CVS to shed 5,000 jobs in cost-cutting push - WSJ



Updated Mon, July 31, 2023 

(Reuters) -U.S. pharmacy chain CVS Health is cutting 5,000 jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a staff memo.

In an emailed response to Reuters, CVS confirmed the company was laying off some non-customer facing employees to cut costs, but did not comment on the number of employees affected.

The company spokesperson said CVS does not expect "any impact to our customer-facing colleagues in our stores, pharmacies, clinics, or customer services centers."

The pharmacy chain had about 300,000 employees in the U.S. at the end of last year.

The Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based company will be cutting down on travel expenses as well as its use of consultants and vendors, according to the WSJ report.

The layoffs news comes ahead of CVS' quarterly earnings report on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

As work begins on the largest US dam removal project, tribes look to a future of growth




Jamie Holt, lead fisheries technician for the Yurok Tribe, right, and Gilbert Myers count dead chinook salmon pulled from a trap in the lower Klamath River on June 8, 2021, in Weitchpec, Calif. Work has begun on the largest dam removal project in history along the Klamath River. Four dams will be removed by the end of 2024.

 (AP Photo/Nathan Howard, File)

ADAM BEAM
Updated Mon, July 31, 2023

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The largest dam removal project in United States history is underway along the California-Oregon border — a process that won't conclude until the end of next year with the help of heavy machinery and explosives.

But in some ways, removing the dams is the easy part. The hard part will come over the next decade as workers, partnering with Native American tribes, plant and monitor nearly 17 billion seeds as they try to restore the Klamath River and the surrounding land to what it looked like before the dams started to go up more than a century ago.

The demolition is part of a national movement to return the natural flow of the nation's rivers and restore habitat for fish and the ecosystems that sustain other wildlife. More than 2,000 dams have been removed in the U.S. as of February, with the bulk of those having come down within the last 25 years, according to the advocacy group American Rivers.

When demolition is completed by the end of next year, more than 400 miles (644 kilometers) of river will have opened for threatened species of fish and other wildlife. By comparison, the 65 dams removed in the U.S. last year combined to reconnect 430 miles (692 kilometers) of river.

Along the Klamath, the dam removals won’t be a major hit to the power supply; they produced less than 2% of power company PacifiCorp’s energy generation when they were running at full capacity -- enough to power about 70,000 homes. Though the hydroelectric power produced by dams is considered a clean, renewable source of energy, many larger dams in the U.S. West have become a target for environmental groups and tribes because of the harm they cause to fish and river ecosystems.

The project will empty three reservoirs over about 3.5 square miles (9 square kilometers) near the California-Oregon border, exposing soil to sunlight in some places for the first time in more than a century.

For the past five years, Native American tribes have gathered seeds by hand and sent them to nurseries with plans to sow the seeds along the banks of the newly wild river. Helicopters will bring in hundreds of thousands of trees and shrubs to plant along the banks, including wads of tree roots to create habitat for fish.

This growth usually takes decades to happen naturally. But officials are pressing nature’s fast-forward button because they hope to repel an invasion of foreign plants, such as starthistle, which dominate the landscape at the expense of native plants.

“Why not just let nature take its course? Well, nature didn’t take its course when dams got put in. We can’t pretend this gigantic change in the landscape has not happened and we can’t just ignore the fact that invasive species are a big problem in the west and in California,” said Dave Meurer, director of community affairs for Resource Environmental Solutions, the company leading the restoration project.

PacifiCorp built the dams starting in 1918 to generate electricity. The dams halted the natural flow of the river and disrupted the lifecycle of salmon, a fish that spends most of its life in the Pacific Ocean but returns to the chilly mountain streams to lay eggs. The fish are culturally and spiritually significant to a number of Native American tribes, who historically survived by fishing the massive runs of salmon that would come back to the rivers each year.

A combination of low water levels and warm temperatures in 2002 led to a bacterial outbreak that killed more than 34,000 fish, mostly Chinook salmon. The loss jumpstarted decades of advocacy from Native American tribes and environmental groups, culminating last year when federal regulators approved a plan to remove the dams.

“The river is our church, the salmon is our cross. That's how it relates to the people. So it's very sacred to us,” said Kenneth Brink, vice chairman of the Karuk Tribe. “The river is not just a place we go to swim. It's life. It creates everything for our people.”

The project will cost $500 million, paid for by taxpayers and PacifiCorps ratepayers. Crews have mostly removed the smallest of the four dams, known as Copco No. 2. The other three dams are expected to come down next year. That will leave some homeowners in the area without the picturesque lake they have lived on for years.

The Siskiyou County Water Users Association, which formed about a decade ago to stop the dam removal project, filed a federal lawsuit. But so far they have been unable to stop the demolition.

“Unfortunately it’s a mistake you can’t turn back from," association President Richard Marshall said.

The water level in the lakes will drop between 3 feet and 5 feet (1 meter to 1.5 meters) per day over the first few months of next year. Crews will follow that water line, taking advantage of the moisture in the soil to plant seeds from more than 98 native plant species including wooly sunflower, Idaho fescue and Blue bunch wheat grass.

Tribes have been invested in the process from the start. Resource Environmental Solutions hired tribal members to gather seeds from native plants by hand. The Yurok Tribe even hired a restoration botanist.

Each species has a role to play. Some, like lupine, grow quickly and prepare the soil for other plants. Others, like oak trees, take years to fully mature and provide shade for other plants.

“It's a wonderful marriage of tribal traditional ecological knowledge and western science,” said Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit entity created to oversee the project.

The previous largest dam removal project was on Washington state’s Elwha River, which flows out of Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Congress in 1992 approved the demolition of the two dams on the river constructed in the early 1900s. After two decades of planning, workers finished removing them in 2014, opening about 70 miles (113 kilometers) of habitat for salmon and steelhead.

Biologists say it will take at least a generation for the river to recover, but within months of the dams being removed, salmon were already recolonizing sections of the river they had not accessed in more than a century. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, which has been closely involved in restoration work, is opening a limited subsistence fishery this fall for coho salmon, its first since the dams came down.

Brink, the Karuk Tribe vice chair, hopes similar success will happen on the Klamath River. Multiple times per year, Brink and other tribal members participate in ceremonial salmon fishing using handheld nets. In many years, there have been no fish to catch, he said.

“When the river gets to flow freely again, the people can also begin to worship freely again,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed.

We’re now finding out the damaging results of the mandated return to the office–and it’s worse than we thought

Remote, hybrid work allowing consumers to spend differently: Reporter


Gleb Tsipursky
Tue, August 1, 2023

We’re now finding out the damaging consequences of the mandated return to office. And it’s not a pretty picture. A trio of compelling reports–the Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and Unispace's "Returning for Good" report–collectively paint a stark picture of this brewing storm.

Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. In other words, employers knew the mandates would cause some attrition, but they weren’t ready for the serious problems that would result.

Meanwhile, a staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules, according to the Greenhouse report. Moreover, employees from historically underrepresented groups are 22% more likely to consider other options if flexibility comes to an end.

In the SHED survey, the gravity of this situation becomes more evident. The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2-3% pay cut.
People were more open to returning to the office if it was out of choice

Flexible work policies have emerged as the ultimate edge in talent acquisition and retention. The Greenhouse, SHED, and Unispace reports, when viewed together, provide compelling evidence to back this assertion.

Greenhouse finds that 42% of candidates would outright reject roles that lack flexibility. In turn, the SHED survey affirms that employees who work from home a few days a week greatly treasure the arrangement.

The Greenhouse report has ranked employees’ priorities as:

Increased compensation (48%)


Greater job security (34%)


Career advancement opportunities (32%)


Better flexible work policies (28%)


A more positive company culture (27%)

In other words, excluding career-centric factors such as pay, security, and promotion, flexible work policies ranks first in employees’ priorities.

Interestingly, Unispace throws another factor into the mix: choice. According to their report, overall, the top feelings employees revealed they felt towards the office were happy (31%), motivated (30%), and excited (27%). However, all three of these feelings decrease for those with mandated office returns (27%, 26%, and 22% respectively). In other words, staff were more open to returning to the office if it was out of choice, rather than forced.

Real-life cases are mirroring findings

Recently, I was contacted by a regional insurance company with a workforce of around 2,000 employees. The company enforced a return to the office policy, causing waves of unrest. It soon became evident that their attrition rates were climbing steadily. In line with the Greenhouse report's findings, most employees would actively seek a new job if flexible work policies were retracted. The underrepresented groups were even more prone to leave, making the situation more daunting.

At that point, they called me to help as a hybrid work expert who The New York Times has called “the office whisperer.” We worked on adapting their return-to-office plan, switching it from a top-down mandate to a team-driven approach, and focusing on welcoming staff to the office for the sake of collaboration and mentoring. As a result, their attrition rates dropped and the feelings of employees toward the office improved, in line with what the Unispace report suggests.

In another case, a large financial services company began noticing employee turnover despite offering competitive salaries and growth opportunities. Upon running an internal survey, they realized that, aside from better compensation and career advancement opportunities, employees were seeking better flexible work policies. This aligned with the Greenhouse and SHED findings, which ranked flexible work policies as a crucial factor influencing job changes. After consulting with me, they adjusted their policies to be more competitive in offering flexibility.

A late-stage SaaS startup decided to embrace this wave of change. They worked with me to introduce flexible work policies, and the result was almost immediate: They noticed a sharp decrease in employee turnover and an uptick in job applications. Their story echoes the collective message from all three reports: Companies must adapt to flexible work policies or risk being outcompeted by other employers.
Inside an employee’s head

As we navigate these shifting landscapes of work, we cannot ignore the human elements at play. Like unseen puppeteers, cognitive biases subtly shape our decisions and perceptions. In the context of flexibility and retention, two cognitive biases come into sharp focus: the status quo bias and anchoring bias.

Imagine a thriving tech startup, successfully operating in a hybrid model during the pandemic. As the world normalized, leadership decided to return to pre-pandemic, in-person work arrangements. However, they faced resistance and an unexpected swell of turnover.

This situation illustrates the potent influence of the status quo bias. This bias, deeply entrenched in our human psyche, inclines us towards maintaining current states or resisting change. Employees, having tasted the fruits of flexible work, felt averse to relinquishing these newfound freedoms.

Consider a large financial institution that enforced a full return to office after the pandemic. Many employees, initially attracted by the brand and pay scale, felt disgruntled. The crux of the problem lies in the anchoring bias, which leads us to heavily rely on the first piece of information offered (the anchor) when making decisions.

When initially joining the company, the employees were primarily concerned with compensation and job security. Once within the fold, the pandemic caused them to shift their focus to work-life balance and flexibility, as confirmed by both the Greenhouse and SHED reports. Unfortunately, the rigid return-to-office policy made these new anchors seem less attainable, resulting in dissatisfaction and an increased propensity to leave.

As we steer our ships through these tumultuous waters, understanding cognitive biases can help illuminate our path. Recognizing and accounting for the status quo and anchoring biases can enable us to create a workplace that not only attracts but also retains its employees in the new age of flexibility. After all, success in the world of business is as much about understanding people as it is about numbers and strategy.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D. (a.k.a. “the office whisperer”) helps tech and finance industry executives drive collaboration, innovation, and retention in hybrid work. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the bestselling author of seven books, including Never Go With Your Gut and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox and over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist at UNC–Chapel Hill and Ohio State.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

New report makes shocking reveal about America’s coal-fueled power plants — a record-setting change is the culprit



Ben Raker
Tue, August 1, 2023 

The winds of change — or, at least, wind and solar power — may be blowing past dirty old coal as a leading source of electricity in the United States.

Wind and solar combined for nearly 16% of electrical energy generation in the U.S. over the first five months of this year, while coal contributed about 15%, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) — with the first four months also reported on by Electrek.

Wind generated about 12% of the U.S. total through the first five months. Solar, including small-scale and utility-scale production, contributed about 4%.

The statistics were only for part of a year, but they’re another milestone in the continuing transition toward clean energy and away from coal, a power source that releases heat-trapping air pollution. The shift has positive implications for keeping the air healthier and moderating climate change.

Electrek also reports that, when you consider biomass, geothermal, and hydropower as renewable energy along with wind and solar, those energy sources accounted for nearly 26% of U.S. electrical generation through April.

Data appeared in the EIA’s “Electric Power Monthly” reports.

An analysis of the data through April by the nonprofit SUN DAY Campaign noted that solar-generated electricity grew by more than 10% from the same period in 2022 and benefited from large increases in small-scale generation, such as from rooftop solar systems.

Meanwhile, coal-electric generation plunged more than 28% compared to the same time last year, per SUN DAY.

Electricity generation is just one sector of energy use, and coal is still part of a mix of sources we all depend on nationally and globally. And yet, breaking free of this dependence has advantages.

One big plus is saving money. Earlier this year, the group Energy Innovation reported that it’s cheaper to replace 99% of U.S. coal plants with renewables than to run them.

The Inflation Reduction Act has received significant credit for incentivizing the shift to renewables. And the great news for average Americans is that incentives are significant for citizens as well as for companies to save money by switching to renewables.

Meanwhile, on a national level, the trend was clear from early-year data.

Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign, summarized this in a news release: “The mix of all renewables continues to set new records.”

FBI Ordered to Find Out Which Agency Disobeyed White House in Secret Deal, Finds Out It Was Itself

Lucas Ropek
Mon, July 31, 2023 

Photo: xalien (Shutterstock)

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that an unknown federal agency had breached official White House policy and used secretive methods to conduct a business deal with the NSO Group, a blacklisted spyware vendor known for selling powerful surveillance tools. The agency in question not only brazenly disobeyed the government’s official policy, but had also used a front company to facilitate the deal, suggesting that it knew what was happening was not exactly kosher.

After the Times’ story was published, the FBI was ordered by the Biden administration to investigate. Now, several months later, the bureau’s investigation is complete, and it turns out that the agency that disobeyed the White House and purchased the creepy NSO tool was...the FBI.

Yes, the New York Times now reports that the bureau has admitted that it was the mystery agency at the center of the controversy several months back. However, America’s top law enforcement agency is also trying to explain away its involvement, claiming that it was somehow duped into the deal without any knowledge of what was going on.

For years, the NSO Group has been tied to spying scandals all over the world. In November of 2021, the company was blacklisted by the U.S. government and placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, a roster of foreign firms that have been deemed as working contrary to American interests. Being placed on this list effectively ends most investment opportunities involving U.S. businesses or government agencies. The government officially announced that NSO’s blacklisting was part of “the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to... stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression.”

However, five days after the White House announced this policy change, a secretive federal contractor called Riva Networks finalized a deal with NSO to acquire a geolocation tool known as “Landmark.” The tool was supposed to help federal law enforcement triangulate the locations of specific mobile users. Riva had previously worked with the FBI to acquire a spying cool called “Phantom” that could reportedly hack any phone in the U.S. (At the time of this prior deal, the Times reported that the bureau had been considering using “Phantom” for domestic spying but the FBI claimed it was just doing “counterintelligence” work on foreign surveillance tools.) In the contracts for both deals, the FBI used a cover name for Riva, dubbed “Cleopatra Holdings,” while Riva’s CEO, Robin Gamble, used a pseudonym, going by “William Malone.”

If all this cloak and dagger stuff would seem to suggest that the FBI knew what it was doing, bureau officials are now saying that they were somehow tricked by Riva into the “Landmark” deal and that the tool was used on its behalf without them knowing about it. Indeed, the government claims that the tool was used by the U.S. “unwittingly” and that Riva “misled the bureau,” goading them into believing it was an “in-house” tool rather than NSO’s product. Somewhat comically, the FBI also seems to be claiming that it did not find out that Riva had procured the NSO tool until it read about it in the New York Times back in April. After the agency discovered that Riva was using “the spying tool on its behalf,” the contract with the company was terminated by FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. officials recently told the newspaper.

Why was the FBI interested in geolocation at all? According to FBI officials who spoke with the Times, they were looking for “fugitives.” They also claim that the government merely gave Riva phone numbers to chase down and that the contractor did all the actual NSO-aided spying itself. A statement provided to the newspaper reads partially:

“As part of our mission, the FBI is tasked with locating fugitives around the world who are charged in U.S. courts, including for violent crimes and drug trafficking. To accomplish this, the FBI regularly contracts with companies who can provide technological assistance to locate these fugitives who are hiding abroad...The FBI has not employed foreign commercial spyware in these or any other operational endeavors. This geolocation tool did not provide the FBI access to an actual device, phone or computer. We will continue to lawfully utilize authorized tools to protect Americans and bring criminals to justice.”

Even if the FBI’s story is to be believed, it still leaves a whole lot of questions. Why is it that the bureau was so unaware of what was happening with this particular deal? Why would Riva Networks blatantly mislead the government as it is alleged? Is it typical for the FBI to farm out surveillance work to contractors like this? You’d think that America’s top police agency would be a little bit more on top of its own operations than this.

 Gizmodo

Australia's prime minister stands firm against the US on WikiLeaks founder's prosecution


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pauses as he makes a statement to media gathered outside the High Court in London, on Dec. 5, 2011. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday, July 29, 2023 pushed back against Australian demands for an end to Assange’s prosecution, saying the Australian citizen was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File

ROD McGUIRK
Tue, August 1, 2023 

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday his government stands firm against the United States over the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian citizen fighting extradition from Britain on U.S. espionage charges.

Albanese’s center-left Labor Party government has been arguing since winning the 2022 elections that the United States should end its pursuit of the 52-year-old, who has spent four years in a London prison fighting extradition.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed back against the Australian position during a visit Saturday, saying Assange was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified U.S. documents more than a decade ago.

“I understand the concerns and views of Australians. I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter,” Blinken told reporters.

On Tuesday, Albanese said, “This has gone on for too long. Enough is enough."

He told reporters that Blinken’s public comments echoed points made by President Joe Biden’s administration during private discussions with Australian government officials.

“We remain very firm in our view and our representations to the American government and we will continue to do so,” Albanese added.

Assange, whose freedom is widely seen as a test of Australia’s leverage with the Biden administration, was discussed in annual bilateral meetings Brisbane, Australia, last week between Blinken and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Wong told reporters Saturday that Australia wanted the charges “brought to a conclusion.” Australia remains ambiguous about whether the U.S. should drop the prosecution or strike a plea deal.

Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents in 2010. American prosecutors allege he helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

Australia argues there is a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

Assange has been in high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in 2019 because so much time had passed.

Last week, Assange's brother, Gabriel Shipton, called for Australia to increase pressure on the United States.

“Each day the U.S. administration ignores the Australian public on Julian’s freedom, it becomes clearer and clearer Australia’s true standing in the alliance,” Shipton said, referring to a bilateral security treaty signed in 1951.

The Mojave Desert is burning in California's biggest fire of year, torching Joshua trees

Grace Toohey, Alex Wigglesworth
Mon, July 31, 2023 

An air tanker drops fire retardant over the York fire in the Mojave National Preserve on Saturday. (R. Almendinger / National Park Service)

California's biggest wildfire of the year — burning through delicate Joshua Tree forests along the California-Nevada border — is an unusual desert blaze being fueled in part by the rapid growth of underbrush from this winter's record rains.

The York fire had scorched 77,000 acres as of Monday, with no containment. After first being observed Friday, the blaze has spread mainly across the Mojave National Preserve in eastern San Bernardino County, but recently jumped into western Nevada. No evacuations have been issued as a result of the fire, which is burning in mostly remote areas.

“It’s a public misconception that the desert doesn’t burn, but we’re seeing right here that that’s not case," said Sierra Willoughby, a supervisory park ranger at Mojave National Preserve. “They’re not as rare as we would hope them to be."

Just 10 days before this wildfire was spotted in the New York Mountains area of the Mojave National Preserve, park officials warned of extreme fire risk for the federally protected desert, banning all open flames.

“Even though we had a good moisture year with the [winter] season, the very high temperatures that came in July were a concern for our fire folks,” Willoughby said.

Read more: Wildfire burns at California-Nevada border, spawning fire tornadoes, torching desert landscape

Southern California's wet winter and cool spring helped foster increasing levels of invasive grasses and underbrush in the Mojave and Colorado deserts, federal officials said, which has made the region exceptionally susceptible to brush fires this summer as those plants dry out.

This year's climate patterns have provided a "more continuous fuel bed" than is typical for desert ecosystems, UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain said on Twitter.

It all comes down to antecedent climate conditions. Given an exceptionally wet winter and cool spring, larger fires in sparsely vegetated areas that are typically "fuel limited" should be expected due to the extra vegetation growth such conditions foster. (2/3)
— Dr. Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) July 30, 2023

"Big fires in the desert are entirely consistent with the fire season outlook for 2023," Swain wrote, noting that poses a major concern for ecologists and desert conservationists.

Fire regimes tend to vary on a gradient from climate-limited, in which there is an abundance of fuel but conditions are often too wet to carry fire, to fuel-limited, in which the climate is generally conducive to fire but there is usually not enough vegetation to carry it.

For this reason, forecasters had called for a less active fire season in California’s higher-elevation forests, which are dense but remain moist from the wet winter. But at lower elevations, the rains helped more grasses grow, and then several weeks of high temperatures caused the vegetation to dry out — or cure — priming it to become wildfire fuel.

Already, a June 10 wildfire burned more than 1,000 acres in the Pleasant Valley area of Joshua Tree National Park. Invasive grasses played a role in stoking that fire, known as the Geology fire, which burned in an area populated by Joshua trees, Mojave yucca, creosote and senna, park officials said.

“Most of the deserts in the southwestern U.S. are fairly fuel-limited in dry years, so there was that kind of natural fire break between plants or keeping it confined to relatively small areas,” said Christopher McDonald, a natural resources advisor at UC Cooperative Extension.

But after a year of above-average rainfall, there’s more fuel connecting perennial shrubs and Joshua trees, which enables fire to spread among the plants, he said. Hot, windy conditions further primed vegetation to burn.

Read more: Wet winter may delay — but not deter — 2023 fire season; 'We must not let our guard down'

Joshua trees and other desert plants have limited natural defenses to fires, officials said, and would struggle to recover from such blazes.

The extent of the plants and animals at risk in the York fire are still under investigation, Willoughby said, noting that the blaze has already burned through Joshua tree, juniper and pinyon pine groves. Stephanie Bishop, a National Park Service public information officer and a spokesperson for the York fire, said endangered tortoises that live in the region also could be harmed.

“What we’ve seen is fires go through these areas and take out quite a bit," Willoughby said. The York fire is burning in some of the areas that last saw flames in 2005 from the Hackberry Complex fire, which eventually burned more than 70,000 acres. Willoughby said many of the forests harmed in that blaze 18 years ago still have not recovered.

Read more: California wildfires map

The 2020 Dome fire, which burned more than 40,000 acres across the southwestern California desert — including in the national preserve, but in a different area from the York fire — destroyed an estimated 1 million Joshua trees. Crews and volunteers are trying to replant and revitalize those groves.

In the Eastern Mojave, the heavy winter rains stoked the growth of native grasses, including big galleta, said ecologist Laura Cunningham, California's director at the Western Watersheds Project and co-founder of conservation group Basin and Range Watch. The area doesn’t have as many invasive grasses, such as red brome and cheatgrass, which are more common in low-creosote deserts, but it does have a big Sahara mustard problem, which could be adding to the fuel, she said.

Some models suggest that increased global temperatures as a result of climate change are bringing more rain to the Mojave desert, fueling grass growth and the risk of lightning strikes, Cunningham said. On top of that, more humans traveling into desert areas increases the risk of sparks — from a bullet glancing off a rock while someone is target shooting or a chain dragging on the pavement while someone is hauling a trailer, she said.

The New York Mountains in the Mojave National Preserve have an enormous density of rare plants, including blue blossom, manzanita and uncommon chaparral shrubs, that could be devastated by fire, she said.

“In those desert areas, the mountains are like sky islands, they call them,” she said — they rise from the “sea” of the hot desert floor that surrounds them and host dramatically different populations of plants and animals.

She thinks the vegetation and plants will recover from the fire, but probably very slowly — too slowly for one person to witness in their lifetime, she said.

“It’s kind of sad because it won’t be when we can see it,” she said. “We can watch it recover slowly, but those old-growth Joshua tree woodlands and shrublands, we won’t see those again in our lifetimes.”

California's other big fire of the year — the Bonny fire, which has charred 2,300 acres in Riverside County — is also burning across some arid landscapes as well as through the mountains. It has forced 122 people to evacuate their homes, with almost 800 structures threatened, according to officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The Bonny fire, burning south of Anza, was 20% contained as of Monday morning. One structure has been destroyed, and at least one firefighter was injured in the effort to control the flames. Almost 2,000 personnel are working that blaze, which began Thursday. Its cause is under investigation.

Read more: What wet winter? California prepares for peak wildfire season

Winds remain a major concern for both fires, officials have said.

A challenging weekend of high winds up to 30 mph sparked dangerous fire whirls that pushed the York fire across the Mojave National Preserve, said Bishop, a spokesperson for the York fire and a National Park Service public information officer. The weather overnight into Monday had improved slightly, with winds that were not as strong and some precipitation, which allowed for some groundwork and minimal fire growth, she said.

A monsoonal influence in the area could produce more of that helpful precipitation, but that pattern typically comes with heavy winds, officials said, and the test of the hot desert heat remains.

Read more: Multiple fires erupt as heat wave descends on Southern California

“The biggest challenge today that they’re going to be dealing with is limited visibility due to thick smoke," Bishop said, noting that visibility has dropped to one mile in some areas.

Federal, state and local firefighting teams are battling the York fire, with more than 260 personnel assigned, officials said. The fire has also moved into the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, which is Bureau of Land Management land, Willoughby said.

What ignited the fire remains under investigation, but Bishop said it was determined to have started on private land within the preserve.

Cunningham expressed concern for area residents — as people live in Fourth of July Canyon, right next to Caruthers Canyon, where there are inholdings within the preserve. The fire is also spreading toward Nipton and Searchlight, she said.

“Today is going to be a windy monsoonal stormy day, so we’ll see,” she said. “This ain’t over till it’s over.”

Big fires in the Mojave Desert are “unfortunately becoming a greater concern,” McDonald said.

“Historically, in general, deserts tended to burn fairly infrequently,” he said. “And that’s one of the reasons why you have a lot of these long-lived plants that can grow into big giant Joshua trees, or saguaros in the Sonoran Desert. But as more and more invasive plants, especially invasive grasses, have grown in desert areas, they’re able to carry fire and burn those long-lived plants and cause a change in the fire regime.”

An increase in fire can also lead to a shifting of habitats into something new, Cunningham said.

“If there are too many fires that happen in the same place over and over again, that can eliminate Joshua trees and other plants and turn it into some other type of vegetation,” she said. “So that’s definitely a concern. And again, if temperatures get hotter, that can cause vegetation to sort of migrate upward in elevation or more northerly.

“We know climate change is impacting the earth, so we have to really protect these special places now — really try to maintain them in a resilient way,” she added. “If there’s going to be a fire, we have to help them recover. They will restore themselves, but we can maybe speed up the process by preventing other fires in those same locations, maybe actively planting some seeds out there to help the plants regrow."

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The UK once vowed to be a global climate leader. Now Rishi Sunak is stoking a culture war on green policies

Story by Analysis by Rob Picheta, CNN • 

Less than two years ago, Britain was championing itself as a global leader in the fight against the climate crisis.

At the pivotal COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson rallied world leaders to find agreement on a historic resolution acknowledging the role of fossil fuels in the climate crisis, and the late Queen Elizabeth II said in a landmark speech that “time for words has now moved to the time for action.”

Things feel very different now. As Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered government limps towards an election it is widely expected to lose, determination has seemingly been swapped for division.

And after a decade of cross-party consensus on tackling the climate crisis, experts fear that Sunak has identified green policies as a new wedge issue that could help reverse his party’s sagging fortunes.

Sunak said Monday he wants to “max out” oil and gas developments in Britain’s North Sea, announcing an expansion in drilling for the fossil fuels that environmental groups have condemned.

The move followed a proclamation from Sunak to Britain’s drivers, in the Telegraph newspaper, that he was “on their side,” as he ordered a review of “anti-motorist” low-traffic neighborhoods created to improve urban air quality.



Sunak poses during COP26. Since becoming prime minister, critics say he has diminished the UK's standing as a leader on the climate. - DANIEL LEAL/AFP/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

Jibes towards climate activists have meanwhile become a common feature at the despatch box in parliament. And in combative interview exchanges on Monday, Sunak defended his frequent use of a jet or helicopter to attend events around the UK – a habit that opposition politicians have often criticized.

“What the government seems to be doing is using the climate to divide the public,” Luke Murphy, the associate director for energy, climate, housing and infrastructure at the progressive IPPR think tank, told CNN. “There does seem to be a degree of political opportunism around what they’ve been doing.”

Few expect the new push to be an election-winner. But Murphy, like many climate experts, fears there are wider ramifications for Britain’s global standing.

“For all the faults of the Boris Johnson government, what you can say is there appeared to be a genuine commitment to net zero and to the climate agenda,” he said.

“Since then we’ve gone backwards. We’ve stalled in many policy areas,” Murphy added. “I don’t think many people would actually now consider the UK to be a global leader (on the climate).”

A populist approach to the climate

Since coming into power, Sunak has been scrambling for wedge issues that could resonate with Britons and turn around his party’s woeful standing with the public. Small boat crossings of asylum-seekers, transgender protections and other so-called “culture war” battles have all been eagerly waged by a prime minister who vowed during his first leadership campaign last year to stop “woke nonsense.”

But amid a deepening cost of living crisis and the decline in Britain’s public services, Sunak has failed to shake the increasingly sticky label applied to him – that he is a caretaker of the managed decline of the Conservative Party, which has ruled for 13 years and is running low on ideas.

A glimmer of hope arrived for Sunak, however, in an unexpected and narrow victory in the by-election to replace Boris Johnson as an MP for Uxbridge, a region on the western fringe of London. The vote was dominated by local opposition to the expansion of London’s world-first low-emissions zone, which gave local Conservatives a rare issue on which they could go on the offensive.

“This campaign is a referendum on ULEZ,” the area’s new MP Steve Tuckwell told CNN in the days leading up to the vote. “We know it’s going to devastate local businesses,” said Tuckwell, who omitted virtually any mention of his party from leaflets and instead branded himself the “anti-ULEZ candidate.”

In the days since that vote, and despite losing a significant share of the votes in the region, leading Conservatives have gleefully picked up the anti-green baton. Ministers have increasingly conflated emissions-slashing agendas with the activist fringes of the climate movement, trying to draw links between the opposition Labour Party and Just Stop Oil, the divisive group known for interrupting national events with guerilla protests.



A Just Stop Oil protester disrupts a match at July's Wimbledon Championships. Sunak's ministers have been attempting to link the group to the Labour Party, which is on course to win the next election. - Hannah Mckay/Reuters© Provided by CNN

Announcing the North Sea drilling expansion on Monday, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps claimed that the opposition Labour Party are the “political wing” of Just Stop Oil, despite the party’s leader Keir Starmer criticizing the group’s tactics. In June, Sunak claimed that “eco-zealots” are writing Labour’s energy policy.

“What you are seeing is a much more populist way of handling (the climate),” Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London and the author of books on the Conservatives, told CNN.

“Uxbridge has encouraged the party to feel – in the absence of many other policies that are going well for them – that it’s a move that has some traction with a certain section of voters,” Bale said. More than three-quarters of British households have a car, and the rate of carless households has fallen steadily in recent years.

Making enemies

It is a difficult path for Sunak to tread. Even voters opposed to schemes like ULEZ do not necessarily lack concern about the climate; the topic has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with nearly two-thirds of Britons consistently ranking it among the most important issues facing the country, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has forcefully defended his city’s programs, including ULEZ, which last week survived a legal challenge brought by five Conservative councils. On Sunday, Khan nodded to recent heatwaves and wildfires in Europe, writing: “The world is on fire – and this is all the leadership we’re getting from Rishi Sunak.”

And Sunak’s approach to the climate is increasingly earning him enemies within his own party.

Foreign Office minister Zac Goldsmith resigned in June, lambasting Sunak’s climate policies. “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested,” he wrote in his resignation letter.



A North Sea oil rig off the coast of Scotland. Sunak's decision to expand drilling in the North Sea was criticized by climate experts. - 

WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

And on Monday Chris Skidmore, a Conservative former energy minister who is now on the backbenches, said Sunak’s expansion of North Sea drilling puts him on “the wrong side of history.”

Skidmore called the move “the wrong decision at precisely the wrong time, when the rest of the world is experiencing record heat waves.”

But with Britain agitating for a change in leadership and with little else to champion, Uxbridge has apparently given Sunak a blueprint for next year’s election – and waging battles with detractors may help him elevate his pitch.

“There aren’t many obvious other avenues for this government to go down,” Bale, the politics professor, said. “This, like the small boats issue, perhaps provides a bit of a distraction for people.”

“You can see a very obvious parallel with what’s going on with migration,” he added. “That is a typically populist attack line – making a distinction between people on the one hand, and elites on the other.”

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QUEEN CITY

Murray Mandryk: Homeless eviction defies our supposed welcoming nature

Opinion by Murray Mandryk • Leader Post

Sending in the police to remove the poor, homeless and drug addicted is not a solution for a city and province that prides itself on being welcoming.

Just beyond the chain-link fencing encircling Regina City Hall with no less than 24 “No Trespassing” signs, you can still visit the courtyard monuments telling us what a welcoming place this is.

Gone are the tents that housed the houseless. And gone are the people who lived in those tents … although some may not have gone very far.

Monday morning, people milled about across the street from city hall near the YWCA on McIntyre Street, just behind the Fresh and Sweet coffee house.

After Regina police tore down the homeless encampment on Friday. half a dozen were sent out of town to hotels in Balgonie for the weekend.

The rest? We don’t know. Perhaps they sought refuge in parts unknown. Out of sight, out of mind?

As explained by city manager Niki Anderson, the issue for these people nobody seems to care much about is public safety.

“Elected officials who claim they should have been consulted about today’s response are, in fact, placing the public at greater risk by inappropriately challenging public safety experts and eroding confidence in my administration’s ability to protect the residents of the City of Regina,” Anderson wrote in a news release.

Of course, we are still a welcoming place … or so the monuments in the city hall courtyard suggest.

You can still go there and peruse those signs. A couple of uniformed private security personnel may give you the once-over, but if you’re a frumpy looking, 60ish white guy, you needn’t worry.

“Dominion of Canada. Tawaw,” reads one monument. Tawaw means “it is open” in Cree. Ironically, the Cree translation also means “it has a hole in it.” That one seems more apropos, given the past few days.

“Open Door Policy. Open Door Society. Open Hearts. Open Minds,” states the Regina City Hall monument from where the homeless were evicted.

“Who dreams shall live,” further states the monument a few feet away from where camp resident Leitsha Bigknife died two weeks ago.

Perhaps we’re no different than anywhere else that similarly prides itself on being welcoming and can’t see when we aren’t.

A few decades back, then-Calgary mayor and later premier Ralph Klein made it known that “Eastern creeps and bums” weren’t welcome. Vancouver, which purports to be the loveliest city in Canada, cleaned out its east end before the 2010 Olympics, so the world could see just how lovely it was.

Toronto? Montreal? Winnipeg? Ottawa? Are they really any different than Saskatchewan, where the solution was to give out-of-province welfare recipients a one-way bus ticket to Vancouver … until we sold the bus company?

With deaths and fires at the Regina City Hall homeless camp, there’s no denying dangers were mounting. City fire and police officials are being vilified, but this is first about keeping the public (including those in the camp) safe.

Finally, issues of mental health and the scourge of serious drug abuse surely must leave those in charge feeling helpless. One might even sympathize with the Saskatchewan Party government, were it not hiding behind the politics.

Asked for simple followup information Monday and an interview with the minister, officials with Gene Makowsky’s Social Services Ministry told the Leader-Post they have “strict rules engaging with the Regina media” because there’s byelections going on.

Beyond this being simply nonsense, this is the same government putting up billboards outside the city slamming teachers. And this same government that won’t meet with municipalities to talk about changes to its Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) program now clearly adding to the homeless crisis.

Meanwhile, there are 700 vacant Saskatchewan Housing Corp. units. The provincial government is sitting on its second year of a billion-dollar surplus, holding back that money to either cut cheques or cut sales tax sometime before next year’s election.

There again, why the hell should provincial politicians meet with those running the City of Regina when they won’t even talk to each other?

We chose multis e gentibus vires as our provincial motto because we wanted to say we welcomed everyone. Well, we clearly don’t.

Forget the mottos and monuments. If you are in distress, the signs say you need to go elsewhere.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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 PHENOMENAL

#TheMoment the northern lights and lightning converged over Saskatchewan

Tristan Wingert has been chasing auroras for over six years — but he'd never seen anything like this before: a stunning time-lapse of a powerful thunderstorm and the northern lights together in the night sky