By Jim Robbins4 January 2017 (Yale e360) – The Yellowstone River has its headwaters in the mountain streams and snowy peaks of the famous U.S. national park with the same name, and makes an unfettered downhill run all the way to the Missouri River, nearly 700 miles away. It is the longest undammed river in […]
HONOLULU, 30 September 2016 (AP) – Federal authorities added seven yellow-faced bee species, Hawaii’s only native bees, for protection under the Endangered Species Act Friday, a first for any bees in the United States. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the listing after years of study by the conservation group Xerces Society. The group […]
By Kieron Monks18 September 2016 (CNN) – Few predators can match the devastating impact of the lionfish. Since arriving in US waters in the 1980s, these fearsome creatures have left a trail of destruction along the Atlantic Coast, from Rhode Island to Venezuela. Lionfish can reduce a flourishing coral reef to barren wasteland in a […]
By Max Blau and Paul Vercammen24 August 2016 (CNN) – A decade ago, Ben Ray had hoped to ease into retirement at his two-story wooden house nestled in the heart of the Sequoia National Forest. But the 79-year-old central California general contractor, who built homes for his future neighbors in Sierra Nevada Mountain communities such […]
By Oliver Milman and Alan Yuhas19 September 2016 (Guardian) – JB Friday hacked at a rain-sodden tree with a small axe, splitting open a part of the trunk. The wood was riven with dark stripes, signs of a mysterious disease that has ravaged the US’s only rainforests – and just one of the plagues that […]
Honolulu, Hawai’i, 4 September 2016 (IUCN) – The Eastern Gorilla – the largest living primate – has been listed as Critically Endangered due to illegal hunting, according to the latest update of The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ released today at the IUCN World Conservation Congress taking place in Hawai’i. Four out of six […]
By Katie Campbell29 August 2016 (KCTS9) – American white pelicans are conspicuous birds. With their long orange bills and their nine-foot wingspan, they stand out, even at a distance. Sue Ehler easily spots a squadron of them through her binoculars from over a mile away, coming in for a landing on Puget Sound’s Padilla Bay. […]
29 August 2016 (AFP) – The human impact on Earth’s chemistry and climate has cut short the 11,700-year-old geological epoch known as the Holocene and ushered in a new one, scientists said Monday. The Anthropocene, or “new age of man,” would start from the mid-20th century if their recommendation—submitted Monday to the International Geological Congress […]
By Kurtis Alexander6 August 2016 McCLELLAN PARK, Sacramento County (San Francisco Chronicle) – Even before the plane left the runway, it was clear the crew of researchers examining the fallout from California’s historic drought would not return with good news. A column of gray smoke from a smoldering brush fire was visible from McClellan […]
6 July 2016 (Society for Experimental Biology) – Scientists from the University of Washington have found evidence that ocean acidification caused by carbon emissions can prevent mussels attaching themselves to rocks and other substrates, making them easy targets for predators and threatening the mussel farming industry. “A strong attachment is literally a mussel’s lifeline,” said […]
