NATURE

IN THIS EPISODE:

Scientists say they now understand more about the mysterious role of epigenetics in cancer growth.

Evidence points to the map being made by Hipparchus, the "father of scientific astronomy."

Our Medieval ancestors left us with a biological legacy: Genes that helped them survive the Black Death likely make us more susceptible to certain diseases today.

ABNC is one of the largest urban wilderness preserves in the United States, and home to over 370 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.

Conservation scientists hope that preserving genetic material offers future insurance against extinction

She has four limbs, expressive eyes and likes to stroll through greenery in New York City.

Brides and grooms who want more sustainable options for their weddings are transforming an industry traditionally fraught with waste.

The European Union’s executive arm is moving to jump-start plans for the EU to abandon Russian energy amid the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.

Dozens of environmental and anti-nuclear organizations are opposing any attempt to extend the operating life of California's last running nuclear power plant.

Major energy producing states from Alaska to Pennsylvania are reaping a windfall from soaring oil and natural gas prices, stoked by the war in Ukraine and the U.S.-led ban on Russian oil imports.

The owner of an oil pipeline that spewed thousands of barrels of crude oil onto Southern California beaches in 2015 has agreed to pay $230 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by fishermen and property owners.

New Mexico’s governor is asking for additional federal assistance to respond to wildfires burning across the state’s north, including one that is the second-largest in the state’s history and that officials estimate has destroyed hundreds of homes.

India has banned exports of wheat effective immediately.

Lighter winds allowed for the most intense aerial attack this week on multiple wildfires in New Mexico, including the biggest U.S. wildfire burning northeast of Santa Fe.

In the first such trial of the war, the defendant, 21, is accused of killing an unarmed civilian.

The fatal floods that wreaked havoc in South Africa in mid-April this year have been attributed to human-caused climate change, a rapid analysis published Friday by a team of leading international scientists said.

A baby giraffe was born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park with an unusual disorder that caused her front limb to bend the wrong way.

Scuba divers at Lake Tahoe are sorting through their haul after an unprecedented, yearlong effort to remove litter from the alpine lake's entire 72 miles of shoreline atop the Sierra Nevada.

In the 30 years that Ara Mirzaian has worked with orthotics, he has never had a patient like this: A baby giraffe.

The Biden administration says it is canceling three oil and gas lease sales scheduled in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.

Wildfires in the West are on a furious pace early this year.

The California Coastal Commission has rejected a long-standing proposal to build a $1.4 billion seawater desalination plant to turn ocean water into drinking water.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo pushed back forcefully Wednesday against critics — including some within the Biden administration — who say a government investigation of solar imports from Southeast Asia is hindering President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate goals.

Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether a Trump administration interior secretary engaged in possible criminal conduct while helping an Arizona developer get a crucial permit for a housing project.

More people in northern New Mexico are being warned they might have to flee as the largest wildfire burning in the United States heads toward mountain resort towns.

The frequency and duration of droughts will continue to increase due to human-caused climate change, with water scarcity already affecting billions of people across the world, the United Nations warned in a report Wednesday.

The remote Greek island of Tilos has pioneered a recycling plant that could act as a blueprint for other islands — including popular holiday destinations — that struggle with waste disposal.

Australian government scientists say 91% of the Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed this year was bleached in the fourth mass event in seven years.

Actor and activist James Cromwell glued his hand to a midtown Manhattan Starbucks counter to protest the coffee chain’s extra charge for plant-based milk.

California's water usage jumped nearly 19% in March.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged authorities to take stronger action to prevent wildfires and increase coordiation between various official agencies in dealing with them.

Stories about long-departed Las Vegas organized crime figures are surfacing after a second set of unidentified human remains were revealed as the water level falls on drought-stricken Lake Mead.

The biggest wildfire in the U.S. burning in New Mexico east of Santa Fe is spreading north toward mountain resort towns near Taos.

A federal attorney says President Joe Biden legally called for suspending new and gas lease sales while considering their effect on climate change, and onshore and offshore sales were legally postponed.

Brazilian environmental and Indigenous organizations are urging the United States to fund forest protection initiatives that directly involve forest peoples.

Lake Mead is receding and Sin City is awash with mob lore after a second set of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of the drought-stricken Colorado River reservoir just a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip.

Humans don’t know what they’re missing in Miami, just under the surface of a busy shipping channel in the “cruise capital of the world.”.

Firefighters in New Mexico’s Rocky Mountain foothills are excavating new firebreaks and clearing brush to keep a massive wildfire from destroying more homes and pine forests.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says drought during the growing season has made farmers in most of Texas, all of Louisiana and parts of Arkansas and Mississippi eligible to apply for federal aid.

Many climate scientists share a sense of optimism with professionals in other tough jobs like emergency room doctors and researchers who study Alzheimer’s Disease even as they chronicle a world losing its protective balance with the sun.

The deepest fears of some New Yorkers are crawling to the surface as the metropolis continues its recovery from the pandemic.

Residents of a northern New Mexico city tried to recapture a sense of normalcy as their rural neighbors hunkered down amid predictions of extreme fire conditions.

Fast winds are complicating the fight against fires burning across northeast New Mexico.

California is preparing for an energy shortfall equivalent to what it takes to power about 1.3 million homes when demand is at its peak in the hottest months of summer.

As the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. marches across northern New Mexico, residents have been guided by their faith and their connection to each other and the land.

In lush fields southwest of Paris, farmers are joining Europe’s fight to free itself from Russian gas.

In a bid to protect coastal communities from climate change and encourage investment, African nations are increasingly turning to mangrove restoration projects, with Mozambique becoming the latest addition to the growing list of countries with large scale mangrove initiatives.

Bird flu is killing an alarming number of bald eagles and other wild birds, with many sick birds arriving at rehabilitation centers unsteady on their talons and unable to fly.

The Biden administration has announced a wide-ranging enforcement strategy aimed at holding industrial polluters accountable for damage done to poor and minority communities.

An Associated Press analysis has found a growing number of hazardous dams in poor condition across the U.S. The AP tallied more than 2,200 dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition that are rated as high hazard, meaning their failure likely would kill someone.

A NASA climate research scientist who has spent much of her career explaining how global food production systems must adapt to a changing climate was awarded the World Food Prize at a ceremony at the U.S. Department of State in Washington.

Firefighters in New Mexico are taking advantage of diminished winds to build more fire lines and clear combustible brush near homes close to the fringes of the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. The blaze has charred hundreds of square miles of tinder-dry forest, destroying dozens of homes and triggering the evacuation of thousands across an expansive stretch of rural northeastern New Mexico.

Firefighters have slowed the advance of the largest wildfire in the U.S. as heavy winds relented.

Dole in recent months has issued three recalls of mixed greens and lettuce products sold under nearly a dozen brands.

Covid-19 has claimed nearly 6 million lives. Antimicrobial resistance may claim 10 million annually by 2050 — and that figure is starting to look low.

"Somehow it's converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we've seen before," team leader Dr. Hurley-Walker said.

NASA recently announced the discovery of 301 newly identified planets beyond the edges of our solar system, presenting new scientific mysteries. Here's what that discovery means.

Health bosses could not provide evidence of progress a year after the report into Elizabeth's death.

There’s been swift, early warning about the new variant but that only means there’s still a lot of work to be done.

It is the final day of the Court of Appeal hearing and a ruling will be published at a later date.

It's long been known that the Vikings arrived in the Americas sometime before Christopher Columbus. Now, a new article in the journal Nature pinpoints the exact year: 1021.

The race to decarbonize is making growing trees popular because its a cheaper, but carbon capture tech needs to be scaled up, says Microsoft in Nature article.

The incremental nature of this year’s iPhone 13 improvements is a big letdown and offers current iPhone owners little incentive to trade up.

Heating from humans has caused irreparable damage to the Earth that may get worse in coming decades.

Steven Bouquet has been jailed for more than five years after he killed nine cats in night attacks.

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates back Nature's Fynd, an alt-meat company whose fungus-based breakfast patties, nuggets and cream cheese are headed to grocery stores.

Police are hunting vandals who targeted the commemorative stone in Motherwell, Lanarkshire.

"Sunday Morning" takes us to the far-away shores of Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, home to the aptly-named Fischer's Lovebirds. Videographer: Lee McEachern.

Nature: Starling murmurations "Sunday Morning" goes sky-gazing at Greenbrae, California, where flocks of starlings are performing aerial acrobatics known as murmurations. Videographer: Lee McEachern.

Nature: Baboons in Botswana "Sunday Morning" takes us among the baboons at Chobe National Park in Botswana, Africa. Videographer: Justin Grubb.

Nature: Big horn sheep in Montana "Sunday Morning" takes us to Big Sky Country, in Western Montana's Sapphire Mountains. Videographer: Brad Markel.

Nature: Elephant seals "Sunday Morning" takes us to the beach at San Simeon, Calif., a home for elephant seals. Videographer: Lance Milbrand.

In the Chicago area, full-service restaurants and hotels were singled out as contributing “far more to infections” among the superspreader locations, according to the study, which has been peer reviewed and was placed on Nature’s website Tuesday prior to final editing. The travel period examined dates to March and May, before the surges seen during the summer and now in the fall.

“I think the nature of the campaign that’s been waged against her is really a campaign against all of the criminal justice reforms we’ve been struggling so hard to enact — for people who want to go back to the bad old days when the jail was often full of poor Black and brown people who were often there on charges of nonviolent offenses and they just couldn’t pay their bail,” Preckwinkle said.

There are still few places where our homeless can go," Salvation Army Major David Yardley said at the group's downtown center. Blistering temperatures can endanger health, and can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke and even death. The daily high temperatures in Phoenix were forecast to hit 110 degrees (43C) or very close to it during the extreme heat warning in effect through Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters said. The cooling stations in metro Phoenix open when the weather service declares extreme heat warnings They were also open for a string of days during an extreme heat warning in late April. In metro Las Vegas, where an excessive heat warning is in effect until Friday evening, four heat relief stations were open.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday turned down a request by the Trump administration and energy industry groups to revive a permit program for new oil and gas pipelines that had been canceled by a lower court. The case originated with a challenge to the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. but has affected oil and gas pipeline proposals across the nation. Backed by numerous states and industry groups, attorneys for the government argued the cancellation would delay construction of pipelines needed to deliver fuel to power plants and other destinations. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency request to block Morris' ruling. They said in a one-page decision that the government, states and industry groups had not demonstrated sufficient harm to their interests to justify reviving the program while the case is still pending.

An Indian man selling earthen pots beneath a bridge drinks water in Ahmedabad, India, Thursday, May 28, 2020. Cyclone Amphan, a massive super storm that crossed the unusually warm Bay of Bengal last week, sucked up huge amounts of moisture, leaving dry, hot winds to form a heat wave over parts of central and northern India. Gurjar, a top official of Indias Locust Warning Organization, said his 50-person team was scrambling to stop the swarms before breeding can take place during Indias monsoons, which begin in July. Indian environmental journalist Joydeep Gupta said that the perfect storm of pandemic, heat and locusts show India must go green. Its building coping abilities of the very poor to be able to deal with stress after stress after stress, she said.

DENVER Nearly two dozen states and several cities on Wednesday filed a legal challenge to the Trump administrations rollback of Obama-era mileage standards, saying science backed up the old regulations developed with the help of the nation's car makers. The new mileage standards require automakers to achieve 1.5% annual increases in fuel efficiency. The Obama-era standards called for 5% annual increases and were seen as the government's most forceful initiative against climate-changing fossil fuel emissions. The states and cities claim the rule violates the Clean Air Act, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Opponents claim dirtier air from the rollback will kill and injure more people than the rollback claims to save in roadway accidents.

A juvenile black bear roams through Fort Myers, Fla., Tuesday morning, May 26, 2020. A black bear roaming around a Florida city proved no match for the doughnuts that lured the animal into a humane trap. Wildlife officials say bears tend to move more in the spring in search of mates and, as always, food. Brown said the bear was relocated to a state-managed wildlife area. Authorities estimate there are about 4,000 black bears in Florida.

People who live in those areas will experience a phenomenon like no other compared to 2004, CNN reported. This particular cicada is part of a group called Brood IX, or periodical cicadas, and they are different from the ones that arrive annually in southern states like Texas, according to CicadaMania.com. According to Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension, these particular types of cicadas emerge from the ground after 13 or 17 years of developing underground, beginning in early May and fading to around July. The timing of a 13- or 17-year cycle is one of the great mysteries of the insect world, Virginia Tech stated on their Entomology website. You can see a map of cicada activity by Brood year courtesy of USDA Forest Service by clicking here.

Circuit Court of Appeals said state courts are the proper forum for the lawsuits alleging that Big Oil promoted petroleum as environmentally responsible when producers knew it was causing damage. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)LOS ANGELES Big Oil lost a pair of court battles Tuesday that could lead to trials in lawsuits by California cities and counties seeking damages for the impact of climate change. The oil companies strategy is to keep the light from shining on their own behavior. Oil companies got the cases transferred to San Francisco federal court, where two judges reached different conclusions. The companies had argued that federal law controls fossil fuel production, and Congress has encouraged oil and gas development.

A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration's efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles. The judge canceled energy leases on more than 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of public land in Montana and Wyoming. But the latest ruling, handed down Friday, appears to go further and strike at the administration's broader energy policies. Their numbers have plummeted due to energy development, disease and other factors. Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma noted that some of the cancelled leases had been sold before the Trump administration's policies went into full effect.

According to the ruling, Volkswagen is basically obliged to pay damages to car owners affected by the diesel scandal. Volkswagen said the decision announced Monday would clear the way for settlement of remaining consumer claims in Germany. The decision affects some 60,000 individual claims brought by car owners there; around 262,000 others have already been covered by an 830 million-euro ($904 million) class-action settlement. For the majority of the 60,000 pending cases, this ruling provides clarity, the company said in a statement. He had sought the full purchase price but the court ruled he must accept less due to depreciation related to the distance he drove.

In this Friday, May 15, 2020 photo, Joel Johnson rides his new bicycle on a bike path at Crissy Field near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Johnson hadn't owned a bicycle since he was 15, but soon after the coronavirus pandemic led to a shelter in place order in San Francisco, he bought a bike to avoid crowded public trains and buses. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)SAN FRANCISCO Joel Johnson hadnt owned a bicycle since he was 15, but the pandemic changed all that. San Francisco soon followed, closing sections of twelve streets in a city that already has a robust network of bike lanes. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, an advocacy and education group, has seen demand for its classes on city biking now online jump from 30 participants to more than 100, Executive Director Brian Wiedenmeier said.

In this Friday, May, 22, 2020 photo released by the Woodland Park Zoo shows a 2 1/2-month-old male gorilla, Kitoko, with mom Uzumm. Kitoko was injured Saturday, during a skirmish among his six-member family group in Seattle. (Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo via AP)SEATTLE A baby gorilla was badly injured at a Seattle zoo on Saturday when he was caught in a skirmish between his family group members, zookeepers said. Animal health experts at the Woodland Park Zoo say little Kitoko was bitten on the head, likely by accident when another gorilla tried to bite his mother, Uzumma. Gorillas tend to be gentle giants but conflicts among family members do occur, in zoos and in nature, Woodland Park Zoo mammal curator Martin Ramirez said.

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park often leave common sense and situational awareness at home, as those examples in the past year show. Were out there.Other national parks that have reopened include Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, where park officials urge visitors to arrive early at popular spots. We're expecting there to be less people on the trails than being open all day, said Grand Canyon spokesperson Lily Daniels. A lot of it is self-governance.That's not a good idea, said former Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger in an opinion piece Friday in The Arizona Republic. No ones an expert at reopening national parks in a pandemic, Sholly said.

Acting under an earlier order in the case, the administration in February released an analysis that said the decision to resume coal sales would make little difference over time in greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, a contention critics said was flawed. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued the administration only considered emissions from a handful of leases and failed to capture the cumulative, long-term impact of the coal program. Yet critics of the coal program note that some lease sales have continued and say the administrations moves could open tens of thousands of acres of public lands to new mining. The coal program is overseen by the U.S. If those mines are to continue operating, they will need to keep expanding onto federal lands, he said.

Get ready to hear that eerie noise that can only come from a cicada! Experts said a massive amount of the noisy bugs are making their way to the skies after 17 years underground, according to a CNN report. They believe as many as 1.5 million cicadas may emerge in parts of Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. Cicadas dont do not bite or sting, and they do not pose a threat to people, experts said. However, they could cause damage to trees.

This Aug. 1, 2018, aerial photo made available by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows Grayton Beach State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. The squeak,' squeak, 'squeak of the sand when you walk in it.It's a large reason the beach was picked as the best in the United States by Stephen Dr. Beach Leatherman, a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University, who has been ranking the nation's beaches for 30 years. Grayton Beach State Park won the list's top spot even without a smoking ban based on its sheer beauty. I have caught lots of fish at Grayton Beach State Park, Cherry said.

This Aug. 1, 2018, aerial photo made available by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows Grayton Beach State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. The squeak,' squeak, 'squeak of the sand when you walk in it.It's a large reason the beach was picked as the best in the United States by Stephen Dr. Beach Leatherman, a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University, who has been ranking the nation's beaches for 30 years. Grayton Beach State Park won the list's top spot even without a smoking ban based on its sheer beauty. I have caught lots of fish at Grayton Beach State Park, Cherry said.

BRUSSELS The European Commission unveiled plans Wednesday to protect biodiversity across the 27-nation bloc while building a more sustainable food system, insisting on the need to both reduce the use of pesticides and promote organic farming. The commission also wants to plant at least 3 extra billion trees over the next ten years. The use of antimicrobials, which include antibiotics, should also be reduced by 50% for fish and animal farming. The commission also estimates that investing in organic farming will help create 10-20% more jobs per hectare than traditional farming. Farmers alone must not bear the brunt of the costs of further environmental and climate protection," said COPA president Joachim Rukwied.

(Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)WASHINGTON Democrats on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration's moves to roll back environmental regulations during the coronavirus crisis, with one senator saying a "pandemic of pollution'' has been released. Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the EPA remains open for business" and "at work meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment.'' While the rest of the country works around the clock to combat and overcome this deadly respiratory pandemic, the Trump EPA has been spearheading a pandemic of pollution, Carper said. An EPA spokeswoman disputed Democrats claims that the temporary enforcement waiver allows companies to openly exceed pollution limits. He said that Trump's EPA has saved U.S. businesses more than $5 billion in regulatory costs.

The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. For a week in April, the United States cut its carbon dioxide levels by about one-third. The study was carried out by Global Carbon Project, a consortium of international scientists that produces the authoritative annual estimate of carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, the study found that drastic reductions in air travel only accounted for 10% of the overall pollution drop.

FILE - In this May 18, 1980, file photo, Mount St. Helens sends a plume of ash, smoke and debris skyward as it erupts. May 18, 2020, is the 40th anniversary of the eruption that killed more than 50 people and blasted more than 1,300 feet off the mountain's peak. (AP Photo/Jack Smith, File)COUGAR, Wash. The coronavirus outbreak disrupted what had been big plans to mark the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. And Mount St. Helens may not be done yet. The first of a series of small explosions on Oct. 1 shot volcanic ash and gases into the air.

FILE - In this April 5, 2020 file photo, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks at the National Palace in Mexico City. Industry associations said it will affect 28 solar and wind projects that were ready to go online, and 16 more under construction, with a total of $6.4 billion in investments, much of it from foreign firms. Mexico also has been slow to build supplementary plants for the times when wind or sun power naturally decreases. But the situation really hit crisis levels when the pandemic caused a huge drop in electricity demand as factories closed. There was literally nowhere for the fuel oil to go if the state-run plants didn't burn it, and no money to subsidize the unused power plants.

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 13, 2020, file, photo beachgoers walk and exercise on the beach in Malibu, Calif. Phil Murphy issued guidance Thursday to officials in shore towns on reopening beaches, directing them to set occupancy limits and spacing requirements. Free public beaches opened a few weeks ago. Public health officials were concerned large gatherings could allow the virus to spread. Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, said it was sensible to start reopening beaches and see how it goes.

We leave you this Sunday Morning with the mighty moose of Maine's North Woods. Videographer: Scot Miller

We end this week's episode with a return to Dallas, this time at the Great Trinity Forest. Videographer: Scot Miller

We leave you this Sunday Morning among flowers in bloom in Arizona's Sonoran Desert, near Pinnacle Peak. Videographer: Phil Giriodi