"Hunted for centuries for their pelts, sea otters had dwindled to near-extinction by the 1910s, leaving a population of about 1,000 worldwide and only about 50 in California, in small pockets on the Central Coast and Southern California’s Channel Islands."
"California officials on Monday announced a settlement reversing a Trump-era decision opening central California to new oil and gas drilling on public lands."
"California claims to know how much climate-warming gas is going into the air from within its borders. It’s the law: California limits climate pollution and each year the limits get stricter."
"Since Friday, the Oak fire has consumed more than 18,000 acres of the sparsely populated mountain community. And by Tuesday morning, the blaze, located near Yosemite National Park, had destroyed 41 structures and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes."
"The water that comes out of the tap for more than 900,000 Californians is unsafe to drink and the state isn’t acting fast enough to help clean it up, state auditors said in a report released Tuesday."
"[As Californians] prepare to finalize a state climate plan that relies on CCS technology, some environmentalists are urging officials to abandon the idea. Instead of helping to wean California off fossil fuels, they say CCS will actually increase oil production."
"A destructive wildfire near Yosemite National Park burned out of control through tinder-dry forest on Sunday and had grown into one of California’s biggest blazes of the year, forcing thousands of residents to flee remote mountain communities."
"A burn scar in Northern California offers an unsettling glimpse into what forests across the Sierra Nevada could become. Bare tree carcasses are strewn across the dun-colored hills. Rock outcroppings jut out like bones."
"California’s Chinook salmon haven’t been able to reach the McCloud River since 1942, when the construction of Shasta Dam blocked the fish from swimming upstream and sealed off their spawning areas in the cold mountain waters near Mt. Shasta. After 80 years, endangered winter-run Chinook are about to swim in the river once again."
"The largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park was closed Friday and hundreds of people ordered evacuated nearby as a wildfire burning through dense forest became the latest in recent years to threaten the world’s largest trees."
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