Welcome to my blog.
All in Environment
The cicadas have arrived. Slightly earlier than predicted, but the first bugs have been reported in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In the coming weeks, two distinct bug broods, which usually emerge in separate years but in 2024 their disparate cycles are in sync, will infest the US southeast and midwest.
There was a time when Earth Day was a day of protest, specifically of the impacts of 150 years of industrial development. On the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — mobilized to call for greater protections for the planet.
This week the goats returned to Riverside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Charlie, Chico, Cowgirl, and Mallomar launched their summer’s groundskeeping job with a “ribbon chewing” ceremony to open the park’s new compost site, to which the four will be contributing over the next two months.
Scientists have discovered that the great Pacific garbage patch, the 620,000-square-mile vortex of trash in the ocean, is rife with thriving communities of sea creatures, most of them more naturally at home on the coasts.
Due to climate change and related factors, a dozen or two bird species have expanded their ranges into New York City. Among them: The black vulture, a grim looking fellow with a five-foot wingspan who, in the old days, never strayed this far north.
Researchers from the University of Utah have been studying the rare Colorado checkered whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis neotesselatus), in particular how living on a US army base affects the little reptiles. Turns out the lizards stress-eat when they hear loud noises.
The Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Italy, is world-renowned for its marble mines, with about 160 active quarries in the Massa Carrara and Lucca regions. The quarries, many of them decommissioned, are also home to the endangered Italian alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris apuana), whose recent discovery here has mobilized the locals.
The National Park Service in Kula, Hawaii, announced this week that they will soon be releasing millions of mosquitoes in Haleakalā Park in an effort to combat the avian malaria that is endangering forest birds.
There’s a class of chemicals used to manufacture all kinds of consumer products that, in humans, are linked to cancers, reduced immune function, and other ailments. A new study reveals that the nasty pollutants are causing problems in nonhumans as well, and they’re everywhere.
Last week, officials said they believed that the chemicals let loose in the Ohio train derailment had killed 3,500 aquatic animals. This week, they say the number of dead was more than 43,700 animals, all within a 5-mile area of the disaster.
There are 66 known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica. The most recently discovered group, about 1000 adults with chicks on the West Antarctic coast, gave away their position to satellite cameras — with their guano.
When the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition rolls around, there’s always (at least) one image of a species we had never seen before. In this year’s competition – the 58th by the UK’s Natural History Museum – that animal is the houbara of the Canary Islands.
The long-running war over garbage in Southern Sydney in NSW, Australia has evolved into a battle of wits. On one side are the humans, who want to keep their street-side rubbish bins sealed until the garbage trucks arrive; on the other side are the cockatoos, who want the opposite.
Conservationists in Zimbabwe are attempting to be Noah but without the ark. An effort to move thousands of animals – elephants, impalas, giraffes, buffaloes, wildebeest, zebras, elands, lions, and wild dogs – is underway as severe drought threatens this menagerie.
Australia is rife with invasive species like the feral pig, introduced by European settlers in the late 18th century, now spread across 40 percent of the country and numbering in the tens of millions. Invasives get a foothold because there are few natural predators in their new homes, but in Australia the pigs have at least one enemy: the saltwater crocodile.
Today we remember Henry David Thoreau, America’s original environmentalist. Born on July 12, 1817, Thoreau came of age in the thick of the Industrial Revolution, as machines transformed the lives of humans – for good or ill.
It is a little strange that the world’s largest plant has only just been discovered. Where was it hiding all this time? The answer is underwater, just off the coast of Western Australia.
It is hard to imagine that 33 souped up racing cars that zoom 500 miles around an oval for three hours can possibly be considered environmentally friendly, but the annual Indianapolis 500 is trying.
