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Railroad company appeals water pollution fine after train crash into Oregon river

The Department of Environmental Quality fined the railroad company $81,600 after the January crash.

The railroad company whose trestle collapsed earlier this year, derailing a train into the Marys River in Corvallis, has appealed a fine for water pollution stemming from the incident, denying state officials’ versions of events.Included in the Department of Environmental Quality penalty notice that fined Portland & Western Railroad $81,600 fine was an order that the company inspect all its water crossing trestles for safety concerns and formulate a process for evaluating and prioritizing repairs, modifications or replacement.‘Reckless disregard’In January, the train bridge spanning Avery Park and Pioneer Park gave way under a 19-car freight train carrying pelletized fertilizer, dropping one railcar into the Marys River and leaving another partially in the water.The derailment spilled 199 tons of urea into the river over nine days, according to the DEQ. Urea, which can be synthesized or harvested from animal urine and is used in fertilizer, both sinks and dissolves in water.DEQ alleges the derailment was caused by reckless disregard on the part of Portland & Western Railroad Inc., issuing a civil penalty of $81,600 to the company in a notice made public Friday, Dec. 19.Several attempts, by email and phone, to reach railroad officials went unanswered.The appealPortland & Western Railroad filed an appeal the same day, according to a document provided by the DEQ. The agency initially reported that it wasn’t sure the appeal was filed by the established deadline.The company has requested a hearing with the agency over the penalty and denies several of the DEQ’s findings outlined in the notice.In its appeal, the company denies that the Jan. 4 incident “had a significant adverse impact on human health and the environment.” It also denies that railcars continued to release urea into the river through Jan. 12, as the DEQ alleges.Furthermore, Portland & Western Railroad denies the “characterization of and the related factual allegations regarding the condition of the bridge.” It also denies how the state characterized the railroad’s actions with respect to ”the inspection, maintenance and operation of the bridge.”In its defense, the Portland & Western Railroad appeal claims the bridge failure was an “act of God/Nature,” saying river flooding generated unusually high and fast-flowing water at the time and was a significant contributing factor to the collapse.The state has said urea can pollute water by introducing excessive nitrogen that promotes algal blooms, depletes dissolved oxygen and disrupts aquatic ecosystems. When it breaks down into ammonia, it can be toxic to aquatic organisms.Precipitating event?In May 2022, the trestle caught fire and took nearly nine hours to extinguish. Witnesses reported hearing explosions, possibly from propane tanks at a homeless encampment under the bridge.At the time, a spokesperson for Portland & Western Railroad Inc. said the structure had been “inspected thoroughly” and repairs were made before rail traffic resumed.The DEQ says the company in fact made only “minor repairs” at the trestle damaged in the 2022 fire and ”continued running freight trains over it” rather than replacing it.“Given the threat to human health, safety and the environment posed by a train accident involving freight such as chemicals, disregarding that risk constituted a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would observe in that situation,” the DEQ said in the penalty notice.As such, the state is demanding Portland & Western reinspect every trestle over a body of water in Oregon.However, in the appeal the railroad company is denying that it operates approximately 478 miles in Oregon. The railroad was bought by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. in 1995 but still uses the Portland & Western name locally.

Pollution
Water
Chemicals

The Environmental and Human Rights Costs of China’s Clean Energy Investments Abroad

Chinese companies have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy manufacturing investments overseas, but the projects are having significant social, environmental, and human rights impacts.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News as part of its Planet China series and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.The audience sat patiently through the presentations about the cluster of battery factories going up nearby. They listened to descriptions of the hazardous chemicals the plants will use, their huge water withdrawals and energy demands.WIRED's Guide to How the Universe WorksYour weekly roundup of the best stories on health care, the climate crisis, new scientific discoveries, and more. When it came time for questions, people began shifting in their chairs and standing up, making the cramped room feel even smaller.What if the chemicals leak, one woman asked. What’s in it for the politicians in their “velvet chairs,” another demanded. A third warned it would be just like the Soviet era, when iron and steel plants left a polluted legacy.Then a woman began to tear up as she told the 50 or so people who had gathered in a community center on a cold, dark evening that the factories’ smokestacks and hazardous materials were about a mile from her daughter’s kindergarten.“Please stand up for yourselves,” she said, urging the audience to spread the word.The Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, is nearing completion on what could be one of Europe’s largest electric vehicle battery factories. The industrial park where it is located, outside Debrecen, Hungary’s second-largest city, also hosts several other manufacturers of battery parts and supplies. At least two of those are owned by Chinese companies, one by a South Korean firm. Another Chinese-owned battery factory is being built on the other side of the city.The surge of construction is part of a nationwide frenzy, prompted by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s goal to make Hungary a leading battery manufacturer. To reach this target, Orbán has looked primarily to Beijing. Chinese companies have announced or built at least 18 EV and battery-related projects in Hungary so far, $17 billion in pledged investments, according to data compiled by the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University.While the factories could position Hungary in the center of Europe’s transition off fossil fuels, they have prompted a backlash from residents worried about their impacts on public health and the environment.“Everyone will get their fair share of this stew,” said Éva Kozma, who leads the Mikepércs Mothers for the Environment Association, a citizen activist group that hosted the event. Kozma helped form the group after CATL announced its plans in 2022 and has since been highlighting the risks posed by battery development, identifying pollution events and scrutinizing the factories’ permits.

Energy
Activism
Climate

‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps?

With the snow line edging higher, 186 French ski resorts have shut, while global heating threatens dozens moreWhen Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table. Continue reading...

When Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table.The Céüze 2000 resort when snow was plentiful.The Céüze resort in the southern French Alps had been open for 85 years and was one of the oldest in the country. Today, it is one of scores of ski resorts abandoned across France – part of a new landscape of “ghost stations”.More than 186 have been permanently closed already, raising questions about how we leave mountains – among the last wild spaces in Europe – once the lifts stop running.It was costing more to keep it open than closed … We looked into using artificial snow but realised that would delay the inevitableAs global heating pushes the snow line higher across the Alps, thousands of structures are being left to rot – some of them breaking down and contaminating the surrounding earth, driving debate about what should happen to the remnants of old ways of life – and whether to let nature reclaim the mountains.Snowfall at Céüze started becoming unreliable in the 1990s. To be financially viable, the resort needed to be open for at least three months. In that last winter, it only managed a month and a half. For the two years before that it had not been able to operate at all.Opening the resort each season cost the local authority as much as €450,000 (£390,000). As the season got shorter, the numbers no longer added up. To avoid a spiral of debt, the decision was made to close.The resort closed permanently during the 2020 winter due to a lack of snow. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The Guardian“It was costing us more to keep it open than to keep it closed for the season,” says Michel Ricou-Charles, president of the local Buëch‑Dévoluy community council, which oversees the site. Even under the most optimistic projections, the future looked bleak. “We looked into using artificial snow, but realised that would delay the inevitable,” he says.It was seven years before the trucks and helicopters came in to begin removing the pylons. Still, the local community grieved for the small, family-oriented resort, which was host to generations of memories. As demolitions began, they came to take nuts, bolts and washers as mementoes of what they had lost.Degrading wild terrainIn France, there are today 113 ski lifts totalling nearly 40 miles (63km) in length that have been abandoned, nearly three-quarters of them in protected areas. It is not just ski infrastructure. The Mountain Wilderness association estimates that there are more than 3,000 abandoned structures dotted around French mountains, slowly degrading Europe’s richest wild terrain. This includes military, industrial and forestry waste, such as old cables, bits of barbed wire, fencing and old machinery.There are 113 abandoned ski lifts in France, nearly three-quarters of which are in protected areas. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianCéüze ski resort is fast becoming one of these pollutants. The little wooden cabin at the bottom of the first button lift is shedding insulation. Ropes once used to mark out the piste hang in tatters and bits of plastic are falling off a pylon. The old sheds at each end of the ski lifts often still contain transformers, asbestos, motor oils and greases. Over time, these substances seep into the soil and water.Corrosion and rust from metal structures left over from the second world war, such as anti-tank rails and metal spikes, have led to changes in plant species in the surrounding area, potentially offering a vision of what could happen if pylons are left to rust over the coming decades.Don’t think that you are making eternal things; they will end up becoming obsolete … ask yourself: what will remain?Nicolas Masson, Mountain Wilderness“In Latin, we say memento mori – remember that you are mortal. Don’t think that you are making eternal things; they will end up becoming obsolete,” says Nicolas Masson, from Mountain Wilderness, which is campaigning for old ski infrastructure to be dismantled to make space for nature. “When you make them, ask yourself the question: what will remain?”Some believe the resorts should remain memorialised landscapes, honouring generations of people who lived and skied here; others believe they should be returned to wild landscapes with their disintegrating machinery removed.Ecologist Nicolas Masson is part of a campaign to dismantle old ski infrastructure. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianNature’s recoveryCéüze’s deconstruction started on 4 November 2025, a month before the ski season would once have kicked off. The resort’s ski lifts were airlifted out using a helicopter to minimise environmental disturbance and compression of the earth.French law requires ski lifts to be removed and dismantled if they are no longer in use. The law only applies to ski lifts built after 2017, however. Most last for 30 years, so no lifts would be considered obsolete until at least 2047. The process is also expensive: dismantling Céüze will cost €123,000. This means most abandoned ski infrastructure is left to disintegrate in situ. What is happening in Céüze is rare. With pylons cleared and the resort already closed for seven years, early signs of ecological recovery are already visible. A red haze floats over the white snow: winter berries of the dog rose are sprouting where the piste is no longer mown.Berries can be see on dog rose shrubs which are starting to flourish now the piste is no longer cleared for skiers. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianThe berries are important winter food for birds such as the rare red-billed chough, and their thorny stems are used for nest-building come spring. In the summer, orchids and yellow gentians bloom over these hillsides. The hills surrounding the site are classed as Natura 2000, meaning they are home to Europe’s rarest and most protected wildlife.The trees are coming back too. “I don’t know if it would take 10, 20 or 50 years, but this is becoming a forest,” says Masson.A fraction of a degree changes everything in the mountain environment. It’s the difference between snow and no snowWild boar and roe deer living in these forests will benefit from quieter winters. Birds such as grouse shelter from severe cold in winter by digging into the snow, and prefer deep powdery snow – just like skiers. The species is endangered in all the mountain ranges of France.The dismantling of Céüze comes at a time when many spaces for nature are shrinking. Pierre-Alexandre Métral, a geographer at the University of Grenoble Alpes, who studies abandoned ski resorts, says: “There is a lot of debate about the nature of this dismantling – is it just removing mechanical stuff, or are we attempting to put mountains back into a kind of original state?”Ecological recovery can be filled with surprises, he says, noting that the maintenance of pistes can be beneficial to some alpine flowers. “If we let nature come back spontaneously – in a wild, uncontrolled way – there are also risks that some invasive species that tend to be stronger could colonise faster,” says Métral.The hills around the former resort are home to some of Europe’s rarest and most protected wildlife. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianThere is scant research in this area, but studies from the Valcotos ski resort closure in Madrid’s Sierra de Guadarrama in 1999 show it led to significant recovery of native vegetation and cleaner waterways, while reducing soil erosion.“These are laboratories of what the mountain could be like in the future with new closures,” says Métral.On the brinkThe question of what to do with these places will play out across Europe’s mountains, and around the world. Skiing is disappearing from many alpine landscapes. “Many lower ones are already closed,” says Masson. “A fraction of a degree changes everything in the mountain environment. It’s the difference between having snow and no snow.”Richard Klein believes the resort should have been saved. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianResearch suggests that with 2C (3.6F) of global heating, more than half of existing resorts risk having too little snow. Higher altitude resorts are vulnerable to the loss of permafrost, threatening pylons that have been drilled into it. Some resorts, such as St-Honoré 1500, were abandoned before construction was even completed. Even bigger resorts, which typically have funds to invest in new pistes and artificial snow, are struggling to survive.For some, the loss of Céüze feels premature. Richard Klein,who lives in Roche des Arnauds, near Céüze, feels the ski resort could – and should – have been saved. “It’s a wonderful place to learn to ski – it’s the best. I think it’s really stupid they closed it,” he says. “There were always loads of people.” Klein believes the local authority should have begun using artificial snow, adding: “Now it’s too late.”Yet life has not disappeared from Céüze. In October 2025, the resort’s Hotel Galliard is being sold to a developer looking to open it for events, according to Ricou-Charles. A property developer has bought the children’s holiday residence, and a carpenter has moved into the building where the old ticket office was. The rooms used as a holiday camp for children have cracks appearing down the side, but might open again in the future.“Céüze will continue to live, despite the loss of the resort,” says Ricou-Charles. “We are not mourning Céüze because it is not dead.”On winter weekends dozens of cars still gather in the car park, with people enjoying quieter activities on the hillside, such as walking, snow-shoeing, cross-country skiing and sledging.A poster from the resort’s 80th anniversary celebrations. Photograph: Thomas Valentin/The GuardianMasson does not like the term “ghost resort” because it suggests total abandonment when what is happening in his area is more complicated. “People continue to come,” he says. “We don’t need large machines to make mountains attractive.”What happens at Céüze is a glimpse into a future that faces dozens of other small resorts, and mountain landscapes, across Europe. “What is our heritage that we will want to keep,” asks Masson. “And what is just a ruin we want to dismantle? That is a question we have to ask every time, and it requires some reflection.”

Nature
Water
Forests

Sure, the Newspaper Informed. but as It Fades, Those Who Used It for Other Things Must Adjust, Too

The lurch in the media business has changed America over the last two decades

The sun would rise over the Rockies, and Robin Gammons would run to the front porch to grab the morning paper before school.She wanted the comics and her dad wanted sports, but the Montana Standard meant more than their daily race to grab “Calvin and Hobbes” or baseball scores. When one of the three kids made honor roll, won a basketball game or dressed a freshly slain bison for the History Club, appearing in the Standard's pages made the achievement feel more real. Robin became an artist with a one-woman show at a downtown gallery and the front-page article went on the fridge, too. Five years later, the yellowing article is still there. The Montana Standard slashed print circulation to three days a week two years ago, cutting back the expense of printing like 1,200 U.S. newspapers over the past two decades. About 3,500 papers closed over the same time. An average of two a week have shut this year.That slow fade, it turns out, means more than changing news habits. It speaks directly to the newspaper's presence in our lives — not just in terms of the information printed upon it, but in its identity as a physical object with many other uses.“You can pass it on. You can keep it. And then, of course, there’s all the fun things,” says Diane DeBlois, one of the founders of the Ephemera Society of America, a group of scholars, researchers, dealers and collectors who focus on what they call “precious primary source information.”“Newspapers wrapped fish. They washed windows. They appeared in outhouses,” she says. “And — free toilet paper.”The downward lurch in the media business has changed American democracy over the last two decades — some think for better, many for worse. What's indisputable: The gradual dwindling of the printed paper — the item that so many millions read to inform themselves and then repurposed into household workflows — has quietly altered the texture of daily life. American democracy and pet cages People used to catch up on the world, then save their precious memories, protect their floors and furniture, wrap gifts, line pet cages and light fires. In Butte, in San Antonio, Texas, in much of New Jersey and worldwide, lives without the printed paper are just a tiny bit different. For newspaper publishers, the expense of printing is just too high in an industry that's under strain in an online society. For ordinary people, the physical paper is joining the pay phone, the cassette tape, the answering machine, the bank check, the sound of the internal combustion engine and the ivory-white pair of women's gloves as objects whose disappearance marks the passage of time.“Very hard to see it while it’s happening, much easier to see things like that in even modest retrospect,” says Marilyn Nissenson, co-author of “Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana.” “Young women were going to work and they wore them for a while and then one day they looked at them and thought, ‘This is ludicrous.’ That was a small but telling icon for a much larger social change.”Nick Mathews thinks a lot about newspapers. Both of his parents worked at the Pekin (Illinois) Daily Times. He went on to become sports editor of the Houston Chronicle and, now, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism.“I have fond memories of my parents using newspapers to wrap presents,” he says. “In my family, you always knew that the gift was from my parents because of what it was wrapped in.”In Houston, he recently recalled, the Chronicle reliably sold out when the Astros, Rockets or Texas won a championship because so many people wanted the paper as a keepsake. Four years ago, Mathews interviewed 19 people in Caroline County, Virginia, about the 2018 shuttering of the Caroline Progress, a 99-year-old weekly paper that was shuttered months before its 100th anniversary. In “Print Imprint: The Connection Between the Physical Newspaper and the Self,” published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, wistful Virginians remember their senior high school portrait and their daughter’s picture in a wedding dress appearing in the Progress. Plus, one told Mathews, "My fingers are too clean now. I feel sad without ink smudges.”Flush with cash from Omahans who invested years ago with local boy Warren Buffett, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab is a well-equipped center for migratory waterfowl, wading birds, reptiles, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, mink and beaver.“We get over 8,000 animals every year and we use that newspaper for almost all of those animals,” Executive Director Laura Stastny says.Getting old newspapers has never been a problem in this neighborly Midwestern city. Yet Stastny frets about the electronic future.“We do pretty well now,” she says. “If we lost that source and had to use something else or had to purchase something, that, with the available options that we have now, would cost us more than $10,000 a year easily.”That would be nearly 1% of the budget, Stastny says, but “I’ve never been in a position to be without them, so I might be shocked with a higher dollar figure."Until 1974, the Omaha World-Herald printed a morning edition and two afternoon ones, including a late-afternoon Wall Street Edition with closing prices.“Afternoon major-league baseball was still standard then, so I got to gorge on both baseball and stock market facts,” an 85-year-old Buffett told the World-Herald in 2013, By then, he had become the world’s most famous investor and the paper’s owner.The World-Herald ended its second afternoon edition in 2016 and Buffett left the newspaper business five years ago. Fewer than 60,000 households take the paper today, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, down from nearly more than 190,000 in 2005, or about one per household.Few places symbolize the move from print to digital more than Akalla, a district of Stockholm where the ST01 data center sits at a site once occupied by the factory that prints Sweden main newspaper, Kaun says.“They have less and less machines, and instead the building is taken over more and more by this co-location data center,” she says.Data centers use huge amounts of energy, of course, and the environmental benefit of using less printing paper is also offset by the enormous popularity of online shopping.“You will see a decline in printed papers, but there is a huge increase in packaging,” says Cecilia Alcoreza, manager, of forest sector transformation for the World Wildlife Fund. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced in August that it would stop providing a print edition at year’s end and go completely digital, making Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper.The habit of following the news — of being informed about the world — can't be divorced from the existence of print, says Anne Kaun, professor of media and communication studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm. Children who grew up in homes with printed newspapers and magazines randomly came across news and socialized into a news-reading habit, Kaun observed. With cell phones, that doesn't happen. "I do think it meaningfully changes how we relate to each other, how we relate to things like the news. It is reshaping attention spans and communications,” says Sarah Wasserman, a cultural critic and assistant dean at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire who specializes in changing forms of communication. “These things will always continue to exist in certain spheres and certain pockets and certain class niches,” she says. “But I do think they’re fading."Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – December 2025

Business
Animals
Forests

Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

These fungi boost plant growth and restore depleted ecosystems, but federal funding for a library housing them has been cut – and it may be forced to closeInside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts. Continue reading...

Inside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts.For leading mycologist Toby Kiers, this would be catastrophic. “INVAM represents a library of hundreds of millions of years of evolution,” said Kiers, executive director of the Society for Protection of Underground Networks (Spun). “Ending INVAM for scientists is like closing the Louvre for artists.”The arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi conserved by INVAM are symbiotic organisms that support the growth of 70% of land plant species across all ecosystems. In exchange for sugars and fats, they provide plants with vital nutrients – phosphorus, nitrogen, trace metals – and buffer them against drought, disease and other stressors. They also represent a substantial underground sink for carbon dioxide. INVAM maintains living spores of more than 900 distinct fungal strains collected from six continents. It’s an irreplaceable hub for mycological research worldwide – but these fungi also have practical power: restoring degraded ecosystems, rebuilding damaged soils and slashing artificial fertilizer use. They are essential tools for growing food and undoing the environmental harm caused by agriculture.Established in 1985, INVAM has relied on successive federal grants for its entire existence. Its latest US National Science Foundation (NSF) funding ended in May. As curator and professor Jim Bever and team prepare a new funding proposal, the outlook is ominous: the Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 would slash NSF funding by 57% and make it even more difficult to win the remaining funds.Without another grant, Bever estimates the collection can limp along for perhaps another year. Beyond that, INVAM could be forced to close. “I have a hard time thinking about that possibility,” Bever said, “but we can’t deny it’s true.” For now, INVAM is surviving on temporary research grants and volunteer labor. Unlike the collection’s previous home at West Virginia University, which provided institutional support for personnel, the University of Kansas covers infrastructure and overhead costs but not staffing.Liz Koziol and Terra Lubin stand amid sudan grass plants used to culture AM fungal spores in INVAM’s greenhouse at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Photograph: Ben MartynogaAnd the staff are critical. Unlike seeds stored in vaults or cells frozen indefinitely, without sustained, meticulous work, the spores of AM fungi die. At INVAM, associate curator Lubin works at a microscope to isolate and identify AM spores from intact soils. Seen through the microscope, these spores are visually stunning: glistening orbs, packed with nutrients needed to support young fungi.Lubin then paints isolated spores onto the roots of a sudan grass seedling. These host plants will grow in a sterile greenhouse for 12 weeks while fungi colonize their roots and soil. Then the plants will be water-starved, prompting the fungus to produce millions of spores, which workers harvest and store in the adjoining cold room. For every one of INVAM’s 900-plus strains, this process must be repeated annually.“The isolation and maintenance of AM fungi requires an arcane skillset,” said Bever. “There really isn’t another lab in the US that has been doing this.”Most commercial biofertilizers are ‘really just terrible’INVAM prepares small batches of AM fungal spores to distribute or sell to other researchers and land managers. But Bever is clear this isn’t a commercial operation, and INVAM has neither the capacity nor the ambition to scale up production. That matters because the commercial AM fungus market is rife with problems.In a 2024 study, Bever and colleagues tested 23 products marketed as fungal biofertilizers – AM spores alleged to boost plant growth naturally. Eighty-seven per cent failed to colonize plant roots. Many contained only dead spores or no spores at all. Some products contained known plant pathogens. A large-scale 2022 study by European researchers revealed similar failings. Bever and Koziol’s 2024 mata-analysis of global research reached the same disturbing conclusion: the majority of commercial AM fertilizers are worthless.“Unfortunately, the quality of most products available to farmers or restoration practitioners is really just terrible,” said Bever.Yet land managers are buying them. The global market for fungal biofertilizers is worth $1.29bn. Most of that money is being wasted on products that simply do not work. Bever sees two key problems: the industry lacks regulation, and most producers lack the specialized expertise needed to steward and distribute these delicate organisms effectively. Meanwhile, the public research infrastructure that could provide real solutions struggles to survive.But quality biofertilizers can be pricelessThe failure of most commercial biofertilizers stands in stark contrast to research demonstrating what these organisms can actually achieve.At a field research plot near INVAM’s base in Lawrence, Kansas, the impact of invisible fungi is obvious. Nine years ago, this was a tired old hay field, dominated by invasive grass. Today it is a riot of color and diversity. Twelve-foot prairie docks tower over head-tall grasses; grasshoppers leap and butterflies flit between late blooming flowers, even in October. This small patch has become a reincarnation of the tall-grass prairie that once dominated the central US states. It was this ecosystem that built the deep, fertile soils that made this area such a prime target for conversion to farmland – a shift that has diminished the prairie to a mere 1-4% of its original extent.AM fungi drove the transformation. In 2016, INVAM curator Koziol seeded plots with dozens of native prairie plants, plus AM spores from surviving old-growth prairie fragments. Control plots received the seeds but not the fungi. As a result, dozens of plants in the control plots failed to establish and all plants grew slowly. Nine years on, the difference between control and AM-treated plots is still clear.Modern agriculture decimates AM fungi – which is why reintroducing them can deliver such dramatic results. Fungicides used to control plant diseases seep into soils, killing AM fungi. Excessive synthetic fertilizer application causes plants to break symbiotic ties, starving fungi. Ploughing destroys their underground networks. As a result, AM fungi often vanish entirely from cultivated land, “We can barely even find the DNA [of AM fungi] in some of the soils that have been in intensive agricultural production,” said leading fungal ecologist Matthias Rillig of Freie Universität Berlin.This matters because AM fungi disperse slowly – they produce no above-ground fruiting bodies to scatter spores on the wind. As a result, reintroduction is often essential for restoration.Building on their successful prairie restoration experiments, Bever and Koziol see potential for AM fungi in establishing prairie strips – patches of deep-rooted, species-rich perennial plants within existing farm fields that boost pollinators and limit fertilizer runoff, which contaminates groundwater and creates dead zones in bodies of water.“Prairie strips are awesome,” said Bever, but he believes there’s grander potential in the Conservation Reserve Program. This federal scheme has already enlisted more than 20m acres, supporting landowners to transition marginal farmland into native grassland and woodland to improve soil health, retain water and store carbon. “The return on that investment would be much greater if there was a national policy to reinoculate with native mycorrhizal fungi,” he said.Beyond habitat restoration, and despite the current failure of most commercial fungal biofertilizers, AM fungi can be useful in mainstream agriculture. In 2016, Koziol founded MycoBloom to produce high-quality preparations of old-growth prairie fungus spores. In addition to restoration practitioners, customers report promising results in vineyards, orange orchards, and high-value organic crops such as peppers and tomatoes.The effects of AM fungi are likely to be strongest in perennial crops, including new grains like Kernza, whose roots remain in the ground long enough for stable symbiosis to establish. But evidence shows AM fungi can also boost growth of annual staples such as maize.“The benefits of mycorrhizal fungi are real,” said Bever. Yet scientists are only beginning to understand how these organisms work. Numerous research questions about AM fungi can only be answered with living libraries such as INVAM, Bever added. Why do AM fungal cells contain thousands of nuclei, for instance, when ours need just one? And how can apparently distinct species merge their cells to create hybrids? “Research on mycorrhizal fungi is totally dependent on having these fungi in culture,” Bever said.“The current administration has shifted funding away from basic science,” he added, “and while there is always a hope that private donors could fill that void, I don’t think there is a real substitute for federal investment.”Kiers, now a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, described how visiting INVAM in the 1990s to identify spores collected from Panama’s hyper-diverse rainforests shaped her entire career: “After seeing the collection, I was hooked. It changed the way I saw the underground.”“To have any hope in leveraging fungi for future climate change strategies, restoration efforts and regenerative agriculture, we need to safeguard this collection,” Kiers said.Merlin Sheldrake, mycologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, agreed emphatically.“These organisms are vital ecosystem engineers that hold the key to so many problems we face,” he said. “To lose this library would be an unimaginable tragedy.”

Agriculture
Climate
CO2

Virginia Offshore Wind Developer Sues Over Trump Administration Order Halting Projects

The developers of a Virginia offshore wind project are asking a federal judge to block a Trump administration order that halted construction of their project, along with four others, over national security concerns

Dominion Energy Virginia said in its lawsuit filed late Tuesday that the government's order is “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional. The Richmond-based company is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a project it says is essential to meet dramatically growing energy needs driven by dozens of new data centers.The Interior Department did not detail the security concerns in blocking the five projects on Monday. In a letter to project developers, Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management set a 90-day period — and possibly longer — “to determine whether the national security threats posed by this project can be adequately mitigated.”The other projects are the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind in Rhode Island and Connecticut and two projects in New York: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind. Democratic governors in those states have vowed to fight the order, the latest action by the Trump administration to hobble offshore wind in its push against renewable energy sources. Dominion's project has been under construction since early 2024 and was scheduled to come online early next year, providing enough energy to power about 660,000 homes. The company said the delay was costing it more than $5 million a day in losses solely for the ships used in round-the-clock construction, and that customers or the company would eventually bear the cost.Dominion called this week's order “the latest in a series of irrational agency actions attacking offshore wind and then doubling down when those actions are found unlawful.” The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker set a hearing for 2 p.m. Monday on Dominion's request for a temporary restraining order.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – December 2025

Climate
Energy
Government

The World Has Laws About Land and Sea, But Not About Ice

As the Arctic melts and people spend more time there, defining our relationship to sea ice becomes more necessary.

When the Chinese cargo freighter Istanbul Bridge set sail for Europe in late September, it took an unusual route. Instead of heading south for the 40-day voyage through the Suez Canal, it tacked north. The freighter arrived in the United Kingdom at the port of Felixstowe just 20 days later—successfully launching the first-ever Arctic commercial-container route from Asia to Europe.For most of human history, the surface of the world’s northernmost ocean has been largely frozen. Now scientists predict that most of the Arctic Ocean’s 6.1 million square miles may be seasonally ice-free as soon as 2050. Economically, a less icy Arctic spells opportunity—new shipping routes and untapped fossil-fuel reserves. Climatologically, it’s a calamity. Legally, it’s a problem that has to be solved.  Much of the ocean’s center, the northernmost stretch surrounding the pole, will be subject to the lawlessness of the high seas—which will become a problem as more ships try to navigate a mushy mix of water and sea ice. And although the Arctic is the world’s fastest-warming region, and contains its most rapidly acidifiying ocean, it has few environmental protections. Scientists don’t have a clear idea of which species might need defending, or of the climate effects of unbridled shipping. (Ships puff black carbon, which reduces ice reflectivity and, in the short term, causes up to 1,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide.)In October, the United Nation’s special envoy for the ocean, Peter Thomson, called for countries to agree to a “precautionary pause on new economic activities in the Central Arctic Ocean” to buy time to study the climate and environmental risks of increased activity. Others are asking for an agreement akin to the 2020 Artemis Accords, which committed 59 nations to the “peaceful” and “sustainable” exploration of space. But some polar-law scholars argue that curbing climate catastrophe may require a more radical reimagining: to make sea ice a legal person.For centuries of seafaring, ice was an obstacle blocking people out, not an environment anyone thought to protect. Even in the Arctic, “we have laws about the land, we have the Law of the Sea, but we don’t have laws about ice,” Apostolos Tsiouvalas, a postdoctoral researcher with the Arctic University of Norway, told me. Because dealing with ice hasn’t been a major concern, even for the five nations that border the Arctic, and because ice is always transforming, its place in the law is confused at best.In many cases, solid ice extending from a coastline has been treated as legal land, and ice carried by a current has been considered water. During the Cold War, both Russia and the United States maintained scientific “drift stations” on detached ice floes. In 1970, when a shooting occurred on one American station, several nations debated where, exactly, the crime took place. Was the ice Canadian, because it likely calved from a glacier on Canada’s coast? Was it an American island? After some back-and-forth, the vessel-size chunk of ice legally transformed—by no small imaginative leap—into an American ship.The so-called Arctic Exception of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does extend states’ rights to impose laws far from the coastline, in areas that are ice-covered for most of the year. The point was for Arctic states to help prevent accidents and pollution, but states have since used the exception to extend their geographical sovereignty. But the term ice-covered complicates these claims. How much ice means “covered”? Are we talking uncrossably frozen, or just a few drifting bits?That’s the problem with regulating icy regions: Even if these cryo-categories were more formalized, none would apply for very long. A large majority of Arctic ice is sea ice, which forms on ocean surfaces when salt water freezes. (It’s distinct from icebergs, which calve from landbound glaciers.) Human activity may have accelerated its melt, but sea ice was already one of the planet’s most dynamic systems, its surface area fluctuating by millions of miles season to season. It’s always either melting or freezing, and as it melts, its fragments can travel hundreds of miles along waves and currents.In an article published this month in the journal The Yearbook of Polar Law, Tsiouvalas and his co-authors, Mana Tugend and Romain Chuffart, argue that piecemeal updates to current laws simply will never keep up with this fast-changing and threatened environment. Future governance of sea ice will require a transformation of some sort, and they argue that the clearest path forward is to bring the rights-of-nature movement to the high north.  Since Ecuador’s landmark 2008 constitutional protection of nature, Bolivia, India, New Zealand, and other countries across the world have made natural entities legal persons, or otherwise given them inviolable rights. The UCLA Law professor James Salzman, who has taught a class on nature’s rights, told me that this idea does not represent a single legal framework but that it does answer what he calls the “Lorax problem” of environmental law, referring to the Dr. Seuss character who claims to “speak for the trees.” Granting a voiceless entity legal personhood provides it with a representative to argue on its behalf.With this designation, Tsiouvalas and his co-authors note, sea ice would get the highest legal status possible. In many cases, environmental protections can be bent to accommodate other, conflicting benefits to human society. But personhood grants an inherent right to exist that can’t be superseded. The new paper is mostly an ethical exploration and, the authors acknowledge, still just a stepping stone to more concrete regulations, but granting ice rights would create firmer standing to, for example, keep ships out of areas that humanity might otherwise want to use. The authors also note that rethinking sea ice’s status could include Indigenous people who have been routinely excluded from decisions around Arctic sovereignty and whose millennia of living on and with ice could guide its future governance.But Sara Olsvig, the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, told me recently that the legal interest in Arctic rights of nature is a “worrying development.” To Olsvig, the phrase rights of nature itself implies some separate concept of nature that doesn’t exist for the Inuit. And in the past, the environmentalist movement has elevated its idea of “nature” above the interests of Indigenous people. Decades-long bans against whale and seal hunting, for instance, devastated the cultural continuity and health of Inuit in the far north.To answer such concerns, any legal right granted needs to be very clear about the duties that follow, Salzman said: If sea ice has a right to not be harmed, what constitutes “harm”? Would that mean blocking all human interference with the ice, or merely banning fuels that emit black carbon? After all, the major threat to sea ice—global emissions—“is not something that can be locally managed,” Salzman pointed out, and so far, natural resources have obtained legal personhood only in a national context. Rights for sea ice would require international agreement, which could be not only harder to achieve but harder to enforce. Sara Ross, an associate law professor at Dalhousie University, in Canada, told me that, in her view, legal personhood granted via international treaty would be too dependent on goodwill agreements to be effective.But in some ways, legal personhood for nonhumans is an old idea, Ross said. Most countries grant it to corporations, and in the United States and Commonwealth countries, it’s typical for ships too. She especially likes the ship comparison, because—as maritime law has already discovered—floating pieces of ice aren’t so dissimilar. She imagines a more circumscribed role for sea-ice personhood, connected to, say, setting standards that ban icebreaking or heavy fuel emissions in icy areas. If these mandates are violated, local Inuit communities would have the power to sue on behalf of the ice—whether or not they could prove how much one particular ship degraded one particular stretch of ice. Without some legal protections put in place, the sea ice will soon disappear that much faster. In October, the U.S. bought new icebreaking ships from Finland and undermined an International Maritime Organization agreement that would have had shipowners pay a fee for the greenhouse gases their vessels emit. The next week, just after the conclusion of the Istanbul Bridge’s voyage, Russia and China made a formal agreement to co-develop the Northern Sea Route that the ship had followed. If summer sea ice disappears entirely, scientists predict accelerated catastrophe—leaps in temperature, more frequent and stronger storms, global sea-level rise—which will threaten the planet’s general livability. “The fact that we need sea ice to survive is not a rights-of-nature argument,” Salzman said. “But it’s still a pretty good case to make.”

Climate
CO2
Health

Scenes From an Unfolding Climate Drama

The last 10 global climate summits have played out on vastly different stages: from the hopeful consensus of the Paris Agreement through a subsequent pandemic shock, petrostate spectacles and a hoped-for reckoning with environmental justice in the Amazon. But the new scripts often seem like reruns, with minor plot twists; a new villain, a new […]

ICN international climate policy reporter Bob Berwyn reviews the past decade of the United Nations Climate Change Conference.Story and photos by Bob BerwynThe last 10 global climate summits have played out on vastly different stages: from the hopeful consensus of the Paris Agreement through a subsequent pandemic shock, petrostate spectacles and a hoped-for reckoning with environmental justice in the Amazon. But the new scripts often seem like reruns, with minor plot twists; a new villain, a new planet-saving technology or a new text that raises more questions than it answers. The struggle remains unresolved. A close look at the settings and the actors shows a process paralyzed between performative self-awareness and transformative, meaningful action.

Climate
Technology

Sustainable aviation fuel take-up in UK unlikely to hit 2025 target, data suggests

Provisional figures in government mandate’s first year show 20% shortfall in levels of SAF supplied for UK flightsThe take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulfil the requirement. Continue reading...

The take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulfil the requirement.The government introduced the mandate in January, which requires suppliers to hit targets for SAF – which the industry has argued is important for cutting its carbon emissions – within the overall UK aviation fuel mix.Themandatory target rises sharply from 2% in 2025 to 10% in 2030 and then to 22% in 2040, including the use of second-generation fuels that are seen as more sustainable in the long term.So far, the supply of SAF has been exclusively produced from recycled cooking oil from Asia, predominantly China, the DfT figures showed.The data shows that a little more than 160m litres (35m gallons) of SAF was used, out of 10bn litres of jet fuel burned in UK flying until early October.The DfT said the time needed for verification meant that the figures were provisional, and final figures for the year were not expected to be published until November 2026. A spokesperson for the department said: “These figures do not present the full picture. SAF volumes are continuously rising and not all suppliers have reported on the fuel they’ve supplied.”Planes burning SAF still emit equal amounts of CO2 in flight, but the net carbon footprint is calculated as far lower because of how SAF is produced, compared with normal jet fuel. Although many scientists and environmental groups remain deeply sceptical that it can be delivered, production and uptake of SAF is seen as the only way for commercial, and particularly long-haul, aviation to reduce its emissions.While the government has backed aviation as a driver of economic growth and granted permission for airports including Gatwick and Luton to rapidly expand, ministers have promised to consult the Climate Change Committee over plans to build a third runway at Heathrow.The aviation minister, Keir Mather, told an industry conference in London earlier this month that Heathrow expansion would still have to meet Labour’s four tests, including reducing its climate impact, but that decarbonisation would be “a licence for growth”.He said that SAF represented the biggest opportunity, and the government’s SAF bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, “will deliver the revenue-certainty mechanism that you called for – a guaranteed price for SAF that reduces risks for investors and raises confidence for producers”.Heathrow airport has pushed the uptake of SAF with an incentive scheme that cuts landing charges for airlines using cleaner fuel. It expects to meet its own target of 3% SAF use over the course of 2025.However, airlines have fewer available supplies outside larger hub airports, and have questioned whether future mandates can be met – especially when costlier second-generation and power-to-liquid SAF, yet to be produced at scale, are mandated.The UK has progressed further than most in global aviation. The international airlines body Iata recently warned that growth in production worldwide was stalling, with SAF supplying only 0.6% of total jet fuel consumption in 2025, and forecast to increase to 0.8% in 2026.Iata’s director general, Willie Walsh, criticised the mandates, adding: “If the objective is to increase SAF production to further the decarbonisation of aviation, then they need to learn from failure and work with the airline industry to design incentives that will work.”Duncan McCourt, chief executive of the air industry body Sustainable Aviation, said: “These provisional figures show the UK is using significant quantities of SAF and we remain confident that the mandate will be met and UK aviation will use increasing quantities of SAF in the years to come.”

Sustainable
Government

Help in trying times: See how the 2025 Season of Sharing campaign is assisting Oregonians in need

The Oregonian/OregonLive’s annual fundraising campaign is making a different to seniors, at-risk youth and people experiencing homelessness.

This has been a year of financial uncertainty for many Oregonians. Consumers have continued to face challenging prices due to inflation and tariffs, and many nonprofit organizations have had to pinch pennies after seeing federal funds cut significantly or eliminated altogether in many cases.That reality makes it particularly gratifying to see Oregonians come together to support our annual Season of Sharing holiday fundraising campaign.This year’s campaign tells the stories of 14 nonprofits working to make Oregonians’ lives better in a variety of ways, ranging from groups helping seniors experiencing food insecurity and isolation to organizations helping people experiencing homelessness find stability and a way forward.Donations to the campaign, administered by The Oregonian/OregonLive’s charitable arm, Oregonian Public Benefits Inc., will be divided among the nonprofits as unrestricted grants. The Season of Sharing campaign is accepting donations, which are tax deductible, through Dec. 31. The more that comes in, the more each nonprofit will receive.Online donations can be made at oregonlive.com/sharing or the 2025 Season of Sharing Give Lively page. You can also Text the code Season2025 to 44-321.Donations can also be made by mail: Make a check out to Oregonian Media Group Season of Sharing and send it to Oregonian Season of Sharing, c/o Oregonians Credit Union, 336 N.E. 20th Ave., Portland, OR 97232.Related: Editorial: In tough times, the community is our safety net.These are the 14 nonprofit organizations featured in the 2025 Season of Sharing campaign.Kira Akito, a former foster youth, formed a long-time connection with Court Appointed Special Advocate Dick Ross, who helped Akito navigate foster placements and find independent living resources.Sami EdgeCASA of Central OregonCASA of Central Oregon advocates for children in the foster care system. They recruit and train volunteers to become Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) who work directly with kids, ensuring their voices are heard in court and that their needs are met. With many children waiting for advocates, CASA plays a crucial role in providing stability and support during a challenging time in children’s lives. The volunteers build meaningful relationships with these kids, helping them navigate the complexities of the foster care system and ultimately aiming to improve their futures.“Every child deserves someone who is in their court and rooting for them and getting to know them, and (to) have a consistent figure in their life during that process,” said Debbie Ross, 69 and a CASA volunteer for the last five years.Read the story.From Left: Community Supported Shelters board member Ken Beeson, co-executive director Heather Quaas-Annsa, development director Jennifer Yeh, former resident D.J. Williams and service navigation manager Mellinda Poor pose for a photograph in October 2025.Zane Sparling/The OregonianCommunity Supported SheltersCommunity Supported Shelters addresses homelessness in the Eugene area by providing innovative and supportive housing solutions. The nonprofit works to create a safe and welcoming environment for individuals and families experiencing homelessness, offering not just shelter but also resources to help them get back on their feet. Through a model that emphasizes community involvement and support, the organization engages residents in the process, helping those in need find stability and a path to a brighter future.“It’s like a stepping stool, and it makes you feel like a human,” said 45-year-old Zechariah Boesman, who lived in one of the shelters’ innovative “Conestoga Huts” at one time and now is a maintenance technician for the nonprofit. “It’s just refreshing to know that this organization takes the time and cares the way they do.”Read the story.Hezekiah Franklin was once a guest of the Daytime Drop-In Center, but now works there as a staff member.Tatum Todd/The OregonianCorvallis Drop-in CenterThe Corvallis Daytime Drop-in Center has been a vital resource for homeless individuals in Benton County and surrounding areas for over 20 years, providing essential services during the day when many shelters are closed. Welcoming 60-100 guests daily, the center also reaches out to those living in tents, cars and RVs, offering support that includes mental health services, housing assistance and addiction recovery resources. The center aims to combat social exclusion and stigma, treating everyone with dignity and respect.Hezekiah Franklin, 48, knows what the center does from experience: He’s experienced homelessness in the past, and first came to the center two decades ago. Now, as part of the center’s staff, he spends his days using his own experience to help others navigate similar situations.“I’ve been on both sides of the fence,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I don’t get burned out on compassion and stuff like that because like I’ve been there before.”Read the story.Kayli Duprest is the Director of Operations for the Domestic Violence Resource Center in Beaverton, Oregon.Allison Barr/The OregonianDomestic Violence Resource CenterThe Domestic Violence Resource Center is dedicated to supporting and empowering survivors of domestic violence and their children through three key programs: Advocacy & Empowerment, Counseling Services, and Housing/Shelter Services. The center offers free individual and group counseling for all ages, including specialized trauma treatment methods like art therapy. DVRC provides a confidential emergency shelter, a transitional home, and an independent housing program with rental support and case management.“To have people out there advocating for you to be safe is really special,” said Alicia, a survivor of abuse who asked that her last name not be used. “You’re not stuck. There’s a brighter light on the other side if you just take that chance.”Read the story.Profile photo of Tia Topley, of Kindred Matters, in Northeast Portland on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. Kindred Matters is a Northwest organization that funds and hosts camp opportunities for children who are in foster/state care and separated from siblingsSean Meagher/The OregonianKindred MattersKindred Matters has been reuniting foster siblings for the past 20 years through summer camps designed to strengthen their bonds. Founded by Karyn and Charley Schimmels, the organization has helped around 3,700 children in state care reconnect with their siblings, offering them a chance to share experiences and create lasting memories together. With three camp locations and activities tailored to foster those important sibling relationships, Kindred Matters makes a difference in the lives of children who often face the challenges of separation in the foster care system.Tia Topley and her brother attended one of the camps each summer for eight years, starting when she was 8. Now 29, she says the camps were a refuge from the tumult of the rest of the year and a cherished chance to see her brother, who was living in another state with relatives. “It was the most magical experience anyone could go through,” she said. “I was so happy and loved.”Read the story.Barbara Johnson in her apartment in Union Manor.Lizzy Acker/The OregonianMeals on Wheels PeopleMeals on Wheels People delivers nutritious meals to seniors and individuals in need, ensuring they have access to healthy food right at their doorstep. Beyond just providing meals, the service also offers a friendly visit from volunteers, which helps combat loneliness and fosters a sense of community among older adults. Meals on Wheels People nourishes both the body and the spirit by connecting people and creating lasting relationships. Their work is vital in helping seniors maintain their independence and quality of life.“It’s friends helping friends,” said Barbara Johnson, 75, who is one of the 11,500 people the group helped in the past year. “I don’t know where I’d be if they didn’t have such a system. I really don’t.”Read the story.Each puppet in “¡Alebrijes!” was handmade by Yosmel López Ortiz, who honed his puppetry craft over many years in Cuba before joining Milagro Theatre.Chiara ProfennaMilagro TheatreMilagro Theatre celebrates and promotes Latino arts and culture through a variety of engaging programs and performances. The group focuses on providing a platform for Latino artists, showcasing their work in theater, music and visual arts, while also offering educational opportunities for the community. Milagro aims to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of Latino heritage, creating a space where diverse voices can be heard and celebrated.“We’re looking at how we continue to develop creativity in all aspects,” said Milagro’s founder, José Eduardo González y Salazar. “Exploring the lives and stories of Latinos, and what kind of contributions and traditions that they hold to hopefully expand the picture of what being a Latino is.”Read the story.Lauren Eads, Director of Development and Communication, and Kirsten Willis, Community Based Housing Program Coordinator, revisit a playful memory outside the New Avenues for Youth headquarters in Northwest Portland.Sean SterlingNew Avenues for YouthNew Avenues for Youth empowers homeless and at-risk youth to achieve self-sufficiency. They provide a range of services, including housing support, job training and educational programs, all designed to help young people build the skills and confidence they need to thrive.“New Avenues helps these 9- to 25-year-olds get to a next stage in life,” says Kirsten Willis, the organization’s Community Based Housing Program coordinator. “They can become survivors instead of just victims of houselessness.”Read the story.Julia Stults is swarmed with puppies as part of a visit organized by nonprofit Pile of Puppies. The then-10 year old received a puppy visit in 2019.Courtesy of Dina StultsPile of PuppiesPile of Puppies brings joy and comfort to children facing serious illnesses through the therapeutic power of puppies. By organizing visits where friendly puppies interact with these young patients, the agency creates moments of pure happiness. These furry companions not only provide emotional support but also help reduce stress and anxiety, allowing children to momentarily forget their worries and focus on the joy of play. Each wagging tail and playful bark fosters a sense of connection and love, reminding these kids that they are not alone in their journey.“Having chronic illness as a kid, there are so many downsides,” said Julia Stults, 16, who got a Pile of Puppies visit when she was 10. “It’s those little, tiny special things that are like, ‘Yeah, having (ulcerative colitis) sucks, but then I wouldn’t get all the puppies.’”Read the story.Paid interns stock merchandise inside Project Lemonade at the Lloyd Center mall. The store provides a free shopping experience for youth in foster care.Samantha Swindler/ The OregonianProject LemonadeProject Lemonade provides support and resources to youth in foster care, helping them navigate the challenges they face. One of the nonprofit’s standout initiatives is an unusual store at Lloyd Center where foster kids can shop for new clothes and school supplies, all at no cost to them. Project Lemonade not only ensures that these kids have the essentials they need for school but also helps them feel valued and supported.“So much of their life is doing something that makes them feel different,” said Lindsey McDonnell, Project Lemonade’s executive director. “It’s a very isolating experience to be in foster care, so we want this to feel like the kind of thing that any other kid would do.”Read the story.Chelsey Passon, Safety Compass Manager of Communications, poses for a portrait outside of the organization’s office at the Family Resource Center in Woodburn.Abigail Landwehr/The OregonianSafety CompassSafety Compass promotes safety and well-being for survivors of human trafficking. The organization provides comprehensive training and resources that emphasize personal safety, emergency preparedness and self-advocacy, empowering individuals to navigate their environments with confidence. By addressing the unique vulnerabilities survivors face, Safety Compass offers support and education that helps them build a safer future.“It’s such a beautiful thing to watch this survivor go from like … ‘There’s nothing out there’ to like that spark of ‘Actually maybe there’s another option’ to five to 10 years down the road where their life is completely changed,” said Chelsey Passon, a trafficking survivor who is now the communications manager for the organization. “It’s truly a privilege to be able to hear someone’s story and witness it and to be able to sit there and say, ‘Hey … you don’t have to navigate this alone.’”Read the story.Kassandra Ball, walking in Ashland's Lithia Park on Nov. 9, is an English and Spanish speaker from Laredo, Texas, with a master's degree from Oregon Health & Science University, who sees patients at La Clinica's Central Point Health Center.Bob Palermini, www.palermini.comSouthern Oregon Alliance of PhysiciansThe Southern Oregon Alliance of Physicians is a dedicated group of healthcare professionals committed to improving the health and well-being of communities in southern Oregon. The alliance focuses on fostering collaboration among physicians and healthcare providers to enhance patient care and address local health challenges. By working together, they aim to share resources, knowledge and best practices, ensuring that everyone in the region has access to quality healthcare.Dan Weiner, a family medicine physician and chief medical officer of Rogue Community Health’s five clinics, helped found SOAPP and continues to volunteer. “We believe access to high quality healthcare is a big component of a thriving community,” Weiner said, “and SOAPP allows us to partner with others who share that vision.”Read the story.Students from four different elementary schools in the Canby School District partake in the High Dose Tutoring offered by Todos Juntos.Yesenia Amaro | The Oregonian/OregonLiveTodos JuntosTodos Juntos strengthens families and communities by offering a variety of support programs aimed at empowering youth and families. The nonprofit’s mission focuses on creating connections that inspire and educate, like the new initiative High Dose Tutoring, offered free of charge for students recommended by four schools in the Canby School District.“Our focus is to increase their reading comprehension because a lot of them are struggling,” said Fatima López, community liaison for Todos Juntos at the Canby School District, where programming is focused on children in second and third grade. “Those two grades just make more sense because those are the ones that need a little bit more support.”Read the story.Deborah Marion picks up her CSA share at Zenger Farm in southeast Portland with her three kids, who enjoy the fall bounty from the nonprofit urban farm. Jamie Hale/The OregonianZenger FarmZenger Farm is an urban farm dedicated to making good food accessible to everyone while promoting sustainable practices and community development. The farm’s mission revolves around educating the public about food systems and environmental stewardship. And the farm offers a community-supported agriculture program the allows people to buy produce directly from farms with monthly payments for “shares” of the crop.“It’s not just my kids taking their space,” said Deborah Marion, who has been a member of the farm’s CSA for about a decade. “The farmers are so kind and welcoming to them and make them feel this sense of home and belonging here.”Read the story.

Agriculture
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Education

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