In marshes across North America, if you look carefully and listen for a loud gulping sound on spring mornings you might spot an American Bittern. In this week’s BirdNote®, Mary McCann describes its striped plumage and how its behavior helps it blend with the cattails.

This week, Peter Dykstra and Host Steve Curwood go Beyond the Headlines to discuss NASA’s new anti-climate action Administrator and a girl scout’s journey to Washington to protest the weakening of coal ash regulation. In the history lesson, they consider the influence of Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that dramatically depicts CO2 levels rising in lockstep with global temperatures.

Two of the seven winners of the 2018 Goldman Environmental prize were a team of grassroots activists from South Africa. Their efforts quashed a secret deal between Russia and the South African government to build expensive and wasteful nuclear power plants. Liz McDaid and Makoma Lekalakala tell host Steve Curwood how they were able to derail the shadowy project, and why they believe with an abundance of sunlight and wind, nuclear has a minimal role in South Africa’s energy profile going forward.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt faces allegations of legal and ethical violations, including allegedly illegal spending on a soundproof phone booth and a cozy condo deal with an energy lobbyist. Democrats recruited a record number of federal lawmakers for a joint resolution calling for a cabinet resignation – 39 Senators and 140 House members. Republicans won’t sign, though some also want him out. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) is leading the push and tells host Steve Curwood he’s frustrated by the lack of oversight in the Republican-led Congress, and concerned by EPA’s regulatory rollbacks that he says endanger Americans’ health.

Sea urchins help create their own homes by chewing up the rocks they live on. As Aynsley O’Neill reports in this week’s Note on Emerging Science, Purple sea urchins can create as much sediment as a river would deposit.

In the 1950s and 60s landfills were often sited in wetlands, land too soggy for farming or houses. That use would be illegal in the US today and many have been shutdown. However, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental protection recently gave the green light to uncap part of a waste incinerator landfill in an estuary north of Boston and add half a million more tons of toxic ash. Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb reports.