Contact: Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov16 June 2011 It’s summer wildflower season in the Rocky Mountains, a time when high-peaks meadows are dotted with riotous color. But for how long? Once, wildflower season in montane meadow ecosystems extended throughout the summer months. But now scientists have found a fall-off in wildflowers at mid-season. They […]
By Stephan Nielsen1 July 2011 SAO PAULO – Deforestation rates in the Amazon, the world’s biggest rain forest, more than doubled in May as Brazilian farmers become more confident they’ll be granted amnesty for illegal logging. Almost 268 square kilometers (66,200 acres) of protected rain forest were cut down in May, up from 110 square […]
(CBS) This story was first published on Oct. 21, 2007. It was updated on Sept. 3, 2009. […] 60 Minutes joined up with Tom Boatner, who after 30 years on the fire line, became chief of fire operations for the federal government. “A fire of this size and this intensity in this country would have […]
By Brandon Keim June 30, 2011 The plants and animals of the southwestern United States are adapted to fire, but not to the sort of super-sized, super-intense fires now raging in Arizona. The product of drought and human mismanagement, these so-called megafires may change the southwest’s ecology. Mountainside Ponderosa forests could be erased, possibly forever. […]
[Sadly, the folks at Serengeti Watch were right: The road will be built anyway. From their Stop the Serengeti Highway Facebook page: “AS PREDICTED OUR WORK IS NOT OVER! ‘Construction of a road across Serengeti will go on as planned but the government says more than 120 kilometres cutting across world famous park will not […]
By Pete Wilton June 28, 2011 Half the elephants from West and Central African savannahs have vanished in the past 40 years, scientists report in PLoS One. A team, including Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, estimate that around 7,750 elephants remain in the Sudano-Sahelian zone, which covers 20% of the continent, a […]
By Karolin Schaps; editing by Jason Neely29 Jun 2011 (Reuters) – An invasion of jellyfish into a cooling water pool at a Scottish nuclear power plant kept its nuclear reactors offline on Wednesday, a phenomenon which may grow more common in future, scientists said. Two reactors at EDF Energy’s Torness nuclear power plant on the […]
The unusual visit last week of two long-beaked dolphins to waters outside Olympia was just the latest in a string of strange animal sightings in and around Pacific Northwest waters. Lots of creatures that at first glance might not seem to belong have found their way here in recent years. By Craig Welch, Seattle Times […]
[Update: As usual, optimism is not supported by the evidence: Paved road across Serengeti will go on as planned – World Heritage site to be mined for uranium.] By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News 24 June 2011 Controversial plans to build a tarmac road across the Serengeti National Park have been scrapped after warnings […]
On July 28, Animal Planet will debut Black Tide: Voices From the Gulf, a two-hour doc from award-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Crude) on the impact of the Gulf oil spill on Louisianians. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20, 2010 was the largest offshore oil spill in American history. The two-hour special explores […]
