An Interior Department proposal would cancel BLM grazing leases for American Prairie’s buffalo in Montana, but it could affect tribal and private herds across the West.

By Blaine Harden

PHILLIPS COUNTY, Mont.—The American buffalo—those ornery, hairy prairie beasts that reign as the official mammal of the United States—have joined wind turbines, electric cars and climate researchers in the cross hairs of the Trump administration.

Trump Administration Targets Bison on Federal Grazing Lands

The courts will decide if the first “climate superfund” law in the nation survives, a likely years-long battle. Vermont towns, meanwhile, must figure out how to pay for infrastructure that extreme weather won’t destroy.

By Dana Drugmand, Nathaniel Eisen

RUTLAND, Vt.—Eighteen years after the first “climate tort” lawsuit was filed, no U.S. plaintiff has collected damages for the harms of global warming. Now, Vermont’s different legal strategy to make fossil fuel companies pay is facing its first real test.

As Vermont Defends Its Law to Make Fossil Fuel Firms Pay for Climate Adaptation, the Bill Is Already Coming Due

Go behind the scenes with managing editor Jamie Smith Hopkins and investigative reporter Katie Surma as they discuss how the Shuar people in Ecuador are combining ancestral knowledge and modern science to protect their forest from a Canadian mining giant.

By Katie Surma

In the copper-rich mountains of southeastern Ecuador, residents working as “paraecologists” are documenting the biodiversity of their territory – home to endangered species, waterfalls, and medicinal plants – not simply for the record, but to protect the land from mining.

Paramedics for Ecosystems