The Environmental Protection Agency is awarding more than $10 million in grant funding to aid conservation efforts in Long Island Sound. The 2022 grants from the Long Island Sound Futures Fund will reach more than 300,000 people through environmental-education programs. Mark Tedesco, director of the EPA s Long Island Sound office, said the fund is multi-purpose, with numerous goals to accomplish. .
A new report explores a clean-energy pathway in southwestern Pennsylvania. Sean O Leary, senior researcher, Ohio River Valley Institute, said the report was inspired by the passage of the inflation Reduction Act and efforts in Pennsylvania and throughout Appalachian to push for a decarbonization pathway that wouldn t be based largely on preserving natural gas and coal in the region. O Leary said the Ohio River Valley Institute commissioned the analytics firm Strategen to develop an alternative that would also boost the economy in the Keystone State. .
California s old-growth sequoia trees are dying at an alarming rate - so land managers across the Sierras are mounting an emergency response. Many of the biggest, oldest trees on earth have fallen victim to mega-fires, bark beetle infestation and drought, all exacerbated by climate change. Jessica Morse, deputy secretary for forest and wildland resilience at the California Natural Resources Agency, said multi-tree die-offs are rare among sequoias - with only about 2 dozen lost between the ice age and 2015 - but now more than 10,000 old-growth trees have died since 2020. .