Pratt, a conservation leader and wildlife advocate, has spent more than a decade observing the tiny mammals and the other inhabitants of these serene granite domes and the alpine meadows they overlook, which gleamed gold on a crisp afternoon in mid-October. Their stories are woven into Pratt’s new book, Yosemite Wildlife: The Wonder of Animal Life in California’s Sierra Nevada – the first in more than a century to focus solely on the more than 150 species who call the park home. Pratt’s book is designed to be more than a coffee-table tome. Each chapter features stories, facts and intimate insights about a different animal. The book isn’t necessarily meant to be read cover to cover. Rather, she was inspired by the encyclopedias she got lost in as a child. Paired with hundreds of photos from naturalist-photographer Robb Hirsch, as well as archival images, natural history and research, her storytelling transports readers into a world they don’t often have access to. Published by the Yosemite Conservancy, proceeds also directly benefit the park.

Along with a glimpse into the lives of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects who dwell in one of the country’s most treasured parks, Pratt hopes to foster a deeper connection to the tenacious creatures who are surviving through the harshest conditions.“We think we as humans are so exceptional, but come up here and even the smallest of critters will put you in your place very quickly,” she said. The world Pratt captures is fierce and fragile: Butterflies, weighing no more than a feather, fly over 12,000ft (3,650-meter) peaks. Freshwater crustaceans called fairy shrimp spring to life in small temporary ponds left after the mountain snow melts, their eggs able to last up to a century waiting in suspended animation for the right conditions. Pratt even saw a marmot chase off a coyote. But it also highlights how exceedingly vulnerable these animals have become. The climate crisis and the encroaching development into once-wild places have added challenges even for the most hardy. “People don’t understand that wildlife operate on the barest of margins,” Pratt said, pausing to ferry a caterpillar off the trail and onto the underbrush in the direction it was heading. “Something like trampling their nest or leaving trash out can result in dead animals or a loss of habitat or scaring an animal who doesn’t have a lot of energy reserves to begin with.”

‘Stuff your eyes with wonder’.......For more than 30 years, Pratt has worked in environmental leadership roles, including heading the campaign behind the world’s largest wildlife crossing of its kind, stretching across 10 lanes of a bustling highway near Los Angeles.

Her work helped the city fall in love with P-22, a celebrated urban mountain lion who lived in Griffith Park and died after being struck by a car in 2022, which inspired the P-22 Day festival – held in October this year – to honor and increase awareness around protecting wildlife. She is also the author of I Heart Wildlife and When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors. But from her first visit after she moved from Massachusetts to California in 1991 at the age of 22, “Yosemite claimed me”, she wrote in the book’s preface. Her adoration of national parks, first introduced in a book she dreamed over in middle school, was cemented during a first winter trip to the park that she now refers to as “her north star”.      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/02/beth-pratt-yosemite-author-wildlife#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhen%20I%20was%20younger%2C%20it,They%20are%20equal%20to%20us.%E2%80%9D   

SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF LARGE-SCALE RIVER AND WETLAND RESTORATION. WWF Investing in restoration of rivers and wetlands worldwide has significantly benefited people and economies. Looming water supply 'bankruptcy' puts billions at risk, UN report warns.This is according to a technical report commissioned by WWF that collects evidence and case studies from more than 30 countries across 6 continents to demonstrate the importance of rivers and wetlands not only environmentally but economically and socially, and how they can be restored.  The world’s wetlands are under threat. Since 1970 the world has lost a third of its healthy wetlands and an 85% decline in freshwater wildlife populations. This is the worst decline of any habitat type.  

Wetlands are facing damage from over-abstraction of water, fragmentation of rivers by dams and other infrastructure, land-use change, pollution, aquatic invasive species, over-harvesting and the climate crisis. This decline has led not only to a collapse in freshwater wildlife populations but also to material risks to human wellbeing, economic development and international water security. Looming water supply 'bankruptcy' puts billions at risk, UN report warns. WHY HEALTHY RIVERS AND WETLANDS ARE IMPORTANT Rivers and wetlands have always given us so much more than water. Through the ages, they have shaped civilisations as much as they have shaped landscapes. We have relied on them for food, transport, water, energy and building materials. We have worshipped them as places of inspiration, power and life. For most of our history, we have been dependent on rivers and wetlands. Now they need us. When rivers and wetlands are healthy, they deliver many benefits that underpin water and food security, and build climate resilience. However, since 1970 the world has lost a third of its healthy wetlands and we’ve seen a shocking 85% decline in freshwater wildlife populations, the worst of any habitat type.......read the full report    https://wwfint.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_the-benefits-of-restoring-rivers-and-wetlands_briefing-paper_2026.pdf

 The massive Himalayas rise to the south and east, the Pamirs to the southwest, and a pair of mountains known as the Tian Shan and the Altai to the west, leaving the landscape completely isolated from moisture. 66 billion trees have been planted by estimates since the start of the ShelterBelt program, which finished in 2024. Monikered the “Green Great Wall,” this incredible increase in greenery has raised average rainfall by several millimeters, resulting in a natural growth of foliage during the wet season that boosts photosynthesis along the tree line, leading to greater degrees of sequestration......read on    https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/chinas-tree-planting-turned-a-barren-desert-into-a-carbon-sink-to-help-lower-atmospheric-co2/

AND.......  Madrid is Planting a Huge Forest Ring Around the City to Lower Heat Levels and Cut CO2 Emissions  Good News Network Andy Corbley -Jul 25, 2021  Whether you’re from the U.S. and call it a “Beltway” or Europe and call it a “Ring road,” Madrid will be calling it the “green way” soon enough, as the Spanish capital aims to combat their city’s island of heat by encircling themselves with a sea of green. Their urban forest project will involve planting nearly a half million trees on a 46-mile perimeter (75-km) around the city. When the trees have reached maturity, they should absorb around 175,000 tons of CO2 per year. Black pine, beech, Spanish juniper and various oak species can all be found in the arid middle of Spain wherein lies the Spanish capital, and it is these native trees which require little water or specialized soil conditions that will constitute the new forest. “What we want to do is to improve the air quality in the whole city, to fight the ‘heat island’ effect that is happening inside the city, to absorb the greenhouse emissions generated by the city, and to connect all the existing forest masses that already exist around the city,” Mariano Fuentes told                                                                               

“What we want to do is to improve the air quality in the whole city, to fight the ‘heat island’ effect that is happening inside the city, to absorb the greenhouse emissions generated by the city, and to connect all the existing forest masses that already exist around the city,” Mariano Fuentes told Euronews. As Madrid’s councilor for the environment and urban development, Fuentes explained that for cities that belch three-quarters of all human-caused CO2, which tend to absorb much more heat and poor air than surrounding countryside, methods for combating climate change and general environmental degradation need to be varied. “It has to be a global strategy,” added Fuentes. “It’s not only about cars, but also a pedestrianization strategy, the creation of environmental corridors in every district… and most of all… to engage citizens in this new green culture, it is essential for every city to face the near future in the best conditions.”.....read on      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/madrid-to-create-perimeter-forest-around-the-city-to-absorb-heat-and-co2/   

RELATED: Volunteers in India Do it Again–Planting 250 Million Saplings in Single Day and Seeing 80% Survival Rate

Earth’s Core Might Hold Dozens of Oceans Worth of Hydrogen, Hinting at the Origins of the Planet’s Vast Water Supply. Scientists have long debated whether most of Earth’s vital liquid was delivered via icy comets or was homemade Smithsonian Mary Randolph 13 Feb 2026 How Earth got its water has remained an open question for years. Some scientists suspect that much of it came from icy comets that pelted the planet during its youth. But now, new research supports another leading idea: A huge reservoir of hydrogen—water’s main ingredient—may have been hiding on Earth since the planet’s early formation, hinting that most of this vital liquid may have been homemade.  Some 4.6 billion years ago, gas, rocks and dust clumped together to form Earth. In the baby planet’s high-pressure center, metals—primarily iron and nickel—heated into liquid and started to swirl. But other elements exist there too.Researchers have previously attempted to investigate how much hydrogen might be lurking in the core, but because of its depth and pressure, that work has largely relied on computer simulations and lab environments that mimic the conditions. And hydrogen is especially hard to quantify “because it is the lightest and smallest element,” study co-author Dongyang Huang, an Earth and space scientist at Peking University in China, tells CNN’s Mindy Weisberger.So, Huang, Murakami and their colleagues took a different approach to measure this tricky element. In the lab, they recreated Earth’s middle by wrapping iron, representing the core, in glass containing hydrogen, silicon and oxygen, which acted as the planet’s early ocean of molten rock. Samples were squeezed at extremely high pressures, up to 111 gigapascals, between diamonds and heated to a maximum of roughly 8,720 degrees Fahrenheit. After the melted blobs cooled and solidified, the researchers tracked where hydrogen, silicon and oxygen atoms had gone within the iron. The analysis revealed that hydrogen and silicon had formed a specific structure, in which the two elements’ atoms existed in a one-to-one ratio. Existing estimates of silicon in the core helped the team calculate the amount of hydrogen that should be present.

Hydrogen makes up between 0.07 percent and 0.36 percent of the core’s weight, the researchers estimate, making it the planet’s largest store of the light element. What’s more, that percentage might be an underestimate, Kei Hirose, a planetary scientist at the University of Tokyo in Japan who was not involved in the study, writes in an email to CNN. Hydrogen may have escaped as the pressure ramped down, which was not accounted for in the new work. And Hirose’s past research has hinted that the core contains a larger amount of hydrogen than the recent estimate, he tells the outlet. Such a large hydrogen reserve in the core must have come about when the planet was forming, Hilke Schlichting, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research, tells Scientific American’s Stephanie Pappas. The discovery “really changes the way we think of where our water comes from,” she says.  Check out.......Where Did Earth’s Water Originate? Solar Nebula, Study Suggests