Wildlife and Habitat
Time To Move Lyme Disease Awareness Month To April
The month of May brings many things, among them Mother’s Day, tulips, and Lyme Disease Awareness campaigns. But according to Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, if we want to get a leg up on tick-borne illness we need to become vigilant earlier in the season.
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Time To Hug A Tree
Forest preservation is essential to combating climate change. Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide, storing it in their wood. Forest destruction is responsible for about 20% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Accounting For Sea Level Rise
Several years ago, North Carolina’s legislature voted to ignore sea level rise when setting rules for coastal development. Here is the science that conservationists hope will influence future decision-making.
Why Did The Frog Cross The Road?
Here in the Northeast, after a long winter signs of spring have finally arrived. Many of us are tuned into budding plants and migratory birds. It’s also a great time to take a hike and observe the awakening of amphibian life.
The Value of Woodland Pools
Woodland pools are small, seasonal wetlands. In the Northeast, they are typically covered with ice and snow in the winter. In the heat of summer they dry up. And in the spring and late fall they contain standing water. Now is a great time for exploring the diversity of life in woodland pools.
McDonald’s And Antibiotics
McDonald’s – the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants – recently announced plans to source chicken that is free of human antibiotics. The corporation, which is one of the country’s biggest buyers of chicken, is trying to shake its image of offering unhealthy and unnatural foods. The transition to this cleaner meat will take two years.
Designer Wetlands
Drinking water supplies around the world often contain trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, agricultural and industrial chemicals, and other synthetic compounds that can harm reproduction in fish and may be linked to adverse health effects in humans. Many of these chemicals enter the water supply by passing through our bodies, entering the sewage system, and finding their way into rivers and other bodies of water. There are currently no US regulations for medical drugs under the Safe Drinking Water Act, so it is important to attack this problem proactively.
Animals And Earthquakes
There has long been the notion that animals can somehow sense that an earthquake is imminent. The observation is that animals suddenly withdraw and go silent before a quake. While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for this phenomenon, there has been little solid proof; that is, until recently.
Tough Times For Amphibians
It’s a tough time to be an amphibian. Around the world, millions of frogs, toads, and salamanders are dying from two emerging diseases. The first plague appeared in the 1990s, and is so deadly to amphibians that it is causing what has been described as the most spectacular loss of vertebrate biodiversity due to disease in recorded history.
Are Weed Killers Killing Us?
The U.S.-based agrochemical giant Monsanto finds itself at the forefront of another controversy. Monsanto, which dominates the agriculture market with its genetically modified seeds and herbicides, has drawn unwanted scrutiny after a new report linked one of its most popular herbicides to potential health hazards.
A Giant Marine Preserve
The marine life and habitats in the oceans are at risk from the activities of humankind. The three major threats to the health of our oceans are overfishing, marine pollution, and the effects of climate change. National parks established around the world have long been a way to protect and preserve wildlife and habitats on land. Only more recently have marine protected areas come into existence. These are special places in the ocean designated to help protect marine life and habitat.
Trash Into Treasure
In one of the world’s most impressive reclamation projects, Israel’s largest landfill dump has been turned into a 2,000-acre ecological park three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
Emptying The Skies
Here in the Northeast, winter is slowly giving way to spring. This means melting snow, thawing soils, and the return of migratory birds. The calls of warblers and woodcock and the thrill of spotting waterfowl like heron herald the warmer and greener days ahead.
Coyotes Calling
In New York State, if you hear howling at night, it’s not a wolf. And it’s not your imagination. When New York’s wolves were killed off in the 19th century, it left an ecological vacuum that coyotes were happy to fill.
Plastic Pollution
It’s no secret that plastic pollution in the ocean is a huge problem. The most visible sign of this is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This accumulation of debris is at least twice the size of Texas and can be seen from space. But now scientists have developed a new way to measure ocean trash – and it turns out there’s more than meets the eye.
The Dirty Job Of E-Waste Recycling
“Reduce, reuse, recycle” was a popular mantra of the 80s and 90s, encouraging citizens to separate paper, plastic, and aluminum from their trash. But with the exponential rise of electronics like cell phones, laptops, and tablets – recycling has become more complex.
An Astonishing Number Of Lakes
Have you ever wondered how many lakes there are in the world? In an effort to answer this question, an international research team used satellite photos and computerized mapping technology to count up Earth’s inland waters. They found about 117 million lakes, covering almost four percent of the planet’s non-glaciated surface, according to their study, which was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
In A Warmer World, The Ticks That Spread Disease Are Arriving Earlier
In the northeastern US, warmer spring temperatures are leading to shifts in the emergence of the blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme disease and other tick-borne pathogens. So reports a new study published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
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Teaming Up To Protect And Manage Lakes
