Inside the fight to give Florida rivers legal rights

A network of environmentalists has helped more than a dozen counties and cities introduce “rights of nature," but the movement faces pushback from lawmakers and lobbyists.
Floods inundating Appalachian communities are ‘public health nightmares’

Residents say flooding emergencies highlight the urgency of long-overlooked regional needs like infrastructure investment.
The longleaf pine was nearly wiped out 100 years ago. Can Southern landowners help it make a comeback?

The future of longleaf pine forests, which are critical to biodiversity, depends on landowners protecting and maintaining them through prescribed burning.

We’re hiring a part-time Gulf Coast correspondent!

Read more about how to apply.

Mold, foundation cracks, sinking houses: How a Florida Habitat for Humanity neighborhood fell apart

Experts, lawyers, and residents argue that affordable housing communities should be built with environmental justice and climate change in mind.

Join us for an event in Robeson County, NC

Join journalists, community leaders, and folks from across the county for a conversation about media coverage, the stories important to you, and the future of rural North Carolina.

This West Virginia town is a Superfund site. The booming outdoor industry doesn’t want to talk about it.

Minden residents are still searching for answers about PCB contamination while a new outdoor recreation economy is being built around them.

North Carolinians battle the $7.5-billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline

This eastern North Carolina community wants worthwhile economic development. Instead, it could be getting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Nuclear waste in Paducah, Kentucky poses extra threat to region facing historic flooding

Residents say federal agencies and contractors have left them in the dark about public health risks related to a Superfund site.

‘Absolutely discriminatory’: Access to federal agriculture resources lacking in Indian Country

The Longs are multigenerational Indigenous farmers in the South. Like most farmers, they need on-the-ground support from extension agents.

Your Southern Stories

“It took moving away from the South for me to truly appreciate what it is. I’ve only been away from my home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for 4.5 years now (I moved to Alaska for three years after college, then to NYC for a year, now I’m in Portland, OR), and the list of things I miss is endless. Just to name a few: the smell of rain steaming off hot pavement, cicadas singing on tree trunks, pollution enhanced sunsets. I also have vivid memories of my sister and I roaming around my grandmother’s swampy backyard looking for crawfish, and it being an absolute blast.

I don’t know when I’ll be back, just that I will be back. All Southerners return home eventually, right?”

—Taylor Balkom, Alaska

“My favorite place growing up was the farm my dad was born on in West Virginia. Daisies growing in the fields, swaying with the breeze, are my absolute favorite flower. The daisies always remind me of my grandmother who passed away when I was in 3rd grade … The log cabin, then dilapidated, was where my dad was born. The doctor arrived in his horse drawn carriage and delivered him on Thanksgiving Day, 1944. As an adult I have had opportunities to return to the farm. It seems so different now. The old log cabin is completely gone now. The well has been filled in. The “mountain” to the “BIG rock” turned out to be much smaller than we realized. But I still love daisies because they still remind me of my feisty grandmother. And, honestly, if I listen really close I can still hear the Whiporwill singing as the sun goes down.”

— Annette Ellis, Kentucky