The Environment Report

Here’s one way to react to a warming planet: get smaller. We know mammals literally shrank, during a massive global warming event 56 million years ago. Imagine an early horse ancestor the size of a cat. Now back then, the earth was 46 degrees hotter on average than it is right now. So researchers wanted to know: do mammals still experience shrinking - a.k.a. dwarfing - during other, less intense periods of warming? Abigail D'Ambrosia is a researcher at the University of New Hampshire, and she

You know how in old Disney cartoons and movies, spring arrives and all the birds and woodland creatures just wake up all at once? That’s kind of how nature works, too. But new research suggests that what we typically think of as spring: flowers blooming, ice melting... is starting to change.

Early budget indications suggest the Trump administration could slash funding for the Great Lakes. There are many possible cuts to EPA programs. Great Lakes restoration money could be cut by 97%, and money for beach monitoring could be also at risk.

President Trump called for a trillion dollar investment in infrastructure this week in his address to Congress. The Great Lakes Commission has ideas for where some of the money should go. The Commission is an interstate compact agency that represents Great Lakes states. The agency released recommendations today for rebuilding our water infrastructure.

Scientists have known that spring is arriving earlier across the U.S. because of climate change. Now, you can take a look at new maps from the U.S. Geological Survey to see how early spring is arriving where you live. Jake Weltzin is an ecologist with the USGS, and the executive director of the National Phenology Network. "The folks down in the southeastern United States, across much of that region, are seeing spring coming as many as three weeks early this year," he says. In Michigan, early

For more than a decade, double crested cormorants could be killed in 24 states in the eastern U.S. In the Great Lakes, it was mainly done to protect sport fish like perch and bass. But last spring a federal judge stopped the program, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wasn’t doing the research on cormorants necessary to justify killing them. Sport fishing groups hoped that research would have been done by now and the program could resume.

Energy costs can be a huge burden on low-income communities. That’s especially true in Highland Park. The tiny enclave within Detroit was literally left in the dark after it ran up a big street lighting bill. But there are some small bright spots popping up—thanks to solar power, and the efforts of one community group. (Support trusted journalism like this in Michigan. Give what you can here .)

The International Joint Commission, a treaty organization that advises the United States and Canada, says the two countries should do more to keep microplastics out of the lakes. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are five millimeters or smaller. Microbeads are used in things like soap and toothpaste. Microfibers are tiny fibers that wash off our synthetic clothing, like fleece. Those tiny plastics can end up in the Great Lakes and can get into fish.

An environmental group in Traverse City is challenging the claim that Enbridge’s Line 5 is necessary to keep residents of the U.P. warm. The twin pipelines that run under the Straits of Mackinac deliver natural gas liquids that can be turned into propane.

Shortly after the election, researchers from the U.S. and Canada got together to start backing up scientific data from federal agencies in the U.S. They’re also keeping a close eye on how the Trump Administration is changing federal websites, and they're already finding some changes. One of the groups heading up this effort is called the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. (You can see EDGI's report on changes to some EPA websites here , and its report on the State Department and