Newsday

New York State law could protect Long Island wetlands from federal restrictions

Just a short hike into a 200-acre woodland in Manhasset lie a series of shallow basins in the forest floor left behind by retreating glaciers. After a dry August, the basins are empty, but in spring they will fill with snowmelt and rain and teem with wildlife: spotted salamanders and wood frogs, waterthrushes and rusty blackbirds, woodland bats and a resident pair of coyotes. Small freshwater wetlands like this provide habitat for dozens of species, offer protection against flooding and help cle

Newsday

Environmentalists name the 'dirty dozen' plant species damaging Long Island

Invasive plants are undermining the health of Long Island's forests. Home gardeners can help control them.

The Guardian

‘Ghosts of capitalism’: the push to dismantle America’s decrepit dams

On a muggy day in late August, George Jackman, an aquatic ecologist who works on habitat restoration, stood at the edge of Quassaick Creek in upstate New York.

The Quassaick, which flows through the small city of Newburgh, New York, and spills into the Hudson River, was unusually shallow after a summer with little rain. “It looks bucolic now,” Jackman said. “But it can be a raging torrent.”

For 300 years, that torrent had been contained by a small dam that once powered a nearby mill, where the

New York Focus

Big Oil Wants New York’s Cow Manure

Biogas credits are incentivizing the expansion of factory farming in New York—and might end up increasing carbon emissions.

The New York Times

A Multimillion-Dollar Payday, at the Carwash

Wage-theft cases are notoriously hard to prove, and they almost never pay out. But for some of the most marginalized laborers in the city, justice was served.

The New York Times

The Bronx Zoo’s Loneliest Elephant

The plight of one elephant raises the question: it is inhumane to keep highly social, intelligent animals in zoos?

New York Focus

Rural Counties See Dramatic Declines in Family Lawyers

In six of eight rural counties, panels of children’s attorneys have lost more than half their lawyers over the past decade.

Youth Today

An accidental experiment during COVID suggests too many children are removed to foster care

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, some experts worried that children confined at home would be vulnerable to abuse.

Brookings Institution scholars wrote in April 2020 that COVID had created “a perfect storm” of isolation and economic stress that would “almost certainly lead to a sharp increase in unreported cases of child abuse and neglect,” and a New York Times op-ed headline the same month warned of a coming “child abuse epidemic.”

But the evidence suggests that in some parts of

The New York Times

How Game Theory Helped Improve New York City’s High School Application Process

Tuesday was the deadline for eighth graders in New York City to submit applications to secure a spot at one of 426 public high schools. After months of school tours and tests, auditions and interviews, 75,000 students have entrusted their choices to a computer program that will arrange their school assignments for the coming year. The weeks of research and deliberation will be reduced to a fraction of

New York Focus

Hochul, Plastics Industry and Green Groups Battle Over Recycling Proposal

Rather than try to improve Hochul’s proposal, some environmentalists want to scrap it.

TakePart

This Simple Solution Keeps Kids in School, out of Handcuffs

Telling kids they can never make a mistake was at the root of the problem.

Chalkbeat New York

A plan tackling segregated middle schools in Brooklyn shows some patterns are hard to break

An ambitious project to mix things up yielded dramatic results in some schools, and smaller shifts in others.

TakePart

The Proven Way to Keep More Innocent Teens From Confessing to Murder (and Why Police Won't Adopt It)

Standard interrogation, which includes badgering and lying to suspects until they confess, is psychological torture for the young and mentally frail. Now there's a better way.

The Nation

A Bronx Tale

From Providence to Los Angeles and the Bronx, urban rivers that were polluted and even paved over are being restored.

Salon

Is Briana Waters a terrorist?

In an alarming case, U.S. attorneys exploited post-9/11 counterterrorism policies to pursue and prosecute an environmental activist.