The Brief

A Long Beach man was rescued after being trapped in Sequoia National Forest for three days.

Ryan Wardwell of Long Beach was trapped behind the Seven Teacups waterfalls after a rappelling incident.

Wardell was treated for minor injuries and dehydration.

TULARE COUNTY, Calif. – Rescue teams in Sequoia National Forest this week were able to save a Southern California man who had been trapped underneath a waterfall for three days.

Timeline

Ryan Wardwell from Long Beach was last seen on Sunday, Aug. 10, at the top of the Seven Teacups waterfalls in the Kern River. According to officials, Wardwell was planning on rappelling down the falls, but didn’t return to his car Sunday night.

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Local sheriff’s deputies searched the area all day on Monday using aircraft with infrared detection, but weren’t able to find Wardell.

The next morning, crews were able to find Wardwell after flying a drone behind the waterfall. Officials then threw a rescue helicopter in and were able to lift Wardwell out to safety.

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What we know

According to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office, Wardwell tried to rappel down the falls, but was taken off the line by the fast-moving water, and was trapped.

The helicopter took Wardwell to a landing zone. After three days, Wardell was suffering from dehydration and suffered only minor injuries. He was then reunited with his family.

The Source

Information in this story is from an Instagram post from the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office.

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways

A nature photographer has recounted a surprising discovery he made while checking one of his trail cameras.

While the brown bear is listed as “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, the species was once considered to be extinct in Lithuania.

However, the large animal has made a handful of appearances in the last several years, hinting at its return to the local ecosystem. A highly publicized sighting occurred in the Šalčininkai district in Lithuania in April. Marek Kislovskij, a wildlife enthusiast and photographer, captured a brown bear strolling through a nearby forest using a perfectly located trail camera, according to LRT.lt.

Kislovskij told the publication, “When I came to check the camera, I couldn’t believe what I saw at first.”

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According to Kislovskij, he was not aware of any brown bear encounters in the Šalčininkai district.

“I was really surprised to have captured such a shot and, of course, I was thrilled,” he continued. “At the same time, it was a bit unsettling to realize that a bear had recently been walking around in that same area.”

Trail cameras can serve as a perfect tool to monitor the well-being of nearby wildlife while remaining hands-off. As with the case of the brown bear sighting, trail cameras can also be extremely useful in the documentation of rarely seen species.

Although Lithuania has been described as a “non-bear country,” bears once enjoyed strong populations throughout several European nations, but habitat loss and overhunting contributed to their decline. The sighting of a brown bear can be a sign of a thriving ecosystem.

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Brown bears can play a crucial role in regulating prey populations, dispersing seeds, and aerating the soil. Although they can be viewed as intimidating predators, they are very wary of humans and commonly avoid interactions.

This sighting came just days after a bear cub was spotted in northwest Lithuania. Laimonas Daukša, director of the Lithuanian Hunters and Fishermen’s Association, noted the importance of the sighting to Made in Vilnius.

“A special day for Lithuanian nature, because from now on, bears living in Lithuania, which were previously considered extinct, despite their regular visits to our nature, should also appear in the Red Book,” Daukša said, referring to the country’s list of protected animals, plants, and mushrooms.

“As far as I know, according to the current procedure, only leading species can be included in it, so we have the first bear cub that has opened a new page in this book,” he added.

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In the rugged North Cascade Mountains of Washington State, no one likely knows this glacier better than Mauri Pelto, who says, “My life has been shaped by this ice.”

For more than 40 years, Pelto, a glaciologist and a professor at Nichols College in Massachusetts, has returned to this remote wilderness. “We got 6,000 measurements on this glacier,” he said.

Today, the crunch of footsteps in the snow is now rivaled by the sound of melting ice. “It’s always melting off,” he said. “The crevasses are changing. We can hear the water flowing under our feet.”

For more than 40 years Mauri Pelto has been studying the shrinking glaciers in the rugged North Cascade Mountains of Washington State. / Credit: CBS News

Pelto founded the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project as a grad student in 1984. He vowed to measure these glaciers every summer for 50 years. This is Year 42. In that time the glaciers have changed more than he has, shrinking by 40%. Some have disappeared.

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Pelto’s work has been featured by NASA, and fed into a worldwide glacier database. Of the 47 glaciers he has studied, returning to them year after year, he says 12 are now gone, “nine of them just in the last five years.”

Climate scientists say warmer summers and drier winters, driven by our burning of fossil fuels, are accelerating the loss. Seven of the 10 worst years for glacier melt worldwide have happened since 2010, according to Climate Central.

Or just ask Mauri Pelto where the ice used to be. “Almost 50 feet above my head just a decade ago,” he said.

The glaciers in the North Cascade Mountains have been shrinking; some have disappeared altogether. / Credit: CBS News

Glaciers are Earth’s water towers, storing 70% of the freshwater supply, vital for drinking, farming, and the health of many ecosystems. As they melt, sea levels are rising, and coastal flooding is getting worse.

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During his annual treks to the North Cascades, Pelto has hiked nearly 6,000 miles, and slept 800 nights in a tent. “We got our picture window,” he said of the view. “It’s also one of those places that’s really special to us as a family.”

His son Ben, daughter Jill, and now his nine-month-old granddaughter Wren have joined him in the field.

Jill Pelto has spent 17 summers by her dad’s side, but she doesn’t just collect data. As the project’s art director, she paints it. The data points that she and her dad measure eventually will go into her art. “Data is a story about something in the real world and that story has meaning and emotion,” she said. “And that’s what I’m trying to bring into my art.”

Her watercolor paintings are more than just beautiful landscapes; they reveal the science. Look closely and you see a bar graph of glacier decline in the North Cascades. One piece showing temperature rise and ice loss made the cover of Time magazine.

In her 2015 watercolor

Jill said, “I think sometimes when people see data there’s this instant reaction, and so it’s not like the data is any different in my art, but something about that combination maybe gets people to kind of put down the wall of like, ‘Oh, I can’t understand this,’ or ‘You know, this is not something I’m interested in.'”

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I said, “The average person is not going to read a scientific report, but they will see a painting. And it does impact you in a different way.”

“Yes, definitely,” said Jill.

Her art has given her dad a new way to share the story he’s been recording for the past 42 years. And it’s also changed their relationship: “We do it so seamlessly at this point,” Mauri said.

“Feels like you’re one team out here?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.

Jill added, “This bigger project just means so much to us and has shaped our lives. So, sharing that year after year is beyond special.”

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And now, Mauri Pelto has just eight summers left to fulfill his 50-year promise. Asked what he thinks it will be like to no longer come out to the glaciers, Mauri replied, “I don’t know, I can’t remember what it was like to not come out here. This landscape has been shaped by ice, and so to understand the landscape and the ice, you really have to walk across it.”

Mauri and Jill Pelto. / Credit: CBS News

For more info:

North Cascade Glacier Climate ProjectMauri Pelto, Professor of Environmental Science, Nichols College, Dudley, Mass.Jill Pelto Art (Official site)Climate Central

Story produced by Chris Spinder, in partnership with Climate Central. Editor: Chris Jolly.

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See also:

Climate scientist: “There’s no place that’s safe” (“Sunday Morning”)Photographer James Balog on documenting climate change: “Adventure with a purpose” (“Sunday Morning”) Building healthier habitats to resist the impacts of climate change (“Sunday Morning”) Coastal residents on climate change: “The ocean’s coming for you” (“Sunday Morning”) “Engine Trouble”: How greenhouse gases threaten our world (“Sunday Morning”) For many climate change finally hits home (“Sunday Morning”)

Rashid Johnson on art as a source of potential joy

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Almanac: August 17

The invasive quagga mussels found in an Idaho river in 2023 were microscopic. But to state officials, their presence was enormous.

Though the mussels couldn’t grow much larger than a nickel, state officials said an infestation would devastate Idaho’s economy and ecosystem, clogging water pipes and stealing food from native species. Biologists typically kill off the mussels with chemicals, adding just enough of a lethal dose to infested waters. But treating mussels in a river had never been done before. Moving water would let the toxic chemicals travel beyond the treatment area.

State officials took the risk.

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Only two weeks after that first mussel detection, the state spent $3 million to flood the Twin Falls area of the Snake River with over 40,000 pounds of the prescribed copper-based poison. They had anticipated some of the impacts, like scores of sturgeon up to 8 feet long and 35 years old turning up dead. But other effects of the treatment, and the fate of the copper itself, were unknown until now.

Two years after the treatment, a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey detailed that the copper destroyed up to 90% of the invertebrates living in the area, putting at stake food resources for future fish populations in the river. Over 7,000 pounds of copper have settled into the riverbed, according to the study, potentially remaining toxic.

The treatments also didn’t work. A year later, state officials found more quagga mussel larvae, and they applied another round of copper. The effects of the 2024 treatments are still being studied.

“We understood the terrible gravity of what we had to undertake, but we also know ultimately what’s at stake,” Chanel Tewalt, Idaho State Department of Agriculture director, told the Idaho Statesman. “So we can’t shy away from making these hard decisions just because there’s difficult collateral. There is collateral either way.”

‘Fastest and most complex’ mussel treatment in North America

Since 2009, after quagga mussels were found in the Colorado River basin, Idaho has been testing its water and inspecting boats entering the state for signs of the mussels.

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Quagga are native to Eastern Europe but were introduced to North American waterways through the Great Lakes in the 1980s, according to Austin Baldwin, research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Water Science Center. They have spread to nearly all regions of North America aside from the Columbia River basin, where the Snake River drains.

State officials planned their response to the mussels for years leading up to the 2023 detection, but the fact that it happened in the Twin Falls area of the Snake River meant the treatments would be “incredibly challenging,” Tewalt told the Statesman. The river there was sandwiched by canyons, making the water difficult to access by boat and providing plenty of crevices for mussels to hide.

“We had to stage chelated copper along canyon rims with hoses, airlifting boats, constantly moving copper product through a river system,” Tewalt said.

It was the “fastest and most complex” invasive mussel treatment that had ever been done in North America, she added.

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The copper product the state used is sold under the name Natrix, a treatment registered for invasive mussel control through the Environmental Protection Agency, according to the product’s parent company, SePRO . Natrix is in a liquid form and is chelated, which helps it evenly distribute in water.

In 2023, the state used a copper concentration of 1 part per million, Department of Agriculture spokesperson Sydney Kennedy told the Statesman. That amount falls below the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1.3 part per million limit for drinking water, but is lethal to adult mussels and other aquatic species.

Copper poisoning had ‘heartbreaking’ collateral

Baldwin was part of the team tasked with finding out, in the aftermath, what all that copper would do. It was “such an unprecedented treatment at this scale,” he said, that it warranted a lot of questions about its impact.

Baldwin in his study found that the effects of the copper on invertebrates, like native mussels and snails, were devastating. The number of invertebrates in the treatment area dropped by 50-90% after the chemicals were deployed, though some species were more tolerant of the copper than others.

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“One thing that we don’t know is how long those effects might last, the decreases in abundance,” Baldwin said. “We don’t know if those numbers would rebound within a few months, or if it would take potentially years.”

Baldwin added that the drops in invertebrate populations could shake up the food web for fish — another impact, on top of the chemical treatments that had already killed them off.

Mike Peterson, regional fisheries manager at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told the Statesman that 48 white sturgeon out of a local population of 49 were killed directly by the copper treatment. While they also saw fish species like yellow perch and largescale suckers largely killed off, other fish species were minimally affected, he added.

Then there’s the fate of the copper. Baldwin said about half of the copper settled into its solid form or was absorbed by living things within the first 15 kilometers downriver of the treatment area. While he noted that the settled copper was less toxic than in its liquid treatment form, he said it could still harm creatures that live in the sediment of the river.

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“I think it’s less toxic to at least a fish, but organisms that live in that sediment, they’re definitely getting exposed to that copper,” Baldwin said. “It’s still there, and it could still be problematic to those organisms living in the stream bed.”

Tewalt described these impacts as “heartbreaking,” but inevitable. Without the treatment, she told the Statesman, native Snake River organisms would have been killed off by the quagga mussels, which suck up nutrients from the water and alter entire ecological regions.

David Wong, a quagga mussel management researcher at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, criticized Idaho’s approach because of the environmental impact and the need for more poisoning just a year later. He called the treatments a “failure” for having such lethal effects without eliminating the quagga.

Since officials didn’t know where the adult mussels producing the larvae were, Wong told the Statesman, they could not have expected their treatment to succeed. Though state officials found one adult mussel leading up to the first treatment in 2023, mussel larvae were found upstream of that adult, so it couldn’t have been the only source of the larvae, Wong added. In 2024, the state didn’t find any adults before its treatments.

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“In order to do a rapid response, you have to have very basic data to support your rapid response plan,” Wong said.

Tewalt dismissed Wong’s concern about missing adult mussels. Searching for them “doesn’t serve a strong purpose” since their small size makes them difficult to find, and an abundance of adults would have indicated the infestation was too far gone for treatment, she said.

The copper treatments were even more robust in 2024, Tewalt said, aiming to address any shortcomings of the first treatments. This time, they went further upriver and checked the copper concentrations to ensure consistency at different depths of the water. It was unlikely that there could have been adults even further upriver, she said, since it was hard to access by boat — the most common way they’re transmitted.

“This upriver discussion, I guess it’s one that folks can have,” she said. “I’m much more concerned about ensuring that copper got into every part of the river that it possibly could.”

A watercraft boat inspection station is located in Marsing, Friday, July 25, 2025.

Treating quagga mussels was ‘absolutely critical’ for Idaho

An hour southwest of Boise, a small red shed waits at the intersection of U.S. 95 and Idaho 55, intercepting all watercraft entering the state. Employees man the building for 16 hours a day beginning at sunrise, serving alongside two dozen other stations in Idaho as the “first line of defense” against quagga mussels and other invasive water species, according to the state Department of Agriculture’s website.

Watercraft inspector Mark Klug, left, inspects two jet skis last used in Nevada at a watercraft boat inspection station in Marsing, Friday, July 25, 2025.

Lloyd Knight, the agency’s deputy director, told the Statesman that whenever a car holding a watercraft turns into the station, one worker will begin interviewing the driver to determine whether the boat had been in infested waters, while another inspects the watercraft.

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“They’re looking for what it’s carrying,” Knight said. “Is it carrying aquatic weeds? Can they see mussels on it? They’ll look on all the surfaces.”

Those inspection stations are intended to intercept another quagga outbreak before the mollusks even have a chance to enter Idaho waters. Officials said they hope to avoid more rounds of chemical treatments, but believe they’d be necessary if they find more of the mussels to avoid the consequences of an infestation.

Watercraft inspector Mark Klug, right, looks at drain plugs on two jet skis last used in Nevada at a watercraft boat inspection station in Marsing, July 25, 2025.

Through a spokesperson, Gov. Brad Little told the Statesman that a quagga infestation could mean “hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect costs” for the state, having implications for drinking water, energy, agriculture and energy. He characterized the treatments as “absolutely critical.”

Idaho Power biologist Michael Stephenson told the Statesman that the mussels can become clogged in hydropower water intake pipes. Managing them could result in power outages to Idahoans during peak seasons and increased costs passed down to customers, he said.

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“The treatment versus the long-term infestation — the juice is worth the squeeze on that one, in my opinion,” Stephenson said.

And Tewalt said if the mussels were to make their way into irrigation pipes, it would have a massive impact on the state’s agriculture industry.

“Idaho uses more acre feet of irrigation water than any other state in the nation except California,” she said. “If we can’t move irrigation water in this state, the lifeblood of our economy withers.”

For now, it’s unclear whether the latest treatments removed the mussels. In a July news release, the state said it has yet to detect any new viable quagga mussels in the Snake River.

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But Idahoans can’t rule out the possibility just yet. In previous years, quagga were not detected until the fall.

“We behaved last year as if this was our last chance,” Tewalt told the Statesman. “We fully believe that eradication is possible, or we wouldn’t do this. I can confidently say we left nothing on the table in 2024.”

Aug. 15—SUPERIOR — A panel created in 2013 to implement the Wisconsin Point Area Management Plan could be looking to update the plan that led to dune restoration, boardwalks and other amenities, consolidated parking and a trail that extends from Bear Creek Park to Lot 1 on Wisconsin Point.

The Wisconsin Point Committee took no action Tuesday, Aug. 12, but an idea for a new trail that loops from Makwa Ziibiins Miikana (Bear Creek Trail) sparked discussion of updating the plan, which hasn’t been discussed in years.

“The last time it even came up, it was as though it had been put to bed because everything … according to the director at the time, had been accomplished,” said Tom Bridge, chairman of the committee since its inception. “But I think, for me, there’s one more thing I’d like to see.

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Bridge served as the city councilor for the area of the city that includes Wisconsin Point from 2002 to 2013 and was a driving force behind the management plan development for about 2,300 acres that includes Wisconsin Point and the surrounding area.

Tuesday, Bridge proposed a couple of options for a trail loop to the right of the most recent extension of Makwa Ziibiins Miikana. One option would add about 3 miles of trail on the lake side of Wisconsin Point Road and the other would add a 4-to-5-mile loop in the same area.

Bridgit Maruska, parks, recreation and forestry director, asked if Bridge was suggesting that it would be a good time for an update to the Wisconsin Point Area Management Plan.

Bridge said the trail extension should be in some kind of plan, but he wasn’t sure it had to be in the Wisconsin Point Area Management Plan, which was adopted by the city and Douglas County in 2012.

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Maruska said it makes a lot of sense to include the trail in a plan.

Matt Steiger of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, an alternate on the committee, said it makes sense to keep the management plan alive.

“There’s reliable natural history information that’s in there,” agreed committee member Deanna Erickson, director of the Lake Superior National Estuarian Research Reserve. She said she still refers to the management plan regularly. She acknowledged that a lot has changed since the plan was adopted, most notably that the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has regained land and the cemetery the tribe once occupied.

Other plans are in the works, too, for Wisconsin Point.

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Fond du Lac is working on a plan to restore its land near the end of Wisconsin Point, and the DNR is working with the city on a plan to improve the point’s resiliency. And in September, a plan to resume ishkode, prescriptive fires to restore forest health, will take place for the first time in more than 150 years.

“A full-on update would need some sort of financial support,” Steiger said. “It makes sense to me to be somewhere in that 2026, 2027 realm of taking on a plan update.”

Bridge noted the Bear Creek Trail took about eight years to start building after it was first discussed.

The committee held the matter for further discussion when it meets in November.