Photo by Chris Yarzab. We are just entering summer and already some parts of the country are under heat advisories. The first heat wave of the season started last Friday, literally, on the first official day of summer and has been impacting about 128 million Americans from Louisiana to Maine. The US West, including California, hasn’t been impacted by this particular heatwave. But it’s only a matter of time. In fact, what you might not know is, extreme heat is now the leading climate-related heal...
Jun 27, 2025•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – June 20, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.
Jun 20, 2025•30 min
Chuckwalla Box Canyon in the Chuckwalla National Monument, one of six monuments the Interior Department is considering shrinking. Photo by Bob Wick / Bureau of Land Management. Last year, an estimated 330 million people visited our national parks here in the United States. Tens of millions more visited national wildlife refuges, national forests, and Bureau of Land Management lands, connecting with our wild places, our shared history, and the wildlife these lands protect. Despite broad public en...
Jun 13, 2025•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – June 6, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.
Jun 06, 2025•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – May 30, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.
May 30, 2025•30 min
Hummingbird Farm is a community-led urban agriculture project in the Excelsior neighborhood of Southeast San Francisco, stewarded by PODER’s (People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights) Urban Compesinx. Since its inception in 2017, the community has transformed nearly seven acres of underutilized public land into a vibrant space for growing food, culture and resilience. Joining forces in this work are PODER and 5 Elements, two local organizations reclaiming land stewardship an...
May 02, 2025•30 min
Water for Life tells the story of three Indigenous activists in Central and South America, who have fought to protect their communities’ water rights and ancestral lands from mining, hydroelectric projects, and large scale agriculture. The three individuals profiled in the film are Berta Cáceres, a leader of the Lenca people in Honduras; Francisco Pineda, a subsistence farmer in El Salvador; and Alberto Curamil, an Indigenous Mapuche leader in Chile — all of whom were previous recipients of the ...
Apr 25, 2025•30 min
The Palisades Fire that started in the City of Los Angelas, January 2025. Photo courtesy of Cal FIRE. California is being hit with increasingly frequent, climate change-turbocharged wildfires and much of the disaster-recovery costs are being passed on to taxpayers and ratepayers in the form of higher, and increasingly unaffordable, insurance rates, housing costs, property taxes, utility bills, and health expenses. Some lawmakers, backed by environmental and citizen rights groups, aim to change t...
Apr 18, 2025•30 min
The 2016-2017 Standing Rock protests aimed to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Photo by Lucas Zhao / Oceti Sakowin Camp. In March, a North Dakota jury found against Greenpeace in a highly watched trial, ordering the environmental group to pay pipeline company Energy Transfer more than $660 million in damages. The case stems from the Standing Rock protests in 2016 and 2017, an Indigenous led movement to stop construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. Energy Transfer alleges that...
Apr 11, 2025•30 min
Grizzly bears once roamed California in large numbers, with populations reaching up to 10,000 before they were driven to extinction by human activity in the early 20th century. Now, over a century later, efforts are underway to reintroduce grizzlies to the state. Building on decades of research and advocacy, the California Grizzly Alliance is set to release a groundbreaking feasibility study this spring that explores the potential for grizzly recovery in California. In this episode of Terra Verd...
Apr 04, 2025•30 min
Not only is the fashion industry is the world’s second biggest polluter after the fossil fuel industry, but many of the textiles we surround ourselves with (in our clothing, bedding, and home upholstery) are also made of petroleum-based products and/or contain PFAS—or “forever-chemicals”—which pose an enormous threat to our health and the environment. On this episode of Terra Verde, host Fiona McLeod speaks with Patty Grossman, co-founder and CEO of Two Sisters Ecotextiles, and Smita Paul, found...
Mar 28, 2025•30 min
Of the estimated 10,000 chemicals used in beauty products, the US federal government has banned or otherwise restricted only 11. Photo by Jaime Street. The average adult in the United States uses somewhere around 12 personal care products a day, with women typically using more than men. Those products can expose us to more than a hundred chemicals on a daily basis, some of which come with serious health risks. These risks are not borne equally. Black women in particular bear a disproportionate b...
Mar 21, 2025•30 min
Protestors at the 2017 March for Science in San Francisco. Photo by Tom Hilton. Environmentalists and civil rights activists are strategizing and pushing back against the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle our democracy, but a lot of this work is not yet visible to all and we are left with the sense that, so far, resistance to Trump 2.0 has been rather lack-luster. But has it, really? To delve further into this question Earth Island Journal editor-in-chief and Terra Verde cohost Maureen N...
Mar 14, 2025•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – March 7, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.
Feb 14, 2025•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – February 7, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.
Feb 07, 2025•30 min
California’s growing wildfire crisis has impacted nearly every corner of the state in recent years, and this month we’ve witnessed a series of deadly, destructive, and unprecedented January wildfires in southern California. Governor Gavin Newsom created the California Wildfire & Forest Resilience Task Force in 2021 to introduce a more holistic, integrated approach toward effective forest management. The Task Force is a collaborative effort that unites federal, state, local, and tribal organi...
Jan 31, 2025•30 min
California is facing a growing crisis as wildfires become more frequent, intense, and devastating. In the face of the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles this month, youth climate activists there are sounding the alarm. Local activists from the Sunrise Movement’s LA chapter made headlines last week by staging a takeover of the Phillips 66 refinery, demanding accountability from the fossil fuel industry for its role in driving the climate crisis. On this episode of Terra Verde, host Fiona McLeo...
Jan 24, 2025•30 min
A colorized transmission electron micrograph of H5N1 virus particles (purple). Photo courtesy of NIAID and CDC. As wildfires continue smoldering in Los Angeles, looming over the horizon is another worrying development — the growing spread of bird flu. This strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) — first detected in the United States in February 2022 — has swept through poultry and dairy farms across the country and has jumped over to infecting humans as well. In December, the first fa...
Jan 17, 2025•30 min
A humpback whale entangled in fishing gear in Monterey Bay, California, last year. Photo by Robin Gwen Agarwal. Every year, hundreds of thousands of whales, dolphins, sea turtles, and other animals die globally from entanglement in fishing equipment. Countless more are injured. Along the US West Coast, impacted species include humpback whales, gray whales, and fin whales. Despite the breadth of the problem, information about entanglements, including where they occurred, what animals were impacte...
Jan 10, 2025•30 min
Latinx farmworkers, who make up over 80% of California’s agricultural workforce, face some of the state’s lowest levels of food security, wealth, and homeownership. This week on Terra Verde, host and producer Hannah Wilton is joined by longtime farmer and co-owner of Full Belly Farm Paul Muller to discuss their research and development initiative to create a replicable model of affordable homeownership for farmworkers. Their pilot project, “Casas Capay Valley,” will provide resident-owned housin...
Jan 03, 2025•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – December 27, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Dec 27, 2024•30 min
Never Forget: A vigil for Honduran environmental activist and Indigenous leader Berta Cáceres in front of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights headquarters in San José, Costa Rica in April 2016. Cáceres was murdered in her home in Honduras on March 3, 2016. Photo by Daniel Cima. Writer essayist, and journalist Lauren Markham soon-to-be released book, Immemorial, reflects on how language and memorials can offer strategies for coping with climate anxiety and grief. Journalist, activist, and au...
Dec 20, 2024•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – November 29, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Nov 29, 2024•30 min
College campuses have a critical role to play in creating healthier environments for students, faculty and staff, and surrounding communities by eliminating synthetic pesticide use. Right here in our own backyard, UC Berkeley has made important steps toward transitioning to organic, biodiverse land management practices in recent years. On this episode of Terra Verde, host Fiona McLeod speaks with Mackenzie Feldman, founder and director of Re:wild Your Campus and Lydia Woltjer, Manager of the Lan...
Nov 22, 2024•30 min
An anti-Trump protest in Los Angeles in 2016, when he was first elected president. California is expected to be the special focus of the president-elect’s ire. Photo by Ken Shin. In California — a state whose progressive environmental policies have been the special focus of Trump’s ire — policymakers and environmentalists are bracing for the impacts of a second Trump administration where Republicans have full control of both houses. Lawmakers are gearing up to use state and local government powe...
Nov 15, 2024•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – November 8, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Nov 08, 2024•30 min
A weekly public affairs show that delivers news and views about the most important environmental issues in California and globally. The post Terra Verde – November 1, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Nov 01, 2024•30 min
In September, Western Rivers Conservancy conveyed the 466-acre Dillon Beach Ranch to the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria for permanent conservation and stewardship. With this historic land-back conservation deal, the Tribe (comprised of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Indians) regains ownership and stewardship of lands within their aboriginal territory, spanning across Sonoma and Marin Counties. The property includes 1.5 miles of the Estero de San Antonio, home to critical habitat for a vast...
Oct 25, 2024•30 min
Clockwise from top: Amelia Southern-Uribe, Austin Picinich, and Asa Miller. Photos courtesy of BYA. Three young activists from across the US — Asa Miller, Amelia Southern-Uribe, and Austin Picinich, who received the 2024 Brower Youth Awards at a ceremony in Berkeley last week talk with Earth Island Journal editor-in-chief and Terra Verde cohost Maureen Nandini Mitra about their outstanding efforts to promote ecological sustainability and environmental justice, what inspires them, the challenges ...
Oct 18, 2024•15 min
Photo by Cassandra Nelson / UNSOM. Plastics are pretty much inescapable these days, and that’s no mistake. The plastics industry has flooded our lives with countless single-use product, from bags, to food packaging, to drink bottles. This plastic now fills our landfills, litters our coastlines, and permeates our bodies. And still, the plastics industry creates more, pointing to plastics recyclability as the solution to our mounting plastic pollution crisis. Of course, recycling isn’t the solutio...
Oct 11, 2024•30 min
