1.  Nearly three million acres of public lands would lose their protections overnight under new executive orders that virtually eliminate Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.  Bears Ears would be reduced to just 9% of its original size and Grand Staircase-Escalante to 10%. This rollback also strips five Indigenous tribes of their leadership, ending a historic agreement to co-manage their ancestral lands.  Since 1916, the dedication of wild lands for public use and protections was driven by a universal ideal: that wild places would not exist just for the profit of a few, but as a public commons and a social good.   Public lands were made free to all of us, creating spaces to hike, camp, hunt, fish, and climb - where people find peace in nature, and vital wildlife species find safe refuge.  The fate of the natural world hangs in the balance as habitat loss accelerates mass extinctions, but we can urge our representatives to protect what the visionaries who went before us achieved over a century ago.  

2. The Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of more than 900 ocean sensors, has tracked for more than a decade ocean circulation, marine ecosystems, climate change and extreme weather, and has produced the data freely to the public, informing more than 500 scientific publications.  Yet with no warning and with no scientific review, the National Science Foundation (NSF) directed the removal of the system's instruments from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland by 2027 as proposed by the federal 2026 budget that had included a 55% cut to the agency.  The cuts are part of a broader retreat from environmental and climate-related science that has scaled back research programs and reduced staffing at agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), all while easing emissions regulations.  Public and legislative pressure in July resulted in the withdrawal of the proposed cuts.  

3.  In mid-July, The Washington Post reported that $10 million in funds to the U.S. Forest Service to remove dead trees to reduce wildfire threats had been held up last year by the federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).  The project, awarded to the Superior National Forest in 2021, sought to remove thousands of acres of highly flammable, dead or downed spruce and fir trees along the Echo Trail near Ely.  The plan would have strengthened the roadway's use as a firebreak between the main unit of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to the north and the Trout Lake Unit to the south, and was to have begun last year, according the district ranger of the Kawishiwi District from 2021 to 2025 who helped shepherd the program.  Local contractors had been set to start work last year, but the fire-reduction plans were cut, and were only given the green light after a St. Louis County Commissioner traveled to Washington to plead the case for the program.  But work has yet to start.  

4.  The greenest form of energy use is the energy not needed, which has been the goal since the 1970s by administrations of both parties to issue regulations to reduce the amount of fuel used by cars, buildings and appliances, and to curtail the emissions that are warming the planet.  Yet current leaders are dismantling a wide array of federal energy-efficiency programs at the same time that war in Iran is raising oil prices, climate change is fueling record heat that is driving up demand for air conditioning, and new data centers are straining America's electricity supply.  Overall, the U.S. economy has been getting more energy efficient each year, but that progress slowed significantly in 2025, according to the International Energy Agency.  A recent study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that current appliance efficiency standards have lowered U.S. energy use 6.5% and saved the average household $576 per year, compared with a system in which there are no standards. 

5.  Wildfire smoke "ages" over time, writes Minnesota meteorologist Paul Douglas, by reacting with sunlight and ambient air to create secondary organic aerosols that are actually more toxic by the time it reaches downwind cities.  And on a super-hot day your brain orders a massive redistribution of blood flow to blood vessels near the skin, forcing the heart to beat much faster and pump harder to keep blood moving to your skin.  Yet, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (ucs.org), a new federal plan to dismantle the world's premier, and largest, wildfire research agency (the U.S. Forest Service) comes at a time when wildfire risk, climate impacts, and economic losses are accelerating.  By closing 57 of its 77 research and development facilities, the Forest Service's mission in administering more than 193 million acres of land - including 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands - while conducting independent science that provides the foundation for many forest management decisions, is severely curtailed.  To read more, visit act.ucs.org/sum26-forests.