Environmental News

MPR News is your source for environment news from Minnesota and across the country.

Getting to Green: Minnesota’s energy future

Getting to Green is an MPR News series that shares stories about Minnesota’s clean energy transition, including what needs to be done to get there.

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Climate Cast

Listen to Climate Cast, the MPR News podcast all about our changing climate and its impact in Minnesota and worldwide.

Waiting for justice for Floyd, north siders work the land as an act of healing
An urban garden in the Hawthorne neighborhood in north Minneapolis has been in the works for months. But after the police killed George Floyd, it has become a healing space — particularly for Black residents who often feel targeted and criminalized. 
DNR: Irrigation wells in Pineland Sands don’t need in-depth study
Tim Nolte wants to irrigate about 300 acres to grow hay and other crops, and graze his cattle. But the request got caught up in a larger debate over the conversion of forests to potato fields in north-central Minnesota’s Pineland Sands region.
U of M to fund more CWD research in Minnesota’s deer herds
Researchers at the University of Minnesota were awarded new funding on Wednesday to study the spread of chronic wasting disease in the state’s deer herds. The goal is to determine how the fatal deer disease is passed to animals through plants and tainted water.
Study finds pharmaceuticals, other chemicals in remote Minnesota lakes
The chemicals were often found in lakes that receive discharged water from wastewater treatment plants. But they also turned up in remote lakes with little or no human development, sometimes at levels similar to more populated lakes.
Swarms of locusts continue to plague large swaths of Africa, Asia
Titanic swarms of desert locusts resembling dark storm clouds are descending ravenously on the Horn of Africa. They're roving through croplands and flattening farms in a devastating salvo experts are calling an unprecedented threat to food security.
As EPA steps back, states face wave of requests for environmental leniency
The EPA does not require companies to notify federal regulators if the pandemic interferes with pollution monitoring or reporting. That leaves states alone on the front lines of pollution control.