To help address the crisis of nitrate in drinking water and rising cancer rates in the Iowa, the Izaak Walton League launches a fundraising campaign to restore essential water monitoring in the state iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/09/30/i...

Federal public lands have attracted & inspired generations. The US created the template for saving wild places worldwide. But threats persist from Congress & this administration to privatize the land & prioritize extraction. What's at stake, from Outdoor America magazine. iwla.org/why-we-fight...

Catastrophe brewing for Mississippi River as agencies like US Geological Survey, Fish & Wildlife Service face steep budget cuts under Trump admin. Federal coordination is vital to the River. The agencies keep the river safe and are key to region's economy. www.jsonline.com/story/news/2...

Linn County officials are working to level a $20,000 civil penalty against a Minnesota company that drilled dozens of shallow, unpermitted wells at a Cedar Rapids construction site. www.thegazette.com/local-govern...

Iowans across the state asked to conserve water due to dry wells, high nitrate levels which are measured by several organizations including the Izaak Walton League and its Nitrate Watch community science program that tests local waterways. iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/06/17/i...

Last month we stopped a dangerous House effort to allow sale of a half million acres of public land in the West—land that belongs to us all. Now it's back resurfaced in the Senate and it’s worse, mandating disposal of up to 3 million acres of public lands. Help us stop it! iwla.org/conservation...

Minnesota Public Radio interviews leaders of the Green Crew, a growing youth-led organization started by a Minnesota chapter of the Izaak Walton League. The New York Times recently profiled the Crew and its efforts to tackle climate change. www.mprnews.org/episode/2025...

The Senate must remove the anti-conservation provisions in the budget package. iwla.org/league-urges...

TODAY urge Congress to oppose provisions in the House budget reconciliation bill to sell up to 500,000 acres of public land, approve drilling that would pollute the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, gut clean energy incentives & weaken NEPA – the Bill of Rights for the environment iwla.org/conservation...

Featured in the @nytimes.com today, Minnesota youth tackle climate change through the Green Crew, a youth-led environmental program that leverages volunteer action developed several years ago as a part of the Izaak Walton League and Scouts. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/c...

Great summary by Sen Tina @smith.senate.gov: GOP in Congress is trying to give a foreign conglomerate permission to build a "copper-nickel sulfide mine right on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters watershed" & irreversibly pollute wilderness. @jburcum.bsky.social www.startribune.com/burcum-staub...

NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy www.science.org/content/arti...

We should be thinking smarter about our drinking water: EPA needs to update the standards for nitrate in drinking water. Op-ed from the Izaak Walton League in Cedar Rapids gazette lays out the key issues www.thegazette.com/guest-column...

Iowa water quality monitors, many of whom are volunteers, expect increased nitrate concentrations this month as part of the “spring flush,” when April showers wash fertilizer and other nutrients into the waterways, Cami Koons reports. iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/04/11/c...

Volunteer scientists use Izaak Walton League's Nitrate Watch program to monitor pollution in Iowa’s waterways iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/04/11/c...

Congress: Don't sell future generations short by selling off our public lands to pay for a tax package! It won’t significantly decrease the deficit & will only exacerbate issues like wildfire, invasive species, preserving sources of drinking clean water. Full statement: www.iwla.org/publications...

The Trump administration is studying selling 625 square miles of federal land within 10 miles of cities with a population of 5,000 or more. It's the new administration's answer to the the housing crisis. (Sorry... paywall) news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-...

America’s parks created the template for saving natural areas worldwide. My cover story in Outdoor America looks at the benefits these places provide for people, wildlife & the planet & the threats confronting public lands today: Let's keep public lands in public hands. www.iwla.org/publications...

New EPA review announced today will fail to protect our waterways because the regs will adhere to the dangerous misinterpretation of the Clean Water Act and faulty definition of Waters of the USA established by the Supreme Court in Sackett v EPA in 2023. Full statement: www.iwla.org/publications...

Very cool! Submissions open now!

Rage Against the Miocene. (I love the Miocene, but we're not prepared to live in it!)

Trump's March 1 exec order to increase logging on our PUBLIC lands to generate energy(!) + lumber: “Our inability to fully exploit our domestic timber supply has…degraded fish and wildlife habitats”? The EO would bulldoze Endangered Species Act & NEPA safeguards www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Check out the overview summary for our “2025 Journalists’ Guide to Environment + Energy” special report, plus look back at three dozen-plus stories gathered for our ninth annual guide. www.sej.org/publications...

SHARE WITH YOUR NETWORKS: Applications are open for the 9th year of the NASW Diversity Summer Fellowship. Awards of $3,000 available for students and early-career science communicators undertaking summer internships. Learn more and apply by April 1: www.nasw.org/2025Div...

Tackling chloride pollution: When ice melts, road salt lingers. Izaak Walton League & partners nationwide promote smarter ice management. Apply more effectively. And cover these big piles that leach corrosive salt into streams & drinking water pipes which can leach lead www.iwla.org/publications...

This week the #SEJSpotlight is on Jennifer Grayson, a Los Angeles-based journalist and author focusing on the environment, food systems and public health. Learn more and check out her work: www.sej.org/sejspotlight....

Thousands participated in Winter Salt Awareness Week to discuss the dangers of & solutions to road salt pollution. Each year, between 10 & 20 million tons is applied to paved surfaces which permanently pollutes fresh water as it washes off into streams and drinking water www.iwla.org/publications...

Nature and the great outdoors is an amazing classroom. Forest preschools, where students spend virtually all their time outside, have sprouted up across the US and Europe in recent years. Read the feature from Outdoor America. www.iwla.org/publications...

Root River Current magazine in SE Minnesota profiles Izaak Walton League water quality & stream monitoring. Aquatic guardianship includes monitoring nitrate and evaluating macroinvertebrate populations & reporting results to www.cleanwaterhub.org run by iwla.org. rootrivercurrent.org/mill-creek-w...

Our power grid needs help. We'll need better transmission technology, capacity & energy storage to meet demand & get more #renewable electricity onto the grid. See Grid-lock, my cover story in Outdoor America magazine #netzero #AI #datacenters #smartgrid #environment www.iwla.org/publications...

Our power grid needs help. We'll need better transmission technology, capacity & energy storage to meet demand, reduce GHG & get more #renewable electricity onto the grid. See cover story in Outdoor America magazine #netzero #AI #datacenters #smartgrid #environment www.iwla.org/publications...

Montana Supreme Court upholds the right to a "stable climate system" for youth. Outdoor America covered Held v Montana, brought by 16 young people in Montana in 2020. We interviewed lead plaintiff Rikki Held who was 18 when the case was filed. The Guardian update: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...

A new study challenges the assumption that urban biodiversity is only possible in affluent neighborhoods. Communities with less wealth can find ways to leverage the resources they already have to foster biodiversity, such as collective action. #biodiversity ow.ly/n2wh50Uu66s

We're running out of fresh water. Waste, consumption by data centers & power plants & polluted farm runoff take an immense toll. But we have technologies, policies & practices to conserve clean water for future generations. My cover story from Outdoor America magazine www.iwla.org/publications...

9/ Read the article by @marioarizabaez.bsky.social: floodlightnews.org/massages-and...

Wait, the Biden administration is about to sell off the Arctic Refuge?! Here's a 🧵to explain why this is happening and how it relates to the longer history and ongoing struggle to protect this land. (1) #envhist www.blm.gov/press-releas...

Students at George Mason University are helping to spread the word about water pollution, the importance of testing and collecting data from local waterways and the role of volunteer science. Great article in campus paper IV Fourth Estate @georgemasonu.bsky.social gmufourthestate.com/2024/11/18/d...

Climate change drives up insurance costs — and missed mortgage payments 🗞️

Since 1922 when the Izaak Walton League kickstarted the modern environmental movement, the League has published a magazine advocating for outdoor America. Early contributors included Zane Grey, Theodore Dreiser, Gene Stratton Porter #EnvironmentalHistory Archived here: www.iwla.org/publications...

The ecological role of hunting in the 21st century: reimagining one of our oldest traditions, a hard-wired trait. Hunters rarely get credit for their role in funding conservation or managing populations. Cover story Outdoor America, Issue 1 2024, looks recent innovations www.iwla.org/publications...

Following Donald Trump’s election, SEJournal revisits prospective coverage of his upcoming administration and SEJ’s Interim President @bobbymagill.bsky.social provides thoughts on the challenges that lie ahead for journalists. www.sej.org/publications...

White-tail deer hunting in suburbia opens a vital path toward habitat restoration, sorely needed population management and healthy food. In the next issue of Outdoor America, Izaak Walton League

I was today years old when I learned that Aldo Leopold wrote a report of the Iowa Game Survey for the Izaak Walton Magazine: Outdoor America in 1933. Here’s the quail chapter with a bonus map (link in alt). The Leopold archive is publicly available a UWM: digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiar...

"Federal regulators say more of Iowa's rivers — including ones that supply drinking water for Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City — should be placed on the state's impaired waters list." Nitrate pollution threatens water across Midwest. Byline: Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register bit.ly/4fRRIER

New: Old-growth forests are key to slowing climate change and to protecting endangered species. In Oregon, logging in Bureau of Land Management-controlled areas has continued at a steady pace despite Biden’s promise to protect these forests.

Great reporting from the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most important and fragile ecosystems on earth. From @washingtonpost.com staff Juliet Eilperin, Carolyn Van Houten, Alice Li. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

The glass is half empty: Cover story for Outdoor America magazine (2024 #2) on water scarcity & contamination. We have technologies, policies, practices that could preserve clean water for generations if we apply them broadly across industries and households. www.iwla.org/publications...