Posts
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| Golden Eagle / Photo by Tom Koerner/USFWS |
- A study using thermal imaging found that Tufted Puffins use their big bills to disperse excess heat.
- Northern Spotted Owls have already lost ground to Barred Owls, and it appears that the same process is happening with California Spotted Owls.
- The Tiaozini mudflats in China, which is an important stopover habitat for migrating Spoon-billed Sandpipers and Nordmann's Greenshanks, will be protected from reclamation.
- A single cat decimated a colony of Banded Dotterels in New Zealand. Out of 14 nests, only one fledgling survived.
- South Island Wrens are thriving in a mountainous area that was cleared of invasive species.
- Superb Lyrebirds had much of their habitat burned in the Australian wildfires.
- Avian Hybrids: Drawing lines between larks: How many species of Horned Lark are there?
- The Freiday Bird Blog: NJ Bird Declines: We've Been Asleep At the Switch
- The Applied Ecologist's Blog: Predator and scavenger movements as opportunities for pathogen spread among endangered seabirds
- The Meadowlands Nature Blog: Don Torino’s Life in the Meadowlands: Why The Decline in Bird Populations? Start Looking In Your Own Backyard.
- Urban Hawks: Bryant Park American Woodcock
- Backyard and Beyond: Raptors vs. Squirrels
- Arachnofiles: Arachnews: January 20, 2020
- brewster's linnet: WIR 1/15-1/21
- A new species of earthworm is invading forests of the eastern U.S. and will add an extra challenge for native plants to survive.
- Nearly 50 threatened species had 80% of their territory burned by the Australian wildfires, and another 65 species had 50% of their range affected. Many more threatened species had at least part of their territory burned. Here are some graphics that give some examples of the species harmed and areas burned.
- The manager of a Monarch butterfly reserve in Michoacán, Mexico, has disappeared and was probably killed for his work protecting the Monarch's wintering grounds from illegal logging. The incident is part of a wave of violence against environmentalists.
- The Monarch population that winters in California is stable but remains extremely low.
- A study shows that the West Virginia flying squirrel, a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel, has continued to do well since its removal from the endangered species list.
- Eastern Indigo Snakes were found breeding in Alabama for the first time since the 1950s. This threatened species has been the focus of a reintroduction project.
- One of the four North Atlantic Right Whale calves spotted this winter already has a wound from a boat propeller.
- Here is an explanation of the differences between some groups of animals whose names tend to get mixed up, like frog and toad or bison and buffalo.
- Conservation groups are threatening to sue to get the wolverine listed under the Endangered Species Act.
- Argentina's new Impenetrable National Park has partially opened, but most of the forest is already gone.
- Madagascar has launched an ambitious tree-planting program, but unfortunately a lot of the trees are not native to the island.
- BP successfully lobbied the Trump administration to weaken enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act to speed up the approval of pipelines and power plants. While BP presents itself as environmentally conscious, in practice this has not amounted to much.
- The Trump administration also cut scientists out of the decision to weaken clean water regulations.
- The 9th Circuit dismissed the children's climate lawsuit, but other climate cases will continue outside its jurisdiction.
- Malaysia has sent back 150 containers of plastic waste to their countries of origin since since banning the import of plastic waste in 2017.
- Meanwhile, China is phasing out its own consumption of single-use plastics.
- Historic sites important to the Tohono O'odham Nation, including a burial ground, are in the path of Trump's border wall project.
- New York has made funds available for the removal of obsolete or hazardous dams that block fish migration.
- Florida is buying a 20,000-acre parcel of the Everglades to protect it from oil drilling.
- The Wilderness Society is challenging an oil drilling permit within the Great Australian Bight Marine Park.
- New Jersey passed a new law to stop illegal dumping, which is a continuing problem in some towns.
