environment

Kansas City is draining Brush Creek in order to clean the famously dirty waterway that runs through a large portion of the city. Cars and shopping carts are among the items that workers have found.

Once a chemical storage area, Olathe’s Pollinator Prairie has since been reclaimed as an ecological habitat hosting hundreds of native plants. A recent event showed off its role as a stopover for migrating pollinators like monarchs.

Kansas City has committed to planting 10,000 trees in three years. But the city's existing tree canopy is relatively old and under stress by climate change and other factors.

A grant from the Missouri Department of Conservation helped local educators create a grassland prairie for students to learn about conservation at an Oakville elementary school.

Artificial floating wetlands naturally filter water from contaminants and excess nutrients. There are about a dozen in the state, and the Missouri Department of Conservation wants to add more.

Alligator snapping turtles are the biggest freshwater turtle in North America, sporting jagged, pointy shells, and a hooked beak. But these prehistoric-looking creatures haven't been seen in Kansas since 1991.

Tiger-Lily, a nearly three-foot-long western rat snake found in 2017 in southwest Missouri, will be at the Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center until Sept. 28.

Robert Benecke captured 19th-century western Kansas landscapes before massive European migrations to the area transformed them. In the intervening years, the dust bowl, mass extinction of bison, and expansion of mechanized agriculture have all led to a profusion of trees, ponds and lakes across the Sunflower State.

The Heartland Conservation Alliance is working with local organizations to eradicate invasive Bush Honeysuckle on 40 acres along the Blue River. The non-native Honeysuckle grows so thick it blocks sunlight, keeps animals from foraging and limits bird and wildlife biodiversity.

Plastics labeled with resin codes between 1 and 7 used to all be eligible for recycling. Now, there's no market for some types of plastic, and nearly a quarter of what gets sent to sorting facilities can't be recycled.

To save Oklahoma from treacherous tornados, scientists in the 2024 blockbuster “Twisters” try to use a real-life technique called cloud seeding. But would this really work? Researchers have actually been using cloud seeding to modify the weather since the 1940s. For professor Katja Friedrich, it’s a promising way to address some of the issues caused by climate change.

Nearly 75% of Kansas City, Missouri, residents live in a heat island where temperatures can be at least eight degrees higher on any given day. That presents serious health and energy concerns, but efforts to cool these areas down are gaining steam.