Posts
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| Ruby-throated Hummingbird / Photo by Courtney Celley/USFWS |
- While people are distracted by other crises, the Bureau of Land Management is speeding up deforestation and sagebrush clearing on public lands to benefit the ranching and mining industries, with harmful effects for sage-grouse and other birds.
- Proposed mines in the Bahamas would threaten an important wintering area for Piping Plovers.
- The proposed Icebreaker Wind project on Lake Erie illustrates how green energy projects can potentially harm birds and other wildlife if they are built in the wrong place.
- Black Birders Week and anti-racism protests have spurred continuing conversations about how race affects birding. There have also been calls to change honorific names for species named after terrible people, like the McCown's Longspur.
- Hawaii's birds are threatened by invasive predators, like feral cats, rats, and pigs.
- Eurasian Oystercatchers sleep with one eye open more when there is a lot of human activity, so their sleep may have been more peaceful during the lockdown.
- A network of researchers across North America and Eurasia are monitoring Arctic-nesting shorebirds to determine their populations trends and annual survival rates, among other things.
- Protection for birds like the Yellow-billed Cuckoo could help protect the health of western rivers.
- One of the best ways to help birds is to plant native plants.
- A new paper argues that local parasites influence mate selection and the appearance of different populations of Barn Swallows.
- Grassland birds are losing their habitat, and gutting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act will make things worse.
- Less sea ice will probably benefit Adelie Penguins, at least in the short term.
- Long-tailed Tits can recognize the calls of close relatives to avoid inbreeding.
- Restoration of mountain meadows in the Sierra Nevada can bring birds back.
- corvidresearch: Crows are watching your language, literally
- 10,000 Birds: Parrots in My Costa Rican Neighborhood
- Avian Hybrids: Can you deduce the activity patterns of owl species from their eye color?
- Blackwater Blog: Nature Post-Lockdown II
- On The Wing Photography: Black Henbane – Noxious Weeds In Utah
- Arachnofiles: Arachnews: June 23, 2020
- Zoonotic diseases are most likely to originate at the edges of tropical forests, so deforestation makes it easier for new diseases to jump to humans. Most tropical deforestation is driven by a handful of commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, and wood.
- While stuck at home because of the pandemic, entomologists discovered 9 new insect species from specimens collected via a citizen science project.
- This week was Pollinator Week, but see this thread on the "beewashing" that accompanies it.
- Boreal peatlands in the Adirondacks are threatened by climate change.
- A tree species in India that was once thought extinct is now considered endangered after its range was surveyed.
- Rattlesnakes have a bad reputation but are shy and mostly avoid humans.
- A coalition of tribes and researchers are working to protect the cougars of the Olympic Peninsula.
- Here is a list of the top ten tropical rainforests in honor of World Rainforest Day.
- This week critical habitat was designated for the Sonoyta Mud Turtle.
- A North Atlantic Right Whale was found dead in the ocean off Long Branch. Only about 400 remain in the wild.
- A student from Kansas discovered 18 new species of Chasmogenus aquatic beetles in northern South America.
- California is requiring that trucks sold in the state become zero-emission vehicles over the next 25 years — 50% by 2035 and 100% by 2045. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the rule should improve air quality, as diesel trucks cause 70% of California's smog and 80% of particulate air pollution.
- This week temperatures reached 100.4°F in Siberia north of the Arctic Circle. It was the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic and follows a warm winter and hot spring. Like other extreme heat events in the Arctic, it appears to be linked to climate change. The heat has been accompanied by major wildfires in Siberia.
- Reusable bags and similar items are a low risk for spreading COVID-19 since the virus spreads primarily by airborne droplets.
- A new poll finds that a majority of Americans think the government should do more about climate change, including stricter emissions standards for power plants and automobiles.
- A loophole in Facebook's fact-checking system allows climate change denialism to run rampant on the platform.
- USDA Wildlife Services is back to planting cyanide bombs in the wilderness now that the Trump administration loosened the rules.
- Australia’s wildfires last winter sent smoke 19 miles into the sky; the last smoke plume to reach such a height was the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
- Climate change is likely to intensify wildfires in the American West.
- A recent paper found like between environmental racism and police brutality.
- The Trump administration plans to hold a fireworks show at Mount Rushmore for Independence Day; fireworks shows at that site had been stopped ten years ago because of the fire hazard, and this year there is additional danger from the pandemic.
