Posts
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| Sharp-tailed Grouse / Photo by Andy Jewett (USFWS) |
- The Pine Tree wind farm in California's Tehachapi Mountains has an unusually high rate of avian mortality, including eight Golden Eagle deaths.
- Bryan’s Shearwater, a species recently discovered from a misidentified specimen, still has a remnant population breeding on islands off Japan.
- Idaho is working on a conservation plan to protect sage grouse within the state in the hopes of avoiding a federal endangered species listing.
- The bittern population in the U.K. is recovering well, with bitterns occurring in more and more available wetlands.
- Snail Kites have been eating one of the many exotic species that has established itself in the Everglades, and their population may be recovering as a result. The exotic island apple snails were introduced to the Everglades via the aquarium trade.
- Emergency conservation work helped the Zino's Petrel have a normal breeding season in 2011 after a wildfire caused a complete breeding failure in 2010.
- Whooping Cranes are more dispersed this year because drought has degraded their normal wintering area at Aransas NWR.
- 10,000 Birds: “A Little Bird Told Me” … Happy Birthday Charles Darwin
- The Rattling Crow: Builder Wren and counting hens
- Nemesis Bird: Dovekie – It’s What’s for Dinner
- The Drinking Bird: Birder Jargon Project: Ducks n’ whatnot
- Safari Ecology: The wheatear's remarkable migration: Alaska to East Africa
- Sibley Guides: It’s right where I’m looking!
- Round Robin: An Index to Our Updated Species Accounts
- The Birder's Report: Anna’s Hummingbirds Building Nests
- Outside My Window: Winter Trees: Sycamore
- Beetles in the Bush: The World’s Largest Tiger Beetle
- The Dragonfly Woman: Science Sunday: Adult Dragonflies and Damselflies as Indicators of Water Quality
- The Conversation: Ants and us: can society take a leaf from the leaf-cutter’s book?
- Bird Digiscoper: Wisconsin takes another step backwards
- DeSmogBlog: Unethical Oil: Why Is Canada Killing Wolves and Muzzling Scientists To Protect Tar Sands Interests?
- Leaked documents revealed some of the Heartland Institute's activities with regard to climate science, including paying conservative bloggers to spread anti-science propaganda and developing a classroom curriculum that denies the validity of climate science. Denial of established science comes readily to the Heartland Institute, which spent much of the last two decades fighting tobacco regulations. Here is a bit more on the work of the Heartland Institute vs. mainstream science.
- By 2050, one-third of U.S. counties will face severe water shortages and 7 of 10 will face some shortages due to climate change.
- Four new chameleon species found in Madagascar are among the world's smallest chameleons. Click through to see pictures of the tiny chameleons.
- Fairly soon the National Park Service will decide whether to cull 300 white-tailed deer from Rock Creek Park with sharpshooters over the next two or three years. The deer population in the park is so large (80 deer per square mile) that the park's understory has substantially degraded. In accordance with the park's proposed deer management plan, the lethal measures would be accompanied by nonlethal methods like birth control.
- A study on hurricanes and offshore wind farms found that Galveston County in Texas and Dare County in North Carolina have the highest risk of turbine destruction (as one might expect). Some of this risk may be mitigated by building turbines that can rotate in high winds.
- A new brightly-colored lizard species was found in the Peruvian Andes.
- Tejon Ranch in California was fined $136,500 for killing at least 11 mountain lions to protect game for trophy hunters.
- Another desert solar project being built on federal land faces an uncertain future due to its effects on protected animals (this time kit foxes), as well as a possible Native American archeological site that was ignored during the expedited review.
