Michigan Environment Watch

Rock climbing might be a new tool for conserving the public land that bolsters Michigan’s annual $20 billion tourism industry. The sport is gaining traction as outdoor enthusiasts look to experience nature differently, especially after indoor climbing gyms closed during the pandemic.

Don’t expect big new efforts to shut down Line 5 when Democrats take control. Those on both sides of the issue say the pipeline’s fate is now in the hands of a federal judge and President Joe Biden.

As millions of pounds of microplastics enter the Great Lakes each year, microplastics are turning up in human bodies. Researchers are scrambling to understand the health effects while efforts to curb waste fall short.

The denial permanently eliminates 800 megawatts of emissions-free power from Michigan’s grid, hindering the state’s efforts to go carbon neutral. But nuclear detractors cheered the move, citing safety fears at the aging plant.

A new study finds that Michigan’s outdoor recreation economy grew by 15.4 percent last year, more than double the growth of the state’s overall economy.

The century-old dams are expensive to maintain, generate little energy and are generally harmful to rivers and native fish. But their reservoirs bring boaters, visitors and lake houses that help support small communities.

A $34.9 million cleanup of heavily contaminated Muskegon Lake and White Lake in West Michigan is estimated to have recovered $16.4 million in lost housing value for nearby homeowners.

A new research program in Detroit will assess the impacts of air pollution and preterm birth.

Montcalm County voters rejected five renewable energy referendums and recalled several local officials who supported the plans. There is growing opposition to wind and solar farms as Michigan attempts to chart a green energy path.

Though wolf hunting is banned at the federal level, hunting advocates want Michigan to lay the groundwork for a hunt should federal protections end. Wolf advocates say there’s no justification for doing so.

The energy utility plans to lean into natural gas after shutting down coal plants, a move that has irked some clean energy advocates.

Resistance to wind and solar farms is growing across the farmlands of Michigan, where locals, not the state, control site approval. Nowhere is that fight more intense than Montcalm County.

Four years from the onset of the city’s lead-in-water crisis, crews have removed 99 percent of lead service lines from the city’s water delivery system.

Democrats and Republicans, hunters, fishers and birding groups want Michigan to invest $30 million in federal funds for wetlands to help reduce algal blooms in Lake Erie and Saginaw Bay.

The Nature Conservancy, a global environmental group, has paid a New York hedge fund more than $27 million for part of the land, with another purchase to come. The deal appears to put an end to fears of privatization of timberland long open to the public.

Prosecutors in the Michigan Attorney General’s office say they will argue a circuit court judge erred when she dismissed criminal charges against seven former public officials.

Whitmer wants to close Line 5, prepare for climate change, watchdog industrial polluters and update water safety. Dixon wants Line 5 open, regulations cut and a state that treats businesses like customers, not adversaries.

The experimental barrier along the Boardman River would cap a decades-long effort to replace dams that impede the river’s flow and block native fish migration. But a resident contends it would ‘decimate’ a city park.

Mid-Michigan lawmakers urgently introduced a slate of bills to better fund and regulate Michigan’s aging dams. But more than two years after the Midland disaster, the reforms have yet to receive a hearing.

Parts of the Great Lakes region could be a monarch stronghold as climate change and human practices wipe out parts of the butterfly’s migration route. Activists say lackluster conservation efforts threaten monarch survival.