While many are planning their exit, I’ve decided to come back.
Is this email difficult to read? View in your web browser. ([link removed])
News of the world environment
NEWSLETTER | OCTOBER 03, 2025
([link removed])
([link removed])
([link removed])
A Long Way Home
In mid-September, I received an email from a friend in Portland, Oregon. She and her partner would soon be making a trip to Victoria, British Columbia. “Do you still live there?” she asked. “We are casually crafting an exit strategy.” When I told her I was about to move back to the States, she responded with a common refrain: “Why would you move back right now?”
It’s a question I’ve been struggling to answer. In the 12 years that I’ve lived abroad — and especially this past year — I’ve watched as my home country has become more dysfunctional, dangerous, and unjust. Why would I move toward what many others are trying to escape? I still don’t have a great answer, but I think it has to do with a sense of responsibility.
I’ve been away a long time, working as a journalist in Australia ([link removed]) and Canada ([link removed]). And, more recently, I’d been questioning whether I should bring my acquired skills and knowledge back “home.” In July, Earth Island Journal offered me an opportunity to do that and return to California — a place I grew up in and will always love.
I would work with Earth Island Institute, a progressive organization founded by the late activist David Brower that values courage, equity, and intersectionality. I would publish stories about grassroots efforts around the globe to protect people and the planet. Despite growing attempts by the Trump administration to silence and punish journalists, the job felt like a way to contribute and fight apathy ([link removed]).
I arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area this past Monday, just after Trump ordered the National Guard into Portland (where I had stopped on my drive south and enjoyed a peaceful cappuccino, and a view over a city that was certainly not at war). I don’t blame my friend for wanting to leave in such a political climate, nor would I blame any scientist or service worker or citizen for leaving a place that feels hostile or unsafe. Not contributing tax dollars or talent to an oppressive government is one form of resistance. Another, I think, is staying, or returning to try to help.
On my first day at the Journal office in Berkeley, as I was walking up the cement stairwell of the David Brower Center, a quote on the wall from the Indigenous botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer caught my eyes, and then my heart: “To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”
I’m happy to be in a place, and in a job, dedicated to that kind of healing. I look forward to sharing stories that inform and inspire positive change near and far.
Serena Renner
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Dennis Yu ([link removed])
PS: Let’s grow the movement! Share this email with an environmentally conscious friend or colleague (or copy this easy sign-up link ([link removed])).
THE LATEST ()
([link removed])
For the Love of Cats ([link removed])
Sharon Negri has been working to protect mountain lions for more than 40 years. Amid today’s anti-predator backlash, she’s still at it. “As activists know, the work is rarely ever finished,” she writes.
READ MORE ([link removed])
([link removed])
Forced Out ([link removed])
In late 2023, the Indigenous Ogiek people of Sasimwani were evicted from their homes in Maasai Mau Forest, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, to make way for the country’s growing carbon credit market. They are still fighting to return.
READ MORE ([link removed])
([link removed])
Commonsense Conservation ([link removed])
“In all my time on the water … I’ve interacted with many conservation-minded anglers out there like me. Yet our views are rarely represented in conversations about how meaningful policy and management can benefit all fishers in the long term. Fish On was born in 2024 to do just that.”
READ MORE ([link removed])
([link removed])
Public Lands Watchdogs ([link removed])
For years, the Journal has stood up for protecting our public lands ([link removed]). Thankfully, the latest Trump scheme to sell off our public lands didn’t pass Congress this time.
But there’s so much more to cover to keep this administration in check. That’s why Earth Island Journal is committed to being at the forefront of in-depth reporting on the fight to protect our public lands, our parks, our waterways, and beyond.
Reader support gives us the independence to tell the stories of people like legendary park ranger Betty Reid Soskin ([link removed]), pictured above with Managing Editor Zoe Loftus-Farren in 2016. Your support is essential to our success, and we thank you.
Won’t you join us today?
Count me in! ([link removed])
Latest Podcast
Berkeley, California, recently passed regulations requiring residents in certain parts of the city to remove vegetation within five feet of homes to help protect them from wildfires. Maureen Nandini Mitra talks with two wildfire scientists who have concerns about the no-vegetation regulation and how the controversy over it might detract from the more essential and urgent work of implementing other home hardening measures. ▶️ Listen now ([link removed])
ICYMI
Remembering Jane Goodall
In this interview from Earth Island Journal’s archives, renowned primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall, who passed away on October 1, reflects on her groundbreaking work that redefined what it means to be human and primate, and shares how to hold onto hope for planet Earth. (Earth Island Journal ([link removed]))
You Are What You Eat
Thailand may just have the world’s best advertising. We are especially digging this 2019 PSA. Watch until the very end; you’ll thank us later. (Thai Health Promotion Foundation ([link removed]))
Did a thoughtful friend forward you our newsletter?
What a great friend! Sign up here. ([link removed])
([link removed])
Facebook ([link removed])
([link removed])
Bluesky ([link removed])
([link removed])
Instagram ([link removed])
Thanks for supporting Earth Island Journal, an independent publication of the nonprofit Earth Island Institute. Reader donations to our Green Journalism Fund ([link removed]) help to cover the costs of our in-depth investigative reporting on environmental issues.
([link removed])
You are receiving this email newsletter because you signed up on our website.
No longer want to receive these emails? Update your preferences ([link removed]).
Make sure we land in your primary inbox: Add Earth Island Journal to your address book.
Our mailing address is:
Earth Island Journal
2150 Allston Way Ste 460
Berkeley, CA 94704-1375
Copyright © 2025 Earth Island Journal, All rights reserved.
