critic

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was tracking right-hander Emmet Sheehan’s velocity against the Rangers Saturday, but it wasn’t going to be his primary measurement of the start.

“I think right now, where he’s at, the hitters will tell us the most, not the radar gun,” Roberts said before the Dodgers’ 6-3 win.

Sheehan had both in his first quality start of the season.

Just look at the way he attacked Jake Burger in the sixth inning to close his outing. Sheehan threw three fastballs in the at-bat. That pitch averaged at 95.2 mph on Saturday, almost 1 ½ mph over his season average. And even as his pitch count climbed into the mid-70s, he was sitting at around 94 mph.

Dodger Teoscar Hernández watches his three-run homer clear the left center wall during a win over the Texas Rangers Saturday at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

The last pitch he threw was a slider off the plate. Burger was able to get a piece of it, but only enough to ground out to first.

Saturday’s start was Sheehan’s best based on both consistency and results. He held the Rangers to three runs and four hits in six innings.

He’d found a cue in his work between starts. And if the adjustment unlocks a consistent run, that would do a lot to stabilize the Dodgers’ rotation at the back end.

“One of the big things this week was the glove tap,” Sheehan said. “Just timing everything up. Before, I feel like I was getting in good positions, I just wasn’t timing everything up the right way. I think that helped a lot.”

He was cruising through most of it — other than the two home runs he surrendered to Rangers leadoff hitter Brandon Nimmo.

Sheehan turned around his start immediately after the first long ball, on the second pitch of the game.

He came in throwing hard, pumping 96.2 mph on the first fastball, a ball inside, and 95.7 on the second. The latter drifted over the plate, and Nimmo lined it to straightaway center field, just over the “395” printed on the wall.

Sheehan, undeterred, retired the next eight batters. Nimmo hit a two-out ground-rule double that bounced over the left-field fence in his next at-bat, but Sheehan struck out Ezequiel Duran on a slider to quickly end the inning.

Only two Rangers besides Nimmo reached base against Sheehan. Evan Carter drew a leadoff walk in the fifth, and Josh Jung led off the sixth with a single into shallow center field.

Other than that, Sheehan recorded six strikeouts and generated mostly groundball contact.

He was also pitching with a lead for most of his outing, thanks to a solo homer from Shohei Ohtani and three-run shot from Teoscar Hernández in the first. The Dodgers added to their lead in the third inning with two walks, a single, and a run-scoring double play.

So, when the Rangers’ lineup turned over again, and Nimmo stepped up to the plate with a runner on base in the sixth, Sheehan was working with a four-run cushion.

Dodgers pitcher Alex Vesia celebrates after earning a save during the Dodgers’ win over the Texas Rangers on Saturday at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Sheehan stayed away from his fastball, but Nimmo managed to get a hold of an inside slider.

Again, Sheehan responded with three straight outs, this time all infield grounders.

The Dodgers’ bullpen turned in a scoreless performance for three innings, even with Roberts staying away from closer Edwin Díaz, whose velocity was down Friday in his first blown save of the season.

And in the eighth, center fielder Andy Pages kept up his red-hot offensive start to the season with an RBI single into left field for insurance.

The Dodgers are off to the best offensive start of any National League team, whether they’re measured by runs (89), batting average (.297), slugging percentage (.507) or offensive fWAR (30.0).

The unknown entering the game was Sheehan, who had been working through directional issues in his delivery.

“There’s a little bit of east-west with him, and that’s kind of how he gets his power,” Roberts said. “But I think that towards the end of the year and spring, it got a little bit too east-west, where you’re just not back to front as far as direction.”

Everything was synced up for him Saturday, and even Nimmo couldn’t ruin that breakthrough.

“It can definitely be tough sometimes,” Sheehan said. “The past like month and a half we’ve been trying to work on it. It felt like at times it wasn’t progressing the way it should, but just stuck with it.”

Snell feels good after live BP

Left-hander Blake Snell threw an inning of live batting practice at Dodger Stadium on Saturday before the Dodgers’ game against the Rangers, taking a new step in his rehab progression.

“It’s very big,” Snell said. “…To be able to face two good hitters and feel good — I’ve got a lot of work to do still, but definitely a big step.”

Snell was delayed in his buildup entering spring training, after pitching through the postseason. He also dealt with shoulder issues last season, sidelined for about four months with what the Dodgers identified as inflammation in his left shoulder.

“I feel great,” Snell said. “I’ve done a lot of different things than I did last year when I was in this position. So I feel way better. I’m just very excited about how I feel right now, where I’m at, getting back to some normalcy again feels really good. I just can’t wait to pitch.”

He revisited old workouts, added Pilates to his routine and changed his diet.

Snell, an avid gamer, has also kept up his Twitch livestream activity while on the injured list. He recently responded to a harsh comment from a critic about his injury while streaming, cursing as he challenged anyone to match his World Series contributions amid pain. The clip naturally circulated widely on social media.

“I’m trying to game with my people, then trolls want to get in there and got something to say,” he said and then broke into a smile. “I should watch my language a little bit, but outside of that, it was pretty true. I’m going to have fun, going to be myself. I’ve got to watch my language though. If my mom sees that. … She probably will.”

He’s bracing for her call if she does.

Snell will continue to build up his workload in a simulated game environment, before eventually leaving on a minor-league rehab assignment. He didn’t say how many live BP sessions he’d need before that next step.

“You got to talk to the jefes,” he said.

Sitting in the dugout, Snell nodded up to the field where some of those bosses — president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, general manager Brandon Gomes and Roberts — stood talking.

Roberts later speculated that Snell would build up to about three innings before pitching in games.

“I just miss pitching, it’s what I love,” Snell said. “So to be able to do that again, I was very excited coming to the field today. Like, I finally get to throw and pitch and see where I’m at, see if I’m good, bad, kind of figure myself out.”

On Saturday, he just wanted to throw strikes, see how his stuff played, and get feedback from utility player Tommy Edman and outfielder Alex Call, who faced him.

“The next one I want to be more crisp, want to hit locations more,” he said. “I only have so many starts left before I’m back. So I really have to hone in and make sure these weeks are very important.”

Injury updates

Edman, who underwent ankle surgery this offseason, is still on track to be activated around late May, Roberts said Saturday. In addition to taking live batting practice, he’s been running, but not quite at full speed, according to Roberts.

Shortstop Mookie Betts (strained right oblique) played catch on the field before the game Saturday.

For scientists, measuring the water in a river or a lake is relatively straightforward. It’s much more complicated to figure out how much water lies underground.

After years of research, a team of scientists has finally mapped what remains of these hidden waters across the United States, and they’ve produced the most extensive estimate of the country’s groundwater to date.

Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Arizona took data from about 800,000 wells and applied a machine-learning model to estimate the depth of the water table nationwide.

“Groundwater is out of sight and out of mind for most people,” said Reed Maxwell, a hydrologist at Princeton and co-author of the recent study in the journal Nature. “Knowing how much we have will be helpful in knowing how to use it wisely.”

They incorporated data on the geology of aquifers and estimated down to nearly 1,300 feet, far deeper than most wells.

The scientists say their detailed map and data could help local decision-makers address overpumping from stressed aquifers, and help researchers estimate how much water has been depleted.

California has seriously depleted groundwater in the San Joaquin, Salinas and Cuyama valleys, Ventura County and other places, with some of the fastest rates of water decline in the world.

In parts of the Central Valley, where large farms draw heavily from wells, aquifer levels have plummeted. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates it has lost 128 million acre-feet, comparable to the volume of Lake Tahoe, since pumps started pulling it out in the early 20th century.

That was as of 2019, and water levels have continued to decline.

(Yueling Ma et al. / Princeton University)

In the desert Southwest, the groundwater is largely considered “fossil water” because it took millennia to accumulate. So once it is pumped out, it’s in effect gone for good.

Even depleting small amounts of water can be a problem, said co-author Laura Condon, a University of Arizona hydrologist. “We see this in Arizona and in Southern California too, where long before you run out of water, you start disappearing wetlands, disappearing small tributaries.”

The total quantity of water underground is still immense. The scientists found nationwide there is roughly 250 billion acre-feet, or 13 times the volume of the Great Lakes.

Data compiled by lead author Yueling Ma show the Colorado River watershed has about as much groundwater as the volume of the Great Lakes, while California has about 70% of that.

Those are vast quantities, but the researchers said that definitely doesn’t mean there is plenty of water to recklessly use up. Declines in groundwater levels have in recent years caused household wells to sputter and run dry, streams and wetlands to dry up, and land to sink, damaging canals and levees. California’s database of dry wells shows about 6,000 have run dry since 2013, but in the last year, only 13 dry wells were reported. So that problem has slowed down for now. It could soon worsen again.

The new map shows groundwater varies widely across the country. In some places, you have to drill down 300 feet to reach it. In others, it’s just a few feet below the soil.

The map can help scientists studying where slow-flowing aquifers are feeding nature, nourishing streams and wetlands.

Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University who wasn’t involved in the research, called the researchers’ map and estimates a “remarkable achievement for modeling and understanding groundwater” in the United States.

The scientists “convincingly show that it is now possible to simulate groundwater depths and availability at very high resolutions,” he said, and they have made their results “accessible and useful for water managers across the country.”

He said the research adds to satellite measurements that scientists now use to track shifts in water over time. What the country still needs, he said, is a “national-scale network of deep groundwater wells” to track the quantity and quality of water all the way down to bedrock.

More water news

Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a strategy to save declining salmon. Now, as Rachel Becker reports for CalMatters, members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe say the state is ending its support for an effort to reintroduce endangered winter-run Chinook to waters upstream of Shasta Lake reservoir, and they feel betrayed.

The Trump administration recently announced it will spend $40 million to begin a plan to raise the height of Shasta Dam, which would expand California’s largest reservoir. As Camille von Kaenel reported for E&E News by Politico, dozens of environmental, fishing and tribal groups sent a letter to Newsom urging him to oppose the Trump administration’s renewed effort to raise the dam.

I followed up to ask Newsom’s office about the idea of raising Shasta Dam. “We aren’t getting distracted by conceptual projects, years from viability,” Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said. Instead, she said the governor is focusing on getting the planned Sites Reservoir built northwest of Sacramento, which “will benefit regions throughout California and is much farther along towards construction.” Gallegos added that the state already is “a significant investor in the project, and the federal government should join us in ensuring this project comes to fruition.”

In the San Joaquin Valley, the Delta-Mendota subbasin has become the fourth farming area to avoid being placed on groundwater probation by state regulators. The State Water Resources Control Board voted this week not to impose enforcement measures on the area, Monserrat Solis reported for SJV Water.

More climate and environment news

The Trump administration has a budget proposal that calls for increasing military spending while slashing funding for clean energy and federal science programs. My colleague Hayley Smith wrote about the proposed cuts, which are strongly opposed by Democrats and environmental groups.

A wolf that captured national attention when she ventured into L.A. County earlier this year continues to make history. As Lila Seidman reports for The Times, it’s the first time a wolf has ventured into Inyo County in the Eastern Sierra in more than a century.

Imperial County supervisors voted to combine several parcels of land to clear the way for construction of a massive data center, which has faced opposition from residents who worry about the complex’s environmental footprint, Kori Suzuki reports for KPBS.

California’s last remaining nuclear power plant has received federal approval to run through at least 2030. My L.A. Times colleague Blanca Begert reports that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s license to operate.

A couple more things

Los Angeles Climate Week started April 8, with a big lineup of community events running through April 15. Here is the full calendar of events, which include a day of activities along the L.A. River and an interfaith climate gathering.

PBS SoCal’s new season of its locally produced environmental series Earth Focus premieres April 22, Earth Day, at 7:30 p.m., with an episode focusing on how L.A. stadiums are taking steps to be more environmentally friendly.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more water and climate news, follow Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social on Bluesky and @ByIanJames on X.

When I cracked open retired firefighter Bruce Hensler’s 15-year-old book, Crucible of Fire, I felt I had found an oracle.

Before 15 out of California’s 20 most destructive fires on record, Hensler described large chunks of cities burning to the ground, insurance companies jacking up premiums after realizing they wildly underestimated the risk and politicians failing to enforce the few fire safety rules on the books.

He even describes the fire chief of a decimated city criticizing city its politicians for failing to properly prepare for such a disaster, resulting in the city ousting the chief. (Sound familiar, Palisadians?)

Yet Hensler wasn’t trying to predict what would unfold in California’s wildland-urban interface in the 21st century. He was simply telling the story of the late 1800s and early 1900s in the Eastern U.S.’ downtowns of dense, wooden buildings.

Spoiler: Firefighters, policymakers, local advocates and, notably, insurance professionals figured out how to stop it from happening. Here’s how they did it.

The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the Civil War, transformed Northeastern cities into denser and denser wooden tinderboxes filled with tons of humans more than capable of accidentally generating sparks.

Fire departments, inspired by the war, were already reorganizing under a new paramilitary structure to more quickly and aggressively respond to blazes although most were still primarily volunteer-based. And beyond a few ad hoc fire safety laws that were scarcely enforced, cities’ building codes and water infrastructure naively lagged far behind the threat cities were creating.

So, cities started burning.

In 1866, a Fourth of July firecracker burned down much of Portland, Maine.

The destruction — more than $240 million in damage in today’s dollars — seriously spooked insurance companies focused on downtown industrial properties. Within days, they joined together to form the National Board of Fire Underwriters to try to stabilize their industry and promote fire-safety measures.

It wasn’t enough. A barn fire burned down Chicago in 1871 — more than $4 billion in damage in today’s dollars. A warehouse fire burned down Boston the next year — causing more than $1 billion in damage.

After the Boston fire, the board raised rates by 50% in large cities and began hurling ham-fisted threats to pull coverage altogether if cities didn’t get their act together and address their tinderbox problems quickly.

Over the next few decades, the board slowly got its own act together: It began collecting data on what caused cities to burn and funded a lab to run experiments. After Baltimore burned in 1904, the board released its own national fire-safety building codes based on that knowledge and created a grading scale to identify the risk of different cities based on their fire departments and water utilities as well as how closely their building practices aligned with the board’s building and electrical codes.

For politicians who dragged their feet because bolstering a water system or fire department is costly and designing a fire-safe building is, quite frankly, more cumbersome, the grading system made maintaining the status quo no longer viable — try explaining to your constituents that insurance rates in town are through the roof simply because the city won’t adopt the board’s new codes.

At some point, cities no longer burned down, only blocks or buildings did. As fire departments and cities continued to adopt new tech (with some pushing from the insurance industry) — motorized fire engines to replace horse-drawn ones, and later, smoke detectors and indoor sprinklers, then air tanks that allowed firefighters to enter buildings — fires didn’t often spread past a single floor or room.

These reforms, targeted mainly at commercial and industrial buildings in dense downtowns, largely missed the looming crisis in suburban residential areas that were slowly building themselves into a different kind of tinderbox that burned from the outside in.

In those areas, we’ve already seen many of the same dynamics play out: first the insurance rate hikes, then the cancellations. Now, some conversations and many heated debates — often driven by the insurance industry — are taking place around what we ought to do to protect our urban-wildland interface areas and how we can make them insurable again.

Organizations such as the Institute for Business & Home Safety play the role of the National Board of Fire Underwriters. Insurance wildfire models are starting to play the role of the grading scale, and policies such as Zone Zero, the national building codes.

As Hensler wrote in 2011, we now “accept building fires as commonplace but no longer expect them to consume adjacent buildings or blocks.”

It reminds me of a text Keegan Gibbs, who leads the Community Brigade program with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, sent me when I asked what he hopes to see in 10 years’ time: “neighborhoods where wildfire can move through the landscape without becoming a community-level disaster.”

More recent wildfire news

State Farm reached a deal with California last month to keep a 17% rate hike that took effect after the 2025 L.A. County fires, my colleague Paige St. John reports. The state initially rejected State Farm’s 22% rate hike request but eventually offered a temporary approval of the 17% hike last year. State Farm — which said it paid $6.2 billion in claims last year, largely from the L.A. County fires — said the increase enables the company to continue serving Californians.

A monthlong heat dome over the American West, fueled by climate change, has melted mountain snowpacks significantly this year, writes fellow Boiling Point host Ian James. With more time for vegetation to dry out, the early melting brings an increased risk of wildfire across the region this year.

In fact, acreage burned this year is nearly triple the 10-year average, reports Tim Casperson of newsletter the Hotshot Wake Up. The uptick has been fueled by a series of fires in Nebraska that has stunned many of the state’s ranchers as it decimated the hay that cattle rely on and stressed pregnant cows, reports Anila Yoganathan at the Flatwater Free Press.

A few last things in climate news

The U.S. Forest Service announced a major reorganization effort Tuesday that will move its headquarters from Washington to Salt Lake City, close research and development facilities in more than 30 states and shift management from broader regional offices to more localized state offices, reports Christine Peterson for High Country News. Former Forest Service employees and tribal leaders expressed concern that the move would uproot thousands of employees, scattering specialized regional knowledge. The chief of the Forest Service said the plan is intended to make the agency more “nimble, efficient, effective and closer to the forests and communities it serves.”

Gas prices in Los Angeles surged to $6 per gallon this week after the U.S. and Israel’s and the U.S.’s attack on Iran prompted the nation to close the Strait of Hormuz. However, California’s petroleum market watchdog is warning that some of the inflated price may be due to price gouging, my colleague Blanca Begert reports. In January, refineries were making 49 cents on the gallon, the watchdog group said; now, it’s closer to $1.25.

Honda is scrapping plans to build and sell three new electric-vehicle models in the U.S. after the Trump administration abandoned Biden-era policy goals to increase EV manufacturing and adoption, Dan Gearino reports for Inside Climate News. It comes after similar moves by Ford and Ram.

Finally, Heatmap News, in collaboration with MIT, has launched a new tool tracking electricity prices across the country on a month-to-month basis all the way down to the Zip Code level. You can check it out here.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

If I had a nickel for every time an editor has sent me an SFGate story and asked me to match it, I’d be at least a couple dollars richer. The San Francisco-based news website provides solid coverage of California public lands, especially our national parks.

So when my colleague Jaclyn Cosgrove told me the National Park Service had reportedly blacklisted SFGate, I wasn’t exactly shocked.

Recent SFGate stories have revealed efforts to limit which public lands employees can share information with the public, quoted critics of the Department of the Interior’s decision to end reservation systems at popular parks and detailed a litany of items that were previously offered at the parks but are now being reviewed for possible removal, thanks to an executive order to “restore truth and sanity” to American history, including books about Indigenous culture and educational materials for children.

But over the past month, the National Park Service essentially stopped responding to inquiries sent by SFGate reporters on dozens of subjects, national parks bureau chief Ashley Harrell wrote last week. The outlet spoke with sources, reviewed internal communications and learned that an Interior Department spokesperson had instructed the National Park Service to ignore SFGate reporters, Harrell wrote. The blacklisting was apparently prompted by a Feb. 10 article on the Interior Department’s efforts to centralize control of park service communications.

I emailed the National Park Service to learn more. “Unfortunately, SFGate has distorted the facts and has caused confusion with their reporting with the mainstream media,” a spokesperson replied. “This has caused the Department to spend countless hours correcting their false narrative with other media outlets.”

Although the statement came from a park service email address, the wording is identical to a statement provided to SFGate by an Interior Department spokesperson.

I’ve also noticed changes in how the park service handles media requests over the past year or so. Some L.A. Times inquiries — about a coyote swimming to Alcatraz and a man charged with BASE jumping in Yosemite, for instance — received prompt replies.

But others — like questions about whether the park service is relying more heavily on seasonal employees amid a decline in permanent staff — went unreturned. And some — like an inquiry for a previous edition of a Boiling Point newsletter about an interpretive exhibit under scrutiny at Death Valley National Park — were fielded by a spokesperson for the Interior Department , rather than the park itself.

I’m not alone. When our wildlife and outdoors reporter Lila Seidman wrote about a wildfire that ripped through Joshua Tree National Park during last year’s government shutdown, she received responses from the Interior Department, but emails to the park service went unreturned.

Jack Dolan, an investigative reporter who often covers public lands, said he hasn’t received meaningful responses from the National Park Service since early last year.

And Cosgrove, who writes The Wild newsletter, said that park rangers remain friendly and helpful, but any communication involves a demand for all questions in writing.

Park service sources and advocates describe all this as part of a broader effort to centralize communications from sub-agencies to the Department of the Interior. Since last year, roughly 230 communications employees have been moved from the National Park Service to the Department of the Interior — part of a broader push in which more than 5,700 employees at the 11 agencies the Interior Department oversees were shifted from the agencies to the department, according to figures provided by the National Parks Conservation Assn., a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

What’s more, the Interior Department must now approve many park service communications that were once left up to the parks themselves, said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Assn. That includes exhibits, news releases, website updates and even social media posts, said a source within the park service who asked to remain anonymous over fears of retaliation.

The consolidation “creates significant inefficiencies and removes a layer of accountability to the parks themselves,” Garder said. “It makes it difficult for parks to act nimbly using their professional discretion to make decisions about informing the public about developments in the park,” like a closed road, wildlife hazard or natural disaster.

In an email to The Times, the park service accused National Parks Conservation Assn. employees of donating to Democratic political campaigns and pointed out the nonprofit’s X account follows progressive politicians and groups. “Our parks are nonpartisan, but the NPCA isn’t and they are using you to further raise money off of our parks while never giving those funds to our parks,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

National Parks Conservation Assn.’s X account follows over 55,000 users of the platform, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers and organizations. Garder also noted that the association’s longstanding role has been to advocate for national parks, rather than to raise money directly for them.

The park service email confirmed that officials are “modernizing” the Department of the Interior so that it “will share one voice when communicating the priorities of the Department.”

“The unification of the communication functions will allow for a more collaborative, creative and hands-on approach to Department communications,” the statement said, “and will modernize the federal government by providing a product that is not only better for the American taxpayer but also showcases the state-of-the-art communications capabilities of the United States of America.”

I asked whether I should attribute the statement to a spokesperson for the park service or the Interior Department. The spokesperson replied that I could attribute it to either.

A quick announcement

If you’re a Southern California local, you are probably familiar with PBS SoCal. On April 22, the public media organization is premiering the seventh season of the award-winning program “Earth Focus,” which will be followed by the eighth season in May. We’re excited for the eighth season in particular, because we collaborated with the PBS SoCal team on a few stories about the complexities of rebuilding Los Angeles. You can stream the show for free at pbssocal.org/earthfocus.

More recent land news

Karen Budd-Falen, the third highest-ranking official at the Department of the Interior, has been granted an ethics waiver to work on grazing issues despite potential conflicts of interests that prompted her to recuse herself from such matters during the first Trump presidency, according to Chris D’Angelo of Public Domain.

A pair of Republican senators have officially moved to overturn the management plan for Utah’s Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, casting uncertainty on its future and raising new questions about the future of public lands management, Caroline Llanes of Rocky Mountain Community Radio reports.

The Trump administration is aggressively expanding the border wall through ecologically sensitive public lands, with a portion planned for Big Bend National Park emerging as a political flash point, Arelis R. Hernández, Jake Spring, John Muyskens and Thomas Simonetti write in this Washington Post deep dive.

The Interior Department has officially pulled back more than 80% of its regulations tied to implementing the National Environmental Policy Act in a bid to streamline the environmental review process for major projects on federal public lands. Conservation groups say the changes will block public input and violate federal law, according to Hannah Northey and Scott Streater of E&E News by Politico.

The Trump administration is taking the final steps to undo the Public Lands Rule, which elevated conservation to an official use of Bureau of Land Management lands, Streater also reports. The rule allowed conservation groups to obtain leases for restoration work, similar to how the Bureau of Land Management awards leases to private contractors for extraction and development, points out Sage Marshall of Field & Stream.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is expected to soon release an updated proposal for the rescission of the Roadless Rule, which blocked new road building and commercial logging on some 58 million acres of backcountry. The rollback would strike a big blow to hunting and fishing opportunities, according to a report from Trout Unlimited.

A few last things in climate news

Amid a global energy crisis that’s seen oil prices skyrocket, California has been particularly hard-hit due to a dearth of refineries and higher taxes and fees, all of which have left politicians, consumer groups and business interests arguing over who’s to blame, write Ivan Penn and Kurtis Lee for the New York Times.

In the latest maneuver in its campaign against renewable energy, the Trump administration will pay a French company $1 billion to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases, according to Jennifer McDermott of the Associated Press.

Southern California’s most destructive wildfires, wettest holiday season and hottest March heat wave have all taken place in the last 15 months, and there’s one clear through line connecting them all, scientists told my colleague Clara Harter.

Mosquitoes have gone year-round in Los Angeles, but business owners have indicated they’re not willing to pay to expand a promising effort to help control their numbers, my buddy Lila Seidman reports.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Almost exactly 10 years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio won a Best Actor Oscar (his first) for his performance in “The Revenant” as an early 19th century fur trapper who is injured in a bear attack, then by turns grudgingly kept alive, abandoned and left for dead by the avaricious hunting party he had been hired to lead.

In his acceptance speech at those 88th Academy Awards, DiCaprio first thanked the film’s cast and crew. He then pivoted quickly and forcefully to the environment. “The Revenant,” he said, was … “about man’s relationship to the natural world that we collectively felt in 2015, as the hottest year in recorded history.”

The rest of what he said is worth a big block quote; to read it today, the week after the 98th Academy, during which politics and policy both receded, is bracing.

“Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, the big corporations, but who speak for all humanity, for the Indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children’s children, and for those people whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take this award for granted.”

That year was something of a heady time for environmentalists. Barack Obama was in the middle of his second term as president of the U.S and though his climate and environmental policies were not especially progressive, in 2015 he did enact the Clean Power Plan, which had the stated goal of reducing carbon emissions locally, and “leading global efforts to address climate change” outside U.S. borders.

Further, just a couple of months after the 88th Academy Awards, the U.S. would become one the 196 parties to sign onto the Paris Agreement, an international treaty to reduce the rise of global temperatures, whose terms had been negotiated the previous fall.

Fast forward 10 years. Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020. Joe Biden rejoined in 2021. Trump withdrew again just a few months ago. And in this second go at the White House, the Trump Administration has done everything in its power to tighten the knots tethering the U.S. to fossil fuels. It has literally forced owners of coal plants in Colorado and Washington State that want to shut them down to keep them open. Trump has fought tooth and nail in court to suspend wind energy projects that are fully permitted, under contract and under construction across the eastern seaboard. And his administration has rolled backed numerous efforts to keep climate change in check, like the allowance of state-specific fuel economy standards and the landmark fossil-fuel endangerment finding of 2009.

Meanwhile, that global temperature record that DiCaprio mentioned in his acceptance speech in 2016 seems almost trifling compared to what has happened since. It’s been surpassed six times. According to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information, the three hottest years on record are 2024, 2023 and 2025.

At the 98th Academy Awards, DiCaprio was nominated again for Best Actor — his sixth in that category — this time for “One Battle After Another.” The film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, won Best Picture. DiCaprio lost in his category to Michael B. Jordan, the lead of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” so he didn’t have a chance to say anything about climate change.

But not a single one of the Oscar winners this year mentioned it.

Both “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” were produced by Warner Brothers, which is about to be acquired by Paramount Skydance, which in turn is owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, one the world’s wealthiest individuals and noted Trump supporter. Ellison the younger has already made decisions that have significantly defanged the climate coverage at CBS News — Paramount’s flagship news network — and it would not be shocking if CNN — part of the WB — is next.

Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of this show was its dearth of any language at the awards that could be considered political.

Instead of the fire we got from, say, Michael Moore in 2003, what we got was a sort of mea culpa from P.T. Anderson — who might be the definitional American Gen X director — in his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay:

“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them. But also, with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”

I harbor the same hopes, but it might require at least acknowledging the problems first.

More culture & enviro news

One thing that does give me some optimism is that the feted films themselves did a pretty good job acknowledging climate change. According to Good Energy, a consultancy group, of the 16 scripted features that were nominated for an Oscar and met the eligibility criteria, five passed the “climate reality check.” That’s pretty good!

Relevant especially for those facing the heat wave right now in L.A. and the rest of the southwest: a study published earlier this week in Lancet attempted to quantify how rising global temperatures will impact physical inactivity in different parts of the world. Chloé Farand summed it up for the Guardian, noting the researchers’ projection of 500,000 additional annual deaths due to inactivity by 2050.

Meanwhile, Libby Rainey at LAist wrote about how the city is preparing for the inevitable heat challenges that will accompany the World Cup games this coming summer.

This isn’t brand new — in fact, it references the reporting of my former colleague Sammy Roth — but Alexandra Tey over at the Nation has a nice roundup of sports fans protesting their teams’ financial ties to fossil fuel companies. It focuses on one of the most visible of these partnerships: Citi Field, where the New York Mets play, is named for Citi group, the world’s biggest lender to oil and gas companies.

A few last things in climate news this week

With gas prices skyrocketing due to the war in Iran, some Californians have been wondering why oil companies in the state can’t just start drilling more. My colleague Blanca Begert explains why it isn’t that simple.

The related big question is will the turmoil in the middle east push countries around the world to double down on renewable energy. In the New Yorker, Bill McKibben makes the case that this could be the moment that small clean tech — think solar panels, heat pumps, induction cooktops, etc — really takes off.

Finally, somehow, some 10 million tons of manure produced at California factory farms is unaccounted for. Seth Millstein, writing for Sentient, explains how lax regulation let farms dispose of 200 Titanics’ worth of animal waste without telling anyone where or how they did it.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

Erin Wagner lives in the Chicago suburbs but visits two bald eagles in Southern California’s Big Bear Valley nearly every day.

At work, the 41-year-old often plays a livestream featuring Jackie and Shadow on one of her monitors — a respite when she needs a break.

The avian power couple follows her home, keeping her company as she cooks dinner.

“We live in such a busy world, and things are always being thrown at our face, so sometimes it’s nice to just have a gentle reminder of nature and what else is out there in the world,” Wagner told me last week.

She is just one of many devoted fans; the eagles had the highest view count of any year-round nature livestream active on YouTube between last fall and this spring, said Rebecca Mauldin, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who studies social connectedness.

While the eagles’ following is singular, it’s part of a broader trend: surging interest in webcams that broadcast nature, unadulterated, minute by minute, in all its messy glory.

The number of 24/7 livestreams created per year swelled by about 3,000% between 2019 and 2025, Mauldin’s data show.

Jackie and Shadow’s livestream exemplifies “Slow TV,” a genre that began with a 2009 Norwegian broadcast of a seven-hour train trip. It took off, with other marathon programs featuring chopping firewood and knitting.

Nature looms large in the format. Millions tune into Sweden’s live coverage of an annual moose migration, and the same goes for a seasonal broadcast of bears chowing down on salmon in Alaska.

The appeal makes intuitive sense. In a world of quick camera cuts, sound bites and troubling headlines, Mother Nature’s rhythms can be a salve. And with many of us wound up in concrete urbanity, the livestreams offer instant transportation to the wild.

Following Jackie and Shadow takes patience. If they’re not hanging out at the nest, it’s a waiting game until they come back. Even when they’re there, there may not be much going on.

Entertainment “can be very artificial, it can be very packaged, and it can be very short,” said Jenny Voisard, media manager for Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that operates the cameras broadcasting the eagles. “This is long and slow and calm.”

Yet nature is unpredictable, another draw for viewers. This nesting season alone has brought plenty of drama, from the lovebirds losing their eggs to ravens to laying more not long after. Last week, I wrote about the couple’s shocking origin — it involves a love triangle! — and their rise to reality stardom.

Last year, Jackie and Shadow raised two chicks that went on to fledge: Sunny and Gizmo

(Friends of Big Bear Valley)

Research backs the vibes. Those who watch nature livestreams — from platypi to osprey — report a host of benefits, from uplifted mood to relaxation, said Mauldin, citing a literature review she-coauthored.

Others get jazzed about learning about a particular species, she said.

There may be limitations, though.

In terms of connecting to nature, “I lean toward the effect is stronger if you’re actually outdoors, or, you know, you’ve got a little ant crawling on your finger and watching it,” Mauldin said.

She highlighted another dimension I didn’t think of: Many “talk about how they’re developing strong online relationships, and you can see it in the chats or in the comments.”

Someone might comment that they had a bad day and are glad to be watching their favorite birds again, and another viewer will rally to support them. Then there are people who watch on their own, but gab about it later with a friend.

Friends of Big Bear Valley, with 1.2 million followers on Facebook, offers more than just updates on the eagles. It’s a buzzing community center where fans can share their thoughts and engage with one another.

Animals may also get something out of being watched: protection.

The eagle cam, for example, “sort of stokes the public’s imagination and interest in conservation,” said Thomas Leeman, deputy chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s migratory bird program in the Pacific Southwest. “They start to really care about whichever particular birds that they’re watching.”

Wagner, of Chicago, said her husband and 14-year-old son sometimes give her a hard time about how invested she is in Jackie and Shadow.

But her cat, Oscar, shares her fascination.

She recently posted a photo of the feline on Jackie and Shadow’s Facebook — looking intently at a TV where an eagle hunkered down on the nest.

“My new cat is just as obsessed as all of us,” she wrote.

More recent wildlife news

Big Bear’s celeb eagles continue to keep us on our toes. Jackie recently vanished from the nest for nearly 24 hours, sending fans into a panic — but eventually reunited with her eggs and mate, reports USA Today’s Michelle Del Rey.

While we’re on the subject of avian kind: Last week, I wrote about a pair of condors that appear to be nesting in Northern California, something not seen for a century. The Yurok Tribe is leading the effort to bring the large, endangered vultures back to their historic homeland in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

As conservationists celebrate that win, the story for birds nationwide is not so rosy. A recent study found that North America is rapidly losing birds, and the loss is accelerating, largely due to intensive agriculture and warming temperatures, writes the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein.

A few last things in climate news

Trump’s war on Iran has disrupted global oil and gas supplies. The conflict has kept ships that carry millions of barrels of oil a day stranded in the Persian Gulf, and key Middle East facilities have sustained damage, reports the Associated Press.

Oil prices have spiked, and Californians are paying the highest price at the pump in the nation. As my colleague Iris Kwok explains, that’s due to the state’s higher taxes and stricter requirements for cleaner, more expensive gas that pollutes.

Sticker shock at gas stations is expected to spur more Americans to consider hybrid or electric vehicles, according to fellow Times staffers Caroline Petrow-Cohen and Blanca Begert.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a legal opinion that sets the stage to approve a controversial oil operation off the Santa Barbara County coast, The Times’ Grace Toohey reports.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.