Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · 7d

The official USFS website right now is...something. Can't recall ever seeing the use of official govt resources for openly partisan objectives like I'm seeing today.

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · 15d

We've also translated our work into BMPs for mineland mgmt & reuse projects. These are critical as everyone - from conservative politicians to green groups - (inaccurately) sells old mines in #Appalachia as zero-cost sites for solar, data centers, nuke plants, & more. See: bit/ly/GrowingSm...

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · 15d

Our lab's latest paper reports some good news from the Virginia coalfields: Spotted #Salamanders love colonizing incidental wetlands formed on old coal mines, & now we know a little more about how & why (& which wetlands matter most). Full-text available here: digitalcommons.odu.edu/vjs/vol76/is...

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Reposted by Wally Smith

Kevin Reuning @reuning.bsky.social · 21d

The @aaup.org just shared guidance for academic workers on how to protect themselves online www.aaup.org/news/advisor...

Advisory to Academic Workers

In a moment when it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the consequences of our online speech and choices, the AAUP and Faculty First Responders are issuing guidance to AAUP members and othe...

www.aaup.org

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Reposted by Wally Smith

Appalshop @appalshop.bsky.social · 22d

📣We're hiring for our radio station WMMT! 📣

We're searching for a General Manager who will help carry forward WMMT's mission and keep the station thriving as a voice and resource for mountain people.

Details and how to apply: appalshop.org/wmmtgm

A green graphic promoting that Appalshop is hiring.

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · 25d

Lost in the current hysteria over universities is that - at public schools, at least - we're not only not interested in the political views of applicants for faculty jobs but can't even ask what views those faculty hold or how they vote during the search & hiring process. It's illegal to do so.

Aaron Fritschner @fritschner.bsky.social · 25d

*looks directly at the camera*

Mollie Hemingway: “All public universities should be required to have minimum 50% if their staffs be conservative professors by spring 2026. In each department.

Michael Tracey: “so you want to bring back affirmative action?”

Hemingway: “No, I want to remove the left-wing oppression that has destroyed American universities.”

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Reposted by Wally Smith

Center for Biological Diversity @biologicaldiversity.org · Sep 8

“But now we’re very worried, because the Forest Service is actively pursuing aggressive timber targets that are unprecedented in scale and will directly harm hellbenders,” said Will Harlan, the Center's Southeast director. ⬇️

Planned environmental rule changes threaten beloved Eastern hellbender’s possible protection as endangered species • Asheville Watchdog

The ideal habitat of the Eastern hellbender that Tracy Davids described was pretty much what she saw on Tuesday morning as she stood ankle-deep in the Davidson River. “Relatively shallow, fast-moving,...

avlwatchdog.org

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Sep 4

Our lab appears in this piece on coalfield solar farms. In brief: VA stripped regs requiring enviro assessments for mineland solar ➡️TNC announced, w/o such assessments, plans to build solar on mines home to at-risk wildlife ➡️we've been trying to undo the damage since.

www.whro.org/virginia-cen...

In Virginia’s Coalfields, Renewable Projects Hit A New Roadblock – Trump

Renewable energy developers planned dozens of projects on property owned by The Nature Conservancy. Then President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1, upending an unprecedented effort to revitalize Appalachia...

www.whro.org

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Reposted by Wally Smith

Paul Higgins @phiggins.bsky.social · Aug 28

AMS released a statement on climate change today that points out five foundational flaws with the Department of Energy's 2025 climate report: www.ametsoc.org/ams/about-am...

The Practice and Assessment of Science: Five Foundational Flaws in the Department of Energy's 2025 Climate Report

Adopted by the Executive Committee of the AMS Council on 27 August 2025

www.ametsoc.org

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Aug 6

Found this momma ’mander & baby ’manders on land wrecked by past surface mining & logging above Dante, VA today. A reminder that the phrase ”Who cares? It’s just an old surface mine” minimizes natural treasures like these that deserve our respect (& more thoughtful planning for post-mining land use)

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Aug 1

Really enjoyed this excellent feature from back in April on our lab’s hellbender habitat restoration work…& what we learned when Helene dropped a generational flood on top of it. Check it out at the link, and look for a white paper on the project later this year.

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · Aug 1

How climate disasters, human sprawl—and now Trump—are coming for the Eastern hellbender, America’s largest salamander

Legend has it this salamander came from hell. We’re about to send it back.

Climate disasters, human sprawl, and now Trump: This is how extinctions happen.

www.motherjones.com

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Jul 28

Yeah, I think politics is mostly behind it here in SWVA. Lots of money to be made by some politically-connected VIPs when regs don’t have to be followed (& in some cases, public money changing hands between those VIPs & reg agencies themselves, which further muddies the water…pun intended).

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Jul 28

Oh yeah, for sure. In our area, all that is nested in a broader issue of (some, not all) agencies endorsing large-scale unpermitted stream disturbance as a conservation measure. I’ve sat in a mtg where DEQ said stream excavation is a “beneficial use” of public waterways that does not need permitting

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Jul 23

Depressing but informative piece on the “we need to clean out the streams” craze gripping #Appalachia in the wake of recent floods. Similar story to what we’ve seen with state-run ATV trail development digging out streams here in VA: regulatory agencies will turn tail & run when politics are at play

Vox @vox.com · Jul 23

Debris removal after Hurricane Helene did more damage to the environment than the storm itself in some parts of the state, scientists claim. www.vox.com/down-to-eart...

The government stepped in to clean up a disaster in North Carolina. Then they created another one.

Debris removal after Hurricane Helene did more damage to the environment than the storm itself in some parts of the state, scientists claim.

www.vox.com

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Jul 23

Seeing this w/ a (highly-politicized) push to develop nuclear facilities in rural coalfield towns here in #Appalachia. Feasibility studies so far have omitted any analysis or consideration of waste storage/risks, & officials punt to “don’t worry; they’ll just recycle it” when Qs come up from locals.

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · Jul 23

One weird thing about nuclear power is that it's easy to model narrowly its economic and emission impacts, but very hard to model low-odds, high-impact risks associated with waste, spent fuel, weapons proliferation, military strikes on plants, etc. As most objective analyses omit huge factors, ..

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Jul 21

This situation is precisely what a number of us warned about when TNC bought 250,000 acres of the coalfields to “protect” them, w/o purchasing the underlying mineral rights. Now a portion of that for-profit carbon offset project is getting surface-mined with minimal environmental assessment.

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Reposted by Wally Smith

Ben Rosen @benrosen.bsky.social · Jul 9

1977: why would the bartender in star wars even care if some robots with artificial intelligence came into his bar

2025: ohhh ok

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Reposted by Wally Smith

Lee Hedgepeth @leehedgepeth.bsky.social · Jun 17

"This would nuke this creek," a Yale biologist said of a proposed data center in Alabama. The data center is projected to use more water than every home in the state and 90x the electricity of homes in Bessemer, where it's to be located. Full story: insideclimatenews.org/news/1606202...

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · Jun 10

Because you probably need a timeline cleanse right now, here’s some good news: we surpassed 5 new Virginia populations of Plethodon pauleyi this week for our lab’s new USFWS-funded project. It’s beginning to look like this ESA-petitioned species is (thankfully) much more common than we’d assumed.

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · May 31

I’ve heard the same argument - that dredging is a quick fix to stop flooding in #Appalachia - from local govt officials in recent meetings here in SW Virginia, just across the border from eastern KY. In reality, stream dredging makes flooding worse (see: www.kymitigation.org/wp-content/u...).

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · May 30

Duffield, VA - a town of 73 people covering 0.6 sq mi in the decidedly deep-red part of rural Virginia that I live in - was named to this list. Getting strong “we used AI to populate this list for us” vibes from this.

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · May 29

Goes without saying, but if I or someone in my position did this in a research report, I would (rightfully) end up without a job, despite having tenure. But in our current political moment, it’s just a typical Thursday evening.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · May 29

The Trump administration released a report last week that it billed as a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for action on a range of children’s health issues. But the report, from the Make America Healthy Again Commission, cited studies that did not exist. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/w...

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wearing a suit and tie, is sitting at a table. A headline reads: "White House Health Report Included Fake Citations." Photo by Eric Lee/The New York Times.

Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · May 28

Setting aside the obvious ethical & 1st Amendment issues with this, one of the ongoing federally-funded research projects in my lab has now spanned 3 different presidential administrations. Our work, which is apolitical, happens on vastly different timescales from partisan politics.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · May 28

Linda McMahon: "Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish."

Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · May 22

It is beyond annoying to hear the refrain that inland flooding from Helene was some wildly unpredictable event. Catastrophic flooding across the southern Apps from those setups is such a well-documented phenomenon that we have covered it in my *ecology* class for the past 15 yrs here in SW Virginia

Nick Bassill @nickpbassill.bsky.social · May 21

Accuweather is pushing a study that claims (without describing the data/methods with any reproducibility) that they are superior hurricane forecasters. Among their ridiculous claims is that they were the "only" one to predict disastrous flooding from Helene. Gory details here: x.com/accuweather/...

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Wally Smith @wsmith1.bsky.social · May 21

“Life’s hard, man. Like, have you ever been tryin’ to get it on with your lady in a mud puddle and some guy just swims over and sits there, watching you doin’ it, and won’t leave? Some days are like that, man.”