Pri: Living On Earth

The US Senate recently voted to reverse a moratorium on mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, a million acres on the US-Canada border that’s teeming with wildlife and crystal-clear waters. The region is also rich in valuable copper, nickel, and cobalt, but Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) says mining in the same watershed as the Boundary Waters poses unacceptable risks.   Also, while electrifying transportation is essential to addressing the climate crisis, the mining of nickel, copper, and lithium required to build out these green technologies brings its own environmental and social costs. To understand these impacts, author and political scientist Thea Riofrancos traveled to the Atacama Desert in Chile, home to one of the largest lithium reserves in the world. She discusses her book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.   And Nigerian conservation ecologist Iroro Tanshi rediscovered the short-tailed roundleaf bat in 2016, after decades when it was believed extinct in the r