Category: Nature

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“A view of the cleared right-of-way for the Constitution Pipeline on the property of the Holleran family of New Milford, PA. Tree-fellers authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission used chain-saws to destroy 90 percent of the family’s maple trees that produced syrup for their business, North Harford Maple.”

The Limits of Disturbance

With its permitting authority over natural gas infrastructure, the little-known Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has sweeping power over individual citizens’ property and our collective climate trajectory. Critics say that reforming its pipeline review process should be high on President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Coal-fired electrical power and heating plant glows amid rosy polar stratus clouds in the polar night of January in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.

Arctic Treaty Nears 100 in Heated Climate

The Svalbard archipelago sits halfway between Norway and the North Pole with strategic access in the Barents Sea to vital sea lanes linking Russia, Western Europe and North America.

Snow-mantled mountains crown the northern tip of Prins Karls Forlandet in April in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway.

Methane: Arctic Promise and Peril

Consigned to my bunk all night by gut-wrenching seas, I wistfully thought back to terra firma on mainland Norway a few days earlier. Before boarding the University of Tromsø’s research ship, R/V Helmer Hanssen,

Johan Isak Oskal (quoted in story) feeds hungry reindeer from sack of specially-formulated feed since sheet of ice beneath snow prevents grazing in coastal pasture near Tromsø, Troms County, Norway, January 2015.

On The Edge: Reindeer and Climate Change

Female reindeer stands protectively beside her calf. Text and photos by Randall Hyman TROMSØ, NORWAY – “When I got married two years ago, we invited 1400 people,” Berit Oskal-Somby told me as we stood in an icy coastal pasture in northern Norway surrounded by 1500

The aftermath of the Lac-Megantic crude railcar explosion in 2013. (Credit: Axel Drainvile via Flickr)

BOOM: North America’s Explosive Oil-by-Rail Problem

U.S. regulators knew they had to act fast. A train hauling 2 million gallons of crude oil from North Dakota had exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people. Now they had to assure Americans a similar disaster wouldn’t happen south of the border, where the U.S. oil boom is sending

Emaciated polar bear searches for food on Leirholmen island; Kongsfjorden, Svalbard.

Meltdown: Vanishing Polar Ice

“What you are looking at,” lamented marine biologist Haakon Hop of the Norwegian Polar Institute, “is the melting of the Arctic Ocean.”

Nearing 82 degrees north latitude aboard the research ship RV Lance in late July 2013, we were just 500 miles shy of the North Pole.

Rhinos

Will All African Rhinos be Dead in Twenty Years?

The flat bone had a bullet hole through it wide enough to fit the tip of a pinky finger, and was caked in a dried mix of Kruger National Park’s rusty clay earth, and blood. Two cracks had propagated outwards from where the bullet entered.

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The Scientist Who Explored the Skies

MT. PALOMAR – Visiting the Palomar observatory in the forested mountains northeast of San Diego is a bit like finding oneself at the foot of one of the great pyramids of Egypt. The scale is so intimidating, so outsized compared to its surroundings, that you

A bison's massive, furry head allows it to fight off predators, clear snow to find grass and stay warm in frigid prairie winters.

Saving the American Buffalo by Killing It

Jerry Blanks took careful aim through the powerful scope on his black hunting rifle as the buffalo surrounding the pick-up truck watched him quizzically. His eye was focused on the dark fur just behind the ear of a young bull that stood just slightly apart from the group.

White Bunny

The Hare’s Race: Can evolution save species from climate change?

Behind the wheel of his boxy red Ford F-250 truck, L. Scott Mills sipped his watery coffee and headed east. It was 18 degrees out on a dim and wintry Missoula morning. As the sun rose and the sky turned white, Mills followed Montana Route 200 along the lazy Blackfoot River, northeast toward the town of Seeley Lake.

Lone bison grazing

An Epic Experiment: Can America’s Great Plains Bison Recover?

The battered white pickup truck is bouncing across a pasture of sagebrush and alfalfa when Bronc Speak Thunder turns the steering wheel east and points to the far side of a creek bed. Scattered across a grassy slope are what appear to be a field of brown boulders —

Rockhopper penguin by Dominque Filippi, Creative Commons.

Which Species Will Live?

The ashy storm-petrel, a tiny, dark-gray seabird, nests on 11 rocky, isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of California and Mexico. Weighing little more than a hefty greeting card and forced to contend with invasive rats, mice and cats, aggressive seagulls, oil spills and sea-level rise, it faces an outsize fight for survival.

3 men in stream in stream - Photo Credit: Cameron Ghalambor

Climate adaptation: Survival of the flexible

Up in the foothills of the Rockies last summer, researchers from Colorado State University in Fort Collins fanned out along the banks of a stream. Some took the water’s temperature and measured its speed and chemistry. Others waded in to catch insects using flat-bottomed nets.

An Ash Meadow Amargosa pupfish.

Should we Dilute Genes to Save a Species?

West of Pahrump, Nevada, in a corner of the Mojave Desert a couple thousand feet above Death Valley, a warm aquifer provides a home for one of the world’s rarest animals. It’s a tiny silvery-blue fish, smaller than your pinkie toe, and in the past 50 years it has survived real-estate speculators,

As China Grows Rich, Rainforests Fall

ZHANGJIAGANG, China – An incredible forest lies on its side in this gritty industrial town in southeastern China. On the southern bank of the Yangtze River nine-foot-diameter kevazingo trees from Gabon rub against Cambodian rosewoods and Indonesian teaks. Nearby, rust-colored bark from Malaysian pacific maples

China’s Rise Creates Clouds of U.S. Pollution

MOUNT BACHELOR, Oregon – At more than 9,000 feet along the crest of Oregon’s Cascade mountain range, the top of this snow-covered peak normally enjoys some of America’s cleanest air. So when sensitive scientific instruments picked up ozone – the chief component of smog –

Golden Toad, Monte Verde

A Rise in Fungal Diseases is Taking A Growing Toll on Wildlife

On the southeastern outskirts of Washington, D.C., inside the Smithsonian Institution’s cavernous Museum Support Center, one can see some frogs that no longer exist. Alcohol-filled glass jars hold preserved specimens of Incilius periglenes, the Monte Verde golden toad;

Acropora palmata spawning in Belize, courtesy of Raphael Ritson-Williams.

Frozen Sperm Offer a Lifeline for Coral

COCONUT ISLAND, Hawaii — Just before sunset, on the campus of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Mary Hagedorn waited for her mushroom corals to spawn.

As corals go, Fungia is fairly reliable, usually releasing its sperm and eggs two days after the full moon.