From California to Alabama, people of color are building communal spaces rooted in care and tradition
Zappa Montag steps outside his home to a thicket of redwoods, Pacific madrones and oak trees. Dozens of fruit trees dot the 76 hectares (189 acres), along with a large garden replete with squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, corn and peppers. Nearby, a small stream runs through a valley surrounded by hills. At Black to the Land, the ecovillage in Boonville, California, Montag and five other Black people steward the land off the grid, relying on well water and powered solely by solar panels. The intentional community, as it’s called, is located in a rural area 115 miles (185km) north of San Francisco. Montag said it was an effort to “reverse-gentrify the country”.
Black Americans and Indigenous people have long gathered in intentional communities, defined as small groups of people who live in the same area based on shared values and a common vision. They come in many forms, including co-housing spaces in urban environments where people have their own units and share communal spaces.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
‘Reverse-gentrify the country’: how Black and Indigenous intentional communities are reclaiming land
04/12/2026 - 06:00
04/11/2026 - 18:01
Study identified eight areas that can sustain a population and government has given £1m for recovery programme
“The world is grown so bad that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.” So wrote Shakespeare in Richard III, in a line of social commentary that feels ever more relevant with age.
A note of good news then, in a world of so much bad, that the eagles the Bard was probably referring to could finally be reintroduced to England after more than 150 years.
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04/11/2026 - 00:00
On Monday, a public inquiry will reopen, nine years after the plan was proposed and a toxic local battle began
When Fidelma O’Kane retired more than a decade ago from her career as a social worker and lecturer, she thought she would be “travelling and having a glass of wine and eating chocolate and reading books” while based in the quiet, hilly corner of rural County Tyrone where she has lived almost all her life.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, an idle remark from a neighbour would set O’Kane on a path that would become an all-consuming mission. A mining company, the neighbour told her, was planning to drill for long-rumoured reserves of gold in the Sperrins, the low peatland mountain range in Northern Ireland where O’Kane’s family has lived for generations.
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04/10/2026 - 23:00
The Ukraine war on our doorstep is a constant threat. Contaminated drinking water is a dangerous new twist
In the second week of March, the nature vlogger Ilie Cojocari went out to film the arrival of spring on the Nistru (Dniester) river, 70 metres away from his home in Naslavcea, a village bordering Ukraine on the northernmost point of Moldova. But as he approached the river he could smell the stench of oil rising up from the water and see dark spots floating on its surface. Something was wrong.
Two days earlier, Russia had attacked Ukraine’s Novodnistrovsk hydropower complex 15 miles upriver. Cojocari had been kept awake all night by the sound of shelling. “No one slept in the [Moldovan] district of Ocniţa that night,” he told me.
Paula Erizanu is a Moldovan journalist and writer based in Chișinău
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04/10/2026 - 09:26
Campaigners say birds could die trying to access ancestral nests that were sealed during rail refurbishment
Some swifts returning to Britain to breed will be unable to access their ancestral nesting holes after they were blocked in a £7.5m refurbishment of a Derbyshire railway viaduct, campaigners say.
Nature lovers had appealed to Network Rail to unblock three holes which were among at least nine swift nesting sites on the twin viaducts at Chapel Milton, on the edge of the Peak District.
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04/10/2026 - 05:00
The restructuring will close all regional offices, which manages 193m acres of land, roughly the size of Texas
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US public lands will “pay the price” of a drive by Donald Trump’s officials to restructure the agency that oversees them, union leaders have warned, accusing the administration of forcing workers to decide whether to relocate or resign.
All regional offices of the US Forest Service, which manages 78m hectares (193m acres) of land – roughly the size of Texas – are set to close as part of an overhaul launched by the Trump administration. The service has already shed hundreds of staff members since Trump returned to power last year.
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04/08/2026 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 09 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s44183-026-00196-z
Leveraging service providers to improve distant-water fisheries governance
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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