Roughly 73 square miles of ancestral homelands once belonging to California's Yurok Tribe have been returned to them. The land-back conservation project along the Klamath River, a partnership with the Western Rivers Conservancy, is being called the largest in state history and more than doubles the tribe's land holdings. The lands include important river tributaries, salmon habitat and areas of cultural and spiritual significance that the tribe will now manage and protect. The deal joins a growing Land Back movement of returning lands to Indigenous people, as well as mounting acceptance that their traditional ecological knowledge is critical to addressing climate change.

The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world's rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned the drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in many places. The World Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers in many countries suffered the largest loss of mass in the last five decades. WMO warned that ice melt can threaten long-term water security for millions of people globally. Its secretary-general says water is the "canary in the coalmine" for climate change — a distress signal for a warming planet.

California's weather has calmed down after weeks of atmospheric rivers that slammed the state with damaging rains, wind and surf. Tallying the damage will take time, but a California Office of Emergency Services spokesperson says the number of homes and other structures that will be red-tagged as uninhabitable could be in the "low thousands." The damage is spread across 41 of California's 58 counties. Light rain and snow showers are lingering in some areas Tuesday, but skies are largely clear. The National Weather Service says there will be a shot of precipitation from a quick system on Wednesday into Thursday, followed by a dry period.

Ten years old, a boy who loved swimming in the river more than anything, was always wet behind the ears. Grandmother would wake him at first g…