Posts
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| Greater Sage-Grouse / Photo by Tom Koerner/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service |
- Despite the protections of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Florida has become a hotspot for songbird trapping and smuggling.
- The California Condor restoration project recently recorded its 1,000th chick hatched since the species reached its nadir of 22 individuals in 1982.
- A study found that American Robins that preferentially use one eye over the other (akin to handedness) are better at rejecting eggs that are not their own.
- River Terns are disappearing from Southeast Asia, possibly due to changes that affect their nesting sites on sandbars.
- Kirtland's Warbler is coming off the Endangered Species List but will still require conservation efforts to maintain a stable breeding population.
- The eggs of Yellow-legged Gulls vibrate in response to alarm calls and then pass on the warning to nearby eggs.
- Here are some ideas to use photography to support conservation.
- AOS News: Revisiting the Classics: What factors influence the start of the dawn chorus of House Wrens?
- Avian Hybrids: It takes two: The evolution of duets in New World warblers
- 10,000 Birds: Being a beginning birder, again
- Vermont Center for Ecostudies: Mansfield Update: the Joys (and Pains) of Banding
- MaghrebOrnitho: Finnish Pallid Harrier wintered in Morocco in a rich, yet dangerous area
- Backyard and Beyond: Snoutless
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: Why Should We Care About Butterflies?
- wadertales: Time to nest again?
- Some of the actions people take to help Monarchs are actually counterproductive. The best things one can do are to plant locally-adapted milkweeds and reduce the use of pesticides.
- A military base in Pennsylvania is home to a remnant population of Regal Fritillaries.
- Some tree stumps keep living after a tree falls with help from neighboring trees.
- Tick saliva has properties that benefit both the tick and the diseases it carries. It makes tick bites hard to detect and neutralizes the body's immune response.
- The reproductive cycle of certain poison frogs requires more complex mental mapping of their environment than expected.
- Environmental DNA provides a way to detect species that might be otherwise missed in freshwater wetlands.
- A rare primate may have gone extinct in Côte d’Ivoire since it has not been seen in four decades. It belongs to the red colobus group, most of which are highly endangered.
- Since the closing of Fresh Kills Landfill, its grounds have been reclaimed by nature.
- Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives presented their own climate change plan that sets a goal of making the US carbon-free by 2050. The plan seems like a less ambitious answer to the Green New Deal proposed by other Democrats months ago; neither plan is ready to be passed into law or implemented.
- California reached a deal with several automakers to continue reducing emissions despite the Trump administration's regulatory rollbacks.
- While the DNC has not yet agreed to a climate change debate, at least two television networks are planning their own climate change forums for presidential candidates in the fall.
- What makes heat waves deadly is not just the daytime high but the hotter nighttime low, and nighttime lows are rising with climate change.
- Restoring peat bogs could help absorb some carbon emissions.
- A large oil spill in California was still growing this week, and Chevron was still dragging its feet about cleaning it up.
- Plastic waste is a major problem, especially in the countries where the US has been dumping its "recycled" trash.
- While many communities are trying to regulate or ban single-use plastics, the plastics industry has been fighting back with a combination of public-relations campaigns and lobbying for pre-emptive laws (e.g., bans on plastic bans).
- The Trump administration seems to be on board with selling off BLM lands to states.
- Berkeley recently became the first US city to ban natural gas in new buildings.
- The border wall is an environmental and humanitarian disaster and also infringes on the rights of Native Americans.
- Washington, DC, may build a park on top of the remains of the 11th Street Bridge over the Anacostia River.
