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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
 
 

It’s the best season to experience the outdoors, rather than just reading about it in this newsletter! And while American megabrands dominate the outdoor space, Canada’s top camping-gear companies are quietly making some of the most innovative equipment.
 
 

In that spirit, here is your 2025 guide to Canadian outdoor gear for summer camping trips.

 
 

Speaking of camping, that’s what I’ll be doing soon. Our agriculture and food reporter, Kate Helmore, will be your climate guide next week. See you later!
 
 
 

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
 
 
 
 
  1. Coal: Saskatchewan says Ottawa can’t stop it from extending life of coal-fired power plants
  2. Groceries: For this B.C. beekeeper, gathering groceries is sweet and sustainable
  3. Environment: Kayaking on Lake Superior, I explored a ‘living museum’ of history in the Slate Islands
  4. Photo essay: Brazil’s depleted jungle rivers make midwives even more essential when the water breaks
  5. Whales: Shifts in habitat make North Atlantic right whales harder to track – and to save from extinction
  6. Roads: Road lines fading faster after environmental rule, say local politicians – raising costs and safety concerns
  7. Mining: Receiver planning sale of Yukon gold mine involved in contaminant release disaster
  8. Community: When the power goes out, your neighbours are the grid
  9. Theatre: Documentary play Eyes of the Beast tells the story of B.C.’s 2021 heat dome
  10. The Grizzly Return: The U.S. planned to restore grizzlies to the North Cascades. Trump’s return brings uncertainty to that plan.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

For this week’s deeper dive, an excerpt from the third story in a series on Canada-U.S. cross-border measures to protect North Atlantic right whales by Jenn Thornhill Verma.
 
 

Yards from Herring Cove Beach on a crisp day in late March, a young North Atlantic right whale grazes the surface of Cape Cod Bay’s crystal-blue waters.
 
 

As he glides, mouth agape, his fringelike baleen plates filter seawater so he can feast on small planktonic crustaceans called copepods.
 
 

“That’s what we call mowing the lawn,” says Daniel Palacios, program director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Mass., describing the whale’s skim-feeding behaviour as his team surveys from a boat.
 
 

For more than eight decades, from winter through spring, these critically endangered whales have returned to feast on an abundance of zooplankton in Cape Cod Bay, which has been seasonally protected to limit fishing activity and vessel speeds since 2015. That includes this young male, identified only by the number #5245, and his family. Sea and air surveys show he first visited with his mother, Slalom (#1245), in 2022, just as she likely did with her mother, Wart (#1140).
 
 

Every year, both Slalom and Wart would then guide their calves to the Bay of Fundy, which was once considered the northernmost limit of the right whales’ typical geographical range.
 
 

But in 2022, Slalom brought #5245 further north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence – a change that, when it began more than a decade earlier, cued attention to an increasingly urgent problem that still plagues researchers and policy-makers today.
 
 

As #5245 and the other whales continue to head to colder feeding grounds in the coming weeks, where they all will go next is a mystery. Climate change is affecting ecosystems and changing the availability of their food in different areas, resulting in the species popping up in new spots.
 
 

The consequences of the whales’ shifting habitats are dire: Under threat from fishing gear entanglements and vessel strikes, the dwindling North Atlantic right whale species – with a population of 372 – requires agile protections to survive.
 
 

But if researchers can’t find them, then policy-makers don’t know where to put such measures in place.