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What whale are we talking about this month?

Thanks for asking. This time we’re looking at Rice’s whale (Balaenoptera ricei), also sometimes referred to as the Gulf of Mexico whale.

Don’t you mean the “Gulf of America” whale?

Don’t get me started.

Why not? That would actually be pretty good branding.

You know, you’re kind of right. The Trump administration, which insists on calling the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” recently put a target on these rare, uniquely American whales’ backs by prioritizing oil and gas development in the Gulf of Whatever You Choose to Call It. A 15-minute, closed-door meeting of the rarely convened Endangered Species Committee — colloquially known as the “God Squad” for its ability to override the Endangered Species Act — was all it took to remove Rice’s whales’ protection in the name of “national security.”

Many conservationists fear this will push Rice’s whales to extinction.

That sucks. Are they really that rare?

Yup. No one knows exactly how many are left, but current estimates put the population at fewer than 100, probably closer to half of that. (The most commonly used number is 51.)

Geez, that really sucks. How’d their population get so low?

Well, for one thing, these whales were kind of hiding in plain sight, so no one prioritized their conservation. For many years they were (wrongly, it turned out) considered to be a subpopulation of Bryde’s whales (B. edeni), a species with a population so healthy that they were heavily hunted in the 20th century. It wasn’t until 2021 — just five years ago — that a study of the Gulf whales’ genetics and skeletal structures revealed them to be a different species.

Rice’s whale (formerly Bryde’s whale). Photo taken under NOAA research permit #779-1633. (NOAA)

That misidentification probably made it easier to overlook how many whales in this region died from ship collisions, oil pollution, entanglement in fishing gear, and other threats, including ocean noise (which they find particularly disturbing). Those same factors continue to threaten them today, while climate change poses a long-term threat to their prey and other potential factors within the Gulf.

That makes me sad. Tell me something cool about them to pull me out of my depression spiral.

We don’t know a lot about Rice’s whales, but what we do know is pretty cool. They’re a little over 40 feet long — that’s about the length of a city transit bus or as tall as a four-story building. Scientists have documented that they make some unique sounds that resemble long moans. They’re lifelong residents of the Gulf — unlike other species, who migrate — and spend a good chunk of their days hundreds of feet beneath the surface, where they find most of their food.

Speaking of which, they’re also baleen whales, meaning they use their “teeth” to filter out yummy silver-drag driftfish and other prey from the water.

Yeah, I got the “baleen” part from their taxonomic name.

You’re right, that was a dead giveaway. Not all baleen whales are from the genus Balaenoptera, but all Balaenoptera are baleen whales.

Go figure. So speaking of the name, what’s the deal with “Rice’s?”

That’s after whale scientist Dale W. Rice, who first recognized the Gulf whales as something different in 1965, although he didn’t have the genetic tools at the time to ID them as a unique species. (Visually, they’re almost identical to Bryde’s whales.)

Rice himself was an interesting scientist who conducted groundbreaking studies of whales, including 164 scientific publications covering multiple species.

Before that, though, he was part of the team that first banded Wisdom, the world-famous albatross, on Midway Atoll in 1956. That band (a little metal ring with a unique identification number, #Z333) allowed scientists to track her for decades — and boy, have they learned a lot. Wisdom has flown more than 3 million miles over the past 70 years and is still around and active today. In fact she’s the world’s oldest known wild bird, still laying eggs as of last year.

Wow, maybe she could teach Rice’s whales to be better breeders.

I’ll see if Duolingo offers classes in albatross and whale.

Leave the snark to me, dude. So, if I wanted to see one of these amazing animals, could I take, like, a whale-watching boat or something?

Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. Rice’s whales are so rare that even scientists don’t observe them very often.

That said, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published an excellent guide on how to identify Rice’s whales, and if you do happen to spot one you can report your sightings by calling (877) WHALE-HELP. Every observation provides critical information that can help conserve this species.

Cool. So what else can your average Joe or Jolene do to help ensure Rice’s whales will always be out there?

Great question. The biggest priority is to stand up to the Trump administration’s push for more oil and gas development in the Gulf. Call your local representative to ask for renewed protections for these animals, post-haste. Our publisher, the Center for Biological Diversity, can help you do this by email, as can some other nonprofits.

Beyond that, a less direct but important step includes making sure any seafood you purchase from the Gulf is sustainable.

And, of course, you can make all manner of choices in your life that reduce your consumption of oil and gas. The more we push the transition to renewable energy, the less profitable it will be for the fossil-fuel industry to operate in the Gulf — or anywhere, for that matter. That’s the best possible scenario for Rice’s whales.

Cool. So is that it? What whale will we talk about next month?

Yup, that’s the skinny on Rice’s whales. I’m not sure about next month yet, but I’m thinking about diving into minke whales, a species that doesn’t get a heck of a lot of discussion. Of course you can always write to me at jplatt@therevelator.org to suggest your favorite whale.

Why would I do that when we’re talking about this right now?

Well, that’s really for everyone else out there, reading this.

Everyone else? Now I feel like someone’s eavesdropping on me.

Um … maybe it’s just a few ecologists studying your behavior.

Okay, that makes me feel better. I think.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Songs Whales Sing: The Peculiar History of Commercial Whaling

The post Whale of the Month: Rice’s Whale appeared first on The Revelator.

In February of 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off not just the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War. It also triggered an unprecedented experiment in how wars spill into the natural world.

As Russian armored vehicles poured into Ukraine, the contaminated land surrounding the defunct Chornobyl nuclear reactor turned from a massive de facto wildlife sanctuary into a battleground. By coincidence, the reaction of wildlife to this incursion was captured on more than two dozen motion-detection cameras set up the previous year to study lynx.

The resulting trove of images, which reached scientists after the Ukrainian military retook the territory in April 2022, offer a previously unseen look at how animals change behavior when their habitat becomes a war zone. The results, published in June in Science, show that the war did in fact alter the animals, sometimes in unexpected ways.

The findings point “to a broader transformation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone — away from an ecosystem that, in the absence of human disturbance, had recovered from the reactor disaster, toward a militarized landscape in which wildlife habitat use and behavior changed,” said University of Freiburg ecologist Marco Heurich, who took part in the research.

The results underscore yet another way that wars can take a toll on wildlife. This at a time when conflicts rage on many continents, including civil conflicts in places like Sudan and Myanmar, and attacks by one country on another in Ukraine, Lebanon, and Iran. While the human tragedy of such conflicts is most shocking, nature is also a casualty.

 

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The Chornobyl region had already witnessed more than its share of destruction at the hands of humans. The 1986 explosion of a nuclear reactor there had left the surrounding land tainted with radiation. But the accident also led to the creation of a 4,200 square kilometer zone largely off-limits to people, giving birth to an unexpected haven for wildlife. Wild boars, roe and red deer, wolves and moose flourished. Brown bears and lynx, once extinct from the region, returned.

In early 2021, scientists set out a network of camera traps aimed at studying the revived lynx population. A year later, Russian troops turned up, then were forced out by Ukrainian fighters. The timing meant the scientists had an unusual opportunity to compare how wildlife in 2021 behaved compared to the same time in 2022 when the war had begun.

The arrival of war fits within a broader body of research studying what is commonly called the “landscape of fear.” Scientists have delved into the ways animal behavior is altered when their habitat is perceived as being more perilous, often because a predator turns up. It could be guard dogs scaring off foxes, fish restricting where they graze on algae, or the smell of predators shifting antelope feeding habits.

It’s commonly thought that animals in a war zone will shift their movements more toward the nighttime. Darkness can off be quieter and makes it easier to move undetected.

In some animals, the researchers saw just that. Brown hares, for example, showed up more often in night camera shots. But just the opposite occurred for both red deer and red fox. “The decline in nighttime detections suggests that these species have shifted their activity to daytime hours in response to increased conflict intensity,” said Svitlana Kudrenko a former Freiburg Ph.D. student who led the research.

The cameras turned up other surprises. While bombs and gunfire might be expected to trigger animals to flee spots occupied by people, both lynx and red fox turned up close to human settlements more often during the occupation.

The researchers don’t offer explanations for this divergence in how different species responded to the war. And the occupation of Chornobyl was brief enough that it was impossible to see how these immediate behavioral changes might translate into broader ecological effects.

But with the war dragging, and some parts of the country reduced to front lines of devastation and violence, there are plenty of landscapes of fear where ecosystems are have been affected by the war for years, even if there are no cameras to capture it.

Kudrenko, et. al. “Changes in wildlife activity patterns in response to war in Ukraine.” Science. June 18, 2026.

Photo: Black storks and a grey heron resting on metal structures at the former cooling pond of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (June 2020) ©Kateryna Korepanova

Note on spelling: Many people are used to the “Chernobyl” spelling. But this paper spells it “Chornobyl.” The older spelling was Russian, and the new spelling is the internationally accepted one preferred by Ukraine.

Fakta Penting Mengenai RTP

Return to Player merupakan persentase teoretis yang menggambarkan seberapa besar total taruhan diproyeksikan kembali kepada pemain dalam jangka panjang.

Sebagai ilustrasi, apabila sebuah permainan memiliki RTP sebesar 96 persen, bukan berarti setiap pemain akan memperoleh kembali 96 persen dari modal yang digunakan. Nilai tersebut merupakan hasil perhitungan statistik berdasarkan jutaan bahkan miliaran simulasi putaran yang dilakukan selama proses pengujian permainan.

Artinya, dalam praktik nyata, hasil yang diperoleh setiap pemain dapat berbeda secara signifikan. Ada pemain yang memperoleh hasil lebih tinggi dari nilai RTP, sementara pemain lain bisa mendapatkan hasil yang jauh lebih rendah dalam periode permainan tertentu.

Fakta inilah yang sering kali tidak dipahami secara utuh sehingga memunculkan berbagai asumsi yang kurang tepat di kalangan pengguna.

Mengungkap Peran Volatilitas dalam Pola Permainan

Selain RTP, volatilitas menjadi indikator kedua yang memiliki pengaruh terhadap karakteristik permainan slot digital.

Volatilitas tidak berkaitan dengan besarnya peluang menang, melainkan menggambarkan pola distribusi hadiah selama permainan berlangsung.

Permainan dengan volatilitas rendah umumnya memberikan kemenangan dalam frekuensi yang lebih sering, namun nominal hadiahnya relatif kecil. Sebaliknya, permainan dengan volatilitas tinggi cenderung menghadirkan kemenangan yang lebih jarang, tetapi memiliki potensi hadiah yang lebih besar ketika kombinasi tertentu berhasil diperoleh.

Perbedaan karakteristik tersebut membuat setiap permainan memiliki pengalaman yang berbeda bagi pemain, meskipun nilai RTP yang ditampilkan relatif sama.

Mengapa RTP dan Volatilitas Sering Disalahartikan

Hasil pengamatan terhadap berbagai forum diskusi pemain menunjukkan adanya kecenderungan menghubungkan RTP dengan peluang kemenangan instan. Tidak sedikit pula konten yang menampilkan daftar permainan dengan RTP tinggi tanpa memberikan penjelasan mengenai konsep statistik yang mendasarinya.

Di sisi lain, istilah volatilitas juga kerap dipersepsikan sebagai ukuran tingkat kesulitan permainan. Padahal volatilitas lebih tepat dipahami sebagai pola distribusi kemenangan, bukan ukuran kemampuan pemain untuk memperoleh hasil tertentu.

Fenomena tersebut diperkuat oleh banyaknya informasi yang beredar di media sosial tanpa disertai konteks teknis yang memadai. Akibatnya, pemain baru sering memperoleh pemahaman yang kurang lengkap sebelum mencoba suatu permainan.

Berbagai Sudut Pandang Mengenai Penggunaan RTP

Dari perspektif pengembang permainan, RTP merupakan parameter matematis yang digunakan untuk menjaga keseimbangan sistem permainan sesuai rancangan awal.

Sementara itu, operator platform memanfaatkan informasi tersebut sebagai bentuk transparansi kepada pengguna agar karakteristik setiap permainan dapat diketahui sebelum dimainkan.

Di sisi pemain, RTP sering dipandang sebagai acuan dalam memilih permainan yang dianggap lebih menguntungkan. Namun para analis industri menilai bahwa indikator tersebut sebaiknya digunakan sebagai referensi tambahan, bukan sebagai dasar utama dalam memperkirakan hasil permainan individual.

Pendekatan yang lebih objektif adalah memahami RTP bersamaan dengan volatilitas, mekanisme bonus, fitur permainan, serta preferensi masing-masing pengguna.

Hubungan RTP, Volatilitas, dan Random Number Generator

Salah satu aspek yang tidak kalah penting adalah keberadaan sistem Random Number Generator (RNG). Teknologi ini bertugas menghasilkan setiap putaran secara acak dan independen.

Dengan adanya RNG, hasil putaran sebelumnya tidak memengaruhi hasil putaran berikutnya. Oleh karena itu, tidak terdapat pola tertentu yang dapat menjamin kemenangan hanya berdasarkan riwayat permainan sebelumnya.

Dalam konteks tersebut, RTP dan volatilitas tidak mengubah sifat acak dari setiap putaran. Keduanya hanya memberikan gambaran mengenai karakteristik permainan berdasarkan perhitungan matematis dalam jangka panjang.

Pentingnya Literasi Informasi Bagi Pengguna

Meningkatnya akses terhadap berbagai informasi digital membuat pemain memiliki lebih banyak referensi sebelum memilih permainan. Namun, kemudahan memperoleh informasi juga membawa tantangan berupa penyebaran klaim yang belum tentu didukung oleh penjelasan teknis yang memadai.

Karena itu, literasi digital menjadi faktor penting agar pengguna mampu membedakan antara data statistik, opini komunitas, strategi pribadi, dan informasi promosi. Memahami perbedaan tersebut membantu pemain mengambil keputusan berdasarkan informasi yang lebih akurat serta menghindari kesimpulan yang tidak didukung oleh fakta.

Kesimpulan

Penelusuran terhadap berbagai aspek RTP dan volatilitas menunjukkan bahwa kedua indikator tersebut memiliki fungsi sebagai informasi statistik untuk membantu memahami karakteristik permainan, bukan sebagai alat untuk memprediksi hasil pada setiap sesi permainan.

RTP memberikan gambaran mengenai tingkat pengembalian teoretis dalam jangka panjang, sedangkan volatilitas menjelaskan pola distribusi kemenangan yang mungkin terjadi selama permainan berlangsung. Ketika dipahami secara bersamaan, keduanya dapat menjadi referensi yang lebih bermanfaat bagi pemain dalam mengenali karakteristik suatu permainan.

Pada akhirnya, pemahaman yang komprehensif mengenai RTP, volatilitas, serta mekanisme acak melalui Random Number Generator menjadi landasan penting untuk menafsirkan informasi secara objektif. Pendekatan berbasis fakta dan literasi yang baik akan membantu pengguna menyaring berbagai klaim yang beredar sekaligus membangun pemahaman yang lebih realistis terhadap cara kerja permainan slot digital

It was a big week in British politics. On June 18, Mayor of Manchester and Labour candidate Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election on a...

The post Don’t shed a tear for Keir: How Labour botched their big chance and what comes next first appeared on Spring.

Akses Cepat Melalui Berbagai Perangkat

Perubahan pola penggunaan internet mendorong banyak platform untuk mengembangkan layanan yang fleksibel. ROYALGACOR menghadirkan sistem yang mampu menyesuaikan tampilan secara otomatis berdasarkan ukuran layar perangkat.

Responsivitas tersebut memungkinkan pengguna tetap memperoleh pengalaman yang konsisten saat berpindah dari komputer ke tablet maupun telepon pintar. Seluruh menu tetap mudah dijangkau tanpa perlu melakukan pengaturan tambahan.

Optimalisasi ini juga berdampak pada waktu muat halaman yang lebih singkat, sehingga proses berpindah antarfitur berlangsung lebih lancar dan efisien.

Informasi yang Disajikan Secara Terorganisasi

Selain menghadirkan berbagai fitur, ROYALGACOR juga menampilkan informasi dalam format yang mudah dipahami. Setiap kategori memiliki penjelasan yang sistematis sehingga pengguna dapat mengenali fungsi maupun tujuan dari masing-masing layanan.

Penyajian informasi yang terstruktur memberikan nilai tambah karena pengguna tidak perlu menafsirkan berbagai istilah teknis secara mandiri. Seluruh informasi ditampilkan dengan bahasa yang ringkas namun tetap informatif.

Pendekatan tersebut membantu menciptakan pengalaman eksplorasi yang lebih efektif sekaligus meningkatkan kenyamanan selama menggunakan platform.

Optimalisasi Kecepatan dan Stabilitas Sistem

Kecepatan akses menjadi salah satu faktor yang sangat menentukan kualitas pengalaman digital. Platform yang lambat sering kali mengurangi kenyamanan pengguna, terutama ketika berpindah dari satu menu ke menu lainnya.

ROYALGACOR mengoptimalkan performa sistem agar proses pemuatan halaman berlangsung lebih cepat. Stabilitas layanan juga menjadi perhatian utama sehingga pengguna dapat mengakses berbagai fitur secara lebih konsisten.

Performa yang baik tidak hanya meningkatkan efisiensi, tetapi juga memberikan kesan profesional terhadap keseluruhan layanan yang tersedia.

Kesimpulan

ROYALGACOR menghadirkan berbagai fitur yang dirancang untuk mendukung pengalaman digital yang praktis, responsif, dan mudah dipahami. Mulai dari antarmuka yang modern, navigasi yang terstruktur, optimalisasi kecepatan sistem, hingga penyajian informasi yang rapi, seluruh elemen disusun untuk memberikan kemudahan dalam menjelajahi setiap layanan yang tersedia.

Memahami fungsi masing-masing fitur merupakan langkah penting agar pengguna dapat memanfaatkan platform secara maksimal. Dengan eksplorasi yang tepat, setiap fasilitas dapat digunakan sesuai kebutuhan sehingga pengalaman menggunakan ROYALGACOR menjadi lebih efisien, nyaman, dan informatif. Artikel ini diharapkan dapat menjadi panduan awal bagi siapa pun yang ingin mengenal lebih jauh berbagai fitur unggulan yang ditawarkan platform tersebut.

As residential batteries have become more energy dense, cheaper, and smaller, more households are storing their excess solar power. Now, utilities and energy companies in dozens of countries are buying up those electrons, bundling them together, and using them to balance the grid.

Read more on E360 →

Headline News:

• “Biggest US Wildfire Leaves Ranchers With Dead And Missing Cattle” • As the Cottonwood Fire, the largest wildfire in the US, continued to rage in Utah, ranchers reported finding dead cattle strewn across burned grazing land, and the state agriculture commissioner said it could take years for ranchers to recover from the devastation. [ABC News]

Cattle grazing in Utah (inkknife_2000, CC BY-SA 2.0)

• “Federal Appeals Court Upholds Limits On Fossil Fuel Use In Buildings” • The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld laws that prohibit appliances burning fossil fuels in new buildings in New York City and New York State, affirming lower courts’ rulings. Communities are taking action to stop use of polluting fossil fuels in buildings. [CleanTechnica]
• “Renewables Generate Record Share Of UK Electricity, As Wind Out-Supplies Gas” • Renewable energy sources in the UK generated a record 53.1% of the country’s electricity during the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 7.4%, driven by increased wind energy generation. The share of electricity generated from fossil fuels fell to 32.8%. [Renew Economy]
• “Record-High Ocean Temperatures Could Fuel Sea Level Rise And Extreme Weather On Land” • New Copernicus data reveals that daily global sea surface heat has broken records for the time of year. The record high global sea surface temperatures are the latest sign that the world’s oceans are entering what scientists call “uncharted territory.” [Euronews]
• “Extreme Heat Forecast: What To Expect As Heat Wave Hits Midwest, Northeast” • A serious heat wave is bringing prolonged extreme heat to the Midwest, the South, and the East Coast this week. The extreme heat hit the Midwest first. The heat index is forecast to hit 105°F in Chicago and 111°F in Detroit. The heat is spreading next into the Northeast. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Oklahoma restricts oil field wastewater injection within a half-mile of public water wells to protect against pollution. Regulators have let companies do it anyway. Officials are taking on the oil industry by calling for additional protections against oil field wastewater injection.

Trying to kill algae with chemicals is a common response when community ponds or other water features go green. But there are better solutions that cost far less, last longer and carry less risk of harm to pets and wildlife. Rather than battling against nature, these alternatives work with nature for long-term solutions.

By Pat Elder
July 1, 2026

Left- AI-generated illustration depicting a homeless encampment on the Fort Ord coastal dunes. Right – The yellow dots show homeless encampments. - California Department of Parks and Recreation, 2025 Annual Report, Fort Ord Dunes State Park.

A 2025 California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and California State Parks Annual Report documents that significant quantities of lead bullets remain on the surface of portions of Fort Ord Dunes State Park nearly three decades after half-hearted remediation efforts were completed by the Army. Quarterly inspections continue to identify huge areas with bullet cover, while annual lead removal operations continue to recover substantial quantities of lead from the dunes. 

‍ Buckets containing lead bullets and fragments collected from the sand dunes at the former Fort Ord, popular with vacationers.  - California Department of Parks and Recreation 2025 Annual Report, Fort Ord Dunes State Park

In December 2025 alone, State Parks personnel removed 106 pounds of lead bullets from Ranges 15 and 16 after identifying areas of concentrated surface contamination during routine inspections. The report also documents continuing homeless encampments within former firing ranges and the construction of a new campground in portions of the historic military training area.

‍These findings raise important questions regarding potential human exposure to lead among several groups of park users, particularly individuals who spend extended periods in the dunes.

Magnitude of the Remaining Contamination

The Army claims that the cleanup of contamination at the beach is complete, but they are lying to the public.  Rather, it has become an ongoing management issue for the state, requiring repeated inspections and recurring removal activities. Surface inspections conducted throughout 2025 found concentrations of lead bullets in many of the same locations identified during inspections conducted between 2017 and 2022. Inspectors continue to map visible bullets, remove smaller accumulations during quarterly inspections, and schedule larger cleanup operations where concentrations remain elevated. The recovery of more than one hundred pounds of lead during a single cleanup event illustrates that substantial quantities of metallic lead remain accessible at or near the surface in portions of the former firing ranges.‍ ‍

Tens of thousands of soldiers trained each year for more than 50 years.  The cumulative total of bullets reached into the billions of rounds.

Unlike many former military ranges located on stable soils, Fort Ord occupies an active coastal dune system. Sand movement driven by strong coastal winds, winter storms, bluff erosion, and wave action continually reshapes the landscape. The annual report itself notes continuing bluff erosion caused by winter storms and ongoing wind erosion in portions of the park. These natural processes can expose bullets that were previously buried beneath sand while simultaneously burying others.

Areas appearing relatively clean during one inspection may later contain newly exposed bullets following periods of strong winds or storm erosion, explaining why annual inspections and repeated cleanup efforts remain necessary decades after the initial remediation. Of course, the Army understood this when they proclaimed a clean bill of health for the dunes many years ago. It’s the same story in many places around the world. They just don’t give a damn.

 Potential Exposure to Campground Visitors

A new campground is being constructed under the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, (DTSC) oversight, with environmental monitoring during grading activities. These measures reduce, but do not eliminate the likelihood of direct exposure within the campground itself. Nevertheless, campground visitors are naturally drawn to explore the surrounding dunes, particularly children and families. Individuals leaving designated areas and entering former firing ranges may encounter visible lead bullets or fragments exposed at the surface. Contact with contaminated sand may result in incidental ingestion through ordinary hand-to-mouth activity, while windblown dust generated during dry conditions may provide an additional pathway for inhalation exposure.

Homeless Encampments

The annual report documents that law enforcement removed homeless encampments from Range 1 during 2025. Individuals residing within former firing ranges may experience considerably greater opportunities for lead exposure than recreational visitors because of the duration and nature of their activities.

Living in the dunes often requires repeated disturbance of surface sands while constructing campsites, leveling sleeping areas, digging fire pits, or building makeshift shelters. These activities increase direct contact with surface soils where lead bullets remain. Windblown sand can accumulate on bedding, clothing, food, cooking utensils, and personal belongings, creating repeated opportunities for ingestion and inhalation. Individuals living outdoors also spend many hours each day in direct contact with the ground, substantially increasing cumulative exposure compared with visitors spending only a few hours in the park.

The annual report documents the continued presence of homeless encampments but does not discuss whether environmental lead exposure has been evaluated among these individuals or whether any public health assessment has been conducted.

Potential Exposure Among Hikers and Other Recreational Users

See Monterey Magnet Man’s brilliant YouTube video. He found 93 bullets while metal detecting in a small area on the Fort Ord Dunes.

Many hikers leave established paths to explore the dunes, former bunkers, and the historic military landscape. Those entering former firing ranges may encounter visible lead bullets or fragments resting on or near the surface. Sitting directly on contaminated sand, allowing children to play in affected areas, handling bullets as curiosities, or disturbing surface sediments during recreation all provide plausible pathways for lead exposure. Although exposure during a single visit is likely to be relatively small, repeated recreational use of contaminated areas could increase cumulative contact over time.

Occupational Safety Highlights an Important Concern

An important observation emerges from the annual report. State Parks personnel conducting lead removal operations wear gloves, long sleeves, safety glasses, and N95 respirators while collecting bullets from the dunes. These protective measures acknowledge that collecting and disturbing lead-contaminated materials presents an occupational exposure concern. In contrast, members of the public entering former firing ranges generally receive no comparable protective equipment and may be unaware that visible lead bullets remain present on the ground surface.

Conclusions

The 2025 DTSC annual report demonstrates that lead contamination remains a serious management issue within portions of Fort Ord Dunes State Park. Continuing inspections, repeated bullet mapping, and the recovery of 106 pounds of lead during a single cleanup operation indicate that substantial quantities of lead remain accessible on or near the surface of the former firing ranges. The report further documents continuing coastal erosion, ongoing dune migration, recurring homeless encampments, and the ongoing need for lead removal, indicating that this is not a static contamination site but a constantly changing coastal environment where storms and wind can expose previously buried bullets.

The potential for human exposure varies considerably depending upon how the park is used, although we must keep in mind that lead bullets weather through physical abrasion and chemical corrosion. Weathering produces small lead-containing particles that adhere to fine sand and dust. The strong coastal winds suspend these fine particles in the air where they can be inhaled.

Campground visitors using the new facilities are likely to experience some exposure, while hikers who leave designated trails may encounter highly contaminated areas. Individuals living for extended periods within homeless encampments located inside former firing ranges may experience the greatest opportunity for repeated exposure because of prolonged contact with contaminated sand, windblown dust, and surface lead. Additional environmental monitoring and public health evaluation, particularly regarding populations residing within the former firing ranges, would provide a stronger scientific basis for evaluating the magnitude of these potential risks.‍‍‍ ‍

As the hot days of summer begin to settle in and the excitement of spring migration slows down, human celebrations are picking up. June is a month to celebrate freedom, a feeling that birds have...

On Saturday, June 27th, Greenbelt Alliance and our partners through the Hayward Eden Area Resilience Collaborative hosted a workshop to learn about the latest sea level rise planning strategies, to explore nature-based solutions like horizontal levees, and to share community perspectives. Almost 100 attendees joined us to learn about the adaptation strategies informing multiple project designs.

The afternoon kicked off with updates from the project teams, including the Hayward Area Shoreline Planning Agency (HASPA)’s Shoreline Adaptation Implementation Plan, the First Mile Horizontal Levee at Oro Loma Marsh, the Hayward Nature-Based Solutions Project, and the Hayward Marsh Restoration Project. Then attendees explored stations across the room to learn more about the projects and map where they have seen flooding and erosion along the shoreline. During the breakout session, participants were able to speak to planners and designers for each of the projects. Throughout the gallery walk attendees asked questions, gave project feedback, and shared their thoughts on the plans.

Our team heard from long-term residents who had observed local shoreline flooding, and who on Saturday became aware of  the measures being taken to adapt the shoreline to higher sea levels. Additionally, we were joined by Chabot College students who participated through Teach Earth Action to depict their visions for the shoreline through art. 

After the workshop, participants got a chance to look at the First Mile Horizontal Levee project site, the biggest horizontal levee to be built in the San Francisco Bay. The site will serve as a vital demonstration and educational reference for future coastal adaptation projects around the Bay. Workshop participants were able to view the project site from the San Lorenzo Community Park. The First Mile Horizontal Levee will become a sloped marsh that will reduce flooding and shoreline erosion, filter treated wastewater, provide vital habitat for shorebirds and young fish, and expand public access.

Looking forward, this summer Greenbelt Alliance will be hosting a bike tour on Saturday July 11th along the Hayward Eden Area shoreline to learn about the project in more depth and hear about how sea level rise is impacting the shoreline today. Interested in the bike tour? Sign up here! Additionally the Collaborative will take the project on tour, tabling at farmers markets and sharing the projects with interest groups in the Hayward Eden Area. Want to stay connected? Reach out at HaywardShoreline@greenbelt.org to join our list.

The Hayward Area Shoreline Resilience Collaborative includes Greenbelt Alliance, Plantify, East Bay Dischargers Authority, The Watershed Project, Teach Earth Action, and San Francisco Estuary Partnership, working with HASPA member agencies: City of Hayward, East Bay Regional Parks District, Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, and Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District.

 

The post Hayward Eden Area Community Gathers to Advance Sea Level Rise Solutions appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Today we had another conversation with our frequent guest and comrade Professor Eskandar Sadeghi of The University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who’s an international authority of Iranian history and…

A Hunter Valley community group is calling on the NSW Government to expedite its own draft legislation to impose workforce support obligations on the owners of closing coal mines, as 300 workers at the Ashton mine this week learned they will lose their jobs in the next 18 months.

A handful of oil-producing countries and their corporate allies stalled and ultimately derailed the entire process

Source

Dear Friends,

The State Water Contractors are attempting to advance AB 2215 as a legislative solution to DWR’s expired water rights for the State Water Project and the DCP, rather than through proper procedure at the State Water Board. The bill, authored by Assemblymember Calderon, will be heard at the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee at 9 am on Wednesday, July 1st.

We need your help urging the Chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee, Senator Becker, to side with Delta communities.

Call Senator Becker at (916) 651-4013.

If passed, AB 2215 would:

• Permit the SWP for construction and increased water diversions through 2046 to the benefit of The Delta Conveyance Project.
• Circumvent existing processes through the State Water Resources Control Board that would both require an Environmental Impact Report; and analyze impacts to public trust, Tribal and environmental justice communities, and the Delta ecosystem. 

The Delta is a severely over-allocated system. Any new water infrastructure proposing to increase diversions must go through the regulatory process to protect Delta communities, ecosystem, and local fishing and recreation economies. 

TAKE ACTION!

Call Senator Becker at (916) 651-4013 and use this script urging their office to oppose AB 2215:

Hello Senator (LAST NAME),

“I am calling to ask that you oppose AB 2215 and legislative interference in water rights, especially in relation to the Delta Conveyance Project. This bill circumvents existing processes that would provide comprehensive analysis of the impacts of such an extension, and benefits controversial projects like the Delta Conveyance Project. The bill would also eliminate the public’s ability to provide input. I ask that you side with our community that will be negatively impacted by this project rather than State Water Contractors who continuously work to undermine transparency and full inclusion of Californians in water management. The tunnel is a dangerous symptom of ineffective California water management.”

It is time for our Delta communities to come together and stop the machine. Raise your voices and help us fight for the watershed, the Delta, fisheries, Tribes, Delta farming communities, the San Francisco Bay, and the people throughout the state who are impacted one way or another by the Delta Tunnel Boondoggle.

In solidarity,

The Restore the Delta Team

Why Oregon should keep investing in clean trucks and buses Brett Morgan Tue, 06/30/2026 - 12:12 pm

This article An intimate reckoning with the Weather Underground was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Looking for a quintessentially American book to read this 4th of July? 

As we celebrate and/or mourn the 250th birthday of the most militarized, most violent, (almost) most corrupt, most polluting, most inequitable and most sad nation on the face of the Earth, I am reading “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground.” Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s new book about his Weatherman parents is more than just a great beach read (which it also is, literally). It is the most appropriate book to read instead of subjecting yourself to a PTSD-triggering fireworks display.

It chronicles a small group of revolutionaries who used dynamite, bombs and guns to blow up buildings, statutes and police cars, break people out of prison and generally make mayhem half a century ago. But it is not just history to view on the page. It says so much to our MAGA moment.

It is a story of history, conscience and memory at a time of AI slop, official lies and active amnesia. It is a story of youthful rebellion against the Vietnam War that matures into revolutionary sabotage, political violence and life “underground” that eventually settles into careers in education and law outside of the mainstream. It is the story of surviving some of the most harrowing political moments of the last half century. It is a story of a family.

I grew up in a very different corner of the left than Ayers Dohrn. There were no drug-fueled orgies, shootouts with the cops or days of rage in the Catholic left. But there was a similar stridency, urgency and seriousness about my family life. There was jail and prison and fear of FBI infiltration and dirty tricks. There were people with no last names who showed up for a meal or a night and headed back into the underground. We also survived separation and secrecy, and I am also not raising my children on the knife’s edge of the revolution. So, Ayers Dohrn’s effort to tell his family’s story with truthfulness, curiosity and distance landed so very true for me. 

Don’t need a weatherman to know

Who were the Weathermen? They’ve been memorialized countless times on screens small and large, most recently (sort of) in “One Battle After Another.” But in real life, they were mostly white, mostly college educated, mostly middle-class young people who had been part of Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, before splintering off from that group in the summer of 1969 to join forces with the Black Panthers and incite revolution, laying waste to what they left behind. They felt like they had tried everything else!

In recounting this episode, Ayers Dohrn was able to use FBI notes and communiques to highlight their role in fomenting the clash between the more progressive and radical factions, manipulating members into all-out conflict with one another and essentially destroying SDS. Ayers Dohrn quotes Weatherman faction leader Mark Rudd reflecting that it was “the single greatest mistake I’ve made in my life … scuttl[ing] America’s largest radical organization — with chapters on hundreds of campus[es], a powerful national identity and enormous growth potential — for a fantasy of revolutionary urban guerrilla warfare.” What could have been is not explored.

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At this point, we’d need speculative fiction to spin out the possibilities of true solidarity between the largely white, campus-based antiwar movement and the Black Panther Party and its affiliates. It sure scared the FBI! In fact, in a memo to agents in the field, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote that SDS and the Black Panther Party working together would “pose a formidable threat. … It would be a definite advantage if these two groups were alienated.”

This story is told with cinematic depth, gleaned from Ayers Dohrn’s interviews with participants and from declassified FBI files. The new organization was small, secretive and “fiercely committed to following the leadership of the Black vanguard, to fighting the police and to going out, if necessary, in a blaze of revolutionary glory.”

A declaration of a state of war

The mostly middle-class, young, white activists had been working on many fronts for years, but their “organizing and peaceful protest had failed to stop the war.” They were going to try something new — but actually it wasn’t new. It was old. It was violence. And, for a time, it was street riots against the police and property damage during protests. But then their friend and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was assassinated by Chicago police and the FBI in a barrage of 90 bullets. And then the horrors of the My Lai massacre were revealed, and as 1969 became 1970, the Weathermen declared war on the United States.

An FBI wanted poster for Bill Ayers. (FBI)

Ayers Dohrn describes a series of bombings at the homes of judges, banks and police stations, and a complicated plan in New York City’s West Village that would have brought the carnage of Vietnam to a military Officer’s Ball at Fort Dix in New Jersey. The Fort Dix plan was thwarted not by the FBI or a rival faction of revolutionaries, but by chemistry. The bombs went off in the 11th Street townhouse the revolutionaries were using as a temporary safe house (while the parents of one of the Weathermen were on a St. Kitts vacation). Three Weathermen were killed in the blast and the house was obliterated. Bill Ayers’ girlfriend at the time was among the dead and he carried that grief and memory into Ayers Dohrn’s life. As a little kid, Zayd remembers going with his father to lay flowers at the site every year. 

Recalling that loss, Ayers Dohrn asks his father how he contemplated killing people with those bombs. Bill Ayers responded that “We often said things like, ‘I need to be a tool of the revolution.’ … Or ‘I need to be an instrument of the rebellion.’ And that instrumentalizing of our lives was more than a weakness. It was a horror.”

That realization and the other reflections Ayers Dohrn is able to elicit from his parents as they think back on their roles as revolutionaries are the backbone of this book. Bill and Bernardine Dohrn are able to reflect, see mistakes and missteps, explain their priorities, and accept responsibility for the harms they inflicted because they survived and so many other people who were part of this splinter movement did not.

It was a horror

It is difficult and brave that Zayd Ayers Dohrn contends with violence and memory without letting anyone — even his mother and father — off the hook. Against the backdrop of an administration and a president that can’t remember, or won’t admit to, crimes of three sentences ago, he holds his father and mother to a high standard. And they can take it. They survived the days of rage and purity tests and self-criticism sessions and the run-ins with the law and stretches of prison and dirty tricks that so many others did not.

His mother, Bernardine Dohrn, is now living with dementia, as is my own mother, and I found his present-day conversations with her the most poignant and difficult of the book. Memory threads all the way through this book. What do we remember? Why do some memories stick? 

Ayers Dohrn began his reckoning with family history in an extraordinary 10-part podcast called “Mother Country Radicals,” which was Fred Hampton’s term of endearment for the Weathermen. But as he researches his own past and excavates his own memory, there are things that don’t add up, don’t stitch together, memories that don’t bear up to scrutiny. There are contradictions that he can’t square.

Once the podcast was released, he received letters, diaries and phone calls from old fellow travelers. These new resources, along with 7,833 pages of FBI files, convinced him that there was more to the story and he sat down to write. The book is more in-depth, intimate and searching than the podcast. Ayers Dohrn is less star struck by his parents’ bravado too. Now, he is a parent, too, noting decisions that Bill and Bernadine made that put the family in jeopardy, that were hard for him, that caused him pain. He sees and feels the impact of his parents’ choice of the revolution over parenthood. “Over and over, you can see the same pattern, repeated: Asked to choose between solidarity and family, revolution and love, my parents and their comrades chose the cause almost every time.”

A 1969 mugshot of Bernadine Dohrn from an arrest at a Chicago protest, later circulated by the FBI. (FBI)

Family lore had it that Bill and Bernardine hung up their revolutionary bonafides when they became parents. But the documents Ayers Dohrn received after the podcast aired show that was not true. They continued to take risks even after they became parents of Zayd and his younger brother Malik. One memorable camping trip in West Virginia as a family turns out to be a trip to case Alderson Prison for Women where Black Panther leader Assata Shakur was serving out her sentence. She was eventually liberated from prison in another operation and Bill Ayers played a small — but very risky — role in that while Bernardine was home with Zayd.

Ayers Dohrn confronted his dad by asking: “What would have happened, not only to him but to me, my mother and my unborn brother?” Ayers responded: “It was a difficult decision. It felt monumental, it felt important. We were pretty clear that Bernardine would be with you. … But yeah, it was, in retrospect, really risky. And really on the edge.” But in the end, Bill Ayers played his part, “Because it mattered. Because the world needed it to happen.”

They continued to do leg work for the Black Liberation Army and other radical groups like Action Five even after they informally adopted 14-month-old Chesa Boudin. That should have been a clear warning to stop. Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, Chesa’s parents, had acted as getaway drivers for an Action Five robbery on a Brinks armored truck in October 1981. The job quickly went off the rails and three people injured, and three others were killed — Nyack police officers Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown, and Peter Paige, one of the team from the Brinks truck. Boudin and Gilbert spent decades in prison for their crimes while the Ayers Dohrn family raised their son. 

Life underground

I described this book to a friend, and she got stuck on the word underground. “Wait,” she demanded, “you mean they lived underground, like moles or Hobbits?” No, they lived under assumed names, worked cash jobs, had fake IDs. They were on the run from the FBI, facing jail time and family separation. They had disappeared from “normal society” and were dependent on friends and fellow travelers for support.

A striking moment in the book comes when Ayers Dohrn recounts that at one of his father’s off-the-books jobs, as a longshoreman in San Francisco, he gets the sense that something is about to go down. Bill Ayers saw men on the rooftops and by the union hall, standing out in their cheap suits and cop-loafers. But he was already at the docks and there was nowhere to run. The docks are all of a sudden swarmed with police and his co-workers started yelling “La Migra! La Migra!”

 “It only took a few minutes; the feds rounded them all up, chasing them to the edge of the water or just tackling them down to the concrete of the parking lot. And they let all the white people go” Ayers Dohrn recounts.

Previous Coverage

Daniel Berrigan and his fearless nonviolence, at 100

The officials were not looking for Bill Ayers, of the Weathermen. They were rounding up undocumented immigrants. Ayers Dohrn writes that his father had “always assumed, with the self-centered paranoia of a federal fugitive, that he was the only outlaw hiding out on the docks. … But it turned out that half of the men on his crew were invisible, even to him. They were all living on a different plane, off the grid. Undocumented. Underground.”

In his autobiography “To Dwell in Peace,” my uncle, Father Daniel Berrigan writes that while he was underground, avoiding a prison sentence for the Catonsville 9 action and speaking constantly to young people, he heard that the Weather Underground wanted to dialogue. On Aug. 8, 1970, just a few days before he was captured on Block Island, he made an audio recording and sent it off through intermediaries. It had been just six months since the three Weathermen were killed in the bomb blast on 11th Street.

A new kind of anger

In the message, addressed to his “Brothers and Sisters,” Dan Berrigan invites them to “a new kind of anger which is both useful in communicating and imaginative and slow-burning to fuel the long haul which is the definition of our whole lives.” He calls them away from violence for the sake of violence, noting that there is a great risk that violence “will change people for the worse and harden them against enlightenment.” He continues by sharing that “I hope your lives are about something more than sabotage.”

I looked around for evidence that Dan Berrigan ever sat down with the Weather Underground, or that his message received a reply. I did not find any, but the group did shift tactics after the 11th Street explosion. Ayers Dohrn writes of a meeting that his mother called a few weeks later where the group became the Weather Underground and “disavow[ed] deadly violence going forward.” They did not become paragons of pacifism after this, but they stopped a posture of open warfare against the American people. 

In “Absurd Convictions, Modest Hopes: Conversations After Prison with Lee Lockwood,” Dan shares that the Weather Underground did respond to his communications, saying, “In fact the response was almost beyond my hope, because it indicated that they really were serious and were growing more thoughtful about such things.” That’s where that thread ends, as far as I can tell, but it is beautiful to consider the “calling in” and constructive dialogue that could have followed, as both sides — motivated by a fervent commitment to racial equality and an end to war — kept talking.

In his message to the Weather Underground, my uncle has a beautiful formulation of the concept of underground, writing: “Instead of thinking about the underground as temporary or exotic or abnormal, perhaps we are being called upon to start thinking of its implication as an entirely self-sufficient, mobile, internal revival community, so that the underground may be the definition of our future.”

Ayers Dohrn dedicates his book to his wife Rachel and their children Dalin and Light. Late in the book, he writes that “every generation is born into a world desperately in need of transformation, and young people in every era have inherited a struggle — a fight to make things better — that stretches back long before any of them were born.” 

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I read “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young” with horror and hope — in equal measure. There is plenty to rage about in the Mother Country these days. You do not have to look far to find a replay of the horrors that radicalized Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and their friends. The war lust, impunity and corruption of the Trump administration and the craven weaponization of the justice system under FBI Director Kash Patel makes President Richard Nixon and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover look like Boy Scouts, and that is saying something!

Our society is full of the dirty, dangerous, violent and young, but so much of the violence is turned inward into self-harm and online into self-referential time frittering. It does spill out into the streets and it is political, but it is not, for the most part, organized or coordinated. The political violence of the Weatherman and the Underground that felt so justified and satisfied, that urge to “do something” and to “take a stand,” did do something. But most of that something was sowing chaos, alienating potential allies and narrowing the political space available to others. That violence was used — over and over — to rationalize indiscriminate state-sponsored repression and violence. In the process, almost incidentally, they did build something of value, the idea of an underground, and that persists and continues.

There is a lot of hope here for me in this idea of a permanent underground that sustains and revives, a subculture of connection and support that is not on the same map (literally not plottable) as the systems that exploit and oppress.

Those who survived those harrowing years as fugitives, undergrounders and radicals, built community, raised families, showed up for one another. And they were able to do all that because they survived. Or, perhaps, they survived because they could do all that.

This article An intimate reckoning with the Weather Underground was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.