Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes peek at what our team has been reading, learning and discussing. Let us know what you think at [email protected].
Walk it out
Contributing Editor Peter Yeung has been traveling for several months — and bringing us great stories from places like the Galapagos and Peru’s Cordillera Azul along the way. But this week, he shared a Le Monde story about his hometown that made our New York-based staff envious.
Peter says:
Parisians just voted to triple parking fees for SUVs. It’s almost unthinkable for this to happen in the US. But, as I reported on back in 2022, these measures really are needed to make cities more livable and people-centered.
Getting crabby
Getting crabbyEditorial Director Rebecca Worby drew our attention to some good news about sea otters, a topic that Contributing Editor Michaela Haas wrote about for us last year. According to AP News, otters are helping to save California’s marshlands from erosion — by consuming crabs that would otherwise eat away at the plants that keeps dirt in place.
Becca says:
When Michaela wrote about the return of otters to Oregon and California, one of the experts she spoke to mentioned that he’d observed reduced erosion. So it’s cool to see this update — and fun to picture all those otters feasting on crabs.
What else we’re reading
🪨 Bill would ban cities from using boulders, other ‘hostile architecture,’ to prevent camping — shared by Audience Engagement Manager Mariel Lozada from KIRO 7 News Seattle
🐪 This camel has a very important job — shared by Rebecca Worby from Vox
🧸 Young, old and marvellous: how a care home built a nursery – and everyone thrived — shared by contributing writer MaryLou Costa from the Guardian
Elsewhere in our channels…
An atmospheric river brought powerful storms to California this week, so we’re thinking about how such events affect the landscape. We’ve covered recent flood mitigation efforts in the state, including a story from last month by Elizabeth Hewitt about farmland restored to a floodplain.
