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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge is ordering the Trump administration to dole out millions of dollars to multiple nonprofits groups, determining the Trump administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order issued two weeks ago regarding freezing foreign aid.

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(NEW YORK) — Honey bee colonies across the United States are facing record-breaking losses in 2025, with scientists warning the impact could be felt in agricultural production.

Washington State University entomologists announced this week that commercial honey bee colony losses are projected to reach between 60% and 70% in 2025.

Over the past decade, annual losses for colonies have typically ranged between 40% and 50%, marking a significant jump this year.

Priya Chakrabarti Basu, an assistant professor of pollinator health and apiculture at WSU told ABC News that honey bee losses could stem from nutrition deficiencies, mite infestations, viral diseases and possible pesticide exposure during the previous pollinating season.

“I honestly think this is a combination of multiple stressors, which is why for years my lab has been focusing on understanding the impacts of and interactions of these stressors on bee pollinators,” Basu said, adding that America’s commercial beekeepers are under pressure to maintain colonies.

“The pollination demands haven’t gone down, so beekeepers face tremendous pressure to keep the same number of colonies to meet those needs,” Basu said.

Pollination is critical for food production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with the agency saying about 35% of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators to produce.

Crops that depend on honey bees and other pollinators to grow include fruits and vegetables — like apples, strawberries, cucumbers and avocados — but also nuts, such as almonds and macadamia nuts, the USDA said. Other affected plants include coffee, cocoa and vanilla, according to the USDA.

“I don’t want to be a fearmonger, but this level of national loss could mean increased bankruptcies amongst beekeepers,” Brandon Hopkins, a professor of pollinator ecology at WSU, said in a press release accompanying the research.

Hopkins said the effects could be felt the strongest in California’s almond production.

California almonds are the biggest crop for honey bee pollination, which happens in February and March, according to Hopkins.

“The almond industry frequently asks for strong colonies,” Hopkins said in the release.

“But this year, growers are desperate,” he added. “Anything with live bees in a box is in demand because the industry is short on supply. I haven’t heard of that since the early days of colony collapse around 2008.”

Honey bees had a production value of nearly $350 million in 2023, according to the USDA.

In order to combat such severe colony losses, WSU scientists are working on methods for widespread varroa mite control, awareness on commercial honey bee colony management practices and new research on bee nutrition in the hopes beekeepers will have better access to healthy food for their colonies, according to the release.

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(LOS ANGELES) — California has just experienced one of its worst wildfire seasons in years, despite the Golden State’s ample resources to combat the blazes once they spark.

The Palisades and Eaton fires, while both mostly contained as of Wednesday, are still active in Los Angeles County after starting on Jan. 7 and burning through tens of thousands of acres and killing at least two dozen people — and new fires have popped up as the region’s landscape remains dry and filled with fuel.

California is the best-equipped state in the country to combat wildfires, experts told ABC News. But even with the availability of personnel, equipment and the most advanced technology, other factors — some exacerbated by climate change — often make it impossible to contain fires before they cause widespread destruction.

Firefighting resources in California are abundant

The state often experiences the most fire activity in the U.S., leading the country with the most wildfires and the most acres burned, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) says it responds to an average of 7,500 wildfire incidents annually.

But California contains a “spider web” of different fire control, fire management and fire agencies that all come together to combat large wildfires, like the fires that decimated large portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties in recent weeks, Hugh Safford, a research fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, told ABC News.

These agencies include local fire departments run by municipalities, which contain firefighters trained not only in urban, or structural, fires but wildland fires, as well. Combined with state and federal efforts — which include Cal Fire, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service — California contains not only the most firefighters in the country but also the most highly trained, Safford said.

“The Forest Service has, by far, the largest firefighting organization of all of those, because it manages most of the nation’s forests,” Safford said. “It deals with most of the areas in which fire risk to ecosystems and to humans is most extreme.”

Considering the wildfire risk to human lives, property and wildlands, California has a vast budget for fighting wildfires. Cal Fire was given a $4 billion budget for the 2025 to 2026 season, and operating budgets are always subject to increase in the event of a big fire year, Safford said. Of the Forest Service’s $3 billion annual fire suppression budget, most of it is spent in California, he added.

That budget allows for the best equipment, such as helicopters and other machinery, to be implemented during firefighting efforts, Safford said. With Silicon Valley in proximity, the latest technologies in firefighting are also readily available, he added.

“A lot of that new technology is being tested and used here to begin with,” Safford said.

Despite ample resources, putting out fires can still be difficult, experts say

Wildfires have been getting bigger and more extreme in the last several decades, research shows. The frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled in the last two decades, a study published last year in Nature Ecology & Evolution found. A climate that has caused warming and drying in regions already prone to wildfires is partly to blame.

In California, annual wildfires are burning five times more land than in the 1970s, according to a 2019 study published in Advancing Earth and Space Sciences.

“Climate change has made California hotter and drier,” said Emily Fischer, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and a member of Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of climate scientists and mothers that says it aims to build a better future for kids. “That just makes it easier for fires to start and spread, and that means a larger area is burning every year,” she said.

While wildfires are a natural and necessary part of Earth’s cycle, climate change and other more direct human influences have increased their likelihood. Firefighters are battling blazes that could now be considered “unnatural” due to their severity, making them harder to contain before they cause widespread damage.

Safford, who used to work for the U.S. Forest Service, said he’s witnessed the rise in wildfires firsthand, in terms of cost. In the year 2000, fire suppression accounted for about 20% of the Forest Service’s annual budget, he said. Now, firefighting is taking up about 70% of the agency’s budget, he said.

That increase in fire suppression needs has taken away from the Forest Service’s other responsibilities, such as restoration, recreation, conservation and law enforcement, Safford said.

“We’re burning communities and forests down at a scary rate these days,” he said.

In the case of the Los Angeles wildfires, their inception was caused by a perfect storm of weather and climate conditions — including a Santa Ana wind event that brought hurricane-force winds to the region, as well as plentiful fuel left from two consecutive wet winters followed by months of drought conditions.

The co-occurrence of these events could potentially take place more frequently in the future, further increasing the risk of fires in California, Lei Zhao, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois, told ABC News.

“Climate change trends, the extremes and climate variability contribute to this situation,” Zhao said. “All those things are likely to be exacerbated in the future.”

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