Environmental cuts hit poor communities

Here & Now Anytime

WBUR

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4.6 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

Lee Zeldin, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, says he's eliminating environmental justice jobs that were largely focused on addressing pollution in low-income and minority communities. Grist's Lylla Younes explains the impact of these cuts. Then, more than 400 Fish and Wildlife Service workers — or about 5% of the agency's workforce — were let go last month. And more cuts to the agency could be on the horizon. Writer and photographer Mark Seth Lender shares concerns wildlife enthusiasts are feeling. And, the number of monarch butterflies overwintering this year in Mexico has nearly doubled, according to the annual census data from the World Wildlife Fund. Biologist Emma Pelton talks about this encouraging sign for the monarch population, as it continues to rebound from dangerously low levels this century.

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0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design.
0:09.2	MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com.
0:17.6	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:22.8	Environmental justice is no longer a priority of the Environmental Protection Agency.
0:28.6	They're calling it woke to focus cleanup efforts on the communities hit hardest by pollution.
0:34.7	Many of which are the communities of the Trump administration has purported to
0:39.3	want to protect, you know, poor working class communities, many of which also are former
0:44.4	mine sites in Appalachia, white communities even.
1:01.2	It's Friday, March 21st, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR.
1:02.1	I'm Chris Bentley.
1:10.2	Today on the show, three stories about nature and human nature.
1:13.8	We've got a bit of good news about monarch butterflies and what you can do to keep it going. Also, as the Trump administration slashes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
1:21.6	Service, we wonder what privatization might mean for our national wildlife refuges.
1:28.3	Can you imagine Yellowstone National Park where you could drive your car in for 10 days for
1:34.4	$70 and still have time left over, turned into Disneyland where it would cost you
1:41.2	$700 to $1,000 to do the same thing.
1:45.5	That's where we're headed.
1:50.4	But first, do you live near a toxic waste dump or a chemical plant?
1:57.5	Does a highway slice right through your neighborhood?
2:03.4	If it does, you might be in what the EPA used to consider an environmental justice community. And it's not a coincidence that the dirtiest
2:09.6	businesses spew their pollution in places with the least power to push back. Poor communities,
2:17.0	often black, Latino, and indigenous areas.
	...

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