Environment

Volunteers who visited sites in California and Arizona around Thanksgiving tallied more than 330,000 butterflies, the highest number of these insects counted in the last six years.

The oldest organism in the world is 600,000-year-old Siberian bacteria, and the oldest plant is a 200,000-year-old sea grass meadow near Spain. But the Southwest has the distinction of being home to the largest concentration of old plant species.

U.S. Forest Service officials are considering recommending that Congress adopt heightened protections for 37 miles of the Upper Verde River under the National Wild and Scenic River System.

A new study from Northern Arizona University shows how climate change is shrinking vital springs in the Grand Canyon and along the Mogollon Rim. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports.

The Kayenta Mine Complex on tribal lands in northeastern Arizona once supplied the coal that lit up homes in Los Angeles and pumped water to Phoenix. The mine closed in 2019, and now Navajo and Hopi people want the land returned so they can use it to graze livestock and gather culturally important plants. Mine reclamation is well underway, but the process is slow, and some worry it’s taking too long. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports.

The Grand Canyon won’t see a beach-building flood this fall for the fourth year in a row. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports, river managers point to unprecedented low levels in Lake Powell.

The drought in the Southwest has bottomed out major reservoirs on the Colorado River and raised alarms among cities and farms that rely on the water. But it’s also a threat to the environment in one of the world’s most recognizable wonders: the Grand Canyon. As KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports, a longstanding program of artificial floods to save the canyon’s beaches now faces an uncertain future.

In the fall, large flocks of cliff swallows take wing together, heading all the way to South America to overwinter. But they’ll be back in the spring, ready to breed and claim nesting sites.

A new coloring book written by farmers and Indigenous artists in Flagstaff spotlights forgotten food plants that can survive hot, dry weather. And it includes packets of drought-tolerant seeds. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports, the project’s creators think it’s an imaginative, inclusive way to confront the Southwest’s long running drought.

Students learn to read and write in classrooms, but in the wider world they gain a different kind of literacy: a deep understanding of the natural world.