Severe droughts have been occurring so frequently in the Amazon Basin in recent decades that the forest may not have time to recover before the next one hits, according to a new study based on remote-sensing data. The study, published March 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used monthly microwave radar satellite data gathered between 1992 and 2025 to calculate changes in forest biomass and tree-canopy moisture during and after droughts. In that time, the Amazon was struck by droughts in 1997-98, 2005, 2010, 2015-16 and 2023-24, several of them among the most severe in nearly a century. The study found it took three to seven years for the forest to return to a median recovery level after the droughts, but that did not necessarily mean a return to pre-drought moisture levels. About 30% to 40% of the forest did not return to...
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The world’s rarest sea turtle is having a remarkable year. On the Gulf Coast beaches of Tamaulipas state in northeast Mexico, where roughly 95% of world Kemp’s ridley (Lepidochelys kempii) nesting occurs, authorities logged 2,476 nests and over 222,000 eggs under protection as of mid-May. Those are unusually high mid-season figures. In just 48 hours in April, nearly 7,000 females came ashore at Playa Rancho Nuevo, depositing eggs along roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) of coastline in a mass nesting event. The Kemp’s ridley is the smallest of the sea turtle species, measuring about two feet in length and weighing up to 100 pounds. It is also the world’s most endangered, classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered. Kemp’s ridleys nest almost exclusively during the day. This makes them more vulnerable than other sea turtle species, which typically come ashore to bury...
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Three Mexican environmental organizations have filed a formal complaint denouncing the illegal construction of a 16-kilometer (10-mile) road through primary jungle in the Caribbean municipality of Tulum. The complaint alleges the road project poses a threat to the underground aquifer that supplies fresh water to the entire Yucatán Peninsula—including the nearby Riviera Maya, one of Mexico’s most important Caribbean tourism-resort regions. It was filed on June 23 by the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights (Cemda), Greenpeace México and Sélvame MX, a nonprofit dedicated to ecosystem protection in southern Mexico. The project that prompted the suit is not new. Construction of the road was begun in 2025 by the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) as part of a bypass around Tulum. Following complaints by environmentalists, Mexico’s Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (Profepa) halted the work, finding the project lacked an authorized environmental impact assessment. In their...
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