Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointments.

San Diego, California - A team of animal care staff from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park went on the road this week with a 7,500-pound (3,432-kilogram) traveling companion named Vus’Musi. The 11-year-old male elephant—who is affectionately called “Moose” or “Moosey” by his keepers—was moved to a new home at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo on Thursday, Aug. 20 as part of a breeding loan recommended by the Species Survival Plan program, managed within zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Sacramento, California - As wildfires burn across the Southwest and the drought stretches on, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued the following statement after new research from Columbia University, University of Idaho and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientists linked climate change to current and future drought conditions in California:

Los Angeles, California - Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today issued a consumer alert to Californians based on an increased number of complaints regarding student loan debt consolidation scams received by the Attorney General’s Public Inquiry Unit. Often times purporting to offer “student debt management” or “student loan consolidation” plans, private companies are charging borrowers upfront or monthly fees for FREE federal loan benefits.

San Francisco, California - If the California drought continues another two to three years, the state will face increasingly acute challenges in two areas: water supply in some low-income rural communities, where wells are running dry; and ecosystems, where the state’s iconic biodiversity is under severe threat and wildfire risk is growing to new extremes. Farmers have been hit hard, but are adapting. The state’s cities and suburbs are in the best shape to withstand more years of drought, thanks to investments in diversified water supplies and improved demand-management.

Sacramento, California - As Californians continue pumping groundwater in response to the historic drought, the Department of Water Resources today released a new NASA report showing land in the San Joaquin Valley is sinking faster than ever before, nearly two inches per month in some locations.