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NPR's Linda Gradstein reports that ten years ago this week, the Chernobly nuclear reactor exploded in the densely forested planes of Ukraine. It spewed a cloud of radioactive gas into the atmosphere that -- according to the United Nations -- contaminated more than 100-thousand square miles of land and affected nine million people in some way ... Among them were hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Ukraine and Belarus. About one thousend of them...all children...came to Israel for medical treatment under a program sponsored by a religious organization called khah-BAHD. Gradstein tells us how those kids are doing.

Linda speaks to Dr. Eric Danell (dah-NELL) of the Department of Forest Mycology and Pathology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science in Uppsala (oop-SAHL-ah) Sweden. He says he's found a way to grow the hard-to-find chanterelle mushroom in controlled conditions. The mushroom has previously only been found in the wild. He says some of the details are secret, but that it was his love of eating chanterelles that led to his research. From now on, they can be grown on farms. They need a live host to survive, unlike many other mushroom species that grow on decaying material.

Some 300 million monarch butterflies spread all over North America will soon converge on small forests in the mountains of Mexico. This year, the butterflies have unusual company -- Francisco Gutierrez. He plans to follow the monarchs' migration in a 33-foot wide utralight airplane.

Diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's spread like a fire through the brain. Scientists think they may know how that fire starts. (Story aired on All Things Considered on June 19, 2023.)

Hundreds of thousands of acres have been destroyed and at least 10 people have died, including several firefighters. The Chilean government says the blazes are the worst in the country's history.

Politics have always been part and parcel of fighting wildfires. With wildfires setting records across the West, political will is growing to change the way we manage forests and fight fires.

Brazil is now a world power when it comes to food production. And a leading symbol of that might is Katia Abreu, a senator, landowner and head of the country's most powerful Big Agro association. But environmentalists say limits need to be placed on the farming industry in order to protect the forests of the Amazon.

Forest elephants in central Africa are being slaughtered in record numbers for their ivory tusks, a decade-long study finds. The U.S. government and wildlife advocacy groups are struggling to slow the killings as poaching is overcoming laws and treaties intended to protect the species.

Scientists who study forests say they've discovered something disturbing about the way prolonged drought affects trees. When drought dries out the soil, a tree has to suck harder to draw in water. But that increases the risk of drawing in dangerous and deadly air bubbles.

It's been an unusually warm winter in the Northeast. Loggers there need frozen ground to reach some forested areas. (Story first aired on Jan. 21, 2023 on Weekend Edition Saturday.)