The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’ Insects have declined by 75% in the past 50 years – and the consequences may soon be catastrophic Without insects birds too will disappear 87% of all plant species require animal pollination, most of it delivered by insects theguardian.com/environment/…

Fifty years of rules keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails — GONE. Lifted trucks, ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles. Anywhere they want. On your public lands. Nixon protected it. Carter protected it. Trump just erased both quietly on a Friday afternoon. A grizzly bear will abandon its habitat when there's just one mile of road per square mile. One mile. Now there's no limit on where these vehicles can go. In the Mojave, desert tortoises have already lost 96% of their population in some monitored areas - partly because off-road vehicles crush their burrows. A federal judge just ordered 2,200 miles of trails closed to protect what's left. Then Trump signed this. No designated trails. No boundaries. No framework at all. When vehicles go off trail they shatter habitat into pieces too small for wildlife to survive in. They destroy stream banks. They push predators toward humans. And when that happens, the animals always lose. There was no vote. No public comment. Just a signature. Now the agencies tasked with writing replacement rules are the BLM, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service - all under an administration that has spent months dismantling every protection they had. The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, is in charge of most of it. The same Doug Burgum who has opened public lands to drilling, mining, and grazing at every turn. Don't hold your breath. When the last quiet place is gone, what do we tell the children who never got to hear it? #DemsUnited

I’m constantly astonished that billionaires would rather ignore the climate crisis and prepare to live in a bunker with dvds and baked beans than devote a modicum of their bottomless wealth to saving the planet where we have fresh fruit and soft grass and blue skies.

70–80-year-olds are mostly shunned from being hired by companies, they're considered unemployable because of mental decline and physical decline... Yet people vote them in when they run for office. 🤷‍♂️

In the blistering heat, a simple act of kindness. 🙌🙏🫶🥰👇

WE DID IT! 🎉🐶 Ridglan Farms is shutting down after decades of breeding for animal testing. Soon, 2000 beagles will be in loving homes❤️ BFP was honored to help place 568 of these dogs. Thank you to every donor, volunteer, foster, adopter, rescue partner, & activist involved.

The U.S. government just made a land deal with the world's first trillionaire. Not a sale. A trade. Because apparently that's how we do things now. 715 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge - built by Congress in 1979 to protect one of the most biodiverse wildlife corridors left in North America - handed to SpaceX. Endangered ocelots. Aplomado falcons. Piping plovers. Land the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas has called sacred since long before there was a United States. SpaceX built a rocket launch site next door. Then came the explosions. Concrete and metal hurled six miles across refuge land. A 2024 study found that after one launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the site suffered egg damage or loss. The Fish and Wildlife Service's response was not enforcement. It was a land swap. FOIA documents show internal planning for this transfer started as early as April 2025 - while Musk was running DOGE and threatening to fire federal workers who didn't justify their jobs to him. The agency developed what they called "the most expedited schedule possible" to get it done. Part of what's being handed over includes the Palmito Ranch Battlefield - the site of the last battle of the Civil War. A National Historic Landmark. Once transferred, SpaceX can restrict public access whenever they want. 25,000 people submitted public comments. Most opposed the deal. The government moved forward anyway. A coalition of tribal and conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit this week to stop it. Because someone has to. Why are we cutting real estate deals with a trillionaire when we could have just made him pay for it? #DemsUnited

The single biggest irrigated crop in America isn't corn, wheat, or soybeans. It's not even avocados or almonds. It's lawn. We grow more grass than any food crop in the country, around 40 million acres of it, and almost none of it feeds a single living thing. Think about how strange that is. We took a grass that isn't even from here, planted it coast to coast, and now we pour water, fertilizer, and pesticide into keeping it short, green, and perfectly useless. To a bee, a butterfly, or a bird hunting caterpillars for its chicks, a manicured lawn is a desert. Nothing to eat, nowhere to nest, mile after mile of it. But here's the good news, maybe the easiest win on this whole account: you don't have to fix the entire desert. You just have to claw back a corner. Pick one strip. The hellstrip by the sidewalk, the run along the fence, that awkward patch you hate mowing anyway. Stop mowing it and plant it with native flowers, a few black-eyed Susans, some bee balm, a couple of coneflowers. That's it. No ripping out the whole yard, no fight with anybody. Just convert one piece. And that piece stops being dead space and starts being habitat: bees, butterflies, and birds showing up to a spot that offered them nothing a year ago. Now picture your neighbor doing the same, and the one after that. That's how a desert turns back into a meadow, one reclaimed corner at a time.

A hundred years ago, the eastern bluebird was one of the most common birds in the country. Then it nearly disappeared. Here's the problem: a bluebird can't build its own home. Neither can a chickadee or a wren. They're cavity nesters with no tools to dig a hole, so they move into ones that already exist: an old woodpecker hole, a rotted knot in a tree, a hollow in a dead limb, a soft spot in a wooden fence post. Then we launched a relentless effort to tidy the world and put everything in its right place. We cut down the dead trees, the "ugly" snags, and hauled them off. We swapped the old wooden fence posts for metal. We cleaned up every hollow stump and dying branch. And just like that, the nesting spots were gone. Worse, two birds we'd imported from Europe, house sparrows and starlings, muscled into the few cavities left and threw the bluebirds out. By the 1970s, bluebird numbers had fallen by nearly 90%. Here's where things began to turn. Ordinary people started nailing wooden boxes to posts. Just boxes, with a hole the right size. And the bluebirds came back, all the way back, one of the greatest comebacks in American conservation, built almost entirely by regular folks in their own yards with a little lumber. So here's where you come in. A nest box isn't a cute decoration. It's a replacement for the dead tree we took down, a hole in the world for a bird that can't make its own. Put one up, with the correct hole size for the bird you want, on a smooth pole a predator can't climb, and you stop being a bystander to that story.

Palestine is the most well-documented genocide in history, yet the most denied.

It's hot. Put a dish of water outside today with a few stones in it. During a heat wave, birds and bees need water as much as food. Honey bees drink it, haul it back to the hive, and use it to help cool the brood. But bees need a safe place to land. A deep bowl of water can become a trap. The fix is simple. Fill a shallow dish with pebbles or stones and add water until the tops stay dry. The bees get islands to stand on, and birds get a shallow edge to drink and bathe. Set it in the shade and dump and refill it every day. Fresh water in the heat, no mosquito problem. Two minutes, a dish, and a handful of rocks can make the hottest days a little easier for everything sharing your yard.

I fear we have a cruel month ahead of us: the future of campaign finance law, the definition of Election Day, the fate of birthright citizenship. While I remain hopeful, I am prepared for democracy to leave this month weaker than it entered. democracydocket.com/opinion/…

De Niro: I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser. I can’t love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more. I can’t love a country that takes healthcare away from millions of people and uses that money to enrich their pals in the Trump-Epstein class. I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families. I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant. And let me just say it: I can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.

While legacy media covers Trump's disgraceful UFC fight as if it's normal and his capitulation to Iran as if it's a real cease fire, Democracy Docket is exposing Trump's plot to undermine free and fair elections. No both-sides. Subscribe now to support. bit.ly/4a7l1TR

Nobody wants a city on Mars. Nobody wants AI in every app. Nobody wants a robot butler. Nobody wants data centers everywhere. Nobody wants flying cars or humanoid robots. We want clean water, we want bees to survive, and we want a habitable planet.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature.” — Hubert Reeves

Wait, is this for real? Trump spent $60 million of our taxpayer funds to host a UFC fight and then is selling UFC coin to line his family’s pockets. The Trump corruption swamp is a mile deep. cnn.com/2026/06/09/politics/…

The White House Epstein Files cover up goes all the way to VP JD Vance, Susie Wiles, and Kash Patel. It’s time to bring these people in front of our committee. We won’t stop until we get justice for survivors.

The richest man on Earth dismantled the organization that feeds the poorest children on earth. The definition of evil is being a trillionaire in a world where millions of children are starving.