Reading Nature

A Scarred Earth: Environmental Disaster on the Navajo Reservation

The Navajo Nation has long suffered from political and cultural discrimination but now faces a new kind of oppression, Environmental Injustice. Learn on this episode how Navajo reservation lands now face environmental degradation from the failed cleanup of uranium mines.

Mining, Mapping, and Making: The destruction of Dredging

We as humans have used oceanic dredging for a wide variety of reasons, and the practice has provided great benefits to using it. However, the practice has been turning our oceans into baron husks of their past selves and will continue to do so unless regulated.

California Condors: Taking Flight

This podcast is about the largest bird in North America, the California Condor. Human efforts and collaboration has made it possible for this species to recover from devastating population loss due to lead poisoning and return to their natural habitat. While there is still a long ways to go before they are out of danger, there is still hope for this species and more that we can do to ensure their survival.

The Disappearance of the Long Island Sound Coastline

The coastline of the Long Island Sound stretches across much of Connecticut and New York. For the past several decades, the beaches in these states have been slowly disappearing due to beach erosion, which is caused by several human activities and other factors. We can help restore these beaches back to their original beauty.

Can the Chesapeake’s Watermen Save the Bay Without Losing their Livelihood?

Working-class independent fishermen, crabbers, potters, and oystermen - known colloquially as “watermen” along the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Maryland - rely on selling their fresh catch from the Chesapeake Bay to support themselves and their families each day. In more recent years, they have found themselves at the mercy of the effects of the Bay’s declining health and water quality, as well as multiple large environmental groups working to clean the Chesapeake Bay that often come at the expense of the watermen’s livelihoods.