.

Still, these advances don’t diminish the urgency of the genuine crisis we’re facing, and for now, our climate problems are still outpacing solutions. Watching that unfold, watching the status quo persist, can be agonizing. In therapy terms, the cognitive goal has to shift from “accurate assessment” to “functional clarity.” Accurate assessment asks, “How bad is it?” Functional clarity asks, “Given what I understand, what can I do?” The first question keeps you spinning while the second moves you forward. It can help you channel your emotions into motivation — to get involved with a local organization, lobby your elected officials, or change your own behavior.

Learn to distinguish between threat awareness, which is necessary and healthy, and threat rumination, which exhausts without informing. When your mind is cycling through worst-case futures with no path forward, that’s your signal to use the tools you’ve been building in therapy: Take a walk, do a breathing exercise, seek out a story about climate progress.

This is also where therapy offers something that information alone can’t. Climate anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. Therapeutic tools (somatic practices, working through grief, reining in the runaway thoughts that keep you up at night, and building confidence to act) strengthen your capacity to stay present with the shifting climate reality without being overwhelmed by it. That’s not “coping” in the familiar sense of managing symptoms until life returns to normal. It’s developing the inner resources to keep showing up, keep caring, and keep acting with an open mind and heart. That kind of resilience makes sustained engagement possible.

In this with you,
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column.

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

More from Ask a Climate Therapist

• Ask a Climate Therapist: Why should I plan for my future when I feel we don’t have one?

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport offers advice to a young reader staring down a world of uncertainty.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: How can I balance my travel itch with guilt about emissions?

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport advises a reader who loves to travel, but worries about its impact on the planet.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I deal with friends and family who won’t stop polluting?

  Your climate values are conflicting with your closest relationships. Here’s some advice on how to cope.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real? on May 29, 2026.

From Grist via This RSS Feed.

Katelynn Delos Reyes thought she knew what to expect when Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into Saipan last month. As a lifelong resident of the island, Delos Reyes had survived frequent storms, including Supertyphoon Yutu, the second-strongest in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Yutu’s 170-mph winds devastated her village in the southern end of Saipan. Just three years before that, she survived Typhoon Soudelor.

But Sinlaku was different. “At the beginning, it was OK. But later on it wasn’t,” said Delos Reyes, who is Chamorro, Indigenous to the Mariana Islands.

A few days before it hit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, on April 14, Sinlaku had tropical-storm winds. That made it what is known in the Marianas as a “banana typhoon” because such storms level banana trees but leave others standing. Then over the weekend, the typhoon rapidly intensified by 75 mph in just 24 hours before becoming a 185-mph monstrosity and the strongest storm on Earth so far this year.

Delos Reyes and her family had done what they could to prepare. They boarded up the windows. They bought gallons of drinking water and filled plastic drums to use in the shower and toilet.

Then the storm hit, and Delos Reyes grew scared. The winds, which had weakened to 150 mph, ripped the wood from a window. Rainwater gushed through the ceiling and soaked their belongings, including Delos Reyes’ mattress. She and her partner, her mother, her daughter, and their two dogs hid in her mother’s room, where its concrete roof and walls would keep them safe. She heard sections of the roof tumbling away. Eventually, Sinlaku slowed to a crawl, forcing tens of thousands of others to remain sheltered for days. “How long is this storm going to be with us?” she prayed. “I think, Lord, maybe it’s enough, you can go and finish it elsewhere.”

More than a month after Sinlaku tore across the Western Pacific, families in the Northern Mariana Islands and beyond are still grappling with a lack of electricity and clearing debris as they pick up what’s left of their homes.

Debris litters Garapan, the center of Saipan’s tourism district, in late May, more than a month after Sinlaku hit the island. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

The region-wide death toll — including Guam and the Federated States of Micronesia — has ticked up to 17, making Sinlaku the deadliest storm in the Micronesian region of the Pacific since 2002. The deaths include a couple on Guam who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning while running their generator indoors, as well as six crew members of the cargo ship Mariana, which was caught in the storm when its engine died.

In Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia, the storm killed nine people, including a baby whose pregnant mother couldn’t reach the hospital due to fallen trees. Other deaths were attributed to a boat capsizing and a tree falling on someone.

Strong storms are common in the Micronesian region of the Pacific but rarely this deadly. Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central, said Sinlaku’s sudden escalation happened over ocean waters 0.6 degrees Celsius warmer than average — temperatures made 70 to 100 times more likely due to climate change, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas. Scientists have long warned that rising marine temperatures can enable storms like Sinlaku to get stronger faster and hold more moisture, leading to increased flooding. “In general, climate change is making events like this more intense at their peak intensity,” Winkley said. Sinlaku was named for the Kosraean goddess of breadfruit in the Federated States of Micronesia — a cultural staple also threatened by climate change.

A https://www.climatecentral.org/ map rendering of Category 5 Super Typhoon Sinlaku southeast of Japan in April 2026. FrankRamspott / Getty Images

The Pacific is home to many Indigenous peoples who have contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions, yet are already bearing its disastrous effects, ranging from stronger storms to rising seas. Their nations are increasingly calling on major polluters like the U.S. and China to be accountable for their carbon emissions and help bear the cost of the extreme weather wreaking havoc on their communities. The Federated States of Micronesia was among 140 countries last week that voted in favor of a United Nations resolution affirming that state governments have a legal obligation to protect the earth from the harm caused by greenhouse gases, and nations that fail to do so must pay climate reparations. The U.S., which claims sovereignty over the CNMI and Guam, was one of just eight nations that voted against the resolution.

The latest available report from emergency officials in Chuuk State, the part of the Federated States of Micronesia hardest hit by the typhoon, estimates that the storm destroyed or severely damaged more than 7,000 homes in Chuuk and Yap and displaced more than 13,000 people. “Access to safe water is critically compromised, food reserves are depleting rapidly, and the outer islands face growing isolation as maritime supply lines remain constrained,” the report warned.

U.N. agencies such as the International Organization for Migration, along with nonprofit organizations and countries like the U.S. and China, have been providing typhoon relief for Chuuk. The growing Micronesian diaspora in the U.S. has also mobilized to send food and money. “They’re going to need financial support to rebuild their houses. They’re going to need chainsaws to cut down trees,” Josie Howard, head of the Honolulu-based nonprofit We Are Oceania, told Hawai‘i Public Radio.

Fallen trees line the road leading up to Marpi in the northern part of Saipan more than a month after Sinlaku devastated the island. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

In the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, officials are still counting the number of homes destroyed and people displaced. But as of last week, piles of debris still littered roadsides, and the entire island of Tinian remained without electricity. Families opened their windows to catch breezes, seeking relief from the humidity and 80-plus degree weather. Indigenous fishermen caught ti’ao, or goatfish, to feed their families fresh dinners in the absence of refrigeration. Residents of Guam bought so many battery-powered Ryobi fans to send their loved ones on more affected islands that the Home Depot ran out. In both the CNMI and Chuuk, children were missing school because their schoolhouses had been severely damaged and, in some cases, destroyed, with many not expected to return for months.

On Saipan, people waited an average of two to three hours at the local recovery center to talk to Federal Emergency Management Agency officials about applying for aid. As of last week, more than 9,000 CNMI residents had applied for federal disaster assistance, and the recovery center was serving an average of 300 more each day. “It’s a snake, kind of like the lines at Disneyland,” JD Reyes, a CNMI Commerce Department official who has been managing the recovery center, said of the rows of dozens of waiting families, some of whom had brought their children.

The families were from all over the island, Reyes said. “Soudelor hit the north, and Yutu hit the south,” Reyes said. “This just hit everyone, and what made it worse is it just sat on top of us for more than 24 hours. So it really made sure, if you’re not affected, you will be.” His wife was working at the hospital during the storm, so he stayed home to watch their two-year-old and mop up the water that flooded their house in northern Saipan. Just before dawn, his neighbors ran to his house for shelter because their roof had blown away. “We actually are very fortunate; we just had our flooding, damage to personal property,” he said. His village went without electricity for more than five weeks. “But at least we have a roof over our head, no windows destroyed, just damage to the car.”

For Delos Reyes and thousands of other residents, recovery remains uncertain. The deadline to apply for FEMA disaster assistance in the CNMI is June 22. Delos Reyes’ family in southern Saipan is one of more than 450 families who have so far received emergency tents or temporary roofs. A FEMA tent now sits in her yard, and a tarp partially covers her missing roof.

For weeks after the typhoon, Delos Reyes dragged her rain-soaked mattress into the yard to dry slowly in the hot sun. The first thing she and her family did was clear the debris from their driveway so an ambulance could reach her mother in an emergency. Delos Reyes is a caregiver for the 94-year-old woman, who has dementia and has been bedridden for seven years. That’s one reason why, no matter how bad each storm gets or how many times she needs to repair her house, Delos Reyes doesn’t plan to leave.

“One day at a time,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pacific Islanders slowly recover from the strongest storm of the year on May 29, 2026.

From Grist via This RSS Feed.

Syria's energy ministry warned on Thursday of rising water levels on the Euphrates River after flooding in the north and east following increased flows from neighboring Turkey and recent rains.

From Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change via This RSS Feed.