Art by Carmen Deñó
Every year for Earth Day, the New England News Collaborative stations produce a series of stories about climate change in our region.
We're seeing warmer winters and hotter summers, increased flooding and persistent drought. And that’s challenging for the flora and fauna that have long made this region home.
For our 2025 NENC Earth Day series, our journalists headed out to see how the sea slugs, salamanders, and snowshoe hares are doing. They met native wildlife, and some of the invasive newcomers that are moving in, and looked at how all of these changes are affecting New England's ecosystems.
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Alexej Siren/CourtesyAs New England warms, snowshoe hares are increasingly finding themselves the wrong color for camouflaging with their environment. New England scientists are looking at some promising ways to help. -
Zoey Knox/NHPRCars and climate change have made life harder for key species that provide nutrients for creatures all around New England and sequester carbon in soil.
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If you’ve spent a lot of time outdoors in New England, you’ve likely crossed paths with, and probably stepped on, lichens. This mysterious indicator species plays an important role of the bottom of the food chain, and is also a habitat for other microorganisms. -
Researchers say they're seeing more of these colorful blobs growing on docks, but they're not the only invasive marine species that could be spreading along New England coasts. And climate change may be partly to blame. -
Researchers are checking deeper water to find the once-common bivalves, while mussel farmers use new methods to grow consistent crops. -
The invasive spongy moth, a destroyer of northeastern forests, has a natural foe in a Japanese fungus that needs certain weather conditions to activate. -
New England needs more housing — especially affordable housing. But what happens when the land picked for that housing is also valuable in the fight to slow climate change? -
Te compartimos cinco consejos para inquilinos y propietarios para reducir sus emisiones y combatir el cambio climático. -
With federal money and local support, Peterborough is hoping to electrify 200 heating systems in the next three years. They’re also trying to train more people to do that work.
