Incident Underscores Links Between Mercury Pollution, Illegal Gold Mining & Organized Crime Last month, Sabin Center Senior Fellow Luis Fernandez assisted Peruvian customs officials authorities in the seizure of a record-breaking 4-ton shipment of illegal mercury on its way to Peru. Hidden in bags of […]
Schang Steps in as Meiburg Retires The Sabin Center welcomes Board Member Scott Schang as Interim Executive Director. Schang, a Professor of Practice and Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Wake’s School of Law, brings decades of nonprofit, corporate, and academic experience, including leadership roles […]
Testing reveals chronic mercury exposure across Peru’s Loreto region Climbing gold prices may mean climbing mercury poisoning rates for the people living in the Peruvian Amazon. According to a June report from our colleagues at CINCIA, widespread mercury exposure has been identified in several […]
The Real World Consequences of Cuts to USAID Programs Earlier this year, the Trump Administration terminated over 6,000 grants as it rapidly dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), before any meaningful review of the programs could take place. When critical scientific funding […]
In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, trees may be quietly recording one of the region’s most persistent environmental threats: mercury pollution from gold mining. A new study in Frontiers in Environmental Science shows, for the first time, that tropical trees can store a […]
With virtually each passing day of the new administration, our nation has seen major shifts in federal governance, and environmental regulation is certainly facing rapid change. Executive Director Stan Meiburg, who capped his 39-year career with the EPA as Acting Deputy Administrator under President Obama, […]
Faculty Affiliate Ovidiu Csillik published two recent papers highlighting the role of remote sensing in improving our understanding of how tropical forests are responding to climate change dynamics. “Environmental drivers of spatial variation in tropical forest canopy height: Insights from NASA’s GEDI spaceborne LiDAR.” […]
Global mercury expert leads world-class lab in the middle of the Amazon Sabin Center Fellow Claudia Vega, who heads up CINCIA’s Mercury Program, has just been announced as a 2025 TED Fellow. Trained as an analytical chemist and a wildlife veterinarian, Vega’s work illuminates […]
Senior Fellow Luis Fernandez co-authors major new report from Conservation X Labs With the price of gold exceeding $3,000 per ounce, solutions to ensure responsible sourcing of the precious metal are increasingly urgent. Sabin Center Senior Fellow and Wake Forest Research Professor Luis Fernandez recently […]
What is a “Flash Drought” and how does it explain the current Carolina Wildfires? Board Member Lauren Lowman, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, and Nick Corak, a Ph.D. Candidate in Physics at Wake Forest University, shared a helpful explainer in The Conversation on the […]